Editor’s note: This story, originally published at 11:53 p.m. May 14, was updated at 11:26 a.m. May 15 to reflect the latest election results.
For the fourth time in the past six years, Rockville attorney Marylin Pierre on Tuesday appeared to fall short in her bid to win a Montgomery County Circuit Court judgeship.
Judges Marybeth Ayres, Louis Leibowitz and J. Bradford McCullough–all initially appointed to the bench in 2022 by then-Gov. Larry Hogan–and Judge Jennifer Fairfax, appointed last year by Gov. Wes Moore, were poised to win election in Tuesday’s primary election to 15-year terms on the court.
With nearly all precincts reporting as of Wednesday morning, Ayres and Fairfax were drawing about 23% each in the Democratic primary, to 21% for Leibowitz and approximately 19% for McCullough. Pierre–who had previously sought election to the Circuit Court bench in 2018, 2020 and 2022–trailed with just under 13%.
As is the case in such judicial elections, the five candidates were filed to run as well in the Republican primary–where the incumbents also captured the four available nominations, guaranteeing them to be elected in November. In the Republican contest, McCullough led with 23%, to 22.5% for Fairfax and approximately 22% each for Ayres and Leibowitz. Pierre was far behind with about 10%.
As has been the case in the three prior elections in which Pierre has challenged incumbent judges for a full term, the central issue in this campaign was the vetting process for recommending and appointing Circuit Court judges–a process that has been in place by executive order for more than a half-century, under eight governors of differing political parties.
Candidates such as Pierre who do not receive a gubernatorial appointment to the bench are nevertheless eligible to file to run for Circuit Court judge if they are members of the Maryland Bar, have lived in the state for five years and for six months in the judicial district where the court on which they are seeking to serve is located.
Under the vetting process for Circuit Court judges, those seeking a gubernatorial appointment to the bench fill out a lengthy written application, followed by applicant interviews with up to 14 specialty bar associations across the state, as well as interviews with the Maryland Bar Association and Montgomery County Bar Association.
The recommendations of those groups are then forwarded to a county-level trial courts nominating commission, whose members are appointed by the governor. The commission then selects a “short list” of nominees for forwarding to the governor, who conducts further interviews before making an appointment.
At a judicial candidates’ forum last month, Fairfax praised the rigor of the trial courts nominating commission process. “You are sitting in a room with 13 people who are really challenging your credentials and questioning your qualifications, in a way to assess your temperament in how you respond to questions,” she said, adding, “They’re also assessing your character through the process.”
But Pierre–who has acknowledged unsuccessfully applying to Montgomery County’s trial courts nominating commission for nine open Circuit Court judgeships before deciding to seek election to the post–again questioned the fairness of the nominating commission process.
“Not everybody is treated the same,” Pierre told the recent judicial candidates forum, adding: “What happens in that closed room … depends on who you are. There are some people who are treated with kid gloves, and some people who are treated with very, very harsh gloves—and I was one of them.”
Unseating of the “sitting judges” by challengers in Circuit Court races remains uncommon, but has occurred on several occasions in recent years in jurisdictions around Maryland–although there has been no instance in the past of a challenger unseating an incumbent in a Montgomery County Circuit Court race.
Candidates for Circuit Court–whether incumbents or challengers–file in both the Democratic and Republican primaries. If the incumbents seeking to retain their seats are nominated by voters in both primaries, the general election becomes an uncontested formality for them–and they are then seated for 15-year terms.
Pierre fell short of winning one of the available party nominations in 2018 and 2022 – but she finished ahead of one of the incumbent judges in the 2020 Democratic primary. Since all four of the incumbents running that year were nominated in the Republican primary, Pierre as well as the four incumbents advanced to the general election ballot.
It turned into an acrimonious campaign, in which several controversial statements made by Pierre–including an inaccurate assertion on Twitter that sitting judges “are an in-group. Most of them have worked at the same law firm, go to the same church, and are related by marriage”–led to a complaint against her being filed with the state’s Attorney Grievance Commission.
While the Grievance Commission ultimately recommended that Pierre be disbarred, the Maryland Supreme Court last summer reduced that to a reprimand. At the same time, the court criticized the state’s bar counsel–a position then held by held Lydia Lawless, a former Bethesda attorney–for bringing the complaint so close to the 2020 election, citing an appearance of bias.
In the 2020 general election, Pierre lost her race against the four incumbent judges by a wide margin, trailing her closest opponent by 75,000 votes.
The wisdom of holding contested elections for Circuit Court judge has been debated for more than five decades, with critics of the current system suggesting that forcing judges to compete in contested elections runs the risk of compromising their impartiality–or at least creates a perception of that occurring.
Unlike Circuit Court judges, District Court judges in Maryland are appointed by the governor following vetting by a local trial courts nominating commission, and confirmed by the Maryland Senate without standing for election.
In the case of the Maryland Supreme Court and Appellate Court, judges are vetted by an appellate courts nominating commission, with the judges appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate–before facing voters every decade in “yes or no” retention elections.
The Workgroup to Study Judicial Selection, created by the Maryland Judicial Conference and co-chaired by Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Dumais, is scheduled to issue a report in the coming months, in advance of a possible debate by the 2025 session of the General Assembly over whether to amend the state constitution to do away with contested elections for Circuit Court judges.
But pockets of resistance to doing away with the current system remain, particularly among some minority group leaders—who have regarded judicial elections as a fail-safe to ensure diversity on the bench in the state’s 24 major jurisdictions.
