Fundraising for state Supreme Court campaigns nationwide more than doubled between 2000 and 2009, pitting business groups against trial lawyers and highlighting loopholes in the often murky world of judicial campaign finance, according to a report released yesterday by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
Lawyers and business groups were by far the biggest spenders cited in the study, which tracked more than $46 million in judicial fundraising in 2007 and 2008 alone. Most of the money raised was ultimately spent on television ads, which can be particularly effective in judicial elections, where most voters know little about the candidates involved.
Special interest groups in particular spent most of their money on attack ads, which can be devastating to judicial candidates, the study shows. Because California Supreme Court judges are appointed, not elected, they did not figure prominently in the study.
However, concerns about elections and campaign spending in the state's lower courts have prompted debate and legislation in the state Legislature, which has mulled the issue for the better part of the summer.
The bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, would disqualify judges from hearing cases involving contributors from whom they accepted $1,500 or more. After passing the Assembly in May, it was unanimously approved by the Senate last week and is on its way to becoming law.
At issue, according to a committee hearing on the subject in May, is whether judges can maintain impartiality when their re-election depends in part on money from the very parties they rule against.
At least one judge – former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer – didn't think so. As he told The New York Times in 2006:
I never felt so much like a hooker down by the bus station … as I did in a judicial race. Everyone interested in contributing has very specific interests. They mean to be buying a vote.
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