Just as several Republican presidential candidates got involved in the 2010 campaign against retaining three Iowa Supreme Court justices, two leading GOP contenders for the next presidential race are lending support to the “No Wiggins” campaign in Iowa this week.
Fundraising and public appearances for the Iowans for Freedom campaign in 2010 helped several of the GOP candidates for the 2012 Iowa caucuses, especially Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. With Republican Mitt Romney looking like an underdog against President Barack Obama lately, it’s no surprise that Santorum and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal are jumping on the No Wiggins bandwagon.
Three of the seven Iowa Supreme Court justices who concurred in the Varnum v Brien ruling on same-sex marriage rights were ousted in November 2010. The other three besides Wiggins won’t be up for retention again until November 2016, so this year’s vote is the last chance before the next Iowa caucuses for opponents of marriage equality to make a statement at the ballot box.
The anti-retention coalition Iowans for Freedom launched its four-day statewide No Wiggins bus tour yesterday. The coalition is on Facebook here and online at NoWiggins.com, if you want the play by play. The pro-retention coalition Iowans for Fair and Impartial Courts is running its own “Yes Iowa Judges” bus tour, hitting most of the same metro areas as the “No Wiggins” bus.
Yesterday the No Wiggins bus stopped for events in Des Moines, Pella, Ottumwa, Burlington, and Muscatine. Today’s stops are in Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, and Cedar Falls. Wednesday the bus is scheduled to stop in Mason City, Marshalltown, Fort Dodge, and Carroll. On the final day, the bus will hit Council Bluffs, Sioux City, Spencer, and Orange City (in Iowa’s most Republican county). The following groups are sponsoring the No Wiggins bus tour: CitizenLink, The FAMiLY LEADER, Rick Santorum’s Patriot Voices, the National Organization for Marriage and CatholicVote.org.
Radio Iowa covered highlights from the bus tour kickoff at the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines yesterday, with audio from the Iowans for Freedom press conference and the “Vote Yes on Wiggins” press conference. As during the 2010 campaign, Governor Terry Branstad is not taking a position on the retention vote. However, his niece Christine Branstad, a Republican attorney in Des Moines, was a speaker at the “vote yes on Wiggins” event.
An Iowans for Freedom press release last week showcased Santorum’s and Jindal’s support for the campaign against so-called “activist judges.”
Santorum said in statement that the judiciary’s usurpation of authority in recent years is completely unacceptable.
“It is obviously clear the people’s Constitution gives the judicial branch the least power, and yet these appointed judges continuously legislate from the bench whether it is gay marriage in Iowa, collective bargaining in Wisconsin, or resulting in the death of millions of lives caused by the opinion of Roe v. Wade,” Santorum said.
Jindal said in a press release that the election in November may be the most important election of our lifetimes.
“From the top of the ticket on down, our freedoms and values are at stake. It’s critical we do everything we can to encourage conservatives to go to the polls and vote to uphold our values, freedoms, and constitutional rights,” Jindal said.
Santorum spoke at yesterday’s No Wiggins events in Des Moines, Pella, and Ottumwa. He told audiences, “I didn’t come here for any reason other than to encourage the people of Iowa to do what you do so well – that I am a witness of – and that is speak loudly to the country.” Right.
Jindal is joining the No Wiggins bus for Wednesday’s events. I’ll update this post with highlights sometime after the end of the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur on Wednesday evening. Meanwhile, any comments about the retention campaign or early 2016 Iowa caucus speculation are welcome in this thread.
I leave you with photos of the No Wiggins bus and the 2010 Judge Bus. I noticed that they painted this year’s bus red instead of purple like the 2010 version. Maybe that’s because strong oppositionto same-sex marriage is increasingly a Republican rather than bipartisan phenomenon in Iowa.
UPDATE: Highlights from Jindal’s appearance with the No Wiggins bus in Marshalltown:
Jindal, who was touted during this summer as a possible vice presidential candidate, was the highlighted Republican guest star on Day Three of a weeklong bus tour organized by Iowans for Freedom. But Jindal spent roughly as much time fomenting anger at President Barack Obama as he did Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins.
Jindal, recounting a litany of what he called Obama’s broken promises about the economy, health care and national debt, said he had “no doubt that the president has done his best. But his best is simply not good enough for America.” […]
Jindal railed against judicial activism both in Iowa and in general, saying judges should seek a legislative office if they really seek to write liberal-leaning laws.
“This isn’t about Justice Wiggins’ liberal views,” Jindal told the group. “If he wants to espouse them, God bless him, I wish him luck in running for the legislature. I wouldn’t suggest you vote for him, but I wish him luck.”
The Louisiana governor got his biggest laugh, however, while talking about judicial activism across the country – not specifically Iowa: “Some of these judges, they actually make the replacement refs in the NFL look like geniuses,” he said.
KIMT reported on the competing events in Mason City today.
Jindal said, “I think it’s important to send a message against judicial activism, whether its at the state level or the federal level. We need justices that are truly interpreting the Constitution, not creating law from the bench.”
But not everyone sees the 2009 decision in the same light.
Iowa State Bar Association’s, Dan Moore said, “They applied the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and made a decision in the Verum case that was based on the Constitutional principles. It was based on the facts of civil marriage and nothing more than that.” […]
Moore said, “We want to preserve the integrity of the Constitution system – the integrity never left, the politics is starting to creep into the court system and we’re trying to keep the politics out of the court system.”
Moore is a Sioux City attorney and past president of the Iowa State Bar Association who was once secretary and treasurer of Vander Plaats’ gubernatorial campaign. He advocated for retaining the Iowa Supreme Court justices in 2010 and later said of Vander Plaats, “Bob is obsessed with the gay-marriage issue. He is so obsessed that he would rather see the Iowa judicial system destroyed, instead of pursuing a change in the law within the channels provided (a constitutional amendment).”
Todd Dorman’s latest column for the Cedar Rapids Gazette explains why a quote on the No Wiggins bus was taken out of context.
Wiggins was interviewing University of Iowa law Professor Angela Onwuachi-Willig. The bus quote comes from the first question Wiggins asks. Here’s the link to the video, which I can’t embed. (The exchange is at roughly the 11-minute mark). […]
Wiggins: “You’re not licensed to practice law in the state of Iowa. And the Iowa Constitution requires that you practice law, to be a member of the Iowa Bar. Um, and I know we’ve talked about you trying to get licensed before this, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. And our charge is to send people who meet the qualifications, either by age or by license to the governor. We have to send nine people. If we send you, without a license, we’re really sending eight people. So tell me, in your best way, how we can get around the Iowa Constitution and do that.” […]
Watching the interview, I think it’s clear that Wiggins was basically being mildly sarcastic about the significant hole in her qualifications. Maybe you like a smart ass, and maybe you don’t. But the notion that Wiggins is really, genuinely looking for a way around the state constitution, as implied by those who slapped it onto the side of a campaign bus, is ridiculous. Activist judges? More like activist editing.
Onwuachi-Willig was the only woman on the short list of potential Supreme Court justices the State Judicial Nominating Commission sent to Governor Terry Branstad in January 2011.