For a few shining hours two years ago, it appeared we might stand a chance to begin seating our Arkansas Supreme Court justices with some measure of decorum and professionalism.
The Arkansas Bar Association agreed to try to develop a constitutional amendment to select appellate justices by merit screening, gubernatorial nomination and state Senate confirmation.
And there was not-insubstantial legislative support for making these “dark-money” outside groups more accountable when they come into the state with their expensive and incendiary television commercials smearing one judicial candidate or another for reasons probably less than altruistic.
What happened in the interim was Donald Trump and Arkansas legislative Republicans, a deadly one-two.
A clear message of Trump’s overpowering win in Arkansas was that the state’s voters would rebuff any effort seen as emanating from insiders to anoint insiders to get judges seated without the public having any say.
It’s heavily ironic, of course, as most things are anymore. Trump is president because the people don’t have any say.
Then, in the ensuing legislative session, “dark money” survived because it mostly serves conservative and Republican interests and most of our legislators are conservative and Republican.
The result is yet another biennial season of sleaze on your television screen.
The first entry of the season was from the Judicial Crisis Network, with a policy director who formerly clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and which frequently gets favorable mention on the ultra-right, anti-“deep-state” Breitbart News.
Its television ad hammers Associate Justice Courtney Goodson, who seeks re-election after dark money derailed her midterm bid for chief justice two years ago.
Goodson deserves criticism, but not in this form or from this assailant, which opposes her mainly, I suspect, because she’s married to wheeler-dealer class-action lawyer Johnny Goodson. That seems to suggest to these outside intruders that she favors plaintiffs’ lawyers helping the little people against the big corporations — nursing-home chains, let’s say. Ultra-conservatives don’t want corporations bothered by the little people signing on with ambulance-chasing liberal lawyers married to state Supreme Court justices.
Goodson is attacked in the ad for taking lavish special-interest gifts, most of which were from Goodson — her husband — when he was courting her as she transitioned, quite coincidentally, from one politically connected husband to a more politically connected husband.
She also is attacked for seeking a raise that the entire state Supreme Court — a petty and ridiculous bunch — asked for and didn’t get. Apparently, a couple of associate justices — not Goodson so much as the couple of others — didn’t think their pay advantage over the inferior minions of the intermediate Arkansas Court of Appeals was wide enough.
The fact is that Goodson is not a bad judge. There, I said it. My objections are entirely matters of personal disapproval.
The voting May 22 is tantamount to a primary if none of the three candidates gets more than 50 percent. The runoff would be in the general election.
So, it’s possible I might end up having to vote in November for Goodson. That’s because one of the other two candidates, David Sterling, is worse — than Goodson, than most anybody.
How bad is Sterling? He’s so bad he made Leslie Rutledge look moderately responsible when he got into a runoff with her nearly four years ago for the Republican nomination for attorney general.
Here I must cite again the Judicial Crisis Network, the right-wing outfit attacking Goodson, and a spokesman for which got quoted on Breitbart New during that Rutledge-Sterling runoff — back when Steve Bannon was running Breitbart — as praising Sterling and scolding Rutledge.
It seems that Sterling declared that, as attorney general, he would hire only avowed right-wing attorneys who would enforce the 10th Amendment and save Arkansas from having to abide by any darned Obama administration regulations. The Judicial Crisis Network liked that kind of talk.
Rutledge’s sin? It was that she said you might not want to do that by any open avowal because you could invite a lawsuit. Her plan, it turns out obviously, was to do what Sterling was saying but not telegraph it or compromise it.
Sterling thus offers himself for a seat on the state Supreme Court on the basis that he is more conservative than Leslie Rutledge but not as smart.
Now there’s this outfit calling itself the Republican State Leadership Committee. But it’s not affiliated with the Republican State Committee. It’s a national 527 organization with ties to Karl Rove.
It has hit Arkansas television screens with a spot saying the state must elect this dude Sterling. That way, the ad says, Sterling can end fake news, punish Anderson Cooper (for what? I wonder) and keep Nancy Pelosi from … oh, I don’t know … introducing rural Arkansas schoolchildren to sushi, I guess.
If I might interject at this point: The Arkansas Supreme Court has not a blankety-blank thing to do with fake news or Anderson Cooper or Nancy Pelosi.
There is a third candidate in this state Supreme Court race. He is Kenneth Hixson — aka the potential savior.
He is a good ol’ boy from Logan County who made himself into a lawyer and now sits on the Arkansas Court of Appeals. He’s quite conservative. He told me at lunch that judicial nominations went to Hades when Democrats acted rudely toward Robert Bork.
But he’s all right, you know? Comparatively speaking.
Some legal and political leaders, beholding the choice of Goodson and Sterling, talked him into running for the good of the court.
At this writing he seems inconsequential because no dark money has been spent on any television commercial for or against him.
He did put out a news release the other day saying dark money is out of hand and claiming some of it must have been used to make attack telephone calls against him recently.
Me, too. Me, too. That’s what he’s saying.
At this point it might be in his interest to get attacked on TV by some mysterious and rich outsider.
Otherwise he’s losing the name-identification battle.
But maybe he is that rare candidate who doesn’t really need name identification. After all, it’s less important that he’s named Kenneth Hixson than that he’s not named David Sterling or Courtney Goodson.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.