Litigation

Election Day Summary: Pressure on Courts ?Is Growing?

By Peter Hardin

A new round of special interest campaign cash, attack advertising and wedge-issue politics broke several spending records in the 2010 judicial elections and took ideological hardball campaigns into new states.

The roar of the year’s national politics played out in judicial elections and referenda, and it favored populists and partisans and tilted against incumbents and the establishment, the Justice at Stake Campaign and Brennan Center for Justice said in an analysis of the Election Day outcomes.

Their report highlighted TV ad wars in Michigan that cost $5 million to $8 million and saw Supreme Court candidates sharply outspent by political parties and an out-of-state group; and the unseating of three Supreme Court justices in Iowa, although organized efforts to oust justices failed in Illinois Colorado, Alaska, Kansas and Florida.

A ballot initiative to replace competitive elections in Nevada with judicial appointments and retention contests was defeated, but voters in a Kansas district rejected efforts to scrap a merit selection plan. Other details from the election season, including TV ads, are available at Judicial Elections 2010.

“Pressure on impartial justice is growing,” said Bert Brandenburg, executive director of Justice at Stake. “Judges are facing more demands to be accountable to interest groups and political campaigns instead of the law and the constitution.”

Heavy spending and angry TV ads that had marked many past contested elections spilled over in 2010 to several states with retention (up-or-down) elections. High-court retention elections in Illinois, Iowa, Colorado and Alaska resulted in about $4.6 million in total costs, more than double the $2.2 million raised for all retention elections in the 2000-2009 decade.

But in most of the 15 states where justices stood in retention elections, campaign expenditures lagged well behind those in competitive election states.

Through Monday, more than $12 million was spent nationally on TV air time in state supreme court elections. Including $4.6 million spent on TV ads last year, the current total for the 2009-2010 election cycle is about $16.6 million, close to the amount spent for judicial TV advertising in the last non-presidential election cycle, 2005-2006.

“As in past years, judicial election campaigns featured substantial numbers of hard-hitting, mud-slinging attack ads–many of which were as nasty as those seen in any political campaigns,” said Adam Skaggs, Counsel at the Brennan Center.

The JAS and Brennan Center analysis spotlighted data from these states:

All three Iowa justices on a retention ballot were dumped, following a fierce attack on a unanimous 2009 ruling that overturned a state law banning gay marriage. Out-of-state groups pumped in more than half of the estimated total election costs of $1.2 million.

“Under our constitutional system, courts are designed to be different from the other branches of government,” Brandenburg said. “If judges in any state begin basing their decisions on political pressure and campaign spending, instead of the facts and the law, everyone loses.

More than $3.1 million was raised in the extraordinary Illinois race, where Justice Kilbride retained his seat with 68 percent of voters casting a “yes” ballot. “Special interest money bought one of the most tasteless TV ads that ever appeared in a court election, while a sitting justice raised millions of dollars from plaintiffs’ lawyers and other parties who will appear in court,” Brandenburg said.

Michigan was the nation’s most expensive judicial election battleground. More than $5.1 million was spent on Supreme Court TV ads; the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, which checks TV station ad records, placed the total even higher at exceeding $8 million. “Political parties and independent groups hijacked this election, heavily outspending the candidates, and ads on both sides were riddled with questionable claims,” Brandenburg said.

In Nevada,  voters chose to keep their current system of nonpartisan competitive elections by a margin of about 58 to 42 percent. “The politics of 2010 made it a difficult climate to ask voters to change how they picked judges,” Brandenburg said. “And yet many voters remain concerned about campaign cash in the courthouse.”

You can visit the JAS Election 2010 Results page for details from Election Day.

Full post as published by The Gavel on November 03, 2010 (boomark / email).