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Posted on 10/03/2002 11:23:37 AM PDT by NativeNewYorker
Washington, Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court,
still scarred by the fight over the 2000 presidential election
fight, probably will be reluctant to wade into the battle over New
Jersey's U.S. Senate race, legal experts said.
Republicans today asked the nation's highest court to block
Democrats from putting former Senator Frank Lautenberg on the
state's Nov. 5 ballot. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled
yesterday that Lautenberg could replace Senator Robert Torricelli,
who withdrew from the race Monday.
The high court two years ago issued a 5-4 decision that
cleared the way for Republican George W. Bush to defeat Democrat
Al Gore and become the 43rd U.S. president. This time, Supreme
Court intervention would boost Republicans in their bid to
recapture the Senate, which Democrats now control by one vote.
''The U.S. Supreme Court would love to avoid getting involved
if they can,'' said Washington lawyer Thomas C. Goldstein, a U.S.
Supreme Court specialist at Goldstein & Howe who represented Gore
in 2000. ''The court really hated being involved in Bush v. Gore
and doesn't want to send a signal that every political fight
should be an issue for the court.''
Republicans say Torricelli dropped out only because he was
losing to Republican Douglas Forrester -- by 13 points, according
to a Newark Star-Ledger/Eagleton-Rutgers poll released Saturday.
Torricelli was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee in June
for taking gifts from a man who later went to prison for making
illegal contributions to the senator's campaign.
Unanimous Ruling
The New Jersey Supreme Court, ruling 7-0, let Lautenberg
replace Torricelli on the ballot so that voters would have
candidates from the two major parties on the ballot.
''The court should invoke its equitable powers in favor of a
full and fair ballot choice for the voters of New Jersey,'' said
the court, which includes six members appointed by former Governor
Christie Whitman, a Republican. The seventh was appointed by the
current governor, Democrat James McGreevey.
The Supreme Court appeal argues that some members of the
military have already received absentee ballots with Torricelli's
name on them, said Alex Vogel, general counsel for the National
Republican Senatorial Committee.
''The election has already started and now they're trying to
change the names on the ballot in midstream,'' Vogel said.
Forrester and the Republicans also say the New Jersey court
violated a U.S. constitutional provision that gives authority for
setting election rules to state legislators, not judges. They
point to a New Jersey law that requires replacement candidates to
be named 51 days before the election.
That issue may not be enough to get the Supreme Court to
intervene, said Jan W. Baran, an election law specialist at Wiley
Rein & Fielding who has represented Republicans in several Supreme
Court cases.
'Major Difference'
There is a ''major difference'' between the New Jersey and
Florida cases, Baran said. ''Florida involved a presidential race
and federal laws that dealt specifically with presidential
electors.''
The Bush v. Gore decision split the court along ideological
lines and drew criticism from some legal experts that the court
harmed its own credibility by taking on a political case.
Weeks after the ruling, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist,
who voted in the majority, said he hoped courts ''will seldom, if
ever,'' become involved in another U.S. presidential election.
Dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a speech, called the
episode a ''December storm'' over the court.
In addition to the Supreme Court appeal, Republicans are
sending a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft asking him to
intervene and ensure that remaining absentee military ballots,
containing Torricelli's name, are mailed immediately. Members of
the military also are filing a separate suit backing Forrester in
federal district court in Trenton.
'Beat the Odds'
The U.S. Supreme Court doesn't have to grant a hearing. It
agrees to hear only about 70 or 80 of the 8,000 appeals it
receives every year.
''We've learned from Florida that election cases can beat the
odds,'' Baran said. ''The Republicans are going to try to beat the
odds.''
Republicans in New Jersey may have a harder time than Bush's
campaign in persuading the justices that their appeal presents an
issue of federal law that must be decided, said A.E. Dick Howard,
an expert on the high court who teaches at the University of
Virginia law school.
''The argument for a federal interest in Bush v. Gore was
greater because we have one president,'' Howard said. ''You could
argue the whole point of the Senate is to give the states more of
a presence in the federal structure.''
(This post brought to you by the New Jersey Supreme Court Educational Foundation).
This may mean that the problem can be solved without the SCOTUS agreeing to take the case. After the SCOTUS laid down the law in Bush v. Gore, the lower federal courts are perfectly capable of applying it to new cases.
It's not a Republican thing, folks. It's the LAW that says ya can't swap in a new candidate just because your guy is going to lose, but of course they won't mention the obvious. Nothing to see here, just move along.
Excuse me! Didn't Torricelli say that himself? Didn't he say that he didn't want to be responsible for the DemocRATs losing the Senate?
Ideological Purification of the R party is key.
OK. Fair enough. Then how about perpetrating a fraud on the voters of New Jersey?!
The fact is, this is an egregious flouting of the law by the NJ supremes and it must be corrected.
The problem is that the SCOTUS opinion in Bush v. Gore tried to avoid "laying down the law". I believe that the unsigned controlling opinion said something along the lines of "The arguments in this case do not necessarily apply to any other case". They had to do that, because the logical extension of their argument was that Equal Protection was violated wherever different counties used different voting systems in the same state.
The Democrats still have the one ace in the hole: Jumpin Jim could switch again, this time to the "darkside" Dems.
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