Vote for López Torres

Fourteen years ago, straight-arrow Margarita López Torres beat the corrupt Brooklyn Democratic machine at their own game and was narrowly elected Surrogate judge, overseeing the estates of the dead. It’s the most patronage-rich post there is, and she kept it whistle clean.

She deserves another term in the June 25 primary.

López Torres is right that Surrogate Court needs change and that the mayor, not the judge, should appoint the public administrator of estates. She’s right that salaried city lawyers, not private attorneys on commission, should handle the legal work.

But the real reason to reelect her is the dogged independence she’s shown year-in, year-out.

After she was elected to Civil Court in

1992, when sleazy Vito Lopez pushed a party hack as her law secretary, she said no. A few years later, when his daughter Gina Lopez Summa finished law school, Lopez tried to get López Torres to hire her, offering a state Supreme Court seat. She said no again.

The machine and boss Clarence Norman tried and failed to beat López Torres in her 2002 Civil Court reelection.

In 2004, López Torres sued in federal court to declare party control of judgeships unconstitutional. She won at trial and on appeal, but lost when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that no matter how terrible the party’s grip was, it was legal.

In 2005, after a Daily News exposé ejected the crooked sitting Surrogate judge, she won her first 14-year term against the machine.

López Torres doesn’t make deals. Reelect her.