Justice Tom Parker has to be in the running for most incompetent public official ever. He “overlooked” $100,000 in contributions from trial lawyers? Yes, folks, this is the man who wants to be Alabama’s next Chief Justice.
Parker is running for chief justice in the Republican primary June 6 against incumbent Drayton Nabers. But the question over his campaign finance reports goes back to his 2004 GOP primary victory over incumbent Justice Jean Brown.
In that race, Parker filed campaign reports with the secretary of state’s office reporting $50,000 each in contributions from three political action committees funded by plaintiff lawyers: Venture PAC, Covenant PAC, and Honor PAC.
Those three PACs filed reports with the secretary of state showing additional contributions to Parker’s campaign that he didn’t report: $44,500 from Venture PAC, $35,500 from Covenant PAC, and $20,000 from Honor PAC.
Not to worry. Parker’s campaign manager, Matt Chancey, has taken the blame for the “clerical error”. See? It wasn’t Tom’s fault.
Parker must be excused on the grounds that he was too busy writing opinions and taking cues from Above to notice such a small oversight. Damn, did I really say that? MORE OVERSIGHT in all 3 branches of government is what we could use!
[...] (h/t to Politics in Alabama, Birmingham Blues, and Alablawg). Filed under Elections, Law and courts permalink :: email author :: no comments [...]
Haha… good point, Don.
I’m not a fan of Parker’s campaign, but I don’t think he lied about what happened with the trial lawyer contribution. If Parker received $100,000 in a wire transfer and sent a payment out the same way within a day or two it would not affect the balance on his account. So the person who completed the disclosure report months later (when it would be due 45 days before the general election) would not suspect anything was wrong when the total from the paper records of deposits/expenditures, etc. matched up with the total in the then most-recent bank statement.
If the facts in the news report are accurate, then Parker did mess up, but only in being too cheap to hire a real accountant.
AL Lawyer, I bet you’re right. But it’s so much fun to rag Parker.