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Endorses Stevens

The race

Washington Supreme Court Position 3 is an open seat on November 3, 2026: Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis, the first Native American elected to statewide office in Washington, announced in January 2026 that she would not seek a second term. The August 4 top-two primary narrowed a three-judge field to two: Mason County Superior Court Judge David Stevens finished first with 612,267 votes (35.19%), King County Superior Court Judge Jaime Hawk advanced second with 578,979 votes (33.27%), and Washington Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Diaz was eliminated with 543,721 votes (31.25%) despite holding the Seattle Times and Stranger endorsements. Only Stevens and Hawk are on your November ballot. The race is officially nonpartisan; alignment below is derived from career record and endorsers, and we say so.

David Stevens — Mason County Superior Court judge. Stevens's career has run on both sides of criminal cases: chief public defender for the Colville Confederated Tribes, senior deputy prosecutor in Mason County, and a federal prosecutor, before his service on the Mason County bench. In this campaign he has argued that the current justices are "fundamentally changing the criminal justice system in Washington state" because they are "ideologically driven," and he emphasizes judicial restraint — constitutional change belongs in the amendment process. The Washington State Republican Party recommended him. Fuse Washington's endorsement file reports that in a candidate pledge Stevens affirmed the "sanctity of life" from conception, marriage between one man and one woman, and U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations — positions his opponents cite against him and which we print as reported by that (opposing) endorsement source.

Jaime Hawk — King County Superior Court judge since 2019. Before the bench, Hawk spent more than two decades as a public defender and worked in civil-rights law, including at the ACLU of Washington. She serves on the Washington Supreme Court's Minority and Justice Commission. Her campaign emphasizes access to justice, including raising juror pay — most Washington jurors are paid $10 a day, a rate unchanged since 1959. Her endorsers include Governor Bob Ferguson, former Justice Mary Yu, Justice Helen Whitener, Third Act, The Stranger, and the Seattle Times editorial board for the general election. She declined to sit for the on-record candidate interview series offered to every contested November candidate by Kitsap County News; Stevens sat for his.

Pros and cons

Stevens: Credits: The broadest criminal-law résumé in the race — public defense, tribal defense, county prosecution, federal prosecution, and a trial bench — which means he has had to protect both the public and the accused; an explicit restraint philosophy (amendment process, not judicial revision); the state Republican Party's recommendation; first place in the primary. Dirt and debits: The candidate-pledge positions reported by Fuse (life from conception, marriage definition, UN withdrawal) are policy pledges, not judicial method, and voters who want a judge who campaigns on restraint should weigh that he signed them; his "ideologically driven" attack on the sitting court is campaign rhetoric, printed as his claim, not a finding.

Hawk: Credits: Seven years on the state's largest trial court and two decades of trial-level criminal defense — real courtroom depth; concrete court-administration concerns (juror pay frozen since 1959) that sit squarely inside a justice's rulemaking role; endorsements from the governor and sitting and former justices. Dirt and debits: Her formation is the public-defender and ACLU side of the system — a documented advocacy alignment, not a restraint record; her endorsement cluster (Ferguson, the Stranger, progressive organizations) is the same machinery behind the court's current direction she would extend; and she declined the on-record interview offered to both finalists, a transparency debit her opponent did not incur.

Record gaps

OUR CALL

Our call: endorse David Stevens. Disclosed basis: record and endorsers in a nonpartisan race. Stevens is the only candidate here who has stood on every side of a criminal case — defender, tribal defender, prosecutor, federal prosecutor, judge — and the only one running on restraint as method: constitutional change through amendment, not through the bench. He carries the state Republican Party's recommendation. Hawk is an experienced trial judge, and we credit that; her career and her backers are the public-defense and civil-rights advocacy wing that already holds this court's direction, and under our doctrine an advocacy-aligned jurist does not earn our support without a proven restrained bench record. Stevens's pledge-signing cuts against pure restraint rhetoric, and we priced it above; it does not outweigh the two careers laid side by side.

Vote David Stevens.

For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Result pending. No verified call (Associated Press or official) as of November 4, 2026. This page will be updated when the race is called or certified. The original article above is unchanged.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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