The damage caused by enormous amounts of influence-seeking campaign money unleashed by recent Supreme Court rulings is spreading beyond elections for legislative and executive posts to contests for important state court judgeships. Following on those destructive decisions, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruled last week to deny matching funds under the state’s pilot campaign financing program for judicial races to a Republican candidate, Allen Loughry II, for a seat on that court.

The court acknowledged the state’s compelling interest in preserving public trust in the impartiality of the courts from the taint of campaign spending by litigants. But it said it had to block the matching money because the United States Supreme Court had struck down a similar public campaign finance program in Arizona last year.