State court candidates give 'what if' views

A book to read after a nuclear attack? Nonpartisan race speculative at forum

RALEIGH -- N.C. Supreme Court candidates Bob Edmunds and Suzanne Reynolds stayed away from partisan messages or hot-button social issues at a forum Monday night.

So how did those attending get a sense of the candidates they would be voting for? By asking a lot of questions about personal favorites.

Former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Willis Whichard, the moderator, even had some fun with it, asking the candidates if the court survived a nuclear attack, what one book would they each bring?

Reynolds said she'd bring a law school staple: "The Nature of the Judicial Process" by Benjamin Cardozo, a U.S. Supreme Court justice who died in 1938. Edmunds said he'd bring a book of Alfred Tennyson's poetry.

Whichard then asked that if the laws of nature had been suspended by the attack and they could talk to any one person (he excluded Jesus and the Apostles), who would that be?

Edmunds said Abraham Lincoln; Reynolds said Eleanor Roosevelt.

Edmunds, 59, a Greensboro Republican, is seeking his second, eight-year term on the court. He is a former N.C. Court of Appeals judge and a former federal prosecutor. He has emphasized his criminal law experience, including running a TV ad in which Cabarrus County Sheriff Brad Riley points at some unsavory characters in a police lineup and tells voters, "These people don't want you to re-elect Bob Edmunds to the Supreme Court."

Reynolds, 59, a Winston-Salem Democrat, is making her first run for political office. She has been a law professor at Wake Forest University for 27 years and is a recognized expert on family law. Her TV ad emphasizes her academic work and her family law expertise, and includes endorsements from former U.S. Attorney Janice McKenzie Cole and Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines.

Troublesome rulings

The two candidates' backgrounds played a role when asked what N.C. Supreme Court cases troubled them. Reynolds cited a decision that she said compromised separation agreements between divorced couples; Edmunds cited a decision that he said gives district attorneys too much latitude to make inflammatory statements in jury trials.

They are seeking the only seat up for election on the state's highest court. The 90-minute forum was sponsored by the Triangle Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society.

The races are officially nonpartisan. Both candidates have accepted public financing for their campaigns.

But party politics have entered into the race. Both candidates have made mention of their party affiliations. In recent weeks the N.C. Democratic Party has begun paying for a mailer and newspaper ads in support of Reynolds, triggering "rescue" funds for Edmunds' campaign.