Two Supreme Court races to be decided in March
By Roy Ockert Jr.
Nov. 17, 2015
Among the most interesting and important races on Arkansas ballots March 1 will be two races for the state Supreme Court. Thanks to our Legislature’s desire to promote the presidential campaign of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, that’s when Arkansas will hold its preferential primaries in 2016.
Arkansas holds its nonpartisan judicial elections in conjunction with the primaries. Races for judgeships in this state are somewhat uncommon. Normally they occur only when a position becomes vacant because few attorneys dare to challenge an incumbent judge.
Both Supreme Court races developed after retirements, and since the winner is unlikely to get competition for re-election in the future, the 2016 decisions become especially important.
Chief Justice Jim Hannah retired due to ill health earlier this year and was replaced by longtime University of Arkansas law professor Howard Brill, who cannot run for the seat.
The first to announce was Courtney Goodson, who defeated Circuit Judge John Fogleman of Marion in 2010 for the position she now holds. I wrote previously about her announcement which seemed to indicate her decisions as chief justice would depend more on the latest opinion polls than the law.
Furthermore, one month after her race against Fogleman, her husband, Fayetteville attorney Mark Henry, filed for divorce. Financial disclosure forms for 2010 showed that she had received more than $99,000 in gifts and cash from a Texarkana lawyer, John Goodson, whom she later married. It was also disclosed that she and Goodson accepted as gifts two trips valued at a total of $62,000 from a business associate of her husband. None of that was determined to be illegal.
Though she had never practiced law prior to being elected to the Arkansas Court of Appeals in 2008, Goodson now gets a free shot at the state’s top judicial position. She doesn’t even have to resign her current position, which pays $166,500 a year, to run for chief justice, which pays $180,000.
However, she has drawn another well-qualified opponent, Circuit Judge John Dan Kemp of Mountain View. Kemp has served the 16th Judicial District of North-central Arkansas since 1987, and I covered his court for the first couple of those years while editor of The Batesville Guard.
Previously, he had more than 10 years of legal experience in private practice, as a city attorney and as a municipal court judge.
In his announcement Kemp indicated that ethics would be an issue in the campaign. “We are at a critical point in our Arkansas judiciary,” he said. “Over the past five years there have been newspaper headlines, editorials and political commentaries that rightly question the impartiality of our judiciary. Our values in Arkansas are being undermined both behind the scenes and in broad daylight.”
He’s certainly right about that. The sorry example of then-Circuit Judge Mike Maggio, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to federal bribery charges, has stained the entire state court system. Maggio admitted to reducing a jury’s award in a negligence lawsuit against a Faulkner County nursing home in exchange for campaign contributions from the facility’s owner.
An Arkansas Democrat-Gazette investigation showed that the owner, Michael Morton of Fort Smith, had given more than $1.2 million in campaign contributions to candidates for top state offices, including more than $100,000 to five sitting Supreme Court justices (Goodson got $25,000). No charges have been filed against Morton or any other office-holder, but a federal probe remains open.
If you think he wasn’t trying to buy influence with public officials, you would be sadly mistaken.
At least those contributions were documented. In the 2014 Supreme Court race between attorney Tim Cullen and Justice Robin Wynne, a Virginia-based group called the Law Enforcement Alliance of America ran an estimated $400,000 in television ads that painted Cullen as being soft on sex offenders. Because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the contributions that helped elect Wynne remain secret.
Judge Kemp told a Democrat-Gazette columnist last week that a New York private investigator has already made requests for records showing his disposition of cases and his office budget. The dark money is already at work.
The other Supreme Court race will determine a successor to Associate Justice Paul Danielson, who retired because otherwise after reaching age 70 he would have faced a significant loss of retirement benefits.
Seeking the position are 14th District Circuit Judge Shawn Womack of Mountain Home, a former legislator, and Clark Mason of Little Rock, a trial lawyer with more than 25 years of experience.
After 10 years as a Republican in the state House of Representatives and Senate, Womack was elected to replace a retiring judge in 2008, and he was re-elected without opposition two years ago.
Mason was a late entry, but at least two other attorneys reportedly considering jumping into the race. Many in the legal community consider Womack to be highly partisan because of his legislative background.
This campaign figures to draw dark money, too.
Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.