It's an off year election, but a lot of important local legal positions are up for grabs. The DA is up for re-election, and it is hotly contested, although the incumbent certainly has an advantage. There are also two judge positions open: criminal and civil.

The criminal position is a very tight race between a city judge and a very well respected attorney with a history as a prosecutor and defender. I'm going with the city judge. She has a proven track record from the bench. I've been in front of her a few times, and she has a very even temperament and makes well thought out and researched decisions. She has never represented criminals, and therefore is likely to be very pro-prosecution, but her existing track record makes her the better candidate in my opinion. The other guy has a very good reputation - as a lawyer - he has never been a judge before, and the roles are different, and how he would behave from the bench is an open question mark. Some people are too wishy washy and let attorneys get away with too much. Others treat the bench as their own little kingdom, and can be quite offensive to any one who doesn't do things exactly their way. A person's behavior as an attorney doesn't always guarantee how they will turn out as a judge.

Unfortunately, I think the position is going to the attorney and not the judge, and I think it comes down to advertising. The judge's latest ad has a local kindergarten teacher talking about how the judge comes around once a month and interacts with the children in her class, and how good the judge is with the kids. I'm like "Geez. Okay. You don't have a family and are trying to compensate for it by showing that you like kids. But you are running for judge not kindergarten teacher." There's something to be said for not softening your image too much. The popular attorney running for the position has very slick, polished ads that hit just the right chord.

For the civil position, it is a very open field. In our monthly county bar newsletter, the candidates lay out their backgrounds and qualifications. Here's one candidate making a bit of a mistake I thought when describing landing her first job in 1986:

"I was granted an interview; that interview began with the senior legal partner stating 'Molly, we're going to ask you some illegal questions now - that okay?' He proceeded to comment on the law school I had graduated from (Catholic U) and ask me how many children I planned on having because 'We know you people like to have a lot' Amazingly enough, they hired me (emphasis mine), and I became the first female associate in Athens, Georgia"

Now, she may feel that she was presenting an amusing anecdote that illustrates a barrier that she had to overcome, but I think a lot of people reading that would be like "Um. Why did you go to work for a bigoted pig, Molly, and doesn't that say something about a potential lack of integrity on your part?"

Goof two was one when one of her opponents, a man who has a reputation as being a really, really good public defender said that he had "tried almost a dozen civil cases". I think I would have just said that I had tried "a number of" civil cases. A dozen is nothing. I do a dozen a month. The kind of civil cases he is talking about are much bigger than the ones I do, but a dozen is pretty meager for a person practicing almost twenty years who wants a job that will largely involve trying civil cases.

Oh well, this isn't the U.S. Supreme Court. We are a semi-rural, middle of nowhere, small rust belt metro area. Can't expect perfection I guess.