The Republicans on the Hill keep getting smarter. The Dems have been using well funded advocacy groups to fight the Judical Nominations. Time for the Republicans to do the same. "The Hill"
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K Street enters fray over bench
At urging of GOP, business sets aside reluctance to fight
By Alexander Bolton
Business groups are getting involved in the partisan dispute over the judiciary.
After months during which the Senate Republican leadership has urged more active support from corporate America on the issue, business has overcome its concern about being involved in the controversial issue of confirming President Bush’s nominees.
The groups remain cautiousbut are anonymously giving tens of thousands of dollars to groups fighting to approve Bush’s choices and wielding their financial muscle in state judicial battles, away from the Beltway’s media spotlight.
In the past, corporate leaders have viewed the battle over judges as a fight more over social rather than business policy.
But pressure by GOP leaders on the Hill and the spiraling costs of class action lawsuits and other civil litigation has persuaded key players in the business community that they have a big stake in the battle over the bench, which has periodically paralyzed the Senate throughout this year.
“Every time I talk to any kind of K Street group, I talk about judges and the importance of getting them involved in the judge issue,” said Senate GOP Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). “I think it’s one of the most fundamental issues we have.”
Santorum highlighted the importance of the judiciary’s makeup to business interests and the economy in January at a breakfast sponsored by The Hill. Since then he and his colleagues have slowly persuaded the business community, which is notoriously controversy-averse, to recognize its stake in the issue.
In the most visible development, officials at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are looking at 40 state supreme court races across the country where it may underwrite and counsel to groups that support candidates who are viewed as fair to business.
“I would say the Chamber’s efforts have really been welcome, and to me that’s major progress,” said Santorum. “And I think as a result of the Chamber’s effort and [business leaders] hearing from people on the Hill of the importance [of judges] that should hopefully motivate some people in the right direction.”
A good number of companies have responded to Senate Republican urgings to get involved by giving money to the Committee for Justice, a group dedicated to promoting and defending Bush’s judicial nominees, said executive director Sean Rushton.
“It’s becoming a cause that is better understood outside of the conservative activist base – and that includes K Street,” Rushton said
He declined to identify anyone. The Committee for Justice does not have to disclose its donors because the group is classified as a non-profit group under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.
Dave Warner, spokesman for the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, said: “We work with third party groups and they may identify certain races where there’s a clear difference between one candidate or another on legal reform issues.”
“It’s important to have good state judges because that is the pool of judges that become federal judges,” he added. “We would like for that pool to be judges who enforce the rule of law with integrity and impartiality.”
The Chamber worked to influence 18 state judicial races in 2002 and 15 such races in 2000.
Many executives say a large number of judges in places such as California, southern Illinois and West Virginia are overly sympathetic to trial lawyers.
The Business Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC), one the biggest business trade associations in the country, is working with the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform to develop a grassroots program to make voters more aware of judiciary branch issues.
“We make our tools available to allow business to effect changes, and changes in the judiciary are happening on the local level,” said Greg Casey, the president of BIPAC.
One of BIPAC’s most effective tools is the Prosperity Project, which it operates with other prominent business associations to help businesses mobilize their employees on legislative and political issues.
The project instructs roughly 170 companies — including more than 50 Fortune 500 firms — how to customize websites and distribute voting records, voting guides, and registration forms to educate their employees on issues. Last year in Ohio, businesses used Prosperity Project tools to help win two key state supreme court races.
“We want what they [the Institute for Legal Reform] have to develop through all our networks throughout the country,” said Casey. “If you look at our reach through the various contracts we have we’re able to reach 20 million employees.”
The Institute for Legal Reform has yet to assume a big role in the Senate fight over judges, other than advocating for a vote on Charles Pickering Sr., nominated by Bush last year to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. But an alliance with BIPAC would give them an effective platform to do so.
However, business remain quite cautious about getting publicly involved in high-profile judiciary battles such as the recent fights over Miguel Estrada, who was nominated to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, before withdrawing his name, and 5th Circuit nominee Priscilla Owens.
“Many businesses are concerned about being perceived as being involved in social issues,” said a GOP aide. “Gradually they’re getting to the point where they realize they have interests they need to defend that don’t have anything to do with abortion.”
Business leaders looking down the road calculate that they will likely have to do more to increase their influence on the nomination and approval of federal judges, especially if Congress passes the Class Action Fairness Act or other tort reform that would move class action suits out of state court and into federal courts.
“Then we would have to create a whole new set of points of influence,” said a consultant to a business trade association.
But conservative activists wish that the business would move more quickly to make its voice heard on judiciary issues.
“The moneyed interests of the left are very much engaged in this battle, and the moneyed interests on the right are not,” said Richard Lessner, the executive director of the American Conservative Union. “They have to remember [U.S. District Court Judge] Thomas Penfield Jackson in the Microsoft case to remind them that who sits on the bench is of considerable interest to the business community.”
President Reagan named Jackson to the bench.
Lessner said he regularly attends meetings of coalition groups working on confirming the president’s judicial nominees.
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