Culliton 2026
Portrait of Karim Merchant
Position 7 · Stephens seat — challenging Stephens

Karim Merchant

Solo criminal defense attorney, K. Merchant Law PLLC (Renton); trial attorney listed at King County Department of Public Defense

Our read on this candidate
Not enough to tell
Confidence: Low

Renton criminal defense lawyer with no campaign infrastructure and no record on tax or Article VII. Background points vaguely progressive, but nothing in his public footprint addresses Culliton.

Seat
Position 7 — Stephens seat — challenging Stephens
Appointing authority
Not applicable. Challenger, not a sitting judge.
Background
Criminal defense for 18+ years, with 300+ bench and jury trials. Practice spans felony and misdemeanor defense, constitutional rights litigation (Fourth Amendment and Article I § 7), domestic violence defense, drug trafficking, felony firearm offenses, and government misconduct cases. Solo at K. Merchant Law PLLC in Renton, with concurrent listing at the King County Department of Public Defense (since 2008).
Reported endorsements
None located. No bar, judicial, union, or elected-official endorsements identified.
Fundraising
No filing yet as of May 19, 2026

What the record actually shows

Facts pulled from public sources: who appointed them, what they did before, what they've said or written, who's backing them. We're not predicting any vote. Why these categories?

  • What he has not said

    Zero direct statements on Culliton, Article VII, the millionaires tax, Quinn v. State, capital gains tax, or property tax uniformity. No interviews, no voter pamphlet, no op-eds, no podcasts on the substantive constitutional question this race turns on. His campaign URL (merchantforjustice.com) does not resolve.

  • Background, weakly read

    Howard Law (a historically civil rights–oriented school), King County public defense, constitutional litigation focused on criminal procedure rights. This is the profile of a civil libertarian criminal defense lawyer. That orientation has no obvious mapping onto Article VII property tax uniformity, which is a separate legal universe.

  • Coalition signals

    No identified ties to Full Court Press (the conservative organization active in 2026 WA judicial races) or the Federalist Society. No identified ties to SEIU, the ACLU's PAC arm, or organized progressive judicial mobilization either. He sits outside both coalitions. That is itself informative — neither side has invested in him.

  • Anomalous social media data point

    He shared a clip of former Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) saying Democrats 'have no clue how bad their policies are for the economy,' with the caption 'what she said.' One ambiguous social media post does not establish a lean. It is the only off-note in an otherwise standard progressive public defender profile, and it cuts both ways: it could read as left critique of corporate Dems or right-leaning fiscal skepticism.

Deep read

How this candidate is likely to rule, and why.

Karim Merchant is the hardest candidate in the 2026 field to place on the Culliton question, because there is almost nothing to place him with. He is a Renton solo criminal defense attorney with a Howard Law JD (2007), 300+ trials, and a concurrent listing at King County DPD.

He registered as a Supreme Court candidate in December 2023, more than two years before the primary, which is unusually early.

Since then his campaign has produced essentially nothing: no working website (merchantforjustice.com does not resolve), no voter pamphlet statement located, no fundraising ($0 raised, $0 spent under PDC mini-reporting), no endorsements, and no interviews explaining why he is running. His firm site mentions none of it.

The few public signals available all relate to courtroom procedure and individual constitutional rights, which is what you would expect from a criminal defense lifer. None of them touch Article VII, the uniformity clause, Quinn, or the income tax. The only data point that is even ambiguously political is a Facebook share of former Gov.

Gregoire criticizing Democratic economic policy. That can read as left critique of corporate Democrats or as right-leaning fiscal skepticism. It is too thin to extract a signal. Coalition-wise, he sits outside both organized camps.

There is no evidence he is a Full Court Press candidate or a Federalist Society pipeline candidate, and no evidence the progressive judicial machine (SEIU, ACLU PAC, Frame-Pellicciotti coalition) has invested in him. Neither side has bet on him. The honest call is unclear with low confidence.

His Howard Law plus public defense profile circumstantially suggests a generally progressive judicial worldview, which would map weakly toward scrap — but that is inference stacked on inference and not defensible at any meaningful confidence level.

He may simply be a long-shot candidacy with no developed view on the case at the center of this election.

  • Early filing, no follow-through

    Registering with the PDC in December 2023 suggests deliberate planning, not a last-minute filing. But the absence of any campaign infrastructure since then — no working website, no fundraising, no message — makes the candidacy hard to interpret. Either his strategy is to coast on ballot order in a low-information judicial race, or the campaign simply hasn't materialized.

  • Public defender pipeline

    Public defenders who become judges or justices tend to be on the progressive side of state constitutional questions, in the same way that prosecutors who become judges tend to be on the state-power side. But that correlation is about criminal procedure and Fourth Amendment-style cases. It does not transfer mechanically to tax uniformity or Article VII.

  • Howard Law context

    Howard's law school identifies its mission with civil rights and social engineering. That is biographically consistent with a progressive read, but Merchant has not invoked that framing in any campaign material located.

  • Neither coalition claims him

    The Urbanist and Washington Observer profiles of the race mention him only as 'a defense attorney' challenger. He is not on Full Court Press materials. He is not in the Frame-Pellicciotti endorsement orbit. The most telling signal may be that nobody has tried to draft him for either side.

An analytical read on public signals. Not a prediction of any individual vote.

Questions a voter might ask this candidate

  1. Why is he running against the Chief Justice with $0 raised and no website?
  2. Does the Gregoire-clip share signal genuine fiscal moderation, or is it ambient internet activity?
  3. Has he ever taken or briefed an Article VII or state-tax case?

Phrased to comply with Washington's Code of Judicial Conduct, which prohibits candidates from pledging votes on specific cases or issues likely to come before the court. Methodology questions are permitted.

Sources