Two candidates vie for district judge position

Two women, Heidi Ulbricht and Vanessa Ceravolo, are running for the judge position currently held by Stewart Stadler, who is retiring. The two nonpartisan candidates for Flathead County District Court Judge for Department 3 will face each other in the June 5 primary and again in the fall general election.

This is Ulbricht’s second run at district court judge. She ran against three other attorneys in 2010 for the new Department 4 position in a race won by David Ortley.

Ulbricht has degrees in both law and accounting. After graduating from law school at the University of Idaho in 1988, Ulbricht clerked for a judge in Boise, Idaho, before joining a law firm there specializing in insurance cases. She moved to Montana in 1992 and joined a law firm in Kalispell specializing in contract and real estate law.

She was elected Kalispell Municipal Court judge in 1994 and has held the position since then. She says her experience as a municipal court judge — “supervising personnel, budgeting in a fiscally sound manner and effective case flow management using the court’s information system” — will serve her well at district court.

Ulbricht has served as a mentor in youth peer court, assisted district court judges in reviewing cases, was appointed by the Montana Supreme Court to advise in educating other judges and in investigating complaints brought against them, and served on the steering committee for the Flathead County Self-Help Law Center.

She wrote two successful grants that helped establish the first DUI and drug courts in the Flathead. She also testified before the Montana Legislature on DUI laws, and she requires alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelets, such as SCRAM, for alcohol offenders.

Ceravolo graduated from Flathead High School in1976 and attended undergraduate and law school at the University of Montana-Missoula, where she participated in the school’s ROTC program. Ceravolo went to the University of Virginia to study military law and served as a captain in the Army’s JAG Corps.

As a JAG officer with the 25th Infantry Division, Ceravolo provided legal services for more than 10,000 soldiers and their families. She was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service. She also served as an assistant attorney general and as an administrative law judge in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands.

Ceravolo touts her long resume. Since returning to the Flathead in 1992, she has served as a Substitute Flathead County Justice of the Peace, a public defender, a district court settlement master, president of the Northwest Montana Bar Association and a Montana Supreme Court appellate mediator.

An attorney and mediator in Kalispell since 1992, Ceravolo points out that she has settled hundreds of complex civil and family law cases over the past 27 years as a mediator, settlement master and attorney.

“Our Flathead County District Court has 1,219 cases per judge per year,” Ceravolo said. “It is vital that our district court system function as efficiently as possible. We need a judge that is experienced in civil and family law.”