Cantero is also helping one of the most liberal justices on the bench in a very direct way: He’s serving as co-chair of The Committee of Responsible Persons for the Merit Retention of Barbara J. Pariente, Justice Pariente’s reelection committee.
The question remains: Do ordinary voters, who don’t share a strong ideological bent with folks on the far left or far right, care enough to listen?
Justice Cantero artfully crystallized the inherent risk of using judicial merit retention votes as political weaponry with this warning in his email to the Florida Bar:
“If today we can remove a justice because we consider his decisions too liberal, perhaps tomorrow we can remove another because her views are too conservative. Neither approach is helpful to our democratic process or to respect for the judiciary.”
To pick up on Justice Cantero’s line of reasoning, Florida voters, including the Tea Partiers, must ask themselves: Would they still be gung-ho to hand the keys to the judiciary to Florida’s governor if that governor were not Rick Scott but, gasp, a Democrat?
