From the St. Louis Post Dispatch

PAC funds add up
By Paul Hampel
Of the Post-Dispatch
Monday, Nov. 01 2004
The two candidates running Tuesday for a seat on the Illinois Supreme Court
have shattered the national record for donations to a judicial campaign, with
receipts of $7,148,813 by the end of last week.
The previous record was $4.4 million spent on a 1996 race for a seat on the
Alabama Supreme Court.
Washington County Circuit Judge Lloyd Karmeier, the Republican candidate from
Nashville, Ill., reported raising $4,291,863. His Democratic opponent, 5th
District Judge Gordon Maag, of Glen Carbon, reported $2,856,950.
An additional $1.6 million has poured into the two men's campaigns from outside
groups that are raising money on their own.
Mike Lawrence, director of the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois
University Carbondale, predicted in September that the race would attract $10
million. At that time, less than $1 million had been officially declared by the
candidates
"People asked me then if I was smoking something, or if I was in my dotage,"
Lawrence joked. "I am in my dotage, but it looks like they may hit $10 million
after all."
The race is for the 5th District seat on the Supreme Court, covering Illinois'
37 southernmost counties. Though elected only by voters in the 5th District,
the winning judge is involved in all of the court's decisions.
The race is considered one of the most tightly contested Tuesday on the Metro
East ballot, which will include presidential, U.S. Senate, congressional, state
legislative, county board, judicial retention and referendum issues.
Even if the court race comes in under $8 million, that's almost as much as the
two candidates for Illinois attorney general spent in the 2002 general election
campaign, and it's twice the total of the two candidates in the Illinois
treasurer's race that year.
Those races were statewide.
Kent Redfield, political scientist at the University of Illinois at
Springfield, noted that the 5th District has fewer than 1 million voting-age
residents. If 500,000 of them vote - an optimistic number, based on
voter-turnout trends - that would mean an $8 million race costs about $16 per
vote.
By comparison, the most expensive race in Illinois history - the 2002
governor's race in which Rod Blagojevich and Jim Ryan spent a combined $21.3
million in the general election for 3.4 million votes - cost an average of
under $7 per vote.
The Maag-Karmeier race has drawn national attention and big money because it is
seen as a litmus test of sorts on tort reform. Karmeier's support comes from
groups who hope his election would begin to change a court system that they say
rewards trial lawyers at the expense of business defendants. Maag's supporters
find nothing wrong with the current court system, saying it provides speedy
justice to plaintiffs from around the country.
The Supreme Court judgeship is key to which party controls circuit and
appellate judgeships. Vacancies on those courts are filled by that district's
Supreme Court judge. The Supreme Court now has a 5-2 Democratic majority.

Not included in the reported contributions to the Maag-Karmeier campaigns is
about $1.6 million from outside groups.
The Justice For All PAC, a group heavily supported by trial lawyers, has
collected $1.2 million for ads supporting Maag.
Of that total, $725,000 came from asbestos attorney Randy Bono and
SimmonsCooper of East Alton, his personal injury firm. (That sum was in
addition to $200,000 that Bono and SimmonsCooper had contributed this year to
the state Democratic Party, which also pays for Maag's ads.)
An additional $91,500 to the Justice For All PAC came from class-action
attorney Stephen Tillery; $50,000 from East Alton trial lawyer Barry Julian;
and $25,000 from the Dallas firm of Baron and Budd, which has filed cases in
Madison County Circuit Court.
The remaining $385,000 to the PAC came from the committee's parent group, the
Justice For All Foundation.
On behalf of Karmeier, The IL Coalition for Jobs, Growth & Prosperity PAC has
collected $375,000 to cover attack ads.
Neither the Justice For All Foundation nor the Il Coalition for Jobs Growth &
Prosperity has yet registered with the state as a political committee, meaning
that they do not have to disclose their contributors and expenditures.
Most of Maag's money in the campaign has come from the Democratic Party and
Madison County trial lawyers.
Karmeier's key backers have been the Republican Party, which donated $911,000
on Oct. 22, along with insurance companies and other businesses.
Most of the money has gone to television attack ads, where Illinois also holds
the distinction of leading the nation. According to the Democracy Program at
the Brennan Center at the New York University School of Law, Maag and Karmeier
had spent a combined $3,371,947 on their ads as of last week.
Ohio was a close second with $3,109,403, but that total was spent on two
contested seats for the state's high court.
Calls for reform

In June, Lawrence's group, the Public Policy Institute, began a campaign of its
own to suppress negative advertising. It had asked volunteers to videotape
attack ads, and to collect campaign materials.
Lawrence admits that that effort failed.
"No need to videotape ads when everyone's seen so many by now that they're sick
to death of them," he said.
If there is a bright side to mud slinging, Lawrence said, it's the hope that
this year's election could spur a change in the way judges are selected.
Lawrence favors a system whereby a nonpartisan commission would recommend a
nominee for a judicial seat to the governor, who in turn would submit the
nomination to the state Senate for approval.
Such a system would require an amendment to the state's Constitution, requiring
a three-fifths' vote of the House and the Senate to submit the referendum to
voters in a general election.
Deborah Goldberg, with the Brennan Center, hailed Illinois' system for
recording political donations and making the information available to the
public.
Such information is easily found on the state's Web site at
www.elections.state.il.us and clicking on "Campaign Disclosure."
"In other states, those donations are being screened," she said.
Short of the constitutional amendment that Lawrence suggests, Goldberg believes
there's room for reforming the election process.
"The vicious situation in Illinois calls out for public financing," she said.
"Right now, when interest groups run attack ads, the candidates have to go to
trial lawyers or business groups to get money to respond. That gives every
appearance that the judges will be influenced in the favor of their
contributors when they make their decisions."
Reporter Paul Hampel
E-mail: paulh@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 618-659-3639