Political Notebook: Two longtime Pima County judges won't run for re-election

Two long-serving judges at Pima County Justice Court will not be running for reelection and will be replaced by non-attorneys.

Justice of the Peace Susan Bacal has been on the bench since 1998. Challenged months ago by fellow Democrat Kristel Foster, she considered running for reelection but in the end did not turn in signatures to get on the ballot.

Neither did Justice of the Peace Adam Watters, who filed in January to run for his third four-year term but did not submit petition signatures. Outgoing state Sen. Victoria Steele is the only candidate for that seat.

Bacal said Thursday she had gone back and forth for months on whether to run for reelection, in part in consideration of her brother Rick Bacal’s possible interest in the seat.

“My initial plan was, ‘If my brother runs, I won’t; If my brother doesn’t run, I will,’ “ she said.

Then the Pima County of Supervisors approved a plan by former County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry to eliminate one Justice of the Peace precinct and remap the remaining ones. Rick Bacal’s neighborhood went into a different precinct than the one his sister represents.

Bacal submitted a statement of interest late in March but ultimately decided not to follow through with a run against challenger Foster.

“Running for office makes me a political official whether I want to or not,” she said. “That’s the only part of the job I don’t like.”

Foster works as a teacher trainer at Sunnyside Unified School District and served two terms on the Tucson Unified School District board. She said one of the motivations for her challenge was the eviction of fellow Sunnyside teacher Emilio Bustamante during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bacal ordered the eviction of Bustamante, which was covered in a detailed Arizona Daily Star story, published in September 2020, describing how he taught classes remotely while homeless. Foster garnered enough support to make herself comfortable she could win, she said, and she filed her statement of interest on Dec. 6, 2021.

In the end, Bacal said, both an appellate ruling and a decision by the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct backed her decision. Still, she acknowledged, it was a bad situation with a worse ending — last year, Bustamante died unexpectedly.

“I feel heartbroken for his family because he died,” she said. “I don’t feel I’m the cause of that, but it’s still tragic.”

“Part of being a judge is making those hard calls,” Bacal added.

While Bacal is an attorney, Foster is not. It is not a requirement that justices of the peace be attorneys, but, Bacal said “I really think it’s important to have legal experience.”

It’s a common feeling among attorneys, but increasingly, nonlawyers are winning seats on the bench. Current justices of the peace Charlene Pesquiera, Vince Roberts and Ray Carroll are not lawyers.

Watters is an attorney and Republican but will be replaced by Steele, who is a Democrat and not an attorney. Watters became the subject of controversy after Feb. 14, 2021, when he fired a gun at the ground near a man who he suspected of stalking his family.

The man, Fei Qin, later was convicted of stalking, and soon after his sentencing in January, Watters filed to run for election, but ultimately did not submit signatures.

- Tim Steller

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Watkins’ bad night

Ron Watkins may be a great communicator when he uses a keyboard, but the figure who helped the QAnon conspiracy theory catch fire during the pandemic proved himself a weak debater during a Clean Elections event Wednesday night.

Watkins, a newcomer to Arizona, is running for the Republican nomination for Congress in the new Congressional District 2, which covers much of Pinal County, eastern and northern Arizona. He’s best known for running the internet message board where posts were made by a character calling himself Q and claiming vast pedophile conspiracy existed that President Donald Trump was secretly shutting down.

Asked about the United States supplying military aid to Ukraine, Watkins said, “I support military aid to Ukraine, but I want to say we would not even be in Ukraine if President Biden did not shut down the Keystone Pipeline on the first day.”

This was a reference to a controversial oil pipeline running from Canada through the Dakotas. After Watkins made a convoluted explanation of the supposed connection between the pipeline and Ukraine, fellow candidate Walter Blackman disentangled the two issues.

“He’s right. I made a mistake,” Watkins responded.

That wasn’t necessarily the worst moment, though. In a passage that went viral online, Watkins seemed to lose his words as he concluded his opening statement.

“And I will make sure that your ... rights ... are ... are kept,” Watkins said, lifting his fist as he struggled for words.

- Tim Steller

Lieberman seeks spark

Trailing badly in the polls, Democrat Aaron Lieberman is going all-in with a bid to finally light a fire to his campaign.

Lieberman is launching a new TV commercial, complete with a burning dumpster he said represents Arizona politics, attacking not just Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is leading the pack in the Democratic primary, but also Republican Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for governor who so far is polling ahead of others.

Lieberman is betting heavily on the effectiveness of the commercial: He is allocating $500,000 of the $760,000 he recently reported having left on hand to get the message out statewide.

He starts by launching an attack on Lake for appearing at rallies with Nazi sympathizers.

But Lieberman said the worry for the Democrats — his target audience — is that Lake is still polling better than Hobbs “who two federal juries have found guilty of racial discrimination.”

That refers to federal court findings that Senate staffer Talonya Adams, who is black, was discriminated against by Hobbs who, at the time, was the Senate minority leader. Jurors awarded Adams $2.7 million, though that was reduced because federal civil rights laws limit damages in discrimination cases to no more than $300,000.

And the not-so-subtle bottom line in the ad is that Lieberman calls himself “the only Democrat who can win in November.’’

- Howard Fischer