The majority of decisions most Los Angeles County voters are asked to make on their March 5 ballots deal with Superior Court judges. But they have less readily available information about the judicial candidates than they do for any other races. That’s no accident. A variety of laws, rules, practices and customs limit what judicial candidates can tell voters about who they are and what they would do if elected.
History suggests that voters like to elect criminal prosecutors to the bench, and current campaign lore holds that candidates with Latino surnames do well in Los Angeles County. That may be why candidates decided to give Victor Avila, a prosecutor with a Latino surname, a wide berth in this race. Or it could just be a fluke. Avila actually has an opponent. You won’t see deputy public defender Natasha Khamashta’s name on the ballot, but she qualified to run as a write-in candidate.