Your Opinion: Inappropriate rhetoric

Dear Editor:

Perhaps the biggest problem facing democracy today is the power of big money to shape and control the election process. Money buys campaign managers, media experts, television time, newspaper ads, mass mailings, robo calls, brochures, leaflets, yard signs, etc.

When a big money campaign is used to contest an election for a legislative or executive office that is one thing. Those offices involve the making and implementing of policy. An election for a judicial office is something else.

The role of a judge is to hear specific cases, ascertain the facts, apply the law to the facts and reach a decision. Whether one side or the other wins depends on the facts of the case and the law, and this has implications for the conduct of judicial elections.

In the first place the voters are being asked to do something that they are not well equipped to do - determine whether one candidate or another is best equipped to understand the law and apply it to the facts of particular cases. It is not like picking a candidate for legislative office who represents one set of policies over a candidate who represents a different set of policies. In a judicial election it is a matter of picking a candidate best equipped to perform a technical legal task.

Thus in a judicial campaign it is off the mark to claim that a sitting judge rules improperly for or against such groups as "environmental activists" or "liberal special interests." Such a claim should only be made if supported by an examination of specific instances including both the facts and law that were involved in those instances.

Unfortunately in the present election for circuit judge in Cole County such claims, supported by no reference to the facts or law of the cases, have been made by Brian Stumpe (see News Tribune, 10/8/14) in his campaign against Judge Pat Joyce. A disregard for the facts and law of cases being relied on calls into question Mr. Stumpe's fitness to serve as a judge, for it is reverence for the facts and the law that is crucial for a judge.

Not only is Stumpe's campaign rhetoric inappropriate to the office he seeks but he does it as the candidate backed by $200,000 of anonymous out-of-state campaign contributions (See News Tribune, Oct. 19).

Someone really wants Mr. Stumpe elected.

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