In a November 4 article by reporter Charles Ashby about former Republican Colorado Senate president John Andrews's campaign to amend the Colorado Constitution to impose judicial term limits, The Pueblo Chieftain reported Andrews's criticisms of the Colorado Commission on Judicial Performance and his support for judicial term limits but provided no opposing viewpoints. As several media outlets, including the Chieftain, have noted, opponents of Andrews's judicial term limits ballot initiative -- Amendment 40 -- include U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO), Gov. Bill Owens (R), Attorney General John Suthers (R), the Colorado Bar Association, the League of Women Voters of Colorado, and numerous Colorado newspapers.

Amendment 40 seeks to impose term limits on Colorado's appellate court judges and Supreme Court justices. Andrews is chairman of Limit the Judges, the organization supporting Amendment 40. As the Chieftain reported, Andrews also recently started the Committee to Retire Judge Marquez, a Colorado Court of Appeals judge whom Andrews calls “the poster child for why voters need to approve Amendment 40”:

To former Senate President John Andrews, Court of Appeals Judge Jose Marquez is the poster child for why voters need to approve Amendment 40.

Andrews, chairman of the committee in favor of term limits for the state's highest judges, said Marquez is a prime example for why the time Supreme Court and Court of Appeals judges serve on the bench should be limited.

Marquez, who's been on the appeals court since 1988, has the lowest marks from the 10-member Judicial Performance Commission that reviewed all five appellate judges who are up for retention votes this year.

“Out of the five, four of them get a 10-0 (vote) recommendation to retain,” Andrews said. “Only Marquez is a disputed vote, and that's 6-4. They say that he's not very strong in oral arguments, that his written opinions aren't very strong, and that he doesn't always follow the controlling law.”

In Andrews' mind, that means Marquez gets an F in judicial performance, even though the commission gave him an overall grade of B-plus, and recommended that he be retained.

[...]

That was enough for Andrews to start a separate campaign from his Amendment 40 work -- the Committee to Retire Judge Marquez.

Andrews said the state's performance system is flawed because it rarely recommends a judge not be retained, and even then there's never a guarantee the judge won't win a retention vote.

“Is this the best we can do? We don't feel it is,” Andrews said.

The Chieftain also quoted Andrews as saying that Colorado's judicial evaluation process is “toothless, meaningless. There has never been a supreme court or appeals court judge turned down by the voters.” But despite reporting Andrews's extensive criticism of Marquez and the judicial performance commission's recommendation to retain him, the Chieftain failed to include opposing viewpoints.

In contrast, an October 24 Chieftain article -- also by Ashby -- reporting on Salazar's opposition to Amendment 40 included an extensive rebuttal from Andrews. According to the Chieftain, “Imposing term limits on the state's highest judges would be a colossal mistake, U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar said Monday.” The Chieftain further reported:

In speaking out against Amendment 40 on this year's ballot, the Democratic senator said the citizen's initiative would destroy the judicial system's independence, which Salazar called a cornerstone of Colorado's balanced government.

“Amendment 40 is an assault on our judicial system,” said Salazar, a lawyer and former Colorado attorney general. “It seems to me that those who have brought Amendment 40 forward are those people who have decided that they want to attack the system of judicial independence, which has served the state of Colorado well.”

The article included comments from Andrews:

“The issue with Amendment 40 is, who will write the laws for Coloradans to live under?” Andrews said. “Will our courts do their job of interpreting the law, or will they presume to write the law?

Andrews argued that ”the imperial mentality of courts and judges with a God complex ... is diminished" as judges recognize that after their 10-years on the bench, they have to live as ordinary citizens under the rulings they have made.

In contrast to the November 4 Chieftain article, other newspaper articles have reported responses to Andrews's campaign against Marquez. An October 23 article in The Denver Post reported that Colorado Bar Association president Elizabeth Starrs “finds it 'curious' that Andrews would target a judge who most attorneys and judges believe should be retained.” And, on October 25, the Rocky Mountain News reported that “Starrs said she found it curious Andrews is using the findings of the Commission on Judicial Performance to critique Marquez while undercutting the commission's work through Amendment 40.” The News quoted Starrs as saying, “It seems to me he's using the very system that he seeks to step-by-step dismantle. ... But the system works.”

Colorado Media Matters previously noted that the Chieftain, in an August 11 article also written by Ashby, quoted Andrews's views on term limits without mentioning or quoting from any of the amendment's opponents.