Partisanship and dark money in the race for Arkansas Supreme Court

John Moritz’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette preview today of the important race for Arkansas Supreme Court characterized the race as low-key and absent dark money spending employed in recent races for the court.

The situation is changing, however. The Republican State Leadership Committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative has already posted a YouTube video endorsing Webb, wife of Republican State Party chair Doyle Webb. The video includes a clip of Webb speaking about her qualifications for the court. It has filed papers indicating it will be making independent expenditures but has not yet filed a financial report.

This is the group that spent $2.6 million trying unsuccessfully to defeat Justice Courtney Hudson (then Goodson) in her race for Supreme Court re-election against David Sterling in 2018. It resents being called a dark money group because money flows in block amounts from a national PAC that reports millions in contributions nationwide to elect corporate-friendly judges. The money is, at best, opaque. There’s no meaningful way to trace money used by the group to funnel into races such as the one in Arkansas. No specific contribution reports with individual donors are filed in Arkansas.

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Barbara Webb, who hopes to defeat Circuit Judge Chip Welch for retiring Justice Jo Hart’s seat, is following the Republican template for judicial election. She is advertising a statement made about her by Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson when he named her to temporarily fill a judicial vacancy in Saline County; her social media posts are full of her appearances at Republican gatherings around the state (Welch has wangled a GOP appearance or two himself), and there’s a photo of her recent trip with Doyle Webb to the Trump White House.

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https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2020/02/16/partisanship-and-dark-money-in-the-race-for-arkansas-supreme-court