Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Toxic politics have been around forever, and there certainly is no shortage today. But for the last two decades, the New Mexico judiciary has been mostly free of this scourge, thanks to a constitutional amendment that set up a system of merit selection and retention elections, and to strong rules promulgated by the Supreme Court limiting judges’ participation in political activities.
Unfortunately, that amendment contained a provision that required judges appointed through the process to stand for one partisan election before the retention system kicked in. Perhaps surprisingly, those involved in those partisan elections — judges and their supporters — have generally eschewed politics and followed the spirit of the merit/retention system.
But like water that finds the weak point in a dam, that changed this year when a political action committee, funded in large part by some trial lawyers, unleashed a social media and television attack on five Republican appellate court judicial candidates appointed by Gov. Susana Martinez portraying them as her puppets.
All five had been screened for qualifications and their names included on lists sent to the governor by the bipartisan Judicial Nominating Commissions. The puppet attack was a ridiculous assertion designed to appeal to party-line Democrat voters in what typically are low-information judicial races.
It’s worth noting the attack by “Safety and Justice for All” spared a Democrat appointed by Martinez through the same process.
All five Republican candidates lost — as they might well have anyway in New Mexico’s blue-wave election. It’s worth noting one of the Democrat judicial candidates will take office in January without having gone through the screening process. Whether she would have been recommended by a nominating commission after the vetting is something we’ll never know; and it’s worth noting all winners condemned the attack ad on their opponents.
As District Judge Briana Zamora of Albuquerque, who has now won a seat on the Court of Appeals, put it, “We do not condone these type of ads and believe they have no place in judicial races.”
Well said.
The broader concern here is that these trial lawyers have opened up judicial races as fair game to outside campaigning and money by other special-interest groups in future elections. And, make no mistake, the trial lawyers are a special-interest group — just like oil and gas, auto manufacturers and insurance companies. They would have skin in the game to push for a “friendly” makeup of the state Court of Appeals and Supreme Court. In fact, a majority of the Supreme Court could be on the partisan election ballot in 2020.
The system in place now is a huge improvement over what we had before voters approved the constitutional amendment. It has improved the quality of the judiciary and for the most part taken the bare-knuckle politics out of it.
But this election has exposed a serious flaw and its ability to undo so much of the good that has been achieved. It’s time for the new governor and the Legislature, firmly in Democrat hands, to push for a constitutional amendment fix that would eliminate the partisan election for our judiciary, leaving us with merit selection and retention.
— Albuquerque Journal