Brad Bondi Can Still Be DC Bar President If Mike Pence Has The Courage

Paul Hastings partner Brad Bondi ran a star-crossed campaign for DC Bar president and got predictably shellacked. In normal times, the Biglaw partner running a campaign focused on mundane priorities like CLE reform would’ve been an ideal candidate. But his sister is busy flouting the Constitution and running a Justice Department in open conflict with the nation’s bar associations. Even if the presidency of the DC Bar doesn’t carry authority over the institution’s professional disciplinary function, the optics of putting Pam Bondi’s brother atop the entity were always bad.

And that’s why he lost roughly 91%-9%.

Like a proper Biglaw partner, he took to LinkedIn to post a concession message.

The post begins by hitting the notes that we all came to expect of a concession — at least before January 6 — noting that “although I did not prevail, I stand with a heart full of gratitude” before offering, in a concluding paragraph, to “recommit to a Bar that lifts us all” with a thank you to supporters. Had he limited his message to these two paragraphs, he’d have a nice little send off message.

But he didn’t.

Instead, 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. 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.

Oh, man, Brad. Discretion is the better part of valor, buddy. It’s posts like this that transform what should be an Above the Law story about lawyerly inside baseball into something the Huffington Post covers. The Streisand Effect is real!

It also shows that Bondi never understood the fundamental problem with his candidacy. Bar associations are frontline institutions for protecting the rule of law. They’re the organs issuing condemnations when the White House denigrates legal institutions and it’s why the administration floats threats against bar associations. Put aside any “conspiracies” that the DC Bar president could shut down disciplinary inquires into the next generation of Big(ger) Lie lawyers, the DC Bar president is, by virtue of increasing attacks on the rule of law, a political job right now.

And, more to the point, it’s a political job that requires someone who will not hesitate for a second to call out Pam Bondi for trampling on due process. Or, hell, put aside proactively criticizing the administration, the president needs to be able to stand up for lawyers when the White House inevitably puts the bar association on blast for disbarring Rudy or whatever. Like it or not, Trump has put lawyers on the other side of the “v” and the presidency race of any bar association at this moment is about electing a spokesperson willing to condemn the administration.

Early on in this campaign, we suggested that Brad Bondi’s only real hope in this race was to say he’s always been a brat to his sister and won’t stop now. That he’s still characterizing the concept of calling out the Justice Department’s lawlessness as “smearing” his family, proves he never grasped the issue.

But by giving in to these partisan impulses, we risk a never-ending cycle of political strong-arming, where every election becomes a proxy for national divides, and the Bar’s unity is fractured beyond repair. I caution that the Bar may never recover from this politicization — a tragedy that would erode its ability to serve as a home for all members, replacing impartiality with ideological litmus tests that alienate and divide. We’ve seen other institutions fall to this temptation, losing their credibility and purpose. The Bar must not follow that path.

“We’ve seen other institutions fall to this temptation”… you mean like rebranding the Justice Department as Trump’s personal law firm? Yeah, that’s sort of how the DC Bar got to this point. It might suck, but as long as “warrantless roundups to sell people to El Salvadoran slave camps” is a partisan position, then a bar association election is going to be partisan.

Championing the “apolitical” is just fancy enabling. It’s about shaming gullible people to take themselves out of the game when the stakes are at their highest. A better take might be that the bar association needs to be at the forefront of pushing back against an administration turning the rule of law into a partisan issue. Suggesting that lawyers should withdraw from that fight to hunker down as docile bullshit receptacles collecting CLE credits and comparing books of business over cocktails is, in fact, very political.

And DC Bar members seemed to agree 9-to-1. It’s one thing to say voters missed the point in a close election, but when it’s a decimation it’s probably worth asking if maybe you’re the one who missed the key point.

Brad Bondi, Pam Bondi’s Brother, Loses Election And Says ‘Rabid Partisans’ Were ‘Smearing Me’ [Huffington Post]

Earlier: Pam Bondi’s Brother Decimated In D.C. Bar Race

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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