Although there wasn't much campaigning from the justices, some local officials began to throw support their way in an effort to help them keep their seats.
"If we allow political money to buy judicial retention elections, the quality of judiciary will be harmed and the perception of the judiciary will be diminished," the Iowa group Fair Courts For Us said on its website.
The group wrote on its site that a "special interest group" was "pouring money" into the race, when in the past three decades all of Iowa's judicial campaigns had "combined spending of $0."
So when Vander Plaats' group told voters it was "time to take a stand against the radical judicial activism of the Iowa Supreme Court," the Fair Courts for Us group did what it could to help.
And while the justices did not actively campaign to keep their seats, Ternus did give a speech last month that warned against the power of special interest groups -- like the groups that campaigned against the justices. "[They want] our judges to be servants of this group's ideology, rather than servants of the law."
But Vander Plaats and his group said they were afraid that the legal precedent set for same-sex marriage could lead to the erosion of other freedoms -- and that was why voters needed to speak up.
"If the Iowa Supreme Court will do this to marriage, every one of our freedoms, including gun rights and private property, is in danger of being usurped by activist judges who are unelected officials," Vander Plaats' group says on its website.