[ Report Home | Previous Page | Next Page ] Lowering the Bar: Lawyers Keep Texas Appeals Judges on Retainer   I. Summary

The Elected Justices

• Republicans—who had 44 of Texas’ 80 intermediate appeals court judges in 1997—held 61 of these posts by January 2003. Republicans benefited from: a conservative swing among Texas voters; having GOP governors appointing justices to fill uncompleted electoral terms; and having a Texas home boy lead the Republican presidential ticket in 2000.
  
  
• Texas spreads its 80 intermediate appeals court justices across 14 districts that have from three to 13 justices apiece. Ordinarily these justices run partisan campaigns to win six-year terms.
  
  
• 73 justices still sitting on these courts in January 2003 raised $6,824,458 to win a total of 87 elections between 1996 and 2002 (14 of the justices were elected twice in this period).
  
  
• Hammered by a Republican tide among Texas voters, winning Democratic justices had to raise an average of $114,739—or 78 percent more than the $64,614 average for winning Republicans.
  
  
• Three Democratic women justices raised the biggest war chests, led by Fourth District Justice Alma Lopez in San Antonio (who raised $343,889 in 2000). Democratic justices raised eight of the 10 largest winning war chests.

The Justices’ Donors

• Mega-donors of $10,000 or more accounted for 24 percent of the justices’ money, while donors of $1,000 or more accounted for 73 percent of the total.
  
  
• Lawyers and law firms supplied 72 percent ($4.9 million) of the justices’ money, with dependency on lawyer money jumping from 61 percent of all money raised in the 1996 election cycle to 76 percent in 2002. Justices in Dallas’ Fifth District and El Paso’s Eighth District raised the largest share of their war chests from attorneys (89 percent). Five incumbent justices with relatively small war chests got all of their money from lawyers.
  
  
• Attorneys contributed 82 percent of the money raised by Democratic justices, much more than the 65 percent share that they supplied to Republicans.
  
  
• Led by Vinson & Elkins ($172,356), the top 50 law firms supplied $1.8 million, or 26 percent of all the money that the justices raised.
  
  
• The largest sources of non-lawyer contributions were: The oil-rich Bass family ($59,500); the Texas Medical Association ($26,434); Perry Homes ($24,750); and Texans for Lawsuit Reform ($19,500). As with the attorneys, most of these other big donors represent interests with cases in Texas courts.
  
  
• Texans cannot have faith in the rulings of justices who take money from interests in their courtrooms. The Texas Bar Association should accelerate judicial reform by encouraging its members to cut off the biggest single source of conflicted contributions in Texas courtrooms.