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

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But trial lawyers felt that Stivers was simply screwing patients and workers. "It's not in my best interest for my clients or myself to comment on this, because I'm not allowed to disclose my true feelings," says Michael Kearns, a Cincinnati personal-injury lawyer. "Let's just say that I used to get up in the morning and think I had a purpose. I no longer feel that way."

Shortly after the new law was passed, its constitutionality was raised before the Ohio Supreme Court.

Twenty-four-year-old Melisa Arbino of Cincinnati had suffered a series of deadly blood clots in her brain and lungs as a side effect of using the Ortho Evra birth-control patch. Doctors told Arbino that she'd have to take blood thinners for the rest of her life.

Along with several other victims, Arbino sued Johnson & Johnson, the patch's manufacturer, in federal court and won. But because Arbino was an Ohio resident, she was awarded far fewer damages than the other plaintiffs. That's because federal courts have to follow the laws of the states where the people live.

Federal Judge David Katz sent Arbino's case to the Ohio Supreme Court, asking whether it was constitutional for them to limit her awards. "A New Jersey corporation came to Ohio and sold a dangerous product that harmed people all over the country," Arbino's lawyer argued. "But the people in Ohio will not get full damages, because the legislature has picked an arbitrary number out of the blue without knowing the facts of this case."

But last December, Ohio ruled against Arbino. O'Connor went along.

The diligence she'd shown in previous decisions was suddenly absent. It didn't matter that her own court had twice found such limits unconstitutional before. And though she had previously found time limits arbitrary, she somehow didn't have the same problems when it came to cost.

Justice Pfeifer called out O'Connor and the rest of the bench. "Was there ever any doubt how this case would come out?" he wrote. "This is a sad day for our Constitution and this court. And this is a tragic day for Ohioans, who no longer have any assurance that their Constitution protects the rights they cherish."

When asked about Pfeifer's statement, O'Connor simply sniffs. "Just because they wear a black robe doesn't mean that they corner the market on analysis."

Others seemed to discover that bankrolling O'Connor could pay off.

FirstEnergy gave her $11,600, according to an Ohio Citizen Action report. It would prove to be money well spent.

Between the near-nuclear disaster at its Davis-Besse plant and serving as the catalyst of the worst blackout in U.S. history, FirstEnergy wasn't doing so hot. Things were about to get worse.

In 1999, the state allowed the company to charge customers "transitional costs" to help pay for the building of its nuclear plants. But the state gave the fee an expiration date, barring FirstEnergy from collecting the $20-per-customer charge after 2005.

Afraid of losing the $3 billion that fee would bring in, FirstEnergy asked the Public Utilities Commission whether it could simply relabel the charge as a "rate stabilization" fee and continue collecting. PUCO agreed, though it was against the law.

By 2004, the Ohio Consumer Commission had sued FirstEnergy and PUCO on behalf of customers.

Just months after the lawsuit was announced, FirstEnergy CEO Anthony Alexander held a fund-raiser at his home for the Supreme Court justices. Among the attendees was O'Connor. That night, Alexander raised $40,500, which was immediately dumped into five judges' coffers.

Citizen Action asked those judges to recuse themselves from the FirstEnergy case. They all refused, including O'Connor. "I didn't feel the need," she says. "Just because someone contributed to my campaign? I don't think that's the criteria."

Even Pfeifer, who never received a penny from FirstEnergy, agrees that it would be ridiculous for five justices to recuse themselves from a case solely based on campaign contributions. "That's an impossibility," he says. "You would have no one left to decide cases, or you'd have most of the important cases written by visiting judges. That just can't work."

Still, Pfeifer expects those justices to remain impartial. But according to the Consumer Commission, that's not what happened.

The Supreme Court ruled that FirstEnergy was allowed to continue collecting the fee, despite what the law said.

O'Connor takes offense at the notion that FirstEnergy's contributions influenced her decision. She claims it isn't her fault that businesses give her money. Her essential defense: Don't hate the player — hate the game.

"You are presuming that there is some other way of electing judges in Ohio other than to wage a campaign," she says. "There are over 100 judges up for election this year. None of them say 'Don't give me money. I don't want to get my message out; I just want people to vote based on the sound of my name.'"

O'Connor isn't an anomaly. When The New York Times ran its 2006 story, it cited Terrence O'Donnell as the justice most likely to rule on behalf of donors. (O'Donnell refused comment for this story.) In fact, no one on the bench has clean hands.

"Part of the reason there is a lot of national focus on the Ohio Supreme Court is that those campaigns got so remarkably expensive so remarkably fast," says Jesse Rutledge, a spokesman for Justice at Stake, a Washington think tank. "Ohio has been at the forefront of a national trend of big-money judicial races."

While Pfeifer remembers raising around $400,000 for his race in 1998, just two years later, candidates like Chief Justice Thomas Moyer were raising as much as $1.5 million. Justice Evelyn Stratton raised $1.9 million for her bid in 2002. And O'Donnell raised more than $3.6 million between 2004 and 2006 alone.

In fact, all the Supreme Court justices have waged multimillion-dollar campaigns since 2000, with the exception of Pfeifer, who ran in 2004 on less than $80,000. "I've been lucky," he says. "I've been elected on the cheap four times. That's because I really predated the big money."

Part of the problem is that big donors have learned to circumvent election laws. By creating their own political action committees or giving directly to parties, they can indirectly dump unlimited amounts into campaigns.

"Money in politics is becoming a shell game," says Rutledge. "Things get moved around, and you can't necessarily see what's going where."

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