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By COLLEEN JENKINS, Times Staff WriterThe circuit judge is ordered to pay a fine and court fees. He keeps his job, but the state Supreme Court has the final say.
John Renke III deliberately misrepresented his qualifications and accepted $95,800 in illegal contributions during his successful 2002 campaign for a Pasco-Pinellas circuit judgeship, a state hearing panel ruled Thursday.
Renke should be publicly reprimanded and pay a $40,000 fine, plus the costs of the proceedings, the Judicial Qualifications Commission panel said.
The panel said it considered recommending that Renke be removed from the bench but rejected that course because he has proved himself to be a good judge, shown extreme remorse for his actions and, unlike many other judicial candidates, was underpaid prior to his campaign.
The panel's recommendations now go to the Florida Supreme Court, which has the final say on Renke's punishment.
Renke was not available Thursday for comment.
His attorney, Scott Tozian, said he hoped the state's highest court would adopt the recommendations.
"It was particularly gratifying that the panel recognized that Judge Renke is considered to be an excellent jurist by the legal community in Pasco County," Tozian said Thursday evening.
The JQC acknowledged that Renke, 36, had overcome many of the doubts local attorneys had when he took office in January 2003. Renke was considered the underdog in his race against veteran attorney Declan Mansfield.
Well-known Republican John Renke II took the reins of his son's campaign. Although judicial campaigns must be nonpartisan, the campaign had a decidedly political feel.
The Renke campaign targeted Pinellas County voters. It sent out hard-hitting mailers that boasted of the younger Renke's broad civil trial experience and looked negatively upon Mansfield's criminal defense work. It didn't protest when the Pasco Republican Executive Committee, of which Renke II was a member, mailed its endorsements to all Republicans in the circuit.
The approach drew scrutiny. A year after his election, the JQC slapped Renke III with multiple charges of campaign misconduct.
Last year, the judge and JQC agreed on a settlement that called for a monthlong suspension, a $20,000 fine and a public reprimand. But the Florida Supreme Court rejected the settlement without explanation.
The JQC added new charges, including the allegation of improper campaign contributions, early this year.
The case went to trial in September. For three days, the judge, his father, Mansfield and others testified in Clearwater before a JQC hearing panel. Much of the attention was focused on the senior Renke's controlling manner over his firm and how little he paid his son to work for him for seven years.
The hearing panel, which announced its findings on Thursday, consisted of two judges, two attorneys, a pastor and a consultant. At least two-thirds of the six panel members found Renke guilty of seven of the nine charges against him.
Members found inadequate evidence to show Renke III had misrepresented certain individuals as public officials in campaign literature and misled the public about his experience as a hearing officer for the Southwest Florida Water Management District.
But the commission ruled that, as an attorney in his father's law firm, the younger Renke took a series of payments for fees that the firm had not yet earned and immediately loaned the money to his judicial campaign.
The JQC equated those payments with illegal campaign contributions from the elder Renke.
"Without these payments it is doubtful that John Renke III could have run for or been elected to his position," the JQC concluded.
The panel considered imposing a $95,800 fine on the judge. But it decided Renke III had a reasonable expectation that he would have eventually earned those fees from a case settled in 2003.
More importantly, despite finding that Renke III grossly overstated his legal experience during the campaign, JQC members said they took pity on him for working for so little money as an attorney.
The judge has earned a reputation for being extremely patient and thoughtful while handling the high caseload in west Pasco's family law division, the panel said. Thus, it found he was "not presently unfit to serve as a judge."
The Supreme Court could accept or reject the recommendation or determine its own punishment, said Brooke Kennerly, the JQC's executive director. Kennerly did not yet have a tally of how much Renke could owe for the proceedings' costs.
If he could redo his campaign, the judge told the hearing panel, partisan politics wouldn't be an issue.
"Judge Renke frankly admitted that if he had it all to do over again," the panel noted, "he might simply put his name before the public and not campaign in any fashion."
Colleen Jenkins covers courts in west Pasco County. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6236 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6236. Her e-mail address is cjenkins@sptimes.com