Elizabeth Halverson, a District Court candidate for Department 23, has an oxygen tank to assist her breathing and uses an electric scooter to get around. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

When Elizabeth Halverson fields questions about her judicial candidacy, she gets one that most candidates never have to answer: Will your physical condition be an obstacle to fulfilling the duties of the position you seek?

Halverson, an obese woman who has an oxygen tank to assist her breathing and uses an electric scooter to get around, has a quick response.

The 48-year-old says that though she is heavy, she's healthy, and her physical challenges will not interfere with her ability to be a judge.

"That has nothing to do with what my mind is like or my heart is like," Halverson said. "You need the head to know the law and the heart to administer justice."

In the August primary, Halverson received the most votes in the seven-candidate primary race for the District Court Department 23 bench and faces the second place finisher, Family Court lawyer Bill Henderson, in the Nov. 7 general election. Nevada Deputy Attorney General Gerald Gardner had been widely expected to come out on top in the primary, but he came in third.

Halverson's performance in the primary has put her in the spotlight, and her critics, including Henderson, contend Halverson simply is not qualified to be a judge because she has not been a practicing lawyer.

While Halverson is, in fact, a lawyer, the vast majority of her career was spent working for nine years as a law clerk in District Court. The job involves researching decisions for judges, and most law clerks spend only a year or two in the job before practicing law themselves.

Henderson said being a law clerk doesn't qualify one for being a judge, and online computer records indicate that when Halverson filed as a candidate for judge earlier this year, she had not filed any cases as a lawyer in Clark County.

"Usually, law clerks are fresh out of law school," Henderson said. "And with all due respect to law clerks, those who have not practiced law have no real notion of the difficulties and complexities of handling cases as a judge.

"Working as a law clerk and then becoming judge is as much of a stretch as saying you worked as a judicial secretary or a bailiff, and that that qualifies you to be a judge," Henderson said.

Henderson also said Halverson has a reputation in legal circles as being difficult.

"I believe if she got elected, she would be very arbitrary and autocratic, and would mistreat staff," Henderson said. "She would constantly butt heads with colleagues. I'm convinced of it. She has a reputation of being very difficult."

Halverson dismisses the criticism.

"You have to ask what is relevant experience?" Halverson said. "Does a judge go in the courtroom and practice? No. A judge reads both sides and makes a decision. What do you think I did for 10 years (as a law clerk?)"

And, Halverson has her supporters. She was originally hired as a law clerk by former District Judge Don Chairez, who is now the Republican candidate for Nevada attorney general.

Chairez said he went to law school with Halverson at the University of Southern California, and when he hired Halverson, he did so because of her keen legal intellect.

"She was brilliant, and she is brilliant," Chairez said.

Chairez said he believes Halverson has her enemies in the Southern Nevada legal community because when she was a law clerk, she wasn't afraid to confront lawyers about what she felt were inadequate legal briefings.

"She was impatient with shoddy work," Chairez said.

Halverson's career as a law clerk also ended in a very public way. In 2004, Chief District Judge Kathy Hardcastle ordered that Halverson's position be filled by someone else.

Hardcastle explained at the time that she felt Halverson's position, which paid nearly $70,000 a year, was not meant to be filled by one person over an extended period of time. Instead, it was meant to help give budding lawyers experience.

"It's a limited type of a job and after they've been there for a year, it is time for them to move on," Kathy Hardcastle said at the time, adding, "I gave her plenty of notice."

Halverson then announced she was running for the Family Court judgeship in Department D. That seat happened to be held by Hardcastle's then-husband, Gerald.

Halverson was placed on paid administrative leave by Kathy Hardcastle, who said the situation posed a potential conflict of interest. Halverson was not rehired.

"They hired somebody younger, prettier, less experienced," Halverson said.

Halverson went on to nearly beat Gerald Hardcastle, receiving 49 percent of the votes in that race.

"I'd actually like to thank Kathy Hardcastle," Halverson said. "She started me thinking, 'Well, what do I want to do?' So, after 10 years of helping make decisions and writing thousands of memorandums and opinions everyday ... I said, 'You know what? I'd like being a judge.'"

Halverson's strong showing in the 2004 Family Court race should have been a good indicator of her ability to campaign. She is known as a woman who shows up at every political function. She constantly campaigns on an individual level, and her purple and yellow political signs are some of the most prominent in the Las Vegas Valley.

"I've been everywhere," Halverson said. "Just ask my opponent. I'm really about grass roots, and going to see people."

Halverson said her large size is the result of immobility resulting from injuries she suffered in a car accident and a subsequent bout with cancer.

She said unlike reporters, people in the general public almost never ask her about her weight or health, and she said she was particularly offended when she was recently listed in a Review-Journal column as one of several "spooky" political candidates on the ballot this year.

"The reason I'm supposedly spooky is I'm a morbidly obese woman in a scooter sucking oxygen in my nose," Halverson said. "Well, so does Stephen Hawking. Shall we get rid of him?

"I think there are people who don't like me because they don't think I fit the image of what a judge should look like, and they'd rather have someone with less intellect and a better body shape," Halverson said. "The public looks beyond all that."