Monday at the bar on a Tuesday: Wyoming Judicial Nominees under Governor Gordon.

This is really remarkable:

Haroldson, Jennings: A partisan doesn't belong in the Wyoming Supreme Courts: A partisan doesn't belong in the Wyoming Supreme Court

I cannot ever recall seeing legislators write an op-ed about judicial nominees in Wyoming.  But here's one. As the op-ed states:

Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Kieth Kautz, after having served three decades, will be required by law to retire in March 2024, and the Commission has already presented its three names to Governor Gordon: Stuart Healy (currently serving as District Judge in Campbell, Crook, and Weston Counties), Robert Jarosh (a Cheyenne attorney), and Tim Stubson (a Casper attorney).

We are alarmed by the selection of Mr. Stubson, not because we disagree on nearly every political issue under the sun, but because of his active participation in divisive, partisan politics. Not only does Stubson regularly engage in partisan political debates on social media (which any judicial officer knows to refrain from), Cowboy State Politics has discovered that he is currently the chairman of two active Political Action Committees: the Wyoming Caucus PAC and the Team Wyoming PAC. Serving as the head of a PAC is an inherently partisan activity, which is why PACs are heavily regulated by the Wyoming Legislature and Secretary of State’s Office.

This editorial is directed at Stubson, and this part specifically aims at him:

Partisan politics are fun. Helping out on a political campaign or two can be exhilarating, especially when your candidate for governor wins. Going on PBS News Hour to share your love for Liz Cheney is definitely an accomplishment. But these are not the kind of activities an impartial jurist participates in.

Mr. Stubson served in the legislature, and then later ran for Congress.  He was one of the three top vote getters the first year that Liz Cheney ran.  Indeed, Stubson and a Teton County candidate likely put Cheney over the top, as they split the majority of the GOP vote, leaving her the top vote getter as a result.

Since then, Stubson has left the legislature and been a regular old citizen, practicing law, as the op ed notes. But he has been vocal in regard to the tragic shift of the GOP into the populist right, as has been his wife.

His partisan activities are the only reason that those authoring the op-ed are against him.

Is that a good basis to oppose him?

Well, judge's positions are political ones, no matter what we might wish to pretend.  Judge Freudenthal, a retiring Federal District Court judge in Cheyenne, was nominated when her husband was the Governor.  Judge Buchanan, a recent pick by Governor Gordon, stepped down from his elected office as Wyoming's Secretary of State in order to aim for that position, something that was quite controversial at the time.

But a greater issue is what's going on with Wyoming judicial picks in general.

There's not a single judge that I've experienced who is currently sitting whom I think is a "bad judge".  But Governor Gordon's picks have been, in my view, lacking quite often.  Indeed, this is so much the case that it's backroom talk amongst the lawyers, and not all that long ago the judicial nominating committee's Chief Justice chair complained that the committee was no longer getting all that many applicants for judicial positions.  Be that as it may, that didn't stop the committee from picking a very young lawyer to a judicial position who had been the Chief Justice's clerk.  

Moreover, by and large, civil litigators have the doors barred to them.  Under Gordon, the picks have been largely out of the criminal law or domestic fields, thereby removing a huge field of talent.  One of the three names up this time is out of the criminal law field, but I would note that the other two are out of the civil law arena.

The prior governor, Governor Mead, who was a practicing lawyer, had a dedicated, and open, policy of addressing the gender imbalance on the bench.  Given a female option, he normally went in that direction.  His choices were good ones, but it did mean that male applicants were pretty much out of the running in many instances through no fault of their own.  But since then, things have declined.

I've liked Gordon as a Governor, except in certain instances.  This is one of them.  Recent choices have been very young and in some cases hard to justify if merit alone was the qualifier.  The applicants do go through a process, but frankly, influence from the Supreme Court and the Governor's Office weighs pretty heavily.  The entire process has declined, and now potential applicants just sit it out.

And that's not a good thing.