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View from the Hill

Report finds link between NC judicial campaign donations and success in courts

Big political money is now reaching its hand into North Carolina judicial races.

The left-leaning Center for American Progress has found a correlation between the success rate of law firms at the N.C. Supreme Court and the level of that firm’s campaign contributions.

In the report, researchers found that attorney donors with more than five cases before the Supreme Court who gave at least $1,000 to judicial campaigns had a success rate of 75 percent in 1998. That statistic dipped to 62 percent in 2004, the first year that public financing was provided.

“It seems pretty clear to me that Art Pope wanted to get rid of public financing, so he could run his own candidates and fund their campaign,” said Billy Corriher, director of research for legal progress at the Center for American Progress.

The 2014 N.C. Supreme Court election raked in an unparalleled $4 million in campaign contributions. This upshot of campaign donations was caused by the 2013 dismantling of the state's public financing system.

By collecting a certain amount of small donations, judges could qualify for public financing, which was essentially a grant of a few hundred thousand dollars to run their campaign, Corriher said.

“It was a really successful program. Judges on both sides of the aisle really liked it because they didn’t have to go out there and fundraise,” said Corriher.

But during state budget negotiations in 2013, Gov. Pat McCrory and former budget director Art Pope decided to stop funding the public finance system. In an effort to bring back public financing to some degree, a compromise was in the works in the legislature, but it never came to fruition.

“The legislature who sponsored the compromise was pulled aside by Art Pope and had a conversation with him. When the compromise came up again, it was dead,” said Corriher.

Not everyone buys into the argument that large campaign donations have a negative impact.

“They cannot just say a thing and make it true, there must be some statistical evidence — and evidence that goes beyond correlation and makes the case for causation,” Jill Farrell, spokeswoman for right-leaning Judicial Watch, said in an email.

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