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1/7/2009
Wednesday morning
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| Now that they have triumphed over the tobacco industry, trial lawyers have
found a new target, Gov. George W. Bush, and they have been spending huge
amounts of money from the tobacco settlement to keep him and other Republicans
from being elected. |
| And money is what it is all about. When it comes to political action,
corporate America was the pioneer in spending money on campaigns, said Stanley
M. Chesley, a Cincinnati lawyer whose firm gave the Democrats $122,500. They
make trial lawyers look like Mickey Mouse. So trial lawyers are attempting not
only to catch up, but to be a copy cat. If Bush can raise $70 million, the
question is, How can you compete? And there is only one way and that is to
raise that kind of money. |
| To that end, while trial lawyers have long been heavy Democratic Party donors,
the prospect of a Bush candidacy, along with the possibility that like-minded
Republicans would retain control of Congress, has ratcheted up the stakes, and
the donations. |
| Mr. Bushs $70 million campaign war chest was financed, in large part, with
donations from rich individuals and corporate interests, the same interests
that trial lawyers have challenged in court. As a result, a financial version
of the arms race has broken out. The more the Bush campaign and the Republican
Party in general raised from business, the more trial lawyers said they must
raise, and vice versa. |
| 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. |
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