Court Election Pits Judge, Deputy D.A. in a Bitter Contest

A $5.8-million verdict against a Pomona labor union local for violent picketing has become a central issue in a bitter contest between incumbent Superior Court Judge Burton Bach and his challenger, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lawrence Mason, in a Los Angeles County judicial election next month.

Organized labor, unhappy at the jury verdict upheld by Bach last year against Local 1458 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, is strongly supporting Mason. The normally liberal Bach has been denied Democratic support and is having a hard time winning a position on Democratic slate mailings.

The union local has filed for bankruptcy rather than attempt to pay the verdict and its president, Larry D. Sooter, said in an interview last week that while Bach’s future “is in God’s hands,” he is personally convinced that the judge “will get what he deserves from someone, if not in this election, later.”

The 58-year-old judge, displaying copies of a letter from Sooter last year urging “bodies, the more the merrier, to pack the hallways and courtroom for the purpose of applying pressure on the judge,” is accusing the union official of continuing to pursue an attempt to coerce the judiciary.

Several hundred union sympathizers showed up at Bach’s courtroom April 29, 1987, but did not dissuade the judge from upholding the verdict.

“The picketing was violent,” the judge said recently. “The verdict was based in part on the emotional distress caused” to the owners of the picketed grocery store. Sooter, on the other hand, said the violent incidents were not of sufficient magnitude to justify such a high damage award and he added that the incidents occurred long before the current union local leadership took over. The union has appealed the verdict.

The challenger, Mason, while describing Sooter’s letter appealing for people to gather at the courthouse as “certainly improper,” said this week that he views the issue as something of a distraction from arguments he has been making that Bach is too soft on crime and too hard on police officers.

But in an earlier interview, Mason charged that Bach, during the union trial, had displayed a pistol in the courtroom.

“Some judges don’t command the respect of litigants or people because they are crude,” Mason said. “The guy packs a gun on the bench and brandishes it. . . . That’s not appropriate.”

However, a moment later, acknowledging that he does not know about the alleged pistol incident first hand, Mason said, “I shouldn’t say, ‘brandished.’ ‘Displayed’ is a better term.”

Sooter said he was the one who told Mason about the alleged courtroom incident.

“He’d stand up, never in front of the jury, pull his robe back, and here’s his gun on the left side,” Sooter said. “He’d show it to me, just stare at me. I didn’t have a feeling he was threatening me. I had a feeling he had a paranoia.”

Sooter said the bailiff and his two defense attorneys could verify what he said. However, all three--the bailiff, Bob Porter, and the two attorneys, Alan Lazar and Sheldon Cohn--said in answer to telephoned questions that they did not remember seeing the judge show a gun and therefore could not verify Sooter’s account. Cohn expressed concern about possibly slandering the judge.

Bach, asked about Sooter’s account, answered:

“I never showed a gun (in the courtroom), never, never, never, never, and if I had, it would have been on the right side, not the left. But I never did.”

Acknowledges Wearing Gun

Bach acknowledged that he often does wear a pistol underneath his robes in court, for protection, but he said he has never openly displayed it there.

The dispute over the pistol in many ways typifies the tone of the Bach-Mason contest, despite the fact that the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. this week rated both men as “well qualified” for the bench.

Mason, summing up his case Thursday, said, “I’m absolutely convinced that he (Bach) is not fair and impartial.” He said this is particularly true in criminal cases, where he accused the judge of being “weak.”

And he charged that when Bach first ran for the Superior Court six years ago, he had distastefully made capital over the fact that the judge who then held the seat, Kenneth Chang, was dying of cancer.

Bach, for his part, said he is extremely unhappy because, with labor opposition, he can not adequately advertise his campaign. In a lengthy interview and a subsequent conversation, he had little critical to say of Mason, although he did say he believes that his opponent is being very tough on him.

The judge said that because he is a Democrat, he is not acceptable on Republican slate mailings and that he has been turned down for Democratic slates. As a matter of practicality, in the often little-noticed judicial contests, one of the few economical ways the candidates can get their names before the public is through such mailings.

The judge told of calling state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles), whom he had been informed was a representative of the powerful Waxman-Berman political organization that sends out many slates, and asking him for help in getting on the slates.

He quoted Rosenthal as telling him, “If you’ve got the unions after you, there’s nothing we’re going to do for you.”

A spokeswoman for Rosenthal said the senator remembered the conversation slightly differently. She said Rosenthal had told Bach he would not endorse him if the unions were against him, and that he had no role in deciding who is endorsed on the Waxman-Berman slates.

As for Mason’s charges that Bach is weak on crime and dubious of the credibility of police officers, Bach said he has made every attempt to be fair.

“The district attorney’s office feels you ought to give 110% credibility to police officers,” the judge said. “That’s not what the law says. It says you can’t give greater weight to a police officer’s testimony just because he’s a police officer. Why, Mason said the same thing in a speech recently.”

Bach said he does not believe that he was distasteful in his race against Chang.

Mason said, “I’m not running as a labor candidate,” and he estimated that only about $15,000 of the total $40,000 campaign contributions he said he will have reported by the end of this month will have come from organized labor.

One of the most controversial incidents of the judicial campaign came on Feb. 25 when Bach appeared before Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union, the Los Angeles County Employees Assn., at the local’s invitation. Sooter was there and proceeded to question Bach in an unfriendly fashion.

In a letter to an official of this union later, the judge complained that he had not been informed that Sooter would be there and that the union officials would permit him to “insult me in front of all the members of your committee,” permitting him to “ask questions such as, ‘Judge, didn’t you illegally . . . ?’ and ‘Isn’t it true that you unlawfully permitted . . . ?’ ”

On April 7, Sooter responded with a letter to Bach.

“I am dismayed at the fact that you could twist things so badly from such a simple interview,” he wrote. “I never insulted you publicly or otherwise, at least not in front of the members of the Local 660 committee. If you feel that I was badgering you during your interview, then apparently you are guilt-ridden. . . .

“Your innuendos and accusations are uncalled for and do not reflect what is expected from the judicial bench.”

In a Times interview, Sooter declared, “The judge can be described in two words: prejudiced and paranoid.” Bach later responded that, given the local’s attempts to put pressure on him in the rendering of last year’s verdict, he believes that he is properly wary.