HARRISBURG -- State Supreme Court Justice Russell M. Nigro lost his retention bid last night, ousted by voters outraged over hefty pay raises given to legislators and judges.

	Paul Vathis, Associated Press
	Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Russell M. Nigro Unofficial returns Justice of the Supreme Court Judicial Retention

Results in Justice Nigro's yes-or-no election were too close to call through most of the night, but as more than 90 percent of the votes were tallied, the numbers increasingly showed he was behind by 2 percentage points.

Justice Nigro, a Philadelphia Democrat, became the first Supreme Court justice to lose a retention election in more than 200 years of Pennsylvania history.

Sandra Schultz Newman, a Philadelphia Republican also up for retention yesterday, won another 10 years on the bench.

Leaders of citizen groups who have protested the pay raises had warned state legislators to pay close attention to the judicial results and repeal the raises before the legislators themselves face angry voters in the May primaries.

Only about 20 to 25 percent of the voters in retention elections historically cast no votes, so the negative reaction to both justices was far above normal, said G. Terry Madonna, a pollster and professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.

Both Justice Nigro and Justice Newman won in Philadelphia and the large suburban counties that surround it, but their retention bids took damaging blows in the returns from counties through the southwestern and south-central parts of the state.

Both were rebuffed in Allegheny, Westmoreland, Beaver, Crawford and Fayette counties. They faced big majorities of "no" votes in Harrisburg's Dauphin County as well as in neighboring counties such as Lebanon, York and Adams.

In a potential omen for next year's elections, the political bases of several of the legislative architects of the state salary legislation were among those with the highest percentage of negative votes.

Mr. Madonna said that yesterday's election was "no doubt, a victory for the pay raise protesters. This election has been a proxy for the reformers to send a message to Harrisburg. They intend to run as many challengers to incumbent legislators next year as possible and change the way Harrisburg does business."

Justice Nigro became the first victim of a serious voter backlash over the controversial July 7 pay raise given to judges, state legislators and members of Gov. Ed Rendell's cabinet.

Justice Nigro would have to leave office in early January and be replaced by someone nominated by the governor. The replacement would serve until the next municipal elections in 2007, when his seat would be filled on a permanent basis.

Both Justice Nigro, 59, and Justice Newman, 67, had strongly contended that it was unfair for people to blame them for the pay raises, since the state Legislature alone had approved the measure in the wee hours without any public debate or hearings.

"I'm a hard-working, fair, decent guy, and I make my decisions based on what I feel is the right thing to do," Justice Nigro said in an interview last week.

Both Justices Nigro and Newman, along with more than 1,000 other state judges and district magistrates, did benefit from the raises. Supreme Court justices had their annual salaries go to $171,800 from the previous $150,369 because of the Legislature's action.

The pay raises were from 16 to 34 percent for legislators, increasing their base pay to $81,050 from the previous $69,647. Top legislative leaders are now making as much as $145,000, up from $110,000 a year.

Newly formed citizens groups, such as Pa. Clean Sweep, Democracy Rising and Rock the Capitol, quickly became upset over all the raises and urged voters to send a strong message to all state officials that "business as usual" in state government would no longer be tolerated.

Russell Diamond, of Lebanon County, the head of Clean Sweep, said all incumbent state legislators should be ousted when they seek re-election in 2006.

Timothy Potts, of Cumberland County, leader of Democracy Rising and Eric Epstein, of Dauphin County, leader of Rock the Capitol, contended that all Supreme Court justices are to blame, at least partially, for the closed-door way the Legislature operates.

They contended that many important laws passed by the Legislature, such as the July 2004 slot machine law and the July 2005 pay raise law, are enacted in the dead of night with little or no debate, but the high court typically upholds the Legislature.

Justice Nigro denied claims by the critics that Supreme Court justices routinely "rubber stamps" questionable actions by the Legislature.

Mr. Potts said the pay raise bill should have been given public consideration on three different days, but instead was amended into an unrelated bill on low-income heating assistance and passed at 2 a.m. on July 7 without debate. Mr. Potts and Mr. Diamond said state judges should be paying attention to such actions, but instead haven't done anything to rein in the Legislature.

The retention election for Justices Nigro and Newman has been extensively covered in newspapers and on talk radio -- a situation almost unheard of in the past, when Supreme Court retention elections got almost no attention.

Justice Nigro said, "There's been a lot about this election in the papers, but there's not been one single article that's said I'm incompetent, lazy, intemperate, crooked or biased. Nobody's said any of those things because it wouldn't be true. I'm fair, I'm honest and I have a good temperament."

Justice Nigro raised more than $400,000 for his campaign and Justice Newman reported contributions of $240,000 in just last week alone.

Justice Russell M. Nigro

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