A secretive group called Better Future for Our Community attacked former Sen. Larry Martin in 2016.

It was revealed through a grand jury investigation that the state’s trial attorney association was behind the attack advertising.

Martin, the ads said, collected a state retirement and voted for more taxes to fix roads. But, according to the grand jury report, the real reason they targeted Martin was because he supported laws limiting the amount of money trial attorneys could collect in civil lawsuit.

Martin, a Pickens Republican lawmaker of 37 years, had been “ripping off taxpayers for decades,” the Charleston Post and Courier reported last week.

An address listed on the ad didn’t reveal who was behind it. Nobody had heard of Better Future for Our Community before.

Martin, chairman of the Senate’s powerful judiciary committee, speculated who might want to do him in.

He had heard rumors but state laws left Martin and the voters in his district with no way to confirm who was financing the ads or why.

In the end, the group got what it wanted.

Martin lost a competitive runoff by 935 ballots.

It took 2 years and several subpoenas for him to learn who was behind it.

A state grand jury investigating corruption detailed how the SC Association of Justice, a group of trial attorneys, spent more than $200,000 to defeat Martin and remove him as Senate judiciary chairman.

The trial attorneys hired Richard Quinn & Associates, a powerful consulting firm, to create Better Future for Our Community and produce the political ads, according to the grand jury.

Heath Taylor, a West Columbia attorney representing the trial lawyer association, said the grand jury report “speaks for itself.”

Martin believes the group’s actions may have killed his reelection.

“Had the public known that, they may have viewed those campaign commercials in a different light,” Martin told The Post and Courier. “They wanted the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

- Jerry Bellune