To the Editor:

When I found out that my lifelong friend Linda Blom Johnson was running for New York State Supreme Court Justice, I wasn’t surprised. Linda is an accomplished and ambitious attorney. She is a partner at Hinman, Howard and Kattell, where she practices civil litigation, and she is also the Rensselaer County Special Appellate Counsel responsible for providing legal representation to indigent criminal and family court litigants on appeal.

Running for judge in the court in which she has had so much experience as an attorney is a natural next step in her career.

What did come as a surprise to me was that New York State Supreme Court judges are elected and have an affiliation with a political party. It did not make sense in my mind; the qualities which make a good judge should ideally be independent of political beliefs. I was also shocked to learn that out of 18 elected justices, only three are women.

In Linda’s case, these judicial qualities include not only her unimpeachable professional experience and knowledge, but also the way that she incorporates activism in her daily life. She is someone who seems naturally to find ways to help others better themselves and better their situations.

Linda volunteers as a Special Olympics tennis coach and at the Joseph’s House homeless shelter. Linda also mentors young women law students with the Albany Law School Alumni Initiative and high school students in Mock Trial.

Linda and I have been friends for 40 years. If you had met our families in 1979, the year that Linda and I first became friends, you might have looked at our two sets of parents and thought that Linda and I came from households with almost opposite beliefs, values, and ways of living.

Linda’s parents came of age in the early 1950s, my parents in the late 60s, two extremely different eras in American culture. In fact, in a story we laugh about now, Linda’s parents were concerned about letting her sleep over at my house the first time I invited her.

After all, they felt protective: Our families did not share religion, background, ethnicity, or politics. My parents were much younger than Lowell and Marilyn Blom and the two couples did not know each other.

In any case, we girls remained close friends and through the friendship our families interacted and got to know each other better. Superficial trappings fell away over the years, and through birthdays and talent shows, school and athletic accomplishments and failures, teenage drama and angst, then later marriage and children it became obvious that our parents had much more in common than they may have first thought.

The things that really make a person who they really are cannot be described with a label nor expressed through a campaign motto. I remember after 20 years of their daughters’ friendship with each other, Linda’s parents asked my parents to sit with them, at the table of honor, at Linda’s wedding.

Years later, when her father was terminally ill, Linda called and told my dad and me that it was time for us to visit and reminisce with Lowell. Again, this was an incredible honor, as she knew these were some of his last days.

The two fathers, neither young at this point, took over the conversation and talked for hours, the way only longtime friends can. They even talked about politics, something Linda and I would have feared as teenagers, but, believe it or not, their perspectives had come to merge over the years, and we found them in agreement on the most hotbed of issues.

Linda is found on the Republican and Conservative lines, along with two cross-endorsed Democrats. At a time when many of us follow political news more closely that we used to, party affiliation can be more loaded with meaning than in the past.

Linda may have decided to wear the label Republican during her Supreme Court candidacy, but I challenge you to look beyond labels and vote for the most qualified candidate.

Vote for someone who has the rare quality of possessing enormous amounts of knowledge and experience, yet is never afraid to learn more. Vote for a more representative State Supreme Court with the inclusion of gender equity at the highest levels.

Vote Linda Blom Johnson for State Supreme Court Justice this Tuesday, Nov. 5.

Rebecca Schweig

New York, New York