Politics What a Bullshit Bill
posted by on January 19 at 13:05 PM
Reacting to last year’s shocking development that partisan groups actually spent money on the state Supreme Court elections (um, duh), Democrats are putting forward this stupid bill to institute public financing for state Supreme Court candidates.
Here’s the willfully naive, self-righteous language from Rep. Shay Schual-Berke’s (D-33, Sea Tac, Des Moines) bill:
The intent of this act is to protect the fairness of elections for the highest courts in Washington state - the supreme court and court of appeals. Doing so will maintain the public’s trust in the integrity and independence of our courts in the face of increasingly large sums of money raised and spent by special interest groups. That flood of money threatens the impartiality, independence, and credibility of our judiciary. To maintain public confidence in the judiciary, we must prevent not only corruption, but the appearance of corruption, for the judiciary is the one branch of government that must be uniquely impartial, independent, and unbiased in order to best serve the residents of Washington. It would be destructive for our democracy to allow our courts to become 19 influenced by large amounts of money, and for our citizens to think that judicial decisions are influenced by those large amounts of money. This act is necessary to ensure that our highest courts continue to be unbiased and insulated from special interests.
I am so sick of this high-minded reaction to last year’s SC races. Candidates for our state Supreme Court run for election. It’s a partisan job. They seek political endorsements.
Washington voters need to stop living under this pretense of purity. Come on. Everyone knows the courts are political.
But no. For years, in Washington sate, SC candidates have hidden behind the obtuse objectivity of the seat to run vague and meaningless campaigns. As a result, voters hardly know what they’re getting. (Ever been to a candidate forum featuring state Supreme Court candidates? They answer every question by telling you they’re not allowed to answer the question.)
This year’s partisan cash infusion—$1.4 million from conservatives, and $564K from liberals—was refreshing. The piles of cash dumped into the Johnson/Owens race and the Groen/Alexander race was a reality check, forcing the candidates out of hiding. And guess what: the liberals won handily.
Until there’s comprehensive campaign-finance reform (I’ll address those stupid bills in another post), let’s not single out SC judges as some special breed in need of protection. Let’s keep who they are out in the open. The real lesson from last year’s SC races is this: state Supreme Court seats are partisan; let’s duke it out.
And given that liberals raised a half million dollars (and won!) they proved they can play this game too. Liberals should stop hand wringing about independent expenditures. Follow the money. It tells the truth—calling bullshit on our consensual nod and wink charade about the objectivity of our high court.
Here’s how the bill works, by the way: A candidate is eligible for public financing if they can demonstrate popular support by getting 250 people to donate $10 to their campaign. The state will kick in 50X the filing fee. (The filing fee is one percent of an SC salary, I believe. So, we’re talking about $70K in the primary and $140K or so in the general.
The idea is this: A candidate who opts to get public financing can hype that as a trump card against a “bought up” candidate who is raising money the old-fashioned way from doners and partisan groups. Get it: public donations to a SC candidate mean the candidate is politically compromised while publicly financed candidates are objective robots and won’t ever make a subjective decision. Yeah, right.
What a lie. Voters are partisan and political. The candidates are partisan and political (publicly financed or not). There’s a political battle over the courts. Let’s have that battle. I wish the Democrats would stop trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist with a PR bill that caters to this delusion about the purity of our Courts.
"I am so sick of this high-minded reaction to last year’s SC races. Candidates for our state Supreme Court run for election. It’s a partisan job. They seek political endorsements."
It's a non partisan job, dude. Shit.
The Seattle City Council is a "non-partisan" job too. Do you believe the Seattle City Council members don't have political agendas?
Do you think voters put away their partisan leanings when they vote just because the ballot says "non-partisan" on the SC choices?
So Josh,
I guess it's OK with you that Jim Johnson is practically on the payroll of these right wing groups and wouldn't know a fair decision if it bit his ass? Or that the BIAW can openly claim that they’re going to buy the Court? It didn’t work here this time but it has in other states.
A major reason that people have lost faith in the judiciary and government in general is that it seems politicians only care about getting reelected and doing favors for campaign contributors. No one has the motive to actually, you know, govern.
Just this past summer, many were lamenting the fact that there are so many uncontested races here in Washington and nationally, and the only way to solve that problem is to level the playing field. All campaigns will have to be publicly financed, as in other countries, in order to restore integrity to the political process. Until then, it's only going to get worse as our state and federal capitols become revolving door whorehouses.
Well put, Josh. We probably disagree most of the time about the actual choice of candidates. But you're absolutely right to call bullshit on the pretense that judges and judicial are somehow less political than the politicians in the other branches of government.
It may be asking too much but could you possibly REPORT this story rather than, as usual, give us your opinion and uneducated guesses. The Stranger, since the fall of B. Jacklet, seems to have given up actual fact-gathering in favor of boring, wonkish points of view (see any E.B. transportation story, shudder), throw-away City Hall gossip and full out flackery for favored politicos (see Josh on the early rising Steinbrueck). You've gone from irreverent to irrelevant, alas.
I'm all for new ideas on running elections, especially for non-partisan races. I hate having to sift through all the total crap that comes spewing over the airwaves (from both sides). Plus, it's an enormous expenditure of money.
A judge's political leanings can be seen by who endorses that judge. Even with piles of money dumped into the races, the candidates themselves will simply sputter out the "I'll follow the Constitution" line over and over. So the $2M spent last year doesn't really do anything except give the appearance that the justices are puppets of huge contributors.
before you go off on more half-assed rants josh, could you please look at the other states that have already instituted statewide public financing. if you don't like those models, hearing valid reasons why you dislike public financing would really help your argument.
your current "stop trying to fix the problem & screw the people who are at least coming up with ideas" isn't much of a winner.
While I usually agree with you, Josh, I don't this time.
Yes, judges are partisan, to the degree that nobody is honestly completely non-partisan. But Judges, more than anyone else, are supposed to at least attempt to put personal views aside, and interpret the law when it is unclear, without bias. No, it doesn't always work out that way, but that is the ideal, and whatever we do to "fix" judicial campaigns, it should encourage that ideal, not discourage it. I'm not sure if publicly financed campaigns is the right solution or not, but your suggestion of openly encouraging partisan battles seems like a step in the wrong direction.
Politicians can, and should, be partisan. They are the body that creates new laws. It is important that voters know their views as much as possible, so we can elect people who will hopefully create laws that we agree with. The city council and mayor being supposedly non-partisan is a joke, and that fiction should be abandoned.
But the judiciary is not supposed to create new law, but rather interpret existing law where it is unclear. They should be non-partisan. They should not be biassed, at least as much as possible. I'm all for gay marriage. But I wouldn't want the judiciary to force the issue if that isn't the way the law is written. I would only want them to rule in our favor if there is solid legal basis to do so. If they rule against it (which they did), then it is up to the legislature to re-write the law, not the judiciary.
Also, one of the purposes of the constitution (whether state or federal) is to protect minorities against the tyranny of the majority. We all know that if gay marriage was put up to a popular vote right now, it would go down in flames. Most civil rights issues would die by public vote. The civil rights of minorities should never be put to a public vote. Yet the result of completely partisan judges would be that people could simply vote for judges who agree with their anti-gay views (or whatever policy issue is their gripe).
I'm not really sure what we can do to encourage truly non-partisan judges. Some people favor appointing judges, rather than electing them. But if you have one party or the other controlling the house, senate, and governor's mansion, which the Dems currently do, then you just as high a risk of totally partisan judges as if you elected them. I might view that favorably right now, but it wouldn't be so good if the Repubs had control of all three, and could do the same thing.
With the Supreme Court, my feeling is that the best legal minds should be the ones in the seat. There are a variety of issues that are usually either very complicated in nature, or so esoteric as to be on the fringe of the law. That's what the Supreme Court largely does.
That being the case, I'm much more in favor of appointed judges that can be vetted for their legal expertise. It's only been in the past decade or so that on the federal level judges were examined for the political bent.
SDA, I agree with a lot of what you say. I do think that appointments (which should be for a long term, or life) are a better way to go. I agree there is a risk of partisan judges because of the political bent of the day, but that being said things change over time. The D's will not always be in power in Olympia- the R's will someday control affairs down there. That means that there are opportunities on both ends if you look at this from a long range perspective.
The Original Andrew wrote (@3):
Good points.
I think all the discussion of who's partisan, who's not, and whether they should admit to it is obscuring a much more important issue: As long as our elected officials are required to either be independently wealthy or almost constantly focused on attracting the affection of large-scale financial backers (whose interests are often very narrow), our self-government is a joke. Other things will also need to change in order for it to discontinue being a joke (e.g., our elections need to be transparent, the public needs to pay attention, our news media need similar "campaign finance reform"), but campaign financing has to change.
We can guess about how much influence large donors have over our elected officials, but surely we agree that all of that influence should instead be shared among the public.
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