GOP attorney general candidate defends his ethics at CJP hearing

SACRAMENTO — Taking the stand nearly a week into his ethics hearing before the Commission on Judicial Performance, attorney general candidate Steven C. Bailey and his lead attorney painted a picture of an outspoken judge whose critics are seeking to manufacture a case against him.

“I’ve had judges from other counties tell me to watch out, I’ve had court staff tell me to watch out,” Bailey testified on the witness stand Monday afternoon. Since the hearing began last Tuesday, attorneys for the commission have tried to portray Bailey as an ethically-challenged judge who began running for attorney general months before resigning from El Dorado County Superior Court.

Bailey faced questions on 11 alleged counts of misconduct from commission trial counsel Mark A. Lizarraga for much of Friday through Monday morning. Many of these revolve around improper campaigning and doing favors for friends and family.

Lizarraga painstakingly walked Bailey through campaign activities he allegedly engaged in prior to his retirement from the court on Aug. 31, 2017. Bailey repeatedly characterized conversations with potential supporters as “exploratory.”

“I was meeting with people to discuss whether I could obtain any support if I were to run for attorney general,” Bailey replied in one typical exchange.

Bailey, a Republican, won 25 percent of the vote in the June primary to finish in second place. He will face Democratic incumbent Xavier Becerra in the Nov. 6 general election.

His attorney, James A. Murphy of Murphy Pearson Bradley & Feeney in San Francisco, guided Bailey through a series of questions designed to show the prosecution is politically motivated.

In several instances, he attempted to show Bailey was being singled out for scrutiny for taking actions that other judges have also done, or for actions directly taken by others. Much of this testimony concerned workplace politics in the El Dorado County court.

Bailey said he has been openly critical of Judge Suzanne N. Kingsbury, who has been presiding judge in the county since 1999, and who he said has mismanaged the court’s personnel and finances. He said court staff and judges from other counties began warning him that there was an investigation against him and efforts to find a challenger in his next election.

“Frankly, by mid-2015, it was hell to be on that bench,” Bailey testified. “I don’t know I was being surveilled, but I suspect.”

Bailey also said that when he first began as a judge in 2009, he sought Kingsbury’s advice on whether he needed to disclose his son worked for the one company in the county offering alcohol monitoring. He said Kingsbury directed him to the California Judges Association, which told him he did not need to disclose the relationship.

Under Murphy’s questioning, Bailey testified he made five such referrals to the company, far fewer than some other judges. When another company became available in nearby Nevada County, Bailey said he began referring people there.

Bailey testified that he asked a supporter who made flyers showing him in his judicial robes for his attorney general campaign, before he was an official candidate, to destroy them.

He said that a candidate for another judgeship used a photo of Bailey in his robes for his own campaign without his knowledge or permission. The prosecution has introduced both flyers in an attempt to show Bailey misused his office.

Many of Lizarraga’s allegations concern events that took places in the spring and summer of 2017, just before he formally announced his campaign in September.

In particular, Lizarraga brought up several potentially campaign-related activities in April. Campaign disclosures show that Bailey made the first of $21,000 in payments to the Republican campaign law firm Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk LLP in May of last year.