Aspiring judge faces challenge

A Hayden Lake woman is challenging the eligibility of lawyer Rami Amaro as a candidate for district judge. Joy Richards, who filed the challenge Wednesday with Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, questions whether Amaro has the minimum experience that Idaho law requires of judicial candidates.

Also Wednesday, Amaro said she’s the victim of a “smear campaign” orchestrated by supporters of her opponent, 1st District Judge John Mitchell.

“The bottom line is I meet the qualifications to run for office,” she said.

State law says candidates for district judge “shall have been admitted to the practice of law for 10 years prior to taking office.” Richards said she believes Amaro “misrepresented herself” by counting two years when she was an inactive member of the Ohio State Bar.

Amaro, 37, a Hayden resident, was admitted to the Ohio bar in November 1996 as inactive. According to the Ohio Supreme Court, inactive members of the bar “may not practice law in Ohio or hold themselves out to practice law in Ohio.”

Although she was an inactive member of the bar, Amaro said she was practicing law – by representing herself. She provided a letter from the Ohio Supreme Court that said inactive attorneys can’t practice “on behalf of anyone except themselves.”

On her campaign Web site, Amaro listed that she had a private practice in Ohio from 1996 to 1998. After she was contacted by a reporter Monday with questions about her experience in Ohio, the reference was removed from the Web site. As of Wednesday afternoon, the site simply said she was admitted to practice law in Ohio in 1996.

“What I was doing was setting up my private practice,” Amaro said Wednesday. “At that point the only person I could represent in that private practice was myself while I was inactive.”

She said she registered as inactive because she was battling cancer and had three young children. Amaro said she “practiced extensively” on behalf of a coffee business she and her husband owned and represented herself in a lawsuit she and her husband filed against a builder.

In her letter to Ysursa, Richards said she believes the intent of Idaho’s law is “to assure the public that a judicial candidate has a decade of practical legal experience as an active, day to day attorney.”

“Mrs. Amaro passed the bar exam, but she did not work as an ‘active’ attorney for the two years she said she did in Ohio,” Richards wrote. “If she worked as an attorney in Ohio, wouldn’t that have been an unethical violation of her inactive status?”

The secretary of state’s office said it is consulting with the Idaho attorney general’s office to determine if Amaro is qualified to run.

Amaro said she feels the judge’s race – voters will cast their ballots in the May primary election – is turning nasty. She said she was threatened Saturday by “a strong supporter and very active member of John Mitchell’s campaign.” She said she was told to drop out of the race or “they would go on a severe negative campaign” against her.

“Apparently the campaign has started,” Amaro said.

She wouldn’t name who allegedly threatened her.

“I don’t know who it is,” Mitchell said Wednesday. “I know I haven’t said a single word to her in any of the joint events we’ve been at. I’ve not seen anybody from my ‘camp’ talk to her.”

Mitchell declined to comment on Richards’ complaint.