Litigation

Election 2010: Dueling Over IA Ouster Drive

By Peter Hardin

Dueling over the campaign to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices reached a fever pitch today. Ouster advocates kicked off a 20-stop bus tour and their foes warned that removing all 74 judges up in November retention elections could threaten public safety.

At the center of the campaign is a drive by social conservatives to remove three justices who joined a unanimous high court opinion that legalized same-sex marriage in the state.

The ouster campaign departed Des Moines in a bus decorated with images of all three targeted justices on its side, accompanied by the word, “No.”

On board were Reps. Steve King, R-Iowa, and Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, a former elected judge, and Kim Lehman, a Republican National Committee member, according to a Des Moines Register article.

Former state Attorney General Bonnie Campbell, who supports keeping the justices, said out-of-state groups were at work.

?Justice in Iowa should not be for sale,? Campbell said. ?Our system works. It truly does. I don?t believe that out-of-state special interest groups, riding around Iowa in a bus with Montana plates, presuming they know what is best for Iowans, have considered at all the full impact of their actions.” The National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council have backed the ouster drive.

Eugene Meyer, the commissioner for Iowa’s Department of Public Safety, warned that deny reelection to all 74 judges would harm the flow of cases in Iowa’s courts. But Rep. King contended that the ouster drive is not aimed at 71 lower court judges up for reelection, with the exception of two judges who have issued rulings in gay marriage cases earlier.

A “Homegrown Justice Tour,” to counter the ouster advocates, was launched by leaders supporting retention of the justices.

OTHER ELECTION DISPATCHES:

FLORIDA: A low-key drive by conservative and tea party activists to remove two Florida Supreme Court justices was the topic of an Associated Press article.

ALABAMA: State Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker likes to tout his conservative credentials, at the same time his reelection campaign has turned political action committees with close ties to Democrats and gambling interests, the Birmingham Press-Register reported.

COLORADO: Former state Supreme Court Justice Jean Dubofsky, in a Denver Post column entitled “Keep integrity of Colorado’s courts,” criticized a group pressing for the ouster of three state Supreme Court justices in retention elections. Clear the Bench “wants to destroy 40-plus years of integrity and impartiality in Colorado’s judicial system and create a nightmare of backroom court deals,” Justice Dubofsky wrote.

NORTH CAROLINA: “They might very well be the most important elections you have never heard of,” Damon Circosta of the N.C. Center for Voter Education, a JAS partner group, wrote in a News & Observer commentary about the state’s upcoming judicial elections and ways voters can learn more about them.

For more news, turn to the Justice at Stake Judicial Elections 2010 page.

Full post as published by The Gavel on October 25, 2010 (boomark / email).