- law dawg
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- RIP Michael Sanft. [8NewsNow; RJ]
- Former YouTuber EDP445 waives extradition in California case. [RJ]
- Judge Jacqueline Bluth, who oversaw high profile murder cases, leaving bench for mediation job. [RJ]
- Lombardo, Wolfson, McMahill likely to be grilled in Ponder lawsuit, says lawyer. [NV Current]
- ‘Metro Mullet’ officer accused of excessive force in lawsuit. [RJ]
What is going on with Quagge v. Reynolds case. Is it a quagmire? No pun intended. It is so close with more votes to be counted. Anyone have any indication. They are still counting ballots. Is it possible for Quagge to overcome Reynolds. How could a relative unknown candidate end up nipping at the heals of an incumbent Judge who ran commercials on TV? I hope we don’t lose another experienced jurist. We lost Judge
Wiese to a guy no one heard of and hardly had a campaign compared to Wiese. I am
puzzled.
Quagge had union endorsements, Reynolds is seen as conservative, and Clark County was an absolute bloodbath for Republicans this year.
In a close election like this ballot harvesting makes a difference. The unions pick up ballots to be dropped off. They issue lists and punch cards to vote for their candidates. They use social media accounts targeted to members. They can swing an election by 60,000 votes in Clark County. Then they can correct ballots. In most states if a ballot is not done properly it is thrown out. Remember the hanging chads in Florida. Those ballots were not corrected just counted or not counted. A ballot has to stand on its face.
Culinary has been running a very aggressive cure campaign for Quagge since last Wednesday. They count the provisional ballots tomorrow. Probably a coin flip.
It is so wrong to allow ballots to be corrected by partisan operatives in this case Democratic–Culinary Union. Why did Jerry Wiese lose. Did everything right that I could see and defeated by an unknown who posted on Instagram maybe.
The problem is judicial elections. For every other position, you can say Jerry Wiese should’ve changed his policies so that he could get the union endorsement. Even Lombardo made progress with getting some unions to not endorse Ford. But of course for judges it’s totally improper for a judge to rule a certain way just so that different voting blocs will support him (which is not to say it doesn’t happen). So Wiese gets swamped by a very powerful group that he can never ethically appease.
But, as evidence that judicial elections are just nothing more than a crapshoot, the other “conservative” candidate who the unions didn’t choose (Reynolds) appears to be on track to win (barely) where Wiese could not.
Reynolds has like 5,000 people in the valley who genuinely believe they are his best friend. People love the guy, including me. Wiese is a great judge but doesn’t have that kind of outgoing personality and charisma. It also didn’t help that, in a Blue Tsunami election, Wiese’s campaign slogan was ‘Choose the ‘RIGHT’ candidate’.
Maybe its just me, but I saw a lot of ads for Quagge on Instagram. I did not see any ads for Reynolds.
Same.
Also, anecdotally, I ran into Quagge probably half a dozen times on the campaign trail. Saw Reynolds once. Not saying Reynolds mailed it in, but Quagge campaigned his ass off and oftentimes that wins you the numbers game in judicial races where the average citizen is flipping a coin.
I saw Reynolds at every event. He campaigned. Raised a lot of money. Quagge was relatively unknown. Reynolds had lots of endorsements. Reynolds blasted the airwaves. So did Wiese. This election cycle very different. Anti incumbency it seems. Quagge got union endorsements and unions went all out for their candidates, for the Democrats and their agenda.
Maybe I’m thinking about this wrong but isn’t it pretty weird to resign right after the election? Why not resign before so voters could have a say? I guess she was appointed by a Dem governor and thought it’s only fair to give Ford the chance.
This way her replacement wont have to run again immediately. Maybe makes it more likely that someone decent agrees to do it.
Jerry Wiese would be great.
Would he take it?
Governors rarely appoint someone that voters rejected. It is a bad look.
The person appointed will need to run again in two years.
I think it’s the opposite. Won’t lame duck Lombardo be appointing the seat? I would assume that’s the plan. He can still appoint prior to Ford taking office. That would make sense why Lalli is applying. No way in heck would Ford put one of Wolfson’s guys in that spot.
Lalli is out. Ford will be making the appointment bc the vacancy is in his term. He takes office 1/4. Bluth resigns 1/5. If she decides to resigns before 1/4, then Lombardo appoints. Don’t know if anyone thought this through. Let’s see if she moves up her resignation so Lalli gets the appointment or if she stays loyal to the Ds and lets Ford do it.
she 100% thought it through
She knew Ford was goin to win so she timed her resignation as such?
If on the chance she did know, she just gave the seat to a PD.
Which seems weird since her husband is a cop and she is a former DA. Right?
Ford assumes office 1/4. She resigns 1/5. Ford makes the appointment, not Lombardo. The only way Lombardo makes the appointment is if she resigns 1/3 or prior. Very PD should be applying right now bc Ford is not appointing Lalli.
Aren’t we all missing a step here? The governor makes an appointment from a list of up to three names submitted by the Commission on Judicial Selection, correct? Four of the nine members of the commission are Lombardo appointees, four are State Bar appointees, and the chief justice chairs the commission. There are other rules about the partisan and geographic composition of the members.
The constitutional provision impliedly dictates that the governor is to fill the vacancy within 30 days after the names are submitted. The commission is scheduled to convene Nov. 18. So my read is Lombardo will get the appointment, effective upon Bluth’s resignation.
I understand there’s been a practice of convening the commission upon the announcement of a prospective resignation, but until the regulation becomes effective there is no vacancy to fill, and that practice seems to be somewhat at tension with the existence of a vacancy being the trigger for convening a commission. Thus, I wonder if the commission itself can actually convene early as it will do here. Did the vacancy arise when the resignation is announced or when the resignation becomes effective?
She announced she was resigning (at least informally) before the Election. This has been known for while. Resigning right after the election allows the new person to not have to run for election. She made this decision after candidate filing deadlines but before the election. And my understanding is that certain candidates that she used to work with were told this was coming to position themselves at the front.
No shot for a DA getting appointed under Ford’s tenure. Not after what Wolfson did to Ford. They’re done. Time for the PD’s to be appointed!!!
Or…. and hear me out on this…. competent civil practitioners? Glad the DA to bench pipeline is over though. Good riddance.
Looks like Reynolds by a razor thin margin.DISTRICT COURT JUDGE DEPARTMENT 29
Candidate Votes % of Total
Quagge, Alex 272,854 49.95%
Reynolds, Jacob 273,425 50.05%
Total 546,279
They still have to count provisional ballots tomorrow. But the deadline to cure ballots has now passed. Culinary’s cure campaign on behalf of Quagge cut Reynolds lead from 956 to 571. It’s not over yet.
Quagge needs the provisional ballots to break 62/38 in his favor in order to match Reynolds. The cures were breaking at that rate, but the provisional ballots include a lot of election day ballots which were cutting heavily for Reynolds. I would give Reynolds about 1:7 odds to win at this point. Quagge could still pull it off, but it would be a bit of a surprise.
Reynolds is likely to win by a margin of about 250 votes.