Have they no shame?

The Houston Bar Association conducts polls of its members in election years. The idea behind the poll is for lawyers who have appeared before sitting judges or worked with non-incumbent judicial candidates to rate the qualifications of those running. Bar polls are not truly representative of lawyers, since membership in the HBA tends to be concentrated in lawyers with the larger firms. Most lawyers do not belong to it. It is not a randomly selected poll. Rather, it is sent to all HBA members. So office lawyers who never go to court can vote on trial judges.

To add to the confusion, the HBA always makes a big production of the results of the poll, listing it prominently on their web site and then distributing the results to the news media. Bar polls are essentially nothing more than an attempt to influence the voting public to vote for judicial candidates liked by lawyers. As anyone with half a brain knows, being liked by lawyers is not necessarily the same thing as being a good judge. Judges are elected to serve the public, not the lawyers.

The bar poll can be manipulated by candidates who spend an inordinate amount of time and resources visiting the big law firms,  or spam the HBA membership when the polls come out.  Unfortunately, as long as the HBA keeps conducting these pseudo-polls, candidates will be forced to endure the results of this ill-conceived idea.

Today I received an e-mail, which blew me away in its crass attempt to manipulate the bar poll. Here is what it says in relevant part:

January 21, 2010

TO: Members of the Harris County Bar

FROM: Members of the Coalition of Harris County Democratic Elected Officials

“First, we are all proud to see a broad and accomplished group of individuals filing as Harris County Democratic candidates.  This spring, with almost forty judicial nominations being contested by more than seventy Democratic candidates, and almost forty more Democratic candidates unopposed in their Primaries, it is easy to tell that times are changing rapidly and the two-party system is once again alive and well in Texas’ most populous county.

“For more than six months, the members of this new organization of Democratic-elected officials in Harris County, many of whom are lawyers, sorted through the list of Primary candidates for judicial posts on our county ballot, interviewed them, examined as best we could the extent of their legal experiences, their reasons for offering themselves as candidates for the nominations of our Party and their strengths as potential jurists.

“For your consideration, we have listed here the candidates we are recommending to Democratic voters … who are also our constituents … in the upcoming March Democratic Primary.  Because of the great influence the Houston Bar Association’s poll has on the opinions of local voters, we felt you might appreciate having the results of our collective thoughts.”

Gag!  This blatant attempt at politicizing what is supposed to be an honest evaluation of the candidates based upon the personal knowledge of the respondents  is signed by its perpetrators, many of whom are not lawyers.  Their names are listed below. Have they no shame?

Also, do they really think that lawyers really care about who a committee of elected officials–lawyers and non-lawyers–think is qualified? Most lawyers are too independent to be led by the nose by a bunch of politicians.

Obviously, the elected officials who signed this memo want to decide who will win the Democrat primary. One must assume that they do not trust the voters to make the right decision.

We Republicans would not do such a thing. We let the voters decide.

I wonder if this is going to backfire on them.  I hope that it does!