JUDGE TAKES LEAVE FROM BENCH TO JOIN SENATE RACE

Libertarian Jim Gray Is Challenging Barbara Boxer in a Longshot Campaign.
He Believes Changes Are Made by Example.

UKIAH, Calif. -- Jim Gray, rigid as a judge's gavel, stood at the front of
a high-ceilinged tavern here and ran through a list of political positions
he hoped would appeal to Mendocino County's famously idiosyncratic voters.
Pot should be legal. Genetically modified foods should be labeled. The
Patriot Act should be gutted.

"We are galloping, racing toward a police state," said Gray, his voice curt
and direct. "This Patriot Act is the most recent, but our civil liberties
are in jeopardy."

These are not political views normally associated with a 59-year-old Orange
County Superior Court judge, a self-described "conservative dude" who left
the Republican Party less than two years ago over its stances backing the
war on drugs and the Patriot Act, and joined the more doctrinaire
Libertarians. But in a life marked by anomalies -- Gray once led an
anti-Vietnam War protest while enrolled in USC's Navy ROTC program -- the
judge is engaged in yet another incongruous act: a yearlong leave of
absence from the bench to challenge two-term Democratic incumbent Barbara
Boxer for the U.S. Senate.

With a three-person staff, pocket change in his war chest and a campaign
based mainly on legalizing marijuana, Gray's path to the Senate is steeper
than the traditional uphill run. It's more like standing at the base of El
Capitan, looking skyward and wondering just how high he can scramble before
gravity drags him back to earth.

But Gray sees his campaign as an act of personal responsibility. He might
be a pragmatist on an impractical mission, but he believes current
government policies are wrong and should be changed. And he believes you
change things by example.

"How can I expect anybody else to come forward unless I do more than my
share?" Gray told the crowd.

So Gray has been making small forays like this one, going out for a few
days to talk to supporters, troll for fresh votes and try to get himself
interviewed by local media. Then he returns to Costa Mesa to map strategy
from his office near John Wayne Airport, a rented first-floor space wedged
between two fast-food joints and downstairs from a tanning parlor.

Like most minor-party candidates, Gray doesn't really expect to win in
November. With Boxer anchoring the Democratic left, challenger Bill Jones
on the Republican right and no one from the Green Party on the ballot, Gray
hopes to galvanize enough support from the political margins and the
independent center to send a message to the mainstream.

"Even if we just make a strong showing, the Republicans and Democrats are
going to see our votes as the difference between winning and losing future
elections," Gray said.

To be considered by any voters, Gray has to get heard.

Late on this cool May afternoon, about two dozen people had gathered in the
Ukiah Brewing Co. as the judge took the stage. It was unclear how many came
to hear him talk and how many just stopped in for a beer and stayed.

Tough Road

Mendocino County is not what you would call Gray -- or Libertarian --
country. In the March primary, Gray placed second, picking up 64 votes to
perennial Libertarian candidate Gail Lightfoot's 98, a reversal of the
statewide results. The Libertarian vote was barely an asterisk to the major
parties: Jones received 3,164 votes and Boxer, running unopposed, outpolled
everyone with 13,034 local votes.

Yet Gray, a little over 6 feet tall with drilling hazel eyes, has more in
common with Mendocino County voters than those numbers would suggest. The
redwood-covered hills and vineyard-carpeted valleys about two hours north
of San Francisco are home to all manner of recalcitrant hippies and
back-to-earthers at the forefront of the medical marijuana movement. County
voters decided in March to require genetically modified foods to be labeled
- -- the first such local mandate in the nation.

That progressive unpredictability extends to local elections. Libertarian
Norm Vroman -- a convicted tax-evader -- has twice won election as district
attorney largely because he backs legalizing marijuana. And Sheriff Tony
Craver is a renegade Republican who also thinks the drug war has been a
failure. Both men, popular political figures here, have endorsed Gray.

Gray may have found sanctuary with the Libertarians, but he's an
indifferent member of the tribe. Part of his appearance in Ukiah, for
instance, was spent arguing for mandated labeling of genetically modified
foods, something most Libertarians would say amounts to the government
sticking its nose in where it doesn't belong.

"I am not a purist. I am not doctrinaire," Gray said. "I believe in
responsibility. I also believe in anti-trust laws.... [Libertarians] have
no place for antitrust. I part company with them there."

The differences aren't likely to cost Gray support among hard-core
Libertarians, though, since as a sitting judge he lends credibility to the
party mainstream.

"He's got the background to at least make an impression on people," said
Kenneth D. Allen, a Libertarian and president of the Anderson Valley
Brewing Co. in Mendocino County. "Then maybe somewhere along the way people
will stop thinking we're weird."

Marching out of step is a trait Gray proudly shares with his late father,
U.S. District Court Judge William P. Gray. The elder Gray, a Republican,
was appointed to the bench by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson and
became a controversial defender of prisoners while overseeing legal
challenges to overcrowded jails in Orange and Los Angeles counties.

After graduating from UCLA, the younger Gray spent two years in Costa Rica
as a Peace Corps volunteer, then entered USC Law School through the Navy
ROTC program.

Two months after leading the anti-Vietnam War protest, Gray went to war
himself on a training mission, assigned as an ROTC midshipman to a landing
craft plying the Mekong River. He earned a combat ribbon, and after the
summer tour returned to USC for his final year of law school, then joined
the Navy's judge adjutant general's office.

Gray worked as an assistant federal prosecutor in Los Angeles before
entering private civil practice in Newport Beach. He lives in Newport Beach
with his wife, Grace Gray, who runs a physical therapy clinic in Orange.

In 1983, Gov. George Deukmejian appointed Gray, who had worked on his
campaign, to Santa Ana Municipal Court, where he served as a no-nonsense
conservative jurist with a deep conviction that a criminal owes society
penance for his sins.

But not every crook. One class of criminal, he believes, shouldn't exist at
all: pot-smokers, both recreational and medicinal. Gray believes deeply
that the U.S. has lost a "hopeless" war on drugs, a conclusion he reached
in the 1980s after seeing the heavy flow of drug cases through his courtroom.

Personal Choice

Gray said he believes that the decision to take drugs should be a matter of
personal responsibility, not law, and that drug users should be given
access to drug treatment, not jailed. But he said radical change also
should begin with moderate steps.

"Let's start with marijuana and see where we go," Gray said. "I don't think
people are ready for anything other than that."

Since 1989, when Deukmejian elevated Gray to the Orange County Superior
Court, he has handled civil matters almost exclusively, in part to head off
complaints that he had displayed a bias on the drug issue.

But Gray said he also had tired of criminal cases and was drawn to the
complexities of civil suits. One of his more notable cases was overseeing a
2001 legal settlement in which the Catholic Church agreed to pay a
molestation victim $5.2 million and promised deep reforms aimed at
preventing recurrences. Both sides credited Gray for his role as conciliator.

That year, he published a book, "Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We
Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs."

Gray's platform has more planks than just legalizing marijuana and opposing
parts of the Patriot Act, the anti-terror device that critics argue has
eroded civil rights.

Gray also believes that federal agencies should periodically justify their
existence to Congress or shut down, and that the federal government should
reimburse local governments for costs associated with illegal immigration
- -- which administrations of both parties have refused to do. Gray touched
on many of those issues during his 45-minute appearance before the small
crowd in Ukiah.

But he seemed ill at ease, as if uncertain about exactly how one asks
strangers for help. Ever the reserved courtroom figure, he asked for votes
with a formal "I request your support." And, almost as an afterthought: "I
actually need money, too. If you are in a position at all to give $5 to
$500 to more, we need that and we'll put it to good purpose."

Afterward, Gray moved through the room shaking hands and posing for
photographs with the few voters who hung around, and sipping from a pint of
beer. They chatted about marijuana laws and genetic engineering, small talk
about large matters as Gray sought common political ground.

A few minutes later, the party over, Gray left, walking past the local
courthouse and into the evening.