Truth and justice
Published July 29, 2014
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, July 28, 2014.
A TV ad in Tennessee targets three justices on the state’s highest court. A narrator says: “28 states fought against Obamacare. But Tennessee went along with Obama. Why? Liberals control our state Supreme Court.”
The Tennessee Supreme Court has nothing to do with Obamacare, but any lie will do in politics these days.
It may not surprise residents of the Greensboro area to learn that the Washington, D.C., organization that paid for these Tennessee ads calls itself a “strategic partner” of the Republican State Leadership Committee, which helped bankroll ads supporting Phil Berger Jr. and attacking Mark Walker during the recent Republican congressional primary campaign. Voters didn’t buy those ads.
The Republican State Leadership Committee also put money behind a campaign to knock out N.C. Supreme Court Justice Robin Hudson in her May primary. TV ads distorted her opinion in a case related to electronic monitoring of sex offenders. She won anyway.
Catharine Arrowood, president of the North Carolina Bar Association, has sounded an alarm about ads like these, paid for by increasing amounts of special-interest money. “This situation causes the public to lose confidence in the integrity of the judiciary and slanders the reputation of lawyers. Like Bill Murray in ‘Ghostbusters,’ we are being slimed,” she said at the association’s annual meeting in June.
Arrowood, a Raleigh attorney, pledges to lead stronger efforts to dispel misinformation broadcast during campaigns. This is a much-needed initiative. Lawyers have a professional interest in maintaining honest courts and opposing efforts to manipulate justice for political reasons.
Candidates can help by rejecting the “assistance” of these independent political action committees, such as Justice for All NC, which — funded by the Republican State Leadership Committee — was responsible for the anti-Hudson ads this spring.
One Supreme Court candidate, Robert N. Hunter Jr., dramatically announced at the Bar Association meeting that he “will not tolerate any untruths” about his opponent, Sam J. Ervin IV. The two are colleagues on the N.C. Court of Appeals and, according to Hunter, “good friends.”
Court observers expect that Ervin will be targeted in attack ads spreading untruths during the fall campaign. If Hunter denounces them, maybe that will shame the sponsors of the lies. If all candidates do the same, maybe the attacks will stop. That’s a lot to hope, but no one should tolerate untruths in these campaigns.
It’s easy to distort the facts about a judge’s record on the bench. Granting a defendant’s motion to dismiss a charge doesn’t mean a judge is “soft on crime,” as an opponent might allege. It might mean that the judge has protected a defendant’s constitutional rights.
Voters generally have little knowledge of these issues or judicial candidates’ records. They can be influenced by misleading TV ads — and the result can be to elect people for the wrong reasons. It will take informed people speaking up for the truth to keep that from happening in North Carolina.
