Marena Lin’s Judicial Slate — LA Superior Court, June 2026

I’m voting for Hon. Robert Draper because of his decades of experience in the courtroom and on the bench. He is 84 years old and recently received a Parkinson’s diagnosis. He is accused of misconduct, but he denies some of the allegations and credibly shows the remainder to have been taken out of context. The accusations date to 2023; the Commission on Judicial Performance (CJP) trial began on April 27, 2026, and will not complete until after the election. The CJP trial is the proper venue to remove Draper if he is found to have committed misconduct — but that determination should come from that proceeding, not by denying voters the chance to weigh in on the choice in front of them now.

As much as I am voting for Draper, I’m voting against his challenger, Tal Khan Valbuena — a prosecutor whose work experience is largely limited to a mental health court. Beyond that limited background, Khan Valbuena has made two decisions during this campaign that raise serious concerns about how he would behave on the bench.

Decision 1: Choosing which judge to challenge.

Two other judges up for reelection this year were found to have committed misconduct by the CJP:

• Emily Cole was severely censured in 2024 for attempting to coach a District Attorney (DA) through ex parte text messages during a murder trial. She then instructed her judicial assistant to produce a minute order that attempted to deny and excuse the behavior. The case was taken away from her at sentencing, and the Court of Appeal vacated the guilty verdict and ordered a new trial due to Judge Cole’s bias.
• Thomas Griego was publicly admonished in 2024 for his mistreatment of self-represented litigants in small claims court, and publicly admonished a second time in May 2026 for a continuing pattern of the same conduct. A repeat sanction this soon is a measure of how serious the original findings were. He’s now on a criminal felony assignment. The Robing Room contains reviews from litigants, attorneys, and court staff calling him incompetent, rude, and opining that his rulings appear to indicate mental unfitness going back to 2019.

Khan Valbuena chose not to run against either Cole or Griego. Both will be automatically elected because they are running unopposed. Draper, by contrast, has no findings of misconduct. The choice to challenge the candidate without misconduct findings — and to leave the two with findings unopposed — looks opportunistic rather than principled.

Decision 2: Publicly armchair-diagnosing his opponent.

In an interview with the LA Times, Khan Valbuena said of Draper: “His honor had exemplified disorganized thought behavior, tangential thought ... things I see on a day-to-day basis [in mental health court],” while acknowledging that he is not a doctor.

This raises two concerns about judicial fitness. First, characterizing an older judge’s behavior in clinical language — without medical credentials or examination — uses the language of mental health pathology as a campaign weapon. A judge who publicly applies clinical labels to an older colleague has already signaled how he might treat cases involving elderly litigants, aging family members in conservatorship proceedings, or older witnesses whose credibility is at stake. Under CCP §170.1(a)(6)(A)(iii), this kind of public statement about issues that recur in the docket can ground case-by-case disqualification motions if Khan Valbuena reaches the bench.

Second, this demonstrates a willingness to overstate one’s expertise. Khan Valbuena works in a mental health court; he is not a clinician. A candidate who borrows clinical authority he does not hold in a newspaper interview may do the same from the bench. The public’s ability to trust a judge’s impartiality starts before the bench, in how the candidate handles the power they don’t yet have.

Christides has the endorsement of the more progressive prosecutors who have become judges (Sharon Ransom and Christmas Brookens) along with endorsements from a number of public defenders. She worked most recently in multiple collaborative (treatment) courts, including ones for veterans.

Her opponent, Irene Lee, left the DA’s office when Gascón won the DA race and returned with Hochman. She therefore appears unlikely to embrace progressive legislation that favors rehabilitation or alternatives to incarceration.

Either candidate is a defensible choice in this race.

Rhonda Haymon is a very experienced and well-regarded public defender (over 20 years) who also teaches at Southwestern Law School.

Maria Ghobadi is a gang homicide prosecutor with very strong endorsements from colleagues, including some defense attorneys. According to MetNews, she’s known for being fair and collaborative.

Either candidate is a defensible choice in this race.

Anna Slotky Reitano has a lot of experience as a public defender (which was her role when she ran in 2022), including in juvenile assignments. She currently works for County Counsel in the justice and safety division, which primarily involves advising the county in lawsuits involving law enforcement. She also clerked for the DA’s office. That diversity of work experience is extremely valuable for the bench.

Justin Clayton is also excellent. He’s been a public defender his entire career, he’s involved in the Black Public Defenders Association, and he’s well-regarded.

I’m voting for Ben Forer, primarily as a vote against his opponent, Cheryl Turner.

Turner is a board member of and an attorney for the Apartment Association of Greater LA — a trade association whose explicit purpose is advancing landlord interests in litigation, policy, and legislation. A large fraction of small claims court cases are tenants recovering improperly withheld security deposits from landlords.

The same §170.1 principle that applies elsewhere on this slate applies here: a judge with an ongoing institutional role advancing one side of a recurring case type will face foreseeable disqualification motions on every landlord-tenant case that comes before her. At the structural level, her institutional alignment runs directly against the most common pro se (self-represented) litigants in small claims court — the people with the least ability to navigate a tilted bench, because they don’t have lawyers.

I’m voting for David Walgren.

The case here is partly against Walgren’s opponent Kapelovitz, who has run for many political offices, including District Attorney and Governor. A pattern of seeking office across very different roles — rather than building a record in one — is at least a yellow flag for whether the bench is the goal or a fallback. Judicial races aren’t the right place for someone whose primary focus appears to be being elected to something.

Bayne is a public defender with over 20 years of experience and an excellent reputation. We benefit from more public defenders on the bench, and he’s an easy choice.

David Ross is a public defender with many endorsements. I’m voting for him.

This is also a vote against Donna Tryfman, who has demonstrated that she cannot be expected by the public to be impartial on cases related to civil rights and immigration.

How I came to look at her record.

In March 2026, Donna Tryfman reacted to my congressional campaign social media post about abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with a yawn emoji. When I asked her to clarify, she couldn’t remember what she’d reacted to — and tried to explain it away by suggesting my post was antisemitic. I sent her the screenshot. Only then did she walk it back as a “mistake.” She then confirmed that she “disagreed” with my “posts re Israel.” Then, unprompted, she followed up with “He’s a Jew too,” referencing her opponent.

I gave her every opportunity to clarify. Instead she reached for an antisemitism accusation she couldn’t back up, and walked it back only when shown the screenshot. Her campaign manager, Crystal M. Litz, then sent me abusive emails for sharing the screenshots.

The pattern beyond my exchange.

I wasn’t the only one paying attention. A group of LA-area educators and community members who interacted with Tryfman compiled a documented record of her conduct and submitted it to the Stonewall Democratic Club’s endorsement meeting before the club’s vote. (Tryfman ultimately received Stonewall’s endorsement.) The record includes Tryfman’s own messages — for instance, telling a teacher that an oncology appointment did not justify calling in sick, and remarking on another teacher’s visible bruise by suggesting it was the result of a cosmetic procedure when in fact the teacher was a victim of domestic violence. The contributors withheld their names citing fear of retaliation from Tryfman and her campaign.

The full record was published on Reddit; see the full documented record here (archived).

Why this matters at the bench.

Under CCP §170.1(a)(6)(A)(iii), a judge must be disqualified from a case when “a person aware of the facts might reasonably entertain a doubt that the judge would be able to be impartial.” Prior public statements about the issues before the court have repeatedly grounded disqualification motions in California courts.

Tryfman has now publicly opposed a federal candidate’s immigration position, made an unprompted remark about her opponent’s religion, and reached for an antisemitism accusation she couldn’t substantiate. If she’s elected, she will face foreseeable disqualification motions on every case touching immigration, civil rights, or Jewish identity. A meaningful slice of her docket would have to be reassigned to other judges.

But here’s what concerns me most: if accusing someone of antisemitism comes this easily as a deflection, what happens when she’s deciding whether to apply hate crime enhancements to criminal charges? What happens when immigration cases come before her courtroom? What happens when civil rights are on the line?

Voters in LA County deserve a judge who takes impartiality seriously.

Smith has many years of experience as a public defender, and he is well-regarded.

Dibble is already doing the job and has gotten positive reviews from seemingly everyone he works with.

His opponent, Lindsey, is an administrative law judge (ALJ). That position handles matters like approving or denying benefits and civil rights complaints, typically without a jury and very often without actual attorneys representing the people who appear before her. The role is nothing like a Superior Court judgeship. She was also publicly reproved by the State Bar in 2011, though the Bar deemed the misconduct not serious.

I didn’t reach a confident recommendation on this race. If you have research on the candidates here that I should consider, I’d welcome the information at contact@marenalinforcongress.com.