Michael Nava Reaffirmed

The Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) of San Francisco met early Wednesday evening to vote on their many endorsements for the November 2nd election to be held in three months.



The room was a small, narrow union hall in the Tenderloin on Golden Gate Avenue, and it was stuffed to the gills with the 33 voting members of the DCCC and a couple of hundred interested parties sitting and standing against the walls.



The meeting agenda was juggled so that The Controversial Case of Michael Nava (above left) could be heard first. The DCCC had endorsed Nava in his run for Superior Court Judge during June's primary election against an incumbent judge, Richard Ulmer, and another challenger. Nava won the election but didn't gather the 50%+ majority required, so he is running against Ulmer alone this November 2nd.

After the primary, a legal cabal, spearheaded by presiding state Court of Appeals judge Anthony Kline and presiding San Francisco Superior Court Judge James McBride, decided to do everything possible to make sure Ulmer wins the November contest. It fits in with their vision of "judicial independence," which is another way of saying they don't believe judges should have to stand for election if at all possible.



A good article by Tim Redmond at the Bay Guardian (click here) details the campaign against Nava, including a war cabinet meeting of judges summoned for battle at the law offices of Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro in early July. The main organizers, by the way, are all Democratic judges rather than Republican ones as has been misreported elsewhere, which only made the meeting that much more disgraceful. It really was about protecting an insular, class-bound white man's club. According to the article, the main dissenter was the indispensable Peter Keane, dean emeritus of Golden Gate Law University, who was quoted as following:

Keane said that “to frame this as an independence of the judicary question cheapens that argument.” Nava, he said, has every legal right to run and make the case that he’d be a better judge than Ulmer. “Ulmer’s been endorsed by the Republicans,” Keane said. “So what’s wrong if Nava is endorsed by the Democrats?” Keane said he’d voted for Ulmer in June, but was switching to supporting Nava this fall, in part because he sees a powerful attack coming down against the challenger. “A lot of Brahmins in the legal society have gotten stampeded into the lynch mob against Michael,” he said.

The political pressure brought to bear by statewide heavyweights was impressive, led by John Burton who is the Chairman of the California Democratic Party. On Saturday afternoon, there was a meeting of the DCCC to hear a quintet of Nava's judicial attackers, including gay Superior Court Judge Kevin McCarthy. According to an article by Kate Moser in "The Recorder" legal paper:

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Kevin McCarthy also spoke at the meeting, saying Nava's challenge is different from his own. McCarthy, one of three candidates to successfully challenge an incumbent San Francisco judge in the past 20 years, said he decided to run in the 1990s when he was discouraged by what he saw as an unwillingness by governors to appoint lesbian and gay candidates to the bench. "I did it because there was no other choice," McCarthy said. Despite the comparisons of McCarthy's path to Nava's, he said, "in the context of this particular race, the balance between diversity and judicial independence is different." There are "people in the pipeline now" from the LGBT community, he said, in line for appointments.

I believe this is called slamming the door shut once you've entered yourself.



The debate on rescinding Michael Nava's endorsement started off with a rambling disquisition by the former California State Senator newly elected to the DCCC, Carol Migden. She was spearheading the defense of "judicial independence" and continuity in the courts, and it soon became obvious that Frank Chu (above) is a model of clear-thinking sanity compared to the lunatic Ms. Migden.



Then Supervisor David Campos, a friend of Michael Nava, stood up to speak, and he gave one of the most impassioned, angry and beautiful speeches I've heard from him or any other politician lately. He first detailed the reasons why Nava should be elected as judge and then described the outrageous campaign of political pressure by judges who were doing so in the name of "keeping politics out of the judiciary." By their very acts, he said, they were making the election that much more political with every bit of lobbying. Greg Kamin at Fog City Journal wrote the best account of the meeting I have found (click here). Here's an excerpt:

Um… yeah. It’s every bit as bad as it sounds. The rationale seems to be that incumbent judges shouldn’t have to face opponents for re-election. Back when I lived in the Soviet Union, they had elections where you only had one candidate, and (surprise surprise) that candidate always won. But last time I checked, the Iron Curtain came down, and this is not the Soviet Politburo. Former California Senator Carole Migden and Attorney Bill Fazio, who squeaked into 12th place on the west side, had requested a re-vote, on the somewhat specious reasoning that they didn’t have a chance to participate the first time. Migden spoke first, repeating the assertion that incumbent judges should be given the benefit of the doubt. But boy, was team Nava ready for them! Supervisor David Campos gave one of his most eloquent and passionate speeches ever. The audience repeatedly applauded. La Raza Lawyers Foundation was in the house. Alice B. Toklas Club members were on hand to lend support. By the time DCCC member Arlo Hale Smith started speaking in favor of keeping the endorsement, it was pretty clear that the coup had failed.

The final, shortest speech came from chairman Aaron Peskin who noted the "double standard" of the judiciary requesting that the Democratic County Committee stay neutral in the race while Ulmer, the Decline-to-State candidate, had already requested and received the official endorsement of the San Francisco Republican Party.



The entire scene was quite dramatic, and by the end the near-unanimous vote against rescinding Michael Nava's endorsement was greeted with cheers. The only person posting a yea for a revote was Mad Ms. Migden, the nemesis of CBS-TV Blogger Beth Spotswood (above).



Michael Nava looked a bit blown away and bewildered by the entire drama, though he shouldn't have been, since the scene was straight out of one of his seven Henry Rios detective novels. If you've read the series, one of the best California detective fictions ever, it's obvious why Nava would make a great judge. If you haven't, the best reason to vote for him is what a commenter wrote in response to the Bay Guardian article:

We have a system that allows for the election of judges. I'm not convinced that it's necessarily the best system, but it's what we have to work with. As such, my duty as a voter is to cast my vote for whomever I think will be the best superior court judge. That will be Nava. It's not because he's gay or Latino, it's because he's the better candidate. This is a guy who took his Stanford J.D. and worked as a prosecutor in L.A. instead of settling for a six figure salary at a big firm. Ulmer, on the other hand, took his Stanford J.D. straight to a series of big corporate law firms. There's nothing wrong with that, but for a judge I value Nava's experience in a City Attorney's Office *and* in private practice at a seriously intense boutique litigation firm over Ulmer's more thin experience at large corporate law firms.

The strongest element of diversity that Nava brings isn't his race or sexual orientation, it's his experience working in a wide range of legal contexts.