Who's responsible for this ad?

This is a traditional candidate ad paid for by Justice Melody J. Stewart for Ohio Supreme Court committee. Contributions to candidates are available on the Ohio Secretary of State’s website. From January 2023 to April 19, 2024 (the post primary filing), Justice Melody Stewart’s campaign received $186,103.60 in monetary and in kind contributions.

Stewart’s campaign finance filings fail to provide meaningful information unless voters are willing to do a significant amount of research. The campaign failed to report 45% of the names of individual donors’ actual businesses. This leaves the organizational or economic affiliations of more than $66.414.52 unidentified. Ohio law requires candidates to identify the employers of donors who give more than $100 or if self-employed, the name of their occupation and their business.

Donor and prominent Ohioan Stephanie Hightower provides a good example of the lack of transparency in the campaign’s reports. The CEO and President of the Columbus Urban League contributed $1,000. However, the campaign reports her occupation vaguely as “professional” and her employer is unidentified.

Discussion and Analysis

Context provided by Jessica Dickinson, Outreach and Engagement Manager, Ohio Fair Courts Alliance

This race pits two incumbents and colleagues against one another – Justice Melody Stewart (D) and Justice Joe Deters (R). Deters was appointed to the state’s highest court by Governor DeWine in 2023. He chose to challenge Justice Stewart rather than running to retain his own seat. Justice Stewart expressed her dismay that he decided to take on a sitting colleague when he had another option. 

Justice Stewart posted pull out quotes from an opinion piece by Brent Larkin. Larkin was The Plain Dealer’s editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009. He now writes columns for cleveland.com.

Candidates increasingly use social media ads across all platforms. It’s less expensive than making television ads or mailing flyers, and the posts reach a wide range of potential voters.

In 2022, for the first time in more than 100 years, party labels accompanied the names of Ohio Supreme Court and Ohio Court of Appeals candidates on the ballot. This was after the supermajority in the Ohio General Assembly passed Senate Bill 80 requiring the political affiliations for these higher level judicial candidates to appear on ballots in general elections.