Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor speaks about the important characteristics of a good judge: wisdom, humility, conscientiousness, competence, and high ethics. Attorneys like me have a responsibility to speak out and support the elevation of members of the bar to the bench who demonstrate these important characteristics.
We have an opportunity in November to place such a man on the bench in Santa Maria: John MacKinnon. He has excelled in the courtroom, and is heartily invested in making Santa Barbara County a better place to live through his involvement in the drug treatment courts and prosecuting workers compensation fraud and sexually violent predator commitment cases. Mr. MacKinnon will serve this community well, and he deserves your vote.
This article appears in Oct 23-30, 2008.