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\nOur View: McCrory should set politics aside, appoint Lamb DA
\nThe Daily Advance
\nSaturday, October 5, 2013<\/p>\n
Gov. Pat McCrory will soon get a second chance to do something he already should have done: appoint Assistant District Attorney Nancy Lamb the 1st Prosecutorial District\u2019s permanent district attorney, allowing her to complete the remaining year of the four-year term started by her former boss and longtime colleague, the late Frank Parrish.<\/p>\n
McCrory had the chance to take this commonsense step over a week ago, in the immediate aftermath of Parrish\u2019s death of heart-related failure. Instead, he only named Lamb interim district attorney \u2014 an appointment lasting only 60 days.<\/p>\n
Lamb is clearly qualified for the permanent appointment. Besides working alongside Parrish for 29 years, she had been his chief assistant district attorney for the past two years, responsible for the administration of the office. So there can be only one possible explanation for McCrory\u2019s reluctance to appoint her: partisan politics.<\/p>\n
It seems some area Republicans, many of whom know little or nothing about the workings of the criminal justice system, have decided to oppose Lamb\u2019s appointment on the sole basis that she\u2019s not a registered Republican. They believe McCrory, the state\u2019s first GOP governor in 20 years, has been presented a golden opportunity with Parrish\u2019s death to appoint a fellow Republican to the vacant district attorney\u2019s job, believing it will give that Republican a leg up in next year\u2019s election, when Parrish\u2019s term expires and any number of candidates could seek the office. They believe McCrory will be squandering that opportunity if he appoints Lamb, who like her late boss, is a registered Democrat.<\/p>\n
While this kind of political maneuvering happens all the time \u2014 Democratic governors have appointed Democrats to fill vacancies created by the deaths of Republican officials \u2014 we think it would be wrong in this case for McCrory to heed area Republicans\u2019 demand. Yes, the district attorney is a political officeholder subject to a partisan process \u2014 candidates are required to state a party affiliation and run in that party\u2019s political primary. But district attorney is not a political officeholder in the same way county commissioners, state lawmakers or even governors are. Nearly every decision one of those officeholders makes is a political decision. No decision by a district attorney, on the other hand, should ever be based on politics. Facts, what the law says and what the interests of justice are, are the only legitimate bases for a district attorney\u2019s decisions. The only \u201cpolitical\u201d part of the job are the elections district attorneys are required to run in as candidates every four years.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why McCrory\u2019s appointment of someone other than Lamb would be so damaging. Given that no one else in the 1st District has her prosecutorial experience, appointing someone else would clearly be seen as political. The individual appointed would have no standing with either the district attorney\u2019s staff, the legal community or the public as anything other than \u201cthe governor\u2019s man\u201d or the \u201cgovernor\u2019s woman,\u201d beholden to interests other than the pursuit of justice. It doesn\u2019t matter how hard the person appointed works to establish their own credibility, ultimately they will be viewed in this compromising way.<\/p>\n
Appointing Lamb avoids this stigma because she\u2019s already in charge of the office, pursuing the same priorities as the district attorney to whom the voters have entrusted the office, first in 1994 and most recently in 2010: Frank Parrish. If the voters disagree with those priorities, they can make a change in the office in the 2014 election when Parrish\u2019s final term ends.<\/p>\n
Appointing Lamb to fill the vacancy also makes practical sense. Think about it: Anyone besides Lamb appointed to the district attorney\u2019s job will have, at most, only two months to begin the process of getting up to speed on the office\u2019s operations. After then, they will have to start concentrating on the 2014 election and running for a four-year term.<\/p>\n
Given that the filing period for the party primaries opens in January, and the primaries are held in May, someone new to the office almost certainly will be spending a lot of time away from it, trying to raise money and build support across the seven counties of the 1st Prosecutorial District. What will happen to the proper functioning of the district attorney\u2019s office in the meantime? Who will be in charge? Who will be accountable?<\/p>\n
Lamb, who is seeking the appointment to complete Parrish\u2019s term, hasn\u2019t said whether she\u2019ll file for a four-year term next year. Regardless of what she ultimately decides, having her fill the seat through the end of next year would avoid the problem of appointing someone who would be juggling competing priorities \u2014 trying to learn the office while simultaneously running for election.<\/p>\n
Those pushing for McCrory to appoint a Republican apparently are hoping a vote on recommendations to the governor by the 1st Judicial District Bar in Currituck on Monday will present McCrory with at least one viable GOP option for the district attorney vacancy. Given Lamb\u2019s long experience in the District Attorney\u2019s Office and work with the practicing attorneys who make up the bar, she\u2019s not likely to lose Monday\u2019s vote. However, since McCrory isn\u2019t bound by the vote outcome, he could appoint an attorney whose name appeared on the ballot and only got one vote \u2014 just because that attorney is a Republican. For the sake of retaining a justice system free of the taint of politics, we hope that doesn\u2019t happen. McCrory should do what\u2019s right: He should appoint Lamb to complete the remainder of Frank Parrish\u2019s term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Text cache http:\/\/www.dailyadvance.com\/opinion\/our-views\/our-view-mccrory-should-set-politics-aside-appoint-lamb-da-2183745#comments Our View: McCrory should set politics aside, appoint Lamb DA The Daily Advance Saturday, October 5, 2013 Gov. Pat McCrory will soon get a second chance to do something he already should have done: appoint Assistant District Attorney Nancy Lamb the 1st Prosecutorial District\u2019s permanent district attorney, allowing her to complete the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-textcache"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1102,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions\/1102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}