Opinion: Write-in campaign against Latino judges fizzles

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In March, a Carson minister launched a write-in campaign against six Latino Los Angeles Superior Court judges, with the help of a USC student and a judicial candidate who wrote a book advocating the loss of citizenship and deportation for everyone in the U.S. who isn’t a white person of European descent. The minister, Ronald C. Tan, explained at the time that he wanted to replace the six with Filipino judges who share his view of religion, abortion and other social issues.

The Metropolitan News-Enterprise reports today that no candidates filed to challenge the six. Under state election law, a write-in candidate is counted only if he or she qualifies by filing nomination papers. The Tuesday deadline came and went with no papers filed, the MetNews reported.

That’s good news for Judges Juan Carlos Dominguez (in the Pomona North Courthouse); Hector M. Guzman (Torrance); Daniel S. Lopez (Pomona); Daniel P. Ramirez (Whittier); Jose Sandoval (the Foltz criminal courts building in downtown Los Angeles); and Michael Villalobos (West Covina). Unlike the 130 or so other unchallenged judges who are up for election this year, the names of the six will still appear on the June 3 ballot, but any write-in votes against them will be in vain.

Tan said in March that he was in the process of getting some of his ‘dear friends’ to try to unseat the judges. It could be that his friends were less dear than he thought, or that they were a bit turned off by the participation of judicial candidate Bill Johnson, who wrote a 1985 book under the name James O. Pace calling for the repeal of the 14th and 15th amendments and the loss of citizenship for Asians and all other non-whites.

Why pick on Latinos? Because, Tan said, they would be easier to beat than judges with Anglo names.