Slates Mailed to GOP Voters Oppose 5 Appellate Justices

Two million pieces of mail that target for defeat in next Tuesday’s election five appellate court justices appointed by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. will go out this week to GOP households in Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, Republican slate mail coordinators said Monday.

Those responsible for the mailing are refusing to give their reasons for opposing the justices, who are all Democrats and members of two of the seven divisions of the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

Although they say that a group of attorneys evaluated the justices, they will not give the attorneys’ names, will not say how many were involved, and say they do not know what reasons the attorneys had for choosing which of the 14 justices up for confirmation in the 2nd District to oppose. The mailing endorses two Democrats and seven Republicans.

The justices targeted for defeat are Steven Stone, Richard Abbe and Arthur Gilbert, who constitute the entire 6th Division of the court, sitting in Ventura, and Earl Johnson Jr. and Leon Thompson, constituting two of the three justices in the 7th Division, sitting in Los Angeles.

While the reasons they are being targeted are not stated, defenders of the justices say they are convinced that the attempt to defeat Supreme Court liberal Justices Rose Elizabeth Bird, Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin is spilling over to lower courts and that these two appellate divisions are being singled out because they are controlled by Brown appointees.

By contrast, they note, no effort is being made in the slate mailing to defeat Justice Vaino Spencer, a Democrat and another Brown appointee, in a division already controlled by conservative appointees of Gov. George Deukmejian. A yes vote for Spencer is being recommended in the mailing.

The call for the five justices’ defeat is only part of the slate mailing being sent out by Los Angeles Republican political consultant Allan Hoffenblum. Hoffenblum said Monday that California Lincoln Clubs PAC--a political action group partially financed by Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum--is putting up $30,000 of the $160,000 cost of the mailing.

He said that was his price to include the recommendations for yes or no votes on the appellate justices. The rest of the slate will endorse Republican candidates and certain positions on ballot measures.

Hoffenblum said the only notation on the slate as to why the five justices are being opposed is that they were all “appointed Dec. 27, 1982, during Jerry Brown’s final hours in office.”

“I asked the California Lincoln Club, ‘What reason are we giving for opposing the judges?,’ ” Hoffenblum said. He said he was instructed not to say anything more than the cryptic reference to the circumstances of their appointment.

At the Lincoln Club, Timothy M. Carey, a vice president of the group that is handling the mailing with regard to the appellate justices, said:

“The attorneys that did the choosing for us had some reasons for reaching their conclusions, but I don’t know them. I stay out of that end of it. I’m just a political organizer. The fact that they are all 11th-hour appointees is coincidental and not the sole reason for their being opposed.”

Panel Not Named

Asked to identify the attorneys and designate which of them should serve as a spokesman, Carey answered, “That stays confidential, because they have cases before the court.”

When asked how many attorneys were on the panel that made the choice, he said, “I won’t give that out either.”

Meanwhile, Richard Schauer, a retired Court of Appeal justice who has been designated as a spokesman for the five justices who are being opposed, said the call for votes against them is lamentable.

“The only issue here, it seems to me, is that there is no issue,” said Schauer. “I haven’t read or heard of a single reason for rejecting the five justices. They were all highly rated by the bar when they were appointed, and the present governor (George Deukmejian), as a member of the judicial qualifications commission, voted for all five. The opinions of these justices are highly regarded by the bar.”

Schauer said the new call for defeat of justices should not be construed as any kind of spillover from the death penalty issue that is affecting the Supreme Court elections, since, he pointed out, “the Court of Appeal has no jurisdiction over death penalty cases. It has never, and never will, handle death penalty issues.

‘No Visible Reason’

“It’s very unfortunate that judges and justices are the subject of any kind of general or scatter-gun attack, because it diverts them from their duties, whereas, although I don’t personally take issue with a specific attack on a specific judge for some stated reason, here there’s simply no visible, viable reasons at all,” Schauer concluded. “I think it’s unfortunate.”

Schabarum’s office confirmed his involvement in helping to finance the activities of the California Lincoln Club PAC. A spokeswoman, Mickie Silverstein, said Schabarum had lent it about $40,000.

The Lincoln Clubs’ Carey emphasized that Deukmejian--who has called for the defeat of Bird, Reynoso and Grodin in the Supreme Court elections--is not involved in the attempt to defeat the appellate justices.

Carey said that a Deukmejian aide, Mitchell Welk, did call him recently to make sure that none of Deukmejian’s appointees were being opposed.

He said that when he was assured that none would be, he rang off without making any objection to the call for the defeat of the five Brown appointees.

Carey added that he hopes for a large conservative turnout in Tuesday’s elections, and he feels confident that the mailing to the 2 million Republican households will be enough to turn the tide against the targeted justices.