Early returns show Long Beach assistant city prosecutor Randy Fudge is not doing well in his race for Superior Court Office No. 70.
Deputy public defender Holly Hancock is currently in the lead with 45% (211,026 votes), with deputy district attorney Renee Yolanda Chang coming in second with 33% (153,902 votes). Fudge is a distant third with 10% (46,377), while attorney Eric Alfonso Torices has 8% (35,381 votes) and attorney Matthew Vodnoy has 4% (20,936 votes)
Fudge and Torices were found to be “Not Qualified” by the L.A. County Bar Association. Only Chang received the “Well Qualified” finding, while the association labeled Hancock and Vodnoy as “Qualified.”
The Bar Association would not give specifics as to why it found individual candidates “not qualified” in its April 27 report on all L.A. County judicial candidates, but it did include this general explanation for the rating:
“To be ‘Not Qualified,’ the candidate lacks one or more of the qualities of professional ability, experience, competence, integrity and temperament indicative of fitness to perform the judicial function satisfactorily,” states the Bar Association report.
A few weeks before the L.A. County Bar Association released its report on judicial candidates, the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, a Los Angeles-based newspaper that focuses on the courts and local government, published this piece that quoted from numerous attorneys and judges, many of whom were quite critical of Fudge’s temperament.
“Randall Fudge is the last person who should be given the power of the robe,” said one unnamed deputy public defender.
“I am concerned about his ability to thoughtfully consider the very real struggles of indigent defendants,” said another unnamed deputy public defender.
Of course, Fudge disputed these characterizations. “I have a good working relationship with the Long Beach defense bar and regularly engage with Long Beach defense attorneys and judges in the Long Beach Bar Association and other outside groups,” Fudge told the paper.