From the St. Louis Post Dispatch

Race for Illinois high court hits low mark
By Kevin McDermott
Post-Dispatch Springfield Bureau
05/25/2004
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - The raucous race for a judgeship on the Illinois Supreme Court has descended into trash-talking. Literally.
A nine-pound stack of photocopies of garbage-picked documents was delivered anonymously to the Post-Dispatch and other media Tuesday, in an effort to prove Republicans are skirting campaign rules to raise money in the race. The documents include hundreds of e-mail printouts, campaign letters, restaurant employee time sheets, old phone bills and discarded envelopes - all apparently fished from trash cans.
The package was designed to bolster an allegation that state Sen. David Luechtefeld, R-Okawville, has used state resources to help raise money for Republican Illinois Supreme Court candidate Lloyd Karmeier.
"All of these documents were legally retrieved from the district office trash of Senator Luechtefeld ... Look what I found in the trash!," the anonymous sender wrote in a synopsis of the 29 "exhibits" included in the package.
Many of the allegations are circumstantial or speculative. However, the documents do appear to show that Luechtefeld's district office used official state letterhead to send out thank-you notes for campaign contributions, a potential violation of campaign rules.
But some say what the package really proves is that this year's political season is trashier than ever.
"It's kind of the logical worst conclusion of the negative campaigns we've seen, and which seem to be getting worse in the last few years," said John S. Jackson, political scientist at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. "This is looking more and more like a made-for-TV movie."
The race for the state's one open Supreme Court seat this year, from the Southern Illinois region, pits Republican Karmeier, a circuit judge in Washington County, against Democratic Appellate Court Justice Gordon Maag.
Luechtefeld, who doesn't face a re-election race this year, has continued to raise money, donating part of it to Karmeier and other Republicans, a common practice in both parties. Luechtefeld on Tuesday said he would examine the allegation that his campaign improperly sent out thank-you notes on official state letterhead. But he expressed outrage at the tactics of the anonymous sender of the documents.
"I didn't know it had gotten this low ... Is this what it's come to? People going through the trash?" Luechtefeld said. "... How low would a person stoop?"
Maag, the Democratic court candidate, said Tuesday he knew nothing about the anonymous package. He expressed anger when he was asked about it in a telephone interview.
"I don't dig through garbage, and those who do have less to do than I do," Maag said. "How in the world can I comment? ... You're asking me to comment on what somebody else did."
Maag added: "I wish the people who are out there calling people names would stop calling people names ... and just go home and get out of this election."
The race has been shadowed by the intense statewide debate over medical malpractice lawsuits, which Republicans and doctors claim are out of control and driving medical services out of Illinois. They want limits on how much juries can give out in "pain-and-suffering" awards. Democrats oppose such "caps," saying the high insurance rates are being caused by greedy insurance companies and sloppy doctors, not reckless lawyers.
Both sides generally agree the problem appears to be worse in Southern Illinois and the Metro East area than anywhere else - a factor that Republicans blame on Madison County's national reputation for frequent and expensive litigation.
Jackson, the political scientist, said the Supreme Court race has become symbolic of the medical malpractice debate, with Maag and his Democratic supporters opposing caps, and Karmeier and his Republican supporters demanding them. The anonymous garbage-picking campaign, he said, "is an indication of how hotly contested this race is, and how much it is enmeshed in the medical malpractice issue in Southern Illinois."
The documents focus heavily on a female college intern who worked on Luechtefeld's staff. The sender alleges the intern was doing campaign work for Luechtefeld and Karmeier on state time. The sender writes that he confronted this intern about this, and that she denied it, claiming she'd done the work on her own time, at night.
"Both sides have done stuff like this," said Jackson, the political scientist, who noted that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jack Ryan recently took heat for assigning a cameraman to stalk Democratic opponent Barack Obama around the clock. "In my opinion, it's all garbage."

Reporter Kevin McDermott
E-mail: kmcdermott@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 217-782-4912