Welcome back to the weekly Nuts & Bolts Guide to small campaigns. A few months ago, I wrote a Nuts & Bolts diary about the lack of solid representation in local offices, particularly law enforcement. Sheriff’s offices and District attorneys are overwhelmingly older white men, and organizations like Reflective Democracy have pointed this problem out repeatedly. In a large number of cases, these positions are held by elected officials. In many states, local judges as well are elected officials. Sheriffs have an oversized position in law enforcement power, often provided to them by state constitutions, but over 60% of them run for office unopposed. 90% of the sheriffs in the United States are white men, but white men are only 30% of the United States population. The fact that they run unopposed, sometimes for multiple decades, leads to this imbalance. Why don’t we take these races more seriously? While 60% face no opposition, many other races face only token opposition from underfunded candidates who are often not likely to get support even if they had funds. A fair number of challenged sheriffs around the United States view those opponents as “for fun” candidates rather than serious campaigns. Here is the problem. In electing judges, the problem is even greater. In Washington State, of 147 judges up for election, only 29 ran opposed. In Seattle in 2018, 16 judges were up for election, and none faced an opponent. Want a statistic even scarier? County prosecutors in under 100,000 population communities face opposition roughly 25% of the time, and only in very large counties does that number grow. Read more