Judge Anne Covey - May 19th
- Thread starter wensilver
- Start date
Just a clarification on wensilver's notice: Judge Covey is running in the Republican primary for Justice of the Supreme Court. Those voting in the primary as Democrats will not have the opportunity to vote for her (unless they elect to write her name in).
Should Judge Covey be one of the top 3 vote getters in the Republican primary on Tuesday, then Democrats and Independents will have the opportunity to vote for her in the general election in November.
Should Judge Covey be one of the top 3 vote getters in the Republican primary on Tuesday, then Democrats and Independents will have the opportunity to vote for her in the general election in November.
If you are a Republican, I would suggest you vote for Anne Covey, not because of what she did for Penn State, but because she would make a great Supreme Court Justice, and she will.
Dems and Independents should absolutely take the time to write her name in because she is worthy. Judges should not be identified by political party anyway.
It is ridiculous that we have democratic and republican judges. No wonder the system is broken.
I'm not a PA resident and so find it astounding that judges run on party tickets. Political ideology should not be factor in rendering justice, at least not so overtly.
I read her profile and stances on issues and she will have my vote most assuredly.
The Commonwealth of PA is many fine things. Alas, it's never found a judicial selection process that its residents, its judges, or other were proud of.
Initially, judges were appointed by the Executive Council. (The first PA Constitution had an Executive Council that ran the Commonwealth.) In 1790 the PA Constitution was amended to replace the Executive Council with a Governor. The Governor appointed all judges.
In 1850, the PA Constitution was modified after the PA Legislature approved, and the voters also approved, an amendment that made all judicial positions elected (all those that were in place had to run for their seats), and only vacancies were filled by Governor appointment.
The process nearly reverted back to appointment at the 1872-73 Constitutional Convention, but a compromise was reached that changed the terms of judges and eliminated their ability to run for 2nd terms.
There was a brief period of non-partisan elections. In 1913, legislation was passed which required judicial candidates to be elected through non-partisan ballots. Unfortunately, that was rather short lived, as the legislation was repealed in 1921.
Since there, there have been all kinds of efforts to move toward merit selection, but none have come to fruition. The PA Bar Association endorsed such a plan in 1947, the League of Women Voters did the same in 1956, and two separate commissions that were established to study and recommend revisions to the PA Constitution (in 1959 and 1963) endorsed the merit selection.
There was another Constitution Convention in 1967-68 which looked at the issue. The result of this was that in the 1968 primary, citizens of the Commonwealth voted on an article that established retention elections for sitting judges as well as a plan to vote on merit selection of appellate judges the following year in the primary election.
This article passed, which caused 2 things to happen:
1) retention elections were adopted, so term limits were removed
2) an election was held the following year on whether to elect judges or have them appointed
In the 1969 primary, the vote on appointment versus election of judges was extremely close. Of just under 1.3 million votes cast, the status quo (electing judges) was victorious over the appointment option by 19,500 votes.
There have been efforts since then to move away from judicial elections. Probably the closest the Commonwealth came to moving to merit selection was under Former Governor Tom Ridge. He was in favor of the idea, and his administration worked with Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts to cobble together a proposal to take to the voters. Alas, before that came to fruition, Ridge was asked by Pres. Bush to become the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security (later the Secretary of Homeland Security), and with his departing the Governor's Mansion, the proposal never was introduced to the legislature. Since then, a number of legislators have introduced bills for merit selection, but none of them have passed.
That commercial cracks me up. Is she running for State Chiropractor?
BACKBONE..........BZZZZZZZZZZT!
I don't think that was ever proven. Judge Covey did suggest that Eckel had a conflict of interest when serving on the PA Bar Association's Judicial Evaluation Commission when they considered her candidacy, which was also the same time that she was the Judge in the Corman/McCord lawsuit.
I am a great supporter of the PA Bar Association evaluations, and have used them when deciding how to vote for judges in the past. That said, I don't agree with the PA Bar in their evaluation of Judge Covey. They didn't even rate her. As best as I can tell, their issue with her is a campaign piece she used in her previous race for Commonwealth Court. I've seen the campaign piece, and I don't think there is anything wrong with it. IMHO, the Bar Association's evaluation commission should evaluate judicial candidates on their lawyer careers, their involvement in improving the judicial system, and their opinions as judges (for those that are judges). PA judges are elected, and many current judges have been elected more on whether they had the funds to run flimsy campaign pieces as opposed to what type of judge they will be. In that context, I think the Bar Association is being rather unrealistic in its evaluation of Judge Covey.
Tom, you have more faith in the BPA ratings than I do. The lack of transparency by their evaluation commission has always bothered me. I will leave it at that. Of course, many of my fellow members of the bar agree with you. Unfortunately, it is difficult for all voters, including lawyers, to make an informed decision on judicial candidates. That said, I have done as much research as I reasonably could on Judge Covey and I believe she will make a superb Supreme Court Justice.
Very informative, Tom, thanks. The problem with so-called "merit" selection is that it is STILL an election, only a lot fewer people get to vote. Works great if your gov is not an idiot, but we have recent experience where the opposite is true. Out of all the means of picking judges, I think non-partisan elections are the best. Nobody runs on a party ticket, and the race is decided in the primary. WV has just moved to this method of selection and I am very hopeful it will be an improvement.
Rumor has that Kay Savino's husband did the dirty work; Savino is current president of PSAA and will be on the BoT in July.
I probably agree with you more than my earlier post may have indicated. I do think the evaluation commission should be more open. IMHO, things are even worse at the local levels. The PA Bar only offers recommendations on statewide judicial candidates. Local judicial races are left to the local bar associations. Some don't actually do evaluations, at least in a formal sense, but they will survey their members about candidates and publish those results.
That said, I usually start with the Bar Association recommendations, and then do additional research on the various candidates. I'll also check to see which candidates receive newspaper endorsements, though it's disappointing how many papers in the Commonwealth don't offer endorsements for judicial candidates.
My conclusion as well, after doing a good bit of research. Biggest question is whether she'll win one of the 3 slots on the Republican slate for Judge of the Supreme Court.
With the party endorsement, the Penn State factor, and what appears to be very low turnout, I would be surprised if she didn't get one of the slots, but I don't know how much money the other candidates have been spending statewide. Most of the media buys in the Pittsburgh area have been for the Democrat Court races, as would be expected.
She'll need everyone's support in the next election. Time to rouse the PSU fan and Alumni base.
Agreed, and support means voting for her, working for her if you can, and most of all, giving her money. This is going to be the most expensive race in PA judicial history. Even if some here can only part with $10.00, every dollar helps, especially early. If she can get a wad of cash out of the gate, other donors will jump in.
