Nesbett Courthouse in downtown Anchorage on Oct. 7, 2024. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
In the last days of Alaska’s election season, a no-budget, grassroots campaign is seeking to remove Anchorage Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman from the state bench.
Alaska’s constitution allows voters to keep or reject judges on a regular basis, and Zeman is on ballots in Anchorage and other parts of Southeast Alaska.
It’s extraordinarily unusual for voters to evict a judge, but Zeman’s course may be different because of a ruling he made in April that struck down as unconstitutional the state’s popular correspondence allotment program, which distributes payments to the families of eligible homeschooled students.
The ruling was later reversed by the Alaska Supreme Court on technical grounds, and the case was sent back to Zeman for further work. It remains in his court.
The campaign against Zeman is being organized by two conservative organizations: Alaska Family Action and a local chapter of Moms for Liberty.
Jim Minnery is one of the organizers of Alaska Family Action and said in a mid-October column that Zeman’s ruling was “horrible” and “showed his true colors as one who thinks our Constitution can be molded and twisted to accommodate the whims of a political agenda.”
By phone, Minnery said it’s important to “remind Alaskans that they have the right to vote however they want, for whatever reason they want.”
Judicial retention votes vary across the state. All Alaskans will have a chance to vote on two Alaska Supreme Court justices and two Court of Appeals judges. Beyond that, Southeast voters will vote on Southeast judges, Southcentral voters will vote on Southcentral judges, and so on.
Of the 19 judges on Alaska’s election ballots this year, Zeman is the only one facing an organized campaign in favor of his removal. If voters reject him, it would be the first time since 2018 and only the second time in state history that a judge has been removed because of popular disagreement with a ruling, rather than misdeeds while in office.
Alaska’s judicial selection and retention process was intended by its authors to be apolitical, with selection and retention advice coming from the Alaska Judicial Council, a six-member board that includes three members of the Alaska Bar Association and three public members chosen by the governor. If the six members tie, the chief justice of the Alaska Supreme Court makes the tiebreaking vote.
Earlier this year, the council voted to endorse all 19 judges on this year’s ballots, but the decision came with controversy.
Of the council’s six members, two of the governor’s appointees voted against Zeman, and one voted against Alaska Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Henderson. Those were the only “no” votes among all the judges statewide.
Council member Denny DeWitt abstained on all the judicial votes except Zeman, whom he opposed. By phone, DeWitt said he doesn’t like that the council is endorsing judges. Instead, he said, the council should simply say that in its reviews, it didn’t find any problems.
“I believe that voters can make their own decisions,” he said, “and they ought to based on what they know about folks in their local community. What I think the Judicial Council can do is advise (voters) about what the lawyers think about (judges) … and whether or not they’ve done anything that would warrant not being re-elected.”
On Zeman, DeWitt said he voted “no” because on the correspondence case “and a couple of his other decisions … I don’t think that his work product, as he goes about it, was appropriate for the folks in Alaska.”
“I don’t think the processes he uses and the conclusions he’s come to are well thought-out and show that he ought to be retained,” DeWitt said. “He’s not the kind of judge I would want, if I had to go before a judge for some reason in this state.”
By law, judges are prohibited from campaigning politically unless there is a campaign against them. Zeman spoke briefly on Thursday during a break from his legal work.
He said he was disappointed by the judicial council’s vote and couldn’t comment on DeWitt’s decision-making process, “much like I don’t know that he can comment on mine.”
“If we are basing retention on a singular decision, when a judge will make thousands of decisions during that term, I think that’s a real slippery slope on how we evaluate judges,” Zeman said.
Zeman isn’t able to talk about the correspondence case because it’s still unresolved, but he was willing to talk about his thinking.
“To tell you the truth, as I was going through my decision, not once did I think, ‘What would the governor think?’ ‘What would so-and-so think?’ ‘What would this group think?’ I haven’t had that thought with any case, and I think that the public should be happy about that. … I understand that people may be upset with that decision, but it’s not — the decision didn’t come out of any malice or spite or targeting. It simply was doing my job.”
The case was the second politically weighty matter in two years to reach Zeman. In 2022, he ruled that the state’s higher education investment fund — used to fund college scholarships — was subject to a constitutional clause that automatically drained it because of legislative inaction.
That ruling was in line with the Dunleavy administration’s arguments and was upheld by the Alaska Supreme Court on appeal.
Former Alaska Attorney General Michael Geraghty worked with Zeman in private practice and is now co-chair of a nonprofit devoted to keeping the Alaska judiciary free of political influence.
He wrote an op-ed in favor of retaining Zeman and by phone said he thinks it’s inappropriate to make a vote on a judge based on just one case.
“Of course I do,” he said, “because judges have so much on their plate.”
“I just think when it comes to a judge, you have to look at the body of work,” Geraghty said.
He suggested looking at the Alaska Judicial Council’s surveys. Jurors, for example, gave Zeman a perfect 5.0 score. Court officials gave him high ratings, as did attorneys who presented cases in front of him.
“The Judicial Council doesn’t ask people: ‘Are you Republican or Democrat?’ ‘What’s your view on abortion? ‘They don’t ask these questions, nor should they. What they’re looking at is how other people have evaluated this lawyer,” he said.
Zeman has a long history in Anchorage, including as a youth soccer coach and a member of the Special Olympics board. He’s a University of Oregon alumnus and happily — though reluctantly, for fear of a jinx — says that they’ll win the national college football championship this year.
“I was born and raised here in Anchorage. This is my home. This is my community. I chose to come back to raise my own family. And, when I applied for this job, I did so leaving a great (law) firm and private practice, because I thought that this was where I could most substantively give back to my community,” Zeman said.
His judicial installment ceremony was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. When it finally took place two years later, he wore a flower lei and gave a celebratory shaka sign for photos.
One of those pictures is now being used in the campaign against him.
He could have sidestepped the controversy by resigning and not standing for the retention election, but he said that wasn’t an option.
“I will tell you this: I absolutely love this job,” he said. “Every day I get to interact with people in this community, and I get to make really important decisions that affect their lives. … I really hope that the folks here will keep me on the bench. I feel like I’m in the right place, and I feel I do a good job at it. Every day, I try to make sure that people walk through those doors and when they leave, they know, regardless of the decision, they know that they’ve been heard, they’ve had their opportunity, and that’s what I strive for every day.”
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