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Liberal and conservative groups spent millions of dollars, and essentially outspent and out-shouted the candidates themselves.
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which used to confine its activities to business advocacy concerns, spent close to $4 million on campaigns in April 2007 and April 2008.
WMC-backed candidates won in both cases. In April 2009, Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson will be up for re-election. If the past two years are any guide, we’ll see another multimillion-dollar campaign.
And the ads by all the outside groups will likely be negative and misleading.
Jay Heck, executive director of the election reform group Common Cause in Wisconsin, wrote to a legal affairs Web site in July: “The failure of the Wisconsin Legislature to enact any campaign finance reform during the 2007-08 legislative session should be a significant campaign issue ... because of the very highly visible State Supreme Court election that will occur in April 2009. If WMC spends heavily in that race to defeat the chief justice, as many expect will happen, then the possibility of a $10 million election — even nastier and more negative” than elections in 2007 and 2008 “is easily possible.”
The problem with the ads that will be run by the third-party groups is that they will be overwhelmingly negative, scare-tactic type ads. And they may or may not be accurate.
Because the Legislature failed to enact a reform bill, which would have involved public funding of Supreme Court races, we face the prospect of another negative ad season next spring.
A forum Monday sponsored by the League of Women Voters of the La Crosse Area had a judge, a political science professor, an attorney and a legislator talk about the negative effects of the unregulated third-party ads.
La Crosse lawyer Ellen Frantz said, “It has shown me that the big money coming in from both sides ... is a big problem. If it doesn’t actually taint fair and impartial justice, it certainly gives the perception that it is reality.”
University of Wisconsin-
La Crosse political scientist Joe Heim called for more fact-checking by the Wisconsin Bar Association. Heim was on a Bar Association Committee that attempted to do just that in the last campaign.
In the absence of meaningful reform, it’s important that voters be able to distinguish between the ads run by the candidates and the ones run by the special-interest groups.
Take the latter with a grain of salt, and pay attention to whatever fact-checking efforts are made.
In the absence of reform, that’s the best we can do.
