Republican Pat Fischer is looking to stay an Ohio Supreme Court justice for as long as possible.

With some prompting from Gov. Mike DeWine, a fellow Republican, Fischer announced May 28 that he would challenge incumbent Democrat Jennifer Brunner for her seat in next year’s election.

Ohio has a law that doesn’t permit judges to run for office if they will be older than 70 when their terms are to begin.

Fischer, 67, cannot run in the 2028 election, when his seat would next be on the ballot. So instead of finishing out that term, he said he will challenge Brunner in 2026. If he wins, Fischer would be able to serve an additional four years on the Supreme Court.

DeWine likes the idea because if Fischer wins, he keeps someone he supports on the court and would get to appoint his successor for the remaining two years of that term.

DeWine selected Joseph T. Deters, a former Hamilton County prosecutor and state treasurer, to an unexpired term after the 2022 general election when Republican Sharon L. Kennedy won the chief justice race over Brunner. Deters is DeWine’s close friend and had no experience as a judge before his appointment.

Rather than run for the remaining two years for his seat, Deters successfully challenged incumbent Democrat Melody Stewart and is serving a six-year term.

Back in 2020, Judge Matt Lynch, elected in 2018 to the Warren-based 11th District Court of Appeals, filed to challenge incumbent Democrat Timothy P. Cannon and won. Lynch got an additional four years on the bench because he would not have been able to run for reelection last year because of his age.

There is talk that Republican Judge Mark A. Hanni of the Youngstown-based 7th District Court of Appeals, elected in 2022, may run next year for one of the other seats on that court, which would extend his time serving. He cannot run for reelection in 2028 because of the age-limit law.

As for Fischer, there were four Republicans who were planning to seek the party’s support and challenge Brunner in 2026.

It really comes down to who gets the endorsement of the Ohio Republican Party’s State Central Committee. It is that important.

Most of the time, aspiring Republican candidates for the Supreme Court get out of the primary if they fail to get the endorsement. Those who remain — and there’s been very few over the past couple of decades — end up losing.

Fischer, calling himself a “Christian conservative,” said he plans to seek the endorsement.

Of the four Republicans who were looking at the seat before Fischer’s announcement, only Judge Andrew King of the 5th District Court of Appeals, to date, said he isn’t backing down.

Of course, it will likely be a different story if Fischer gets the party endorsement.

King and his supporters criticized Fischer for running from a current Supreme Court seat, targeting him for that type of politics as well as for being a Harvard graduate.

The latter is to curry favor from those who support President Donald Trump, the most powerful Republican for the past decade.

Trump has waged a very public battle with Harvard, seeking to freeze more than $3 billion in federal funding to the university.

King said he would be a justice in the same mold as those appointed by Trump, while saying Fischer’s “glaring lack of prosecution experience is a real concern on our state’s most important court.”

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.

Meanwhile, Fischer was elected to two terms on the Ohio Supreme Court and before that, was twice elected to the 1st District Court of Appeals.

When it comes to statewide elections, Republicans have dominated Ohio.

The only branch where they stumbled at times was judicial because candidates for the Supreme Court and courts of appeals didn’t run with party affiliation during general elections.

That lack of party affiliation helped Democrats win two Ohio Supreme Court seats in 2018 and one in 2020.

But Republicans changed the law in 2021, effective with the 2022 election, that candidates for those seats run with their political affiliation on the ballot.

Since then, Republicans have won all six Supreme Court elections, leaving Brunner as the lone Democrat.

We’ve also seen the law’s impact locally.

In 2022, incumbent Democrats on the 7th and 11th Appeals courts lost reelection. In 2024, Democrats didn’t even field candidates for seats on either appeals bench realizing they couldn’t win.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see that again next year.

Cheryl Waite, the last Democrat on the 7th District court, was first elected in 1996 and has never had to run with party affiliation. She is almost certainly not going to seek reelection next year.

David Skolnick covers politics for the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator.