Democrats want revenge on judge who briefly tossed Proposition 208

Democrats and certain supporters of public education have a message for Arizona’s judges, one they are hoping voters will deliver on Election Day:

Cross us at your peril.

It seems the Maricopa County Democratic Party is mad because Proposition 208 was briefly tossed off the ballot by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Coury.

Mad enough, in fact, that the party has mounted a revenge campaign to throw him off the bench — one that has been endorsed by Save Our Schools Arizona and Planned Parenthood.

Judge Coury, the party says, “has a dangerous record of abusing his position to pursue his own extreme political agenda.”

Turns out this “dangerous record of abusing his position” amounts to one case in the 10 years he has been on the bench: Proposition 208, the proposal to raise income taxes on the wealthiest Arizonans.

Coury in July tossed the initiative off the ballot, ruling that the 100-word summary of the proposal was “misleading by its omission of its principal provisions.”

It was a terrible decision, both in its tone (snarky) and its content (alarming). Had his ruling stood, Arizonans likely would have found it far more difficult to put any initiative onto the ballot.

Fortunately, Coury was overturned by a unanimous decision of the state Supreme Court. (Full disclosure: my sister, who sits on the court, wrote the opinion.)

That had to sting.

But tossing a judge off the ballot because of one decision a political party doesn’t like?

That’s a sting could be felt far and wide in the state.

Since 1974, Arizona has had a merit selection system for appellate judges and superior court judges in the state’s larger counties. Rather than electing the candidate who can amass the most campaign contributions, applicants are screened by a committee that then forwards a selection of names to the governor. Once appointed, each judge then periodically goes the ballot so that voters can decide whether he or she should be retained.

The idea is to create a system of independent judges who can focus on the law rather than their reelection prospects.

Rarely have judges been targeted for ouster since Arizona went to merit selection, but that seems to be changing. Two years ago, a grassroots education group threatened to try to knock out Supreme Court Justices John Pelander and Clint Bolick because they were among the 5-2 majority who voted to toss Invest in Ed off the 2018 ballot.

Now, the county Democratic Party is taking up where Red for Ed left off.

“After over 400,000 Arizonans signed petitions to put the Invest in Ed initiative on the ballot, Judge Coury tried to remove it and issued an opinion that was politically motivated and legally incorrect ... ” the party says. “Now we have a chance to tell Judge Coury to keep politics out of the courtroom!”

Actually, if Coury is ousted, the

Rarely have judges been targeted for ouster since Arizona went to merit selection.

Democrats will have succeeded in ensuring that politics is front and center in every courtroom.

Coury says ethical rules prevent him from discussing his decision because the Supreme Court has not yet issued its reasoning for reversing him. He actually went on Sunday SquareOff this week to plead for his job, emphasizing that he’s been reversed fewer than five times since being appointed by Gov. Jan Brewer in 2010.

“I am a judge who actually follows the law as it is written,” he told 12News’ Brahm Resnik. “That’s what I interpret my job to be and that’s what I’ve done. Politics don’t enter into my ruling. They never have.”

Apparently, the Arizona Commission on Judicial Performance Review agrees.

The 33-person panel, composed of judges, attorneys and members of the public, does performance reviews of every judge up for retention. By a vote of 33-0, Coury met all five standards including legal ability, integrity and temperament.

Every judge met the standard this year and in fact, rarely is a judge recommended for ouster. (It does, however, happen.)

So we have a choice.

We can do as Democrats are campaigning for us to do and dump a judge who made one boneheaded decision out of thousands made over a decade on the bench — a decision, by the way, that was promptly overturned upon review.

We can send a message to every Arizona judge to rule based not upon the law but upon what will get them reelected.

Or we can have faith that in the end, a judge made a mistake and the judicial system worked to correct it, as it is supposed to do.

Me? I’m thinking we have enough political hacks in this state without inviting more into Arizona’s courtrooms.