Good As You

The flip side, though, is that we will know exactly who to oppose. And when it comes to being confirmed to higher judicial posts, I would bet that a nod from this group would not be very beneficial. They may think that this is a "winning" strategy, but when races for judgeships become partisan bickering matches, they may find that they end up on the pointy end of that stick.

I just have one more thing to say. It is highly imprudent for a judge (sitting or campaigning), to indicate that they are anything other than impartial or anything other than one who will absolutely uphold the law. Any judge who would accept an endorsement (and not vehemently distance him/her self) from ideologues of any stripe, is one who has already said that they cannot be trusted to be impartial interpreters of the law. They have already indicated, "the law be damned, my ideology dictates my decisions."

I can't imagine that any judge would ever believe that being labeled as an ideologue would ever be beneficial to his/her career - whether they are elected or appointed. It also might open those judges up to much more scrutiny than they otherwise might receive. They can, of course, be impeached - or worse, their rulings can be overturned.

The Religious Right isn't very popular here in California. There are a lot of reasons for that but what people from back east might not appreciate is the degree to which this state is populated by people who came here to get away from oppressive families, communities and states in the rest of the U.S. That group contains a high proportion of gay people but many straights, too, can't tolerate the culturally conservative smallmindedness, which so very often is tied into reactionary religion. The general cultural here is more libertarian in terms of certain issues of personal freedom, very much including sexuality.

There are a LOT of gay people here and we are politically aware and active. But there are also MANY straight people here who REALLY don't like the Religious Right, especially the fundamentalists.

My guess is that being identified publicly as a "traditional values" judicial candidate would make electoral victory difficult, if it wouldn't be the kiss of death, in the localities of most local judgeships, and that would hold for any statewide judicial elections as well.

I guess that's a longwinded way of agreeing with Dick Mills about the fundies getting "the pointy end of the stick" if they tried to pull this here without being VERY slick about it.

Which carries its own hazards, because California, as well as so much of the rest of the country, has gone through the whole fundie "stealth" candidate period in the 1980s, with the nationwide revelation their stealth manual, etc. We know to investigate if things don't seem right about a candidate.

I was going to ask how, after his client was caught diddling herself on camera, Charles LiMandri can be taken seriously as an attorney. But then again, Robert Shapiro did represent OJ.