Two San Diego County deputy district attorneys jumped out to early leads Tuesday night in the voting for the county’s two competitive judicial seats.
The first batch of results showed Brian Erickson, who works in the district attorney’s cold case homicide unit, holding a strong lead for Superior Court judge Office No. 41 over Jodi Cleesattle, a senior assistant attorney general with the California Department of Justice.
In the race for Office No. 43, deputy district attorney Valerie Summers held a commanding lead over Koryn Sheppard, a family law solo practitioner.
The final results of Tuesday’s primary election will decide both of those races without the need for a November runoff. That’s because judicial elections are unique in that a candidate who wins more than 50 percent of votes in the primary is the winner.
San Diego Superior Court Commissioners Rosy Meyerowitz and Kelly Mertsoc will also join the bench, having run unopposed for Office No. 19 and Office No. 38.
Erickson, 56, of Rancho Peñasquitos, has been a deputy district attorney in San Diego County since 2004. He began his career as a deputy district attorney in Tuolumne County, where he worked for two years before moving to the San Diego City Attorney’s Office for six years. He’s a graduate of California Western School of Law in downtown San Diego.
He was leading Cleesattle, a 55-year-old Kensington resident and graduate of American University Washington College of Law. She has worked in the California Attorney General’s Office since 2007, first as a deputy and then as a supervisor. She’s currently a senior assistant attorney general. Before joining that office, she worked in private practice for 12 years, clerked for the federal court in the District of Columbia and launched a national magazine for law students.
Summers, an Encinitas resident and Loyola Law School graduate, has spent her entire career as a San Diego County deputy district attorney. She’s worked as an assistant chief of a gang prosecution unit and chief of the sex crimes and human trafficking division and the family protection division. She also teaches criminal justice courses at UC San Diego.
Sheppard, a 43-year-old East County resident, graduated from California Western School of Law and has spent her career practicing family law both as a solo practitioner and as a litigation attorney at several firms. She’s also an adjunct professor teaching California civil procedure at Thomas Jefferson School of Law.
