I haven’t written much about the Bozonicle lately (well, truth is, I haven’t written much at all), but I caught something in the former “City Hall Blog” over there today. You know, the one that’s now about politics in city and county, instead of, you know, news. Since Matt’s been reined in, clearly I need to get back to doing my agenda summaries.

This article is about the Bar poll, asking local lawyers to rate the various candidates. Every race was on the questionnaire, but the only ones mentioned were the DA’s and County Judge. I can let that slide; both are the biggest news out there, thanks to Chucky’s seppuku, and someone’s (we won’t name names) exquisitely timed departure from the County Judge office. But note some odd inclusions and omissions in the article. Emphasis and comments in [brackets] are all mine.

Siegler was rated well qualified by 475 lawyers, compared to 380 for defense lawyer Jim Leitner, 296 for former Houston police chief C.O. Bradford, 291 for former judge Pat Lykos and 18 for police Capt. Doug Perry. [So Siegler got more top ratings than anyone else.]

These tea leaves can be read a number of ways, and we’ll mostly leave the decoding to you political junkies out there [but don’t worry, we’ll tell you exactly what we want you to know]. Here’s what we know [are gonna tell ya]: Siegler has been a prosecutor for 21 years and therefore is known by a ton of lawyers. (In addition to the 475 who rated her well qualified, 284 said she was qualified to be DA and 525 said she was not). [And since that’s more than said she was qualified, you can ignore the earlier number, mmmkay?]

Leitner is a veteran defense lawyer and former prosecutor. Bradford is the only Democrat in the race; the other four are running in the March 4 Republican primary. Lykos is a former judge who hardly ever did well in the bar polls back when. Perry has not practiced criminal law. [So you know who we want you to vote for, right?]

Bacarisse was rated well qualified to be county judge, the government executive position, by 696 lawyers; incumbent Ed Emmett by 427. They’re in the Republican primary [Which isn’t important, right?]. Democratic candidate David Mincberg got 408 well qualifieds; opponent Ahmad Hassan, just 26. [That’s Mincberg, M-I-N-C-B-E-R-G. Don’t forget it come general election time, we’ll be endorsing him again, after doing our best to make sure the Republican who got the most positive votes overall is knocked out of the primary in favor of our transit cheerleader.]

So what are the raw numbers? Take a look. Out of 2,068 responses:

Some of those figures do jump out, all right. Over half the lawyers who responded chose not to rate Bradford, three-fourths chose not to rate Perry. Neither are lawyers — does this mean that the respondents simply don’t take them seriously as candidates? Or were they afraid to offend someone? The overall ratings that were given to Perry were pretty abysmal, but that’s to be expected. Frankly, he has no chance in the election. And yes, Siegler got more “Not Qualified” than “Well Qualified” votes (525-475) but somehow, the fact that Bradford (537-296), Lykos (527-291), and Perry (499-18) also did somehow goes unmentioned. Only Leitner, former prosecutor-turned-defense-attorney, had a positive ratio (182-380).

Combining Qualified and Well qualified, and ignoring No Responses:
Bradford got a positive rating from 466 respondents, negative from 537, for 46.46% positive.
Leitner got a positive rating from 722 respondents, negative from 182, for 79.86% positive.
Lykos got a positive rating from 654 respondents, negative from 527, for 55.37% positive.
Perry got a positive rating from 85 respondents, negative from 499, for 14.54% positive.
Siegler got a positve rating from 759 respondents, negative from 525 for 59.11% positive.

What do I take from this? Well, firstly, that the Bozonicle sucks. Siegler actually got the most total positive votes, and had the second best rating, even if it was 20 points behind a fellow defense lawyer. Only the large number of negative votes dragged her down. The Chron’s blatant attempt to make her results look totally irrelevant (“Siegler has been a prosecutor for 21 years and therefore is known by a ton of lawyers”) is just sad.

The second thing I take from it is that a lot of defense lawyers are unwilling to say a colleague isn’t qualified. An alternative theory is they really want to put one of their own in as D.A, and they definitely don’t want to see a former police chief or captain taking the job.

An unkind person might say that the lawyers want one of their own in place because they think they’ll get better deals or win ratios, and thereby look better and make more money. The problem with that idea is: if a defense lawyer were to shake things up at the D.A.’s office, the last thing he’d want to do would be to lose a lot of cases (and thereby the public confidence), nor would he want to bring (and drop) lots of charges, thereby giving his buddies lots of work, but looking weak on crime. And if, for instance, a number of reforms were to decrease the number of cases brought before grand juries or to trial, then the lawyers supporting him would have less business, not more.
So I’m not sure that theory holds water.

An even more unkind person might say that this amounts to a vote of “no confidence” in the conduct of the prosecutor’s office. Me? I’m the more unkind type. If it’s not just an artifact of “professional courtesy” and not wanting to say bad things about a fellow lawyer.

As for the County Judge’s office; well, for now let’s just say that Bacarisse beat out his competitors in the “Well Qualified” bracket by a 3:2 margin, and save the rest for later.