11-04-2000

LOBBYING: K Street For November 4, 2000

Wanted: Right-Thinking Justices


A multimillion-dollar corporate drive to get more pro-business justices
elected to state Supreme Courts is garnering lots of business and
conservative backing. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has committed at least
$7 million to the effort this year in Alabama, Michigan, Mississippi, and
Ohio, and the chamber is getting financial help from the American Council
of Life Insurers, an industry trade group based in Washington, and some
big insurers. According to sources familiar with the campaign, the
insurance group is helping to underwrite the chamber's drive. The group is
also channeling cash to certain states to boost Supreme Court candidates
it favors. The stepped-up drive has been prompted in part by business
concerns over recent state court decisions that have hit corporate America
with whopping punitive damage awards (which are often sharply reduced by
appellate courts).


The U.S. chamber has endorsed candidates in its four targeted states. And
last month, the chamber underwrote issue ads airing in Ohio and Michigan
that contrast the judicial records of candidates on such litmus-test
issues (for business) as tort reform and corporate liability. Moreover, in
Ohio, where two sitting justices are defending their seats on the court,
the Ohio Chamber of Commerce is leading a group called Citizens for a
Strong Ohio that has a separate $3 million campaign under way, according
to sources involved in its drive. A fund-raising appeal for the Ohio group
was signed by the former president of Ashland Oil and by the current
president of Nationwide Insurance. State business interests are trying to
oust Justice Alice R. Resnick, a Democrat, while keeping Justice Deborah
Cook, a Republican, on the bench. The Ohio group has also launched a
controversial issue-ad drive on television against Resnick. One of its
30-second spots, which features a blindfolded female justice being
inundated with money, makes a reference to Resnick's accepting $750,000 in
trial lawyer donations. The spot asks: "Is justice for sale in
Ohio?"


Meanwhile, the business blitzes in Ohio and Alabama are being supplemented
by the grass-roots muscle of Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Washington
based conservative organization that claims a nationwide membership of
about 250,000. In Alabama, for instance, where five of the nine justices
are up for election this year, the group's state chapter has published
voter guides and other literature in an attempt to influence the Election
Day results. One of the group's brochures notes that in 1987, the state
Legislature passed a tort reform bill that was later ruled
unconstitutional by the "trial lawyer friendly Alabama Supreme
Court." Last year, the Legislature again passed a tort reform bill;
the group warns that the current conservative majority on the court-in
place since the mid-'90s-could be jeopardized unless voters reject
"activist" judges.


Peter H. Stone

National Journal