If it weren’t for local newspapers, many local judicial races might have gotten no coverage

Editor’s Note: This post is the third install­ment in a series focus­ing on most­ly ignored state and local judi­cial con­tests in the 2018 midterm elec­tions. Read the first post in the series — focus­ing on the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court and the con­test between Jus­tice Steve Gon­za­lez and his chal­lenger — by fol­low­ing this link. The sec­ond post in the series, focus­ing on this year’s sole con­test­ed race for Court of Appeals, in north­west Wash­ing­ton, is also worth read­ing.

Newsprint has been called a dead medi­um many times in the last few years, but if it weren’t for local dai­ly and week­ly news­pa­pers, we’d be total­ly bereft of cov­er­age of many impor­tant issues and con­cerns… like judi­cial elec­tions, which many vot­ers have dif­fi­cul­ty fig­ur­ing out because of a lack of infor­ma­tion about the candidates.

All judi­cial con­tests in Wash­ing­ton are non­par­ti­san, so the can­di­dates’ names appear on our bal­lots with no par­ty affil­i­a­tion or cues of any kind. The bal­lots don’t even say who is an incum­bent judge or jus­tice (if one is run­ning). They sim­ply list the can­di­dates’ names, the posi­tion they are seek­ing for, and the term length.

Tele­vi­sion and radio sta­tions almost nev­er cov­er judi­cial races, not even high pro­file ones, which means that our sur­viv­ing news­pa­pers are almost the only media out­lets devot­ing resources to pro­duc­ing jour­nal­ism about these elections.

There aren’t many oth­er resources avail­able to vot­ers to com­pen­sate for the dearth of cov­er­age, either. There’s VotingForJudges.org, but in most races, it sim­ply offers the can­di­dates’ vot­er pam­phlet state­ments and links to their PDC reports.

Some orga­ni­za­tions vet judi­cial can­di­dates pri­or to prepar­ing sam­ple bal­lots or endorse­ment guides for their mem­bers, but the infor­ma­tion they col­lect (like ques­tion­naire respons­es) isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly made avail­able to the public.

Here at NPI, we’ve been try­ing to shine a spot­light on as many judi­cial con­tests as we can before Novem­ber 6th through the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, and urg­ing more media out­lets (espe­cial­ly tele­vi­sion and radio sta­tions) to do likewise.

While we have pub­lished our own posts explor­ing judi­cial con­tests on this blog and plan to pub­lish more, we also want to rec­og­nize the news­pa­pers that have been doing the same over the past few weeks with­out any prompt­ing or cajoling.

Our first shout-out goes to The Dai­ly Her­ald of Everett, which pub­lished a sto­ry exam­in­ing the race for Cas­cade Dis­trict Court up in Sno­homish Coun­ty.

As a judge in north Sno­homish Coun­ty seeks anoth­er four years on the bench, the local legal estab­lish­ment is lin­ing up behind her chal­lenger — and urg­ing vot­ers to do the same.

Kris­ten Olbrechts ran unop­posed four years ago for judge in Arling­ton-based Cas­cade Dis­trict Court. This cam­paign promis­es to be hard­er. It is prov­ing to be pricey and large­ly self-financed.

Chal­lenger Jen­nifer Ran­court, a Sno­homish Coun­ty pub­lic defend­er and chair­woman of the state Clemen­cy & Par­dons Board, has shored up over­whelm­ing sup­port from the county’s sit­ting and retired judges, along with oth­er key local legal fig­ures. The county’s oth­er sev­en dis­trict court races are all uncontested.

Read the whole thing.

Our sec­ond shout-out goes to The Dai­ly World in Aberdeen, which pub­lished a sto­ry look­ing at the race for Grays Har­bor Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court.

The two can­di­dates for Grays Har­bor Supe­ri­or Court Judge Posi­tion 3 dis­cussed their qual­i­fi­ca­tions with The Dai­ly World edi­to­r­i­al board on Thurs­day and dif­fered wide­ly in their views about a recent con­tro­ver­sial attempt­ed abduc­tion case cur­rent­ly being appealed.

The case was decid­ed by cur­rent Judge Ray Kahler.

His chal­lenger is David Mis­tachkin, a lawyer and part­ner with the Aberdeen firm of Ingram, Zelasko & Good­win. Mis­tachkin served as a Grays Har­bor Dis­trict Court Judge (2015–2016) and often works as a defense attor­ney. Kahler was appoint­ed to the court last Jan­u­ary to fill the seat of retired Judge Mark McCauley.

Kahler was an attor­ney and for­mer part­ner at Strit­mat­ter Kessler Whe­lan (offices in Hoquiam and Seat­tle) for twen­ty-one years pri­or to his appoint­ment, work­ing most­ly in the area of per­son­al injury cases.

Read the whole thing.

In addi­tion to that sto­ry, The Dai­ly World also pub­lished a Q&A with each of the can­di­dates plus an edi­to­r­i­al lay­ing out their ratio­nale for back­ing Kahler.

Bra­vo to them for pro­vid­ing this cov­er­age to their readers!

Our third shout-out goes to the Cash­mere Val­ley Record for cov­er­ing the judi­cial con­tests that Chelan Coun­ty vot­ers will have to sort out this year.

Two by two they were intro­duced, but not to debate nor to enter an ark, but sim­ply to answer a few ques­tions and give their open­ing and clos­ing state­ments. It was­n’t exact­ly a barn-burn­er of a night, but it did give a chance for the peo­ple to see and com­pare can­di­dates for Chelan Coun­ty Dis­trict and Supe­ri­or Court judges.

Most of the audi­ence of around fifty were par­ti­san to one or anoth­er can­di­dates with plac­ards, T‑shirts and var­i­ous para­pher­na­lia extant in the gallery. Wenatchee Val­ley Cham­ber of Com­merce Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Shiloh (Schauer) Burgess intro­duced the for­mat and end­ed the evening at the com­mu­ni­ty room of the Pybus Pub­lic Mar­ket, Thurs­day, Oct. 18.

Read the whole thing.

Our fourth shout out goes to the Skag­it Val­ley Her­ald for cov­er­ing their com­mu­ni­ty’s Supe­ri­or Court race between Rose­mary Kaholoku­la and Lau­ra Riquelme.

The win­ner of the elec­tion will serve the remain­ing two years of the term of Michael Rick­ert, who retired in 2017.

Riquelme has twice been appoint­ed a Skag­it Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court judge by Gov. Jay Inslee, once in 2016 and again in 2017, to fill vacan­cies cre­at­ed by retir­ing judges Susan Cook and Rickert.

Read the whole thing.

Our fifth and final shout out goes to the Spokesman-Review of Spokane for pub­lish­ing a com­pre­hen­sive piece on their Supe­ri­or Court race back in Sep­tem­ber, pit­ting attor­ney Den­nis Cronin against Judge Michelle Szambelan.

Both can­di­dates have a sto­ried his­to­ry in the coun­ty and as such have received wide­spread sup­port in the non­par­ti­san race.

Szam­be­lan, who has received endorse­ments from nine sit­ting Supe­ri­or Court judges, all eight Dis­trict Court judges and her three ex-col­leagues at Munic­i­pal Court, also has earned the sup­port of May­or David Con­don, City Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Ben Stuckart and Coun­cil­women Can­dace Mumm and Lori Kin­n­ear, accord­ing to her website.

“I’ve had real­ly good expe­ri­ences with Judge Szam­be­lan as a Munic­i­pal Court judge. I think she’s excel­lent,” said Stuckart on Thurs­day. “But I also think Den­nis Cronin is great as well. I think he’s real­ly knowledgeable.”

Cronin, mean­while, has won over many local labor unions, the coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and local activists, includ­ing Pas­tor Wal­ter Kendricks of the Morn­ing Star Mis­sion­ary Bap­tist Church. He also has endorse­ments from a long list of local attor­neys, as does Szambelan.

The Spokesman-Review has also had the best cov­er­age of any paper in the state of our State Supreme Court race. Their edi­tors and reporters were pro­duc­ing much-need­ed jour­nal­ism long before oth­er media out­lets took an inter­est in the race.

I hope I’ve suc­ceed­ed in this post in demon­strat­ing the val­ue that our sur­viv­ing dai­ly and week­ly news­pa­pers have to our com­mu­ni­ties. With­out them, we’d have pret­ty much no report­ing what­so­ev­er about crit­i­cal judi­cial con­tests at the coun­ty and local lev­el. Online-only media are sim­ply not a replace­ment for local news­pa­pers and can’t always pro­vide the kind of high qual­i­ty cov­er­age that news­pa­pers do. Please sub­scribe to your local paper if it’s not a free week­ly, and help keep it in business.