An Orange County Superior Court judge can just use her middle initial on the upcoming ballot after her challenger accused the judge of “hiding behind a misleading name” — with the incumbent questioning whether she was targeted for a “foreign-sounding name.”
The ruling ended a dispute between two former federal prosecutors trying to win the same judgeship.
Charles Pell filed a lawsuit against the Orange County Registrar of Voters, which is in charge of printing ballot designations, over the sitting judge’s request to appear on the ballot as “Ami S. Sagel,” rather than “Ami Sheth Sagel.”
Pell contended Sagel was trying to appear on the June 2 primary ballot under “a previously unused name that is not one that voters know.” Pell said the judge is listed as Amy Sheth Sagel in her OC Superior Court judicial assignments, and Pell accused Sagel of “running away” from a record that he alleged “paints of picture of someone who doesn’t have a good temperament.”
Sagel countered that the use of her middle initial “is not misleading.” Her attorney, during a hearing late last week, alleged that Sagel has been “picked on because she used a foreign-sounding name.” Sagel also alleges that Pell told a former colleague, a federal prosecutor, more than a decade ago that “the way to win a judicial election was to target judges with ‘f—-d up names.”
Sheth is of Indian origin, said Sagel, and her maiden name.
Pell’s attorney denied their was racist intent behind challenging Sagel’s ballot designation.
San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Wilfred J. Schneider Jr, in his written ruling released late Monday, March 23, wrote that Sagel had used different versions of her name — with and without her middle name or initial — in professional settings.
Judge Schneider also agreed with Sagel’s request to force Pell to change his ballot designation, which lists him as a “Federal Criminal Prosecutor.” He can use his actual former title, “Assistant United States Attorney.”
Judge Sagel, her husband, Brett Sagel, and Pell all worked together at one time for the local United States Attorney’s Office.
Judge Sagel spent five years as a federal prosecutor before starting a private legal practice; in 2013, Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed her as an Orange County Superior Court judge. Her husband stayed on as a federal prosecutor, handling numerous high-profile white-collar-crime cases.
Pell was a federal prosecutor for more than two decades, in recent years leading headline-grabbing public-corruption cases against former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do and former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu.