While the site was unable to stop any judges from being retained, it appears to have made a significant dent in their approval votes. We could see a difference in
results for 22 of the 44 judges up for retention in Maricopa County,
from one percentage point up to as high as 10 or so. The site’s
influence may have been negated somewhat because liberal voters were also using
it as a guide to retain liberal judges and vote against conservative judges.
Most judges
went down in approval votes since the last election, so in the few cases where
conservative judges like Buttrick, Blakey & Klein went up, we think this
site may have had some influence.
Although we
had no prior vote to compare newer judges’ retention votes to, we found that
many of them we had given poor reviews to generally received lower ratings in
the 60%-70% approval range, instead of the 70%-80% approval range that most
judges averaged in the past. Whereas new judges like Michael Kemp who we gave
positive reviews to did achieve approval ratings in the 70’s.
The judges
we had little information on or who were neutral on tended to receive fairly
high ratings, generally in the low 70’s, which we’d expect.
The first
line under each judge’s name contains the percentage yes vote v. the percentage
no vote. If there is a second line, it is their numbers from the last election
they were up for retention, 2004. The next line contains a brief summary of how
azjudgesreview rated them. Our assessment is in italics. Where there isn’t any
assessment, it’s because it wasn’t clear whether the site had had any influence,
or the difference was negligible.
75.59 –
24.41
Very poor
review
Diane Johnsen
74.74 –
25.26
Very poor
review
Ann Scott Timmer
71.74 –
28.26
Very poor
review
Helene Abrams
73.27 –
26.73
Very poor
review
Linda Akers
68.76 –
31.24
72.94 –
27.06
Decent
review
Louis Araneta
68.19 –
31.81
70.92 –
29.08
Moderate
review
Silvia Arellano
72.45 –
27.55
74.46 –
25.54
Poor review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since she went down slightly
71.17 –
28.83
76.02 –
23.98
Very poor
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since she went down significantly
Eddward Ballinger
72.16 –
27.84
73.65 –
26.35
Moderate
review
Craig Blakey
74.65 –
25.35
73.77 –
26.23
Excellent
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since he went up slightly
John Buttrick
74.9 – 25.1
73.69 –
26.31
Excellent
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since he went up slightly
Bruce Cohen
72.11 –
27.89
70.67 –
29.33
Poor review
Unfortunately this went against our
recommendation – his yes votes increased
Connie Contes
66.52 –
33.48
70.67 –
29.33
Little info
Glenn Davis
71.36 –
28.64
Very poor
review
John Ditsworth
71.51 –
28.49
73.12 –
26.88
Very good
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since he went up slightly
Thomas Dunevant III
70.47 –
29.53
72.25 –
27.75
Poor review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since he went down slightly
Lisa Flores
67.42 –
32.58
Extremely
poor review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since her numbers were so poor
Jeanne Marie Garcia
66.28 –
33.72
Very poor
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since her numbers were so poor
Jo Lynn Gentry-Lewis
61.98 –
38.02
Fairly poor
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since her numbers were so poor
Michael Gordon
71.61 –
28.39
Very poor
review
John Hannah, Jr.
66.71 –
33.29
Very poor
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since his numbers were so poor
Cari Harrison
75.54 – 24.46
76.09 –
23.91
Very good
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since her numbers stayed fairly high
Ruth Hilliard
71.7 – 28.3
76.66 –
23.34
Poor review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since her numbers went down significantly
Kristin Hoffman
73.06 –
26.94
Poor review
Paul Katz
71.92 –
28.08
73.1 – 26.9
Very poor
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since his numbers went down slightly
Michael Kemp
74.41 –
25.59
Fairly good
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since these are pretty good numbers
Andrew Klein
76.49 –
23.51
74.67 –
25.33
Very good
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since his numbers went up slightly
Margaret Mahoney
76.27 –
23.73
76.71 –
23.99
Little info
Crane McClennen
57.8 – 42.2
63.92 – 36.08
Very good
review – but we’d changed our rating halfway through
Considering the Judicial Performance
Review Commission recommended not to retain him, we suspect we had some
influence keeping his numbers higher than they could have been.
Paul McMurdie
72.74 –
27.26
Very good
review – but we’d changed our rating halfway through
Colleen McNally
72.53 –
27.47
76.25 –
23.75
Very poor
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since her numbers went down significantly
Michael McVey
73.72 –
26.28
74.26 –
25.74
Fairly good
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since his numbers stayed fairly high
Linda Miles
73.49 –
26.51
70.04 –
29.96
Moderate
review
Robert Miles
72.99 –
27.01
Moderate
review
Robert Oberbillig
63.78 –
36.22
68.4 – 31.6
Very bad
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since his numbers went down significantly
Jose Padilla
60.9 – 39.1
Very bad
review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since these are very bad numbers
Karen Potts
73.95 –
26.05
Moderate
review
Timothy Ryan
71.76 –
28.24
Poor review
Teresa Sanders
76.37 –
23.63
77.54 –
22.46
Moderate
review
Ronald Steinle III
63.96 –
36.04
66.87 –
33.13
Poor review
May have had some impact on this
vote, since his numbers went down
Sherry Stephens
72.72 –
27.28
76.87 –
23.13
Moderate
review
Richard Trujillo
67.48 –
32.52
62.4 – 37.6
Very poor
review
Unfortunately this went against our
recommendation – his yes votes increased
David Udall
75.8 – 24.2
75.11 –
24.89
Fairly good
review
May have had some impact on this vote,
since his numbers stayed fairly high
Christopher Whitten
71 – 29
Somewhat
poor review
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