‘Candidate forum’ excludes sitting judge

Michael Begert, one of two San Francisco Superior Court judges being challenged for reelection next year, saw an email from an opposition group advertising a “judicial candidate forum” last week, so he decided to attend, and invited another judge. Both were welcomed at the door, but soon afterward were told that the event was for invited guests only — one of whom was Begert’s election opponent — and were escorted out.

“I was surprised,” Begert said Tuesday, a day after the meeting at a private home in Laurel Heights. He declined to criticize the hosts — “I learn things all the time” — but said he would attend an actual debate between the opposing judicial candidates, scheduled for Dec. 7.

“I don’t know what to make of it,” said Judge Linda Colfax, who won’t be on next year’s ballot — her current term ends in January 2029 — but wanted to hear the discussion. “I saw the email that said it was a San Francisco judicial candidates’ forum, and there was nothing that led me to believe otherwise when I entered.”

A different version of the incident came from one of the organizers, Marie Hurabiell, a board member of Stop Crime Action, which supports Begert’s opponent.

“It was a private event hosted by a private individual, a meet-andgreet for the challengers,” she said. “It’s strange that someone would show up at a private party who was not invited.”

But the email that a friend showed to Begert, who provided it to the Chronicle, invited recipients to “please join me” and other representatives of groups opposing the incumbent judges “for a judicial candidate forum on Monday, November 27th.” Attendees would hear from “our two candidates,” attorney Albert “Chip” Zecher and Deputy District Attorney Jean Roland, and learn about “the weak links in our judicial system that prioritize ideology over public safety,” promised the author, marketing executive Martha Conte.

It was “a one-sided judicial forum,” said San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who did not attend the session but was told about it afterward. “Not about voter education, just about political propaganda.”

It was further evidence of a campaign for the March 2024 election that will seek to portray the two incumbent judges, Begert and Patrick Thompson, as soft on crime. That was the successful strategy in last year’s recall election that removed District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Brooke Jenkins, a former prosecutor in Boudin’s office who left to join the recall campaign, was appointed by Mayor London Breed to succeed him, and won the election to fill the rest of his term in 2022.

Begert was appointed to the bench by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in December 2010 and won a new six-year term without opposition in 2018. He no longer hears criminal cases, as he was recently put in charge of San Francisco’s CARE Court — Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment — established by Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers to remove mentally ill people from the streets and place them in treatment. His opponent, Zecher, has practiced law for nearly 33 years, most recently representing Silicon Valley tech firms, and was appointed by Newsom to the board of directors at UC College of the Law in San Francisco.

When Zecher declared his candidacy in early November, he told the Chronicle he wanted to become a judge to “promote public safety and justice,” and declined to discuss any of Begert’s past rulings. But Frank Noto, president of Stop Crime Action, argues that both Begert and Thompson have failed to keep dangerous criminals off the streets.

Thompson was appointed to the court by Newsom last year after 30 years as a civil attorney with private law firms. He has served as board chairman of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. He holds preliminary hearings, deciding whether prosecutors have presented enough evidence to send a case to trial, but does not preside over trials or bail hearings.

Thompson said he will also attend the Dec. 7 debate, sponsored by the Chinese-American Democratic Club and other organizations, including Stop Crime SF, an affiliate of Stop Crime Action.

Roland is a managing attorney supervising felony prosecutions in Jenkins’ office, and has prosecuted gang cases. Jenkins has said she will not endorse any judicial candidates.

“As a prosecutor for over 22 years, I believe that I can make the tough and fair decisions that San Francisco deserves,” Roland said in a statement announcing her candidacy, which did not criticize Thompson. “I will focus on balancing public safety with the rights of all involved in the judicial system.”

The last San Francisco judge to be unseated by the voters was Thomas Mellon, who was appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1994 and was defeated for reelection by Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval in 2008.