Judicial elections watchdog effort suspended
By Roy Ockert Jr.
Arkansas’ judicial elections watchdog experiment is no more — at least for 2020.
That’s a shame because nonpartisan filings so far have produced one Supreme Court race and more than 20 Circuit Court contests, including one in the 2nd Judicial District of Northeast Arkansas.
About this time last year I wrote a series of columns about my experience as a member of the Rapid Response Team, the action arm of a nonprofit corporation, the Arkansas Judicial Campaign Conduct & Education Committee Inc., created in 2015 by the state Bar Association.
For two and a half years I served on the 5-member RRT, charged with receiving complaints from candidates for state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals seats, investigating those complaints and issuing a statement, possibly public, about our findings. While the team had no power of enforcement, the theory was that a public investigation could “shame” candidates who violated the code of judicial ethics. My role, as a retired journalist, involved getting the message out after we had reached a conclusion.
From the beginning in early 2016 the RRT’s problem was not in dealing with unethical candidates but rather with the shadowy groups, usually based out of state, that poured so-called “dark money” into Arkansas in an attempt to discredit certain candidates and thereby help candidates favored by the group(s).
The RRT was made up of a group of volunteers, had no budget, no staff and only a little support in the way of a Web site that never worked as intended. On the other hand, groups like the Judicial Fairness Initiative, the Judicial Crisis Network and the Republican State Leadership Committee, worked out of Washington, D.C., offices, where its leaders were insulated from rules that govern Arkansas judicial elections. They had plenty of money, donated anonymously, to pay for advertising and other campaign materials that were most often blatantly false and misleading.
When the RRT investigated a complaint and issued a finding, along with a cease-and-desist request, the organization ignored it and, when contacted by news reporters, accused the team of partisan bias.
Our team had to work fast so when we received a complaint, we tried to investigate it quickly — usually via conference calls, texts and email — and reach a conclusion within two or three days. But by the time we got to that point, the offending advertisement or flyer had already been replaced by another just as bad.
Our first election cycle (spring of 2016) was frustrating but a good learning experience. However, the team’s chairman, a retired Court of Appeals judge, resigned because of health complications that had limited his participation. He was replaced as chairman by a retired bankruptcy judge, Audrey Evans, and an active Little Rock attorney became our fifth team member.
However, we entered the 2018 election cycle with the same disadvantage, and the dark money groups were even more active, extending their reach into Circuit Court races, which were beyond our charge. We had little success in getting the news media to pay attention to our findings, in part because of the demise of daily newspapers.
Because I had been filling in as chief operations officer for the City of Jonesboro that spring, a role that continued until fall, I resigned from the RRT after the primary runoffs. My letter of resignation not only cited a lack of time but also the feeling that the RRT simply could not be effective, given its limitations.
Actually, Supreme Court Justice Courtney Goodson, a favorite target of the dark money groups in both 2016 and 2018, was more successful in taking them on by filing lawsuits. Her evidence included RRT findings, but one of the complaints was an attempt at prior restraint against TV stations running the ads. As a journalist, that was a strategy I couldn’t join.
The RRT continued to function for last fall’s election with just four members, but I got a note from Judge Evans last week. She said she had first told the other team members that she would not serve again, and all agreed they had reached the same conclusion — “we lack the time, staff support and authority to achieve success in this noble effort. …”
She then wrote to Annabelle Tuck, retired state Supreme Court justice and chairman of the Judicial Campaign Conduct & Education Committee, telling her that no one on the team was inclined to move forward under the circumstances.
In response Justice Tuck sent a letter of thanks and said the committee’s board had decided to suspend the operation of the RRT for the 2020 election cycle but to maintain a voter guide on the Web site. After this year the full operation will be reviewed.
So score a victory for the dark money organizations that want to tell Arkansas voters who they should vote for and against. Any future watchdog effort needs more muscle and teeth. A nonpartisan organization financed by a government entity like the Attorney General’s Office could be more effective, but that office has always been highly partisan.
The alternative is stopping the flow of dark money, by law, into Arkansas and-or giving up on the election of judges.
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.