Backing the blue and promising to be tough on criminals turned out to be a winning message for one Florida judicial candidate, but it also got him suspended by the Florida Supreme Court this week.

John B. Flynn was elected to the Polk County bench in 2022 after promising to “support our law enforcement agencies” and vowing that “criminals won’t be happy to see me on the bench. I am tough. If someone is found guilty, the punishment should sting enough for the person to learn criminal behavior will not be tolerated.”

Flynn rode the message to a decisive win, defeating his opponent by 25 percentage points. But the Judicial Qualifications Commission, the state’s ethics watchdog, opened an investigation and found the campaign violated the judicial canons, the rules that govern a judge’s public and private conduct.

“It’s the job of the impartial judge to look at each defendant individually and each case individually,” said Jason B. Blank, a Broward attorney who serves as president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The judge’s campaign statements undermined public confidence that he would give the accused a fair hearing, he said.