Litigation

Outside Spending to Soar in WI Race?

By Peter Hardin

Taxpayers are financing the two candidates’ campaigns, but forecasts for outside group spending in next month’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election are suddenly soaring.

Voters will go to the polls April 5 in the race that pits Justice David Prosser against challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg. The candidates have accepted public financing under a new state law.

With emotions running high over legislation from Madison to curb collective bargaining power of public employees, the race may become a money magnet for outside groups that see it as a proxy fight over Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s initiative. Justice Prosser is a former Republican legislator.

A progressive group called the Greater Wisconsin Committee says it will spend up to $3 million on the race, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary, entitled “Wisconsin’s Battle Supreme.”

From conservative ranks, leaders are preparing to pump in “more than seven figures” to back Justice Prosser, and the Club for Growth is likely to spend $300,000 more for advertising to support him, according to the commentary.

“We think this race has got to be won, if we are going to keep the momentum going in these budget battles around the country,” Stephen Moore, author of the Wall Street Journal commentary, writes that he was told by the leader of a major conservative political group.

Against this backdrop, a Racine Journal Times editorial warns that “[t]he mud has indeed hit the fan in Wisconsin’s race for the state Supreme Court.” The editorial is headlined, “Appointing judges is a supreme idea.”

This ugly picture is not new for Wisconsin, the editorial states:

“Each succeeding year finds vastly more sums of money spent on political ads by special-interest groups determined to put a sympathetic justice on the Supreme Court and each year the robes of the high court get dirtier and dirtier as they drag through the mud.”

The editorial addresses indirectly a perception of justice for sale, then calls for reform:

“The state Supreme Court will never be totally free of special-interest influence, but it should be rededicated to upholding the law instead of curtseying to the highest bidder.

“Now, more than ever, Wisconsin needs to cleanse its courts and free them from the taint of special interests by going to an appointed Supreme Court and Court of Appeals.”

“An appointive system is no cure-all, but it would restore some of the respect for the state Supreme Court and lift it above its recent roll in the partisan and special-interest mud that has destroyed some of the public confidence in the court’s rulings and its ability to be truly impartial and uphold the rule of law, not that of men, women or special interests.”

Wisconsin’s new public financing law was aimed at reducing the influence of special interest spending in court elections. To learn more about the Supreme Court election, check out Gavel Grab.

Full post as published by The Gavel on March 24, 2011 (boomark / email).