NYT,pg1: Judicial Races in Several States Become Partisan Battlegrounds

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Judicial Races in Several States Become Partisan Battlegrounds
By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: October 24, 2004


Judicial elections, which used to be staid and decorous affairs, have been transformed this year into loud and vicious fights, fueled by money, venom and television.

Campaign spending has skyrocketed. In one Illinois race, two vying candidates have raised $5 million. In West Virginia, a group financed by business interests is spending $2.5 million to defeat a sitting State Supreme Court justice. About a third of the total spending nationwide comes from interest groups, much of it from the independent but partisan organizations known as 527's. Their main contributors are business interests and plaintiffs' lawyers, and their agenda is most often the election of judges who could help - or the defeat of judges who could hinder - efforts to impose limits on lawsuits seeking damages for injuries.

Voters in eight states are seeing television advertisements in judicial races for the first time. And the ads are as pointed as those used in races for legislative and executive positions. One charge, leveled in separate advertisements against sitting judges in two states, is that they released dangerous sexual predators.

When judges are not attacking their opponents, they are telling voters their views on the legal and political issues of the day, something they had avoided until a 2002 decision by the United States Supreme Court. Statements by judges on issues they might be called upon to decide were generally thought to violate codes of judicial ethics before that decision.

All these developments, many lawyers and legal scholars warn, threaten the reputation, independence and integrity of the judiciary in the 38 states that elect at least some of their judges. Even the people involved in some of the nastiest campaigns are critical of their own work, saying it is the upshot of an unfortunate but inevitable political arms race....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/politics/campaign/24judicial.html