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Barkley dismisses the complaints as much ado about nothing. "I don't know how this applies to anything to do with Mike Fields," Barkley said of his canceling his Friday coverage for Musslewhite. "As far as being around Brenda Sims, I'm going to avoid that, because I know she's not a friend of mine." Barkley declined to discuss exactly what he had told Sims in their phone conversation.

The judge also denied that his remarks to Carter constituted any sort of threat. "I don't know what the big deal here is," he said. "They are supporting Fields, and so I'm cautious about people that are not on my side."

The flap over Fields's fundraiser isn't the first involving Barkley's re-election bid. Earlier this year, after Barkley had made it known he would be retiring for health reasons, Marshall Shelsey, a courts administrator and pal of Barkley's, declared his intention to run for the judge's seat. But after assistant district attorney Shirley Cornelius announced that she planned to seek the position, Barkley reversed field and decided to stand for re-election. Cornelius, who would have had to resign her job as a prosecutor to run against an incumbent judge, then decided not to run, and Fields stepped in to replace her.

District Attorney Johnny Holmes says he's not surprised that a judge might use his bench to intimidate political rivals.

"Do I think it exists?" Holmes asks rhetorically. "Yes, I do, but I think it's real, real subtle. If we catch somebody engaging in conduct like that, I think we can do something with it." But since Carter did not record his conversation with Barkley, Holmes figures it would be difficult to make a case against the judge.

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