Fighting for Impartial Justice:
A tool-kit for activists
Graphic by Matt Wuerker for TomPaine.com
Graphic by Peter Berge
Graphic by Matt Wuerker for Tompaine.com
By Roger Bybee
Published by Wisconsin Citizen Action
November, 2002
Table of contents
Introduction
Strategic overview
Step I Settling on Policy: Why only full public funding makes sense
Step II Rounding up high-credibility endorsers
Step III: Building the case
Step IV: Developing your coalition
Step V: Drafting the bill
Step VI: Persuading the public
VIII. Translating support into impact
Step VII. Keeping track of all the action
Appendices
q Letter requesting endorsements
q Endorsement forms
q Fact sheet
q List of endorsers
q Op-eds
q News release on poll released Sept. 10, 2001
q Polling questions
Introduction
T
his “toolkit” is designed to assist state-based activists in winning full public funding for state Supreme Court elections. We think that the increasing clout of special-interest money in state-level Supreme Court elections—a 61% increase in fundraising for such elections between 1998 and 2000 alone—dramatizes the urgency of this reform and the struggle to attain it. The toolkit is based heavily on our experiences seeking to make Wisconsin the first state in the nation to pass and implement the Impartial Justice Bill.
We certainly do not pretend to have all the answers. Most obviously, we do not have a complete success story to tell—yet. (As we prepare this document for publication, our compatriots in North Carolina have just scored a breakthrough, winning passage of full public funding for Supreme Court and Appeals Copurt candidates.) Our efforts in Wisconsin have yielded substantial progress in each of the last two legislative sessions, only to be ultimately blocked at crucial junctures. For example, on the last day of the 1999-2000 session, our Impartial Justice Bill passed the State Senate by a 30-3 vote. But the leadership of the Assembly, at that point fiercely opposed to any substantive campaign reform, simply declined to hold a vote although an overwhelming majority of members were in support, according to two different head-counts conducted by lobbyists.
Determined to overcome this resistance in the 2001-2002 legislative session, we succeeded in building much stronger general support among the Republican majority in the Assembly, and specifically gained several Republicans as sponsors. We eventually won the assent of the speaker for full public funding of Supreme Court elections. Backing among the legal profession, civic groups of all types, and on editorial pages continued to grow, reinforced by a new poll showing 76% support among likely voters.
B
ut this time around, we suddenly encountered intransigent opposition from the Senate majority leader, who insisted that the Impartial Justice Bill would somehow open a new channel for corporate funding of issue ads.
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I'm teaching in Labor Studies at Penn State and the University of Illinois in on-line classes. I've been continuing with my work as freelance writer, with my immediate aim to complete a book on corporate media coverage of globalization (tentatively titled The Giant Sucking Sound: How Corporate Media Swallowed the Myth of Free Trade.) I write frequently for Z, The Progressive Magazine's on-line site, The Progressive Populist, Madison's Isthmus alternative weekly, and a variety of publications including Yes!, The Progressive, Foreign Policy in Focus, and several websites. I've been writing a blog on labor issues for workinginthesetimes.com, turning out over 300 pieces in the past four years.My work specializes in corporate globalization, labor, and healthcare reform... I've been a progressive activist since the age of about 17, when I became deeply affected by the anti-war and civil rights movements. I entered college at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee just days after watching the Chicago police brutalize anti-war demonstrators at the Democratic Convention of 1968. I was active in a variety of "student power" and anti-war activities, highlighted by the May, 1970 strike after the Nixon's invastion of Cambodia and the massacres at Kent State and Jackson State. My senior year was capped by Nixon's bombing of Haiphong Harbor and the occupation of a university building, all in the same week I needed to finish 5-6 term papers to graduate, which I managed somehow. My wife Carolyn Winter, whom I met in the Wisconsin Alliance, and I have been together since 1975, getting officially married 10/11/81. Carolyn, a native New Yorker, has also been active for social justice since her youth (she attended the famous 1963 Civil Rights march where Dr. King gave his "I have a dream speech"). We have two grown children, Lane (with wife Elaine and 11-year-old grandson Zachary, who introduced poker to his classmates during recess) living in Chicago and Rachel (who with her husband Michael have the amazing Talia Ruth,5, who can define "surreptitious" for you) living in Asbury Park, NJ. My sister Francie lives down the block from me. I'm a native of the once-heavily unionized industrial city of Racine, Wis. (which right-wingers sneeringly labeled "Little Moscow" during the upheavals of the 1930's), and both my grandfathers were industrial workers and Socialists. On my father's side, my grandfather was fired three times for Socialist or union activity. His family lost their home at one point during the Depression. My mom's father was a long-time member of UAW Local 72 at American Motors, where he worked for more than 30 years. Coming from impoverished families, my parents met through a very low-cost form of recreation: Racine's Hiking Club.
