Governor Rick Perry’s appointed incumbent, Justice Don Willett, beat my prefered candidate for the Texas Supreme Court, former Justice Steve Smith, by 4,979 votes out of 548,055 cast in the Texas Republican Primary. That’s a margin of about 9/10ths of 1% percent, or .009, or a difference of less than one vote per precinct.

Smith spent about $15,000 dollars on the race, all but $250 of which was his own money. Willett raised about $900,000 (a 60 to 1 margin).

If the fact that Willett (who has never tried a case in trial or appellate court and had only practiced law for three years at the time of his appointment to the bench) plagiarized on his job application had come out only a week earlier, Steve Smith would probably be on his way back to Texas’ highest civil court come January 2007.

Wow.

(Background: Steve Smith was the attorney that original filed the lawsuit that resulted in racial preferences being banned throughout the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1996 case Hopwood v. Texas. At the appellate court level it was Smith who made the argument adopted by the Fifth Circuit that Justice Powell’s opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that race could be used as a “plus factor” in admissions was not controlling precedent because Powell spoke only for himself (the 8 other justices didn’t sign on to his opinion). Smith was originally elected to the Texas Supreme Court in 2002 after beating Governor Perry’s appointee, Xavier Rodriguez, in the Republican Primary. In 2004 Smith lost his race for re-election to Perry’s handpicked candidate Paul Green, who still serves on the court today.)