LOCAL ELECTIONS: DISTRICT ATTORNEY : Bar Assn. Rates Capizzi Highest

Members of the Orange County Bar Assn. have rated Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi the most qualified of four candidates running for district attorney in the June 5 election. Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James G. Enright ranked second.

The Bar Assn. poll results, released Thursday, show Capizzi with much greater marks than his opponents in the “highly qualified” category.

But if the “highly qualified” and “qualified” categories are combined, Enright closes the gap considerably.

Capizzi received 209 “highly qualified” votes and 76 “qualified.” Enright received 117 in the first category and 108 in the latter. That put the totals at 285 for Capizzi and 225 for Enright.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Edgar A. Freeman ranked a distant third, with a total of 168 points for the two categories.

The only candidate who actually made a poor showing was Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Avdeef, who has been Capizzi’s strongest critic during the campaign. Avdeef’s “not qualified” votes outnumbered his combined “highly qualified” and “qualified” votes 84 to 71.

Capizzi is hoping to win enough votes next month so that he won’t have to run against any other opponent in a runoff.

He would need one vote more than 50% of the total to win the election outright in June.

Enright’s supporters, however, said Thursday night that the bar association ratings may be an indication that Enright has enough support to force a runoff.

In a separate section, the poll asked the lawyers to break down their rankings into five categories: experience and judgment, knowledge of the law, integrity and character, objectivity and fairness, and administrative abilities.

Capizzi consistently outranked the others in all those categories. Enright was second in all of them.

But Enright’s votes fell off in the last category, administrative abilities.

He got 61 votes to Capizzi’s 181. Enright was consistently in the low 100s in the other categories with Capizzi in the high 100s.

Bar Assn. President Jennifer J. King said Thursday that the local bar conducted the poll because “it’s very important that the bar respond to the public’s request for information.”

“Attorneys have more contact with the candidates and probably know more about them than the average citizen,” she said.

Only about 10% of those contacted, or 433 lawyers, returned an evaluation. But the Bar Assn. was satisfied enough with the results that it is paying to advertise them in newspapers.