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Thursday, September 14, 2006
Barnes & Bowers, attorneys at law, request your check
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s a pair you won’t find sharing space at the top of many fund-raising letters.
Next Wednesday, former Gov. Roy Barnes and former attorney general Michael Bowers will be co-hosting a fund-raiser at the 191 Club for incumbent state Supreme Court Justice Carol Hunstein, who faces a challenge from J. Michael Wiggins, a former legal advisor the the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
One’s a D, the other’s an R. But Barnes and Bowers are both Ls, and this race is shaping up as one that pits lawyers versus the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. It’s about tort reform, as if we had to tell you.
Not to give short shrift to Barnes, but it’s Bowers’ name on the invitation that stuns. Bowers is chairman of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s Judicial Nominating Commission, which vets courtroom candidates for Perdue. If Bowers is behind Hunstein, it’ll be awfully hard to turn this officially non-partisan race into a Democrat-Republican confrontation.
Lawyers and the chamber were clashing even before the race was formally on. This spring, we reported on an e-mail from a well-known Columbus attorney, urging lawyers with ties to business interests to urge them not to “politicize” the race.
One more thing: An e-mail from a Hunstein supporter has prompted Frank Strickland, one of Wiggins’ co-chairs, to fire off a letter to the Georgia Committee for Ethical Judicial Elections.
Wiggins complained that Atlanta lawyer Michael Warshauer made “false and outrageous” statements when Warshauer wrote that Wiggins had received “huge donations” — $50,000 from Daimler Chrysler, in particular.
Warshauer’s statements came in an electronic notice for a Hunstein fund-raiser scheduled for the week after the Barnes-Bowers do.
