Buying judges

[madmusic]

Big Money and Special Interests Are Warping Judicial Elections

By Thomas J. Moyer and Bert Brandenburg
Legal Times
October 9, 2006

snip

Since 1999, candidates for state supreme courts have raised $123 million in their efforts to win or keep seats. More than half that amount was raised by candidates in just four states with particularly contentious judicial politics—Alabama, Illinois, Ohio, and Texas. This year the candidates in each of the states of Alabama, Ohio, Oregon, and Washington swept past the million-dollar mark before Labor Day. Pushed to raise money like big-time politicians and wary of the demands of special interests, a growing number of judges feel trapped. As former California Justice Otto Kaus eloquently put it, “It is difficult to ignore a crocodile in your bathtub when you’re shaving in the morning.”

Television ads are the canary in the coal mine: When they appear, the rest of this nasty and costly new politics is not far behind.

In 2000 only one in four states with contested supreme court elections saw television ads. Just four years later ads ran in four of every five states with contested high court races. And these ads are appearing earlier in the campaign cycle. Ads have special potency in judicial elections: Because of media indifference and low voter turnout, interest groups can use ads to mobilize their bases just enough to tip the results.

The informational value of these ads is frequently dubious. In 2004 fewer than one in three ads focused on traditional judicial themes of qualifications, experience, and integrity. Instead, high-stakes TV campaigns tempted judicial candidates to come perilously close to making promises about how they will rule from the bench. In recent years, candidates have run on being “pro-choice and proud of it,” “tackling the medical-malpractice crisis,” and believing that “the rights of victims are just as important as the rights of defendants.” Watching such ads, voters might forget that judges rule based on the facts and the law, not on whatever campaign slogan their consultants urged them to adopt.

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