State Attorney Campbell, Public Defender Yeary, 6 judges make 2024 ballot with no opposition
State Attorney Jack Campbell, Public Defender Jessica Yeary and six sitting judges qualified for the 2024 election without opposition Friday, meaning all of them will coast to new terms.
The judicial incumbents who will be automatically re-elected are Circuit Judges Barbara Hobbs, Ron Flury, Frank Allman, Robert Wheeler and David Frank and Leon County Judge Monique Richardson.
None of the incumbents who qualified without opposition will appear on 2024 ballots. However, voters will get to weigh in on one local judicial race — a three-person contest to succeed Leon County Judge Augustus Aikens Jr., who is retiring at the end of his term because of age limits.
Cydnee Brown, Robert Churchill and LaShawn Riggans all qualified to run for Leon County judge Seat 4. Melinda Coonrod, who had filed to run, did not qualify.
Campbell, drew two opponents during his first campaign in 2016 but didn’t face a challenger in his re-election campaign four years later. He raised a little over $60,000 for his campaign, all during the first three months of the year, and spent less than $2,000.
Since 2020, Campbell’s office has scored several key courtroom victories, including guilty verdicts for Charlie Adelson and Katie Magbanua in the 2014 murder of law professor Dan Markel. Adelson’s mom, Donna Adelson, is set to stand trial in the Markel murder conspiracy later this year.
Yeary knocked off incumbent Public Defender Andy Thomas in 2020, but, like Campbell, didn’t draw a challenger in her first bid for re-election. She raised just under $49,000 and spent about $3,600.
She recently made news after public defenders in her office accused a Tallahassee police officer of planting evidence in a DUI case, which prosecutors and police denied. The accused in that case, Calvin Riley Sr., was found guilty of DUI, though the public defenders filed motions saying he didn’t get a fair trial and asking for a new one.
Judges Flury, Frank and Richardson were all first elected to their current positions in 2018. Wheeler and Allman were appointed to the circuit bench in 2016 and elected in 2018. Hobbs was first elected in 2012.
Ron Meyer, an ethics and elections lawyer, said it’s not uncommon for incumbent judges to win re-election without opposition. However, he said judicial contests in other circuits have seen a few candidates challenge sitting judges who are nearing the mandatory retirement age of 70.
“We’ve seen some challenges that we hadn’t seen in past years,” said Meyer, who represents Frank as a campaign volunteer. “I think it’s still the exception not the rule.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Neal Dunn, R-Panama City, drew a pair of challengers, including one from his own party, Rhonda Woodward. Meghann Hovey, a Democrat, also made the ballot.
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Election 2024 qualifying: Campbell, Yeary, 6 judges in the clear
