Voters in Los Angeles County can’t really go wrong with any of the judicial candidates in the race for Office No. 87.
David DeJute, rated “Qualified” by the Los Angeles County Bar Association, has a great resume. He’s served as an Assistant United States Attorney, a vice president at Sony Pictures and currently teaches at the Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law. There, he works as director of the Disaster Relief Clinic, providing free legal assistance to wildfire victims. DeJute, whose father was a judge, says it has been a goal of his to become one himself.
Sharee Sanders Gordon, also rated “Qualified” by the LA County Bar Association, brings a wealth of personal and professional experience. An elementary school teacher-turned-prosecutor, she has served in the Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney’s Office for 25 years. Empathetic and reasonable, she knows well the need to take each case as it comes.
Anthony Bayne, rated “Well Qualified” by the LA County Bar Association, has seemingly done it all. Turned away from drugs and alcohol after seeing what they did to those around him, he turned to martial arts and began piecing together a winding career that took him from the aerospace and defense sectors to eventually a quarter century as a public defender. On the side, he’s taught himself patent law and has been issued patents, with others pending.
This may have been one of our more difficult calls.
All three candidates would be great judges. They all have personal and professional experiences, temperaments and ways of thinking that would only enhance Los Angeles County’s justice system.
DeJute, for instance, though a Democrat, looks back fondly on his time clerking for Ronald Reagan-appointee William J. Rea. “We agreed on nothing when it came to politics,” he explained. “But the judge was able to set that aside and call ‘balls and strikes’ as he saw them. I think that’s right. “
Gordon, meanwhile, spoke movingly about the impact of both crime and the justice system she’s seen on young people. As she elaborated in our endorsement survey, “Too often, early warning signs are met with punishment instead of support. When students are pushed out of school through suspensions or disengagement, they become more vulnerable to entering the justice system. That is not a failure of our youth, it is a failure of the systems that should be supporting them.”
Ultimately, though, we give the nod to Bayne, only the second public defender we’ve endorsed this election cycle out of the nine judicial endorsements at the time of this writing. His support from judges like Pat Connolly and his ability to get the support of both the Peace Officers Research Association of California and La Defensa (whose platform we generally oppose), confirm that he’s truly an independent thinker.
“My career as a deputy public defender has also taught me that the people who appear in court are not abstractions,” he explained to us. “Many are dealing with poverty, unstable housing, addiction, or mental health challenges. Poverty is not a crime. After trying more than 100 jury trials and handling thousands of cases, I have learned to distinguish between someone genuinely trying to get into compliance who needs a little more time, and someone acting in deliberate disregard of the law. That distinction matters, and decades of courtroom experience sharpen it.”
As a judge, he says he will do his best to shed any preconceptions developed as a public defender and instead seek to model how he thinks all judges ought to be. “When courts operate with fairness, preparation, and consistency, they strengthen public confidence in the justice system — and that benefits everyone,” he argues. “My philosophy is straightforward: fairness, efficiency, dignity, and the faithful application of the law.”
If elected, he says he’ll be ready to study up on whatever subset of law he’d be expected to oversee. After all, he knows he’s on the taxpayers’ dime and so the sooner he’s prepared, the better. “I am a taxpayer and I hate my tax dollars being wasted,” he told us.
With that, we endorse Anthony Bayne for judge.