Beating the odds
Lolita Harper
When she realized the gravity of her uphill battle to unseat a
besieged judge, Gay Sandoval remembered the faces of young molestation
victims she called to the witness stand during her years as a deputy
district attorney.
She would hold their hand through the court room, look them in the eye
and reassure them they would be OK.
“The judge is here to protect you,” she would say. “Nothing bad is
going to happen.”
Those same innocent -- yet incredibly terrified -- faces popped back
into her head the moment she learned that Orange County Superior Court
judge Ronald C. Kline -- who is under house arrest relating to criminal
charges of child molestation and child pornography -- had been defeated
by a group of write-in candidates.
Kline received only 33% of the votes, while the block of write-in
candidates combined for 67%.
“It was all worth it,” Sandoval said.
When Sandoval learned of the incumbent Kline’s legal troubles in
December she knew somebody needed to challenge him but hoped it wouldn’t
be her.
Kline’s legal troubles reflected poorly on the legal community,
Sandoval said, but even worse, it sent a horrible message to children.
“A judge is there to protect you,” she said. “To know that a judge is
up on those kinds of charges, how does it make kids feel? How are they
supposed to believe about society’s role in protecting children when they
see that adults are standing by and doing nothing?”
But the 49-year-old attorney had already filed to run for a judgeship
in Office No. 3. She was torn.
Sandoval asked around the legal community, hoping to hear that someone
would challenge Kline but heard of no one.
She asked political analysts about the success of write-in campaigns
and learned her chances of unseating Kline were nearly impossible, much
less gaining the seat herself.
“It would have had to be someone on a suicide mission,” she said.
Mark Petracca, a political science professor at UC Irvine, agreed. He
called Sandoval’s feat “extremely improbable.”
After some deliberation, Sandoval decided to scrap her chances for a
real election -- complete with her name on the ballot -- and challenge
Kline as a write-in candidate.
“I knew that my personal chances of winning were not high so the
question was, do you do what you do for the village or do you do what
might be best for yourself?” Sandoval asked.
The village won.
Sandoval, a former columnist for the Daily Pilot, gathered 900
signatures -- 100 were needed -- to open the race for Office No. 21 to
write-in candidates and thus succeeded in getting Kline’s name listed on
the ballot. Had she not, Kline would have automatically retained his
seat, without voters even realizing it.
Once the signatures were gathered and ratified by the Orange County
Registrar’s office, 10 others joined the ranks as write-in candidates,
including Costa Mesa City Councilwoman Karen Robinson.
During the campaign, Sandoval worried the large number of candidates
would dilute the voters and help Kline keep his seat. In retrospect,
Sandoval said the large number of candidates may have helped inform a
larger number of people about Kline’s legal problems. But not everyone
had to declare themselves a candidate to spread the word, she said.
Petracca said the moral mission to defeat Kline, coupled with the
media attention the race received, gained the attention of the voters --
who usually ignore judgeship races -- and rendered an unlikely outcome.
“All of these people did the right thing because their heart was in
the right place,” Petracca said about the 11 write-in candidates.
Although Tuesday’s election produced a favorable result, Sandoval
still questioned her opponents reasons for running.
“If they wanted to run for judge, why didn’t they sign up the first
week in December?” she asked.
Individual tallies for write-in candidates will not be released until
March 26 and it is still unlikely that Sandoval garnered enough votes to
gain a seat on a bench.
The top two vote getters will participate in a runoff in November.
* Lolita Harper covers Costa Mesa. She may be reached at (949)
574-4275 or by e-mail at o7 lolita.harper@latimes.comf7 .
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