Maybe it’s just a coincidence that some of Attorney General Jim Hood’s largest campaign supporters also happen to get a big slice of the state’s litigation business he farms out to private attorneys.

The appearance, though, is not good. The system needs to change either to bring more competition to how these contracts are awarded, or to prohibit the attorney general from receiving campaign donations from those who do business with his office.

Hood defends the system he uses. He claims that the contracts, worth potentially millions of dollars in contingency fees, are awarded on a first-come, first-serve basis. Whoever comes to the attorney general first with a novel idea for suing on the state’s behalf gets the business. If it’s an out-of-state firm, Hood says, he leaves it to the lawyers to pick the Mississippi firm with which they associate. The contract is then put out for anyone to examine its details.

The problem is, some of these same people pitching lawsuits to Hood also happen to show up prominently on his list of campaign contributors. For instance, Texas attorney Ken Bailey gave $75,000 to Hood’s re-election campaign in 2007 and another $110,000 over the past three years to the Democratic Attorney Generals Association, another major Hood donor.

What interest does a Texas attorney have in a Mississippi attorney general’s election, other than the hope that the investment will pay off for him? In Bailey’s case, it has and then some. He is scheduled to receive $2.78 million in attorney’s fees paid by Eli Lilly on top of the $18.5 million the drugmaker has agreed to pay the state in a recent settlement over antipsychotic drugs. Bailey was one of the main private attorneys with whom Hood contracted to handle the case.

According to the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, Bailey is just one of several attorneys with a financial stake in Hood’s office. It claims Hood, in his first five years in office, received more than $500,000 from attorneys and law firms doing business with the attorney general.

Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, in his current job and his prior one as state auditor, has made it his mission to reform the system. He says the Legislature, not the attorney general, should be the one appropriating legal fees to outside counsel. Bryant’s successor as auditor, Stacey Pickering, has picked up the mantle.

Let’s not forget that two of Hood’s biggest campaign contributors, Dickie Scruggs and Joey Langston, are now in prison for attempting to bribe a judge.

Scruggs and Langston were well-known for perfecting this ploy of spinning campaign contributions into big legal fees. You would think that Hood would rush to be squeaky clean after witnessing the fate of his cronies. Instead, the shady practices continue. Hood keeps thumbing the nose at the electorate. Not a politically wise course given an electorate demonstrably averse to politicians lining their pockets in exchange for favoritism.

Hood has appeared on numerous occasions on the editorial page of the nation’s biggest and most influential newspaper - The Wall Street Journal - and not in a flattering way. The WSJ has made Hood a poster child for judicial campaign abuse. Hood’s persistence in this regard has become an embarrassment to our state, which has already been embarrassed far too many times regarding our judiciary.

When Langston was sentenced, the judge stated, “The damage you have done to the rule of law is the real tragedy in this case.” Allowing the judiciary to be a profit center for well-connected campaign contributors is just one more chapter in this sordid story.