People tell me they are wholly confused by the race for chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court, which will be decided imminently on March 1.
It's an office the people shouldn't be electing in the first place, which is another column.
There are local liberals and moderates who support a veteran rural circuit judge, Dan Kemp of Mountain View, who wears his conservative religion on his sleeve. Also supporting Kemp are some decidedly non-liberal groups, such as many leaders, but not all, of the State Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Pulaski County Republican Committee.
Kemp has been endorsed by this conservative newspaper, where the alleged house op-ed liberal also prefers him.
Meanwhile a national right-wing organization supporting so-called tort reform is running television advertising in the state assailing Kemp's opponent, Supreme Court Associate Justice Courtney Goodson, because she allegedly is a tool of more liberally leaning trial lawyers.
Kemp says he knew nothing of the outside attack on his opponent and thinks we ought to require transparency in such outside spending in judicial elections--which, as I understand from the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2014 Florida case, would be permitted as an exception to the horrid Citizens United ruling.
People ask: Would I please untangle all that? Which is which? What is what?
I will try.
Some moderates and liberals of my acquaintance embrace Kemp because they know him to be a man of integrity, which they believe this troubled Supreme Court desperately needs, even though he might see some cases in conservative ways they would not share.
Frankly, those people tend to be less passionate about their regard for Kemp, which is genuine, than their lack of regard for Goodson--for both personal and political reasons.
Goodson, then Courtney Henry, was elected to the Supreme Court in May 2010. In June of that year, her campaign manager and husband, lawyer Mark Henry of Fayetteville, filed for divorce, which was granted in July. Mark Henry was given primary custody of the children.
Subsequent financial disclosures, required by law, showed that, about the time of the divorce's filing and immediately thereafter, Courtney Henry received expensive gifts from John Goodson of Texarkana, a super-rich class-action lawyer whose firm has joined with associated class-action firms in lathering big campaign contributions on Supreme Court justices.
John Goodson and Courtney Henry soon got married.
So it's kind of a Valentine's Day story.
Then, as Courtney Goodson angled last year to make this race for the vacating office of chief justice, she joined other Supreme Court justices in contriving delays in the gay-marriage case. She acted in hopes--hopes that came true--that the U.S. Supreme Court would rule in a superseding way. That, you see, would relieve her of the discomfort of having to follow the law as she surely knew it.
There are liberals and moderates who find it outrageous that a matter of social justice would be denied timely consideration by the machinations of an associate justice wanting to run for chief and attending to her personal political convenience.
Now, to complicate, there are those right-wing groups who see Goodson as a liberal-leaning tool of trial lawyers.
That's for two reasons.
First, she is married to a rich class-action lawyer whose firm's methods have been widely criticized for judge-shopping and leveraging for negotiated settlements with insurance companies that well-serve the interests of lawyers, but not necessarily those of actually aggrieved parties.
Second, Courtney Goodson, as an associate justice, wrote the opinion in the unanimous Supreme Court decision that struck down as unconstitutional the punitive-damage caps in a tort-reform law passed by the Legislature in 2003.
So here is what it comes down to:
Kemp is a veteran country judge widely credited with integrity who is the more culturally conservative of the choices.
Goodson is a Supreme Court justice of complicating personal associations and dubious actions, and who might be friendlier to trial lawyers and more hostile to corporations--to liberal philosophy--than Kemp.
But lest anyone deem the ever-political Goodson less conservative than her opponent, there's the matter of her announcing last week her endorsement by the National Rifle Association. The news was illustrated by a photograph of Goodson aiming a firearm at something unseen. The specific relevance of gunfire to the chief justice's job was not made clear.
Bear in mind that Goodson stays an associate justice if she loses for chief. Kemp gets to try to work with her--and a couple of other irascible court members who walk around the Justice Building with boulders on their shoulders--if he wins.
As a man told me a few days ago: "If Dan Kemp gets elected chief justice, it'll be the worst day of his life."
So please accept my apology, Judge Kemp, as I cast a vote for your worst day.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 02/14/2016