6 Unopposed Judges Gain New Terms; 3 Seats Go to Polls

Six Ventura County judges won new six-year terms Wednesday when nobody challenged them in the June election.

But for the first time since 1986, Ventura County voters will cast ballots in judicial contests, with two Superior Court seats and one Municipal Court judgeship at stake.

And for the first time in a decade, an incumbent Ventura County judge is being challenged at the polls. Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr., who was named to his seat Jan. 24 by Gov. Pete Wilson, will face Lee A. Hess, a Westlake Village attorney.

It has been 14 years since a challenger defeated an incumbent judge in Ventura County.

“The odds are lousy and it’s very expensive,” said Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath, who nonetheless managed to unseat an incumbent in 1978.

“You very rarely see an incumbent judge challenged,” Public Defender Kenneth I. Clayman said, voicing a view echoed by many local attorneys. “It would be virtually impossible to unseat an incumbent unless there was some scandal or something they have done.”

Hess, 41, said he knows of no skeletons in Campbell’s closet, and he agreed that it will be hard to knock off a sitting judge. He added, however, that “he’s only been an incumbent in this position for a week and a half.” Campbell had been a Municipal Court judge since 1988 before his elevation last month.

“If you don’t chase your dreams, they never have a chance of happening,” Hess said. Having practiced civil law in the county for 10 years, Hess said, he has a cadre of supporters who will help him run a grass-roots effort.

Campbell acknowledged that he would have preferred not to be facing an election campaign.

“I guess I’ll just go out and get a campaign committee and try to tell the voters who I am. In a sense, I’m kind of looking forward to it.” He said he had been thoroughly evaluated by the local bar and by two governors before his judicial appointments.

“I’m willing to let my performance and record be scrutinized by the public,” Campbell said.

The June ballot will also feature a battle between two Municipal Court judges--John J. Hunter and Ken W. Riley--for the Superior Court seat being vacated by retiring Judge Bruce A. Thompson.

And the Municipal Court seat being vacated by Hunter drew a second contestant Wednesday afternoon when Gary L. Windom, a senior deputy public defender, filed his candidacy papers at the county elections office.

John V. Paventi, a former deputy district attorney who is now serving under contract as a Municipal Court commissioner, had previously filed his declaration of candidacy for the seat.

While voters will decide who fills the three contested seats, six other judges won new terms Wednesday without a single ballot being cast. The unchallenged winners include Municipal Judge Roland Nelson Purnell, who like Campbell was appointed to his seat less than two weeks ago. Also elected without opposition were Superior Court Judges Richard D. Aldrich and Robert C. Bradley, and Municipal Judges Herbert Curtis III, John E. Dobroth and Barry B. Klopfer.

“I’m very happy,” Aldrich said. “I can’t help but think it would be a distraction. It would be harder to do the best job you can on the bench.”

Klopfer agreed that an election campaign “is certainly not something I would relish.”

“Yeah, it’s a relief,” Bradley said. “It’s not something that any sitting judge looks forward to.”

None of the three has ever been challenged at the polls, although Klopfer ran unsuccessfully before he was appointed to the Municipal Court.

Like many attorneys and judges, Bradley cited the cost of running an election campaign. “Elections are expensive, and your ability to raise money is very limited.”

In the county’s last contested election in 1986, Dobroth spent close to $50,000 to defeat a fellow deputy district attorney for an open seat. Several attorneys said it will probably cost more than that to wage a serious campaign this year. A Municipal Court judge is paid $90,680 a year while a Superior Court judge gets $99,297.

And unlike most officeholders, candidates for the nonpartisan judgeships cannot turn to political parties for support. What’s more, judicial canons prevent judges from making use of that standard political weapon: the campaign promise.

“The code says the only thing you can promise is the faithful discharge of your duties,” McGrath said. “You can’t really promise anything like politicians can.”

So judicial races become a clash of resumes, he said. “You just tell voters what your qualifications are, and hope yours are better than the other guy’s.”

McGrath was a Municipal Court judge in 1978 when he became frustrated with the refusal of Gov. Edmund G. Brown to forward his application for a Superior Court appointment to an evaluation commission. He decided to challenge Thompson, who had then been recently appointed to the Superior Court.

“It was the most hectic year of my life,” McGrath said, with a four-candidate primary in June followed by a November runoff with Thompson. A typical campaign day, he said, started with breakfast with a civic club, followed by lunch with a civic club, followed by one or two meetings in the evening.

“I spent all the money I raised and then some,” McGrath said, adding that he and Thompson were not far apart in spending. Thompson was later appointed to a different Superior Court seat, from which he is now retiring.

The same 1978 election featured the defeat of another incumbent, Municipal Judge John Childers, at the hands of Frederick A. Jones, a deputy district attorney and former FBI agent. Jones has since been appointed to the Superior Court.

Despite the system’s drawbacks, several judges said it is probably as good as any.

Federal judges, who are appointed for life, clearly have one advantage, Klopfer said: absolute independence.

For a federal judge, he said, “there is never any reason, under any circumstances, ever, to give any thought to anything other than the legal issues.”

Klopfer said he has never worried about possible political consequences before making a decision on the bench. “The flip side of that coin,” he said, “is when that reality of a challenge comes up, I think one finds oneself thinking back: ‘Who might decide to challenge me? Whom have I offended? Who might not like that ruling?’ ”

But the California system, with six-year judicial terms, offers judges more independence than some other officeholders, Klopfer said. And by providing the possibility of an election challenge, he said, the system “keeps one from drifting very far from one’s responsibility to the public.”

The judges who were elected Wednesday will not appear on the ballot unless 100 voters file a petition demanding it. “Nobody ever does that,” said Bruce Bradley, the assistant registrar of voters. The absence of six races from the ballot will save the county a few thousand dollars in ballot printing costs, he estimated.