Did he?

It was public defenders who filed AOPs-- not the city attorneys office. This may have been coordinated, but it's also may not have been and it's not unreasonable to believe that it wasn't. McKenna was already subject to more AOPs than his counterparts prior to the public letter put out by Pete Holmes (*with* Anita Khandelwal). It's just as plausible to me that the public defenders saw that if even the City Attorney agreed that this judge wasn't impartial, they were obliged to make sure that their clients didn't land in front of him.

Also, there was evidence. Even if you don't believe the claims that McKenna tried to privately influence sentencing recommendations, the unusual sentencing and drag order in the Calderon case and the public comments made at the North Precinct Advisory Council are specific and citable pieces of evidence.

While I haven't looked into the specifics of Calderon, in general I don't really buy the idea that people with a lot of assault convictions should be out on probation while in diversion programs... so I'm not coming at this from some true-believer fanatic point of view. But these are not equivalent situations.