Trial Lawyers Big Contributors in Local Judicial Races

Sacramento - Preliminary findings of a study of 1998 and 2000 judicial elections by the Civil Justice Association of California (CJAC) show a total of $2.8 million spent through September 30 in 17 judicial races in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Sacramento counties. In addition, a pair of races in Santa Clara County could add half a million dollars more to the total by election day.

On the average, 44% of the election funding total came in loans and direct funding from the candidates themselves.

Attorneys contributed 38% of the identifiable* non-candidate contributions with three out of ten of those dollars coming from plaintiffs' lawyers and their firms.

Non-attorneys contributed an average of 40% of the non-candidate dollars. This group includes other judges, businesses, labor organizations, law enforcement, and other broad- based organizations.

"Compared with many states, California's system for selecting and electing judges generally wins high marks," said CJAC president John H. Sullivan. "Nevertheless, with the growing amounts of money spent in judicial elections, it is important that voters stay aware of the size and source of the money raised by candidates for seats on our courts."

The biggest spending appears to be in a race for a superior court judge seat in Sacramento County. In the Sacramento race for an open superior court seat, attorney Trena Burger led all contenders across the state with $559,000 reported received through September 30. Her opponent, deputy district attorney Don Steed, reported $102,000 in contributions for a record setting total of $661,000.

The prior record for superior court campaigns identified by the Civil Justice Association of California (CJAC) was a 1994 Los Angeles County race in which John Moriarity and Terry Friedman raised a combined total of $497,000.

"This is a real eye-opener when you consider it alongside state supreme court campaigns in some eastern states where justices run in contested, partisan elections," noted Sullivan. "For example, we have a report that in Illinois two candidates fighting for a seat on the state supreme court last spring spent $1 million each."

County specific information on the preliminary findings is available at www.cjac.org. A final study on judicial campaign contributions for 1998-2000 will be released early in 2001.

California's appellate and Supreme Court justices are appointed by the Governor and later appear on the ballot in retention elections. No retention elections are scheduled this November.

In the 1998 retention elections, $1.8 million was contributed statewide. Of this, $748,000 came from attorneys ($236,000 from plaintiff's lawyers) and $955,000 from other individuals and organizations. Unlike the situation in trial court elections, higher court judges contributed little of their own funds to their campaigns.

The Civil Justice Association of California is a coalition of citizens, taxpayers, businesses, local governments, professionals, manufacturers, financial institutions, insurers, and medical organizations.

* $113,000 of the total came from unidentified sources where individuals were not required to be identify themselves because contributions were less than $100. The sources of another approximately $250,000 of the total reported could not be identified because of missing prior reports.