South Bay Voters Get Rare Chance to Elect New Superior Court Judge

Voters across vast Santa Clara County will have a rare chance this upcoming election to choose a new Superior Court judge in a heated contest between two veteran county prosecutors.

Jay Boyarsky and Johnene Stebbins, who have served for decades together in the county District Attorney’s Office, are facing off for a seat on the bench — one of 77 in the county — left vacant earlier this year with the retirement of Judge Vincent Chiarello.

Voters seldom have the opportunity to select county judges, as incumbent judges don’t often face challengers when they seek another term and, absent any opponents, are essentially reelected automatically without even appearing on the ballot. Meanwhile, if judges vacate their seats in the middle of their six-year terms, the governor typically appoints their replacement.

Judges in the Superior Court system often rotate through different assignments and oversee various civil and criminal cases.

The candidates in this race both work for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office: Boyarsky, 59, is the chief assistant district attorney and has worked in the office for 30 years, and Stebbins, 55, is a deputy district attorney who has 26 years of experience in the office.

Stebbins, 55, told KQED she wants to become a judge because she’s done all she can do in her current role as a deputy district attorney. In her 26 years in the office, Stebbins said, she prosecuted a vast range of criminal cases — from domestic violence and murder to environmental and consumer protection.

“I can’t really think of any crimes left that I haven’t prosecuted,” said Stebbins, who also teaches law enforcement agencies how to investigate sexual assault, child molestation and internet crimes cases. “But I’m not done with public service. I’m not done with the law. I specifically became a D.A. because I wanted to be in the courtroom.”

“I feel like my breadth of knowledge, the things that I teach, the things that I do, my experience in the courtroom, make moving on to judge a natural progression,” she added “And I think I could be an asset to the bench.”

Boyarsky, the chief assistant district attorney, began working in the DA’s office in 1994 and told KQED he quickly became interested in prosecuting hate crimes.

“That’s actually the one main reason I wanted to become a prosecutor, is I wanted to stand up for people who were victimized simply because of who they were,” said Boyarsky, adding that he later also developed a knack for prosecuting sexual offenders, child molesters and rapists.

Boyarsky also ran Jeff Rosen’s successful campaign for DA in 2011 and was subsequently promoted by Rosen — who he calls his “best friend” — to his current position.

“It all ended up working out way better than I ever could have thought because I got to help transform and improve the District Attorney’s Office,” he said.

Boyarsky said becoming a judge feels like an excellent way to continue his work in public service.

“I want to try to make the community and the world better. And I owe that in light of the sacrifice that my father and his generation made for freedom, for democracy, for the rule of law, and to serve this country,” said Boyarsky, whose father fought in World War II and helped liberate Jewish people from Nazi concentration camps.

Boyarsky, who first ran unsuccessfully for judgeship in 2008, also applied for a governor’s appointment to the bench in 2007 and 2023 but was not selected either time. He said the latest application is still pending.

Each candidate has received a hefty tranche of endorsements: Both have gotten the support of roughly 30 current and former judges. Rosen and George Kennedy have also endorsed Boyarsky — the DA before him — along with several other current and former district attorneys throughout the state and a broad array of politicians and civil rights groups.

Stebbins, meanwhile, is endorsed by Chiarello — the judge vacating the bench — along with Dolores Carr, a former county DA. And although the unions representing officers of the county’s two largest law enforcement agencies — San José Police and the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office — endorsed both candidates, Stebbins underscores that she collected the sole endorsement of all other police unions in the county, along with the county union that represents both deputy district attorneys and public defenders.

“I think it speaks volumes as to how law enforcement thinks (the DA’s office is) doing that they do not support the second in command to the top law enforcement official in the county,” she said.

Stebbins said judges need to listen to both sides carefully and be willing to work fairly with each party without getting “run over” by either side, a skill she said she has consistently demonstrated throughout her career.

Stebbins argues she has the on-the-ground experience to become an effective judge, noting that she still practices law daily and works in courtrooms with judges, public defenders, defendants and victims.

“I’m in the courtroom every day, and a lot has changed in the law in the last decade,” she said. “So I’m actually seeing how that all plays out and what changes have been made and how that’s affecting all of the stakeholders in the system.”

That experience is also the basis for her biggest criticism of Boyarsky, who she said is too far removed from the current day-to-day realities of the court.

He’s “supervising the supervisors that supervise,” she said. “I’m the surgeon doing the surgeries every day. … “He’s in the medical office blocks away, hiring the doctors.”

She also argues that Boyarsky’s rise to chief assistant “was not a rise based on merit” but rather on “a friendship.”

For his part, Boyarsky points to his extensive administrative and management experience overseeing 190 attorneys as a major strength that will contribute to his efficacy on the bench.

“What I do is I make a lot of decisions every day, and I communicate them,” he said. “And they’re about people’s lives. They’re about people’s careers. They’re about accountability. They’re about the media, they’re about policy, they’re about the criminal justice system.”

He said judges do much more than just oversee trials.

“It’s primarily making decisions and weighing facts and evidence and taking competing interests into account,” he said. “That’s what someone who’s running a very large organization has to do every day.”

Read more about Boyarsky’s positions and endorsements here, and Stebbins’ here.