By Tony Messenger
POST-DISPATCH JEFFERSON CITY BUREAU
04/14/2010
For several years, a group of conservative political activists has been seeking to make changes to the Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan. Under the plan — which has been copied and adapted in several other states — members of an appellate judicial commission sift through judge candidates and send finalists to the governor, who makes the ultimate choice.
The plan's goal is to make sure that judges are chosen based on merit, not politics.
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But Harris has been unsuccessful in his attempts to push legislative changes to the Missouri Plan, so this year he decided to try to obtain enough signatures to get an initiative on the November ballot that would scrap the plan altogether.
Harris said he believed the effort would cost at least $1 million. He said he asked American Democracy Alliance and other "right-of-center" groups for money. But Harris declined to discuss where the alliance got its funding.
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Former Missouri Supreme Court Justice Chip Robertson calls it the "height of hypocrisy" that a group claiming to want more transparency in the process of choosing judges would go to such lengths to hide a source of its campaign funding.
"They say they want more transparency in the process, but they've got a fundraising process that is so opaque, it's unbelievable," Robertson says of the group directed by Harris.
But the group Robertson leads to defend the Missouri Plan, Missourians for Fair and Impartial Courts Action Fund, also has raised money from various committees, making it difficult to track its source of funds.Robertson heads a nonprofit group with the same name as his political action committee. The group is a 501-c-4, similar to the American Democracy Alliance, and thus doesn't have to publish its donors.
On March 24, the nonprofit group Missourians for Fair and Impartial Courts gave $25,000 to the political action committee of the same name. Just last week, the group donated another $20,000 to its sister organization.
Robertson argues that there is a difference between his group and American Democracy Alliance.
What is it?"
We're not trying to hide anything," Robertson says.
When asked by the Post-Dispatch for the donors to his nonprofit group, Robertson provided a list of 45 law firms from across the state that donated between $500 and $25,000, including Shook, Hardy & Bacon; Shughart, Thomson & Kilroy; Blackwell Sanders; and Dollar, Burns & Becker.
