With so much attention focused on the Presidential race, I all but forgot about some local races that matter a great deal--those for the office of District Attorney.

Colorado voters made a terrible mistake a few years ago when they voted to impose term limits on public officials and neglected to exclude prosecutors. As a result, the Denver metropolitan area, particularly Denver, Jefferson, Adams and Arapahoe Counties, will lose four honest, trustworthy, dedicated and extremely capable top prosecutors who, throughout their careers were concerned about doing justice as well as getting convictions: Bill Ritter, Bob Grant, Dave Thomas and Jim Peters.

The job of the prosecutor is to do justice, not to accumulate convictions, like notches on a gun. Prosecutors should be objective and evenhanded. Their duty is to both protect the public and fairly administer the law.

The Denver Post today had an election guide with short bios for the candidates in the state-wide DA's Races. Most made me want to cringe.

The real losers in the term limits vote are the citizens of Colorado. So many of the contested races for DA are filled with people who sound either clueless as to what the job requires, or so victims' rights and police-oriented that they might not recognize the concepts of justice and balance if they bit them from behind.

TalkLeft has only one endorsement in the ten or so contested races: Scott Storey, who is running against Mary Malatesta for Dave Thomas's spot in the 1st Judicial District (primarily Jefferson county. Here's why we oppose Mary and support Scott:

Mary Malatesta has spent her career rising to the top of the states' death penalty prosecution team. She describes her occupation as "death penalty prosecutor." In her own words, here is why she is running for District Attorney...in a county that might see one or two death penalty cases a year out of the thousands of criminal cases filed and in a state that has executed one person in the last 30 years and has only three people on death row.