Judge Daniel D. McCaffery belongs on the Pa. Supreme Court | Endorsement

The millions of dollars pouring in to influence who wins a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court underscores the need to do away with the unseemly process of electing judges. But until that system is changed, voters must decide which sitting judge should be elevated to the highest court in the commonwealth.

The two candidates on the Nov. 7 ballot are Republican Carolyn Carluccio and Democrat Daniel D. McCaffery. The winner will fill the vacancy on the seven-member court left by Chief Justice Max Baer, a Democrat, who died of a heart attack last October.

This is not a difficult decision — especially since such issues as abortion and voting rights are also essentially on the ballot. The Inquirer recommends Daniel D. McCaffery for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, 21 states have banned or severely restricted the procedure. For now, abortion remains legal in Pennsylvania, but Republicans in the state legislature have attempted to restrict or even ban the procedure, which should remain a matter of individual choice.

» READ MORE: The Inquirer’s 2023 General Election Endorsement Guide

Unlike the Supreme Court justices who said during their confirmation hearings that Roe v. Wade was settled law and then voted to overturn it, McCaffery said he would abide by stare decisis, the legal system construct whereby judges honor precedent.

The U.S. Army veteran and Temple Law School graduate served as a prosecutor in Philadelphia and as a civil lawyer before being elected to the city’s Court of Common Pleas.

In 2019, McCaffery, 59, was elected to the Superior Court, one of the state’s appellate courts, where he said he’s written more than 600 opinions. McCaffery’s brother, Seamus, resigned from the state Supreme Court in 2014 in the wake of a state investigation involving pornographic emails. McCaffery said he is much different in temperament and training from his brother, who was a Philadelphia police officer before becoming a judge.

Carluccio, 63, has been a judge for 14 years and is the first woman to head the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas. She was endorsed by two Pennsylvania antiabortion associations and removed a reference on her website that said she was a defender of “all life under the law.”

In a meeting with this board, Carluccio said she would follow the law in Pennsylvania regarding abortion. She said she did not scrub the “all life” language from her website, but rather a political consultant “updated” it before the primary. Bottom line: The antiabortion language was removed before election season.

Also troubling is Carluccio’s stance on election issues, which have roiled both our state and our nation since 2020, when former President Donald Trump and his associates repeatedly promoted lies about election interference, which led to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

During a Republican forum in Erie last spring, Carluccio said she would welcome a chance to review Act 77, a law passed in 2019 with overwhelming GOP support that expanded mail-in voting. She declared the law “bad for the commonwealth” and referenced unproven “hanky-panky” with mail ballots.

McCaffery is the best choice for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

But Carluccio told this board she would follow Act. 77. A different answer for a different audience?

It’s sad that this next paragraph needs repeating: Trump brought more than 50 lawsuits claiming election fraud and lost at every turn, including in Pennsylvania. Trump-appointed election officials declared the 2020 election the “most secure in American history.” Trump’s top advisers repeatedly told him that he lost.

So it is beyond disturbing that any candidate for public office — let alone the state Supreme Court — is still stoking bogus election claims or giving elusive answers to simple questions.

During the meeting with this board, Carluccio was asked: Do you think Joe Biden won the election? She initially said, “I have no idea.”

After seeing the surprised reaction of a board member, Carluccio tried to clarify her response with this muddle: “Yeah, I think he’s the president. Obviously, he’s our president. I believe he won the election. There are people in my party who don’t believe that. I do believe that I’ll be very clear about it. And I should have just been more direct in the beginning.”

Such obfuscation by people in positions of leadership helps explain why many still believe Trump’s election lies and why our democracy remains in peril. The inability to clearly repudiate bogus election claims should be grounds for automatic disqualification for any candidate seeking office.

Voters deserve judges who follow the law and not the political winds. Fortunately, the commonwealth has a highly qualified and fair judge in McCaffery — the best choice for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.