A pair of President Donald Trump’s allies on Monday lost their bids for leadership roles in the D.C. Bar Association, dashing Republicans’ hopes for a MAGA takeover of the influential legal body.
Bradley Bondi, the brother of Attorney General Pam Bondi, lost to lawyer Diane Seltzer in the race for president of the D.C. Bar Association. The election was a landslide, with Seltzer receiving 34,982 votes to Bondi’s 3,490 votes.
Alicia Long, who ran for treasurer, is a former deputy to Trump’s interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin. Long lost to Amanda Molina, with Molina receiving 26,380 votes to Long’s 8,854 votes.
A number of Trump administration officials have spoken out against state bar associations after suggestions from Democratic-aligned lawyers that the once-obscure legal entities could serve to slow down elements of Trump’s agenda, according to NBC News. Since Trump’s reelection, the Justice Department has retaliated against lawyers they take issue with: firing prosecutors, targeting legal firms due to their legal team or clientele and suggesting the American Bar Association’s role as a law school accreditor could be revoked.
The D.C. Bar has more than 120,000 members, and because of its location, it’s where many federal attorneys are licensed. It also maintains a confidential hotline that allows lawyers to report ethical concerns.
The association said the election “mark[ed] a historic increase in voter turnout for the D.C. Bar.” Turnout rose to 41.22% of eligible voters, up from last year’s 8.57% turnout.
“We’ve got to make sure that we hang on to the rule of law and that we can practice law safely,” Seltzer told NBC News after results were announced Monday and she was declared the president-elect. “That we can represent who we want without worrying about retaliation, and that judges can issue fair and impartial rulings without worrying about being intimidated or retaliated against.”
Bondi, for his part, told NPR that he was “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 D.C. 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,” he told NPR in a statement.
Bondi and Long did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.