CAMPAIGN FINANCE - Why Trial Lawyers Have a Beef With Bush

By David Byrd, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Saturday, May 08, 1999

	      Ask trial lawyers what they'll be doing in the 2000 
presidential campaign, and the answer is simple: working to help 
elect anybody other than George W. Bush. Many trial lawyers view 
the Texas Governor's record on tort reform as hostile to their 
interests, so they're planning to take some of their 
immense spoils from the tobacco wars and shower them elsewhere. 
Vice President Al Gore is the likeliest beneficiary of their 
largesse, but other candidates--including former Sen. Bill 
Bradley, D-N.J., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.--also could belly 
up to the plaintiffs bar. 
	     After years of taking a rhetorical pounding from business 
interests and the Republican Right, trial lawyers say they were 
energized by the upset win, in last year's general election, by 
fellow trial lawyer John Edwards over incumbent Sen. Lauch 
Faircloth, R-N.C. 
	     ''Edwards' election set a tone, a loud tone,'' said Fred 
Baron, a Dallas trial lawyer and vice president of the 
Association of Trial Lawyers of America. ''To see a guy like him 
come out and say, 'I am a trial lawyer and proud of it' has 
emboldened a lot of us trial lawyers to get more active in 
politics.'' 
	     Running for Governor in 1994, Bush made tort reform a top 
issue in his campaign. Indeed, as his first official act after 
getting elected, Bush declared a ''legislative emergency'' on the 
issue, pushing through restrictions on lawsuits as well as caps 
on punitive damages. 
	     And trial attorneys haven't forgotten the attacks at the 
1992 Republican National Convention by his father, President 
George Bush, who slammed Clinton and Gore for being backed ''by 
every trial lawyer who ever wore a tasseled loafer.'' 
	     ''I don't know of any trial lawyers supporting George 
Bush. Not a one,'' said Baron. ''His record is quite awful.'' 
	     Indeed. Bush's No. 1 source of campaign money has been a 
network of corporate attorneys, defense attorneys, and lobbyists, 
but he has not been able to tap at all into the plaintiffs bar. 
Even among the growing number of Republican trial attorneys, 
there is little support for Bush. 
	     ''We're being asked to support someone who hasn't been 
very good to trial lawyers,'' complains Don Hildre, a San Diego 
trial attorney and the membership chair of the Republican Trial 
Lawyers of California. ''We'll probably just concentrate on 
Republicans in the House who won't go south on us when it comes 
to tort reform.'' 
	     Not surprisingly, both Gore and Bradley are courting the 
trial lawyers. Gore struck early and big, lining up the fund- 
raising prowess of Stanley M. Chesley, a wealthy trial attorney 
from Cincinnati. Chesley last month hosted a fund-raiser for Gore 
that netted the Vice President $ 200,000. Chesley, who is involved 
in lawsuits against tobacco companies and gun manufacturers, has 
been a prolific fund-raiser for Democrats; he raised more than $ 1 
million for Clinton in a pair of fund-raisers last year. 
	     Gore has also won the backing of key trial attorneys in 
California and Texas, where some of the nation's wealthiest trial 
attorneys have practices. Mark Robinson, the current president of 
the Consumer Attorneys of California, the state's largest trial 
attorney group, has agreed to round up support from other trial 
attorneys in the state. And John O'Quinn, a Houston trial 
attorney whose firm stands to rake in more than $ 600 million over 
30 years from his role in Texas' tobacco lawsuit, has also thrown 
his backing to Gore. 
	     ''Everything I hear is that Gore is the foregone 
conclusion, so all the money is going to him,'' said John Coale, 
a Washington, D.C., trial attorney who is a lead attorney in the 
Castano Group of lawyers suing tobacco companies. 
	     ''Gore has always--and I mean always--been a friend of 
trial lawyers,'' stressed Baron, whose backing of Gore may sway 
other ATLA members. ''If anyone has had a perfect voting record, 
it would be him. Not one blemish.'' 
	     But support for Gore in the community is far from 
monolithic. Some trial attorneys who raised money for Clinton 
have decided not to be involved in Gore's campaign. Bob Fogel, a 
trial lawyer in Chicago who was part of Clinton's national 
finance committee, was asked to join Gore's team, but he 
declined. ''Gore was at a dinner at my house for a fund-raiser 
when he was running with Clinton,'' Fogel recalls. ''The next 
time he saw me, he didn't have a clue who I was. He doesn't have 
near the charisma that Clinton has.'' 
	     And other trial attorneys have quietly raised concerns 
that Gore may have too much baggage. ''A lot of us are concerned 
with whether Gore is electable,'' said Turner Branch, an 
Albuquerque trial attorney who represented New Mexico in that 
state's tobacco lawsuit. Branch said he has yet to be tapped by 
either Gore or Bradley, but he has raised money in the past for 
Clinton. Though still undecided, Branch noted that ''Bradley sure 
does bring a lot to the table.'' 
	     Bradley has tapped Steve Pajcic--a fellow student from 
his Princeton days--to help raise money in Florida, where trial 
lawyers won $ 3.4 billion in contingency fees for their work in 
getting $ 13 billion for the state from the tobacco companies. 
Pajcic, a Jacksonville trial lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for 
Governor as a Democrat in 1986, has pledged to raise $ 1 million 
for Bradley in the state. 
	     Democrats have long found trial lawyers to be a reliable 
and generous source of funds, but after four years of a GOP- 
dominated Congress, Republicans are also winning support. 
	     ''I have seen more trial lawyer money go to individual 
Republicans in the last two years than in the past 20 years,'' 
Baron said. Just last year, trial lawyers backed New York Sen. Al 
D'Amato, a Republican, over his liberal Democratic challenger, 
Charles Schumer. Even House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, has 
recently been aiming fund-raising letters at longtime Democratic 
trial attorneys. 
	     In fact, Richard F. Scruggs, a Pascagoula, Miss., 
attorney who will receive just short of $ 1 billion over 25 years 
as one of the architects of the national tobacco settlement, is 
throwing his weight behind Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for 
President. 
	     ''I'm personally going to raise as much money as I can 
for McCain,'' boasted Scruggs, who is the brother-in-law and a 
next-door neighbor of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., 
and was, like McCain, a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War. Scruggs 
has already raised $ 50,000 to help McCain's efforts. 
	     The GOP's chances of getting trial lawyer dollars may 
have been helped by the decision earlier this year by Jersey Sen. 
Robert G. Torricelli--chairman of the Democratic Senatorial 
Campaign Committee--to cosponsor legislation that would impose 
limits on lawsuits lodged against asbestos companies by victims 
of asbestos exposure. 
	     ''Many erstwhile Democratic friends of trial lawyers more 
or less double-crossed us on the asbestos bill,'' Scruggs said. 
''The trial lawyer money is going to dry up when it comes to the 
DSCC, if I have any say about it.'' 
	     Scruggs is far from alone in being angry with Torricelli, 
who will need support from trial attorneys in raising money for 
Democratic senatorial candidates. ''He should have thought that 
one out better,'' said Baron. ''There are some really angry trial 
attorneys upset about this.'' 
	     In view of the uproar, Edwards has been dispatched as an 
emissary to allay trial attorneys' fears over the bill. ''A few 
lawyers have expressed concerns,'' Edwards admits, ''about 
Torricelli's sponsorship of the asbestos bill.'' 
	     But as the flare-up over the asbestos bill indicates, 
there's nothing like the threat of tort reform to motivate trial 
attorneys--and their pocketbooks. And trial attorneys are pre- 
emptively signaling Republicans to pick their battles carefully 
in 2000. Trial lawyers are keeping a sharp eye on current efforts 
to cap punitive damages and to limit liability through Y2K 
litigation reform bills in Congress. They're also watching a 
patients' bill of rights, HMO reform, and ''auto-choice'' no- 
fault car insurance. 
	     ''If Bush comes out in favor of auto-choice insurance, it 
will create a jihad,'' Baron warned. ''It is the core issue for 
bread-and-butter trial attorneys, and it will really get them to 
open their wallets (against him) in droves.'' And as trial 
attorneys' bank accounts swell with tobacco contingency fees, 
that's a potent threat. (Trial attorneys say that Gore's aides 
have signaled his opposition to the auto-choice legislation.) 
	     Indeed, Fred Levin, a Pensacola, Fla., lawyer whose firm 
will bring in more than $ 300 million in tobacco contingency fees 
over the next 25 years for its role in Florida's tobacco 
settlement, says that crossing the trial lawyers is expensive for 
any politician. ''Why (would Bush) take these guys on? All that's 
going to do is turn all that tobacco money against Bush and the 
rest of the Republicans. Why tempt a rabid dog?'' 
Stanley M. Chesley 
Age: 63 
Address: Cincinnati 
Work: A class action superstar and president of Waite, Schneider, 
Bayless & Chesley 
Politics: Has contributed more than $ 350,000 of his vast wealth 
to Democratic candidates since 1988. This time around, he's 
supporting Vice President Al Gore. 
Richard F. Scruggs 
Age: 52 
Address: Pascagoula, Miss. 
Work: One of the main architects of the national tobacco 
settlement, he'll receive just under $ 1 billion for his role 
Politics: Although he's the brother-in-law of GOP Senate Majority 
Leader Trent Lott, he gives overwhelmingly to Democrats. But he's 
touting Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for 2000.