COLUMBUS | The four candidates for Ohio
Supreme Court last year raised $6.2 million and the winners —
Republican Justices Evelyn Lundberg Stratton and Maureen O'Connor —
received 109 times as much money from physicians and insurance
companies than did the losers, according to the non-partisan
campaign finance watchdog group Ohio Citizen Action.
The $6.2 million counts only money that went directly to campaign
coffers. Four independent interest groups spent about $1.83 million
on TV ads promoting or attacking Supreme Court candidates. Citizens
for a Strong Ohio, a group backed by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce,
raised another $1 million to support candidates.
The waves of cash, groups with anonymous donors and attack ads
have some people calling for reform.
“Alarm bells are ringing in Ohio, after two election cycles with
multimillion-dollar interest group advertising campaigns. The bar
has condemned the ads; the Chief Justice (Thomas Moyer) has called
for reform,” said Deborah Goldberg, deputy director of the Brennan
Center for Justice’s Democracy Program. “The integrity of the
state’s highest court will increasingly be questioned unless
something is done to sever the connection between big money and
elections to the bench.”
Heavy hitters in the state’s legal and political community will
hold an all-day forum Thursday in Columbus on how Ohio selects
Supreme Court justices, how independent groups participate in
judicial elections and how campaign donations are reported. Chief
Justice Moyer, the Ohio State Bar Association, the League of Women
Voters of Ohio, the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and
Policy and the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics are
holding the forum.
“We are incredibly appalled by the content of many of the TV ads
in the 2000 and 2002 campaigns. Many of them impugned the integrity
of the court. And if citizens can’t believe in their courts, then
our democracy starts to fall apart,” said Terry McCoy, president of
the League of Women Voters of Ohio.
One reform measure likely to be discussed is “merit selection” of
Supreme Court justices. In some states, the governor appoints a
panel to select justices based on their credentials. The justices
then serve a set term or serve a couple of years and then go through
a “retention” election.
Cliff Arnebeck, an attorney representing Ohio Common Cause,
Alliance for Democracy and American Friends Service, said he opposes
a move toward merit selection. Now is not the time to give up on
elections and hand the duty to Gov. Bob Taft, who raised money for
an independent group involved in the 2000 Supreme Court elections,
he said.
Catherine Turcer, campaign reform director for Ohio Citizen
Action, said, “It would be very naive to think retention elections
wouldn’t bring out the lowest common denominator.”
Last fall, Stratton raised $1.9 million, with Republican Party
committees giving her $229,114; O’Connor raised $1.8 million, with
GOP party committees donating $244,566; Democrat Janet Burnside, a
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge, raised $1.2 million, with her
party committees giving $174,996; and nDemocrat Judge Tim Black of
the Hamilton County Municipal Court raised $1.3 million, with his
party groups giving $186,740, according to the Ohio Citizen Action
study released Monday.
Stratton and O’Connor received $1.07 million from physicians and
insurance interests while Black and Burnside raised $9,950 from
those same people and groups, according to Citizen Action. Lawyers
and lobbyists were the biggest contributors to Black and Burnside,
accounting for $1.66 million of their campaign coffers, the study
reported.
[From the Dayton
Daily News: 03.04.2003]
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