Watchdog panel struggles against ‘dark money’ tactics
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the last of three columns on the operation of an Arkansas judicial election watchdog panel formed in 2015.
By Roy Ockert Jr.
An important lesson from the first election for the Rapid Response Team was that its main challenge is dealing with shady campaign tactics of well-financed out-of-state organizations, rather than candidates. Those groups want to swing Arkansas elections, and, unlike the candidates, they aren’t bound by the state’s code of ethics.
The RRT is the action arm of a nonprofit corporation, the Arkansas Judicial Campaign Conduct & Education Committee Inc., created by the Arkansas Bar Association. Its purpose is to receive complaints from candidates for state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals seats; to investigate those complaints; and to issue a statement, possibly public, about its findings. The team has no power of enforcement.
I had been appointed as one of the original five members.
In the March 2016 election the RRT spent much of its time dealing with complaints from the campaign organization of Clark Mason, opposing Shawn Womack for a state Supreme Court seat.
The materials, which the team found to be false and misleading, were produced not by Womack but by the Judicial Fairness Initiative, an arm of the Republican State Leadership Committee, based in Washington, D.C.. The organization ignored the team’s cease-and-desist request and, when contacted by news reporters, accused the team of partisan bias.
Meanwhile, Courtney Goodson, running for chief justice of the court against John Dan Kemp, came under heavy attack from the same group. Television ads painted her as an “insider” with strong ties to trial lawyers, and Kemp denied any knowledge or connection to that advertising. The Goodson organization never filed a complaint with the RRT.
Our team took a hit shortly after the election when its chairman, former Circuit Judge Olly Neal, who had health problems, resigned from the team. Fortunately, there was not an appellate court runoff in 2016.
Early this year Danyelle Walker, a Little Rock attorney, was appointed to replace Neal, and the team elected retired federal Bankruptcy Judge Audrey Evans as chairman. Walker agreed to serve as spokesman. This time our Web site, designed to field complaints, worked but only sporadically.
The May 22 ballot included a 3-way race for one Supreme Court position, for which Goodson happened to be the incumbent, and a 2-way contest for a Court of Appeals seat, including the incumbent, Bart Virden.
Goodson was again a target of the out-of-state “dark money” organizations, which favored a Little Rock attorney, David Sterling. Her organization this time was not reluctant to complain to the Rapid Response Team.
Her first complaint against the Judicial Crisis Network, also a Washington, D.C., outfit, was filed around the first of May. A few days later the team had found the group’s advertising false and misleading, giving it 24 hours to respond.
However, the Goodson campaign didn’t wait for the final decision and immediately issued a news release announcing the findings. The RRT did, too, once the deadline had passed without a response from the Judicial Crisis Network.
The Goodson campaign then filed legal action, asking for a court order enforcing the our cease-and-desist demand but targeting the TV stations running the ads. We declined an invitation to join as a party to the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the RRT was fielding other complaints, several from candidates for lower court positions. From the beginning we had limited our scope to appellate court campaigns, but in one Circuit Court race we were urged by the chairman of our parent committee to tackle the complaint anyway. After a discussion we declined; we were already getting overwhelmed.
We also received a complaint from the Varden campaign organization, which first issued a release saying that the Republican State Leadership Committee would be running negative advertising against him and that a complaint was being filed with the Rapid Response Team.
After receiving that complaint, the team acted quickly to find the ads were false and misleading, then requested a voluntary withdrawal. Once again the complaining campaign issued a news release prematurely, before we got to the cease-and-desist step.
Goodson filed legal actions in two state courts against the TV stations airing the offending ads. Ultimately, she won one and lost the other, both decided after the election. An RRT member was called to testify in both cases.
The nature of the RRT’s work, involving a blizzard of emails, text messages and conference calls, took its toll on our members. I was serving as interim chief of operations for the City of Jonesboro, a full-time position that would stretch into September, and the time required for RRT work conflicted with my duties. As a journalist, I was also troubled by that our team was involved, if only peripherally, in two prior restraint cases against media organizations.
Therefore, in June I submitted my resignation, citing both conflicts and also adding: “I have come to believe that the RRT cannot effectively function as an election monitoring unit without major changes, some of which may not be feasible.” That included having some staff support and working media technology.
The team soldiered on without me into the November runoff between Goodson and Sterling and handled a complaint from the Goodson organization, this time against the Republican State Leadership Committee over some $350,000 in TV ads. Goodson also filed suit, this time against the ad purchaser, and she lost that case. But she won the election handily.
The track record of dark money groups isn’t too good in Arkansas, but they will continue to try to influence our judicial races. Arkansas needs to find a better solution.
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.