Alabama judges
raised and spent $4 million for their Supreme Court races in 2012, ranking No.
1 in candidate fundraising among all states with high court elections in the last
election cycle, according to a new national report on judicial campaign
fundraising released today.
Alabama candidates ranked fourth nationally for spending on air time to televise campaign
ads ($3.4 million), and fifth in overall spending ($4 million), according to
the biennial report, The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2011-12, which I helped
research, write and edit.
Alabama has attracted
the most spending by special interests seeking to elect favorable high court judges,
some $51 million since 2000. But the 2012 election was the last desperate gasp
by the old Alabama Democratic Party, which has since split in two and for now seems
unable to field any credible candidates for statewide office.
The chief
justice post and four of the eight associate justice positions were on the 2012
ballot in Alabama. The last election with that many six-year terms at stake, 2006,
remains among the most expensive ever nationally for total spending ($14.5
million) and for a single seat (the $8.2 million chief justice race).
Normally,
Alabama dispenses million-dollar judicial candidates like Pez candy. There were
four in 2006.
But 2012 was
an off year by Alabama judicial political standards. The sole credible
Democratic candidate, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Robert Vance, didn’t even
enter the field until less than three months before the general election.
Despite spending northwards of $1 million in roughly 11 weeks, he couldn’t beat
a disgraced former chief justice who was seeking political redemption, Roy
Moore.
So while
doing research for the 2011-2012 edition of New Politics, I was surprised to see
Alabama still ranked so high nationally in campaign spending last election.
A decades-long
battle for control of the Alabama Supreme Court pitted the old Democrat power
structure, backed by plaintiff trial lawyers and the state teacher’s union,
against Republican jurists and their corporate backers. Republican political
operative Karl Rove, who cut his teeth politically by engineering a Republican
takeover of the Texas high court in the 1980s, further honed his political
skills by doing the same at the Alabama Supreme Court during the 1990s.
At the time,
Alabama was one of several state battlegrounds in the tort wars, battles to
limit legal money damages and civil liability for corporate and business
interests. Those battleground states – including Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois
– ended up decidedly pro-business. So much so, according to a 2012 study of
their decisions by the Center for American Progress, those courts have recently sided with
businesses in cases involving individual plaintiffs 70 percent of the time.
The majority
on the Alabama Supreme Court switched from Democrat to Republican in 1998, and the
takeover was completed in 2000. State Democrats tried to claw back, but never
regained a solid grip.
Its glimmer of
hope was Sue Bell Cobb, who was elected chief justice in 2006. By 2011, she was
one of only two Democrats left holding any statewide office. When Cobb suddenly
resigned that summer, state Democrat leaders were unable to recruit any
credible judicial candidate for the 2012 race until the late insertion of Vance
onto the ballot.
For the
first time since Reconstruction, Democrats now are a minority in every branch
of government. There are no Democrats among the state’s 19 appellate court
judges.
Limited competition
has meant the big money that had dominated Alabama judicial politics has gone
elsewhere.
Research for
the New Politics report identified 20 “Super Spenders,” organizations or
individuals that have spent at least $1 million each to influence the outcome
of one or more state Supreme Court races since 2000. Three are from Alabama.
On that
list, the Business Council of Alabama ranks fourth ($6 million) and the Alabama
Democratic Party is fifth ($5.6 million) in total spending from 2000-2012. The pro-business
Alabama Civil Justice Reform Committee is 15th on the list ($2.8
million).
But that
trio’s outlay was anemic in 2012 – less than $150,000 among all three combined.
Alabama
Supreme Court candidate campaigns last election received far more money from personal
loans than they did in contributions from the nationally ranked Super Spenders.
(More on the loans in a future blog post.)
As the New
Politics report notes in an essay on Alabama, the likely battles will be in
Republican primaries for Alabama Supreme Court seats, at least until the state Democratic
Party revives. And expensive races in those primary campaigns are unlikely.
How long
will it be before Alabama loses its perch as the top state for special interest
spending? Not long, if Michigan continues its torrid pace. The state ranked
first in total spending in 2011-2012, at least $13 million. Spending there this
century is nearly $41 million.
Since the
2000 elections, The New Politics report has been published by the Justice at Stake Campaign in Washington D.C., the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU
School of Law and the National Institute on Money in State Politics in Montana.
When I
worked at The Birmingham News, my beat included covering judicial politics, including
the 2006 Alabama Supreme Court campaign. New Politics was a regular resource
for me as a reporter. I’m proud to have been part of producing this
edition.
