[conspire] OT: Attorney General candidate censured, barred from the bench for life

[Rick Moen]

Regulars may recall I publish on the Web election analyses for all
elections as experienced at our address in West Menlo Park
(http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/vote.html).  These are carefully
NON-advocacy pieces intended to collect and present information useful
to my fellow voters, except I allow myself a small 'RM partisan
analysis' paragraph at the bottom of each office/issue, stating my own
view.

For the Nov. 6, 2018 election, the weirdest bit by far is that one of
the two candidates for Attorney General -- the state's top legal officer
-- had been under the cloud of disciplanary proceeding for serious
misconduct (starting eight months before the election) during the 8 1/2 
years he'd been Superior Court Judge for El Dorado County (the Sierra
foothils east of Sacramento) before retiring just as he was firing up 
his AG campaign.

The candidate in question was Judge Steven C. Bailey (ret.),
a party-endorsed Republican, who in the end was trounced 63.6% to 36.4%
by Xavier Becerra.  I stress 'party-endorsed' because it would be unfair
to blame the state GOP for a crooked candidate who emerged without party
support, but Bailey _was_ strongly supported, and his history including 
having been Deputy Director in charge of Legislation for the California
Department of Social Services under Gov. Deukmejian, so this guy didn't
just come out of nowhere.

Let's cut to the chase.  Here's the outcome as I summarised it today 
on my page:

  2019-06-23 update: A panel of three special masters appointed by the
  California Supreme Court held evidentiary hearings for the Commission on
  Judicial Performance on twelve misconduct charges against Judge Bailey,
  making recommendations on fact and conclusions of law.  The Commission
  announced on 2019-02-27 that Judge Bailey committed prejudicial
  conduct in 7 of the 12 counts including unlawfully conducting his
  Attorney General campaign during his last year on the bench, and engaged
  in improper conduct in 8 of the 12 counts.  It publicly censured Judge
  Bailey, and barred him for life from California judicial office or
  accepting work from any California court. See: process overview[1], 
  press release[2], verdict[3].  Coverage: [4], [5]

  [1] https://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/overview_2019_special_masters_application_materials.pdf
  [2] https://cjp.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/2019/02/Bailey_DO_Censure_Bar_02-27-19.pdf
  [3] https://cjp.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/2019/02/Bailey_DO_Censure_Bar_02-27-19.pdf
  [4] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/GOP-candidate-for-CA-attorney-general-in-2018-is-13650787.php
  [5] https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-judge-steven-bailey-censured-20190227-story.html


And, wow, where do you even start?  The Commission noted that Bailey had
essentially regarded ethics as being for other people throughout his
time on the bench, and cited multiple examples of his blowing off
official warnings.  It noted corrupt deals he made as judge with a firm
where his son works, accepting improper gifts, not bothering to report
travel-related expense reimbursements & payments, and carrying out 
a wide variety of illegal campaign activities for his AG run while still
a judge and using the title and presige of his judicial office.

In November 2016, when Bailey was still a judge in Placerville, but was
considering running for AG in 2018, he sought advice from a judicial ethics
expert, former Judge Julie Conger, with whom Baliey was a fellow
director of the Alliance of California Judges, about how to run for
office without running afoul of ethics canons.  Conger's advice included
doing no campaign activities until after taking a leave of absence from
the bench.  Half a year later, Conger sent him e-mail noting his ongoing
campaign activity and that he'd disregarded her advice, and retierated
that advice and suggested he resign as an Alliance of California Judges
director.  He did resign from the alliance, but continued to ignore her
ethics advice while staying on the bench until his 2017-08-31 retirement.

In front of the Commission, Bailey claimed that he wasn't _really_ a
candidate until after retirement; that was just an 'exploratory
committee'.  And besides, he claimed any restriction on his partisan
speech while on the bench would violate his First Amendment rights, 
and sees pretty nearly everything he was criticised for (except a couple
of regulatory filing errors) as perfectly right and proper (and that the
whole thing was judge a political hit job).

So, he got rightfully ejected for life from the judge & courtroom
business -- albeit after retirement.  Because his many-years-long
pattern of deliberate ethics violations couldn't be clearer.

And I see no sign of remorse or introspection from the California
Republican Party, for running a career scofflaw to be our chief law
enforcement officer.