BOISE - Idaho Supreme Court Justice Roger Burdick will retain his seat on the Idaho Supreme Court, beating challenger 2nd District Judge John Bradbury on Tuesday.

Burdick, who touted his extensive courtroom experience during the campaign, won with about 58 percent of the vote in early returns.

"I've been humbled by the support that's come my way over the last five months because people from all walks of life and all parts of the state have echoed a common theme throughout our travels," Burdick said, choking up briefly. "They want judges they can trust and judges they can work with ... I can be that judge."

He has served on the high court since he was appointed by former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne in 2003, and was re-elected to the post in 2004.

"I've been questioned many times during this campaign, should we elect judges or appoint them," Burdick said. "I believe the Idaho Constitution and the people of Idaho have come up with a pretty good mix of both - we have appointed judges but we also hold elections from time to time to make sure we keep our citizens involved in the process."

The race drew plenty of public attention, as the two men threw everything but the gavel at each other in their bid for the high bench. Bradbury maintained Burdick has catered to politics rather than the people, while Burdick said Bradbury is more focused on activism than interpreting the law.

The two clashed over everything from whether complaints against judges should remain secret and whether the court system is doing enough to be accessible for average Idahoans.

Bradbury, who chose not to run for re-election to the 2nd District bench in favor of running for the Idaho Supreme Court, said he's done with working in the court system now.

"I've done what I can - in eight years on the bench I brought a full-time judiciary to three counties where there were none, established the state's only rural mental health court and instituted reforms. I'll move on to other private endeavors, but I'm not going to practice law," Bradbury said.

Burdick served in a variety of legal roles before ascending to the Idaho Supreme Court bench. He was a public defender, a county prosecutor, a magistrate and a district judge and spent three years as a presiding judge for the state's water law court.

During the campaign he stressed his time adjudicating water rights, saying his experience would come in handy as water law cases are expected to come before the Idaho's highest court in coming years.

He also tried to deflect criticism from Bradbury and his challenger's supporters, who said Burdick and the rest of the high court justices had abdicated their responsibility nearly five years ago when the court ruled that the state's system of funding schools was unconstitutional but didn't enact any penalties or sanctions to force lawmakers to fix the problem.

In the final days before the vote, a group calling itself Idaho Citizens for Justice ran a flurry of newspaper and radio advertisements and sent out mailers targeting Bradbury. The Idaho Secretary of State's office said the group violated Idaho's Sunshine election-finance law when it did so, because it failed to file as a political action committee and failed to file timely finance reports saying where it got the money for the ads.

Bradbury, meanwhile, said the ads unethically targeted him with inaccurate personal attacks. He said the ads were the downfall of his race.

"I was relatively optimistic until this weekend when they did those ads. At that point there's nothing you can do to combat them," he said. "I'm a gracious loser when the fight is fair - this one wasn't. If you have to win the campaign that way, I'd rather not win."

Burdick has said he didn't know anything about the group, which was funded with donations from the Idaho Falls-based company Melaleuca.