Partisan Courts

Campaign finance reports filed today by the Show Me Better Courts committee show $225,000 in petition collection fees paid to Lincoln Strategy Group of Tempe, Arizona.  Show Me Better Courts is currently trying to get put a measure on the November ballot that, if passed, would overhaul the state's widely-praised judicial selection process.

The Vote Yes to Stop Double Taxation Committee has also paid the firm $195,000.  Realtors are pushing their own ballot initiative to block the creation of a real estate transfer tax in Missouri -- a tax which does not currently exist in the state.

Lincoln Strategy Group, formerly known as Sproul and Associates, has developed quite the reputation for its dubious practices on behalf of right-wing clients.  Think Progress summarized some of the firm's more notable activities in August:

- In Oregon and Nevada, Lincoln Strategies — then known as Sproul and Associates — was investigated for destroying Democratic voter registration forms. The Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign paid Sproul $7.4 million for campaign work. [CNN, 10/14/04; KGW News, 10/13/04; East Valley Tribune, 09/07/06]

- In Nevada, people who registered as Democrats with Lincoln Strategies — then known as Sproul and Associates — found their names absent from the voter registration rolls. [Reno Gazette-Journal, 10/29/04]

- During the 2006 midterm elections, Wal-Mart banned Lincoln Strategies for partisan voter registration efforts in Tennessee. The Republican National Committee had hired the firm. [Associated Press, 08/24/06]

- In Arizona, Lincoln Strategies employed a variety of deceptive tactics — including systematically lying about the bill — to push a ballot initiative to eviscerate the state’s clean elections law. [Salon, 10/21/04]

- Lincoln Strategies, then employed by the Republican Party, was behind efforts to place Ralph Nader on the ballot in states such as Arizona.[American Prospect, 06/25/04]

The Star and Post-Dispatch have the story of a rather incredible letter from lobbyist and Better Courts for Missouri leader James Harris. In the letter sent Monday, Harris asks sitting Republican senators to “speak with members of the [Missouri Supreme] Court” about about a pending case.

Harris' outrageous suggestion that politicians should be lobbying members of the judiciary about pending cases was quickly shot down by the chief of staff to Sen. Charlie Shields (R-St. Joseph).

Please know that any ex parte communication from you with the judges about this case or any issue before the court may involve serious legal ramifications and should be avoided at all costs.

Emphasis in the original.

The Missourian's George Kennedy skewers the right-wing efforts to gut the state's nonpartisan judicial selection process:

Some ideas are so outrageously, irredeemably bad that you just know they won’t go away. One of the worst is the recurring effort to destroy Missouri’s non-partisan plan for picking judges.

Politics should not play a role in Missouri's judicial selection process -- partisan elections should.

So wrote Ernie Lee in the Columbia Daily Tribune yesterday.

In completely unrelated news, Ernie Lee is Peter Kinder's campaign treasurer, and Peter Kinder received a $50,000 check from David Humphreys last quarter.

In October, the Star reported that some lawmakers were "stunned" earlier by the Humphreys family donations connected to this years' legislative efforts to gut the state's nonpartisan courts plan.

The editorial board Post-Dispatch doesn't include many fans of the ballot initiative campaign from the "Better Courts for Missouri" organization, which would replace the state's widely praised nonpartisan judicial selection plan with a more partisan arrangement that would be controlled by the governor and state senators.

[T]he greatest single political threat to justice in Missouri lies with a harshly ideological and well-financed few who are doing all within their power to politicize how judges are selected in the state.

They have plotted — and continue to plot — to cut ordinary citizens and respected lawyers out of the judicial selection process and put partisans and power brokers in charge. Their current strategy is being advanced by a shadow group fronted by James Harris, a former political operative to former Gov. Matt Blunt. [...]

The deep thinkers who want to abandon Missouri's nationally recognized non-partisan court plan and replace it with a full-boat, partisan court system have retreated (at least for the moment) in their backward effort.

The self-described "Show-Me Better Courts" group today withdrew their highly self-promoted initiative petition.

It's unclear if this retreat represents a sudden shift in strategy or is the result of confidence shattering "legal flaws" in their massive plan to remake Missouri's legal system.

Either way, it's a devastating, self-inflicted setback.