George Bush and Texas Tort Reform

George Bush and Texas Tort Reform

Stephanie Mencimer has written Blocking the Courthouse Door, a book which carefully documents the Republican’s discovery that tort reform is an issue Big_business that elects Republicans and closes the court house door to injured people saving business money. Tort reform not only raises millions of dollars from industry seeking to stop lawsuits against them, but at the same time it elects Republicans to office. Republicans discovered that by focusing on tort reform the Democrats were in a conflicted position. If they defended trial lawyers they were defending a profession held in low esteem by the public and were seen as supporting frivolous lawsuits. If they backed tort reform, they lost the support of trial lawyers and the traditional Democratic voter. Not only that, tort reform produced huge donations from those who had the money to give – both big and small business and giant health care interests. In opposition were injured people who had no political influence and little to contribute along with hated trial lawyers. In fact, Republican consultant Frank Luntz had advised the American Tort Reform Association that "it’s almost impossible to go too far when it comes to demonizing lawyers." The match up of big business and injured people with their lawyers proved to be a political unequal matchup.

The book outlines that the key to George W. Bush’s Texas election as governor, consisted of an alignment with the tobacco industry and business who wanted to save money by stopping lawsuits against them. In 1992 the right wing Texas Public Policy Foundation hired a consultant to test a lawsuit abuse message. The Tobacco industry was impressed with the polling results of the test. Phillip Morris decided to fund ads sponsored by the American Tort Reform Association complaining about lawsuit abuse during a Texas senate race The election results showed the issue was a good one for Republicans. Earlier, business groups had created Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR) mostly made up of business interests. The group’s biggest contributors were those most interested in stopping lawsuits against them. Enron CEO Ken Lay was a major contributor of start up money for the group. Another contributor was the CEO of Perry Homes, a company that had been sued some sixty times for such things as building homes on a toxic waste dump and who later financed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign. The tobacco industry was also involved in the group.

In 1994, it was Phillip Morris consultant Karl Rove, who recruited George W. Bush to run for governor of Texas. Rove had long ties to the tobacco giant. In fact he continued to work for Phillip Morris until 1996 while working for Bush as a consultant following his election. Texas tort reformers had decided George W. Bush was their candidate to run for governor. They knew his father well. The senior George Bush had used tort reform as a campaign issue against Bill Clinton. With close ties to the oil industry and tort reform, the senior Bush had surrounded himself with former members of industry, oil and tobacco. A Phillip Morris vice president had been his senior chief of staff at the White house and. Phillip Morris’s VP of corporate affairs had been his assistant secretary of commerce.

It was Rove who convinced Bush to run on the issue of tort reform. Rove had experience with the tactic of attacking trial lawyers. He had previously created a coalition to elect conservative Republican judges to the Texas Supreme court with a goal of protecting Phillip Morris from liability claims. With Rove’s guidance, tort reform became the answer to all of the Texas issues George W. Bush talked about during the gubernatorial campaign. What was George Bush’s position on health care? – tort reform to stop frivolous malpractice suits. How about a jobs program? – tort reform. Welfare reform? – tort reform which means " personal responsibility" another winning idea. In Bush’s first gubernatorial campaign the tobacco industry provided $100,000 to underwrite an advertising campaign against lawsuit abuse which in turn supported Bush. Bush defeated the Democratic candidate Ann Richards in the election with the support of tobacco, oil, business and medical groups. The lesson of tort reform wasn’t lost on the Texas legislature. Monumental changes in Texas tort law followed his election until it reached a point where Texans found the courthouse door locked for injured plaintiffs.

So successful was the Texas tort reform program it was used not only by Republicans in Texas but served as a model in other states. Because tort reform proved to be such a winning issue in was the model again in 2000 when Bush ran for the presidency. A winning combination of oil giants, tobacco, big business, health care providers provided Bush with millions in contributions because of a common goal of preventing lawsuits against them. Besides, the only victims were the crippled, the disabled and the suffering who had no political nor financial clout anyway. Compassion doesn’t mix with, Republican policy and big business.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *