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Joline Gutierrez Krueger: Albuquerque judge can keep helping families, if the voters will let her
Making a judge
State district judges are either elected by the public or appointed by the governor to the bench.
Appointed: Judicial selection commission — composed of bipartisan members of the legal community and citizens —interviews and assesses applicants and recommends candidates to the governor, who makes the final selection.
The appointed judge must then stand for the next partisan election.
After that, the judge then stands for retention elections at the end of each term and must receive at least 57 percent "retain" votes.
Elected: Like an appointed judge in his or her first partisan race, candidate must submit verified petition to be placed on the ballot.
This year, Democratic judicial candidates in Bernalillo County must have at least 816 signatures of registered Democrats; Republicans must have at least 449 signatures of registered Republicans.
• • •
Judicial qualifications
State district judge: Must be 35, reside in the district, have practiced law for at least six years.
Metro Court judge: Must be 18, have practiced law for at least three years.
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Family Judge Elizabeth Whitefield keeps two sticky notes attached to the back of her nameplate where only she can view them each time she takes the bench.
"Be kind," one reads.
"Be patient," says the other.
These are the words Whitefield tries to abide by in one of the most contentious judicial divisions at the Bernalillo County Courthouse in Albuquerque, where volatile matters of the broken heart and broken families, of who gets the kids at holidays and who gets the restraining order, are dealt with daily.
Whitefield has donned the Family Court robes since September after her appointment to the bench by Gov. Bill Richardson the month before.
It's a position for which she says she was custom-made after her 30-year career as a divorce lawyer and the first female partner at Keleher and Mcleod, one of the largest and oldest law firms in New Mexico.
"At age 60, I decided one way to give back to this community that has been so good to me was to bring my experience to this courtroom and put it to good use," said Whitefield, who begins her day before dawn reading cases.
Whitefield sees her job as a uniter, not a divider, though the unions she helps craft are different.
"It's restructuring rather than severing," she said. "The marital relationship ends, but the family relationship continues. The people who come to my courtroom just get stuck. It's my job to help them get unstuck."
And, oh, does she want to stick with what she does in this courtroom.
But that could be tough.
Under the complex rules governing the state judiciary, Whitefield, a Democrat, will undergo a partisan election to keep her job, as all newly appointed judges must.
She faces tough competition in the primary election June 3 against Metro Court Judge Frank Sedillo, a popular figure in the community who is known for his many years as volunteer coach for YAFL football and during his own football glory days at Albuquerque High in the 1970s.
The majority of voters won't likely know much about Whitefield or Sedillo or any of the judicial candidates at the bottom of the ticket, though.
They won't know that Whitefield already has the job. And they won't know Whitefield went through a vetting process by a judicial selection committee before her appointment to the bench.
The latter, she said, is especially important for voters to realize.
"The selection commission is a bipartisan group of lawyers, judges and laypeople who screen us, ask questions of us and decide who is the best qualified to be a judge based on our experience, training, demeanor and fairness," she said. "Anyone with the basic qualifications can run for a judicial seat. But the public can be confident that whoever passes through the commission process is qualified to be a judge."
But Sedillo says putting the decision in the hands of voters from the start eliminates any undue political favoritism.
"There is a small group of people on these commissions who are all politically connected," Sedillo, 47, said. "We live in a very small community, and it's not hard to make those kind of connections."
Most voters won't take the time to research judicial candidates, of course. They will likely select whatever name, party or gender sounds good, not who would make the better judge, not who would make the best judgments.
In the meantime, Whitefield will continue to restructure families so they can get on with their lives while she waits to learn whether voters will let her get on with hers.
