Gov. Is the Judge: Janavs Back to the Bench

The voters spoke, and now it’s the governor’s turn.

Less than 72 hours after the Los Angeles County electorate replaced Judge Dzintra Janavs with a bagel store owner with limited legal experience, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Friday that he would reappoint the veteran jurist to a vacant seat on the bench “as soon as she completes the paperwork.”

In Tuesday’s election, Lynn Diane Olson, who co-owns Manhattan Bread & Bagel in Manhattan Beach with her husband and has barely practiced law in the last decade, bested Janavs, a 20-year veteran of the bench.

Responding to speculation that voters had failed to pick the Latvian-born Janavs in part because of her name, the Austrian-born Schwarzenegger in a written statement said: “I can relate to the problem of having a name that is hard to pronounce.”

The governor also said the election’s “unfortunate result should not rob California of a fine jurist.”

His announcement was greeted with relief in many Los Angeles courtrooms, where judges had expressed distress at the election results, with one even complaining to the legal newspaper the Metropolitan News-Enterprise of physical symptoms of illness.

Superior Court Presiding Judge William McLaughlin said Friday the governor “has done exactly the right thing.”

He added that he didn’t “think it would be fair to interpret the results to say the public does not want Judge Janavs as a judge of the court.”

Political consultants have long complained that voters know nothing about judicial candidates and that they choose based on little more than their names and job designations.

Many judges say they can’t be expected to campaign like other politicians because staking positions could suggest bias concerning upcoming decisions.

Most of the state’s 1,500 Superior Court judges are appointed by the governor and face retention battles only if someone runs against them -- as Olson, a Democrat, chose to do against Janavs, a Republican.

Not everyone viewed the election as a travesty.

“I don’t think the electorate is made up of complete idiots,” said Los Angeles lawyer Jonathan Greenspan.

Still, he added, “as long as Schwarzenegger is governor, he is certainly within his authority to make judicial appointments including the reappointment of candidates who have been rejected by the voters.”

California governors at least twice in the past 25 years have reappointed ousted jurists, including David Perez and Abraham Kahn.

Olson, who spent $100,000 of her own money on the campaign, said she believed her experience as a business owner would give her valuable perspective on a bench that is full of former prosecutors.

She called “eye-opening” the level of opposition to her victory by sitting judges. But she said it was “not my intention to cause waves.”

As for the news that Janavs will stay on the bench, she said, “I’m pleased for her.”

Janavs, who said earlier in the week that the election results proved that “money can buy anything,” said she planned to accept the governor’s offer.

She said she hoped that her experience leads to some kind of election reform. But she added that she did not expect to face another contested election six years from now.

“For 20 years no one ran against me,” she said. “I doubt very much anyone will run against me in six years after this.”

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Times staff writer Megan Garvey contributed to this report.