Judge Andrew King of the 5th District Court of Appeals is not backing down from plans to run as a Republican for a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court despite incumbent Justice Pat Fischer saying he’s running in the middle of his term for the same position.

King and his supporters went on the offense, criticizing Fischer for running safely from a Supreme Court seat to challenge for the post held by Democrat Jennifer Brunner, who is up for reelection in 2026.

They also criticized Fischer for being a Harvard graduate, putting a focus on that because of the ongoing battle with Donald Trump and the Ivy League university over the president’s efforts to freeze more than $3 billion in federal funding. Four current U.S. Supreme Court justices — including Neil Gorsuch, a Trump nominee — received their law degrees from Harvard.

King vowed he’d be a justice in the same mold as the judges Trump has appointed to the federal bench.

King said: “I respect Pat Fischer and appreciate his many decades of service. But as a former prosecutor, I understand the crime problem in Ohio better than most other judges. Pat’s glaring lack of prosecution experience is a real concern on our state’s most important court. If I’m elected, for the first time in recent memory, a majority of our Supreme Court will be judges who have prosecuted felony criminal cases.”

King was elected to the 5th District Court of Appeals in 2022 after losing an election for a different seat on that court in 2018. He’s a former assistant prosecutor in Delaware County and has served as legal counsel to the Ohio secretary of state and attorney general.

Fischer was first elected to the Ohio Supreme Court in 2016 and reelected in 2022. Prior to that, he was elected twice to the 1st District Court of Appeals.

Because of the state’s age-limit law on judges, Fischer, 67, cannot run for reelection in 2028 for the seat he holds.

If Fischer is elected to Brunner’s current spot, he would be able to serve an additional four years.

If that occurs, Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, would appoint Fischer’s successor for the remaining two years of that term.

Describing himself as a “Christian conservative,” Fischer announced last week that he would run for the seat currently held by Brunner in 2026 and would seek the endorsement of the Ohio Republican Party’s State Central Committee.

Before Fischer’s announcement, King and three others had announced plans to run for the seat held by Brunner.

The Republican Party’s endorsement is the most coveted in state Supreme Court races and often leads to those not getting it to drop out.

In King’s statement about running against Fischer, he left the harshest criticism of the incumbent justice to his political allies.

Steve Baker, former Perry County Republican Party chairman, said, “While it may be legal, Republicans around the state are starting to see this as the ‘swampy switch.’ This scheme might work at Harvard or in the D.C. swamp, but it won’t work with Ohio Republicans.”

Coshocton County Republican Party Chairman Steve Hall said: “Fischer started his legal career back when court opinions were written on typewriters, and Al Gore hadn’t even invented the internet yet.”

Noble County Republican Party Chairman Michael Young went after Fischer contending “it’s clear that Pat Fischer is not like Trump’s judges. But everyone who knows Judge Andrew King knows that he is exactly that kind of judge.”

Democrats had made gains on the Ohio Supreme Court with Melody Stewart and Michael Donnelly winning seats in 2018 and Brunner in 2020.

But that was when Ohio Supreme Court justices ran without party affiliations in general elections.

With Republicans losing Ohio Supreme Court and courts of appeals races, the GOP-controlled Legislature passed a 2021 law, effective with the 2022 election, that candidates for those seats run with their political affiliation on the general election ballot.

Since then, Republicans have won all six Supreme Court elections, leaving Brunner as the lone Democrat. Among those Democrat defeats was Brunner losing in 2022 to Republican Sharon L. Kennedy for chief justice. Both ran from safe seats.

dskolnick@vindy.com