High-profile Rulings Put Judge in Spotlight
A Cuban Family Custody Case and the Miami Megaplan Are among the Factors That Have Drawn a Challenger for Jeri Beth Cohen

By Susannah A. Nesmith
The Miami Herald
October 1, 2008

Most Miami-Dade judges rarely get their names, or their pictures, splashed across the media.

But headlines and newspaper pictures -- even the ones her mother thinks make her look funny -- have become familiar occupational hazards for
Carl Juste
Judge Jeri Beth Cohen has presided over some highly publicized
cases and is used to seeing her face in the media. She's running
for reelection

Circuit Judge Jeri Beth Cohen. She is the judge deciding whether Miami's mega-plan to build a stadium, port tunnel and museum park can go forward.

Last year, she presided over the emotionally charged custody battle between a wealthy foster family and a Cuban farmer who wanted to take his daughter back to Cuba.

That case, and the publicity surrounding it, led to another occupational hazard many South Florida judges are able to avoid: an election challenger.

Abbie Cuellar, one of the attorneys representing the foster couple, filed to run against Cohen earlier this year.

Of the 39 judges up for reelection in August, only four drew opposition.

Cohen, a judge since 1992, said she always knew it could happen, but she was still disappointed when she learned she had opposition. She even considered, however briefly, not running.

''I had to ask myself, do I really want to go through a race?'' she said. ``I'm 54 years old. The last time I ran, I was 38. I took pictures of my youngest as a baby, drooling. She's 17 now.''

''It's exhausting, and there's some nastiness that goes with it that you don't really want to be a part of,'' she added.

But the satisfaction she gets from the job, she said, quickly overcame her hesitation.

''I truly believe I have changed people's lives, and I've changed a lot of systems for the better,'' she said. ``I want to continue doing that.''

Across the state, incumbent judges rarely face opposition, though they are more likely to in Miami-Dade, where changing demographics have shaken up traditional politics. Many of the old guard, the Jewish jurists who dominated the county's bench for decades, have been replaced by Hispanics.

While Cohen is prohibited by the judicial canons from talking about her opponent, her supporters claim Cuellar is trying to trade on her surname.

''I firmly believe that Abbie Cuellar is running against her because she's Hispanic,'' prominent attorney Hector Lombana said.

It's a claim Cuellar has become used to, and she categorically denies it.

''I don't expect that because I'm Hispanic that I'll get people to vote for me,'' she said. ``I would ask that people not vote for me simply because I'm Hispanic. Vote for me because you think I would do the best job.''

She also denies rumors that she decided to run against Cohen, instead of picking one of the open seats, because she was bitter over the outcome of the foster case.

''If the child had been sent back, that would probably have some validity,'' she said. ``But the child is here, which is what we wanted.''

Her clients, Joe and Maria Cubas, adopted the little girl's half-brother and wished to adopt the girl, too, but her father wanted to take her back to Cuba. Ultimately, a settlement was worked out, with the father agreeing to live in Miami for a period of time and to allow the little girl to see the Cubases and her brother.

But Cuellar admits the foster case prompted her to target Cohen.

''I'm not pissed off about the fact that the kid is staying here,'' she said. ``I am pissed off about the way the case was handled.''

Cuellar is also bound by judicial rules of conduct, however, and can't go into detail about what she found objectionable.

Cohen has made one comment from the bench that many in the community found objectionable. In July 2002, when a father asked her to deport his wayward 17-year-old son to Cuba, she said: ``I do not think that they deport people back to Cuba. That is our big problem. If we deport people back to Cuba, we could empty our jails. We would have it made and be happy, but we cannot.''

She apologized profusely for the comment and the Cuban American Bar Association accepted her assurances that the comment was out of character.

The comment may have been forgiven, but she knows it hasn't been forgotten.

''In some sense, I don't think these things ever go away,'' she said. ``I think that over 16 years, my actions both on and off the bench have far outweighed that one incident.''

In the end, experts say the race may be more about money than ethnicity or any high-profile case.

While several Hispanic attorneys have been able to oust non-Hispanic judges over the past several years, they have accomplished that only when they had lots of money to spend on the campaign, according to longtime political consultant Gerald Schwartz.

''I think that today, because of demographics, Hispanic challengers still have a distinct built-in advantage,'' he said. ``But the fact is, those Hispanics who lose, I think that without exception, have spent less money. The persons they challenged were able to spend considerably more money.''

Cohen has raised almost $200,000 so far and contributed another $100,000 of her own money. Cuellar hasn't filed her latest financial disclosure form, but she says she won't be able to put together anything like the kind of campaign war chest Cohen has.

''If it's 10 percent of what Judge Cohen has raised, it's probably a lot,'' she said. ``This is a very grass-roots campaign, and I'm clearly the underdog.''

                   Special Report: Judicial Elections
   In Miami-Dade, Reservations About the Campaign System

By Forrest Norman
Daily Business Review
September 1, 2006

Judicial elections in Miami-Dade County are starting to look a lot like elections for other offices — and that’s not necessarily a good thing, according to some election-watchers and members of Miami-Dade’s legal community.

Ethnic politicking and full-time fundraising are among the nasty developments that threaten to turn judges into politicians.

One result of recent election trends is that incumbent judges — even those incumbents with very high approval ratings in bar association polls — are facing opposition.

Of the 22 Circuit Court judges up for re-election, two face challengers — but nine of 11 incumbent County Court judges face challengers.

“It’s not that incumbents shouldn’t ever have to run against anybody,” said state representative and former federal prosecutor Dan Gelber. “Otherwise you’d never get rid of bad judges. But the general public doesn’t really have a lot of information about judicial elections, and it’s a shame to see challengers who seem to be relying on that ignorance.”

Attorney Jeffrey M. Cohen of Carlton Fields oversaw the annual Dade County Bar Association judicial poll this year. Cohen said good poll numbers for incumbents don’t necessarily mean much anymore.

“There certainly is much less complacency on the part of incumbents,” he said. “Now they can’t afford to sit back and assume they won’t be challenged.”

Gelber and other members of the legal community cite a growing trend that accounts for some of the challenges facing incumbent judges: because many voters are unfamiliar with judicial candidates, some candidates are banking on Hispanic surnames to attract votes in Miami-Dade County.

“It’s as good a bet as any, particularly when there’s no way these guys can raise enough money to really educate the general public about themselves,” Gelber said. “Unless you have a name people like the sound of, your best hope as a candidate is to hope for a sort of faint name-recognition at the polls.”

Dade County Bar Association president Merrick Gross said the county’s large Hispanic population affects judicial elections “just like it affects every other kind of election.

“The ethnic makeup of this community is unique,” Gross said. “It creates voting blocs that affect voting trends.”

In Circuit Court, Judge Dennis Murphy, who received a 94.6 percent qualified/exceptionally qualified rating in the latest association poll, is running against solo practitioner Josie Perez Velis. Despite his high approval numbers he admits there is a challenge in translating those numbers to the electorate generally.

“I have to campaign as if I was the challenger,” Murphy said.

Velis, who has experience in a number of legal areas, received a 35.2 percent qualified/exceptionally qualified rating in the poll. She did not return calls for comment.

The other incumbent circuit judge facing a challenge in Miami-Dade is Lawrence Schwartz, a 16-year veteran of county and circuit court. Schwartz received an 80.7 percent qualified/exceptionally qualified rating in the poll. His challenger, former state prosecutor Gina Mendez, received a 60.8 percent qualified/exceptionally qualified rating.

Almost every contested County Court race pits someone with a discernibly Hispanic surname against someone without one, though it’s not always a case of a Hispanic challenger facing off against a non-Hispanic incumbent. Some County Court candidates are trying to chip away at ethnic voting blocs with endorsements. County Court Judge Steve Leifman has been endorsed by Miami Mayor Manny Diaz as well as by Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez.

Some candidates reject the notion that the politics of ethnicity trump merit-based campaigning.

“I am by no means just running on a name,” Mendez said. “I’m a qualified challenger. If I was just running on a name, I would have chosen an opponent with a lot less money.”

Cori Lopez-Castro, president of the Cuban-American Bar Association, said people are too smart to just vote for anyone whose name sounds like theirs.

“When CABA went on a radio campaign on Spanish-language radio to talk about judicial elections, we mentioned our phone number and said people could call us for information on judicial candidates,” Lopez-Castro said. “You wouldn’t believe all the calls we got. People make a bigger effort to educate themselves than they’re given credit for — they don’t just want to vote for someone with the same name.”

The growing cost of elections is another trend that worries some in the legal community. Mendez raised $24,555 in campaign cash and contributed another $62,600 of her own money. She still lags behind her incumbent opponent, who has raised $164,365 and added another $100,100 of his own cash to the campaign war chest.

Former Circuit Judge Michael Chavies, a veteran of the judicial campaign trail, worries that fundraising becomes all-consuming for judicial candidates, distracting from the job they are running to keep.

“Miami-Dade County is huge,” Chavies said. “It’s like running for governor of a small state. If somebody said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this group of lawyers I’d like you to speak to and we’re going to raise some money for your campaign,’ you can’t afford not to go. So you run around to this meeting and that fundraiser, and of course you can’t get anywhere in Miami-Dade in less than an hour. It becomes very, very time-consuming.”

In the Circuit Court races, Valerie Manno Schurr, a civil trial lawyer running against two challengers for a newly created seat on the bench, has the largest war chest. She has raised $16,710, but also contributed $250,000 of her own money. Those funds combined with $440 in in-kind contributions give Manno Schurr a total of $267,150.

Manno Schurr contributed the largest amount of her own money of all the circuit candidates. Incumbent Schwartz, who gave $100,100 to his campaign, has raised the most of any circuit candidate, $164,365. Schwartz, who has also received $2,034 in in-kind contributions, has a total of $266,499 in campaign funding.

The smallest war chest in the circuit court races belongs to Jose Sanchez-Gronlier, who is running against Manno Schurr and Rima Bardawil. Sanchez-Gronlier has raised no money, though he has contributed $6,500 of his own cash to his campaign.

In the races for County Court seats, incumbent Judge Michael Samuels has raised the most money: $204,550. Another incumbent, Judge Ivan Hernandez, has raised the least money, with only $8,930. Hernandez’s opponent Robin Faber has raised $137,538 to finance his campaign.

In addition to the time consuming aspect of fundraising, there is another problem, according to Ben Kuehne, a former federal prosecutor and assistant state attorney general. Kuehne, now a partner with Sale & Kuehne, said that the ability to charm people out of their hard-earned dollars makes someone a good fundraiser, but not necessarily a good judge.

“The things you do to win a judicial campaign have to do, increasingly, with raising money and having the right kind of political machine and political consultants behind you,” Kuehne said.

Gelber, whose father is a senior judge in Miami-Dade, is blunter: “It’s all about how you campaign, and it’s really unfortunate. This is an incredibly expensive, very large, bilingual market. The qualities that make a good campaigner here in Miami-Dade do not make someone a good judge, necessarily.”

The election process is becoming so difficult for candidates, and is such an unreliable arbiter of merit, that both Gelber and Chavies say they would prefer judicial appointments, regardless of the sitting governor’s political party.

“It sounds strange to say it, but I believe you end up with better results that way,” Chavies said.

Lopez-Castro is a fierce defender of the current system.

“CABA’s position is that we have to keep the hybrid system where we have both elections and appointments,” she said. “If you’re concerned about elections being too political, what about the politics involved when you distill the entire electorate down to a small nominating committee?”

Gelber said that while ideology plays a part in appointments, they ensure judges who are, at least, competent.

“Even as a Democrat, I would prefer Jeb Bush appointing judges to the current system,” Gelber said. “To really reach voters in this market, you need $1 million, and these candidates can’t come anywhere close to that. So they blanket the area with signs and hope people remember the signs. What kind of way is that to choose judges?”


                                    Elections Name game

By Jordana Mishory
Daily Business Review
August 22, 2006

Judicial candidates plaster their names on billboards, lawn signs and business cards handed out every chance they get — and apparently a lot is riding on that name.

With such a crowded field of judicial candidates jockeying for a limited number of spots, any slight advantage could make the difference between winning and losing, especially in judicial races where voters often have little information about the candidates.

In Miami-Dade County, one candidate changed her name to lengthen it, adding her husband’s Hispanic surname. In Broward County, one candidate dropped the Hispanic part of her name.

Italian-American Patricia Marino-Pedraza, who is challenging Miami-Dade County Court Judge Shirlyon McWhorter, recently added her Cuban husband’s last name to hers.

Her office letterhead lacks the second half of her hyphenated last name. But Marino-Pedraza said she’s been going by “Patricia Pedraza” since she married Rudy Pedraza seven years ago. However, she has kept her maiden name professionally until now.

“When I became an attorney, I was Patricia Marino. But when I become a judge, I’ll be Patricia Marino-Pedraza,” she said. “That’s who I am now.”

The visual appearance of a name on a ballot could make a difference of a few percentage points, according to Miami-Dade campaign consultant Bob Levy, who is working for McWhorter.

A longer name is more visually attractive to voters facing a hefty list, he said. The first name on a list also could draw voters who don’t know enough about the candidates to make an informed decision but still want to cast a vote.

Voters often lack information about judicial candidates. But canons of ethics prevent judicial candidates from politicizing their campaigns. Although a number of groups make endorsements, the Broward County Bar Association recently decided to forgo its poll of attorneys for this election season.

In heavily Hispanic Miami-Dade, having an ethnic name has helped propel challengers to victory and unseat non-Hispanic judges. Consequently, candidates who make their names more Hispanic sounding during elections seasons have picked up some slack.

An anonymous commenter on a blog covering Miami-Dade courts referred to Marino-Pedraza as “Patty Whatshernamethisweek,” saying that she added her Cuban husband’s last name to “blatantly appeal” to the Hispanic voters.

But Marino-Pedraza, a criminal defense attorney and a founding partner in Marino & Zemon in Miami, said community ties come through hard work and activities, not a name change.

“It’s ridiculous that a married woman is being chastised for using her married name,” Marino-Pedraza said. “It’s been my name for the past seven years, and I’m very proud of that fact.”

But in Broward, former magistrate Marina Garcia Wood dropped her Hispanic maiden name. The judicial candidate will appear on the ballot as Marina G. Wood.

Tony Gargiulo, Garcia Wood’s campaign consultant, said she will be using her full name in all campaign materials and will only appear on the ballot with a middle initial.

“It’s easy to recognize,” Gargiulo said of the new initialed moniker. “Sometimes three big names are confusing to people.”

When asked why Garcia Wood would chose to drop an ethnic-sounding part of her name in an increasingly diverse county, Gargiulo, who is called the “judge maker” in Broward, noted her first name also is Hispanic.

Garcia Wood, who is Cuban-American, did not return calls for comment.

In another Broward race, the addition of Arlene Simon’s husband’s name, Campione, moved her to the top of the most heavily contested judicial race in South Florida. Simon Campione is running against four others for Broward County Group 31, a new county court seat created by the Florida Legislature.

Simon Campione, an attorney with the state Department of Juvenile Justice in Davie, said she officially added her husband Bruce’s name in mid-July as a fourth wedding anniversary present. She said he was tired of being referred to as Bruce Simon on the campaign trail. Her last name Simon came from her late husband.

Without the addition of Campione, she would have been last on the list of five candidates.

“Name is at the top or name is at the bottom, it doesn’t really make any difference at all,” Simon Campione said. “It’s stuck in the middle that’s the problem. This is much ado about nothing.”

Miami-Dade County Court judicial candidate Cecilia Armenteros-Chavez recently added her husband’s last name.

Armenteros-Chavez, a family lawyer in Miami who is trying to spend several hours a day in street campaigning to meet potential voters, said the addition of Chavez has led to some interesting questions.

“People out on the street mostly do it in jest but ask if I’m related to Chavez the dictator,” Armenteros-Chavez said. “I say, ‘No, I’m not. But thanks for asking.’ ”


Marina Garcia Wood photo by Melanie Bell


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