4 candidates vie for Thurston County Superior Court seat
Four candidates are vying for Position 8 on Thurston County Superior Court in the Aug. 4 primary, hoping to fill a seat that will be left vacant by retiring Judge Anne Hirsch.
In a statement to the Thurston County Bar Association earlier this year, Hirsch wrote:
“Just this week, as I observed the swearing in of a new Chief Justice and the first Native American Supreme Court Justice in our state (and only the second in our country), I reflected on how critical it is that there be a diversity of backgrounds, experiences and more for our court system to best serve our communities. It is my hope that at least some of you will consider this opportunity as I did 14 years ago.”
Hirsch most recently had been serving as a judge for Family and Juvenile Court, which hears juvenile offender matters and cases such as adoptions and protection orders. However, judges haven’t voted on rotations for 2021 yet, Superior Court Administrator Pam Hartman-Beyer told The Olympian Friday, so it’s not certain which part of the court system the new judge will serve in first.
Each of the candidates who wants to be that newest judge brings a unique resume to the nonpartisan role, and each has an argument for why that background uniquely qualifies them to preside over the many cases that come before Superior Court — criminal, civil, appeals from lower courts, appeals from state administrative agencies, and more.
However, just two of the candidates in the Aug. 4 primary will move on to the Nov. 3 general election.
Who’s running
Sharonda D. Amamilo earned her undergraduate degree from Southern Illinois University before earning a master’s of business administration at Saint Martin’s University and her Juris Doctor degree at Seattle University School of Law, according to the Voters Pamphlet. In fact, Seattle U is where three of the four candidates earned their law degrees.
She’s collected more than $30,000 in contributions, a little under $2,000 of which is in-kind under her own name. She has a list of endorsements that includes several Democratic organizations; SEIU 775; State Supreme Court Justices Helen Whitener, Steven Gonzalez, and Mary Yu; Thurston County Assessor Steven Drew; state Sen. Sam Hunt as well as state Reps. Beth Doglio and Laurie Dolan; and several other local elected officials.
What sets her apart, Amamilo said, is her experience.
Amamilo was in private practice in the early 2000s before joining Thurston County Public Defense as a child welfare specialist. For seven years she worked on child welfare and involuntary commitment cases, before she was promoted to a supervisory role. In 2019, she went back to private practice to focus on representing children in foster care.
She has trial experience representing adults and children across superior, district, municipal, and tribal courts.
“I have a very broad experiential base that really prepares me for the type of role that superior court judges have to play,” Amamilo said. Judges “have to be general,” she said, and can’t have a “niche focus.”
She served 22 years in the military, which she said lends her a “structural perspective” and an understanding of how being deployed to a war zone can disrupt and impact families and veterans who have a difficult time reintegrating into society, important in a county with many military families and retirees.
There are “a lot of ‘onlys’ in this race,” Amamilo said, referencing her military affiliation, gender, and race. She’s the only woman and only Black candidate.
The next judge also needs to be ready to help with the COVID-19 case backlog, maintain momentum during the pandemic, and “translate the issues that are faced by the BIPOC community that are not represented by the bench right now,” Amamilo said. BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous and people of color.
She talked about the unique perspective she would bring, saying if the court had an opportunity benefit from a broader, more inclusive perspective, it could “mitigate against the perpetuation of institutional racism.”
“You don’t know what you don’t know, and you can’t draw from an experience you don’t have,” Amamilo said.
The other three candidates emphasized their hometown roots in interviews with The Olympian; Amamilo lives on the other side of the Thurston-Pierce county line, in DuPont. The law does not require a judge to live in the county to be a superior court judge — and she says she has nothing to hide.
”I’ve spent my entire career committed to the success of people in the justice system of Thurston County Superior Court...” Amamilo said. “To the extent that I may or may not live in Thurston County, that’s not a requirement for the job and it shouldn’t be a disqualifier for someone who has committed their career to the success of this community, in the court system.”
Jonathan A. Sprouffske, an attorney and partner with Olympia law firm Connolly Tacon and Meserve, currently serves as a judge pro tem at the county Superior Court and as an arbitrator with the court’s Mandatory Arbitration Panel. He has collected more than $24,000 in contributions, including about $7,000 in cash and a little over $2,000 in in-kind contributions under his own name.
Sprouffske’s list of endorsements includes Thurston County Treasurer Jeff Gadman, Coroner Gary Warnock, and Sheriff John Snaza; Port of Olympia Commissioners Joe Downing and Bill McGregor; State Reps. Andrew Barkis and JT Wilcox, both Republicans; and the mayors of Rainier, Tenino, and Yelm, along with former Olympia Mayor Doug Mah.
“Jonathan Sprouffske is part of the multi-generational history of Thurston County,” Rep. Wilcox wrote in his endorsement. “He will live and die here and his decisions will resonate for all of us. I can imagine no better qualification for judge than his history in our community.”
Sprouffske sees his roots as a unique quality among the candidates: He grew up here and went to school at Saint Martin’s University before attending Seattle University School of Law. He has spent his legal career in the county in private practice.
He now runs the Christmas tree farm he grew up on and has long served with the Southeast Thurston Fire Authority, now as chair of the Board of Commissioners.
“I knew from day one I wanted to return here to Thurston County to practice and serve the community here,” he said.
He’ll bring that perspective to the bench by not letting cases that impact communities get lost, he said, and not “getting distracted by the fact that 80% of all cases filed against the state are filed in Thurston County.” With COVID-19 causing a backlog of cases, he points to his experience consolidating districts as a fire commissioner to make operations more efficient and responsive.
In a recent conversation with The Olympian, he emphasized the results of the Thurston County Bar Association membership poll, which included 102 ballots from the pool of 310 attorneys who were asked for their preference in the race. Sprouffske got 34 votes, followed by Amamilo with 28, Scott Ahlf with 24, and David M. Hankins with 16. He said it was an honor to have the support and recognition of his peers.
David M. Hankins, who originally hails from Wyoming but attended Seattle University before Willamette University School of Law, has 30 years of litigation experience in the state Attorney General’s Office and has lived in the county even longer.
Hankins has brought in more than $13,000 in contributions and his endorsements include Attorney General Bob Ferguson, former AG Rob McKenna, former Gov. Chris Gregoire, and Court of Appeals Judge Rebecca Glasgow. Hankins, Ahlf, and Sprouffske all list retired state Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst among their endorsements.
“David Hankins brings experience, fairness, and compassion for all who seek justice in our courts,” AG Ferguson began his endorsement. “While working at the Attorney General’s Office, he has defended our state in numerous multi-million-dollar cases and protected our residents by prosecuting professional licensing disciplinary cases. He is a proven leader in our office serving on our Ethics Committee and, most importantly, educating and training our new lawyers.”
Hankins points to his extensive trial experience — naming constitutional and statutory issues and “complex, multi-level cases” among those in his portfolio that spans every level of court — as experience that sets him apart.
“I’ve spent 30 years in the community and 30 years in the Attorney General’s Office representing the people,” Hankins said.
He believes his background as a public servant has grounded him in the concept of fairness, that his experience with complex cases would be an asset when faced with the many cases brought against the state here, and that his experience on the civil side also would translate to criminal cases.
He said he’s participated in several trainings on identifying racial injustice and implicit bias, and he recognizes that’s an issue in courts that needs to be addressed. Having that training is a reason he’d be “value-added to the bench,” he said.
Scott Ahlf grew up here, graduating from Timberline High School in Lacey before attending Washington State and Texas State universities for undergraduate, then Seattle University for law school.
He’s now served four terms as an elected judge on the City of Olympia Municipal Court, amounting to 15 years. Before that, he was a prosecutor and Assistant City Attorney for the City of Lacey, working on civil and criminal cases, and worked at a general civil litigation practice.
Ahlf has served as president of the District and Municipal Judges’ Association and is currently co-chairing a COVID-19 recovery task force for the state Board for Judicial Administration alongside Chief Justice Debra Stephens of the state Supreme Court and King County Superior Judge Judith Ramseyer.
More than 60 judges have endorsed him, including Stephens and Justices Barbara Madsen and Susan Owens of the Washington State Supreme Court and two previous Supreme Court chiefs. Other endorsements include that of several local, retired police chiefs and the 2nd Legislative District Democrats.
Ahlf has mostly financed his campaign himself along with his wife, he told The Olympian, noting that’s typical in these nonpartisan, judicial campaigns. He’s tallied more than $56,000 in contributions, of which a little more than $19,000 is a cash donation under his name and just under $29,000 is an in-kind donation under his name. Much of the in-kind donation, he said, was cash he had paid separately for a campaign consultant.
One of the things he’s most proud of, Ahlf said in an interview, is Olympia’s Community Court, a therapeutic court that was chosen to be one of four “mentor courts” in the country to serve as a model. Before the pandemic, Ahlf said two or three jurisdictions would visit per month to see how the court runs — they’ve seen a recidivism rate that’s significantly lower than typical in defendants who graduate, he said.
He said he also knows how to make tough decisions and that he’s done so in cases where there’s a violent offender and jail time is necessary.
“We’re changing the criminal justice system to really fit needs and address the needs of individuals that appear,” he said.
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