Circuit Judge Chris France, who oversees civil and family court in Flagler County, and County Judge Melissa Distler, who was first elected in 2012, were both re-elected–or retained–without opposition.
Distler will be starting her third six-year term. Gov. Rick Scott appointed France to the bench in September 2016, replacing Circuit Judge Joseph Will to the Seventh Judicial Circuit seat. The circuit includes Flagler, Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns counties. France at the time had been running for the seat in the 2016 election. He’d been an assistant state attorney in the circuit for for 18 years.
Another appointment is expected later this year or early next year as Circuit Judge Terence Perkins will retire in September from the Flagler bench he’s occupied for the last six years. It is not necessarily the case that the appointment will replace Perkins in Flagler. Unlike county judges, who serve where they are appointed and elected, the 27 circuit judges in the district may be assigned anywhere in the circuit at any time.
Circuit court judges are paid $191,163 a year. County court judges are paid $180,600.
About 90 percent of races for circuit-judge positions were decided last week across Florida, with just 20 of 211 circuit-judge races contested, and with just 11 incumbent judges facing opposition.
In the Seventh Judicial Circuit, only one incumbent judge is facing opposition. Rose Marie Preddy, whom Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed last year and who serves in Putnam County, has drawn a somewhat astonishing and, in her view, illegal challenge from Scott DuPont, the St. Augustine attorney. DuPont was disgraced out of the Flagler County and Putnam courthouses by then-Chief Judge Raul Zambrano, and eventually disgraced out of the bench altogether by the Supreme Court and suspended from the bar for three months after he was found to have violated numerous judicial ethics while campaigning and in the courtroom.
Preddy has sued, seeking to keep DuPont from qualifying, according to the News-Journal.
