II. Total Money Raised

This report analyzes the money raised to date by major-party Texas Supreme Court candidates. As of their latest campaign filings (covering through June 30, 2002), the 10 major-party Texas Supreme Court candidates that survived the primaries raised a total of almost $3 million for the 2002 elections. This total jumps to $4.7 million when the $1.7 million raised by four failed GOP primary candidates is included.
 
 

After the primary and four months away from November’s general election, the financial frontrunners for five high court seats already had raised an average of $501,752. This figure would have been much higher if not for several anomalies this election. Prominent among these was the fact that veteran incumbents, who enjoy a major fundraising advantage, sought to retain just three of the five available court seats, with one incumbent falling victim to a primary upset.⁵  Moreover, Chief Justice Tom Phillips—who raised $1.4 million in 1996—pledged in July 2002 to limit his campaign spending to the $20,000 already stashed in his war chest.⁶  After reporting the receipt of just $5,000 this election cycle, Phillips said he adopted this unprecedented spending cap to protest Texas’ “dysfunctional method of choosing judges.”⁷  For this reason, a powerful GOP fundraiser raised less money than every other 2002 major-party Supreme Court candidate except, not coincidentally, Phillips’ own underfunded Democratic opponent: Richard Baker, an attorney at Baker & Zbranek in Liberty, Texas.

The leading Supreme Court fundraiser was Justice Wallace Jefferson, the only other veteran incumbent justice left in this election.⁸  Positioned to raise well over $1 million, Jefferson already has raised $908,458, or 10 times the $91,065 reported by his Democratic challenger, El Paso District Court Judge William Moody.

No. 2 fundraiser Jesse Wainwright raised $699,595—more than five times the $129,497 raised by his Democratic opponent, state District Judge James Parsons of Palestine, Texas. A Houston District Court judge, Wainwright emerged victorious from an exorbitant, three-way GOP primary race that was decided in a runoff. Business interests initially split their support between Wainwright and John Cayce, the chief justice of the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth who was knocked out in the first primary. Cayce’s defeat consolidated Wainwright’s business support in the runoff, when he defeated Houston District Court Judge Elizabeth Ray. Ray, who outraised her primary opponents, was a maverick GOP candidate who took much of her money from trial lawyers who usually back Democrats. By the end of June 2002, these three GOP candidates had raised more than $1.6 million just for the Place 2 race alone.
 
 

Nipping at Wainwright’s heels, Michael Schneider raised $580,274 by the end of June, shortly before Governor Perry made him a neophyte incumbent by appointing him to the high court slot vacated by Justice James Baker. The former chief justice of Houston’s First District Court of Appeals, Schneider raised more than twice the $245,260 raised by Democratic opponent Linda Yanez, a justice of the Thirteenth District Court of Appeals in Edinburg.

Finally, Margaret Mirabal is the only Democratic financial frontrunner. A justice of Houston’s First District Court of Appeals, Mirabal raised $315,332, or 57 times the $5,500 raised by opponent Steven Smith (who also has $10,323 in outstanding loans from himself). Smith overcame even greater odds, however, when he won a shoestring GOP primary race against incumbent Justice Xavier Rodriguez, who raised $708,048.⁹

Smith, who represented white plaintiffs in the Hopwood case that ended affirmative action at Texas’ public universities, kicked off his frugal campaign by filing a lawsuit targeting the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, which bars judicial candidates from taking positions on issues subject to court rulings. The lawsuit itself violated this code, revealing that Smith opposes: affirmative action; “Robin Hood” poolings of school revenues; and the liberal use of judicial waivers to the Texas law that otherwise requires minors seeking an abortion to notify their parents. In June, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar judicial gag rule in Minnesota as an unconstitutional violation of free speech. This precedent led Smith to prevail in his lawsuit in August.¹⁰  Many observers said that Smith owes his primary victory over a well-funded incumbent to those GOP primary voters who voted for a safe-sounding Anglo name over the more exotic “Xavier Rodriguez.”¹¹  Such white flight arguably was the very result that the Republican National State Election Committee sought to avoid when it contributed $25,000 to Rodriguez before the primary (see below).
 

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