43
State rep of Warren, judge challenging incumbent justices
YOUNGSTOWN
Two Ohio Supreme Court justices, both who started serving less than two years ago, face competition from a Cleveland-based judge and an outgoing state House member from Warren.
One race pits Justice Judi French, chosen by Gov. John Kasich to replace retiring Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, effective Jan. 1, 2013, against Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge John P. O’Donnell.
The other has Justice Sharon L. Kennedy, who beat Yvette McGee Brown in November 2012 for an unexpired term seat, challenged by state Rep. Tom Letson of Warren. Justice Kennedy has served as a justice since Dec. 7, 2012.
Though Ohio Supreme Court candidates run in politically-partisan primaries, they are on the general- election ballot without party affiliation.
The two incumbents are Republicans while Judge O’Donnell and Letson are Democrats.
Justice French spent eight years on the 10th District Court of Appeals before Kasich, a Republican, selected her to fill an unexpired term on the state’s highest court. A Sebring native, Justice French also served as chief legal counsel from 2002 to 2004 for then-Gov. Bob Taft and as an assistant attorney general and chief counsel from 1997 to 2002 for Attorney General Betty Montgomery.
She says her experience as an appellate court judge is “the perfect training ground” for the Supreme Court.
Judge O’Donnell, a 12-year common pleas judge, said because Kasich appointed Justice French “and continues to campaign for her this year, one can reasonably wonder whether she will be an independent voice as a justice.”
He added, “A voter might reasonably be more confident in my independence from the political branch than of hers given her long [association] with the executive branch of government, in particular the party currently in power.”
Justice French said she’s shown independence on the bench, and that politics has no role in decisions.
Judge O’Donnell and Letson criticized the incumbent justices for what they said are “inconsistencies” in not giving standing to a progressive policy organization and two Democratic legislators challenging the constitutionality of JobsOhio, the state’s privatized economic development group created at the behest of Kasich, while giving standing to a corporation in a case involving American Electric Power that permitted the company to not refund $368 million in over-charges to its customers.
The justices say the decisions are consistent as they follow state law and their opponents may not understand the two cases.
Justice French said she and a majority of the court upheld the ruling of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio in the AEP case as well as two others involving the company — one that ruled for AEP and one that didn’t. On the AEP case, Justice Kennedy said she was following state law.
“There are plenty of laws I don’t agree with, but I’m a strict constructionist,” Justice Kennedy said.
Justice French said she considers herself “a stable, conservative” judge. “I ought to be predictable with my decisions,” she said. “You serve the powers of the court and not interpret them liberally.”
As for the JobsOhio decision, Justice French said those who filed the suit “hadn’t been harmed,” and thus didn’t have standing.
Before her 2012 election to the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy spent 27 years in the justice system, including 14 years as a domestic relations court judge in Butler County. She started as a police officer, serving for four years.
“My judicial philosophy is one of restraint,” she said.
Challenging Justice Kennedy is Letson, who’s finishing his fourth two-year term as an Ohio House member. He couldn’t seek re-election this year because of the state’s term-limits law.
Term limits, he said, played a role in his decision to run for the Supreme Court as being a justice would be the “continuation of my public service.”