Election watchdog panel handles first two complaints
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of three columns on the operation of an Arkansas judicial election watchdog panel formed in 2015.
By Roy Ockert Jr.
A vote of no-confidence from Supreme Court Justice Karen Baker didn’t get the Rapid Response Team off to a good start in early 2016. The 5-member panel was gearing up for the nonpartisan judicial election at the same time as party primaries on March 1. Our mission was to help ensure fair campaigns for appellate court positions, and our potential was already being questioned.
Judge Baker specifically criticized my appointment, citing two newspaper columns I had written about elections involving her colleague, Courtney Goodson, who was running for chief justice. I offered to resign, but the other panelists urged me not to and to resist answering the complaint, pointing out that, like any judge, I could recuse in a case where I might have a conflict of interest. The fact that I had covered and written about the judiciary for many years was a primary reason I had been appointed.
Therefore, we moved on. The primaries had been moved up because it was a presidential election year, and Arkansas’ political leaders thought the state would have more influence in March than our usual May primaries would afford.
In early February the panel fielded complaints from one candidate for the state Court of Appeals and another for the Supreme Court, alleging the use of partisan campaign materials against them. As the panel’s name indicates, our intent was to act quickly in response to complaints, but we needed the complainant to provide supporting materials. Most didn’t.
A Web site, www.arkansasjudges.com, had been established for us in early January. Its purpose was to provide information about judicial openings and candidates, identify the Rapid Response Team, explain its purposes and process, and give candidates a means for submitting complaints.
We discovered early on that the portal for fielding complaints wasn’t working properly. In fact, the Web site never really helped much in that election.
After gathering what was needed from the two complainants, the team met at Little Rock to review their allegations. We decided that one was warranted but that we lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the other, referring it to the Judicial Conduct and Discipline Committee or the Ethics Commission. In the Supreme Court case we found the complaint valid and decided to draft a letter to the offending party for a response. Significantly, the campaign material in question, a flyer, was produced by the Judicial Fairness Initiative, an arm of the Republican State Leadership Committee, a Washington, D.C.-based organization. Its purpose was to oppose the candidacy of Clark Mason for the Supreme Court, thereby boosting his opponent, Shawn Womack.
Meanwhile, we would draft a cease-and-desist letter, asking that the misleading claim in a campaign flyer be withdrawn and not used again.
We had barely sent the request for response (by fax) before we got another complaint from the Mason organization, this time about the Judicial Fairness Initiative’s claims in a digital ad buy and on a Web site, ArkansasCourtFacts.com. A recurring theme of the materials was an allegation that Mason “admits his support for [President] Obama’s executive actions that kill Arkansas jobs while making trial lawyers rich.” Further, the flyer tried to connect Mason with Circuit Judge Mike Maggio, who had pleaded guilty to bribery in 2015.
Three days after our Feb. 20 meeting, the team met again, with two of us participating by conference call but minus our chairman, Judge Olly Neal, who was ill.
Our original decision had been to allow 24 hours for a response; we had received none but already had a new issue. Therefore, we decided to issue the cease-and-desist letter, and I sent out a press release. I was asked to try to obtain more information about the Judicial Fairness Initiative, for whom we only had a mailing address.
All this was taking place about two weeks before the election.
We were also getting press inquiries, and Neal was unable to speak because of his illness. Rather than responding to our letter, the Republican State Leadership Committee attacked the team and its parent organization, the Arkansas Judicial Campaign Conduct & Education Committee of the state Bar Association. A spokesman for the RSLC alleged that this committee was comprised of Democratic donors and that members of our team had mostly contributed to Democratic candidates.
Actually, after our organizational meeting the previous December, our team had no direction from the lawyers’ committee and only occasionally reported our progress to its chairman, former state Supreme Court Justice Annabelle Tuck, who kept hands off the team’s actions.
In response to reporters’ questions, I drafted a statement explaining the process and suggesting that the Republican State Leadership Committee address the complaints about disseminating false and misleading campaign materials rather than playing partisan politics. I said that I couldn’t speak for the others but that I had never contributed to any political campaign.
The team received one more complaint, two days before the election, and we decided that it was too late for us to conduct an investigation and give the other side a chance to reply.
It was clear from our first election that the team lacked the resources to be effective. We were a watchdog without teeth.
To be continued.
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.