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Friday, October 27, 2006
Hunstein’s attack ad opens Pandora’s box
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Never again let it be said that judicial races are tainted by politics. The standard doesn’t get any lower than that introduced by incumbent Supreme Court Justice Carol Hunstein.
Never again should any segment of the legal community or the media raise a peep about the unseemliness of judicial campaigns. A key member of the group most fearful of full-scale political campaigning in judicial elections has just set the bar. One ad lays bare the sanctimoniousness of sitting judges and the establishment bar that it is inappropriate even to respond to questions about U.S. Supreme Court decisions, lest they contribute to “politicizing” judicial campaigns.
When a campaigning judge wades into the family circle to trash an adversary, as Hunstein does in lashing out at opponent Mike Wiggins in a commercial that started last week, judicial races in Georgia are in the Willie Horton sphere. The Hunstein ad attacks Wiggins on the basis of litigation arising from a family dispute dating back 20 years.
The commercial quotes in part from litigation and an affidavit by his sister, who alleged that he threatened to kill her, an allegation he denied. The ad was based, Wiggins said, on a guardianship motion filed to prevent removal of life support for their elderly mother, who was in a coma.
“It was my duty as her son to preserve her life and her life savings, which she needed to pay for her intensive medical care,” he said. Wiggins was declared her guardian, the sister consented to repay $12,500 to the estate, and he and his sister agreed, and were directed, to initiate no direct contact “in perpetuity.”
Family disputes, as any 62-year-old adult knows full well, are dangerous territory for outsiders. By Hunstein’s age, most adults have lived through and experienced the stress on families, on children and among siblings, that arises from the deaths of grandparents and parents. I have seen close-knit families, who never uttered unkind words about one another, come unglued by the stress of a parent’s declining health and finances.
Children, all convinced that they have a parent’s best interests at heart, reach different conclusions about what’s best. Having just witnessed the six-year mental and physical decline that preceded a mother-in-law’s death, and having witnessed other families trying to reach good-faith end-of-life decisions about what’s best for a mother or father, I am beyond passing judgment on how others handle their personal and family lives, court documents or not.
Most people in public life, like the rest of us who grew up in a era of family and social change where, for example, divorce was common, have angry ex-spouses, children who harmed themselves or others, siblings who felt slighted or mentally abused by one or both parents, or any other family circumstance or dynamic. But decency and propriety should put that area of our lives off-limits, even for public figures. It’s stunningly bad judgment to wander in and gossip it out.
I don’t know Mike Wiggins’ family history or circumstance. I don’t need or want to know it. That Hunstein has put it out on the street in a political campaign is intrusive and should be embarrassing to all who touched this work product, especially in a campaign that she most likely had won. It is truly bizarre.
It’s not that I object to hard-hitting campaign ads in judicial races. The state constitution gives Georgians the right to elect their judges. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that judges and candidates have the right to talk about legal issues and to criticize previous court decisions, so long as they don’t make promises or pledges. They are entirely free to express opinions about an opponent, as Hunstein did in questioning whether Wiggins would “uphold Georgia values.”
My brief, then, is not with the missile she fired, but with her judgment in her choice of material.
As the Wiggins campaign pointed out, before serving in high-level positions in the U.S. Department of Justice and in the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush administration, he “has been through at least three detailed FBI background checks” and “held some of the highest security clearances in the federal government,” said spokesman Brad Alexander. “Those background checks concluded there was absolutely zero reason to question Mike’s personal integrity.”
Take this Hunstein commercial and send it to the archives. It is the one that forever changes judicial races in Georgia.
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