TEXAS: David Barton’s Shady Radio Co-Host Rick Green Is Running For State Supreme Court Justice

Rick Green, the co-host of debunked “historian” David Barton’s Wallbuilders show on Christian radio, is running for the Texas Supreme Court. Green has chosen to run for the seat of an incumbent justice who shares his last name, with the obvious hope that voters won’t realize which Green they are voting for. The Texas Observer reports:

In any other state, an alliance with a convicted Ponzi schemer, a paid stint promoting an FDA-banned diet pill and an assault charge for punching a state representative might preclude a candidate from vying for a seat on the state Supreme Court. Not in Texas.

Instead, a conservative radio talk show host once named one of the state’s worst legislators by Texas Monthly hopes to unseat incumbent Justice Paul Green, a Republican who’s held on to his seat for a decade. The challenger: Rick Green.

The primary race is for one of three contested seats on the state’s highest court. Legal experts say the Green versus Green race is a prime example of why judges shouldn’t be elected, and how down-ballot races can be decided based on little more than name recognition.

From the campaign site of current Justice Paul Green:

Rick Green’s lack of any prior judicial experience and meager legal experience are not his biggest faults; his well-documented injudicious background is. While serving in the Texas legislature, Rick Green lobbied for, and used his government office to film an infomercial to promote, an ephedra-based dietary supplement called Metabolife, which the FDA banned in 2004 due to thousands of “serious adverse events,” including numerous deaths.

Metabolife, whose namesake product was sometimes referred to as “legal speed” (because it contained compounds chemically related to methamphetamine), was founded by two former methamphetamine dealers. Run as a multi-level marketing company, and during its heyday generating hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, Metabolife and its owner ultimately pled guilty to federal income tax evasion. Metabolife’s outside CPA, implicated in criminal tax fraud, committed suicide after an affidavit for a search warrant was unsealed in federal court.

Rick Green, rather laughably, is accusing Justice Paul Green, who is backed by a clown car full of anti-gay wingnuts, of supporting same-sex marriage. From the Texas Tribune:

Rick Green pointed to a case last year in which a woman who had been married to her female partner in Massachusetts sought a divorce in Travis County. After the two women came to an agreement in trial court, the Attorney General’s office sought to clarify that the trial court could not grant a divorce for a marriage it was not constitutionally allowed to recognize in the first place. The Supreme Court of Texas ultimately ruled the state of Texas could not appeal the trial court’s decree.

“The Supreme Court had very clear legal footing to uphold our Texas Constitution and the will of the Texas people, but the incumbent decided to pander to political pressure that wishes to erode our Texas values and constitution,” Rick Green said. Paul Green said this interpretation of the ruling demonstrated Rick Green’s lack of qualifications. “He uses that case to say I’m some sort of judicial activist, which is preposterous,” Paul Green said. “He’s revealing his inexperience. The case was not about gay marriage or gay divorce. It was a procedural case about jurisdiction.”

Rick Green has been endorsed by Chuck Norris, Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver, Liberty Institute head Kelly Shackelford, and foul anti-LGBT activist Cathie Adams, who is the former chair of the Texas Republican Party. Below is Rick Perry’s endorsement of Justice Paul Green.