Hooper's swearing in marked the successful launch of a campaign--funded largely by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and orchestrated by two relatively unknown GOP operatives--to take over state high courts. Who were the GOP operatives? One was William Canary, head of the Business Council of Alabama. The other was Karl Rove, who already had a reputation for dirty tricks in Texas but had a low profile on the national stage.
The 1994 race between Hooper and Democrat incumbent Sonny Hornsby is brilliantly chronicled in a piece titled "Karl Rove in a Corner," by Joshua Green of The Atlantic. Green's article might be the most important piece of political journalism of the past 20 years, providing details about an election that would presage much of what would happen over the next 15 years.
Why does the Hooper v. Hornsby battle mean so much? The first two vote counts had Hornsby, the Democrat, winning an exceedingly tight race. But after months of recounts and court battles, going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, critical absentee ballots were excluded and Hooper, the Republican, was declared the winner.
If that scenario sounds familiar . . . well, that's because it would more or less play out again in the 2000 presidential election, the 2002 Alabama governor's race (Bob Riley v. Don Siegelman), and the 2004 presidential election.
Rovian Republicans obviously learned from Hooper v. Hornsby--lessons that would pay off big time down the road. What were those lessons? That judicial seats could be bought, that election results could be manipulated, and the justice system could be used as a political weapon.
That last lesson would lead to the U.S. attorney firings and the political prosecutions of Don Siegelman, Paul Minor, and others during the Bush years.
All of that has left us with a justice system that makes a mockery of the 14th Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection, a justice system that too often has little to do with "the rule of law."
I see frequent evidence of this here in my little corner of Alabama. As the fallout from a 10-year legal battle that is chronicled on this blog, my wife and I currently are parties to several federal lawsuits. In recent weeks, I've received rulings from federal judges that are grotesquely and blatantly at odds with the relevant law. I've seen sworn testimony from multiple parties that is demonstrably false, but it seems to be presented in the secure belief that such antics will not be punished. Perhaps the rogues are right; I've presented irrefutable evidence to the court that the testimony is false, only to see no action taken.
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