Putting the oy in oyez

Brown, Klym.

It’s almost election time in Oregon again. The primary ballots go out in a couple of weeks, and the election closes on May 19. We’ll see which Republican bozo gets to take a futile charge at Governor Tina Ko(hou)tek, and the latter’s gas tax will go down in an epic fireball. But the most interesting race may be the re-election bid of a judge here in Portland.

Judge Adrian Brown of the Multnomah County Circuit Court just can’t stop shooting herself in the foot. She had already been barred from handling serious felony cases because the district attorney’s office says she won’t give it a fair trial. But when a defense lawyer filed to challenge her for her seat on the bench, she made things worse for herself. A lot worse.

First she asked her fellow judges to take over some of her workload because she couldn’t handle it under the pressure of a re-election campaign. “None of us should be expected to be in trial while being tried by an election challenge. Indeed it’s an impossibility,” she sobbed, adding: “I wouldn’t wish this on any of us.”

Her request, which was shot down by the presiding judge, got leaked to the O, and the story was picked up by news outlets around the world.

Okay, embarrassing enough, but then Judge Brown went and missed the deadline for getting her statement in the Voter’s Pamphlet. Her opponent’s statement is the only one that appears.

At this point, you’d figure the judge would quit while she’s behind, but no. She rushed down to Salem and appealed for an extension of time to submit the Voter’s Pamphlet statement, on the ground that she’s disabled due to attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Just what you want in a judge, right? And of course, her extension request had zero chance of being granted, which she should have figured out before confessing in writing to her mental health condition.

At first, one might think that Judge Brown’s nightmare would be music to the ears of the district attorney, but not really. Her opponent, Peter Klym, is a career public defender, endorsed by Shannon Singleton no less, and so he seems likely to be pro-defendant, and competently so. Klym, who looks to be around 40 years old, went to Georgetown Law School and clerked for an Obama-appointed judge in Yakima, Stanley Bastian. Thereafter Klym moved back to Portland, where he had gone to college. All in all, it seems like a lose-lose for the D.A.’s office.

For the rest of us, there’s the entertainment value. It’s been pretty absorbing already, and hey, there’s five weeks to go.