Under the caption "Will This Cure the Medford Cancer?" the Daily Courier of Grants Pass carries the following editorial on the attempt to recall Judge Norton:
    "Medford, once the metropolis of Southern Oregon, of late has fallen from her high estate, but something has happened in the Bear Creek city that very likely will ring the knell of Medford's troubles and start her upward again.
    "That something is the unwarranted, asinine and probably suicidal attack upon Circuit Judge H. D. Norton.
    "Here's the way we figure it: For many years Medford has been the city that grew and prospered and got the things she wanted. The method was to harbor no qualms over how she got 'em or what city she antagonized in getting 'em.
    "Then up rose Klamath Falls. Klamath Falls began to get things, railroads, mills, payrolls, population, highways. She got 'em by the other method, patting other cities on the back while getting 'em.
    "The first policy was bound to lose in the end, and the second was bound to win.
    "When Klamath Falls began to usurp Medford's place, Medford tasted the dregs, and seeds of discord sown through many years began to bear fruit.
    "Now the place has achieved statewide reputation for being all muscle-bound by warring factions to the point that nothing can be accomplished. Man after man in public life has been marked for attack and has been pulled down.
    "That is the stage setting for what may be the purgative, the latest and we hope the final attack, that on Judge Norton.
    "Norton is one man in a hundred thousand so removed from petty suspicions, so elevated in public esteem, so freed from any taint of unfair dealings of any nature that the attack can hardly help but be thrown back upon the attackers with maiming force.
    "If that can be the outcome, then it will be a cage of the maimers maimed. The cure of the harmful Medford situation will be on the way. The patient may be on the way to recovery.
    "Let's hope that it will be so. There will be mighty few, if any, signers of Norton recall petitions in Josephine County's borders.
    "If any can be found we will be glad of the opportunity to offer them the proper notoriety."
Medford Mail Tribune, August 11, 1932, page 6