The Price of Public Office : Study on judgeships raises wider questions about the need for campaign reform

A recent report on judicial elections in Los Angeles County raises questions that extend well beyond contests for open judicial seats, the focus of the analysis.

A three-year study by the California Commission on Campaign Financing, a nonprofit, bipartisan research group, has found that candidates for judgeships are increasingly investing large sums of their own money on election campaigns, skewing the judiciary toward wealthier individuals.

The commission, which studied hundreds of Los Angeles Superior and Municipal Court judicial campaigns, also found that the average campaign expenditure for a judicial campaign has more than doubled every election for almost two decades, from $3,000 in 1976 to $70,000 in 1992. And averages don’t capture the extremes; two candidates in one hotly contested Superior Court race last year spent $378,000 and $295,000, respectively. A Superior Court judge makes $104,262 a year.

The implications of this pattern are troubling. An increasingly wealthier bench is unrepresentative of the population it serves. Moreover, the historical dependence of judicial candidates on contributions from attorneys may create the appearance of bias in judicial rulings, although the donors usually are motivated by a desire to have the best-qualified, most fair-minded people presiding in the courts.

To remedy these problems, the commission recommends establishing a limit of $500 per election on contributions to any judicial candidate from individuals, corporations, labor unions and PACs. In addition, the panel suggests that judicial candidates should have the right to publish a statement of their qualifications in the voter’s pamphlet at no expense if they agree not to seek or pay for endorsements made in election slate mailers.

These recommendations and others make sense. But bear in mind that only 20% of Municipal and Superior Court judges win their seats in contested elections; the governor appoints most judges. And spending in judicial elections, while rising, hardly approaches the dizzying heights attained in supervisorial elections and those for other countywide offices. L.A. County Supervisor Deane Dana, for example, spent more than $2.5 million to win reelection to his seat in 1992. Together, he and his opponent spent $3.1 million, breaking the record of $2.8 million set in 1988 by incumbent Mike Antonovich and his opponent.

So undue influence by campaign contributors and the appearance of favoritism by a successful candidate are no less likely at the County Hall of Administration than at the county courthouse. Meanwhile, City Council candidates must comply with campaign spending limits. No such limits apply to candidates for any countywide office during a general election. If campaign finance reform makes sense for judicial elections, it makes even more sense for other candidates seeking county offices.