Nothing like a good e-mail to get the juices flowing. I will leave this as it is. Y’all can decide if you will be Dumbocrats and sheeple and dig CCDC Chair Charlotte Valyo’s pretzel logic or will you stand up, look at your by-laws and ease your Grandma and her flying monkeys into party retirement?

What does the email say? I am including verbiage in case screen shot is not clear and Chesco Dems? “Bubble” well….:

From: Marcy Cornell office@chescodems.org
Date: Fri, Sep 22, 2023 at 3:35 PM
Subject: Retention Explanation
To: Marcy Cornell office@chescodems.org
Cc: Charlotte Valyo chair@chescodems.org

Dear CCDC,

I apologize for yet another email. I am receiving questions regarding retentions. Some information is being shared that is not complete nor necessarily factual.

1) Retention is not an election. Court of Common Pleas Judges are elected once, for a ten-year term. After ten years, they are placed on the ballot for retention. The purpose of retention rather than running again is to remove politics from the judiciary. Once elected, judges are to make decisions based on the law and facts, not on political affiliation or political views. There is no red or blue, they are to think black (robes). This process was written into the Pennsylvania Constitution to ensure the independence of our courts.

2) Judge Carmody and Judge Hall will both age out before their next term ends, which will open up two seats for us to elect our candidates. This also makes it unlikely either would run for a higher Court seat.

3) Judge Carmody and Judge Hall are not extremists but are moderates and have earned the respect of their fellow judges and the legal community. I have spoken with our Democratic Court of Common Pleas Judges, most of our judicial and county candidates, and Democratic attorneys in Chester County. All unanimously support both judges and have only positive things to say about both.

4) If these judges were not retained what would happen?

a. The Chester County Court of Common Pleas would lose 2 judges, burdening an already overburdened Court.

b. Governor Shapiro can appoint attorneys to fill judicial vacancies, but this requires approval by the Republican controlled State Senate. The likelihood that the Republican controlled Senate would vote to approve Democratic judges is very low. Therefore, we will either have no appointments or two Republican judges who could be and probably would be younger and much more conservative.

c. If two Republican judges were appointed, both would be running as incumbents in the next election.

5) Bubbling “No” for these moderate and respected judges diminishes the effect of our bubbling “No” in the future when more extreme judges are up for retention.

6) For statewide judicial retentions, the Pennsylvania State Committee is bubbling the Democrat up for retention as a “Yes” and the Republican blank.

7) Based on the information above and following the lead of the Pennsylvania State Committee, CCDC will not be bubbling in a recommendation for retention for the Court of Common Pleas.

Regards,

Charlotte