Flagler County Judge Andrea Totten, who today announced her candidacy to retain her seat in next August’s election, was facing 13 other contenders in August 2019 for appointment to what was to be a newly created judgeship for Flagler. Each was interviewed in person for about 15 to 20 minutes by the Judicial Nominating Commission. Totten and five others were short-listed and their names sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was to make the appointment after his staff interviewed the six.
Just before the interview, Totten found herself in the same room as Scott Spradley, the Flagler Beach attorney and one of the other short-listed candidates. Both were Flagler residents of long date. But it was actually their very first meeting. They were both in the so-called “ready room,” a sort of Green Room for interviewees.
“Since the interviews ahead of us were running long, we had the better part of an hour to chat and get to know each other in that rather unique situation,” Spradley said today. “I found her to be a delight. When I later received the news that she was selected by the governor for the position, I was of course disappointed, but I was at the same time thrilled that it was she who prevailed, based on my impressions of her during our earlier meeting.” Spradley made a point of attending Totten’s investiture that November, the celebratory occasion when a judge actually becomes a judge. He was the only one of her competitors to do so.
“I was just as impressed when I received a note from her in the days following the Investiture in which she expressed her thanks for my attending it,” Spradley said. “Most importantly, on reflection, the governor made the perfect choice. Judge Totten is an awesome judge and I have had the pleasure of appearing before her on numerous opportunities. She is a very quick learner. And my own law practice is booming and I can think of no place I would rather be than engaging with my clients and my staff on a daily basis.”
Judges–county judges especially–are at once the most immediate and consequential expressions of government power, and the least visible. County judges deal with misdemeanors, civil cases, small claims, actions involving amounts below $30,000, which typically get little to no media coverage. Unless you’re in the courtroom, you rarely know what they do. But judges do affect the lives of thousands every year, and how they do it can affect the direction of those lives and people’s impression of government power, if not justice. If people “are going to have contact with the court system at all, it’s probably going to be the county court,” Totten had said during her nominating commission interview. “So I feel like you’re sort of the face of the community in the circuit court.”
Josh Davis, a local attorney who years ago in Volusia County was an assistant public defender when Totten was an assistant state attorney, recalls a recent case when his client was facing immediate eviction. His client had paid off her brother’s mortgage for a condo unit over a 20-year span and had come to own it. But the condo fees had gone to her brother, and were never paid. The condo association secured a 24-hour eviction order. By the time Davis got the case it was past noon, with the courthouse closing at 4:30 p.m. “We had about three hours and 30 minutes to stop this woman’s eviction,” Davis said. He filed an emergency motion in Totten’s court. Totten intervened. The eviction was stopped, and Davis’s client eventually got to keep her home.
“That would not have happened unless Judge Totten was on top of her stuff and signed the order granting me a stay of execution,” Davis said. “It shows people that she’s invested. Both she and the other county judge,” he said, referring to County Judge Melissa Distler, who was elected in 2012, “have been here a long time. You can tell the community matters to them.” In her interview before the Judicial Nominating Commission, Totten had described how she’d lived many years in a section of Palm Coast within a brief drive of the county courthouse in Bunnell–she’d been in the county 15 years by then–how her children were enrolled in locals schools, her parents were here, her friends, her church circle were all here. She had taken stock in children locally, literally: she had mentored students in the Flagler Education Foundation’s celebrated program, which ensures mentorship and college tuition for students from less privileged backgrounds (like Dylan Long, the Flagler Palm Coast High School student who just won a $40,000 college scholarship through Take Stock.)
Totten, 41, is among those judges–mirroring all the judges in Flagler’s corner of the Seventh Judicial Circuit–who let the law speak louder than their voice, their gavel usually resting symbolically rather than ominously. “She’s thoughtful, she takes her time with things, she analyzes the case,” Davis said, “She’s caring, compassionate but still smart, very thoughtful.” Totten had to make her best case for herself when she interviewed with the nominating commission, but it appears she was not exaggerating when she summed up her character at the time: “I feel that I have the right disposition to be a county court judge. I’m outgoing, I’m a people person, and patient. And I believe that any attorney that you speak to that is working with me as opposing counsel will tell you that I’m fair. So between my professional qualifications and my personality, I know that I would make an excellent County Court judge.”
It is part of Florida’s judicial selection process that, appointments aside, judges have either to be elected or to win the votes to be retained on the bench. So this will be Totten’s first election, having never held elected office before her appointment. She had been an Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Appeals Division of the Office of the Attorney General before her appointment, an Assistant State Attorney for the Seventh Judicial Circuit–which includes Flagler, Volusia, St. Johns and Putnam counties–and a Judicial Law Clerk. She was admitted to the Florida Bar in 2005, and the day she was sworn to the bar that May, not so insignificantly, then-Chief Judge Thomas Sawaya of the Fifth District Court of Appeal–where the swearing-in took place–invited her to address the new class of lawyers: she had scored the highest on the Florida Bar exam.
Her release notes she currently serves on the Pro Bono and Personnel Committees for the Seventh Judicial Circuit, and recently concluded her work on the District Court of Appeal Workload and Jurisdiction Assessment Committee, to which she was appointed by the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court in May 2021.
Totten of course had not expected that her first year on the bench would be upended by one of the most disruptive and unpredictable events of the past century.
“As I’m sure you could guess, the greatest surprise or challenge that I have encountered on the bench is the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic,” Totten said by email this morning, responding–with characteristic promptness–to a few questions after she’d issued a release about her run. “I was at Phase II Judicial College In March 2020, when it became apparent that the world was changing rapidly. The following week was to be Spring Break for many Florida school districts, so one of the topics my colleagues and I were discussing over lunches that week was whether we should cancel our respective Spring Break plans with our families. The answer was clear by the end of the week when Disney World Orlando announced that it was closing. At that point I had only been on the bench for about four months, and my assistant and I were just beginning to feel comfortable with the systems we had put in place.
“Needless to say, it was difficult to tackle learning how to be a judge and learning how to be a judge on Zoom all at once. That certainly was not something we learned how to do at judge school, but I am proud of how quickly we adapted in Flagler County.”
In her interview with the nominating commission, Totten paid special attention to the care and patience needed as judge when dealing with people who represent themselves, as they often do in county court, not having the means to pay for a lawyer. Presiding over such cases, she said today, is one of those things that cannot be taught in judge school, and instead one “simply becomes more comfortable with experience.”
“Much to their credit,” Totten said, “many Flagler County citizens utilize small claims court to settle their disputes. I know that it is an intimidating process for many litigants, but it is heartening that they choose to avail themselves of the judicial system, notwithstanding the fears they might have. Presiding over cases between litigants who may have little or no experience with the law is very different from presiding over cases with attorneys on both sides. It is both challenging and rewarding.”
The Supreme Court urged the creation of a new county judgeship in Flagler–and the Legislature ratified the request–because the docket had become overwhelming for Distler alone. Asked about that workload now, Totten wrote: “I do not feel that I can speak to the work flow in circuit court, but in county court, I feel that Judge Distler and I are doing a very good job of keeping up with the workload. It is always busy, but cases are being addressed in a timely manner on both the criminal and civil dockets.”
The election is on Aug. 23, 2022
