Advertisements for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election culminated to become the most negatively publicized judicial race in state history Tuesday.
Special interest groups spent over $3 million on advertisements in the election, more than either candidate spent and likely more than was spent last year, according to a recent report by the watchdog group Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
According to Mike McCabe, director of the WDC, candidates are restricted by donation limits and strict disclosure rules. However, special interest groups do not have to follow the same rules.
McCabe said elections are supposed to be a dialogue between voters and candidates, but the recent election was a special interest monologue.""
The problem with negative special interest advertisements is the public has no idea where the money is coming from, said Jay Heck, executive director of the ethics group Common Cause in Wisconsin.
Heck said this has lead to ""character assassinating ads to buy Supreme Court elections with secret money.""
According to Heck, the responsibility to reform these issues is in the hands of Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative leaders like Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, and state Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston.
He said establishing legislation requiring special interest groups to disclose the names of donors would decrease the amount of funding because donors would be ""embarrassed if people knew they were paying for the [advertisement] crap.""
Other political observers said the current nature of Supreme Court races does not need to be changed.
""The negative tone to the campaigns is the function of the competitive nature of the election,"" UW-Madison political science professor Kenneth Goldstein said.
According to Goldstein, voting for judges can be problematic because elections were meant for representative offices - not judicial ones.
However, Goldstein said he is not concerned about the amount of money or the negative tone affecting the election.
