Winds of Change Newsletter, September 2005     See sidebar for table of contents

2004 Supreme Court Race Most Negative

Charleston Gazette, June 28, 2005

Last years Supreme Court elections in West Virginia were the most negative in the country, according to a report issued Monday

The tone and content of the television advertising in this race ... were among the most negative and vitriolic seen anywhere, wrote the authors of the study, conducted by the Justice at Stake Campaign and its partners.

Incumbent Justice Warren McGraw defeated Greenbrier Circuit Judge Jim Rowe in the Democratic primary, before losing to Republican lawyer Brent Benjamin in the general election.

And For The Sake of the Kids, an independent IRS 527 political group, raised more than $3.6 million between August and November to attack McGraw with television ads, according to reports filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

Massey Energy President Donald L. Blankenship contributed nearly $2.5 million, or nearly 69 percent of the groups funding

The 2004 McGraw-Benjamin race drew national attention because it involved some of the nastiest mudslinging in the history of modern American court campaigns, said Bert Brandenberg, executive director of Justice At Stake.

Without reforms, West Virginia is doomed to become a perennial target of national special-interest groups who want courts that will rule in their interest, not the public interest, he said.

The time for warnings has come and gone, the report concludes. Every state that elects judges needs to act, quickly, before the new politics of judicial elections undermines the impartiality and independence of their courts.

The complete report is available online at www.justiceatstake.org.