I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Campaign contributions to state Supreme Court candidates soared from $83 million nationwide in the 1990s to more than $206 million between 2000 and 2009, a new study reports. It’s a concerted push by special interest groups to influence judicial decisionmaking that has fueled misleading smear ad campaigns, according to the study’s authors.
“(C)orporations and trial lawyers have millions and millions of dollars at stake, and they feel if they can just spend a few million dollars to influence the outcome (of court cases), it’s worth it,” lead author James Sample said.
Don Blankenship, chief executive officer of Massey Energy, poured $3 million into backing Brent Benjamin’s successful bid to unseat a sitting West Virigina Supreme Court justice, for example. Then, Justice Benjamin cast the tie-breaking vote on the court’s ruling to throw out a $50 million jury verdict against Massey. (The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2009 that Benjamin should have recused himself from the case.)
In 20 of 22 states with Supreme Court elections, the past decade saw the most costly campaigns on record, according to the study, “The New Politics of Judicial Elections,” funded by the Justice at Stake Campaign, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, and the National Institute of Money in State Politics.
“Super spender” organizations donate much of that total, the authors argue. In the 29 costliest elections in 10 states, for example, the top five spenders spent an average of $473,000 each per election, the report states.
For example, the Center for Individual Freedom, a conservative energy policy and tax policy reform PAC based in Virginia, spent a combined $1.8 million in the 2007 Pennsylvania Supreme Court Election and the 2008 Alabama election, according to the report. The nonprofit Center’s funders are secret, but tobacco executives appear to have played a key role in its creation, according to the website SourceWatch.
The study “provides a comprehensive review of the threat posed by money and special interest pressure on fair and impartial courts,” former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said.
Ohio and Alabama saw Supreme Court candidates spend more than $12 million and $13 million, respectively, on television campaign ads between 2000 and 2009, according to the study.
“Alabama is first int he country in money spent on judicial races, and last in funding legal access for the poor,” noted former Alabama State Bar president J. Mark White. “I am embarassed.”
New Mexico, in contrast, saw a relatively modest $383,000 spent on ads by Supreme Court justices in that time.
That is in part due to the fact that New Mexico is one of just four states with hybrid systems in which Supreme Court judges are initially appointed by state governors, but then face a retention election to keep their seats, the study states.
No New Mexico Supreme Court justices are seeking retention elections this year, according to Secretary of State’s office records.
