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Justice Maureen O’Connor says campaign money doesn’t affect her

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For the next several years, O'Connor spent her time as most lieutenant governors do, making public-service announcements and reminding people to fasten their seat belts.

But she didn't plan to stay away from the action for long. In 2002, she announced that she was running for the Ohio Supreme Court.

There was little in her résumé to show that she was qualified. At the time, her judicial experience amounted to less than two years on the Summit County bench.

"I was scratching my head, thinking 'She was lieutenant governor — no one knows the lieutenant governor,'" says Justice Pfeifer, a fellow Republican. "Then I realized — it was the name. O'Connor is a whale of a ballot name."

An Irish Catholic surname is among the keys to getting elected to a judgeship in Ohio. But the real question was whether she'd do as the party wanted, especially when it came to the issue of the moment: tort reform.

Over the years, the Ohio Republican Party had grown frustrated with the battle between the legislature and the Supreme Court over tort reform. In 1975, the legislature passed its first law limiting the damages plaintiffs could collect in medical malpractice suits. Sixteen years later, the Ohio Supreme Court overturned the law, deeming such caps unconstitutional. It did so again in 1997, with a Republican majority on the bench no less.

By 2002, there was talk of a new reform. This time, the GOP — whose war chest was well fed by doctors and insurance companies — wanted to ensure that donors won the 25-year struggle. In order to do so, the two available Supreme Court seats had to be filled with yes-men.

"The Republican Party has gotten very sophisticated in screening and looking at the background [of candidates]," says Pfeifer. "It's not unlike handicapping horses at the track."

Though O'Connor hadn't handed down enough decisions to make her politics obvious, she telegraphed all the right messages. "I will not legislate from the bench," she frequently announced.

"She said those magic words," Pfeifer says. "Sometime after I went on the bench, those became the magic words — the code for 'I'll be fine with anything you pass through the legislature' — that the business interests, which contribute heavily on the Republican side, want to hear."

Soon, O'Connor found herself rolling in the cash. In just eight months, she raised $1,736,852, according to campaign finance records. Over $550,000 came from doctors and insurance companies.

Meanwhile, corporate interest groups helped her on the side, running their own campaigns outside of the perimeters of election law. Among them was White Hat Management magnate David Brennan's group, Informed Citizens of Ohio. A proponent of for-profit education, Brennan paid over $2 million for pro-O'Connor TV ads.

Insurance companies also launched ads arguing that excessive damage claims were the reason for rising premiums. They claimed that if O'Connor wasn't elected, bloodsuckers would have a field day, winning outrageous damage claims and driving business out of Ohio.

Labor, teacher, and lawyer groups tried to counter the flood of attack ads, warning that if O'Connor won, justice for the little guy would be no more. But they had nowhere near the money to compete with corporate interests. O'Connor won.

She impressed detractors with her first major decision. In 2003, the court ruled that the state's ban on concealed weapons was constitutional. O'Connor disagreed.

Her opinion jibed with the GOP's pro-gun line. But O'Connor had obviously done her homework, adhering to precedent and carefully interpreting the constitution. "Will O'Connor be the lapdog of corporate Ohio?" asked the Columbus Dispatch. "Not if she researches the law as carefully as she did this time."

She continued to hand down decisions that impressed critics, making it hard to argue that she was simply a GOP bootlicker.

In 2006, she decided against the City of Norwood, which was trying to use eminent domain to seize property from a small-business owner in order to hand it over to a big developer. It was a landmark case, the first in Ohio to limit the range of eminent domain, and one that O'Connor is extremely proud of.

"That was a case that pitted big business developers against the little guy," she says. "Given the perception that the Supreme Court would typically go with big business, you would expect us to side with the big guy. But it was exactly the opposite."

Even when it came to personal injury cases, O'Connor surprised the public.

In 2005, GM worker Douglas Groch's right arm was horribly disfigured after getting caught in a press. But when Groch tried to sue the press' manufacturer, Kard Corporation, he was barred thanks to an Ohio law that says you can't sue a product's manufacturer after 10 years from the purchase date. O'Connor attacked the law's arbitrary time frame and claimed that it "pulled the rug out from under" people such as Groch.

Still, these cases often found themselves in the shadow of her allegiance to doctors and insurers.

In November 2003, O'Connor caught flak for being the featured lunch speaker at a conference sponsored by the Ohio State Medical Association. As doctors munched on spring mix and poached salmon, O'Connor proudly announced: "What I will never forget and always want to recall in sharp focus is the support I received from physicians in the state of Ohio."

A supposedly unbiased judge, O'Connor seemed to be acknowledging her indebtedness to those who placed her on the court. She says otherwise. "There was no message that doctors were in any special or preferred position. There is no evidence to even support that there is some preferential treatment of the medical community. There is nothing that would back that up."

Her record doesn't fully agree.

In 2005, Taft signed a new tort-reform bill. It limited what people could win for the future costs of their injuries, such as medical care and reduced job opportunities, to $350,000.

The bill's sponsor, Republican Senator Steve Stivers from Columbus, argued that the law "was crafted to reduce the threat and financial uncertainty of frivolous lawsuits, while preserving the rights of Ohioans to seek redress through our court systems."

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