OPINION

JOHN BRUMMETT: Lesson for state politics

Former state Sen. Gilbert Baker of Conway also was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Little Rock. What mainly got indicted, though, was Arkansas politics generally and the state's judicial politics specifically.

Baker was singled out because of an alleged scenario in which he, a hyperactive sort who became full of his own insider wizardry, stepped over that narrow and vague line separating political fundraising and bribery.

If that sounds altogether jaded and cynical, you must try to forgive me.


I've written that we ought to stop electing judges because the concepts of justice and private fundraising don't mix.

I've written that it's comical to pretend that candidates for judicial election somehow blindfold themselves to the contributions their treasurers are collecting for them.

I've written that the right wing loves to cite this poll-tested concept it calls "tort reform" to transfer jury discretion to the judges its money can elect. The drumbeat for "tort reform" persists, as if it's a good thing that would protect jobs and medical-care providers from injured persons and juries of the injured persons' peers.

I've written that our contemporary politics stressing monied private influence over public principle will always find a way, such as this indictment's detailing of a former leading legislator working with lawyers and lobbyists to get an array of dummy political action committees set up--legally--so that a nursing home operator could steer otherwise forbidden large sums to a circuit judge with a case on his pending docket charging negligence against one of that nursing home operator's facilities.

I've written that our legislative culture continues to place premiums on good ol' boys with money.

In the good ol' boy context, I should relate another little gem I've written. It's that Baker was likeable and a good man and guilty mostly of getting too big for his britches.

That one may not hold up as well as the others.

After getting term-limited, Baker set himself up as a "consultant," not a registered lobbyist, speaking of narrow and vague lines.

His main service was keeping balls juggled while money moved from special private interests to public officials. The theme of Baker's activity was the aforementioned tort reform, on electing judges who would favor corporate defendants over people.

Baker faces nine counts based on the central allegation that there was a too-blatant connection between:

• The $50,000 he was arranging for nursing home owner Michael Morton to put into assorted political action committees.

• The eventually aborted campaign for higher office of the local judge, Mike Maggio.

Baker is said in the indictment to have called the money "the first $50,000."

The indictment details many texts by Baker, but none in which he says plainly: Hey, Judge, the nursing home owner is going to write the checks to the political action committees but you're going to need to grant that motion to reduce that $5.2 million jury verdict against his nursing home down to, oh, let's say $1 million.

Baker's defense will be that he never said outright what everybody essentially implies.

As Maggio sat in prison for taking a bribe that no one was alleged to have extended, and as the statute of limitations loomed, the convicted former judge presumably rethought his predicament. He seems to have said, OK, I'll talk to you prosecutors and I'll tell you that Gilbert made it clear to me that I was getting the money in exchange for reducing the verdict.

Maggio presumably also told authorities what he recalls being contained in texts that he had long ago deleted.

The indictment says Baker told Maggio the money was coming "win, lose or draw." Perhaps that is the over-the-line nexus between the contributions and the court case--that "win, lose or draw" meant "win, win or win."

But, by another interpretation, Baker could have been referring to Maggio's outcome in the pending campaign.

What are the lessons here?

One is that our judges should be nominated and confirmed on a merit system rather than elected via campaign contributions. Another is that our campaign-finance and ethics laws should be tougher.

But, more than any of that, it's that the people should insist that political office-holders and the judiciary behave with the independent integrity and devotion to public service that they profess by banal rote in all those oaths they're always reciting to each other.

We need a political and judicial culture in which personal discretion and restraint become valued more than dancing along and cleverly across that vague line.

Less money and better people--that's all we need.

When in doubt, don't--that's the maxim to live by, and it's the wide and clear line.

It will work every time, dependent only on consciences, which probably need recalibration.

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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.

Editorial on 01/15/2019

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