ABQ JOURNAL ENDORSEMENTS JUDGES CODE
ABQ JOURNAL ENDORSEMENTS JUDGES TRIAL

“To me, it was important to balance what I thought would be people’s perceptions of my making an endorsement with my belief of how important this year’s election is going to be,” Kagarise said. Kagarise said he knew that his decision to endorse one of three candidates seeking a county judicial seat would generate questions - and he said he weighed the pros and cons.

ABQ JOURNAL ENDORSEMENTS JUDGES CODE

Specifically, a portion of the Code of Judicial Conduct states that a judge, when a candidate for election or re-election, “may speak on behalf of any judicial candidate for the same office.”īy asking the Judicial Ethics Advisory Board to review his intention - and getting its OK - Kagarise secured what is referred to as “rule of reliance” protection that he can use if a complaint is lodged against him with the state’s Judicial Conduct Board.

Kagarise said that based on prior rulings by the ethics committee - addressing election activities by judges up for retention - he believed he could write the letter endorsing Blair County judicial candidate David Consiglio.

ABQ JOURNAL ENDORSEMENTS JUDGES TRIAL

The board, which replaced the former Judicial Ethics Committee of the state Conference of Trial Judges, is assigned the task of providing advisory opinions regarding the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct. The Judicial Ethics Advisory Board, formed in 2022 by an order of the state Supreme Court, is currently made up of eight judges from appellate, county, municipal and magisterial district courts, and one attorney. Had he not been seeking retention, he said the board’s answer would have been no. The board’s answer was that he was allowed to do so because he is running for retention in November. Kagarise, who will be up for retention in November, said that before he wrote the candidate endorsement letters, published by the Altoona Mirror and other newspapers, he asked for the state’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Board to review his intention to endorse a candidate. “But there is a long-term trend of judicial elections looking like legislative and executive elections, more and more in terms of campaign activities, fundraising, advertising, etc.” “I don’t have any data on how common this is nationally and how it varies by level of court,” Nelson said. In that state, the justices on a politically divided court openly endorsed Daniel Kelly, a conservative former state Supreme Court justice, or Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge who went onto win the seat. Penn State political science professor Michael Nelson said he’s not surprised to hear of judicial endorsements and referred to the Wisconsin Supreme Court election that attracted a lot of press earlier this year.

Abq journal endorsements judges