How judicial candidates with notable incidents hanging over their campaigns fared Tuesday

In one judicial election contest Tuesday, the incumbent had been captured on video walking around the courthouse in his underwear.

In a second race, one candidate had gotten a defendant, who he prosecuted as a commonwealth attorney, pregnant.

In a third, contest, a challenger who had never practiced family law filed against the incumbent Family Court judge, seemingly to disqualify her from sitting in the challenger’s contentious divorce, in which she allegedly threatened to shoot her ex-husband and called him "a fat (expletive) Jew.”

And in a fourth race – a candidate in a circuit where his wife is the top elected prosecutor had to promise not to preside in any criminal cases, to avoid the appearance of a conflict.

So how did these candidates do?

They all lost.

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In Marshall and Calloway counties, Judge Jamie Jameson, whom the Judicial Conduct Commission ordered removed from the bench Friday for dozens of ethics violations, lost to Andrea Lee Moore of Calvert City by a 54% to 46% margin. If he'd been re-elected, votes would have been counted but a vacancy would have been deemed to exist and the governor would have appointed a replacement, according to Michon Lindstrom, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office.

Jameson was accused of misusing the prestige of his office when he tried to kill a potential story on Murray State University's public radio station about him being caught on a security camera "walking around the courthouse in your underwear,” as the commission put it. Jameson said he had worked in chambers until 3 am, then slept for a couple of hours before his wife called and said their children were waiting outside the courthouse door to see him.

The courthouse normally would have been deserted, but a cleaning person saw him and said he was dressed inappropriately. Jameson had denied wrongdoing in all the charges and will appeal his removal, his lawyer said.

In Southern Kentucky, commonwealth’s attorney Matthew Leveridge admitted that in 2014 he got a criminal defendant pregnant, then moved to rescind her pretrial diversion agreement when she told his then-wife about the affair.

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Local attorneys said they were shocked when he decided to run for circuit judge, The Courier Journal reported.

In campaign appearances and interviews, Leveridge said he made a mistake and asked voters to forgive him. His opponent, Sara Beth Gregory, a former state representative and senator who works in the state auditor’s office, did not make it an issue in her campaign.

But in interviews last summer outside a local Walmart store voters said they had neither forgotten Leveridge’s misstep nor forgiven him.

Gregory defeated him with 54% of the vote.

Joni Bottorff, whose practice is focused on estate planning and probate, had never filed a divorce case or practiced family law.

But by entering the race for Family Court for Oldham, Henry and Trimble counties, Bofforff forced Goodwin to recuse herself from Bottorff’s long-running divorce case in which Goodwin twice found Bottorff in contempt of court, The Courier Journal reported. Records in the divorce show she had called her ex-husband who is Jewish, "a fat (expletive) Jew" and told him to “go worship your money.”

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Bottorff won enough votes in the primary to knock out a third candidate but voters by a 56% to 44% margin gave Goodwin, who has practiced family law for 23 years, a second term.

Running for the circuit that includes Scott, Woodford and Bourbon counties – and where Sharon Muse Johnson is commonwealth attorney -- her husband, candidate Rob Johnson, promised to decline to hear criminal cases if elected, to avoid an obvious conflict of interest.

But his opponent, Katie Gabhart, the former head of the Executive Branch Ethics Commission, said in a campaign mailer that would create “chaos for the circuit and delay justice for victims.”

Rob Johnson, now an assistant commonwealth’s attorney who works in his wife’s office, said he could easily handle all the circuit’s civil cases, which comprise more than half the docket, while its other circuit judge, Jeremy Mattox, could handle the smaller criminal load.

Johnson also claimed during the campaign that Gabbart, who was appointed to the opening by Gov. Andy Beshear, did not have enough trial experience.

The voters picked Gabbart by a 55-45 margin.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: How did Kentucky judicial candidates do in the 2022 election?