From Slate.com:
In theory, buying yourself a state supreme court should be easy. Most have just five or seven judges, meaning you only have to pick off a few to flip the court toward your political side. Hardly any Americans pay attention to their state’s judiciary, so it’s not that hard to vilify a few judges you oppose as activist tyrants. Plus, in our post–Citizens United democracy, outside groups can spend unlimited sums flooding the airwaves with nasty, fear-mongering attack ads, scaring voters into knocking off judges they don’t really know anything about.
That was the theory, anyway, that led conservatives to launch an unprecedented campaign this election cycle to vote out left-leaning state supreme court judges in Tennessee, North Carolina, Kansas, and Montana. Given the political climate, many observers expected them to succeed. Instead, they fell short—or perhaps more accurately, they were completely and utterly trounced. In all four states, conservatives failed to flip the court; in fact, they failed to oust a single supreme court judge. Aided by progressives and bipartisan state bar associations, the judges fought back and won big.
The total cost of all this judicial electioneering? Nearly $14 million.
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How, in an otherwise decisive Republican wave, did conservatives fail so resoundingly in their quest to stack state courts with right-wing judges? The Republican State Leadership Committee, which helped to finance most of these races, couldn’t even oust an obscure progressive circuit judge in Missouri despite blitzing the campaign with vast sums of cash. Across the country, voters in both red and blue states cast their ballots for conservative candidates. But when it came to judicial elections, Americans in every state resoundingly rejected a push to knock out progressive judges.
http://www.slate.com/...
According to the article, the most resounding lizard-person defeat was in Kansas, where several right-wing groups chipped in to try to unseat two super-progressive justices. Both won reelection comfortably.