Brother of AG Pam Bondi and a former Ed Martin aide lose bid to take over DC Bar
The powerful organization plays a limited role in enforcing ethics rules, but critics of President Donald Trump raised concerns over Bondi running the group at a time of increasing tension between the legal profession and the Trump administration.
Diane Seltzer, an employment law attorney who ran on a platform of supporting members during a time of 'great uncertainty' won the election receiving 34,982 votes. Bondi garnered 3,490 votes.
'I trusted that our members would elect a president-elect who they know will be fierce for them and hear them with respect to the issues that matter [to them],' Seltzer said after learning about the election results.
Alicia Long, a former adviser to Trump US Attorney nominee Ed Martin and who now serves as principal DC US Attorney under Jeanine Pirro, also lost decisively in a bid to be the treasurer of the organization.
The failed bids of Trump allies Bondi and Long come as the Trump administration has targeted top law firms in the country with executive orders, directing them to stop hiring employees, suspending their security clearances and stopping them from doing business with the federal government.
'I am disgusted by how rabid partisans lurched this election into the political gutter, turning a professional campaign into baseless attacks, identity politics, and partisan recrimination. Never before has a DC Bar election been leveraged along partisan lines in this way, an explicit call for members to vote based not on what's best for the institution but according to their political affiliations,' Bondi said in a statement provided to CNN on the outcome of the DC Bar election. 'Their tactics, which included smearing me over my family and peddling conspiracies about my intentions, were not just an assault on my integrity but on the D.C. Bar's very mission.'
According to the press release from the DC Bar, there were over 89,000 members of the DC bar eligible to vote in this year's election. The organization received a 43% member turnout for the election.
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