Unsolicited ad touts Lally-Green

A Republican candidate for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is getting a huge infusion of out-of-state support - an expensive television campaign touting her in the final week of the hot campaign as a judge who is tough on criminals.

The advertisement is full of glowing accolades about State Superior Court Judge Maureen Lally-Green - although she and her campaign staff said they knew nothing about the commercials or even the group who paid for them.

The ad is part of what the sponsor, the Center for Individual Freedom, called a "public education effort" to inform the public about "important judicial issues in the state."

On its Web site, the Virginia-based nonprofit organization describes its mission as defending individual rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. The Web site also includes a defense of conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh and a tribute to former President Ronald Reagan.

The commercial makes no mention of the race, and does not urge anyone to vote for Lally-Green. Jeffrey Mazzella, an official with the Virginia-based nonprofit, did not return phone calls yesterday.

Lally-Green is one of four candidates running for two seats on the state's highest court. The other candidates are Republican Michael Krancer, a lawyer from Montgomery County, and state Superior Court Judges Seamus P. McCaffery of Philadelphia and Debra Todd of Butler County, both Democrats.

A former Duquesne University law professor, Lally-Green, of Butler County, says she admires U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who is a conservative member of that court. Lally-Green said she did not believe in "legislating from the bench" and said there was no role for partisan politics in judicial decision-making.

The Lally-Green campaign says the commercials came as a complete surprise from a stranger.

"We never heard of them. We never spoke to them," said the spokesman, Mark Weaver, who said that the value of the commercial was considerable, especially in the Philadelphia media market.

"It's a lot," said Weaver, who said he had no idea why the organization had decided to produce such a glowing commercial about the judge.

"In a way, it's a gift," he said.

And an expensive one at that. The commercials are scheduled in the most costly media markets, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. Their cost is estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

James Sample, an expert on judicial campaigns at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said the involvement of such outside interest groups in state judicial races was unusual until just a few years ago. "It is now very much the norm," he said.

Once dull affairs that could trigger glazed eyes even among party workers, judicial races in a number of states have turned into modern-day culture wars, pitting plaintiff lawyers against tort-reform and business groups - and causing judicial campaigns to raise gobs of money.

The dilemma for voters, he said, is that it's often hard to know who is backing the interest groups, or even what the groups stand for. "It's definitely a problem," said Sample.

The Center for Individual Freedom filed suit earlier this year against State Attorney General Tom Corbett, saying parts of Pennsylvania's campaign finance law violated the First Amendment.

The organization said it wanted to produce ads in the fall election that would "address justice issues, and will refer to candidates to illustrate its points, but will not expressly advocate the election or defeat of any candidate."

Corbett and the center reached an agreement, approved by U.S. District Judge Anita Brody, concluding, in effect, that corporations and unions could sponsor ads as long as they did not expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate.

Corbett is among those who have endorsed Lally-Green for a seat on the high court.

Lynn Marks, executive director of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, a reform group that has been tracking the campaign, said that given the federal lawsuit, no one should be surprised by the commercial, or the out-of-state support.

"This has been brewing, so nobody should be surprised that this is out there," she said.