Bench candidates can still seek a party’s nod

01/24/2006

High court declines to revisit restrictions

BY PATRICK SWEENEY
Pioneer Press

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to second-guess lower court rulings that removed many longstanding limits on partisan campaigning by Minnesota judicial candidates.

Opponents of the rulings said they will lead to expensive, high-profile judicial election campaigns fought over how candidates might decide controversial issues likely to come before them as judges. Supporters said the decision means voters will get the information they deserve about judicial candidates.

In 2002, in a free-speech case that stemmed from the Minnesota Republican Party’s endorsement of Golden Valley lawyer Greg Wersal in a judicial campaign, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Minnesota rules severely limiting what opinions candidates for judge could voice about “disputed legal or political issues.”

The latest action by the Supreme Court lets stand a related August 2005 ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of

Appeals that judicial candidates now may:

• Attend and speak at political gatherings.

•Seek political party endorsements and publicize endorsements they receive.

• Identify themselves as current or past members of a political party.

• Personally solicit campaign contributions, rather than relying on surrogates to ask for money for them.

All those activities previously were barred by Minnesota Supreme Court rules. Candidates for judge still may not pledge how they would rule in cases likely to come before them.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to accept an appeal of the 8th Circuit case means Minnesota will continue to have judicial elections in which candidates will run for office without any party designation on the ballot. But now, as in nonpartisan city and school board elections, judicial candidates will be free to seek and publicize political endorsements.

The challenge to the restrictions was waged by Wersal and by the state Republican Party.

Roy Schotland, a Georgetown University law professor who strongly opposed removal of the restrictions on partisan activity, predicted Minnesota could easily follow the lead of states like Ohio, Michigan and Texas, where expensive, highly polarized campaigns for state supreme court have become common.

“We’re going to have worse and worse judicial elections,” said Schotland, who was co-author of a legal brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by a group representing the chief justices of a number of state supreme courts.

Schotland predicted that Minnesota judicial elections, which have mostly been low-spending events in which incumbent judges routinely win re-election, may stay that way for a time. But easing bans on judicial candidates’ political activity would eventually tempt candidates to mount more aggressive, more expensive campaigns, he said.

“There have been strong norms,” Schotland said. “They will hold for a while, but they really are totally vulnerable to who will stretch the envelope.”

Wersal, who unsuccessfully campaigned for the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1998 and 2000, said: “You’re going to see judicial candidates going to political parties to seek endorsement. The other thing they’re going to be doing is raising money, and probably lots of it.”

Wersal, who began the legal fight to avoid sanctions he could have faced for publicizing the Republican endorsement he received, refused to say Monday if he would run this year. “That’s absolutely a possibility,” he said.