Wednesday, February 17, 2010
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Third-Time Candidate Enters Race for Open Seat
By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer
Deputy District Attorney Edward Nison, who has run for the Los Angeles Superior Court twice before, yesterday filed his declaration of intent to run for an open seat, just as the deadline was expiring.
Nison and Deputy Public Defender C. Edward Mack, both of whom entered the filing area on the second floor of the Registrar/Recorder/County Clerk’s Norwalk office a few minutes after 5 p.m., became the eighth and ninth candidates to file for the seat being vacated by Judge Emily Stevens. One of those candidates, Deputy District Attorney Lou Holtz Jr., has since announced that he would not return his nominating papers.
Nison and Mack were allowed to file, an employee who declined to give her name explained, because the office normally gives potential candidates a warning over the building intercom 10 minutes before the deadline, but neglected to do so on this occasion. As a result, the door to the room where candidates are required to file was unlocked for Mack—who had knocked on the locked door minutes earlier—at 5:14 p.m., enabling him to become the last candidate to file a DOI in the race.
‘Last-Minute Decision’
Nison said he made a last-minute decision to enter the race because Holtz’s withdrawal left the race without a deputy district attorney in the field. He was a candidate in 2004 for a seat won by then-Deputy Attorney General Gus Gomez and in 2006 for a seat won by then-Deputy District Attorney David Stuart.
Mack, who ran in the same race as Nison in 2004 and also ran in 2006 and 2008, had previously taken out paperwork to run for either the Stevens seat or the seat being vacated by Judge William Pounders. The other incumbent who did not file for re-election is Judge William Weisman.
Other Hopefuls
The other candidates for the Stevens seat are Beverly Hills attorney Mark K. Ameli, Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney Chris Garcia, Superior Court Referee Randy Hammock, West Los Angeles attorney Elizabeth Moreno, and Long Beach attorney Kendall C. (Ken) Reed.
In other news:
•Redondo Beach attorney Pattricia M. Vienna filed her DOI to run for the Pounders seat. She told the MetNews Friday that she was considering running for the Stevens seat, but said yesterday that the field for that post had become too crowded, and that the fact there were no other women running for the Pounders seat was also a factor.
The other candidates for that seat are Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney Tom Griego, Calabasas attorney William Mitchell Margolin, and Deputy District Attorney Alan Schneider.
•Long Beach attorney Joseph Piro, who took out papers last week to run for the Weisman seat, dropped out of the race. He said that he had made a “spur-of-the-moment” decision to take out the paperwork, and that after thinking it over, he said he did not “want to run in a race where it’s going to take a lot of money and a lot of time.”
At 65 years of age, Piro—who ran for a justice court seat on Catalina Island more than 20 years ago—said he would “leave it to the younger ones” to battle it out for the post. His withdrawal leaves Deputy District Attorney Valerie Salkin, Pasadena lawyer Tony de los Reyes, and San Pedro attorney R. Stephen Bollinger, who filed yesterday, as the only candidates for the seat.
Copyright 2010, Metropolitan News Company