Supreme Court race at $4.3M

MONTGOMERY - The $4.3 million state Supreme Court race on Tuesday’s ballot is overshadowing three other Alabama appellate court races and is once again drawing attention to the state’s expensive partisan judicial elections.

Democrat Deborah Bell Paseur and Republican Greg Shaw seek to replace retiring Republican Justice Harold See.

The nine-member Supreme Court has only one Democrat, Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb.

Paseur is a retired Lauderdale County district judge and Shaw is a judge on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.

Paseur and Shaw have spent $3.8 million on their campaigns so far this year. An outside group, the Center for Individual Freedom, has spent $488,265 on ads favoring Shaw, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Paseur has raised $2.4 million and spent $2.3 million through the end of October. Shaw has raised $1.6 million and spent $1.57 million.

The total spent on the race is $4.3 million and counting because the campaigns still have two days left of spending that won’t have to be reported until February.

The other statewide court races on Tuesday’s ballot are two Court of Criminal Appeals races and a Court of Civil Appeals race.

In the Supreme Court race, Paseur’s and Shaw’s contributions are from traditional Democrat and Republican sources that shove election spending into the financial stratosphere and continue Alabama’s status as the state with the most expensive court races in the nation.

Democrats typically get trial lawyer, union and state party money. Republican candidates since the mid-1990s have been getting money from business groups, including the Business Council of Alabama, which has helped the GOP successfully reverse the former dominance of Democrats on appellate courts.

That trend leads Auburn-Montgomery political science professor Brad Moody to bring up frequent calls for the state to find a different way of electing judges. Alabama was previously called tort hell by business groups because they said they were getting slammed by plaintiff verdicts against them.

Now it appears to have swung the other way, with the 8-1 Republican Alabama Supreme Court that drastically reduced a trial jury’s recent huge punitive damage verdict against Exxon Mobil Corp.

“It would be better if we didn’t elect judges all up and down the ballot in partisan elections, and it’s wrong if you have one party pretty well dominating the appellate courts and the Supreme Court,” Moody said.

Paseur’s campaign seems patterned after Cobb’s 2006 chief justice race that successfully unseated incumbent Chief Justice Drayton Nabers. Cobb’s campaign had a catchy song and charged that Nabers was supported by “big oil.”

Unlike Nabers two years ago, however, Shaw’s campaign this year aggressively defends every Paseur campaign charge and then goes on the offense.

“Supreme Court races are not football games; they should be run with dignity and integrity,” Shaw said. “Unfortunately, the people of Alabama have a race as bad as the skunk-ad race against Harold See years ago.”

The Paseur campaign accused Shaw’s outside support of nearly violating Alabama’s loose campaign finance laws.

“This group, along with AVALA, are purposefully skirting our state’s laws in an effort to elect Greg Shaw to the Alabama Supreme Court,” Paseur campaign spokeswoman Marion Steinfels said of the freedom center and Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse.

Democratic Party Executive Director Jim Spearman said there have been calls within his own party both to change the system and not to change it. “Our chief justice has moved to have nonpartisan choices,” Spearman noted.

Paseur was the district judge in Lauderdale County for 27 years. In law school, she worked as a sworn police officer and for a legal aid society and briefly was in private practice.

As a district judge, she presided over the start of criminal cases and sentenced people to jail. As a result of her position, she did not preside over jury trials or write opinions — factors that Shaw has criticized her about during the campaign.

“It’s very important that judges in the appellate court have the kind of background I have — 27 years in the community face to face, looking criminals in the eye and sending them to jail,” she said. “The power and authority vested in a judge’s pen is probably the most powerful in this country.”

Paseur, 56, said she is bothered by having to run on a party label and prefers a nonpartisan system, but that’s how it works.

“In our community, we’re defined by who we are and the trust level we have from people,” she said. “I was proud to be elected by the Shoals.”

Shaw was elected to the state Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000 and re-elected in 2006.

He was a lawyer briefly in private practice and worked for 16 years for the Supreme Court, most of it as former Justice Gorman Houston’s senior attorney.

“I’ve dedicated pretty much all my legal career to the appellate courts,” Shaw said. “I’ve personally written hundreds of published opinions and law book precedents relied on by lawyers and judges.”

Shaw also is president of the Court of Judiciary that judges ethics complaints against judges.

“I’m unique that I’m probably the only judge in Alabama sitting on an appellate court and a trial court,” he said.

Paseur said she has a guiding judicial principle.

“I believe in judicial independence and fairness and impartiality,” she said. “I believe every citizen should have complete trust that justice is blind on a completely level playing field. That’s how I conduct my campaign with the voters of Alabama.”

Dana Beyerle can be reached at (334) 264-6605.