Supreme disappointment

By Bill Kraus

What the responses to my last blog post about de-partisanizing redistricting reminded me of is how far below the radar this whole subject is.

This is not what you would call a high-profile item. A good half of the people who contacted me or who didn’t respond to my contact urging them to join a movement to turn the every decade legislative district map-making over to people who don’t have a dog in the fight seemed wary of my motives.

What had been made clear is that the present system puts competitiveness into the criteria mix. Negatively. As long as the map-making is in the hands of the legislators who occupy these districts, they will favor making fewer districts and the elections for those districts less competitive. So far so good.

The next assumption among the doubters was that the Iowa system, which I admire, tries to make more districts and elections more competitive. This may or may not be the result of disinterested redistricting, but it is not the objective of it. The genius of the Iowa system is that it simply takes competitiveness out of the list of criteria.

A bird in the hand

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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
November 8, 2009

By Bill Kraus


The Impartial Justice legislation that was passed in the closing hours of the recent fall legislation session is the first attempt in 30+ years to clean up and contain campaign spending.

It has the virtue of being attacked from both sides. Those who like the status quo think it goes too far. The all-or-nothing reformers don’t think it goes far enough.

The latter group contend that the spending limits and public funding award are not big enough to run a statewide campaign. It is inarguable that they aren’t big enough for the kind of full-blown, TV-based campaign to which we have recently been subjected. But if both candidates conform to the limits, it is enough to run the more traditional word-of-mouth, face-to-face judicial contest and spare us all a repeat of the recent atrocities.

The more serious criticism of the bill is that it doesn't deal with the issue ads that have recently become prominent in Supreme Court elections.

The authors of the bill took a pass on putting an issue ad disincentive into it to accompany the millionaire and parallel campaign disincentives that were included is the U.S. Supreme Court. The court is pondering a decision which could make issue ad inhibition unconstitutional.

If they rule the way they seem to be leaning, the whole Impartial Justice bill would be voided. This is not a risk the reformers are willing to take after decades of no action.

They point out that if the Supreme Court surprises us there is a full disclosure bill in the wings which could be enacted quickly to expose and discourage the people who are paying for issue ads.

The other thing that makes this shortcoming less threatening is that WMC, one of the issue-ad wielders in recent years has already backed away from participation in supreme court races. And WEAC has said they would if WMC would. That does leave the semi-anonymous organizations with secret funders and apple pie and motherhood names free to perpetrate their mischief.

Any campaigner worth his or her salt would love to be attacked by these kinds of organizations. It gives the “victimized” candidate the opportunity to ask, “Who are these people and why are they saying these nasty things about me?” and to suggest that something unseemly is being bought here.

The side effect of over-the-top issue ads is the opportunity they present to make a low-profile beauty contest into an issue campaign with the campaign itself and its questionable interlopers being the issue.

And, finally, the Impartial Justice proposal, if it works as hoped, can be a good example for the partisans who are addicted to the egregious campaign system which they hate and believe they can't live without.

If public funding and spending limits work here, they can work anywhere.


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Partial for nonpartisanship

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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
October 25, 2009

By Bill Kraus

In my positions of more or less importance in over 30 political campaigns of more or less importance I have learned many things. One of the most important is that judicial campaigns are and should be different from campaigns for partisan offices.

Both campaigns are about the candidates, their character and their credentials.

Partisan campaigns are also about positions and promises and proposals as well.

Judicial campaigns are not and should not be.

The only issue in judicial campaigns should be solely about the candidates’ ability to at the very least aspire to dispassion, disinterest, open-mindedness on the people and the questions that are in the courtroom.

The answer I want to hear from a judicial candidate who is asked how he or she would rule on any matter brought before the court is, “I don’t know, and I won’t know until I see the facts and read the law.”

I know the press hates this. The special interests hate it even more.

Too bad.

Another major difference between these campaigns is that the judicial candidates are elected in “nonpartisan” elections and strive to be perceived as having achieved that state or a close approximation.

If not all, certainly a great majority of candidates for judicial office come with a political history. Those who have been appointed were picked by a partisan politician for political reasons. Even those who run for open seats bring, with rare exceptions, some political baggage with them. Some bring steamer trunks.

Nonpartisanship is elusive but bipartisanship or departisanizating is possible.

Historically judicial candidates have asked partisans from both parties to serve in their campaigns as antidotes to accusations of partisanship. Former Democratic governor Pat Lucey and former Republican Governor Lee Dreyfus served as campaign co-chairs for a long series of worthy Supreme Court candidates who expected nothing more from them than the de-toxification that their presence implied. The desirable side effect of putting these names on the campaign letterheads is that it affected the candidates behavior and the kinds of campaigns they ran.

This remedy disappeared for a couple of recent Supreme Court campaigns. It can and should be reapplied. It works.

The need for money to run for office is a bone in the throat of candidates’ attempts to establish that they will be even-handed, fair, and not beholden to those who fund their increasingly expensive campaigns.

Most judicial campaign contributions come from lawyers. A bad idea. Lately, money from interest groups or activists with an issue or an agenda has been flowing into judicial elections. An even worse idea.

There is a way to fund these campaigns without giving the impression that the candidates are in the pockets of someone who practices before them or who wants a specific ruling on an issue that might be adjudicated.

It’s called public money. It’s what the Impartial Justice Bill is all about.

It is a small price to pay for an unfettered, unbiased, independent judiciary.



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