Two Democrats running to unseat incumbent Republican Supreme Court justices in Georgia are projected to lose their bids despite hopes from the state party that they could win.

Personal injury lawyer Miracle Rankin and former state Sen. Jen Jordan lost to incumbent Justices Charles Bethel and Sarah Warren, respectively. Both Bethel and Warren were appointed by Republican governors. Georgia’s judicial elections are ostensibly nonpartisan, but the candidates are backed by the parties that are ideologically aligned with them. No incumbent justice has lost reelection in the 100-year history of the state’s judicial elections.

Democrats had been on a run in Georgia over the past year. In 2025, two Democrats won seats on the state’s Public Service Commission by wide margins, while another Democrat won a special election to the state House of Representatives in a district that President Donald Trump won by 12 points in 2024. And they were looking to the Supreme Court races as evidence that this good luck would continue ahead of November’s midterm elections, when they hope to reelect Sen. Jon Ossoff, win the governor’s mansion and take control of the lower chamber of the Georgia General Assembly.

Despite holding a turnout edge on Tuesday, that didn’t carry through. The nonpartisan nature of the races, where the candidates are not listed as affiliated with a party on the ballot, may have played a role. But Rankin and Jordan campaigned together with a progressive message in support of voting, civil and abortion rights.

Republicans criticized their campaigning, which led to a finding from a special committee of the GOP-appointed Judicial Qualifications Commission that both Democrats violated judicial conduct rules. A district court blocked the commission from releasing its findings in a decision that found it violated Jordan and Rankin’s free speech rights on Sunday.

The court remains heavily tilted toward Republicans with an 8-1 GOP majority. That will be important as the court is certain to hear challenges to new maps the Legislature is expected to adopt at a special session called for this summer by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act.

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