October, 29 2010, 12:29pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Charles Hall, Justice at Stake, 202-588-9454; chall@justiceatstake.org
Adam Skaggs, Brennan Center for Justice, 646-292-8331; adam.skaggs@nyu.edu
Judicial Elections 2010: TV Spending Surges
Business and Conservatives Outspend Rivals, Reform Groups Report
WASHINGTON
Spending on state Supreme Court TV
ads has exploded nationally as Election Day nears, with $3.3 million
being spent in the week between Oct. 21 and Oct. 27. The TV binge has
raised total ad spending to nearly $13 million for the 2009-10 election
cycle, with business and conservative groups outspending lawyers and
unions in every major state except Illinois.
Several ads have included questionable claims, stirring complaints by editorial pages, a judges association, and www.factcheck.org,
which reviews campaign advertising. Factcheck rejected claims in one
Michigan Democratic ad, while accusing an Illinois group of
cherry-picking cases to attack an incumbent judge.
Through Wednesday, Oct. 27, $8,154,920 has been spent nationally on TV
air time in 2010 judicial elections, including primary and general
election advertising. Of that, $7,152,580 was spent in the general
election, between Aug. 1 and Oct. 27, and $3,391,730 -- 41% of total
spending for the year -- was spent in the seven days from Oct. 21 through
Oct. 27.
"The lion's share of TV spending in judicial campaigns takes place just
before Election Day, and over the past week there has been a dramatic
increase in the volume of TV ads being run in judicial elections across
the country," said Adam Skaggs, Counsel with the Brennan Center for
Justice. "Many of these spots are mudslinging attack ads by candidates
and outside special interests which have been widely denounced as
slanderous and misleading at best."
Including $4.6 million spent on TV ads in 2009, the current total for
the 2009-2010 election cycle is approximately $12.8 million, compared
with around $16 million in the last non-presidential election cycle,
2005-2006. The highest total for TV advertising in a two-year election
cycle occurred in 2007-2008, when candidates, political parties and
outside special interest groups combined to spend $26.6 million on TV
airtime.
Non-candidate groups have led the way.
Three of the top spenders in the Iowa retention election, which has
hinged on a 2009 ruling upholding same-sex marriage, have been national
conservative groups. Of the nearly $1.1 million spent on that election, a
total of $654,000 has come from the National Organization for Marriage,
the Family Research Council, and the Campaign for Working Families,
which has ties with the Family Research Council.
Nationally, four of the top five TV ad spenders in the general election
(Aug. 1 - Oct. 27) are non-candidate groups. The greatest disparities
between non-candidate and candidate general election TV spending are in
Michigan and Ohio.
The following are highlights from the last week of national judicial elections, as updated in Judicial Elections 2010,
a web site jointly operated by the Justice at Stake Campaign and the
Brennan Center for Justice. TV ad information also is available at the
Brennan Center's "Buying Time 2010" page.
National Overview
Illinois Justice Thomas Kilbride, who is seeking another term in a
one-candidate retention election, remains the national leader both in
campaign fundraising, as well as TV ad spending by a candidate. Through
Oct. 28, Kilbride had raised $2.5 million. Of that, $1,425,000 had come
from the Democratic Party of Illinois, whose funding primarily comes
from plaintiffs' lawyers, unions and House Speaker Mike Madigan.
The Illinois Civil Justice League, the group challenging Kilbride, has
raised $648,000, most of it from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the
American Justice Partnership, a group closely aligned with the National
Association of Manufacturers; and the American Tort Reform Association.
Kilbride has spent $1,361,550 on TV, more than all but a single
non-candidate group, the Michigan Republican Party. All together, four
of the five biggest spenders are non-candidate groups.
The Michigan Republican Party ranks first overall in TV spending
($1,399,100). Kilbride ranks second; the Partnership for Ohio's Future
ranks third (846,340); the Michigan State Democratic Party ranks fourth
($554,470); and the Law Enforcement Alliance of America ($356,570) ranks
fifth.
In Michigan, the Republican Party and the Law Enforcement Alliance of
America, a Virginia-based interest group, have spent $1.75 million in
support of two Republican candidates, while the Democratic Party has
spent about $554,000 supporting two Democrats. Together, these
non-candidate groups combined to spend $2,310,140 -- 86% of total TV
spending in Michigan -- compared to a total of $366,320 spent by the
candidates.
In Ohio, the Partnership for Ohio's Future is responsible for
approximately 51% of all general election TV spending, underwriting
$846,270 in ad buys supporting Republican candidates Judith Lanzinger
and Maureen O'Connor. The O'Connor and Lanzinger campaigns each spent
an additional $320,000. Democrats Eric Brown and Mary Jane Trapp have
spent a combined $177,490 -- about 10% of all TV spending in Ohio's
supreme court election spending.
Questionable Ads
Factcheck.org has weighed in with a
review of disputed ads in the 2010 election season, in Michigan,
Illinois and Iowa. Citing a Michigan Democratic Party ad that accused
Justice Robert Young of barring suits against polluters, Factcheck says,
"In fact, any citizen directly affected by environmental harm can still
sue."
Factcheck also criticized an Illinois Civil Justice League ad attacking
Kilbride -- an ad also assailed by the Illinois Judges Association as
"ugly" and deceptive. According to Factcheck, the JustPac ad
"cherry-picks cases in its ad to portray Justice Thomas Kilbride as
pro-criminal."
And in Alabama, a newspaper sharply criticized a radio ad by Justice
Thomas Parker, in which Parker suggested that a federal judge, who
struck down the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay
military personnel, was as great a threat to national security as
al-Quaeda.
Retention Election Spending
Nationally, about $4.3 million has
been spent on retention elections in 2010, driven by races in which
Illinois and Iowa justices face stiff challenges. That is nearly twice
the $2.2 million spent in all retention elections nationally for the
entire 2000-2009 decade, as documented in "The New Politics of Judicial Elections 2000-2009: Decade of Change."
Supreme Court justices also are
being challenged in Colorado, but relatively little money has been
raised in that effort. According to TNS Media Intelligence, about
$130,000 in ads relating to the Colorado high court race have aired
since Aug. 1.
# # #
The Justice at Stake Campaign is a
nonpartisan national partnership working to keep our courts fair,
impartial and free from special-interest and partisan agendas. In states
across America, Campaign partners work to protect our courts through
public education, grass-roots organizing and reform. The Campaign
provides strategic coordination and brings organizational,
communications and research resources to the work of its partners and
allies at the national, state and local levels. For information, visit www.justiceatstake.org.
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law is a
nonpartisan public policy and law institute that focuses on fundamental
issues of democracy and justice. The Center works on issues including
judicial independence, voting rights, campaign finance reform, racial
justice in criminal law and presidential power in the fight against
terrorism. Part think tank, part public interest law firm, part advocacy
group, the Brennan Center combines scholarship, legislative and legal
advocacy, and communications to win meaningful, measurable change in the
public sector. For more information, visit www.brennancenter.org.
TV Methodology
All data on ad airings and spending on ads are calculated and prepared
by TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, which captures satellite data in that
nation's largest media markets. CMAG's calculations do not reflect ad
agency commissions or the costs of producing advertisements. The costs
reported here therefore understate actual expenditures; the estimates
are useful principally for purposes of comparison of relative spending
levels across states.
Click here for PDF version of this release.
We're a nationwide, nonpartisan partnership of more than forty-five judicial, legal and citizen organizations. We've come together because across America, your right to fair and impartial justice is at stake. Judges and citizens are deeply concerned about the growing impact of money and politics on fair and impartial courts. Our mission is to educate the public and work for reforms to keep politics and special interests out of the courtroom--so judges can do their job protecting the Constitution, individual rights and the rule of law.
LATEST NEWS
'Evil and Cruel': GOP Lawmaker Shamed for Unloading Medicaid-Related Stock Before Voting to Gut Program
"Their bill will gut Medicaid and kill people, and they know it," said Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.).
Jul 03, 2025
Republican Congressman Robert Bresnahan of Pennsylvania got publicly shamed by many of his congressional colleagues on Thursday after it was revealed he unloaded a Medicaid-related stock before voting for a massive budget package that enacted historically devastating cuts to the program.
Quiver Quantitative, an investment data platform that tracks stock trades made by politicians and other prominent public figures, revealed on its X account that Bresnahan recently sold shares he'd owned in Centene Corporation, a for-profit firm that specializes in delivering healthcare exchanges for Medicaid. In the weeks since he sold his shares in the company, their value plunged by more than 40 percent.
Quiver Quantitative added that while Bresnahan claims not to manage his own stock portfolio, he does not appear to have set up a qualified blind trust that would eliminate potential conflicts of interest between his investments and his work as a member of Congress.
Regardless, many of Bresnahan's Democratic colleagues reacted with fury and disgust to revelations that the Centene shares were dropped before he voted for a bill that will slash more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) over the span of a decade.
"This Congressman literally dumped stock in a Medicaid provider company right before this bill came to the floor," wrote Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) on X. "Don't be fooled—these guys know exactly what they're doing."
"Wow," marveled Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.). "So he votes to gut Medicaid and throw 17 million people off of their healthcare and then dumps his Medicaid related stock to cover his own ass? That's just evil and cruel."
"If the Big Ugly Nasty Bill doesn't hurt Medicaid, why are Republicans selling their Medicaid-associated stocks?" asked Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.). "Their words say one thing, their actions another. Their bill will gut Medicaid and kill people, and they know it."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) ripped Bresnahan for "protecting his stock portfolio while ripping away health care from 17 million Americans" with his vote to gut Medicaid.
"This is Washington at its worst," she added. "We need to ban Congressional stock trading."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Climate Change Fueling 'Most Widespread and Damaging' Droughts in History: UN Report
"This is not a dry spell," said the co-author of a new U.N. report. "This is a slow-moving global catastrophe."
Jul 03, 2025
Climate change is driving "some of the most widespread and damaging drought events in recorded history," according to a report published Wednesday on global drought hotspots.
Over the past two years, droughts have fueled increased food insecurity, dehydration, and disease that have heightened poverty and political instability in several regions of the world, according to research by the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
"This is not a dry spell," says Dr. Mark Svoboda, report co-author and NDMC Director. "This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I've ever seen. This report underscores the need for systematic monitoring of how drought affects lives, livelihoods, and the health of the ecosystems that we all depend on."
The report examined conditions in some of the globe's most drought-prone regions. They found that the economic disruption caused by droughts today is twice as high as in 2000.
In Eastern and Southern Africa, which have been blighted with dangerously low levels of rainfall, more than 90 million people face acute hunger.
Somalia has been hit particularly hard, with 4.4 million, more than a quarter of the population, facing "crisis level" food insecurity in early 2025. Zambia, meanwhile, faced one of the world's worst energy crises last year when the Zambezi River dried up, causing its hydroelectric dams to run critically low.
Other drought-plagued regions have seen wide ranges of ecological and economic disruptions.
In Spain, low levels of rainfall in 2023 devastated olive crops, causing olive oil prices to double. In the Amazon Basin, low water levels caused a mass death of fish and endangered dolphins. The Panama Canal became so depleted that trade vessels were forced to re-route, causing multi-week shipping delays. And in Morocco, Eid celebrations had to be cancelled due to a shortage of sheep.
Recent studies of drought have found that they are increasingly caused not by lack of rainfall, but by aggressive heat, which speeds up evaporation. The areas hit the hardest over the past two years were ones already suffering from the most severe temperature increases. It was also exacerbated by a particularly severe El Niño weather cycle in 2023-24.
"This was a perfect storm," says report co-author Dr. Kelly Helm Smith, NDMC Assistant Director and drought impacts researcher. "El Niño added fuel to the fire of climate change, compounding the effects for many vulnerable societies and ecosystems past their limits."
Though the effects of droughts are often felt most acutely in areas already suffering from poverty and instability, the researchers predict that as they get worse, the effects will be felt worldwide.
In 2024, then the hottest year on record, 48 of the 50 U.S. states faced drought conditions, the highest proportion ever seen. Drought in the U.S. has coincided with a dramatic increase in wildfire frequency and severity over the past 50 years.
"Ripple effects can turn regional droughts into global economic shocks," Smith said. "No country is immune when critical water-dependent systems start to collapse."
The researchers advocated for investments in global drought prevention, but also for broader measures to address the existing inequalities that make droughts more severe.
"Drought has a disproportionate effect on those with few resources," Smith said. "We can act now to reduce the effects of future droughts by working to ensure that everyone has access to food, water, education, health care and economic opportunity."
The researchers also emphasized the urgency of coordinated action to confront the climate crisis.
"The struggles...to secure water, food, and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming," said Svoboda. "No country, regardless of wealth or capacity, can afford to be complacent."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump-GOP Budget Bill Will Give Top 1% Over $1 Trillion in Tax Breaks: Analysis
The amount set to flow to a "tiny sliver of affluent families" over the next decade is roughly equal to the Medicaid cuts included in the Republican bill, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Jul 03, 2025
An analysis released Thursday estimates that the Republican legislation on the brink of final passage in Congress would deliver over $1 trillion in combined tax breaks to the richest 1% of Americans over the next decade—an amount roughly equal to the bill's unprecedented cuts to Medicaid.
The new analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which utilizes data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation and other sources, finds that the "tiny sliver of affluent families" in the top 1% of the U.S. income distribution will "receive tax cuts totaling $1.02 trillion over the next decade."
The centerpiece of Trump's megabill is a trillion-dollar tax cut to the wealthy, paid for by increasing the national debt and cutting public services. pic.twitter.com/ISr2XuIdJQ
— ITEP (@iteptweets) July 3, 2025
ITEP has previously shown that the Republican bill's tax cuts—largely extensions of expiring provisions of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law—would be highly skewed to the wealthy, with the small percentage of households at the very top receiving significantly more in total tax breaks than middle- and lower-income Americans.
"Sixty-nine percent of the net tax cuts would go to the richest fifth of Americans in 2026, only 11% would go to the middle fifth of Americans, and less than 1% would go to the poorest fifth," the group found. "The $107 billion in net tax cuts going to the richest 1% next year would exceed the amount going to the entire bottom 60% of taxpayers."
ITEP's new analysis was released as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrapped up a record-breaking, eight-hour-plus speech against the GOP legislation, which delayed a final vote on the measure. Republicans are expected to pass the unpopular bill on Thursday.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular