VanDyke represents out-of-state interests
Montana Supreme Court Justice Michael Wheat recently said at a University of Montana judicial election forum, “I don’t want to let us forget what this race really is all about. It’s about how our court may be under attack from out-of-state money, from out-of-state corporations who want to come into this state and influence who’s going to be on the court.”
For the past two decades, major corporations and their front groups have been doing to America’s courts what they had already done to Congress and state legislatures. They are using their wealth and power to buy judicial elections and install judges who are responsive to their interests rather than the interests of American citizens.
As newspapers and commentators have warned, this year the corporations are coming to Montana. The judge they intend to take out is Montana Supreme Court Justice Michael Wheat. They want to replace him with a corporate lawyer named Lawrence VanDyke. All Montanans who believe in a fair and impartial Court need to be aware of this.
VanDyke did not practice law in Montana until just last year. Before then, he devoted most of his nine-year career to Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, a 1,100-lawyer international corporate law firm in Washington, D.C. and Texas.
The firm is notable for defending Wall Street and foreign banks and various corporate wrong-doers against criminal and civil charges. It also lobbies for these clients in Washington, D.C. Given this background, Mr. VanDyke is an excellent corporate pick, although that is obviously not good news for Montanans.
Another reason VanDyke is an excellent corporation choice is his belief that “corporations are people” who have an unlimited constitutional right to corrupt political and judicial elections with their money and power. This is unsurprising, since VanDyke’s law firm represented the special interest group arguing the same thing in the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC.
Corporate influences show up in VanDyke’s funding in two places. First, his campaign reports show numerous out-of-state lawyers, who represent major corporations, are maximum contributors to his campaign. This includes more than 20 corporate lawyers at Gibson Dunn — including lawyers who represented Citizens United.
Second, corporations and their political backers are contributing large sums of money to third-party front groups who are starting to run attack ads and distribute other misinformation to destroy Justice Wheat’s reputation, and hence gain a seat on our Court through the election of VanDyke.
Corporations are buying judicial races because they want judges who will not hold them accountable. If the disinformation they are spreading successfully manipulates Montanans into electing an unqualified corporate lawyer, we will lose our fair and impartial Court.
We will also lose the services of Justice Wheat, who has a 40-year record of unselfish service to Montanans from the time he was a decorated Marine in Vietnam, including a Purple Heart, to the day in 2009 when Montana’s Judicial Selection Committee and the governor chose him from many other qualified applicants to serve on our Supreme Court. As a judge, he has not been afraid to hold corporations accountable, which is why they are after him.
As one of Montana’s senators commented, “Big and foreign corporations [should not be given] free rein to secretly buy American elections.… We can and we must push back telling them: Not in Montana. Not in America.”
That is what this race is really all about. That is why we must re-elect Justice Wheat.
Erik Thueson is an attorney in Helena. Supporters of this column include retired Montana Supreme Court justices Skeff Sheehy, Jim Nelson, Terry Trieweiler, Bill Hunt, Jim Regnier and William Leaphart.