Atlanta Journal Constitution

Sept 6, 2016

Latino judge faced stiff opposition to seat on Georgia’s top court

Greg Bluestein reporting

More than 130 lawyers were nominated for the three open Georgia Supreme Court slots, but there was only one who provoked a storm of letters to Gov. Nathan Deal’s office.

Two county sheriffs urged Deal not to appoint State Court Judge Dax Lopez to Georgia’s highest bench. A conservative Atlanta group said his history should “disqualify” him from the seat. And a string of voters added their objections, using the words “frightening” and “stupid” to describe his potential candidacy.

The judge’s offense? His past membership in the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, a bipartisan advocacy group that supports a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally and fought tougher state laws on immigration.

For Lopez, a Hispanic Republican who decided last month not to seek appointment to the state’s top bench, it is a familiar line of attack.

The same criticism led U.S. Sen. David Perdue to scuttle Lopez’s nomination in January after President Barack Obama sought to make him the state’s first lifetime-appointed Latino federal judge. And a Republican challenger in a failed May campaign to oust Lopez from the DeKalb County bench labeled him a “rejected politician.”

The pushback against him illustrates the GOP’s hard-line tilt over immigration that fueled Donald Trump’s presidential nomination — and why it can be difficult for the party to attract Latinos.

Deal has three slots to fill on the Georgia Supreme Court because state lawmakers went along with his plan this year to add two positions to the court. Another long-serving justice is set to retire in January.

Lopez, who declined to comment Tuesday, stepped down from GALEO in September 2015, shortly after his nomination to the federal bench. But he has said he was frustrated he did not get a chance to tell his side of the story during the federal nomination process. Latino advocates say it’s symptomatic of deeper problems.

“Anti-immigrant activists are extremists and not in the mainstream, and GALEO has Latino community members from both sides of the aisle,” said Jerry Gonzalez, GALEO’s executive director. “The current political environment has stoked many xenophobic and racist ideas that, polls show, are repulsed by many Americans.”

‘History should disqualify him’

When Obama tapped Lopez for the seat in July 2015 it seemed to many to be a foregone conclusion. State Republican Party counsel Anne Lewis, former state House Majority Whip Ed Lindsey and other prominent GOP attorneys signed a letter to the senators in support of Lopez a few months later.

But a groundswell of conservative blowback quickly slowed the momentum as critics highlighted his past membership on GALEO’s board. It dovetailed with a hardening GOP immigration stance that featured Trump’s tough-talking call for mass deportations of millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and construction of a wall on the border with Mexico.

That opposition continues to haunt Lopez, a member of the conservative Federalist Society who was first appointed to the Georgia bench by then-Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue. Under pressure to increase diversity on the state’s top bench, Lopez was considered by some observers a serious contender for an open seat.

But The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that Deal had received a string of anti-Lopez letters that revealed just how divisive his nomination would have been. The Lopez critiques were the only ones sent to Deal’s office in recent months singling out a potential judicial candidate.

The executive board of the Conservative Republican Women of North Atlanta wrote Deal that Lopez’s “history should disqualify” him. Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway said Lopez “closely aligned himself with a radical organization,” and Union County Sheriff Mark Mason said Lopez’s ties to GALEO were a deal-breaker.

“Say it ain’t so!” added a voter, Ernest Wade of Loganville. “If you appoint Dax Lopez to Georgia’s Supreme Court, then we all know that you have been deceiving us.”

Much of the opposition was marshaled by D.A. King, an activist who casts himself as a defender of immigration law and an opponent of GALEO. King cheered Perdue’s decision to block the Lopez nomination earlier this year, and urged his supporters to dial Deal’s office last month to oppose an “anti-enforcement judge from the illegal alien lobby.”… READ THE REST HERE