Three county court races attract seven sharply divided candidates
Seven candidates seeking three seats on the Palm Beach County Court bench are running sharply different campaigns.
Incumbent Judge Marni Bryson and attorney Lisa Grossman are engaged in open combat, hurling angry invectives at each other. Assistant Palm Beach Count y St ate Attorney Esther “Ettie” Feistmann and civil lawyer Bradley Harper are less openly hostile, opting instead to file complaints against each other through official channels.
Those vying in the third race — an election that almost wasn’t — have been mostly genial. However, the veneer of congeniality disappears when guardianship attorney Dana Santino explains why she didn’t get into the Aug. 30 election until after defense attorney Gregg Lerman and former county Magistrate Thomas Baker successfully filed suit to keep Gov. Rick Scott from naming outgoing Judge Laura Johnson’s replacement.
“The seat did not become an elected seat until June 3,” Santino said. “When this became an elected seat, I joined the race.”
Those are fighting words for Baker and Lerman, who both qualified for the seat in May and bankrolled the lawsuit that ended when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that voters, not Scott, should pick Johnson’s successor.
“There was no question what the law was,” said Lerman. In paving the way for the election, the state’s high court also ordered a special weeklong qualifying period to allow anyone interested in the post to file papers to run. That’s when Santino entered the race.
Both Lerman and Baker agree Get the candidates’ backgrounds and views in their own words in The Post’s exclusive Know Your Candidates online guide, Santino is a legitimate candidate. But they make it clear that she is the beneficiary of their legal battle — a fight she could have joined.
Here’s a look at the candidates who are running for six-year terms as count y court judges. With