Misleading statements used in campaign for magistrate judge?

May 10, 2020

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor Local Voices Politics

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Yesterday I received a “robo-call” from the challenger to Judge Christy Dunkelberger, who is the incumbent magistrate judge for Post 1 of the Fayette County Magistrate Court. This call from the challenger sort of rubbed me the wrong way, and it gave me the inspiration to write this letter to the editor.

The challenger stated in her call that she is running for the Magistrate Court to restore “fairness and integrity” to the judiciary, based on misconduct that lead to the “removal” of three Fayette County judges.

In my opinion, this message was inaccurate and misleading. The caller would have her listeners believe that there is a current issue with the integrity within the Magistrate Court, and that electing her would fix that.

The facts are: One Superior Court judge was removed from office earlier this year for mishandling funds; and TEN years ago, two Superior Court judges “resigned” from office following some allegations and evidence of inappropriate behavior.

More importantly, NONE of the judges involved were magistrate judges. In fact, there are NO issues with the “fairness or integrity” of any of the Fayette County magistrate judges, especially Judge Dunkelberger.

So, the caller, the challenger to Judge Dunkelberger, is running for magistrate judge to bring back “fairness and integrity.” However, as just mentioned above, there is NO LACK of “fairness and integrity” in the Magistrate Court.

That is, UNLESS the caller wants the listener to believe (by convoluted inference) that her opponent, the Honorable Christy Dunkelberger, was somehow connected to the “heap” of errant judges of a different time and in a different court. To the contrary, and this is important, I personally know Judge Dunkelberger to be a devout Christian of the highest moral character.

So, do you sense a little lack of “fairness and integrity” in the challenger’s robo-call? Just sayin’.

If the caller truly wanted to restore integrity to the Fayette courts, maybe she should have run for a Superior Court position, and done so TEN years ago.

I support the previous letter to the Editor (“Our 4 incumbent Fayette magistrate judges deserve to be re-elected”) published here on March 31, 2020.

Bruce Phillips

Peachtree City, Ga.

Letters to the Editor

3 responses to “Misleading statements used in campaign for magistrate judge?”

Ptc27823001

May 14, 2020

I agree. I immediately thought the challenger is a Democrat. They have no sound policies, therefore, they resort to slanderous rhetoric. It so shameful how they distort facts.

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1. Robert W. Morgan
  
  May 15, 2020
  
  Shameful and sad that half of Americans get up in the morning and try their best to create something while the other half focuses on criticizing them and tearing down established institutions.
  
  Must be miserable for those folks that live in the second half, being so full of anger and even hatred. I’m not even sure it used to be 100% political in the past. There were actually some good honest and sincere Dems who were productive and gave away their own stuff in the spirit of charity. Now it is all-out class warfare and gotcha questions from the press. Sick puppies – that group.
  
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Robert W. Morgan

May 12, 2020

That’s just basic Dem-speak 101 probably written by some 20 year old part-time campaign staffer or worse yet something the candidate herself copied from another campaign. Democrats are really good modifying the facts and even the meaning of some words. How else do you get a term like pro-choice accepted into general use when you think about what it really is.

Don’t worry about it Bruce, these people and certainly many voters don’t even know about our judge scandals. The incumbent judge and others will prevail based upon the good job they have been doing. We have small scandals compared to other counties.

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