Legal News

Politics & the Law: Lawsuits Over Troopergate, Michigan Voting

By Dan Slater

Before we ultimately return to Meltdown World, let’s take a quick legal jaunt through Campaign ‘08:

Troopergate yields suit: Today, the WSJ peels back a layer on the controversy surrounding Sarah Palin’s decision to dismiss Alaska’s public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, who says he was dismissed for refusing to fire Palin’s former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, a state trooper. Monegan told the Journal that he never received explicit orders to fire Wooten, but that this was the implication during discussions, which he said included suggestions that Wooten was unfit for his job.

Like the book-banning allegations, Troopergate may never see resolution. But at least we’ve got a lawsuit. The NYT reports that five Republican state lawmakers filed a lawsuit yesterday in Alaska’s Superior Court seeking to halt the inquiry into Palin’s dismissal of Monegan, arguing that the Legislature has exceeded its authority by conducting a “McCarthyistic investigation.” The McCain-Palin ticket says it had no involvement in the suit, which was filed by a local lawyer, Kevin G. Clarkson, and the Liberty Legal Institute, which is based in Texas and has a history of taking up conservative causes.

The defendants in the case are two Democrats, State Senator Hollis French, who is overseeing the investigation, and Senator Kim Elton, who is the chairman of the Legislative Council, which voted on July 28 to open the inquiry; and Stephen E. Branchflower, the independent investigator, a former Anchorage prosecutor who now lives in South Carolina. Elton said in a written statement that while the lawsuit is a distraction, the investigation would continue.

Voter eligibility goes to court: Last week, a report on the Michigan Messenger, a Web-based news site, quoted a Republican county chairman in Michigan saying the party was going to challenge the voting status of homeowners who had faced foreclosure. State party officials later denied the report, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy the Obama campaign and its lead lawyer, Perkins Coie’s Bob Bauer. The Obama campaign filed a suit Monday to limit the ability of Republicans to challenge the eligibility of voters in Michigan. Here’s the WSJ report.

Bauer said he had evidence that Michigan Republicans were engaging in a “particularly ugly brand” of voter challenging, using lists of foreclosed homeowners to compile a voter roll that could be used to challenge the residency of citizens who show up at the polls in November. Bauer field suit in federal court in eastern Michigan on behalf of the campaign and three Michigan residents in foreclosure procedures, seeking an injunction to stop the activity.

In an interview with the WSJ, James Carabelli, the Republican Party Chairman of Macomb County, denied making such comments. But Bauer said that, despite the denials, “It’s impossible to believe something this explicit was made up.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 17, 2008 (boomark / email).