BY NATHAN CRABBE
Special to the Beacon Journal

COLUMBUS: Ohio Supreme Court Justice Deborah Cook has the support of some of the state's biggest spenders. Many of them also are her relatives.

Cook's husband and former law partner, Robert Linton of the Roderick Linton firm, was the Akron area's biggest individual campaign contributor to Supreme Court candidates in 1993-98, said a report released yesterday by Ohio Citizen Action. Linton contributed $13,767, the third-highest total in the state. Almost all of that money was given to his wife's 1994 campaign.

A search of databases provided by Ohio Citizen Action found Cook received another $12,200 from donors with the same last name. Almost half of that was from the candidate herself. She received another $10,000 from M.G. ``Jerry'' O'Neil, her uncle and a longtime chief executive of General Tire.

The report found that Cook received about 75 percent of the nearly $500,000 she spent on the campaign from individual contributions of $200 or more. The top individual contributors statewide were the late Fred Lennon of Solon ($51,000) and Cincinnati financial tycoon Carl Lindner ($21,000).

``No other justice has that type of individual support from multimillionaires,'' said the Rev. Werner Lange, head of a judicial reform group based in Akron.

Cook ran in 1994, a year before donor caps were instituted. Individual contributions are now limited to $2,000 for contested primaries and the same amount for the general election.

The cap, however, doesn't apply to family members, which could be a strength in her re-election campaign this year.

Cook said she sees family support as a strength. Taking money from her family reduces the chance she'll accept money from someone who has a case before the court, she said.

Cook has, however, removed herself from a case involving her husband's firm. Cook's non-familial connections have also led her to recuse herself from other cases.

This included the school voucher case heard before the court in 1998, because of connections to Akron industrialist David Brennan. Brennan, who runs private and charter schools in Ohio, and his wife, Ann, are family friends who gave a total of $11,000 to Cook's 1994 campaign.

Cook also received $10,000 from PIE founder Larry Rogers, who is awaiting trial on charges that he tried to bribe insurance company executives and lobbyists before his Cleveland medical malpractice company went bankrupt.

Lange said Cook should have given back the money once Rogers' legal troubles began. Cook disagreed, saying Rogers' money didn't translate to a decision by the court in his favor.

The report also breaks down donations by sectors of the economy. More than half the $4.1 million in campaign contributions received in the period studied came from lawyers and lobbyists.

Laura Yeomans, Ohio Citizen Action research director and author of the report, said the contributions raise ``chicken-or-the-egg'' implications about the court's voting record.

``Did the flow of money cause the vote or did the vote cause the contribution?'' Yeomans said.

One example is tort reform. The insurance industry pushed hard for a law that limited the amount of money that could be awarded in a lawsuit. Trial lawyers fought against it.

The court struck down tort reform three times in the 1990s, most recently last year, 4-3. Chief Justice Thomas Moyer and Justices Cook and Evelyn LundbergStratton were the dissenting votes.

Moyer, Stratton and Cook each received more than $110,000 from the insurance, finance and real estate sector in the five years covered by the report, more than triple the amount of the next highest justice. They were at the bottom of the list in money raised from lawyers, lobbyists and organized labor.

``I think it's crystal clear: Those contributions were done with strings attached,'' Lange said.

Moyer said the appearance of impropriety is almost a bigger problem than actual wrongdoing.

He said he prefers a system like those in many other states, in which justices are appointed rather than elected. Lange said he would rather Ohio have a system of publicly funded campaigns.