Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
The “banjo ad” supporting North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby.
Sam Ervin IV must have been feeling pretty good about his chances of winning a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court last fall.
He had name recognition—his grandfather was the legendary senator who led the Watergate investigation—and a poll released less than a week before Election Day showed him leading his opponent, incumbent Justice Paul Newby by 6 points, 38-32.
But on the Friday before the election, “Justice for All NC”—an independent political committee whose funding came mostly from out of state—dropped a TV ad depicting a scowling Ervin and asking: “Sam Ervin. Can we trust him to be a fair judge?”
Ervin lost the race by 4 points, 52 percent to 48 percent.
“As far as I know,” says Ervin, “there had never been an attack ad in a North Carolina judicial race.”
North Carolina’s supreme court election was arguably decided by groups like Justice for All—secretive nonprofits, unaffiliated with a candidate, whose money came from out of state.
Credit –
