Outside money is pouring into the race for a seat on West Virginia's Supreme Court, a seat that was last won a dozen years ago with a huge and notorious flood of outside spending.
Groups independent of the candidates have spent more than $1.1 million on the race, more than triple the amount of money the race's five candidates have raised. Nearly two-thirds of that money has come from an out-of-state group.
Two factors have evened the score a bit, though, enabling candidates to keep control of their own message - public campaign financing and one candidate's personal wealth.
The five candidates, through traditional fundraising mechanisms, have raised about $373,000 between them.
But two, incumbent Justice Brent Benjamin and former legislator Bill Wooton, applied for and were approved for public campaign financing.
Each candidate received nearly $500,000 in public money.
Beth Walker, the favored candidate of the state's Republican establishment and business community, has raised the most money for her campaign, about $200,000, but has supplemented that with a $500,000 loan from her husband.
The Supreme Court approved Wooton and Benjamin for public financing despite lawsuits from Walker, who argued that their applications failed technical requirements of state law.
Former Attorney General Darrell McGraw has raised just over $50,000, while Clay County attorney Wayne King has raised no money and loaned himself about $14,000.
"Outside spending has drastically changed the tone of this race," said Alicia Bannon, an author of "Bankrolling the Bench," a study on judicial elections produced by New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. "We have consistently seen that outside groups are much more likely to go negative than the candidates themselves. The worry is that, when judicial races look like ordinary politics, the public may question whether judges are any different than politicians."
All judicial elections in West Virginia are, for the first time, nonpartisan, an effort by the Republican-led Legislature to remove politics from the courts.
Politics is still very much in the courts, though.
McGraw, Wooton and King all previously ran for office as Democrats, and Walker and Benjamin previously ran as Republicans.
The biggest chunk of third-party money comes from the Republican State Leadership Committee, a national group that spends heavily on state-level races across the country. In 2014, the RSLC was the biggest outside spender in Supreme Court races across the nation, spending $3.4 million in five races, according to "Bankrolling the Bench."
The group has spent $722,000 this year in West Virginia. Of that, nearly $600,000 has gone to attack McGraw, and the remainder to attack Wooton.
The ads, one of which accuses McGraw of using tax dollars for personal business and one of which tries to link Wooton and McGraw to President Barack Obama, prompted reactions.
Wooton made his own ad, accusing the RSLC of being funded by "gambling and drug money" and asking, "What do they want with our Supreme Court?"
Benjamin, not the target of attacks, released a statement condemning them and called on other candidates to do the same.
"Our Legislature has clearly stated that massive special-interest spending on negative ad campaigns harms the public's perception of the fairness of our courts," he said.
The next biggest chunk of third-party spending, about $230,000 to date, has come from a group called the Just Courts for West Virginia PAC, and has been spent attacking Walker. The Just Courts for West Virginia PAC has not yet filed a campaign finance disclosure with the secretary of state, so its donors remain unknown.
It links Walker with former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, recently sentenced to a year in prison for conspiracy to violate mine safety standards.
"Blankenship's operatives and executives are funding Walker's current campaign," it says. "Don't let special corporate interests buy Beth Walker a seat on our Supreme Court."
It is hardly Blankenship's first entry into judicial politics. The state's public financing system for Supreme Court races was created in reaction to Blankenship's role in 2004, when he spent $2.5 million attacking incumbent Justice Warren McGraw (Darrell McGraw's brother), helping Benjamin get elected.
Blankenship's former political aides have largely deserted Benjamin and now support Walker.
Walker met with Blankenship in 2008 before launching an unsuccessful campaign for Supreme Court that year, a meeting that her campaign says is not indicative of where she now draws her support.
"Beth Walker is committed to independence and integrity, and that is why she has sought and received the support of countless groups representing West Virginians who share her commitment to the rule of law," Walker spokesman Kent Gates wrote in denouncing the ad.
Walker also released a new television ad, her second of the campaign, saying she is "tired of liberal judges" and taking aim at Hillary Clinton, rather than her opponents.
Her first ad, about the opioid epidemic, calls for "tougher laws" for drug dealing - something that a Supreme Court justice would have no say or role in creating.
Walker also has been the beneficiary of about $225,000 in spending from the state's business community.
The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce has spent $170,000 on ads supporting Walker. The chamber's ad also attacks Clinton and Obama, calling Walker a "tough, fair, conservative judge."
The West Virginia Business and Industry Council, through its PAC, has spent $55,000 on ads supporting Walker, although its financial disclosure forms came with letterhead from the West Virginia Coal Association. The two groups share an executive, Chris Hamilton.
Reach David Gutman at david.gutman@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5119 or follow @davidlgutman on Twitter.