Guesswork Is the Norm When Voting for Judges

Chances are, most voters won’t have heard of any of the prospective judges whose names will appear at the bottom of their ballot next month.

Chances are, most voters will vote anyway.

For those prospective judges, and the consultants they pay to get them elected, this is a process one compared to a story by Franz Kafka.

“It’s completely insane,” said Parke Skelton, who guided Antonio Villaraigosa into the mayor’s office last year. “They’d do better having them bob for apples.... They are selected almost at random.”

Almost. There are a few rules, according to several campaign consultants who help judges get elected. And they are enough to give even the most sober-minded jurist pause. Among them:

* Having an unusual name can spell trouble despite an otherwise stellar career.

* It’s permissible -- even wise -- to submit papers preparing to run for multiple judge seats, and then randomly pick one at the last minute.

* How your current job is described on the ballot is so important that it’s worth suing if you object to how your opponent represents herself.

* Oh, and those little-known voters’ guides and slate mailers, the ones no one has ever heard of? They could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

For Daviann Mitchell, a former police officer and current deputy district attorney who prosecutes hard-core gang crimes, the process has been eye-opening.

“The lack of awareness of the public as to who will be sitting on the bench, when it is such an important position,” Mitchell said. “Judges have such a profound impact ... and nobody knows who they are voting for.”

The vast majority of California’s 1,500 Superior Court judges -- including the 427 who sit on the bench in Los Angeles Superior Court -- are appointed by the governor.

But a small minority are elected -- either because they ran for an open seat or because they challenged a sitting judge. Incumbents, even those named by the governor, face retention elections every six years, though they appear on the ballot only if someone challenges them. Any lawyer who has been a member of the bar for at least 10 years can file a challenge.

Open seats occur when a judge retires or resigns close enough to an election that the governor does not have time to appoint someone.

On June 6, voters in Los Angeles County will pick judges in eight contested elections. There also are one in Orange County, three in San Diego County and three in San Bernardino County. The ballot may make it appear that judges are running for specific seats, but all judges run countywide.

It’s not surprising that voters don’t have a clue who the candidates are. Unlike traditional politicians, judges typically do not mount large campaigns. They are ethically barred from discussing most issues or from making the kinds of campaign promises that draw the financial contributions necessary to get out their message in a place as vast as Los Angeles County.

But lack of knowledge doesn’t stop most voters.

“You know the most frightening thing about judicial elections -- 80% of the people actually pick someone,” Skelton said.

In the absence of an informed electorate, it is the job of Skelton and other consultants to do everything they can to sway voters toward their candidate.

Conventional wisdom holds that the criterion that most voters rely on in picking a judge is the way the candidates describe their professions on the line beneath their names. The best designation, according to many, is “judge,” with “prosecutor” or “criminal prosecutor” running a close second.

In fact, the designations are considered so powerful that it is not uncommon to have litigation over them. Among the cases: whether a deputy district attorney who has taught a community college course has the right to call himself “Criminal Prosecutor/Law Professor” and whether a hearing judge for an administrative agency can refer to himself as “Judge.”

Skelton said one of his candidates once beat a sitting judge. The reason, he says: The jurist was foolish enough to call herself “incumbent” rather than judge.

Another factor in judicial elections, according to consultants, is a person’s name. Unusual names can be dicey. Take the case of Abraham Aponte Khan, who was voted out in 1992 -- some say largely because his opponent had the more common name of Patrick Murphy. Later, Murphy resigned from the bench amid questions about his conduct.

And though television ads are almost out of the question, consultants do spend money to place their judges’ names on slate mailers. These are the pamphlets mailed to homes that purport to list candidates endorsed by public service organizations. In reality, candidates pay to appear on the mailings -- bartering for the cost of an endorsement.

“People are looking for some kind of clue,” Skelton said. “So you buy space on every slate possible ... African American slates, senior slates, the JFK voter guide.”

But for many consultants, the trickiest thing about working with judicial candidates is that they tend to lack any kind of political acumen.

“They are so not politicians. It’s frightening. You can quote me on that,” consultant Evelyn Jerome said.

“Your 9-month-old baby knows as much as they know about politics,” said political strategist Joe Cerrell. “It’s like, put on the mask. Put on the cap. You’re going to perform open-heart surgery. And you’re a lawyer.”

One of Cerrell’s candidates this spring is the only sitting judge in L.A. County to be challenged in this election -- a well-regarded jurist with the unusual name of Dzintra Janavs.

The Metropolitan News, a local legal paper, reported speculation that Janavs had been targeted because of her name.

Janavs, who has been on the bench for 20 years and never before faced opposition, said she was not worried.

“I have tremendous confidence that the people of this county are intelligent voters,” she said. “They will look to a candidate’s qualifications.... I feel quite confident that there should be no problem on this election.”

Still, Janavs added, she has always been “a very nonpolitical person.”

“The whole process is strange to me,” she said.