Big money in Alabama judicial races is nothing new, but a week away from primary day, Republican Supreme Court chief justice candidate Tom Parker is in the midst of a campaign that might be unprecedented.
Parker, who is challenging incumbent Lyn Stuart in the primary, has reported raising $505,625. Of that, $400,000 has come from a single political action committee — the Progress for Justice PAC. Since 2016, the PAC has received all of its money from seven big trial lawyer firms and one individual, a $250,000 donation from plaintiffs’ lawyer David Marsh.
After subtracting the $32,550 that Parker has loaned his campaign, the trial lawyer PAC accounts for nearly 85 percent of the money he has raised since last July.
Not only is the percentage staggering — perhaps unheard of for a statewide campaign — but it is unusual for trial lawyers traditionally aligned with Democrats to spend so heavily in a Republican primary.
Former Lt. Gov. Jere Beasley, whose Montgomery-based law firm is among the contributors to the Progress for Justice PAC, downplayed the significance of the contributions to Parker. He said he would prefer a different system, altogether.
“I like both of them,” he said, referring to Parker and Stuart. “My goal would be to get money totally out of court races, and that will never happen in my lifetime.”
Stuart has been on the high court since 2001 and took over as top justice after former Chief Justice Roy Moore left office amid allegations that he violated judicial ethics by instructing probate judges to follow state law on gay marriage after a federal judge had declared it unconstitutional.
Stuart has doubled Parker’s fundraising, largely on the strength of her support from business interests.
A generation ago, trial lawyers would not even have considered backing Republicans in appellate court races. The 1990s and early 2000s featured often bitter proxy wars between business donors and trial lawyers for ideological control of the judiciary.
But in recent years, trial lawyer interests increasingly have played in GOP primaries. Moore has received a fair number of donations from firms that generally represent plaintiffs. And Parker, a longtime ally of Moore, was the clear Republican choice of trial lawyers the last time he ran for chief justice — when he lost to Drayton Nabers in the 2006 primary.
“This is not the first election cycle that trial lawyers have spread their money to Republican candidates,” said Jess Brown, a political scientist at Athens State University in northern Alabama.
Indeed, the Progress for Justice PAC last year and this year has contributed to several Republicans running for the state Legislature, and a number of judicial candidates. That includes Supreme Court Justice Tommy Bryan, unopposed for the GOP nomination, and Mobile County Circuit Judge Sarah Stewart, who is running against incumbent Brad Mendheim.
Court of Civil Appeals Judges Terri Willingham Thomas and Terry Moore, as well as three candidates running for an open seat on the court — Christy Olinger Edwards, Pat Thetford and Michelle Thomason — also all have taken money from the PAC.
The PAC also made a donation to Chris McCool, who is running for a seat on the Court of Criminal Appeals.
But contributions to Parker dwarf them all. The PAC has given more to him than every other candidate combined; Parker’s $400,000 represents 75 percent of the PAC’s contribution total this cycle.
The Stuart campaign criticized Parker’s heavy reliance on trial lawyers and called on him to refuse to accept any more contributions from those interests. The campaign also blasted Parker for telling AL.com earlier this month that “we need some restoration” after the pendulum had swung too far from the center.
“This is not the Chief Justice Republican voters in Alabama can support or should support,” the campaign said in a statement. “Judges do not place their thumbs on the scale of justice for any party. Rather their duty is to fairly and consistently apply the law and not make law.”
For his part, Parker noted in a statement that his opponent has gotten most of the special interest money.
“I am a grassroots candidate being massively outspent by a Montgomery insider that has raised nearly a million dollars in special interest money. My core supporters are hardworking citizens across the state that believe in God, the Constitution, and protecting the rule of law and the integrity of our courts,” he stated. “I consider myself fortunate to have received the support of numerous attorneys across the state as well.”
Parker added that he is “known for being fair and balanced, and for following the law rather than popular opinion.”
Brown, the political scientist, said many donors prefer funneling candidate donations through PACs in order to build a layer of separation between donor and recipient.
“It’s just another example of how you are able to partially camouflage donors by putting a PAC label on them,” he said.
Beasley, the Montgomery lawyer, said that if campaign money has a large impact on judicial decisions, then average Alabamians have more to worry about from Stuart since she has a large advantage in special interest money.
He said he’d prefer to end the arms race.
“We better wake up and get money out of politics,” he said.
@BrendanKKirby is a senior political reporter at LifeZette and author of “Wicked Mobile.”
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