It is election time and the Broward Courthouse crowd is grumbling once again that too many candidates for judge are running for the wrong reasons.
The complaint is that lawyers run for judge to improve their finances rather than to improve the judiciary. The subtext of this argument is that candidates who need to become judges to boost their incomes are not Broward’s best and most accomplished lawyers.
Below are the incomes of the four Broward Circuit Court candidates now running for two open seats on the Broward Circuit Court.
The candidate’s reported income:
Group 9
- Andrea Gundersen’s 2015 salary — $86,325
- Lea Krauss’s 2015 salary — $94,369
Group 15
- Barbara Duffy’s 2015 salary — $50,000
- Abbe Rifkin’s 2015 salary — $140,256
The election winner can expect to earn roughly $145,000 annually, plus generous retirement and health benefits as a Circuit Court judge. Thus Rifkin is the only candidate that will not be receiving a big boost in salary if she wins.
None of the candidates are exceedingly wealthy for veteran lawyers. Their net worth’s are:
Group 9
- Gundersen: $746,312
- Krauss: $560,000
Group 15
- Duffy: $459,763
- Rifkin: $445,603
Gundersen has the largest net worth, but she is the oldest at 60.
Rifkin is 59, but if the only one of the four candidates who works for government. She’s a Miami-Dade homicide prosecutor.
Duffy, 50, was a prosecutor and is now in private practice. Krauss, 41, is also in private practice.
So are the candidates’ running for a better salary? You decide.
[vc_message message_box_style=”3d” message_box_color=”turquoise”]By Buddy Nevins, BrowardBeat.com, excerpt posted on SouthFloridaReporter.com Sept. 20, 2016[/vc_message]
