judgesonmerit.org

The Birmingham News reports that the 2008 Alabama Supreme Court race was the most expensive high court election last year.  The two candidates and third party groups spent a combined total of $5.3 million:

Total candidate spending was nearly $4.3 million – $2.5 million by [Deborah Bell] Paseur and $1.8 million by [Greg] Shaw, according to state campaign disclosures, including final accountings filed this week. Third-party groups spent at least $1 million more.

During the 2007 Pennsylvania elections, four candidates running for two spots on the Supreme Court raised a total of $7,846,478.  This does not include third party spending.  And, an out of state group active in Alabama this year, the Virginia-based Center for Individual Freedom, spent more than one million dollars on ads supporting one candidate.

What does all this mean for Pennsylvania in 2009?  We are electing one Supreme Court justice and five more judges for the intermediate appellate courts.  Will we be setting yet new records in the fundraising and spending games? Time will tell, and we’ll keep you posted.

Adding to Alabama’s already expensive and nasty Supreme Court election, a Virginia-based organization has begun a series of television advertisements promoting its preferred judicial candidate, spending over $1 million to broadcast ads praising candidate Greg Shaw.  The Press-Register reports that, in response to the organization’s ads, candidate Deborah Bell Paseur’s campaign wants Shaw to demand that the third-party organization either disclose its contributors or stop broadcasting the advertisements.

‘The whole thing we’re interested in is finding out where this money is coming from,’ [Paseur's campaign manager Marion] Steinfels said. ‘Who is funding these ads?’

Factcheck.org takes a closer look at the Alabama race, carefully scrutinizing the role of the third-party organization.  Gavel Grab is also following this development.

Last year, the same Virginia-based organization broadcast similar ads leading up to the most recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court race, urging voters to “thank” one of the candidates.   Ultimately, because the ads never explicitly advocated for the election of a specific candidate, and were considered “issue ads”, the group was able to avoid disclosing its contributors.

Judicial selection and campaign money: a bad mix.

For many years, money has been a big issue in judicial elections.  Who’s giving campaign money to which candidate is already becoming a topic of interest for this fall’s Alabama Supreme Court election.

Campaign finance reports show that political action committees (PACs) driven by pro-business lobbyists account for the vast majority of the money raised for Republican Supreme Court candidate Greg Shaw. A significant percent of the money contributed to the campaign of Lauderdale County District Judge Deborah Bell Paseur, Shaw’s Democratic opponent, has come from law firms, individual attorneys and individuals.

Even the candidates recognize the problems with this system.  Shaw explained that enormous campaign contributions make voters wary: “There is a perception in Alabama that justice is for sale in this state. . . . That strikes at the very heart of the confidence level that Alabamians have in the Supreme Court.”

Large campaign contributions erode the voters’ confidence in their court system in Alabama and other states that hold judicial elections, including Pennsylvania. As Bert Brandenburg of Justice At Stake explained:

[P]olls show the public believes campaign contributions influence the outcome of court opinions. And a poll by the National Center for State Courts showed one in four state judges had the same opinion. “When the insiders feel like money is making a difference,” he said, “that’s pretty scary.”

Eliminating fundraising from judicial selection is a big reason to support adopting a Merit Selection system for Pennsylvania’s appellate courts.