| While money from trial lawyers has gone to all kinds of Democratic committees,
the lawyers have made it clear that their No. 1 target was Mr. Bush. Last
month, Mr. Bush issued a five-point plan to curb frivolous lawsuits and said
he wanted to expand nationwide efforts that he had pushed in Texas that he said
had saved Texas businesses $3 billion by reducing civil litigation. |
| In addition to soft money donations, which could be given to political parties
in unlimited amounts, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America Political
Action Committee has already made $658,000 in donations directly to individual
Democratic candidates and to party committees. This political action committee,
with its own fund-raising now in full swing, has been one of the largest in
each campaign cycle -- in the 1996 election it raised $5.1 million. |
| For trial lawyers, the stakes are enormous beyond calculation this year
because the potential is there for tort reform to move from the extreme back
burner right up to the front depending on how a couple of elections go, said
Larry Makinson, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a
Washington nonprofit group advocating campaign finance reform. |
| This year, though, the ill will has peaked. Trial lawyers have been gearing up
for new battles in Congress to pass a patients bill of rights and in the
courts against health maintenance organizations and the gun industry. |
| Over all, trial lawyers raised $2.7 million in soft money donations for
Democrats in 1999, of a total of $49.4 million in soft dollars raised so far by
the party, according to a recent report from Common Cause, a Washington
nonprofit group. (By contrast, the Republicans got $2,800 in soft money from
trial lawyers, Common Cause reported, of $57.8 million in soft dollars over
all.) |
