On Friday Sacramento Superior Court Judge Gail Ohanesian rejected in its entirety a lawsuit brought by GOP volunteers to have Jerry Brown’s election as Attorney General overturned on the highly technical grounds that his bar dues status was inactive for a few years while he was Mayor of Oakland.
I have written on this issue before a few times in this space. As I have said before, I am no fan of Jerry Brown, however, this lawsuit against Brown was unfair from the start. First, the Plaintiffs filed the action too late (they filed it after the Secretary of State had already certified Brown as a candidate and after he had won the election for the Democrat nomination, and just a few weeks before the general election. The proper time, and best time legally for Plaintiffs to have a chance to win, would have been to file the action right after Brown filed as a candidate and before he was certified or before he won the Democrat primary). But by letting time pass and filing the action late in the electoral process, the Plaintiffs assured they would lose their case, because a judge would clearly view the prejudice to the voters of California in turning out a subsequently elected Attorney General to be enormous, when balanced against the highly technical and nonsubstantive claim that Brown is not qualified to be Attorney General because he paid lower bar dues for a couple of years. The late filing of the case just before the general election by Republican activists called into question the credibility of the Plaintiffs claims — making the case look entirely political to the judge. Which is was.
There has been an indication in the press that the losing Plaintiffs will make an appeal of this case. I urge them to drop that idea and move on. This case has provided whatever "press value" the Plaintiffs were seeking last October. But the courts should not be abused and further clogged for political fights that don’t resolve real issues. This case is now an embarrassment to the GOP and is a loser for our party in the press, and for all the people involved. At this point, the only reason to continue this litigation is spite against Jerry Brown, and that reason is not good enough for me. It makes our party look like petty and pits us against the majority of voters that did elect Brown, fair and square.
And I’ll make one more prediction: this case will surely be a loser again on an appeal.
February 11th, 2007 at 12:00 am
As I reported, the law firm that took on the case last fall dropped it after the election.