JUDGE WILL SCOTT MEET WILLIE HORTON

Of all the mean, negative, and utterly illogical campaign ads this season the current champion is the ad Judge Will Scott is running against Janet Stumbo.

 

Scott, the incumbent (and Republican in this NON-partisan race) and Stumbo (a Democrat in this NON-partisan race) have squared off before. Stumbo is seeking to regain her seat from the judicial district which encompasses Eastern counties.  She has the endorsement of the UMW, far from the political powerhouse it once was.

 

Both signed an agreement in early October to keep the race civil and in keeping with the high judicial office they seek. A great goal, with probably no sanctions whatsoever if either violate that agreement.

 

And Scott certainly has.

 

His ad implies..surprise..Stumbo is soft on crime. He cites several cases where Judge Stumbo's earlier decisions favored the criminal's position which was on appeal. Ergo, she MUST be "soft on crime."

 

Totally illogical.

 

Maybe the prosecution erred, maybe the defense wasn't properly presented, maybe the jury was tainted, maybe the judge made an error, maybe...maybe..all these things happen in lower court, which is why we have an appeals system to rectify mistakes and try to see that Justice is done.  I have no idea whether, judicially, Judge Stumbo was right or wrong in the decisions she issued..but to imply there was one and ONLY one reason for her decision..being "soft on crime"..is absurd.

 

This is the Kentucky version of the famous "Willie Horton" ad from the Bush-Dukakis presidential campaign  While Dukakis was governor of Massachusettes, Horton, a vicious murderer, serving a life term without parole, was given ten weekend furloughs under a hugely misguided program... signed into law by a previous Republican governor, and broadened by that state's supreme court. Dukakis supported the program, which included much more than murderers like Horton as a means of rehabilitation.

 

Horton didn't return from his last furlough, and committed a second vicious crime in another state, which convicted him and refused, properly, to send him back to Boston. When Dukakis won the Democratic nomination, Bush used the Horton case, alone in the ad, to smear Dukakis as "soft on crime"...overlooking the program's Republican sponsorship and a host of other factors.

 

It worked, and presumably Judge Scott hopes that approach will work here, again.

 

I have no dog in this hunt; I can't vote in this district. But I am appalled by this type of campaigning..which is hardly "judicial."

 

I'm just sayin'...