More About Judicial Retention In Iowa

The story about the bouncing of the three Iowa Supreme Court Justices for the gay marriage ruling has really gone viral.

At KCCI-TV, they talk with Polk County Judge Scott Rosenberg:

"one thing that worries him is that people feel they can successfully inject politics into the judiciary"

Really? Are you kidding me?

Rosenberg, don't you know how Judicial Retention in Iowa came about?

In 1962, Iowa voters approved a constitutional reform that replaced the process of selecting judges by popular vote with a merit selection and retention election process. This process promotes selection of the best qualified applicants and ensures an impartial judiciary while retaining judicial accountability and public oversight.

Now let's look at this....

Merit selection? Best qualified applicants? Impartial judiciary?

Oh yes, that would be coordinated by the Iowa Judicial Nomination Commission, which is currently comprised of 86% Democrats and 7% Republicans.

There's a better breakdown of the unfairness of the process at Iowa Republican a few months back. I'll republish it here:

Supreme Court Justices:

-5 out of 7 were appointed by Democrat Governors, none of the 7 are or ever have been registered Republicans

-2 are registered Democrats (Michael Streit and Daryl Hecht)

-4 more were registered Democrats before their appointment to the Court (Marsha Ternus, Mark Cady, David Wiggins, and Brent Appel).

-The final justice claims to be Independent, but he has donated large sums of money to Democrats. David Baker gave $250 to Iowans for Vilsack Pederson, Inc. in 2003, and $2,500 to the Iowa Democratic Party.

-Wiggins has donated $9,000 to democratic candidates or the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) in the last 12 years.

-Appel, whose wife is a very liberal Democrat state senator, has donated over $38,000 to Democratic candidates or the IDP in the last several years.


Appellate Court Justices:

-6 out of 9 are Democrats or were registered as Democrats before appointment to the Court

-7 out of 9 were appointed by Democrat governors, including all 6 Democrats

-2 of the 3 Republicans were appointed by Republican governors


Trial Courts:

-83 judges have been appointed during the Culver and Vilsack administrations

-50 of those judges (60%) are registered Democrats

-16 of those judges (19%) are registered Republicans

-10 of those judges (12%) are Independents (but 3 are former Democrats and 2 are former Republicans)

-Voter information could not be found on 7 judges.

Actually, Iowa Supreme Court Justice Brent Appel gave $100,000 to Democrats (actual source data is located at the bottom of this post) from 2000 until the time he was appointed by then-Governor Tom Vilsack in 2006.

This blog has always contended that Brent Appel basically bought his Iowa Supreme Court seat from Tom Vilsack.

Republican Gov-elect-again Terry Branstad, a man who I have never liked, has to get serious about reform. He needs to be getting the Legislature to work on making the Iowa Judicial Nomination Commission not be an ideological mirror of the University of Iowa, where 8% of University of Iowa faculty were registered Republicans and the UI Law School had 1 registered Republican out of 50 people.