In campaign ads that air frequently on local radio stations, a candidate for Cambria County Court of Commons judge calls himself “a proud conservative who will judge each case on its own merits.”
By declaring your political leaning, can you still claim that you judge each case fairly?
That’s the question voters should be asking as Tuesday’s primary election approaches.
That particular candidate, Republican Brett Smith, said, “My goal is to bring conservative leadership to the courtroom as the next generation of judges.”
In a perfect world, a judge would serve his entire career and no one in the surrounding region would even know whether the person wearing the robe is a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or something else.
But that’s not how it works when elections determine who gets to hand down prison sentences, decide custody cases and settle civil disputes.
Jackie Kulback, chairwoman of the Cambria County Republican Party, said she had a conversation with a voter who demanded to know where a local judicial candidate stood on abortion, even though that hyperdivisive issue isn’t playing out in county level.
The roles of vote hunter and justice dispenser would seem to produce a clash of conflicting duties and ideologies.
If a judge comes from a stated perspective, can someone else on the political spectrum really expect fair treatment?
“It’s a tightrope they’re walking,” Kulback said.
Pennsylvania political analyst G. Terry Madonna, senior fellow in residence for political affairs at Millersville University, said courts and politics have long been tied to ballot boxes, rather than appointing them. by other elected officials, which could be an even thornier proposition. .
So running for judge means telling voters what you believe, or perhaps what they want to hear.
“Local judicial candidates usually campaign to some extent,” Madonna said. “They receive support from local organizations and collectives and, of course, from the party organizations. This has been true historically.”
Five attorneys – all Republicans who cross-filed on both parties’ ballots – are running for two Cambria judge seats that will open later this year, when Chief Justice Norman A. Krumenacker III and Chief Justice Patrick T. Kiniry to resign, as the Tribune’s Katie Smolen has reported.
The candidates are Michael Carbonara, Forrest Fordham, Tonilyn Chippie Kargo, Timothy Sloan and Smith, the red campaign billboards are all over the local landscape.
At a meeting last month with The Tribune-Democrat’s editorial board, leaders of the Cambria County Bar Association announced that their organization had voted to recommend three candidates: Fordham (highly recommended), Sloan ( recommended) and Carbonara (recommended).
Smith was not recommended, and Chippie Kargo did not receive enough votes from members of the bar to produce a rating.
“Lawyers take this very seriously because not only do we work before these judges, but the judges are elected to 10-year terms,” said Heath Long, chairman of the bar’s judicial review committee. , in that meeting.
Kulback blocked the judicial election as “four candidates kind of in the middle of the road, with Brett Smith really being a strong Republican. We’ll see how that plays out.”
Kulback said the GOP will be close to a 10,000-voter lead in Cambria County by the time the primary rolls around, amplifying Brett Smith’s strategy of presenting himself as “a proud conservative,” even though the his father, BJ Smith, is seeking to retain his Cambria seat. Board of County Commissioners as a Democrat.
This seat bid would be decided if two of the five candidates were the top two vote-getters in the Republican and Democratic primaries.
However, Kulback expects a split result on Tuesday, which would mean a competitive race for the November general election.
In his ads, Smith said being a judge is “not just about enforcing the law, it’s about making sure people get a fair shake.”
That seems reasonable.
Except that it also seems to suggest that certain people are more deserving of this approach, or that all criminals are not equal and should not be treated equally.
In one ad, Smith says, “Working people who make a mistake are different from out-of-town criminals who invade our communities.”
Smith has pulled buzzwords from the conservative playbook: telling The Tribune-Democrat that he would “oppose the liberal awakening agenda” and arguing that the bar association ignored him because “I’m not a member of the his old group of liberal lawyers.” .”
The bar association upheld their election.
“If you need a recommendation for a mechanic or anything else, you go to the people you trust who work with those people, and I think that’s why we’re doing this,” said group president Arlene Dudeck.
Smith offered this prediction: “I think the people will decide this election, not the lawyers.”
Yes, they will.
In today’s political climate, can he run a one-man campaign for votes to win a seat on the county bench, but then walk away from that rhetoric and become an independent and fair arbiter if elected?
The two candidates emerging from this five-person race in Cambria County are expected to do just that: make decisions based on the law, not their personal beliefs.
That’s why, Kulback said, “it’s very hard to be a judge.”
He added, “Whoever wins, Cambria County will have two great new judges.”
Chip Minemyer is the editor of The Tribune-Democrat and The Times-News in Cumberland, Md. He can be reached at 814-532-5111. Follow him on Twitter @MinemyerChip.
