Low-key campaigns mark District Court races

Past judicial election campaigns in Forsyth County have featured television advertising, promises made on social issues and sharp attacks exchanged by candidates.

This election's races appear much more low-key -- candidates are largely relying on yard signs and some mailings for campaigns that have generally avoided mentioning opponents.

Seven of the 10 sitting judges in the 21st Judicial District are up for re-election, and two are being challenged.

In one race, Chester Davis, the judge with the second-longest tenure in the district, faces Amy Allred, a lawyer whose focus is family law.

In the second race, Judge Victoria Roemer faces Kelly Patterson, a lawyer who mainly works on juvenile cases and family law.

Roemer was an assistant district attorney and then a magistrate before she was elected judge 1996. She also ran unsuccessfully in 1992.

Roemer defeated challengers in 2000 and 2004. She said that her experience means that voters know what they are getting. That's why a broad range of lawyers support her, she said.

"That matters," she said. "I can fashion judgments that are helpful when they need to be, that are punitive when they need to be."

Patterson, 38, said that his background helps him relate to people who have cases in district court.

He received a high-school-equivalency diploma and worked hangingwallboard, driving a truck and other odd jobs before going to college.

"I think it's important that we have judges that are able to relate to the people before them," Patterson said. "The fact that I ended up representing poor people is not an accident."

He said that Roemer does not have that background, and that when representing a poor client or a client from a minority background, Roemer would not be the judge he would want to hear the case.

Roemer said that that claim was wrong and unfair.

"I'm as upfront, fair and honest as they come," she said. "That's horrible."

Roemer declined to talk about Patterson's qualifications or campaign.

Both candidates have had to deal with negative publicity in recent months.

William Reingold, the chief judge of District Court, found Patterson in civil contempt in August for missing a deadline for writing an order in a child-custody case.

Patterson missed the deadline in May and finished the order in June, before a second deadline Reingold set.

Reingold recently reversed his decision to find Patterson in contempt. Patterson showed Reingold an opinion by the N.C. Court of Appeals that said that Patterson couldn't be held in civil contempt because by the time of the August hearing, he had written the order.

Roemer was reprimanded last year by the N.C. Judicial Standards Commission for misapplying the law and wrongly jailing tenants for unpaid rent. Roemer acknowledged her mistake, apologized and chose not to contest the commission's reprimand.

"The bottom line is, I couldn't do what I did," Roemer said.

"It was a mistake, and it won't happen again."

Patterson said that the tenant case is an example of Roemer making a judgment too quickly in wrongly jailing black tenants of lesser means.

"There's nothing difficult about that. It's a landlord-tenant case," he said.

Roemer and Patterson both agreed on one point -- they said that the negative publicity they faced should not overshadow their sound work in thousands of other cases.

In the other contested race, Allred, 35, is relying solely on yard signs and bumper stickers to get the word out.

"We've kept it simple," she said.

Allred said that she had been considering running for a few years. She declined to say why she thought Davis should be replaced, saying that she did not want to run a negative campaign.

"I can give 110 percent each day to the job, and I'm the candidate that wants to be there, that wants to help people, that wants to give their attention to each and every case," she said.

Davis cites his experience: 17 years as a judge and 36 years as an attorney.

He and Reingold are the two judges assigned to hear cases in which a divorced couple asks a judge help divide their property fairly.

Davis said that those cases require expertise and good judgment to figure out the worth of a business, for example. The largest case that he's seen involved assets valued at about $17 million.

If elected to another term, Davis said, he would help improve court programs, such as finding more efficient ways to handle child-support hearings. The court system also has to keep looking for better ways to handle heavy caseloads in traffic and criminal courts. A night court or court just for drunken-driving cases might be an option.

"My concerns are in improving our system," he said.

Judicial races are nonpartisan -- party affiliations do not appear next to candidates' names on the ballot. But Allred and Patterson are Democrats, and Davis and Roemer are Republicans.

The Forsyth County Republican Party has endorsed Davis and Roemer, and the Forsyth County Democratic Party has endorsed Patterson but not Allred.

■ Dan Galindo can be reached at 727-7377 or at dgalindo@wsjournal.com.