Swiftboating the Supreme Court

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Aw c’mon, stop it! The latest round of television ads, the most recent coming directly from the campaign of Circuit Judge Michael Gableman, who is challenging Justice Louis Butler for his seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, represent a new low in judicial campaigns in Wisconsin.

Last year’s round of ads sponsored by third party groups in the Ziegler/Clifford Supreme Court race were bad enough. Ads depicting a spinning image of Atty. Linda Clifford and calling her incompetent and another ad declaring that Circuit Judge (now Justice) Annette Ziegler was “soft” on sex offenders were simply wrong and untrue. These kinds of ads were untrue, should not have been run and the candidates should have promptly and definitively disavowed them. This year’s third party ads bring this kind of despicable Swiftboating lies to the airwaves in Wisconsin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiftboating
Sadly, over the past week, the campaign of Judge Gableman has now run misleading Swiftboat ads against Justice Butler and will not stop it. It ain’t just the third party groups any more.

Swiftboating by a third party group or a candidate is wrong, dishonorable and should not be tolerated, whether brought against United States Senator (and war hero) John McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries, or against United States Senator (and war hero) John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential campaign or in the 2008 election for Supreme Court Justice in Wisconsin. When done in a judicial race, it strikes me as more than just despicable. As a lawyer, I expect that candidates for a judgeship – any judgeship – should know better and show more civility and ethics than run-of-the-mill politicians. I always thought judges were supposed to be nonpartisan, ethical and neutral in their approach to the law and cases and clients before them, and not be beholden to or the candidate of any particular interest group.

As a practicing attorney who does a lot of criminal defense work, I do not want my client to appear before a judge who is in the pocket of the police, the prosecutor or any other group. I want an independent, fair, neutral and detached magistrate to consider the case. I would have thought that Judge Gableman and his campaign advisors would recognize and understand that clients that Justice Butler may have represented before he was a judge, back when he was a practicing lawyer and public defender, have nothing to do with his abilities as a judge. Am I a murderer for defending a person charged with first degree homicide? Am I a sex offender when I represent clients charged with sex offenses? Does it mean that I endorse my client and his or her deeds if I represent them? Am I wrong if I do my job right in representing my client? This kind of ridiculous ad hominem attack has no place in a judicial election in Wisconsin and should be condemned as an outrageous distortion and lie.

The new campaign ad should be pulled promptly by Judge Gableman and disavowed. The third party ads should be disavowed by the candidates as well. Not to promptly do so means that the “Big Lie” tactic of Joseph Goebbels is alive and well, which does not bode well for our justice system in Wisconsin. Get the campaign back on the right track now.