Friday, Nov. 5, 2004 | 11:11 a.m.
One of two Family Court judges deposed in Tuesday's election is investigating whether a flier endorsing his opponent was a violation of judicial or election regulations.
Judge Robert Lueck said Thursday that he believes the flier, mailed to Clark County Republicans by a group called the Republican Judicial Caucus, was largely responsible for his defeat.
"This was clearly a vote along party lines," Lueck said. "It wasn't a vote about who's the better candidate."
The upset of two veteran Family Court judges was arguably the biggest surprise result in the local races settled Tuesday. Incumbent judges are usually retained if they haven't been the subjects of bad publicity.
Lueck lost to attorney Sandra Pomrenze, 55 to 45 percent. Judge Bob Gaston, on the bench for 12 years, lost to attorney Stefany Miley 55-45 percent.
The third Family Court judge up for election, Gerald Hardcastle, pulled out a slim victory, 51-49 percent, against lawyer Elizabeth Halverson.
Lueck was researching the flier issue Thursday and had not yet taken any action. The flier, which Lueck said was mailed to more than 100,000 registered Republicans in Clark County, states: "It is important to elect Republicans in non-partisan races."
On the other side, the card accurately lists Republican candidates for Supreme Court, District Court, Family Court and Justice Court, as well as educational races, under the heading, "Please use this card to fill out your ballot or take this to the polls."
The card purports to be "paid for by the Republican Judicial Caucus," a group that is not registered as a political action committee with the Secretary of State's office.
Chris Carr, executive director of the state Republican Party, said this morning that he believed the group was composed of members of the party's Central Committee. That could not be verified by press time.
Carr said he saw nothing wrong with the mailing. "Voters have every right to know how a judge is registered to vote," he said.
Although Lueck and others said they hadn't heard of partisan involvement in nonpartisan races before, Carr said the GOP sent out a slate for nonpartisan contests in 2002.
The flier endorsed all three winning Family Court candidates, though it also endorsed Hardcastle's opponent. Nevertheless, its track record wasn't great: of the nine judicial candidates listed, five lost.
The flier probably wasn't illegal under First Amendment free-speech laws, but it did violate the spirit of a nonpartisan contest, said Cynthia Gray, Chicago-based director of the Center for Judicial Ethics of the American Judicature Society.
"The people of your state have said that these are supposed to be nonpartisan elections," she said. "It sort of goes contrary to that to introduce partisanship."
Felix Stumpf, a consultant to the National Judicial College in Reno, said he had never heard of partisan mailings for judges before. He noted that some states have openly partisan judicial races.
"I think it's an unfortunate development, because I don't think the political party should govern the selection of a judge," he said. "Most cases really don't involve any political (issues)."
The crux of the matter is the process of electing judges. Academics, political consultants, lawyers and the judges themselves agree that voters have little to go on when they choose judges -- even if they've been paying attention to these low-profile races.
In such an atmosphere, voters seize on recognizable factors for guidance -- a candidate's name, gender, endorsements, and now political party.
Lueck said the election result came as a rude shock. "With the credentials I have for this office and the endorsements I have, I thought I was in pretty good shape," he said.
But Lueck had his detractors, and a group of disgruntled former litigants mounted an aggressive "Dump Lueck" push, calling him a "dangerous" and "activist" judge in protests, Web sites and signs.
An e-mail to one of the group's Web sites was answered by a person using the alias Incan Cole who would not identify him- or herself, citing fears of retaliation from Lueck.
"We as a group felt that we had a significant impact on how the election turned out," the person wrote.
The group appears to be affiliated with the fathers'-rights movement, which also had a beef with Gaston, who was alleged to favor mothers too heavily in custody disputes.
Gaston was not available for comment Thursday, and his opponent, Miley, could not be reached.
The candidate who defeated Lueck, Pomrenze, refused to criticize the deposed judge but said the position of family court judges, who decide divorce and custody issues, is a sensitive one.
"You're dealing with some of the most crucial issues to families," Pomrenze said. "Emotions run high, and if people don't feel they've been listened to and treated with respect -- if they don't know what to expect when they walk in and they don't know what happened when they walk out -- you create chaos."
Family Court Judge Dianne Steel, who lost her own bid for state Supreme Court, said family court judges can't help making enemies. "You're talking to people about the very heart of their being -- their income, the way they provide for their family, their children," she said.
Every decision will produce one unhappy party, Steel said, and the most judicious decision might produce two. She noted that she won her first election, in 1992, against an incumbent hearing master who drew picketers upset with his decisions.
"It could happen to anyone," she said.
Steel, a former Republican assemblywoman who is named on the ostensibly Republican flier, said she was notified about it before its release but had nothing to do with it. She would not reveal the name of the person who contacted her about the mailing.
Pomrenze said she, too, heard about the flier in advance but couldn't remember who told her. "It was basically through the grapevine," she said.
Veteran Democratic political consultant Billy Vassiliadis, who ran the successful Supreme Court campaign of Clark County District Judge Ron Parraguirre, denounced the flier as improperly politicizing contests that shouldn't be political.
"I don't think it's appropriate, I don't think it's germane, I don't think it's relevant," he said. "These are ladies and gentlemen we expect to serve impartially."
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