Group targets judicial races

Watchdogs call for effort to make campaigns ethically fair

By Brad Shannon | The Olympian • Published May 23, 2008

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A watchdog group for state judicial campaigns is forming, led by a retired state appellate judge and others worried about the tone of recent races.

The pledge

The Washington Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns plans to ask candidates for the Supreme Court and state appeals courts to sign a pledge to run clean campaigns that "foster the public's trust in the judiciary. The pledge will commit candidates to conduct their campaigns in a manner that will support a fair, impartial, open-minded and independent judiciary," the group said in a news release.

The watchdog group plans to review campaign ads and literature and to speak out if the ads harm the integrity of the courts, chairman William Baker said.
Citizens group

The 12-member watchdog group includes Dick Thompson, a former state budget director under Democratic Gov. Gary Locke; defense trial lawyer Jill Haavig Stone; Oscar Eason of the state Commission on African American Affairs; former Bellingham mayor Tim Douglas; Eric Bremner, former president of KING Broadcasting; Jacqueline Bryan, a business-development consultant; lawyer Marco Magnano; math tutor Judy Maleng; Alice Paine, former executive director of the King County bar; Sally Savage, former attorney for Washington State University; and Morris Shore, a Yakima attorney.

"There have been too many bad examples nationally … big money and really highly inappropriate campaign tactics," retired state Appeals Court Judge William Baker said. William serves as the chairman for the Washington Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns watchdog group.

Nine states have responded in the way the coalition hopes to, said Baker, who served 18 years on the appeals court in Everett. The citizen group plans to monitor ads and campaign literature; it also will ask candidates to sign pledges to campaign in ways that don't impugn opponents or erode public trust in the judiciary.

Baker said the effort grew out of work by the coalition that created the votingforjudges.org Web site two years ago. The coalition includes the League of Women Voters, the Municipal League, the American Judicature Society and various legal bar associations, he said.

But also giving it a kick were the 2006 judicial elections, marked by hard-hitting ads by third-party groups.

In Washington, attack ads funded by builders in 2006 painted Chief Justice Gerry Alexander as too old for the job and suggested he condoned a colleague's drunken driving.

Rival ads paid for by a coalition of trial lawyers, tribes and labor groups were rough on Alexander's challenger, John Groen, linking him to right-wing positions he had not expressed and saying extremists were trying to buy him a seat on the court.

Baker said the pledge would require a candidate to denounce ads or other actions taken by supporters that cross the line. Although candidates often don't have control over groups that run ads, the pledge would require candidates to denounce errant ads or the coalition would go public with that fact.

Alexander said he had not heard of the committee but knows of the people involved.

"It sounds like something I would have signed," he said of the pledge.

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