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GOP-led group targets justice
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 13, 2000 TALLAHASSEE -- An organization formed by three Republicans is launching an effort to oust one of the Florida Supreme Court justices who granted Vice President Al Gore's request for a recount of votes over the weekend. "Balance to the Bench," formed Tuesday, plans to raise about $1-million in the next 90 days to begin its campaign to target Justice Harry Lee Anstead when his name appears on the ballot in 2002. The group is being formed by Susan A. Johnson of Orlando, wife of former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Davey Johnson; Sam Rashid, a Plant City Republican activist; and Bill O'Dea, a retired Tampa insurance agency owner. Johnson said opinions issued by the Florida Supreme Court in the last few weeks led her to help form the group. "Justice Anstead has voted not once, not twice, but three times to rewrite Florida's election law," Johnson said at a news conference in the Senate Office Building across the street from the Supreme Court. "We have a system of checks and balances; we vote to retain judges without really knowing who they are or what their political philosophy is," she said. "We need judges who are representative of the people in this state." Anstead is one of the four justices who ruled Friday that counties should begin hand counts of so-called undervotes. The recount was halted in less than 24 hours by the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments in the case Monday. The Florida court's 4-3 decision was decried by Republican lawmakers, but the new organization is the first sign that anyone will take the fight to the next election. Anstead is the first of the four-member majority to appear on the statewide ballot under Florida's merit retention system. Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters said Anstead declined to comment on the group. Anstead, 63, was appointed to the state's highest court in 1994 by then-Gov. Lawton Chiles. Before that, he spent 18 years on the 4th District Court of Appeal. He was returned to the bench with 69 percent of the vote in 1996. Rashid said he realizes it will take far more than $1-million to run a successful campaign to oust a Supreme Court justice, but he hopes to enlist about 100,000 people to help raise money and grass-roots support. Rashid said those who tried to oust former Supreme Court Justice Rosemary Barkett in 1992 spent more than $4-million and failed to get her off the bench. Barkett is now a judge on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Rashid is a prominent player in Hillsborough County politics. His name surfaced in recent investigative documents into the suicide of state attorney Harry Lee Coe. He was an ardent backer of Hillsborough County Commission candidate Stacey Easterling, the daughter of one of Coe's aides. In Florida, Supreme Court justices and appellate court judges are appointed by the governor after being screened by a nominating commission. They seek re-election every six years under a merit retention system that offers voters an opportunity to say yes or no to keeping them. If a justice is rejected, a new person is appointed to the position by the governor. No judge has ever been ousted by voters under the system. Johnson said she went to the polls and voted this year without knowing anything about the justices on the ballot. Justices Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince, the other justices who joined Anstead in granting Gore's request, were all re-elected Nov. 7 with more than 70 percent of the vote. The new group has established a Web site, www.balancetothebench.comc, a political action committee and a non-profit corporation to wage its political battle. The Christian Coalition of Florida has also established a Web site, Floridarecall.org, that seeks support for a constitutional amendment that would allow the recall of justices. "This may translate into a concerted effort to return to the election process for Florida Supreme Court and District Court of Appeal judges," said a statement issued recently by Terry Kemple, executive director of the coalition. In the mid 1970s, as part of an effort to remove politics from the judiciary, Florida abandoned the partisan election of appellate judges and justices and started using the merit retention system.
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