No Incumbent-Protection Plan, Please

Something important is likely to be lost amid the swirl of controversy concerning the continuing county commission boycott and the gentlemen's agreement that, for a while, seemed likely to end it early this week. What could easily be overlooked is that the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't accord that was reached -- and then lost -- would have changed the focus of the judicial primary issue significantly. And not for the better.

Commission chairman Mark Norris, in the process of accusing Commissioner Julian Bolton of sabotaging the tentative draft agreement, said, "He thrives on chaos." Bolton's response was that, instead of compromising on the key issue of judicial primaries, the commission should have acted and acted decisively Monday to nullify the primaries outright. Other problem issues were enumerated when the commission's six black Democrats announced their boycott on July 21st, but all involved, on either side, agree that the primary issue is the defining one. Solve it and the boycott solves itself: That's been the operative assumption -- both spoken and unspoken -- all along.

Let's be candid and admit that Norris has a point in his characterization of Bolton, whose conduct as chairman of the commission during its showdown year of 1996 was, to say the least, provocative -- sometimes brilliantly, sometimes perversely so. But let's take that candor a step further: Whatever his motives, Bolton is right on the issue. There is no room for partisan judicial primaries in Shelby County. Period. Granted, the state's other 94 counties are free, if they choose, to take the partisan route in selecting their judges, and that fact was advanced as an argument by Republican members of the commission when they declined last month to avail themselves of a legislative remedy to the judicial primary problem.

State Rep. Kathryn Bowers, citing Shelby County's tendency to polarize both racially and along political lines, had steered a bill through the 1997 General Assembly that enabled the commission to block judicial primaries by a two-thirds vote. The body fell one vote short back in July, and the boycott ensued -- a clear demonstration that both Bowers and state Attorney General Knox Walkup, who okayed the measure's constitutionality, were right in stating that Shelby County's racial politics justified an exemption to the statewide rule.

Unfortunately, the collapsed compromise proposal would have undermined the premise of the bill and of the true case against judicial primaries -- which is, quite simply, that party labels should not be affixed atop judicial robes, particularly not when they're racial signifiers as well. The boycotting black Democrats argue persuasively that many of Shelby County's African-American judges would be highly vulnerable to party-line white GOP opponents next year.

In proposing to limit the number of judicial primary races to those, basically, in which incumbent elected judges are not involved, the now-defunct compromise shifted the argument from both ethical and practical grounds to the self-aggrandizing one of mere incumbent protection.

We have no great regard, either, for the yes/no retention system which so many elected judges favor and which the compromise proposal also endorsed. State Supreme Court Justice Penny White did indeed lose her seat last year on such a vote, but she and other appellate judges are liable -- fairly or not -- to be judged on controversial public issues. The average Circuit Court judge will never be touched by such controversy, and yes/no in the local environment is tantamount, frankly, to the awarding of a lifetime sinecure.

Judges should be responsible to the people. They don't need parties, but they do need opponents. Julian Bolton may be a showboat, but the horn-blast he's sounding on this latest ego-trip should be listened to.