Polite judicial forum leaves little room for breakout
Appeals court candidates show few differences at Federalist Society forum

By Alyson M. Palmer, Staff Reporter
Fulton County Daily Report
Friday, September 19, 2008

Contested judicial races for the state's appellate courts have been heated—and expensive—in recent years. But those looking for a fiery fight at a lunchtime Court of Appeals candidate forum Wednesday would have been sorely disappointed.

The atmosphere at the event sponsored by the Atlanta Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society was polite. The questions were serious. And the answers were, at times, indistinguishable.

Perhaps the only moment of tension came with Douglasville lawyer Perry J. McGuire's response to the sole question from the audience. John D. Sours, an Atlanta lawyer who used to chair Fulton County's Republican Party, wanted to know what the candidates thought of public financing of judicial races.

All of the candidates present except McGuire—Holland & Knight partner Sara L. Doyle, Atlanta lawyer Bruce M. Edenfield, Decatur appellate lawyer Christopher J. McFadden and Lawrenceville criminal defense attorney Michael M. Sheffield—indicated some support for the idea. Edenfield and Doyle in particular expressed some discomfort with the fundraising aspect of the campaigns they're waging.

“Frankly, as someone who's having to be in this process and try to raise money, it just seems sort of inconsistent with the position that I'm seeking to hold,” said Doyle. “Especially for people who are sitting judges, having to ask people for money and to support them, I have heard lawyers say, 'Well, I had no choice, it was a sitting judge,' and it makes people uncomfortable.”

Edenfield made similar remarks. “The most distasteful thing about this entire race for me is going out and asking somebody for a contribution,” he said. “It's just not in my nature.”

Pledge

McFadden mentioned that some of the candidates have signed a pledge to, as he put it, “run for office the old-fashioned way.” He was referring to a pledge propounded by the private Georgia Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns that says, among other things, candidates will establish campaign committees to raise funds, even though under a 2002 First Amendment decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, judicial candidates are free to solicit contributions personally.

McGuire, who has said he won't sign the pledge, pounced on that issue. “I think we've heard some responses already that maybe some folks have broken the pledge, I don't know,” said McGuire. “But I believe it's just part of running for any public office. … I think it also requires a certain amount of commitment to your endeavor. …If we start writing checks out of the public trust to allow folks to run for office, we could have 20 people sitting up here.”

The ethical judicial campaigns committee's co-chair, Atlanta lawyer Jeremy T. Berry, said Wednesday that McGuire, Sheffield and Lawrenceville divorce lawyer Tamela L. Adkins, who was absent from Wednesday's event, had not signed the pledge. Berry, who's an associate at McKenna Long & Aldridge, has said that asking “in broad strokes for financial support” would not violate the pledge.

After the event on Wednesday, Edenfield said that he usually asks for campaign support in “whatever fashion” people want to give. “I just can't suggest an amount,” he said, “and I'm not supposed to be the one closing the deal by saying send me X dollars.”

McFadden also has said he asks for money but doesn't go into specifics or “close the deal.” Doyle said Thursday that she viewed McGuire's comment as directed at Edenfield, but she didn't think the comment “made a lot of sense.” Her understanding of the pledge is that while she can't try to pin down a potential contributor to a specific dollar amount, she can ask for support generally, she said.

That disagreement over the campaign process aside, there appeared to be little substantive dispute on several of the questions posed by moderator Jim Wooten, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist who pens the conservative “Thinking Right.”

Asked about possible improvements to the court, many candidates mentioned ways to grapple with the court's heavy caseload. Some said they had a judicial philosophy, while others didn't, but no one disputed that respecting precedent was desirable.

Positions on decisions

The candidates disagreed over whether it's appropriate for judicial candidates to say whether they agreed with particular U.S. Supreme Court decisions—questions asked by some interest groups to gauge judicial candidates' views. Only Sheffield and McGuire said yes, while emphasizing that they must follow the law in deciding a given case. McGuire used the question to trumpet his recent endorsement by Georgia Right to Life on the heels of completing that group's questionnaire, which asked, among other things, whether candidates agreed with Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). (Both Georgia Right to Life and the McGuire campaign have declined to publicize a copy of McGuire's response to the questionnaire.)

“I think that if there is one area that our culture has evolved, that demands, I believe, more knowledge of judges, is the fact that we're not a culture where everyone believes the same,” said McGuire. “We're not a Judeo-Christian culture anymore, and I think that people need to know and understand who they're voting for and not wait until they get on the bench to find out what their judicial philosophy is or what they believe.”

Policy differences or lack thereof aside, the forum was an opportunity for the candidates to give a roomful of lawyers their pitches—sometimes with a nod to the conservative-leaning nature of the audience.

Doyle began her first answer by noting she began her career at the now-defunct Wilson, Strickland & Benson, whose lawyers included Frank B. Strickland, now the chairman of the Federalist Society chapter's executive board. McFadden twice favorably quoted Justice Antonin Scalia.

Anne W. Lewis, an executive board member of the Federalist Society chapter and the chair of Doyle's campaign, co-chaired the event. In her opening remarks, she said that the seventh candidate in the race, state Sen. Michael S. Meyer von Bremen, D-Albany, had a major brief due Wednesday and sent his regrets. Neither Lewis nor the other forum participants mentioned Adkins, whom Lewis previously said had not responded to the group's invitation.