Thursday, March 7, 2002
Page 7
PERSPECTIVES (Column)
No Clear-Cut Answer on Relative Potency of Ballot Designations
By ROGER M. GRACE
Which ballot designation carries more clout: “prosecutor” or “administrative law judge”?
That’s the question posed in my last column. It was a question that potentially would be answered by voters on Tuesday. In two contests — for Superior Court Offices 2 and 100 — there was a deputy district attorney and an ALJ competing in a field of three candidates.
In each of those races, the prosecutor garnered more votes than the hearing officer. However, both prosecutors had something going for them in addition to the ballot designations, meaning that no clear-cut answer was provided.
In the contest for Office No. One, Criminal Prosecutor Hank Goldberg drew 37 percent of the vote, followed by Eldercare Attorney Joseph “Joe” Deering with 32.35 percent, and Administrative Law Judge Donald Renetzky with 30.65 percent. Goldberg had name recognition—he was a prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson case — and had the endorsement of the Los Angeles Times.
Results for Office 100 were: Criminal Trial Prosecutor Richard F. Walmark, 45.72 percent; Administrative Law Judge John C. Gutierrez, 40.6 percent; Trial Attorney Thomas H. Warden, 13.68 percent. If all things were equal, that would indicate a designation as a prosecutor attracts more votes. However, Walmark had other advantages: he was on numerous slates and bagged the endorsement of the Times.
The election results do reaffirm the significance of candidate statements. It stands to reason that Deering, with his relatively weak ballot designation, would not have made it into the run-off but for having spent $27,000-plus on an advertisement in the sample ballot booklet.
Paul A. Bacigalupo, designated a “Judge, State Bar,” also had a candidate statement, and led the pack of four candidates, pulling 36.18 percent of the vote. He’s in a run-off with Criminal Prosecutor David Gelfound, who captured 29.09 percent of the ballots.
Another factor in the results appears to be what is now the advantage of having a Hispanic surname. In years gone by, political consultant and pundit Joe Cerrell said that such a surname constituted a five percentage point detriment to a candidate. Hispanics were then low propensity voters. That’s changed. A Hispanic surname is the only conceivable reason why Attorney Richard A. Espinoza came in second in a four-person race for Office No. 53, nearly forcing Criminal Prosecutor Lauren Weis into a run-off. Espinoza drew 24.12 percent to Weis’s 51.11.
Other candidates with Hispanic surnames also did well: Gutierrez, who’s in a run-off with Walmark, and Deputy District Richard Attorney Richard E. Naranjo (40.05%), in a run-off for Office No. 39 with Criminal Prosecutor Craig Renetzky (36.08%).
The last-place showing in the contest for Office No. 39 by candidate Larry H. Layton (23.87%) — who was designated “Law School Professor” — shows that most voters prefer candidates who put bad guys behind bars over academicians.
Nonetheless, there is a limited appeal to the designation. It apparently helped incumbent Floyd V. Baxter, who was billed as “Judge/Law Professor.” As it happens, he is not a law professor — he teaches once a week at a junior college — and, for that matter, isn’t much of a judge. However, voters were apparently impressed by the ballot designation to the point of awarding him 76.12 percent of the votes in his tiff with a challenger, Ross Stucker, who neither spent money nor campaigned.
Baxter outpolled the other challenged incumbent, Superior Court Judge Robert Simpson, who accumulated 66.2 percent of the votes. Simpson did not have the “Law Professor” designation and had a challenger, Kenneth E. Wright, whose name was on some slates and who had a more vote-attracting surname than “Stucker.”
The Times’ endorsements no doubt played a significant role in the outcome of the matches. As noted in the story on Page One, every Times-endorsed candidate either won or came in first and faces a run-off.
‘SKIP’ BYRNE SAYS... — My wife and I were waiting to vote Tuesday when a woman ahead of us in line turned around and said, “You know, I have no idea who to vote for for judges, do you?”
We desisted from sharing with her the MetNews recommendations. However, a woman a few feet away, who apparently knew the person making the inquiry, piped up:
“Skip Byrne says to vote against Baxter — and on Simpson, yes.”
She then explained, for the benefit of others waiting to vote:
“Skip Byrne is a former judge.”
Former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Richard P. Byrne had been quoted during the campaign as commenting on Baxter’s seeming unfitness for office based on his unlawful jailing of a defendant at a time she was statutorily entitled to being released on bail. I gather he spread the word to vote against the Newhall jurist, and to support Simpson.
By the way, no poll-watcher even uttered “ahem” while the politicking was going on. In fact, when I pointed out to a poll-watcher that a man was standing right behind a woman (presumably his wife) watching her mark her ballot, he said he thought that was OK, but that it wasn’t covered in the videotape he watched on procedures at the polls.
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company