Letter to the Editor: Don’t let a PAC buy our judges

To the Editor:

We have lived in Shoreline for 50 years and have been very active in many projects that have made our community a great place to live and work.

The Shoreline District Court, which also serves residents in Lake Forest Park and Kenmore, is a source of pride for us too – pride in having a local court with judges who live here and understand the concerns of our citizens.

We were therefore very disturbed to learn that a political action committee called Citizens for Judicial Excellence is spending big money supporting Les Ponomarchuk, one of the candidates for Shoreline District Court judge. This deceptively named PAC is sending out campaign mailings supporting Ponomarchuk under the name of Goodjudges.org -- but all of this is actually funded by large donations from bail bond companies, firms that sell those ignition interlock devices to convicted DUI offenders, alcohol treatment agencies, and DUI defense lawyers. In fact, one of the large bail bond companies contributed over $15,000 to this PAC just in the past two years. Why is a bail bond company interested in who Shoreline’s judge might be?

We have a fine local candidate who has been working very hard for many months to earn the voters’ trust as he walks around our neighborhoods knocking on doors – Joe Campagna. Joe is highly rated by all the lawyers’ groups, very experienced in the work of the District Courts, and endorsed by more than 50 judges in the area – including every one of our State Supreme Court justices. Joe didn’t ask for help from the DUI industry’s PAC money. He’s been campaigning the good old fashioned way – talking to the voters in person. We intend to vote for him, and we think everyone should be asking themselves “why does this PAC want to influence our local election?”

Pearl and Ken Noreen
Shoreline