By Alice C. Paine

The King County Bar Association has a long-standing concern about the conduct of judicial elections. The Fair Campaign Practices Committee, this year chaired by Neal Philip at the Carney Badley Spellman firm, is charged with the responsibility of investigating complaints about unfair judicial campaign conduct and recommending appropriate action to the Board of Trustees.

Within the practical time constraints of the political process, the Committee makes every effort to provide candidates about whom complaints are received with notice and opportunity to respond to the complaints, but is not designed to serve a disciplinary function. To the extent that conduct complained about appears to warrant discipline, KCBA may comment on the conduct and also refer a complaint to the Washington State Bar Association or the Washington Commission on Judicial Conduct, as appropriate.

In evaluating complaints about judicial campaign conduct, the primary sources to which the Committee refers for standards are the Rules of Professional Conduct, especially RPC 8.2, the Code of Judicial Conduct, especially CJC 7(B), and the Public Disclosure Act, RCW 42.17. In addition, the Committee considers opinions of bar associations and courts that have interpreted these (or analogous) rules or statutory provisions.

A frequent source of complaint in recent years has related to misrepresentations about incumbency, usually in advertising on yard signs. Candidates who are not incumbents may not imply that they are currently a judge or use signs that arrange and use the candidate’s name and the word “judge” in such a way as to invite viewers to draw the erroneous conclusion that the candidate is an incumbent judge.

The Association’s goal is the promotion of fair judicial campaigns. We are aware that judicial campaigns are part of a political process, and we do not wish to inhibit vigorous debate. At the same time, we are committed to the proposition (codified in the Code of Judicial Conduct) that the public is poorly served by deceptive or misleading campaigns or by campaigns in which candidates publicly adjudicate cases they have not yet heard.