MONTGOMERY, Ala. — While all eyes in Alabama on election day next week may be on the race for Alabama’s newly drawn 2nd Congressional District, voters statewide will also decide who will go on to lead the Alabama Supreme Court as the state’s chief justice for the next six years.
The candidates in the partisan race are Republican Sarah Stewart and Democrat Greg Griffin, the former currently serving as an associate justice on the court, and the latter, a judge of Alabama’s 15th Judicial Circuit.
One of them will replace Tom Parker, chief justice since 2019, who has to retire because of the state’s age limit for judges.
Sarah Stewart
Stewart was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2018, though she has nearly two decades of judicial experience, having been appointed by Gov. Bob Riley in 2006 as judge over Alabama’s 13th Judicial Circuit where she presided over more than 20,000 criminal and civil cases.
A graduate of Vanderbilt Law School, Stewart had practiced law for more than a decade before her appointment in 2006, and has leaned heavily into her judicial experience both now, and during a competitive Republican primary earlier this year against Bryan Taylor, former state senator, military prosecutor and attorney.
She’s also made the rounds across the state since winning the March primary election, visiting 38 of the state’s 41 circuit courts.
“Since March, I have driven all over the state to go in person to all of the circuits that I could manage to visit and talk to the district and circuit judges, the clerks, the probate and municipal judges about what we are doing right as a system, and then what the concerns were, what are the issues,” Stewart told Alabama Daily News Friday. “So I feel like at this point I have a really good handle on the concerns of the people that are in the field.”
Stewart also said, if elected, she would work as chief justice to help improve court staff retention, workshop ways to help reduce recidivism among Alabamians leaving the prison system, and develop a plan to improve how the court system handles juvenile cases, which have grown in numbers of the years and placed a growing strain on the state’s child welfare system.
In total, Stewart has raised $2.7 million during her campaign, with her most-recent campaign finance report, filed on Friday, showing her campaign with $65,305 cash on hand.
Greg Griffin
Griffin’s been a circuit judge in Montgomery County since 2014. Prior to that, he spent about 19 years as the chief legal counsel for the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles.
He received his bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College and his law degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
Griffin ran unopposed in the March primary.
Attempts to reach Griffin on Friday were unsuccessful.
His started the campaign with about $15,000 on hand and had monetary contributions of $5,300, according to campaign finance reports.
Alabama Daily News’ Mary Sell contributed to this report.