A few weeks ago, I wrote about the growing influence of a trial lawyer-funded political action committee in the upcoming Mississippi judicial elections. I sold the group short.
The numbers I cited weren’t high enough. In that column, I understated the amount of ICE PAC’s fund-raising and spending by a significant amount — about $207,000.
Final figures in the Secretary of State’s Office show that after beginning 1999 with cash in reserve, the group took in $529,761 in new contributions from trial lawyers and expended $578,732 in disbursements for political activities on behalf of those friendly to trial lawyers.
Of those contributions $105,000 came from nationally prominent Pascagoula plaintiffs’ attorney Richard “Dickie” Scruggs. The brother-in-law of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott earned more than $1 billion in legal fees ($340 million from this state alone) representing Mississippi and other states in litigation against the nation’s tobacco manufacturers.
As a matter of fact, Scruggs and fellow trial lawyers Danny Cupit, Crymes Pittman, Tom Rhoden and Paul Benton alone accounted for $281,000, or just over 53 percent, of the total ICE PAC contributions received in 1999.
Scruggs was handed the opportunity to represent Mississippi in that litigation by Attorney General Mike Moore — a relationship made more interesting by the fact that, prior to the inception of the litigation, Scruggs was Moore’s largest campaign contributor.
Scruggs of late has been making legal hay against health management organizations and major insurance companies and has even been quoted as considering litigation against Wal-Mart for the economic impact of the mega-retailer on small-town, mom-and-pop businesses.
Of Wal-Mart’s influence in America, Scruggs was quoted as saying: “It offends me.”
Who and what is ICE PAC? They call themselves the “Institute for Consumers and the Environment Political Action Committee.” Clearly, the group is concerned about consumers who can sue manufacturers or the suppliers of goods and services and about the legal environment for such suits being favorable to plaintiffs and their attorneys.
ICE PAC is the new Mississippi haven for “soft” political money, and that money is being spent primarily on Democratic candidates who oppose tort reform or other legislation that would make it more difficult for plaintiffs’ lawyers to file damage suits and on judges who are friendly to plaintiffs’ lawyers.
In the upcoming judicial races, ICE PAC is already at work in the state Supreme Court contests through a consultant whose name is familiar to most Mississippi political junkies.
Jere Nash, the chief of staff and political right arm of former Gov. Ray Mabus both in his tenures as state auditor and governor, is a longtime paid consultant to ICE PAC. Nash, many will recall, was part of the Mabus brain trust that put county supervisors in jail in the 1980s for taking kickbacks from contractors — and then was later convicted in the federal courts in 1997 for pipelining illegal campaign contributors to Teamsters Union President Ron Carey.
If the ICE PAC influence in Mississippi politics is relatively new, the Business and Industry Political Education Committee is an old hand. ICE PAC is primarily comprised of Democratic Party-leaning trial lawyers while BIPEC is funded by conservative Republicans in most cases.
To judge ICE PAC and BIPEC as any more good or evil than the other is a mistake — for both represent powerful special interest groups with definite political agendas.
In the upcoming judicial races, BIPEC will likely deliver, as it has in the past, soft money for use by judicial candidates they deem “best for business.” ICE PAC is already at work through Nash to do the same thing on behalf of judicial candidates friendly to Richard Scruggs’ vow to block tort reform.
And the lawyer group isn’t simply battling tort reform in judicial races.
Scruggs, Benton and the law firm of Cumbest, Cumbest, Hunter and McCormack gave a total of $12,000 to the Mississippi Sierra Club PAC in 1999. The Mississippi Sierra Club PAC then in turn spent $9,000 on political mailouts supporting legislative candidates — both of whom were challengers running against incumbent legislators who had decided track records in support of tort reform.
BIPEC is paying for pro-business politicians. ICE PAC is paying for pro-lawsuit politicians. Soft money is gnawing at the concept of one-man, one-vote in Mississippi politics.
The time for serious campaign finance reform is now, but don’t hold your breath. With legislative races drawing this kind of involvement from the PAC’s, that’s like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.
