Bench players

No, no, and no.

The ballots arrive today, and I'm noticing that there are four local trial court judgeships being contested here in Multnomah County. That's more than usual, I think. And aside from all the competition, the races are especially important given the awful state of the criminal justice and mental health "systems" in Portland these days. So I'm paying attention.

I do so with a great deal of uneasiness. I'm not at all convinced that electing judges is such a good idea. The judicial branch is supposed to be the least political of the three, and when the judges are sending out election porn and doing campaign fundraising on the side, well, it's not a good look. That said, given what's happened to the federal bench, the alternative is not a proven performer, either.

Anyway, here is where I am coming out.

First, the easy one: Peter Klym over the incumbent, Adrian Brown. Judge Brown has conducted her campaign with neither competence nor good judgment. Quite the opposite. Klym looks like he'll be soft on crime, but at least he won't be so bad that the district attorney refuses to appear before him.

In the other one-on-one, John Casalino over Joanna Perini-Abbott. They both seem capable, but I'm immediately turned off by JPA's campaign flyer, which leads with "Working Mom" and photos of Killer Kate and Earl the Pearl. And on a substantive note, Perini-Abbott was part of the state bar crew that made the bar exam optional. That's right, they have made the bar exam optional. That's enough of that.

On to the two crowded races. For position 2, I'm going with a former student of mine, Laura Maurer Rowan. She would be a nepo baby on the bench – both her parents are judges – but she's done a good job for the state Justice Department, and she has the endorsements of both Steve Houze and Nathan Vasquez. That does it for me. 

In that race, I would place a "Whatever You Do, Don't" sticker on a couple of dudes in the field, Chris Behre and Anit Jindal. Behre was running around with the hideous Mike Schmidt for a while during the latter's reign as county D.A., when Portland really slid downward. And after a few weeks of looking at Jindal's smiling mug plastered all over, I'm ready to not see it any more.

The last one is position 14, where I'll be voting for Joe Hagedorn, one of two juvenile court judges running for the circuit court seat. Among the other candidates, I'd give the "Please Don't" stickers to Heidi Brown from the God-awful Portland city attorney's office, and also to Bradford Gerke ("I graduated Order of the Coif from the University of Oregon School of Law"). If Hagedorn is not one's cup of tea, Kristine Almquist and Elizabeth Savage seem worth considering. And Michael Lee, the prosecutor, is a natural for the law-and-order readers out there (you know who you are).

Please take a minute to vote in these races. Every day, it seems, we read a story about some heinous criminal being sent back out onto the streets with a slap on the wrist, and we think, "Who the hell are the judges doing that?" Here they are. It's up to us.