Pledge to deliver an impartial court
The words etched in granite on the front of the United States Supreme Court are “equal justice under law.” Every person in this great country has equal rights in our system of justice, no matter how rich or how poor, no matter his or her religion or race. That guarantee of equality and justice applies not only to the federal judicial system, but also to the state judicial system.
The difference between our federal and state court system is that in Montana voters get to decide what kind of Montana Supreme Court we have.
I’m running for chief justice of the Montana Supreme Court because I believe every Montanan expects our state courts must be fair and impartial every time, no matter the type of case or nature of the dispute. That sounds reasonable, but to the leftists who are trying to defeat me, it is a radical statement because it threatens their plan to control our justice system.
Simply put, my opponents do not want a fair and impartial court. They want a court that is biased in their favor. My opponent on the ballot is Jeremiah Lynch, who has focused his campaign on opposing the elected Montana Legislature and governor, and assuring liberal activist groups that he will rule in their favor.
Because Lynch has repeatedly vocalized this bias for the past fifteen months, the national Democratic Party, ACLU, radical environmentalists, liberal trial lawyers, and even George Soros-backed dark money groups have spent nearly $3 million dollars (most of it from outside Montana) to defeat me.
They are peddling lies about me to trick voters. They claim I am against stream access, which is a lie. The truth is that I advocated for legislation that reduced conflict between landowners and sportsmen. The stream access bill I worked for received near unanimous support in the Legislature and was signed by Governor Bullock (HB 190, 2009). I then strengthened stream access further by winning a case Fortner v. Broadwater Conservation District at the Montana Supreme Court.
These liberal opponents falsely claimed I worked as a county attorney to support rich landowners over property rights holders in a subdivision case. That is also a lie. Broadwater County approved a complicated and controversial subdivision in 2002 while I was deployed to the Middle East commanding a unit of the Montana Army National Guard. I was two continents away when that difficult decision was made, yet they have spent hundreds of thousands on false ads on that issue.
The liberal groups are spending millions to lie about me because they don’t want you to hear the simple truth I’ve run on from the start of this campaign: We need a fair and impartial Supreme Court. We need to get politics out of the courtroom. We need all persons, no matter their case, to know they can trust judges to render fair and just decisions based on the law, not based on who is bankrolling their campaigns. I pledge to each of you I will serve every day focused on providing equal justice under law.
Please let me earn your vote on Election Day. I’ll spend the next eight years earning and keeping your trust by keeping this promise of fairness.
Cory Swanson is the Broadwater County attorney and a colonel in the Montana Army National Guard. He is running for Chief Justice of the Montana Supreme Court.