You know how system works: $$$

Something's been bugging me about all the handwringing over specialinterest spending in this year's Supreme Court races:

Why is anyone surprised? Since at least 1994, this paper and others have been writing about the growing influence of special-interest money in court races, particularly from business groups.

Plans for a business group to spend $100,000 on two races in 1994 were called in these pages "the boldest entry by special interests into once-obscure state Supreme Court races."

One of the candidates supported by that unprecedented effort was Gerry Alexander, then a court of appeals judge and now the chief justice of the Supreme Court locked in a fierce re-election campaign.

Today, Alexander's opponent, John Groen, is backed by a record-breaking campaign against the chief justice funded largely by the Building Industry Association of Washington.

The BIAW has led the way to more expensive and hard-hitting court campaigns. The left largely plays defense. Labor unions, trial lawyers, environmentalists and others have formed a political-action committee they call Citizens to Uphold the Constitution.

They don't see themselves as special interests — though they certainly are — and bemoan the state of democracy that allows the builders to spend freely and land hard punches.

I don't mean to sound cynical. But this is the system the electorate has settled on.

A dozen years after the bold entry of special interests, little has changed to control the spending spree or the collateral increase in philosophical and ideological campaigns.

Judicial candidates run for office like the mere mortals in the Legislature, but are required by law to know nothing about the financing of their own campaigns. PACs finance "independent" campaigns to elect candidates who the law says can't say much about the issues that fuel their political patrons.

It's a difficult spot for the candidates — and confusing to voters.

So what do we do? For help, I called James Sample, associate counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. He said we've become "inured and anesthetized" to the politicization of court races.

He had a suggestion: Candidates who stand to benefit from negative and expensive ad campaigns should stand up and renounce the efforts of outside groups.

"Good candidates can articulate persuasively why that is not ultimately in anyone's interest if judges end up being perceived as responsive to particular special interests," Sample said.

Groen has claimed erroneously that the law prohibits him from even commenting on the ads attacking his opponent — some of the hardest-hitting ads I've seen. For his part, Alexander hasn't found anything objectionable in the campaign being run on his behalf.

But if nothing has been done yet to address special interests in court races, I doubt we'll see any change in the five days remaining in this campaign.

David Postman is The Seattle Times' chief political reporter. His column appears Fridays. Reach him

at 360-236-8267 or at dpostman@seattletimes.com