By Linda P. Campbell
lcampbell@star-telegram.com
You just have to roll your eyes with an OMG! when Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett says stuff like this:
"People always comment on the sheer ferocity of the paper flow at the Supreme Court, and that's certainly true. If anything, the biggest surprise is how swiftly it confirmed for me how metabolically hardwired I am for the cloistered, contemplative, cerebral and nerdy life of Supreme Court judging."
Or when he puts this on his campaign website: "Every time I walk onto the bench in Austin, I say a prayer -- every single time -- for wisdom, for discernment, and of bottomless gratitude for the unfathomable blessing of serving 25 million Texans on the Supreme Court."
Or when he writes separate opinions that read like an audition for a federal court appointment in the next Republican administration:
"Today's case is both complex and consequential, and fiendishly so. ... it affords a whetstone on which to sharpen our thinking on some bedrock notions of government."
But does that make him the candidate to vote against -- or for -- in the May 29 GOP primary?
It's not as easy a call as might be assumed.
Willett barely beat Steve Smith for the Republican nomination to the court's Place 2 seat in 2006, by a difference of 6,054 votes. The general election was easier for Willett, a former lawyer for George W. Bush in Austin and Washington whom Gov. Rick Perry moved from the Texas attorney general's office to the state's highest civil court in 2005.
But Smith is back again, a perennial thorn poking the GOP establishment in the heel (Willett's analogy is sharp stick in the eye).
Smith, a product of Everman schools and UT Arlington, made a name in legal circles by initiating the lawsuit that dismantled affirmative action as Texas higher education had practiced it up until 1996.
He adamantly opposes racial preferences of any kind, whether well-intended or cynically motivated.
In 2002, Smith ran for the Supreme Court and unseated much-better-funded Perry appointee Xavier Rodriguez in the Republican primary, then beat a better-qualified Hispanic female Democrat in the general election.
Could it have been the juxtaposition of names?
Why do you think infuriated Republican leaders got behind an appellate judge with the primary-color name of Paul Green to oust Smith in 2004?
Smith claimed he brought "genuine diversity" to the court, and he did in the sense of having experience drafting bills at the Texas Legislative Council and handling small legal cases. Though he has litigated and campaigned with a hard ideological edge, justices who served with him have told me privately that, once on the court, he was smart, diligent, got along with colleagues and didn't take a results-driven approach.
A
Texas Bar Journal article about Green's 2005 investiture says Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson praised the departing Smith for his work on majority opinions and his calm demeanor.
Smith presents himself as the true conservative, the Justice Antonin Scalia-style constitutional textualist, on a court he says bends over backward to favor big business, even imposing individual justices' preferences over legislative will. And he doesn't want any of them getting comfortable doing that.
"I don't necessarily have to win in order to catch their attention," he said in a phone interview.
Willett describes himself as "undeniably a judicial conservative, but in the classic principled sense." He's more likely to point you to a letter from appellate lawyers praising his "impressive scholarship and no-favorites decision making" than to website statements from Focus on the Family's James Dobson and Wallbuilders' David Barton touting his conservative credentials.
Smith has raised and spent almost nothing on the race. Willett's taking no chances, collecting $1.2 million since last summer from lawyers, corporate executives, interest groups and others who track the direction of civil law. That's for a position that pays $150,000 a year.
In an e-mail exchange, Willett told me he couldn't imagine a more fulfilling and satisfying job.
"I was a 30-something father of one when I joined the court. I'm now a mid-40s father of three. And I'd love to become a grandfather while still serving on the court."
With an eye roll, I suggested that would be up to his kids, not Texas voters.
Linda P. Campbell is a Star-Telegram editorial writer.817-390-7867Twitter: @LindaPCampbell
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