The state Supreme Court, which has had the final Pennsylvania say in high-profile election fights, is itself in the middle of an unusual election fight.

Three justices — Christine Donohue, Kevin M. Dougherty and David N. Wecht, all Democrats — face “retention” decisions in the Nov. 4 municipal election, meaning voters statewide will simply be asked whether each should be retained for another 10-year term.

Democrats desperately want to keep their 5-2 majority on the highest court in arguably the nation’s most important swing state. Republicans just as badly want to flip the court to their side. A listing of the areas in which it has made important decisions recently reads like a listing of society’s biggest political battlegrounds: redistricting maps, the mail-in voting law, the COVID-19 pandemic.

And so the campaign is intensifying and the interest is national, given the potential ramifications the vote could have on the 2028 presidential election.

There are gobs of advertising money, door-knocking and slogans, along with warnings about “radical liberal judges” from one side and “extremist Republicans” from the other. And a lot more is expected before the Nov. 4 decision is rendered on Justices Donohue, Dougherty and Wecht.

“No question,” said Richard L. Jolly, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles who has researched and written about judicial elections. “Judicial contests used to be as exciting as playing checkers by mail. Nobody cared at all. That is no longer the case.”

A “NO in November” ad on Google seeking an end to the sitting justices’ terms was part of $118,000 to $135,000 in ad spending carried out online by the Republican State Leadership Committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative. The “extremist Republicans” tag was used by Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which plans a “six-figure” spend on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court retentions.

The ACLU and ACLU of Pennsylvania, meanwhile, said they would put $500,000 into a campaign to educate voters on the “pivotal” Supreme Court retention elections.

Dougherty has deep ties to Philadelphia. Donohue’s and Wecht’s ties are to Allegheny County.

Donohue lives in Pittsburgh and has her chambers here. Born in Schuylkill County and raised in Carbon County, she moved to Pittsburgh to attend Duquesne University School of Law. She eventually taught ethics for lawyers at the university and still serves on its advisory board.

Wecht was born in Baltimore but grew up in Squirrel Hill. His judgeships have included time as on Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, and he was twice elected county register of wills and clerk of Orphans Court. He teaches at Duquesne University and the University of Pittsburgh and lives in the county.

But individual backgrounds and performances have garnered little talk in the campaign so far. It’s all about keeping or grabbing the political majority on the court — a desire fed by the court’s high-profile role in election fights.

“All kinds of cases are going to reach the Supreme Court,” said Michael Berkman, a professor of political science and director of Penn State University’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy. That, he said, means the political parties have a natural interest in the retention elections.

In the pressurized run-up to the 2020 presidential election, the state Supreme Court allowed Pennsylvania counties to count mail-in ballots up to three days after the Nov. 3 election date, with certain conditions.

It later struck down a Commonwealth Court ruling and permitted the counting of 2,349 Allegheny County ballots in the same election that had no written date on the outside. Those ballots were considered vital in the ultra-close battle for a state Senate seat between incumbent Democrat Jim Brewster and Republican challenger Nicole Ziccarelli. Brewster ultimately won the election.

The state Supreme Court “has been a breath of fresh air,” said Stephen Herzenberg, an economist and former executive director at the left-leaning Keystone Research Center. That’s particularly true, Herzenberg said, when compared with a Republican-dominated U.S. Supreme Court that “has the appearance, at least, of being more overtly partisan.”

The DLCC’s Williams, announcing its focus on the retention contests, said, “Extremist Republicans have made it crystal clear they are willing to use the judiciary to keep themselves in power, and we will not stand back and allow them to undermine the voices of the voters.”

Republicans have said “radical liberal judges are trying to secure another decade of power” as they advertise “Put the No in November” ahead of the retention contests.

The action isn’t just online. Advocates for both sides are pounding the pavement.

Republicans are knocking on doors and making phone calls to drum up interest in ending the Supreme Court run of the three justices, according to Republican Party of Pennsylvania spokesman James Markley. “Another decade on the bench? Voters in Pennsylvania want term limits,” Markley said.

Jason Richey, who chairs the Republican Committee of Allegheny County, said he expects interest in the contest to grow in coming weeks. Right now, he said, a lot of voters aren’t thinking about it.

Lori McFarland, chairwoman of the Lehigh County Democratic Committee in Eastern Pennsylvania, said people are knocking on doors, making phone calls, texting and putting up billboards. Key issues, she said, include the court’s possible future role in deciding reproductive health freedoms and the fact that it supported “some of the fairest voting maps in the country.”

Should one or more of the justices lose their retention bids, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, would appoint a justice to fill the vacancy.

But the appointee would have to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. And, the term would last only until just after the 2027 municipal election, when a justice would be chosen for a new, 10-year term via a standard, party-affiliated election.

For many, it’s tough to square away the concept of having judges run for election at all. Jolly, the California professor who as a law student researched and wrote about judicial elections, said the U.S. is one of only three nations that use elections to pick members of the judiciary. The other two are Switzerland and Japan.

“The actual holding of an election for a judge is incompatible with the ideal,” he said, and that ideal is “that the law exists separate from political partisanship.”

Nonetheless, the battle over some of Pennsylvania’s top judges is on, and there is some irony involved.

The Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts said having a simple yes-or-no question with no party affiliation listed was designed “to remove judges from the pressures of the political arena once they begin their first term of office.”

(Post-Gazette staff writer Mike Wereschagin contributed to this report.)

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