Her husband Richard, by contrast, has every reason to support the Democrats. He has made most of his fortune by suing large corporations, one of the few businesses that Republicans are eager to regulate. The GOP backs what it calls "tort reform," pressing for limits on jury awards to workers and consumers injured by negligent companies. Scruggs helped launch the lawsuit against Big Tobacco that eventually yielded a settlement of $368.5 billion for 41 states. Scruggs, who began his high-dollar filings while fighting the asbestos industry in the 1980s, also belongs to the "Reparations Assessment Group," an organization of attorneys who tackle cases expected to yield at least $100 million.

Given his anti-corporate attitude, then, it comes as a surprise that Scruggs shares his wife's interest in the GOP. Republicans, he informed Frontline, have always "provided some of the key national connections" for many of his cases. In 1989 and again in the mid-1990s, Scruggs hired political advisor Dick Morris to conduct public-opinion polls in Mississippi: once on asbestos companies and the other on Big Tobacco. Who introduced the two? None other than Trent Lott.