November 4, 2004

Benjamin may face bias questions

Court winner says he is ‘not bought by anybody’

By Toby Coleman
Staff writer

When Republican Brent Benjamin won a seat on the state Supreme Court Tuesday, he did not thank Don Blankenship during his victory speech.

But he probably should have. The Massey Energy chief executive officer bolstered Benjamin’s $600,000 campaign by dumping as much as $3.5 million into the race.

“He was a decisive influence,” West Virginia Wesleyan College political science Professor Robert Rupp said of Blankenship. “Without his millions, it would have been difficult for Benjamin, one, to convey an effective attack against McGraw and, two, to build up name recognition.”

After getting so much support from one man, Benjamin will start his 12-year term on the high court with questions about his leanings hanging over his head.

Benjamin tried to put those concerns to rest Wednesday by repeating what he has said throughout the campaign:

“Just as I don’t believe it’s right for a justice to be a partisan in favor of trial lawyers, ... I don’t believe it’s right to be partisan in favor of big business.”

Court watchers will scrutinize his every move after he takes the bench in January and starts deciding whether to hear cases involving Blankenship’s company.

In the coming years, the Supreme Court will help decide a variety of lawsuits involving Massey, including one involving a more than $60 million jury verdict against the company.

Benjamin does not know if he will participate in any of those cases. “I will have to see each case on a case-by-case basis,” he said after promising to recuse himself “from any case I don’t believe I will be fair in.”

Benjamin outpolled McGraw, 377,123 votes to 329,991, after running a campaign that blamed the incumbent Democrat for the state’s economic woes.

In the May primary, McGraw was able to hold off similar attacks by calling his opponent, Jim Rowe, a puppet of big business.

This time around, Benjamin supporters drowned out that message with a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that painted McGraw as an extremist.

“Money is the mother’s milk of politics, and that was an extraordinary amount, period, and extraordinary amount to be put in a judicial race,” Rupp said.

Blankenship was the most important figure behind this deep-pocketed, anti-McGraw campaign. He paid for most of the negative advertisements through a special interest group called And for the Sake of the Kids and bankrolled recorded phone calls telling voters to be “scared” of McGraw.

In the final week of the campaign, he spent more than $400,000 on anti-McGraw advertising, according to campaign finance records filed with the secretary of state’s office.

Blankenship said he did it because McGraw is “biased against business and therefore biased against workers and biased against kids.”

“I’m one of 1.8 million people in West Virginia and we all have a better Supreme Court justice than we had yesterday,” Blankenship said Wednesday. “I don’t think I bought a judge for Don Blankenship.”

Benjamin agreed, telling reporters Wednesday that he is “not bought by anybody.”

To contact staff writer Toby Coleman, use e-mail or call 348-5156.