How Big is $207 Million?
August 30, 2010
In their recently released report, the Brennan Center and Justice at Stake pose as a couple “nonpartisan” good government groups that only want to get money and politics out of judicial selection. Neal Peirce falls for it hook, line and sinker in his Seattle Times column yesterday.
Pierce leads off with the report’s “blockbuster” finding that total spending on judicial elections more than doubled from $83 million in the 1990s to about $207 million from 200-2009 – an increase of 149 percent to be exact. Sounds ominous – but is this evidence of special interest money pouring into judicial races or are judicial races just following a larger trend toward more expensive elections?
A quick dig through the invaluable Open Secrets provides the answer.
Between 2000 and 2009, presidential candidates raised $3.16 billion in three elections – an increase of 192 percent compared to the previous three White House races. In the 2000 election, George W. Bush and Al Gore (plus a few dogs and cats) raised $529 million. Eight years later, total contributions to presidential candidates Barack Obama, John McCain, et. al., reached nearly $1.79 billion – a 230 percent increase. Strike One.
By 2008, the winner of the average House seat spent $1.37 million, compared to $650,000 a decade earlier in 1998. That’s a 111 percent increase – a big jump, but not as much as judicial elections, so we’ll call that a foul ball, but still Strike Two.
Let’s take a look at the “worst” state identified by Brennan/JAS – Alabama. Between 2000 and 2009, we’re told, 45 Supreme Court candidates raised just shy of $41 million in five election cycles. During that same time period, there were just two gubernatorial cycles – not quite a fair comparison, but let’s have a look anyway. Between 2000 and 2009, 28 candidates for governor raised $62.7 million – 53 percent more than Supreme Court candidates in three fewer election cycles. If you add in 2010, the difference is even starker: 54 Supreme Court candidates raised just $42.2 million, compared to 41 gubernatorial candidates who raised $83.1 million – 97 percent more. Strike Three.
It seems pretty clear from just a cursory glance at historical election spending figures that the 149 percent increase in spending on judicial elections is comfortably in line with spending on other elections and doesn’t come close to matching the explosion in presidential campaign spending.
Of course, Pierce never notes that both Justice at Stake and the Brennan Center receive millions of dollars in funding by one of the country’s most powerful special interest groups – the Open Society Institute, bankrolled by hedge fund billionaire George Soros and underwriter of countless ultra-liberal causes.
If Neal Peirce wants to argue that citizens should give up their right to participate in the choice of state judges and turn the entire job over to a “merit” selection panel (usually dominated by legal special interest groups and elite lawyers), then he should just come right out and say so. Or at least he ought to be honest with his readers about the agendas of the Soros-funded groups that are trying to manipulate voters.