From the Chicago Tribune

Court election a battle for clout
Associated Press
Published July 12, 2004
Trial lawyers and business groups are pouring money into an increasingly nasty race for an open seat on the Illinois Supreme Court, the latest flare-up in a long-simmering nationwide feud between the two powerful groups.
The campaign comes as tobacco giant Philip Morris is appealing an order to pay $10.1 billion in damages for misleading smokers. The state Supreme Court is due to take up the appeal next year -- after the new justice is sworn in.
On television, ads in the southern Illinois district get to the heart of the issue: One warns "predatory trial lawyers" are driving away jobs and doctors. "Sharks in fancy suits are getting rich at our expense," says the ad, paid for by the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce, a supporter of Republican candidate Lloyd Karmeier.
"The money is flowing, and the mud is starting to fly," said Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a non-partisan group.
Business groups that say juries award too much money in personal-injury and class-action lawsuits are funneling money to Karmeier, a Washington County Circuit Court judge, while trial lawyers, who can reap hefty fees from such lawsuits, are contributing to Democrat Gordon Maag, an Illinois Appellate Court judge.
Critics say both sides are trying to buy clout by bankrolling the campaigns and could end up eroding the judges' independence to decide cases free of political influence.
The candidates, who say they won't be influenced by the money, reported raising more than $256,000 by mid-March, a number expected to be sharply higher in campaign reports due this month. The race is widely expected to top the record $1.3 million spent on a 2002 Illinois Supreme Court race.
The same battle between trial lawyers and business has been raging in many states.
In 2002, $29 million was spent on state Supreme Court races nationwide, the lion's share coming from trial lawyers and business groups.
Concerned about the role of special-interest money, Illinois has a new law that requires independent groups that run ads in court campaigns to report where they get their money.
Illinois Supreme Court rules bar judicial candidates from asking for campaign money but not from accepting it.
The Supreme Court race is in a region that includes Madison County, across the Mississippi from St. Louis. Business groups call the county "a judicial hellhole" where judges favor trial lawyers.
The Philip Morris case was there, and nationally known plaintiffs' lawyer Randall Bono said it is behind the drive to elect a Republican judge in the traditionally Democratic area.
Democrats hold a 5-2 majority on the court, which in 1997 declared unconstitutional a law to restrict personal-injury damages.
Bono said the Republican goal is to switch the partisan balance to 4-3.