Dark money fails to win judicial race
By Roy Ockert Jr.
Arkansas’ general election provided little drama this year. For the most part, having an R beside a candidate’s name was worth 60 percent of the votes cast. National networks called our state’s races shortly after the polls closed.
Judicial races get little media attention because, as nonpartisan, they tend to be devoid of issues and controversy, but one was especially interesting for what it may represent. That was the re-election of state Supreme Court Justice Courtney Goodson.
Since 2012 so-called dark money organizations have poured thousands of dollars into trying to reshape Arkansas’ court system. In 2016 two Supreme Court races drew more than $1 million in outside spending.
Goodson has been a special target for those groups, both in 2016 when she ran for chief justice and this year when she sought re-election to a new 8-year term.
She lost the 2016 bid to then-Circuit Judge John Dan Kemp after an organization calling itself the Judicial Crisis Network aired a barrage of television ads, blasting Goodson as an “insider” with ties to trial lawyers. Indeed, she married one, John Goodson, after her original 2012 election, and the couple went on an Italian vacation paid for by another trial lawyer.
The Judicial Crisis Network was quiet this year, but a similar Washington outfit, the Republican State Leadership Committee, bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of TV time for nearly identical ads against Goodson.
In both races Goodson’s opponent claimed to have had no part in the opposition advertising, and that’s probably true. Such organizations can’t support a specific candidate, or they run into individual contribution limitations, but they can spend untold sums opposing another candidate. And usually they don’t have to disclose the names of their donors until after the election, if at all.
More importantly, their campaign materials and advertisements tend to be misleading. As virtually anonymous groups, they don’t have to stand on the truth.
Goodson fought back in various ways. In 2016 she filed lawsuits against two TV stations in an attempt to stop Judicial Crisis Network ads from running. She won one, lost the other — both decided too late to have an impact.
This year she sued the Republican State Leadership Committee directly, losing that case a week before the election.
However, she waged an effective social media campaign, using the hashtag “DarkMoneyDavid,” arguing that her opponent, attorney David Sterling, had something to do with the dark money attacks on her, or at least didn’t take a stand against such tactics.
That Goodson won by 90,000 votes this year may give the out-of-state groups pause next time about spending so much money on Arkansas judicial races. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
I had a special interest in the last two judicial elections because in late 2015 I accepted an appointment to a new panel whose mission would be to serve as a “watchdog” over Arkansas judicial elections.
Our panel, dubbed the Rapid Response Team, was the action arm of a nonprofit corporation, the Arkansas Judicial Campaign Conduct & Education Committee Inc., created by the Arkansas Bar Association. Its purpose was to receive complaints from candidates for state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals seats about unfair and-or misleading campaign tactics; to investigate those complaints; and finally to issue a statement, possibly public, about our findings.
The organization was established similar to others operated by the bar associations in Ohio and Kentucky. Our team’s statement of purpose starts with a canon of the Arkansas Code of Judicial Conduct, which states that “campaign conduct” and “campaign guidelines” which contain false statements and misrepresentations “undermine public trust and confidence in the judiciary and [are] contrary to the ultimate goal of a fair, impartial, open-minded and independent judiciary.”
The corporation is chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Annabelle Tuck. Other team members initially were former Circuit Judge and Court of Appeals Judge Olly Neal, retired federal Bankruptcy Judge Audrey Evans, attorney Elizabeth Andreoli and political science professor Hal Bass. After the first year Neal was replaced by attorney Danyelle Walker.
That’s a lot of legal knowledge, plus me. My main role was to get the message out to candidates and the public, as needed.
Our team was barely organized when we received its first complaint, but it was easily dispatched because it came from a District Court candidate. Our mission was to deal only with appellate court races.
Meanwhile, a Web site was launched at www.arkansasjudges.org to provide information about the team and take complaints.
Arkansas judicial elections are held at the same time as the party primaries. Runoffs, if needed, are held as part of the general election. Within days of the Web site launch Judges Neal and Evans received a complaint from Supreme Court Justice Karen Baker that only one of 164 judicial candidates was listed — Judge John Dan Kemp. She also criticized my appointment because in the past I had written columns about Goodson’s candidacy. She said she could not advise any candidate to file a complaint with the RRT, clearly referring to Goodson.
Judge Neal’s response, approved by the full team, answered her letter fully and firmly. Ironically, we would spend much of our time over the next two election cycles dealing with Goodson’s complaints.
To be continued next week.
Roy Ockert is a former editor of The Jonesboro Sun, The Courier at Russellville and The Batesville Guard. He can be reached at royo@suddenlink.net.