In the lone race for a spot on the Arkansas Court of Appeals this spring, the incumbent from a sprawling Ozark-area judicial district hopes to fend off a first-time candidate who's worked as a small-town attorney and judge.
Appeals Judge Bart Virden, 58, has represented Position 1 in the 18-county Court of Appeals District 2 since 2014, after a career spent working as an attorney and district judge. He is from Morrilton, on the southern edge of the district, which stretches to the Missouri border.
His challenger is Johnnie Copeland, 40, a private-practice attorney, district judge and part-time prosecutor from Mountain Home who touts her "conservative view" of the courts.
In separate interviews, Virden said he was running on his experience, while Copeland said she brings her own set of skills from a diverse law background that can give voters a choice other than the sitting judge.
Neither had much to say about the other candidate, though common themes of judicial campaigns -- which are officially nonpartisan -- popped up.
"Some of the buzzwords of the campaign are 'judicial activism,'" Virden said. "I haven't seen it."
Copeland said she was running on the idea of a stricter role for the courts, though she could not point to any examples of Virden taking a more liberal approach from the bench.
"I think that the judges should stay in their lane," Copeland said in discussing her judicial philosophy. "I don't think we should be legislating from the bench; I think we have legislators for that. I lean more toward a textualist-type interpretation of the laws written."
Voters in the Court of Appeals district will decide the election on May 22, the same day as partisan primaries. The only other Court of Appeals judge up for re-election this year is District 3's Judge Robert Gladwin, who is running unopposed.
Under a state law that expanded the number of judges on the court and staggered their terms, the winner will serve an eight-year term. The position is due to pay an annual salary of $169,672 after an expected pay boost this year.
When Virden first ran for his seat on the appellate court in 2014, he was unopposed. (Circuit Judge Michael Maggio, facing an ethics inquiry, dropped out of the race before the election.)
The last contested election for Position 1 in District 2 was in 2010. Copeland said voters were excited to have a choice.
"For me, it's not about him, it's about what I feel like I can bring to the table," Copeland said, explaining that her small-town practice has given her a diverse workload of cases, including criminal, divorce and child custody cases.
"I've worked in all of those areas, and I feel like my practice has perfectly prepared me to do something like the Court of Appeals," she said.
Those are many of the same credentials that Virden says he worked up prior to becoming an appellate judge. He previously served as a district judge, deputy prosecutor and for 12 years as a city attorney in addition to having a private practice. Now, he said, he has the added perspective of having worked as an appellate judge.
Recalling one moment on the campaign trail, Virden said he met with a voter who had never heard of him, but the voter still offered support to Virden. The voter assumed the judge's lack of publicity must have meant he hadn't done anything wrong, Virden said.
"He says, 'If it's not broke, don't fix it,'" Virden recalled.
During his tenure on the court, Virden has been involved in one bit of discord between his court and the state's Supreme Court. In June, a footnote included in a Supreme Court opinion lashed out at the Court of Appeals for failing to provide proper documentation in a case in which Virden had written the opinion at the lower level.
At the time, Virden called the upbraiding "unusual." In a more recent interview, Virden attributed the spat to "growing pains" under a new Supreme Court administration, adding that work between the two courts is now "running smoothly."
In addition to his work reviewing cases, Virden has served as chairman of the Court of Appeals' computer committee, which he said has worked to upgrade the court's computer systems and to acquire tablets for judges to use for marking up briefs and holding videoconferences.
Copeland said that as a district judge in Fulton County, she installed Internet in her courtroom for the first time, as well as a credit card scanner to hasten the process of paying court fees and costs. She said that if she's elected to the Court of Appeals, she would look at finding technology advancements there, too.
A Section on 04/30/2018