In March 2020, Kentucky’s 30th Circuit Court 5th Division Judge Mary M. Shaw signed the warrant executed at Taylor’s home. Taylor was fatally shot by police officers who executed the search warrant, which resulted in mass protests and eventually federal charges against former officers of the Louisville Metro Police Department.

Shaw was first elected to her seat in 2006 and eventually ran unopposed in 2014; however, she now faces her first challenger since then in Tracy Evette Davis, a private attorney.

While speaking with Newsweek on Friday, Emily Beaulieu Bacchus, an associate professor of comparative politics in the political science department at the University of Kentucky, said that while Davis fought through a “competitive” primary to get on the ballot, she is likely to continue facing difficulties ahead.

“What we know is that high-quality challengers tend to cost incumbent judges votes, but the problem is, when we think about quality of a judicial candidate, we think about someone who’s already had experiences as a judge, which Davis doesn’t have,” Bacchus told Newsweek. “So she’s got that sort of working against her, or doesn’t have that as an advantage.”

Bacchus went on to mention the different endorsements each of the two candidates have received so far.

According to her campaign website, Shaw has received endorsements from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, Citizens for Better Judges and the Fraternal Order of Police Deputy Sheriff’s Lodge 25 in Jefferson County. On the other hand, Davis has received endorsements from various local labor unions and The Political Women’s Council.

“It’s very much Shaw is drawing the bulk of her endorsements from within the legal community whereas Davis is getting a lot more endorsements from activist groups, labor groups,” Bacchus said. “And again, that doesn’t signal quality in the way we think voters pay attention to when they’re making a decision in a judicial race.”

According to Bacchus, Davis also has the Taylor issue to campaign on, but she noted that “state-of-the-art research on attack campaigning in judicial races suggests it doesn’t really work.”

While Davis has not directly used the warrant as an attack against Shaw, other local Democrats have mentioned it and called on voters to show their support at the polls.

“If we don’t do anything else this election season, the one thing we must do is go to the box and make sure that Mary Shaw is no longer a judge in the city of Louisville,” Kentucky state Democratic Representative Keturah Herron said in March, according to WFPL radio.

While speaking with Newsweek on Friday, Herron said that following Taylor’s death, Shaw “has not been held accountable.”

“So, I do think that it’s up to us, the voters, to go to the polls and make sure that she is held accountable,” Herron told Newsweek. “So, that is a message that is still loud and clear in the streets of Louisville and hopefully we’ll be able to get justice for Breonna at the ballot box.”

Bacchus also spoke about how Kentucky’s judicial races are nonpartisan, which she said has shown to reduce voter participation in these specific contests, “and that’s gonna tend to favor an incumbent.”

“What Davis has is this really big mobilization challenge and so, if she is able to win this it will be by virtue of not so much the criticism of Shaw on the dimension of the no-knock warrant that led to Breonna Taylor’s murder but maybe that is motivating folks who wouldn’t typically otherwise get up, to get up,” Bacchus told Newsweek.

The Louisville Courier-Journal spoke with several candidates in this year’s Jefferson County circuit court races, including both Shaw and Davis, specifically asking how they felt about signing off on warrants.

“A judge authorizing the search of a dwelling, business, car, etc. is a significant intrusion and requires strict adherence to existing legal and administrative standard to protect the constitutional safeguards citizens have from unreasonable searches and seizures,” Davis told the Courier-Journal in October. “My approach would be to review information thoroughly, look at the timeliness of the facts given in the search warrant, if there are any concerns to go back and ask questions of the requesting officer, prosecutor, investigator, etc. to assure there is probable cause for the issuance of the warrant at the time of signing.”

Shaw told the Courier-Journal that signing off on warrants “is a part of a circuit judge’s duties.”

“I am in favor of the recommendation that an officer have a prosecutor review the warrant before presenting it to a judge. The more people involved in the warrant process, the better,” Shaw added.

Newsweek reached out to the both Shaw and Davis for comment.