the "And For The Sake of the Kids" PAC, campaigning against the reelection of West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw. Brent Benjamin went on to defeat McGraw in the general election. Of the election, Blankenship said, "I helped defeat a judge who had released a pedophile to work in a local school, who had driven doctors out of state, and who had cost workers their jobs for thirty plus years. I think this effort helped unchain West Virginia's economy and benefited working families." USA Today called Blankenship's ads "venomous." According to a USA Today editorial dated March 3, 2009, Blankenship "vividly illustrated how big money corrupts judicial elections. It puts justice up for sale to the highest bidder." Notably, Blankenship's coal company Massey Coal had recently lost a civil case in West Virginia state court prior to the judicial campaign and had been ordered to pay a $50 million judgment. The case was pending on appeal as he sponsored Benjamin's campaign for a seat on the West Virginia Supreme Court. When the case was taken up on appeal, Benjamin was one of the judges in a position to decide the case. The plaintiff requested that Benjamin recuse himself owing to a conflict of interest stemming from Blankenship's contributions to his campaign, but he refused. Benjamin ultimately cast a decisive vote to vacate the lower court's judgment in a 3–2 decision. In Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., the Supreme Court ruled that Benjamin's refusal to recuse himself in light of such an obvious conflict of interest constituted a violation of the plaintiff's constitutional right to due process and remanded the case to the West Virginia Supreme Court. Washington political journalist Michael Tomasky, a native West Virginian, claimed that Blankenship was "famous in West Virginia as the man who successfully bought himself a State Supreme Court Justice in 2004 and then tried to buy himself the state legislature, failing spectacularly at the latter effort." In his 2008 book Coal River, Michael Shnayerson reports that no such foundation was ever set up. Although Blankenship was the primary donor to "And For the Sake of Kids," other groups, including Doctors for Justice, contributed over $1 million to ASK. Another group, Citizens for Quality Health Care, funded in part by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, spent over $350,000 to defeat McGraw. Meanwhile, several groups spent millions opposing Benjamin and supporting McGraw, including