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(2) (2)Barbara Behrend Ernsberger, the only one of the 22 appellate court candidates in Tuesday's primary who received a negative rating from the Judicial Evaluation Commission, said she is confident she can convince voters that her more than three decades of experience as a lawyer make her qualified to sit on the appellate bench.
"I'll just go everywhere and tell everybody what I've done" as a lawyer and citizen activist in Pennsylvania's second-largest city, Ernsberger said.
Critics of Pennsylvania's tradition of electing judges said the results of the statewide primary balloting suggested that voters were more interested in superficial factors, such as a candidate's gender or hometown, than in their ability to be fair and impartial jurists.
"We get plenty of qualified judges, but they get selected despite the system, not because of" it, said Lynn Marks, director of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts. For years, the group has spearheaded lobbying for a "merit selection" system in which a bipartisan panel recommends candidates for appointment to the appellate bench by the governor.
Ernsberger, 56, placed first in a six-way Democratic race for nominations for a pair of vacant seats on Commonwealth Court. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, she won 22 percent of the vote and fellow nominee Linda Judson, another Pittsburgh lawyer, was second with 21 percent. The losers included both candidates endorsed by the Democratic State Committee.
The volunteers who make up the bar panel — 12 lawyers and six non-lawyers — cited concerns about Ernsberger's lack of experience before Commonwealth Court and questioned whether she has "the temperament required of an appellate-court judge."
Ernsberger, a mother of three who has worked at the law firm her father founded since she graduated from Duquesne University Law School in 1976, said she has handled a wide range of cases, including workers' compensation disputes and a complex series of consumer lawsuits against a major life-insurance company.
She speculated that concern about her temperament may stem from her vocal opposition to a referendum that changed Allegheny County's government to a home-rule system in the late 1990s. She noted the bar panel did not provide specifics.
"It's hard to answer something that's not stated directly," she said.
Ernsberger ran strongest in western Pennsylvania and carried more than a dozen counties, including the Democratic strongholds of Allegheny, Westmoreland and Erie. A former chairwoman of the Pittsburgh Democratic City Committee, she mounted two unsuccessful campaigns for Allegheny County judge in the 1980s.
Chris Gillotti, a Pittsburgh lawyer who chairs the bar panel, speculated that many voters were not aware of the commission's recommendations or simply did not care about them.
"It seems to be a good argument for merit selection," he said.
Ernsberger and Judson will square off against Republican nominees Patricia A. McCullough, a Pittsburgh lawyer, and Kevin Brobson, a Harrisburg lawyer, in the Nov. 3 general election.
