With all due respect to retired Judge Eric Valentine, my perspective on the Union County candidates’ forum was quite different. I thought Judge Wes Williams handled himself calmly and with dignity.

This is particularly true after Judge Powers described having to run to Judge Williams’ courtroom, interrupting what he was doing, to hear a juvenile dependency hearing Judge Williams was disqualified from. Powers implied it was just another one of many disqualifications of Judge Williams.

In fact, my understanding is that no one is removing Judge Williams from juvenile dependency cases except his opponent, who filed the disqualification motion at issue right before the juvenile dependency hearing. Judge Powers knew this and should have disclosed that. It would have changed the context of the disruption to the court in that it was caused by Jared Boyd, whose campaign platform is prefaced on Judge Williams’ alleged inability to hear a full caseload. He removed Judge Williams for no reason other than to make Judge Williams look bad.

In his closing, Judge Williams calmly but sternly corrected the record and rightly said that Judge Powers did not tell the whole truth. As noted above, the audience would have had an entirely different perspective had Powers prefaced his story on the fact that Mr. Boyd, Judge Williams’ opponent, issued the disqualification right before the juvenile dependency hearing.

Nod Palmer

Union