Group: Money, partisanship cloud judicial elections
Jake Armstrong, Morris News Service
August 11, 2008
Don't drink the Kool-Aid.
That's the message one group is trying to impress upon judicial candidates seeking election
in an era that has seen judicial campaigns take on big money and partisan overtones. Its members
say such campaigning weakens public confidence in the court system.
Recently, the Georgia Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns, a coalition of attorneys,
legal scholars and business people, asked candidates for the Georgia supreme and appeals courts to
pledge to keep their campaigns free of the trappings of most political campaigns.
False and misleading statements are out, as is taking positions on the campaign trail rather
than in the courtroom, according to the pledge.
Mark White, of the National Center for State Courts' campaign oversight committee, said going
negative is now a sure ticket to a losing campaign, as evidenced by 53 incumbent Texas judges who
recently lost election challenges after steadily attacking their opponents.
Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher said judicial campaigns have
become more expensive in the past decade, drawing attention from special-interest groups that
launch attack ads and erode the public's faith in the judiciary.
In fact, fundraising in judicial elections soared in recent years, with Supreme Court
fundraising alone lurching from $38,888 in 2000 to just over $4 million in 2006, according to the
League of Women Voters of Georgia.
They've also become noisy.
In the past two Supreme Court election cycles, manufacturers' organizations launched a salvo
of expensive attack adds against incumbents they believed included personal views into their
decisions, which prompted reciprocal attacks. However, the two Supreme Court justices up for
re-election this year, Robert Benham and Harris Hines, drew no opposition.
Three appeals court candidates who attended an event at Emory Law School signed the pledge
Thursday -- Sara Doyle, Christopher McFadden and Bruce Edenfield. Committee members will follow up
with candidates Michael Meyer Von Bremen, who attended by phone, Tamela Adkins, Perry McGuire and
Mike Sheffield. All seven are competing for the same open seat.
Polly McKinney, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Georgia, said the public
can't depend on fair decisions if judges are beholden to the prevailing political winds.
"It shakes the stability of everything we do," she said.