New to voting for judges? Judicial elections can feel confusing because there are two different questions to consider: what the evidence says about each candidate’s qualifications, and what experience that person would bring to the wider court. Those are not the same thing, and a candidate’s previous job does not predict every ruling. Our plain-language guide to evaluating judicial candidates explains the distinction before you read this race-specific analysis.
Update — October 14, 2026: A reader challenge prompted a fresh review under the Civic Outcomes Standard. This guide previously recommended Clayton at low confidence. The revision gives both candidates’ supervisory work the same scrutiny and incorporates an official County record of Reitano’s civil-litigation role. The change reflects a reassessment of professional preparation, not acceptance of unverified trial totals or an endorsement tally.
Recommendation: Anna Slotky Reitano, low confidence. Both candidates are active California lawyers, both received LACBA’s Qualified rating, and both bring substantial public-defense experience. Reitano’s combination of criminal and juvenile trial work with civil litigation, administrative practice and government advising provides a modest preparation advantage for a court with varied assignments. Clayton’s continuing hearings and Inglewood branch leadership remain a strong countercase. Neither candidate has a comparable judicial performance record, and the evidence does not establish who has spent more total time in court or tried more cases.
This analysis is part of the Los Angeles County Voter Guide 2026 and is researched under the sherafy.com Civic Outcomes Standard.
What the choice actually is
On November 3, 2026, Los Angeles County voters will choose one candidate for Superior Court Office 65, a nonpartisan countywide trial-court seat. The official Los Angeles County ballot listing names Justin Allen Clayton and Anna Slotky Reitano. They advanced from the June primary, where official county results recorded 614,230 votes (36.69%) for Clayton and 500,183 (29.88%) for Reitano, among four candidates. Neither won a majority, so the top two advanced to the general election under California’s judicial-election system.
The winner will serve a six-year term. This is a choice between two new judges, not a referendum on a policy or an incumbent’s record. The reviewed sources supply no comparable record of judicial opinions, appellate reversals, calendar management or judicial discipline for these candidates.
What this office can actually control
California Superior Courts are trial courts of general jurisdiction. Judges decide legal and evidentiary questions, manage proceedings, assess facts in bench trials, instruct juries, and issue orders in criminal and civil cases. Superior Court assignments may include family, juvenile, probate, traffic, and other matters; the court, not the candidate, controls assignment. A judge cannot set prosecution policy, fund treatment programs, rewrite sentencing statutes, or promise outcomes in individual cases.
California law requires a Superior Court judge to have been a California lawyer or judge for at least ten years before election or appointment. State Bar profile for Clayton shows admission June 6, 2012, and Reitano profile shows June 4, 2009; both are Active. The profile history tables display no discipline or administrative action for either, but the State Bar explains that some administrative suspensions may be removed from profiles. This is a check of the displayed public history, not proof that no complaint or nonpublic matter has ever existed.
Judges are bound by the California Code of Judicial Ethics, including duties of independence, integrity, impartiality, competence, and diligence. Decisions may be appealed, and the Commission on Judicial Performance investigates judicial misconduct and incapacity. Those safeguards do not erase the personal consequences of a wrongful ruling or delay.
The baseline and what happens under each alternative
The seat is open and will be filled by one of the two candidates. The court’s jurisdiction, assignment system, legal rules, staffing, and appellate process are unchanged whichever candidate wins. Both are nonpartisan candidates with extensive criminal-defense backgrounds, which makes this race different from the common prosecutor-versus-defender comparison.
Clayton’s reported Public Defender employment begins in 2014; his California Bar admission was in 2012. Those dates measure different things. His campaign biography describes current leadership of the Inglewood branch, attorney supervision and training, adult and juvenile representation, and dozens of trials. The saved reporting also describes continuing arraignments and preliminary hearings. Exact employment dates, trial totals and management results have not been verified against personnel files or complete court records.
Reitano’s Bar admission was in 2009. Her campaign biography describes more than a decade of public defense, earlier administrative representation and a certified law-clerk role, followed by current County Counsel litigation supervision and agency advice. Her October 2 questionnaire responses, published by South Bay Tide, specify ten and a half years as a public defender and dozens of jury trials and juvenile adjudications. These remain candidate-reported credentials, not independently reconciled totals. Her August 31 CityWatch interview describes roughly comparable public-defense tenure to Clayton, with additional practice areas.
The relevant choice is therefore between substantial criminal-court practice joined to branch leadership and substantial criminal-court practice joined to a broader legal portfolio. Neither a license date nor a current job title establishes superior judicial temperament, legal reasoning or impartiality.
What the evidence shows
What we can compare—and what we cannot
| Dimension | Clayton | Reitano | What the evidence permits |
|---|---|---|---|
| California license | Admitted June 6, 2012 | Admitted June 4, 2009 | Reitano has approximately three additional years of Bar seniority. Admission does not establish continuous practice, County employment or courtroom hours. |
| Public-defense career | Reported start in 2014; still in that office | Reports ten and a half years before County Counsel | Both have substantial defense experience. The reader’s claimed one-year hiring difference remains unresolved. |
| Trials | Campaign reports dozens; La Defensa reports more than 40 jury trials and adjudications | Published questionnaire reports dozens; reader asserts 38 | No complete, matched trial lists or definitions. No verified numerical advantage. |
| Current responsibility | Inglewood branch supervision, training and continuing hearings | Civil-litigation supervision and County advising | Different forms of responsibility; neither is equivalent to judging or proves superior management. |
| Practice range | Adult and juvenile criminal defense | Criminal and juvenile defense, administrative/labor representation, civil litigation and government advice | Reitano’s wider range is a relevant preparation proxy; it does not establish mastery of every Superior Court assignment. |
The license comparison comes from the linked State Bar profiles. Career descriptions come from candidate materials and saved reporting; trial categories are from La Defensa’s guide and the published Reitano questionnaire. The public record supports comparing kinds of experience more securely than ranking accumulated courtroom time.
Some outside profiles call Clayton a 14-year public defender. A South Bay Tide profile attributes that description to LA Progressive, while the previously reviewed Los Angeles Times chronology places his County start in 2014. A repeated description is not separate corroboration. We use the reported employment chronology and keep it separate from 2012 Bar admission; no dishonesty finding follows from conflicting secondary accounts.
A primary record strengthens the civil-litigation comparison
A June 9, 2026 County litigation packet, page 3, names Anna R. Reitano as the Justice and Safety Division’s County Counsel attorney in Marlen Medina v. County of Los Angeles, a federal civil-rights case arising from a death in juvenile custody. Outside counsel is also listed. This independently documents a substantive civil-litigation assignment rather than leaving her current work supported only by campaign descriptions.
The packet does not show how many attorneys she supervises, how often she personally appears in court, or the quality of her legal work. Its proposed $2.5 million settlement is a recommendation, not evidence of payment or a finding that she caused the underlying institutional failures. Representation of a government defendant is not evidence of agreement with alleged misconduct, just as criminal-defense representation is not agreement with a client’s alleged conduct. The relevant qualification is experience with a different body of law and litigation responsibilities.
The earlier guide gave Clayton’s recurring criminal hearings greater weight while describing Reitano’s civil supervision as less direct preparation. Current hearing work is useful, but legal preparation also includes motions, evidence, complex disputes and oversight of litigation. We have no matched performance evidence showing that one kind of supervision prepares a better judge. The comparison must assess both roles as imperfect professional proxies.
Equal professional ratings leave the comparison open
The LACBA Judicial Elections Evaluation Committee rated both candidates “Qualified.” Its 2026 announcement says it assesses professional ability, experience, competence, integrity, and temperament; it reports background reviews, candidate interviews, questionnaires to 50–75 people familiar with each candidate, and at least 25 telephone interviews. That is relevant peer-review evidence, but it is the association’s description of its own process. The actual candidate-specific reasoning is not public in the materials reviewed. Because the ratings are the same, they establish that both cleared the committee’s threshold; they do not establish that either is the stronger choice.
Their public judicial views overlap more than they differ
Both candidates describe fairness, preparation, access, and individualized decision-making as judicial priorities. In a questionnaire-based review, advocacy organization La Defensa endorsed Clayton and listed Reitano as recommended. It reports that both support considering ability to pay and individualized risk in pretrial detention, lawful diversion and treatment options, and attention to racial disparities and misconduct. La Defensa says it evaluated questionnaire responses and interviews and explains that its recommendations reflect a reform-oriented perspective. Its analysis is valuable evidence of what the candidates communicated, but it is an advocacy organization rather than a neutral qualifications body. Its descriptions are also not guarantees of how either candidate would rule; judges must decide cases on their records, governing law, and ethical obligations.
This overlap limits the usefulness of treating “reform” or “toughness” as a simple dividing line. A public defender background does not prove leniency or partiality. Nor does commitment to public safety establish that a judge will favor prosecutors. The useful distinction is the combination of depth, practice range and present responsibility. Neither advocacy endorsements nor promises of fairness establish better judging. Reitano’s broader practice deserves weight alongside Clayton’s continuing criminal-court work, with the same limits applied to both.
No public judicial or substantiated professional concern distinguishes them
The reviewed materials supply no comparable judicial performance record. The public State Bar pages read for this review show each as Active and display no discipline entry. No substantiated candidate-specific professional controversy, judicial reversal record, or public finding of misconduct was identified in the reviewed candidate reporting, official profiles, or campaign materials. That is a bounded search result, not a guarantee that no private complaint, unreported dispute, or inaccessible record exists.
Fiscal effects, distribution and opportunity cost
The judicial position is part of the existing court system, and the winner does not control the court’s budget. No credible candidate-specific, costed plan or evidence of a measurable fiscal difference was located. A judge’s decisions can still affect public spending indirectly through case duration, detention, sentencing, treatment referrals, and civil orders, but those effects depend on the case, legal standards, other agencies’ capacity, and systemwide policies. They cannot responsibly be converted into a candidate-level dollar forecast from this record.
Applying the ten Civic Outcomes lenses
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Human welfare. A Superior Court judge’s decisions can affect liberty, safety, family integrity, housing, property, and access to remedies. Both candidates have worked with people facing serious criminal consequences; neither has a judicial outcome record that permits a comparative welfare estimate.
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Distribution and inequality. Public-defense experience gives both candidates direct exposure to unequal resources, pretrial detention, and the consequences of criminal proceedings for families. Reitano adds juvenile-court and government-side civil experience; Clayton adds continuing local-court and branch-supervision work. No comparable outcome data show how either would translate that experience into fairer results.
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Civil liberties and equal treatment. Both have publicly emphasized constitutional protections and individualized treatment. Their professional roles do not prove future neutrality. The code of ethics, due process, and case-specific findings govern; campaign statements cannot substitute for those duties.
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Economic and material effects. Detention and court delay can threaten jobs, housing, caregiving, and legal costs. Clayton emphasizes preparation and deadlines; Reitano’s history includes defense and civil litigation supervision. Neither has documented judicial performance on calendar speed or case management.
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Fiscal reality and opportunity cost. The seat carries the court’s existing costs. Indirect fiscal consequences of rulings are real but not quantified here, and neither candidate has authority to appropriate treatment or court resources.
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Institutional integrity and democratic accountability. Voters select the judge; ethical rules, appellate review, recusal, and judicial discipline provide checks. The LACBA rating is a meaningful but nontransparent tie because candidate-specific reasoning is unavailable. Campaign endorsements show support coalitions, not proof of independence or qualification.
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Evidence of effectiveness. The best available evidence consists of professional backgrounds, public candidate statements, and one peer-rating level. Neither candidate has judicial outcomes, published opinions, or standardized performance data. The record supports only a tentative preparation preference; it does not establish superior judicial outcomes.
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Implementation and administrative capacity. Clayton’s reported branch leadership and continuing hearings show current court exposure and attorney training. Reitano’s reported litigation supervision, independently documented civil assignment and agency advice show a different form of legal responsibility. Neither has a verified comparative management assessment. Her breadth supports adaptability; his continuing hearings support familiarity with criminal-court operations.
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Unintended consequences and behavioral response. Candidates’ public statements may create expectations among endorsers or voters, but a judge cannot properly commit to a result before hearing a case. Both must be evaluated on whether they can translate experience into impartial adjudication rather than reproduce an advocate’s role.
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Reversibility, resilience and future lock-in. A six-year judicial term is consequential. Appeals can correct some legal errors, and discipline can address certain misconduct; neither mechanism can fully restore lost liberty, undo every family or financial harm, or recover time lost to delay. That favors selecting the candidate with the most relevant evidence of courtroom readiness while acknowledging the limits of the record.
The strongest case for and against each alternative
The strongest case for Clayton is substantial adult and juvenile defense experience combined with current branch leadership, lawyer training and recurring hearings. Those responsibilities require preparation, communication and practical familiarity with court operations. For a voter who places the greatest weight on a continuing criminal-court assignment and branch management, Clayton remains a reasonable choice. La Defensa’s endorsement adds an explicitly reform-focused assessment, not proof of comparative competence.
The strongest case against Clayton is that the reviewed career is concentrated in criminal defense while Superior Court judges may receive varied assignments. Reitano adds civil litigation, administrative practice and government advice to her own substantial trial background. His current role provides no measured advantage in temperament, impartiality, writing or calendar management. It should not be converted into a claim that he has more lifetime courtroom experience.
The strongest case for Reitano is the combination of substantial criminal and juvenile trial practice, a longer legal career and a wider portfolio of legal problems and clients. The County litigation packet supplies primary confirmation of a current civil assignment. Both candidates have reported supervisory responsibilities; her role should receive credit on the same terms as his. This combination modestly favors preparation for a general-jurisdiction court without relying on the reader’s unverified numerical claims.
The strongest case against Reitano is that broader practice can be uneven or comparatively shallow, and overseeing litigation is different from personally trying it. We have no matched writing samples, performance evaluations, hearing logs or evidence that she would manage a judicial calendar better. Clayton’s continuing criminal hearings and branch supervision could prove more useful in a criminal assignment. Her equal Qualified rating supplies no comparative peer-rating advantage, and representation of different clients does not itself demonstrate impartial judging.
Campaign claims audit
| Claim | Evidence | Assessment and limit |
|---|---|---|
| Clayton has 14 years as a County public defender | Some secondary profiles; 2012 Bar admission; saved 2014 employment chronology | Not established. Do not equate licensing with employment; exact hire date remains unverified. |
| Reitano has a longer legal career | Official Bar admission dates: 2009 versus 2012 | Verified as Bar seniority. Does not establish more total courtroom time or continuous practice. |
| Reitano started public defense a year earlier and has more trials | Reader submission; published career descriptions; nonstandard trial categories | Not verified. The hiring accounts conflict, and matched case lists are unavailable. Neither assertion drives the recommendation. |
| Clayton supervises lawyers and continues court appearances | Campaign biography and saved reporting | Supported as a reported role; no independent management-performance assessment. |
| Reitano supervises civil litigation and advises County departments | Campaign, published candidate interviews and official County civil-case packet | Reported supervision; primary confirmation of a civil assignment. Reader’s more-than-30 active cases and superior supervisory experience are not verified. |
| Reitano has broader practice | Career descriptions, interviews and primary civil assignment | Supported as a professional-background comparison. Does not establish better outcomes or mastery of every assignment. |
| Both are Qualified | LACBA’s 2026 release, rechecked October 14 | Verified rating tie; no public candidate-specific comparative rationale. |
| Newspaper or advocacy endorsements settle the contest | SCNG endorsement lead, La Defensa and campaign lists | Editorial judgments with different priorities. The SCNG original was inaccessible; an aggregator summary was read and not treated as complete original text or independent credential verification. |
Clerkship experience is relevant legal exposure, but it is not years as a licensed lawyer or service as a deputy prosecutor. Administrative representation is relevant practice, but it is not automatically Superior Court trial experience. We apply those distinctions to both candidates rather than add unlike categories into a single experience total.
Funding and interested parties
The campaigns disclose their committee identifiers on their websites: Clayton for Judge 2026, FPPC No. 1489455, and Anna Slotky Reitano for Judge 2026, FPPC No. 1487582. La Defensa reports that both candidates said they do not accept law-enforcement or police-association money; its guide also reports Reitano said she did not plan to seek PAC money. These are attributed campaign statements, not a complete reconciliation of all filings.
The current raw Form 460, Form 497 and independent-expenditure records for both candidates have not been fully reconciled. An isolated secondary report about one campaign would not provide a fair comparison, so no campaign totals or contribution amounts are used to rank these candidates. The County campaign-disclosure page directs readers to its archive and NetFile. Review both committees on the same reporting cutoff and check applicable late reports, transfers and outside spending before release.
What remains unknown
- Neither candidate has a judicial record, so there are no comparable decisions, reversals, assignment-level evaluations, or judicial calendar results.
- Candidate-reported trial and matter counts are not standardized and were not checked against complete case dockets.
- LACBA has not published candidate-specific reasoning in the reviewed materials; both candidates received the same rating.
- Public campaign statements do not establish how either would decide a close evidentiary, bail, sentencing, juvenile, civil, or family-law question.
- Campaign-finance totals and outside spending were not reconciled from the latest raw filings for both committees.
- California Code of Civil Procedure section 170.1(a)(2) requires disqualification for specified prior legal work on the same proceeding or related issues, including certain personal representation of a public agency. Prior County or Public Defender employment alone is not a blanket conflict. No specific pending conflict was substantiated in the reviewed record.
These gaps keep the recommendation at low confidence. The ballot facts and broad practice comparison are supported; total courtroom time, exact hiring dates, standardized trial counts and comparative performance remain unresolved. We choose on the combination of substantial trial preparation and practice range, without presenting either candidate as proven to be the better judge.
What would change this analysis?
A public candidate-specific LACBA rationale that identifies a material difference in ability, integrity, or temperament could change the comparison. So could verified, comparable evidence of courtroom management, written legal analysis, or substantiated professional conduct that is absent from the reviewed materials. A material correction to either candidate’s role or State Bar status would require an immediate reassessment.
The preference for Reitano would weaken if her civil role proved materially narrower than the documented assignment and reported supervision suggest, or if comparable records showed Clayton’s courtroom preparation, legal analysis or management materially stronger. A common-scope employment history could clarify tenure; matched trial lists could clarify experience but would still need context about responsibility, complexity and quality. Serious, substantiated professional findings would require reassessment for either candidate.
sherafy.com recommendation: Anna Slotky Reitano — low confidence
Reitano receives a narrow preference because she combines substantial criminal and juvenile trial experience with civil litigation, administrative practice and County advice. For a general-jurisdiction trial court, the capacity to work across different legal rules and client responsibilities is a relevant form of preparation. The official County packet strengthens the evidence that her present portfolio includes substantive civil litigation. The decisive lenses are implementation and administrative capacity, legal competence within institutional integrity, and fair procedure; the record does not permit a forecast of better welfare, fiscal or case outcomes.
Clayton’s countercase remains strong. His continuing hearings, branch supervision and attorney training offer immediate familiarity with criminal-court operations. If the assignment were known to be criminal and matched evaluations showed stronger preparation or management, that could favor him. Assignments are not promised, however, and daily advocacy is not judicial calendar management. Reitano’s broad practice and Clayton’s current court work must both be assessed as proxies, with the same evidentiary limits.
The earlier conclusion applied that standard unevenly: it asked whether Reitano’s breadth had translated into better judicial performance while favoring Clayton’s current work without equivalent performance evidence. The reviewed materials supply no comparable judicial record. Correcting that imbalance and giving substantive civil work proper weight supports the change. The conclusion does not depend on proving Reitano has more courtroom hours, more trials, or superior supervision; those comparisons remain unverified. Nor is it an adoption of the reader’s argument or another editorial board’s choice.
Both are Active and Qualified, with no distinguishing substantiated professional finding in the public materials reviewed. The burden is to support a comparative preparation judgment, not promise particular rulings or demand certainty unavailable for first-time judges. Reitano’s combination of substantial trial experience and wider practice meets that burden only narrowly. Equal peer ratings, incomplete personnel and case records, unknown performance and unresolved finance checks keep confidence low. Better comparable evidence could favor Clayton, strengthen Reitano’s case or make the choice indeterminate.
Evidence Ledger
| Material question | Finding | Evidence type and source | Confidence | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Office 65 roster and primary advancement | Clayton and Reitano are listed on the November ballot; they placed first and second in June | Official LAVote ballot and results | High | Reconfirm final ballot and certified status before release. |
| Legal eligibility and Bar status | Both are Active; admitted in 2012 and 2009, respectively | Official State Bar profiles | High | Public profile history is not a record of confidential complaints; removable administrative matters may be absent. |
| Practice and supervision | Both have substantial defense backgrounds and reported supervision; Reitano also has an official civil-litigation assignment | Candidate materials, published interviews, saved reporting and County packet p. 3 | Moderate overall; high for named assignment | Supervision scope and comparative effectiveness unknown; no total courtroom-time ranking. |
| Professional ratings | Both were rated Qualified by LACBA | LACBA 2026 rating release / LAist | High as to the rating | Candidate-specific reasons are not public. |
| Judicial outcomes | No comparable judicial performance record located | Reviewed public career descriptions and official profiles | Moderate as a bounded search result | Search does not establish absence of unreported temporary service or private/unreported matters. |
| Funding and interests | Both committee IDs are disclosed; no complete contribution or outside-spending comparison | Campaign disclosures and saved County filing guidance | Low for comparative completeness | Raw filings and all late/outside reports require common-cutoff review. |
| Recommendation | Reitano, low confidence | Editorial judgment: substantial trial preparation plus broader practice, with both supervisory roles evaluated on equal terms | Low | Clayton’s continuing hearings and branch leadership are a strong countercase; comparative performance unknown. |
References and Further Reading
SCNG endorsement, Head Topics summary. An explicitly summarized account of the October 1 endorsement; original publisher text was inaccessible. Used only as bounded editorial context, not independent credential verification.
County Counsel: June 9, 2026 Medina litigation packet. Complete six-page packet read; page 3 identifies Reitano and outside counsel. Confirms assignment, not personal trial count, management quality, settlement payment or responsibility for the underlying death.
South Bay Tide: Reitano candidate questionnaire. October 6 article presenting October 2 candidate responses; defense tenure and trial descriptions remain self-reported.
CityWatch: August 31 Reitano interview. Candidate explanations of practice range and judging; an interview, not independently verified performance evidence.
Reitano campaign FAQ. Candidate descriptions of clerkship, administrative representation, defense and current work; campaign advocacy, not independent verification.
South Bay Tide: Clayton profile. October 7 secondary profile; its 14-year public-defender description repeats LA Progressive and does not resolve the employment chronology.
Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder: Office 65 ballot listing. Official November ballot names and contest designation.
Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder: June 2, 2026 results. Official countywide primary vote totals for Office 65.
California Courts: Judicial selection and terms. Judicial qualifications, appointment/election path, and six-year terms.
State Bar profile: Justin Allen Clayton. License status, admission date, and displayed public history.
State Bar profile: Anna RS Reitano (aka Anna Slotky). License status, admission date, and displayed public history.
LACBA 2026 judicial ratings announcement. LACBA’s rating and description of its evaluation method, republished by a press-release distributor; candidate-specific reasoning is unavailable.
LAist: 2026 Los Angeles County Superior Court judicial races. Candidate roster, rating links, and voter context.
Los Angeles Times: 2026 Los Angeles County Superior Court judge guide. Career histories, stated priorities, and candidate explanations; trial counts remain candidate-reported.
La Defensa: 2026 judicial voter guide. Questionnaire and interview process, candidate positions, and endorsement/recommendation; advocacy perspective disclosed.
Clayton campaign biography and endorsements and endorsement page. Candidate-provided claims and endorsements.
Reitano campaign biography and endorsements. Candidate-provided claims and endorsements.
Los Angeles County campaign disclosure information. Explains current archive/NetFile transition and report types.
The Ballot Book daily campaign-finance report. Secondary filing digest used as a source lead in the earlier review; not a substitute for current raw filings or a complete comparative finance record.
California Code of Judicial Ethics and Commission on Judicial Performance. Judicial obligations and misconduct oversight.
California Code of Civil Procedure section 170.1. Disqualification rules concerning prior legal work; the Legislature site returned a 403 during access, so the cited text was read from a secondary codification.
Editorial currency and research limits
Research currency: October 14, 2026 for this challenge review, official November roster, both Bar profiles, published LACBA ratings, candidate pages and the additional County litigation record. June result totals and general legal background reuse the October 11 saved evidence. Transparent California and the supplied LinkedIn profiles could not be read; they do not verify exact start dates here. The Daily News original and same-title publisher alternatives were inaccessible; only an aggregator summary was read. Complete campaign finance, exact employment dates, trial lists and supervisory scope remain open. This is an author source/recommendation self-review, not independent expert review or clearance for publication.
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