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State's highest court says experience matters and picks somebody with actual legal experience as one of its two clerks; Suffolk County voters next week will pick the other
By adamg on Wed, 08/28/2024 - 10:59pm
Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Kimberly Budd today swore in Maura Looney as the SJC's Clerk for the Commonwealth, replacing Francis Kenneally, who was appointed a judge in the district-court system earlier this year.
Looney, an attorney, spent 11 years as the court's assistant clerk. Before that she held jobs that included enforcement attorney in the Secretary of State's securities office and assistant district attorney in Middlesex County. The Suffolk University Law School graduate also worked as a law clerk for a justice on the Massachusetts Appeals Court.
The court's other clerk position will be decided in the Democratic primaries on Tuesday when voters just in Suffolk County will select an SJC Clerk for Suffolk County, an office that, despite its name, also deals with statewide issues before the court, such as lawyer discipline and emergency petitions to the court, and which remains an elected office decades, if not centuries, after anybody still remembered why it was elected to begin with.
In that race - there are no Republican candidates - voters will decide between Allison Cartwright, who has been a lawyer for 33 years and who currently oversees a team of 75 public-defender lawyers and Erin Murphy, who says her lack of legal experience is no bar to the job and that she's got plenty of experience as an elementary-school teacher and city councilor.
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Comments
I don’t know how things work
I don’t know how things work in that sphere.
Angela Cartright has tons of relevant experience to clark in this finance town, but the fact that she’s running unopposed -no offense- sounds like the selection was made already in the sense that no one of similar stature is running. This must be a small ecosystem, why no competition? No interest?
08:59, 08302024: Surely there’s a pool of peer candidates and I was wondering how candidate/apparatchik A with the long CV is running against candidate/apparatchik B with the a job title instead of a similar candidate to A, but then I heard on NPR that candidate B has deep family/historical/philosophical background.
I hope Boston is clear of what each candidate represents.
Uh, what?
The story says she has opposition.
Erin Murphy is running
Erin Murphy is running against Allison in the Democratic primary next week.
It doesn't appear that there will be an opposing candidate on the ballot in the General election in November.
Please dont vote for a
Please dont vote for a political hack when there is a professional with relevant administrative experience available. Cartwright all the way. Erin Murphy should try _getting a job the regular way_. Why this position is even elected is some kind of absurdity.
Cartwright!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvzFxsU0WEI
Why elected?
What relic of corrupt machine politics causes a clerk of court to be an elected position? What steps could be taken to professionalize these administrative jobs?
Essex County Clerk
The Essex County Clerk job is also up for election this year. One of the candidates is running on the platform that this should not be an elected position. Of course every elected official is lining up behind the incumbent.
is there a problem?
Has the SJC been reduced to chaos with its Suffolk County cases?
I will vote for Allison, since I know her and she's been a good defense lawyer, and I have no objection to democracy.
Worst case scenario, it's a sinecure for burned out pols. They can do no harm. The staff knows what to do.
An alternative selection process by the Governor, Legislature, Governor's Council or the SJC itself would involve "machine politics" too.
I know Allison, too.
I know Allison, too.
Legal is not my field, but I am confident in her ability. She'll definitely have my vote.
Agree
And to the extent there is a political “machine” these days, it’s Mayor Wu and the progressives, who are supporting Cartwright. I get that Suffolk County is more than Boston, but Winthrop Revere and Chelsea don’t have any collective machine either. Let the people vote and see what the result is. Not everything these days is a crisis for democracy and progressives have (finally) figured out how to use politics pretty effectively too. Sure took them long enough.
Ditto register of deeds.
Ditto register of deeds. There's no reason it should be an elected position, allowing a washed up hack like Steve Murphy to secure a lifetime salary based on name recognition instead of someone with domain expertise like longtime Universal Hub commenter and real estate guy John Keith.
*Disclosure: I did some minor campaigning for Keith in his 2016 run
Who is Angela Cartwright?
Who is Angela Cartwright?
Allison Cartwright is the candidate.
Fixed
Angela Cartwright played one of the daughters on "Lost in Space," which is not a show I particularly liked, so no clue how I confused the two.
please provide a quote
where the SJC actually "said" something.
She was also in Make Room For
She was also in Make Room For Daddy, as well as The Sound Of Music.
Have you been dreaming lately of families in black & white with simple suburban sitcom plots?
Have you been converting draperies to play clothes recently?
My first TV crush.
I was nine. She was thirteen.
I wasn't yet old enough to know what a crush was :-)
Penny Robinson!
One of my first crushes too!
Also Danny Thomas's "daughter"...
As someone around the same as Angela Cartwright, I can attest I had a crush on her as Penny in Lost in Space.
BTW -- There is another clerk's race in Suffolk County -- and it seems like very little info is available about the candidates (beyond their own websites).