HUNTINGTON -- Judge Wanda Bryant was appointed to the North Carolina Court of Appeals by former Gov. Mike Easley in 2001, but when she ran in a contested election to retain the seat, she lost.

Bryant got a second shot a couple years later, having been reappointed to the Court of Appeals by Easley. She ran again to retain the seat in 2004, but this time was able to take advantage of new public campaign financing program implemented by North Carolina lawmakers.

Bryant won and has since become a spokeswoman for public financing of political campaigns, although not necessarily because it helped her hold on to her seat. North Carolina's law still allows candidates for public financing to take campaign contributions, although it limits those contributions to $1,000 per individual. She believes that cap gave people who couldn't donate much money a sense of empowerment.

"I was really proud of that, because many people who had never written a check in any political race could do so, and they could do so feeling they had made a difference," she said.

Bryant was one of a dozen speakers at an Aug. 28 public hearing on judicial reform at Marshall University. The hearing was the first of three slated to take place around the state by of the Independent Commission on Judicial Reform.

The commission was appointed by Gov. Joe Manchin to look at legal reform in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's Caperton v. Massey decision, when it ruled that state Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Justice Brent Benjamin should have recused himself in a case involving Massey Energy and its CEO Don Blankenship. The nation's highest court remanded the case back to West Virginia. The state Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments in the case on Sept. 8.

The court ruling stemmed from political contributions made by Blankenship during the 2004 election. Blankenship spent $3 million through a third-party organization, For the Sake of the Kids, to defeat Benjamin's opponent, incumbent Warren McGraw. While none of the money went to Benjamin's campaign, the high court found that Benjamin benefited from Massey's efforts; therefore he should have recused himself from a lawsuit between Caperton and Massey.

The commission is made up nine attorneys and legal experts. Manchin's former legal counsel, attorney Carte Goodwin, is the chairman. In addition, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor serves as honorary chairwoman and will attend the commission's Sept. 21 hearing in Morgantown.

The commission is taking up a different topic at each hearing, with Aug. 28 hearing focused on judicial campaign finance and reporting. They also considered whether judicial elections should be nonpartisan, given candidates for office currently must run under a party label or as an independent.

Two dozen people sat through the six-hour hearing, listening to speakers share information and opinions about campaign finance reform for judicial elections.

One question the commission is trying to answer is whether the public even wants reform. The answer is mixed. A poll organized by Jonathan Crook of the Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling found that a majority of West Virginians don't agree with public financing of elections in general, but at the same time a majority said they favored a public financing system like that in place in North Carolina.

The North Carolina law provided public financing to candidates if they agree to spending limits and reject funds from political action committees. It also requires candidates to run nonpartisan elections and requires state officials to provide voting guides to voters.

Roughly 73 percent of respondents said they liked that idea. But asked about public financing in general, 56 percent of voters said they were against it while only 23 percent said they were for it.

State lawmakers already have taken some steps toward what they believe is reform. Last year, the state Legislature passed a law requiring certain third-party organizations to identify their sources of funding if they ran or distributed printed materials against political candidates. Democratic lawmakers were the main supporters of the bill, with Republicans calling it a violation of free speech.

"We're not saying you can't say it," Senate Judiciary Chairman Jeffrey Kessler, D-Marshall, said. "You can still say it, just tell us who you are."

Lawmakers also spent much of last year studying judicial reform. Kessler sponsored a bill that would have launched a trial program for public financing of judicial campaigns, but it was shot down after Manchin put pressure on lawmakers to table it because he wanted to have an independent panel study the issue between legislative sessions.

The state Supreme Court as a whole hasn't taken a stand on election reform, said Steve Canterberry, administrative director for the court. That doesn't mean that individual justices don't have opinion, he added.

Canterberry said switching to a public financing system wouldn't have prevented the controversy in Massey case, since that money was third-party money and didn't go directly to Benjamin's campaign. In fact, from a voter turnout perspective, the injection of funds helped because it got more people to turn out and vote in a Supreme Court election than ever before.

"All that money spent generated a lot of interest, and people went out and voted," he said.

Canterberry asked the commission to consider whether any of the changes they eventually recommend make the system more efficient. Judge O.C. Spaulding, president of the West Virginia Judicial Association, had a simpler message: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

"If it is broke, tell us where it is broke," he said. "If we need to make change, let us help you with that."

Judge Ronald Anderson, president of the West Virginia Family Judicial Association, acknowledged it is difficult as a judge to ask people for campaign donations while at the same time telling them you will be impartial. But having been both elected and appointed to the bench, he makes no qualms that he preferred the former.

"I would much rather do the election route, because frankly there is less politics," he said.

The judicial reform commission will host two more public hearings before reporting its findings and recommendations to the governor on Nov. 15.

The second hearing will be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 21 at the West Virginia University College of Law in Morgantown and focus on judicial selection. The third and final will be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the state Capitol. The topic will be judicial restructuring, such the possible formation of a court of chancery and an intermediate appellate court.