When Nat Lester saw this figure in Jackson, at the McCarthy headquarters, he knew they were dead. Fisk got almost half the votes in the most laid-back county in the district. It soon got much worse.
Ron and Doreen were eating pizza at the crowded campaign office in downtown Brookhaven.
The Lincoln County votes were being tallied just down the street, and when the news came that his neighbors had turned out in big numbers and given him 75 percent of the vote, the party began. In Pike County, next door, Fisk received 64 percent.
When Sheila lost Hancock County on the Coast, her night was over, as was her career on the supreme court. In one ten-minute span, she then lost Forrest County (Hattiesburg), Jones County (Laurel), and Adams County (Natchez).
All precincts were in by 11:00 p.m. Ron Fisk won easily with 53 percent of the vote.
Sheila McCarthy received 44 percent, and Clete Coley retained enough admirers to give him the remaining 3 percent. It was a solid thrashing, with Fisk losing only Harrison and Stone counties.
He even beat McCarthy in Cancer County, though not in the four precincts within the city limits of Bowmore. In the rural areas, though, where the Brotherhood ministers toiled in the fields, Ron Fisk took almost 80 percent of the vote.
Mary Grace wept when she saw the final numbers from Cary County: Fisk, 2,238; McCarthy, 1,870; Coley, 55.
The only good news was that Judge Thomas Harrison had survived, but barely.
The dust settled in the week that followed. In several interviews, Sheila McCarthy presented the face of a graceful loser. She did, however, say, 'It will be interesting to see how much money Mr. Fisk raised and spent.'
Justice Jimmy McElwayne was less gracious. In several articles, he was quoted as saying, 'I'm not too keen to serve with a man who paid three million for a seat on the court.'
When the reports were filed, though, three million looked rather cheap. The Fisk campaign reported total receipts of $4.1 million, with a staggering $2.9 million collected in the thirty-one days of October. Ninety-one percent of this money flooded in from out of state. The report did not list any contributions from or expenses paid to such groups as Lawsuit Victims for Truth, Victims Rising, and GUN. Ron Fisk signed the report, as required by law, but had many questions about the financing.
He pressed Tony for answers about his fund-raising methods, and when the answers were vague, they exchanged heated words. Fisk accused him of hiding money and of taking advantage of his inexperience.
Tony responded hotly that Fisk had been promised unlimited funds, and it wasn't fair to complain after the fact. 'You should be thanking me, not bitching about the money,' he yelled during a long, contentious meeting.
Soon, though, they would be attacked by reporters and forced to present a united front.
The McCarthy campaign raised $1.9 million and spent every penny of it. The $500,000 note produced by Willy Benton and signed by twelve of the MTA directors would take years to satisfy.
Once the final numbers were available, a storm erupted in the media. A team of investigative journalists with the Clarion-Ledger went after Tony Zachary, Judicial Vision, Ron Fisk, and many of the out-of-state donors who'd sent $5,000 checks. The business groups and the trial lawyers exchanged heated words through the various newspaper stories. Editorials raged about the need for reform. The secretary of state pursued Lawsuit Victims for Truth, Victims Rising, and GUN for such details as the names of members and total amounts spent on advertising.
But the inquiries were met with stiff resistance by Washington lawyers with wide experience in election issues.
Barry Rinehart watched it from the safety of his splendid office in Boca Raton. Such postgame antics were the rule, not the exception. The losers always squawked about the lack of fairness. In a couple of months, Justice Fisk would be on the big bench and most folks would forget the campaign that put him there.
Barry was moving on, negotiating with other clients. An appellate judge in Illinois had been ruling against the insurance industry for many years, and it was time to take him out. But they were haggling over Barry's fees, which had jumped dramatically after the Fisk victory.
Of the $8 million funneled through various routes by Carl Trudeau to Barry and his related 'units,' almost $7 million was still intact, still hidden.
Thank God for democracy, Barry said to himself many times a day. 'Let the people vote!'
PART THREE. THE OPINION
Chapter 33
Ron Fisk was sworn in as associate justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi during the first week of January. It was a short, quiet ceremony attended by Doreen and the three children, a few friends from Brookhaven, Tony Zachary, and the other eight members of the court and some of the staff. The chief justice, the most senior member, gave a short welcoming speech, then everybody had punch and cookies. Justice Jimmy McElwayne skipped the refreshments and returned to his office. He had not expected to like Ron Fisk, and so far he had not been disappointed. Fisk stumbled badly when he summarily fired Sheila's law clerks and secretary without the courtesy of first meeting them. He stumbled again when he showed up in early December and began pestering the chief justice to see the docket and have a look at some of the upcoming cases.
At forty years of age, Fisk was by far the youngest member of the court, and his eager-beaver enthusiasm had already rankled some of his brethren.
Once sworn in, Fisk had the right to participate in every case not yet decided, regardless of how long the matter had been before the court. He plunged into the work and was soon putting in long hours. Ten days after arriving, he voted with a seven-member majority (including McEl-wayne^ to reverse a zoning case out of DeSoto County, and he dissented with three others in a wetlands dispute in Pearl River County. He just voted, without comment.
In each case, every judge can write his own opinion, either concurring with the majority or dissenting from it. Ron was itching to write something, but he wisely kept quiet.
It was best not to rush things.
The people of Mississippi got their first glimpse of the new, post-McCarthy court in late January. The case involved an eighty-year-old woman with Alzheimer's who was found under her nursing home bed, naked and filthy. She was found there by her son, who went ballistic and eventually sued the nursing home on her behalf. Though accounts varied and records were incomplete, testimony at trial proved that the woman had been completely neglected for at least six hours. She had not been fed for nine.
The nursing home was a low-end facility, one of many owned by a company from Florida, and its history of safety and sanitation violations was long and pathetic. The jury, in the rural county of Covington, awarded actual damages of $250,000, though it was difficult to gauge the extent of the physical injuries. There were bruises on her forehead, but the poor lady had lost her mind a decade earlier. The interesting part of the case was the punitive award of $2 million, a record for Covington County Justice Calligan had been assigned the case. He rounded up his other three votes and wrote an opinion that reversed the $250,000 and sent it back for another trial.
More proof was needed on the issue of damages. As for the punitive award, it 'shocked the conscience of the court' and was reversed and rendered-thrown out once and for all. Judge McElwayne wrote an opinion in which he upheld the entire verdict. He went to great lengths to spell out the wretched history of the nursing home-lack of staff,untrained staff, unsanitary rooms and bed linens and towels, poisonous food, inadequate air-conditioning, overcrowded rooms, and so on. His opinion was joined by three others, so the old court was equally divided. The new man would be the swing vote.
