Partisan interest groups have injected negative and distorted messages into a race for state Supreme Court, at a time when voters need it least, according to Democratic candidate Kate Ford Elliot.

Elliot campaigned in Mercer County Thursday. She stopped at four places in the Shenango Valley, including The Herald and the county courthouse.

Elliot, a lifelong Pittsburgh native, is running against Republican J. Michael Eakin of Elizabethtown. Both are 52 years old, "highly recommended" by the state bar association, and sitting state Superior Court judges -- Elliot is going on a dozen years on the bench, Eakin half that.

Their race was the first in the country to involve negative campaigning since the Sept. 11 atrocities, The Associated Press reported Tuesday. The race is hotly contested because Republicans and Democrats are fighting for majority of the bench.

Monday, the Republican State Committee said Elliot was insensitive toward victims of sexual abuse, based on votes to retry three cases because of "procedural irregularities," the AP reported.

Thursday, Elliot said the GOP state committee was insensitive and made "blatantly false and distorted" accusations.

Elliot said she has made more than 7,000 decisions on the Superior Court bench and has a strong record of protecting victims, especially children. "That was what was the most hurtful," she said of the accusations. Her decision in one of the three cases the GOP committee cited was backed by seven others on the bench, she said. And she added: "I'm a woman and a mother. Why on heaven's earth would I want sexual offenders on the streets?"

"This is a difficult time, and Pennsylvania has been touched closely" by the events of Sept. 11, Elliot said, denouncing what she called negative campaign tactics by the GOP state committee and the not-for-profit group Penn Law Watch. She said Penn Law gave her a horrible judicial rating based on 89 meticulously picked decisions she has made. An Elliot staffer said Eakin has not launched any campaign missiles, either. It has been the work of GOP interest groups.

"I am going to run on my merits," said Elliot, who expects her campaign to spend about $1.2 million but not to launch any missiles at her opponent.

Elliot has sat on the Superior Court bench since 1990, but her experience with that court stretches back to 1978. She was a judicial law clerk for the court's senior judge from 1978 to 1980; an administrative assistant to a former president judge from 1980 to 1982; and coordinated the efforts of 17 lawyers as chief staff attorney for the court from 1982 to 1988. She worked as a lawyer for Pittsburgh's second-largest law firm from 1988 to 1989 and was a reading specialist for the Pittsburgh schools from 1971 to 1978.

She said she taught kids with learning disabilities how to read by day and studied law at Duquesne University by night.

The state Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority in the state. In addition to being the final court of appeals, it hears decisions of the Superior and Commonwealth courts and, in some cases, ones from Courts of Common Pleas. The Supreme Court also may take any case pending before a lower court if it involves an issue of immediate public importance.

There are seven Supreme Court justices. The term is 10 years and the salary is $133,643.