Three of four judicial hopefuls get passing grades from S.F. bar

Judicial candidates in the June 5 election have gotten their formal evaluations from the Bar Association of San Francisco, and three of the four deputy public defenders running against incumbent judges received at least passing grades — for one hopeful, a score as high as the judge she is trying to unseat.

The four attorneys are mounting a rare challenge to Superior Court judges seeking new six-year terms, targeting incumbents who were appointed by Republican governors. All four of the judges happen to be registered Democrats, and they have won endorsements from local and state Democratic leaders and from judicial colleagues.

A fifth attorney, unaffiliated with the deputy public defenders, is also challenging one of the incumbents.

The local Bar Association’s Judiciary Committee issued the evaluations Friday after interviewing the candidates and speaking with judges and lawyers familiar with their work. The committee said it considered, among other things, each candidate’s experience, legal knowledge, temperament, integrity and ability to overcome personal biases.

Three of the incumbent judges — Curtis Karnow, Cynthia Ming-mei Lee and Andrew Cheng — received the highest rating, “exceptionally wellqualified.” The fourth judge, Jeffrey Ross, was rated “well-qualified.”

Deputy Public Defender Maria Evangelista, who is running against Karnow, got a “well-qualified” rating. So did her colleague Nicole Solis, giving her the same score as Ross, her opponent.

Kwixuan Maloof, the deputy public defender running against Lee, got a “qualified” rating, which the committee defined as having the ability to perform judicial duties satisfactorily

Another challenger for the same seat, Elizabeth Zareh, a private attorney and San Francisco property assessment commissioner, was rated “not qualified.” Zareh, an Iranian American and a Muslim, promptly accused the bar committee of bias against her “ethnicity and country of origin” and said she had been rated as qualified by another San Francisco legal organization, the Queen’s Bench Bar Association.

In the fourth contested election, the Bar Association rated Cheng’s challenger, Phoenix Streets, as “not recommended for appointment or election at this time.” The association said such a rating means a candidate lacks at least one needed qualification for the bench that could be remedied in the future, such as lack of experience.

The Bar Association did not explain its evaluation. Streets, an 18-year veteran of the public defender’s office, is on leave from his job and could not be reached for comment.