Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Page 3
Aguirre Explains Decision to Quit State Bar Race
By a MetNews Staff Writer
State Bar Board of Governors member James Aguirre dropped out of last week’s contest for president after determining he had little chance of winning, he told the MetNews yesterday.
Aguirre, the lead attorney for the law firm of Richardson & Fair and house counsel for the Automobile Club of Southern California, serves on the board as a representative for Los Angeles County, and was one of four candidates who had declared an intent to run for State Bar president.
San Francisco attorney Jon Streeter was elected to the post on Friday, defeating fellow local representative Angela Davis, an assistant U.S. attorney, and Thousand Oaks practitioner Michael Tenenbaum, after Aguirre withdrew.
Aguirre said his “priority was to determine…the race was going down a path where the presidency was going to fall into good hands, and that certainly did happen.” The attorney insisted he “would not have withdrawn from the race if [he] didn’t have complete trust in the persons who were left in the race to fulfill the office of the presidency with great skill and distinction.”
Having determined his “chances of…winning the race would be relatively slim,” Aguirre said he decided to focus his attention on pursuing an appointment to the Judicial Council and to signify the strength of his interest in such a post by bowing out of the State Bar race.
Aguirre said he was interested in “helping with the challenges that are being faced by our courts” in light of the “unprecedented challenges” posed by the budget crisis. Based on his experience with the State Bar, the attorney said he felt he had “something to contribute, that will be of value” in terms of “finding some solutions, as part of a team,” to the judicial branch’s fiscal woes.
Copyright 2011, Metropolitan News Company