Off the Kuff

Rooting so hard for Crystal Mason.

The decade-long litigation of a Fort Worth woman accused of illegally voting in 2016 was resolved last week, but her fight lives on until the Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells is unseated.

Crystal Mason, a mother and grandmother who cast a provisional ballot in Tarrant County 10 years ago while ineligible to vote, saw her case resolved Sept. 24 by the highest criminal court in the state. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed state prosecutors’ appeal of her acquittal in a 5-4 decision.

“Today we celebrate victory, but next we’re coming for accountability,” Pamela Young, executive director of United Fort Worth, said Monday. “We’re coming for accountability, and that starts Oct. 19 through 30 with early voting. We can be a part of that accountability by kicking Phil Sorrells right out the door.”

In 2024, District Attorney Sorrells asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to convict Mason of voting illegally and send a message to all “would-be illegal voters.” She was initially found guilty by the 432nd Judicial District Court in 2018, but the conviction was overturned by the Second Court of Appeals.

Mason, who lived in Rendon at the time, used a provisional ballot while on supervised release for a 2012 tax fraud conviction. The vote did not count, but she faced five years in prison for casting the provisional ballot.

“The facts are undisputed that Crystal Mason was on federal felony probation when she cast her illegal ballot. That’s against the law,” Sorrells said in a comment Monday. “Elections are the cornerstone of our democracy and anyone who attacks them with an illegal vote will be prosecuted.”

Mason’s defense attorney Alison Grinter Allen said when she and Mason first met, Mason was determined never to vote again. Once Mason realized everyone involved in her case was elected, her attitude reversed, and she became an “evangelist for the ballot box.”

“Anyone who knows Crystal Mason, first of all, knows that they are registered to vote,” Grinter Allen said. “But second of all, has been absolutely bowled over by her faith and her optimism that Texas can be the place that we deserve, and that it can happen slowly, it can happen peacefully, it can happen at the ballot box.”

Mason created a voter outreach program called Crystal Mason: The Fight Against Voter Suppression in an effort to get more people to the polls and educate individuals about their eligibility to vote. Now, her entire family is made up of deputy voter registrars.

Amazing. After this years-long travail, which had clearly become vindictive, nothing would be more fitting than for Crystal Mason to have a hand in ousting Phil Sorrels from office. That’s what I would call justice.

More on Sorrels and the overall rancidness of Tarrant County’s governance.

On an August day in Fort Worth, when the temperature will reach the high 90s before noon, Tiffany Burks is counting door hangers. Volunteers have gathered at Portico Coffee in the Northside neighborhood, and Burks, the Democratic candidate for Tarrant County district attorney, is reviewing logistics before a block walk. Her choice of venue was strategic: In the 1930s, banks, insurance companies, and housing authorities “redlined” Fort Worth, denying loans to people in neighborhoods like Northside based on race. The practice helped entrench racial and economic segregation in Fort Worth, with effects that continue to shape where people live and if they can accumulate wealth.

As Burks sees it, the redlining also helped create long-term “disillusionment” in government.

“I go and I talk to people and I ask them, ‘Who is your DA?’ And they have no idea,” said Burks. That’s why she and her volunteers are “going into areas where people don’t normally go, to try to let them know that we really do care about Northside.” While 40 percent of Tarrant County’s population is white, 92 percent of the death sentences sought by prosecutors since 2012 have been against people of color. The decision on which charges to file and when to pursue the death penalty lies with the DA’s office.

Burks, who worked in that office as a prosecutor from 1999 to 2021, previously ran for the top job in 2022 against Republican candidate Phil Sorrells, who beat her by about 6 points. She says Sorrells is part of an “old boys network” that doesn’t work for the people they’re elected to represent. Burks wants to create a new diversion unit within the office that connects people struggling with addiction and homelessness to services rather than repeatedly jailing them.

The DA hopeful frequently campaigns with fellow Democrats Nydia Cárdenas and Alisa Simmons, who are both running for spots on the commissioners court. Similar to Burks, Cárdenas meets many people who don’t know that the governing body handles county finances, elections, budgets, and taxes. Voters will ask her, “Oh, is that the one where the guy kicks everybody out and he’s rude?’” She tells them, “Yes, that’s the one.”

County Judge Tim O’Hare—the Republican leader of the court and the guy who “kicks everybody out”—has spent years making it more difficult for people to vote. That includes a September vote in which the judge and his two fellow Republicans on the five-person court approved just 224 voting locations, down from 316 in 2022. In a public meeting that ran over eight hours, incensed speakers pointed out that the move would adversely impact voters of color. The civic dissent that has arisen in response has often gone viral online, drawing new levels of attention to the oft-overlooked machinations of county government in the region.

“Come November, you better find yourself a new job,” a man tells Republicans on the court in one video that earned over 87,000 likes on Instagram. Similar videos have darker endings: A local podcaster uses the word “bullshit” and is thrown out of a meeting (and later jailed). Lon Burnham, a former Democratic state rep, was dragged out of a meeting (and also jailed).

Burks and her fellow Dems know that translating widespread frustration into votes will be key to any wins they pick up in Tarrant County, where local politics are widely influenced by “the Fort Worth Way.” To people happy with their city, that old moniker conveys a folksy, tourist-friendly charm. To the people who feel like they are on the outside looking in, it conveys a conservative status quo.

Now, the latter group may be angrier and more organized than ever.

“In 2026, the numbers are just exponentially greater in the amount of people who are organized, who are active, and who are on the ground working to bring about change in our leadership,” said Pamela Young, a local criminal justice organizer. “I think it’s a cumulative effect of all of the horrendous things that our current leadership has done and the leadership that we’ve had over the last several decades in Tarrant County.”

There’s more, so read the rest. The article talks about the recent history of Democrats getting their noses in the tent – Beto in 2018, Biden in 2020, and Colin Allred in 2024 all carried Tarrant County, but had no company in doing so. I’ll get to that shortly. For a bit more context first, let’s look at this.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s message to potential donors as polls show a tight race against Democrat Gina Hinojosa?

“Our race is now a toss-up,” the subject line of a Sept. 29 fundraising email from his campaign reads.

The Tuesday appeal cites a RealClearPolitics competitiveness rating that, according to USA Today, recently shifted the race from being “Republican leaning” to a “toss up” as the Nov. 3 Election Day nears.

Abbott leads Hinojosa by 2.3 points on average in polls, but the margin between the Republican incumbent and the Austin area Democratic state representative has narrowed in recent weeks.

The fundraising message from Abbott’s campaign blasts Democrats for “a scheme to convince voters that their radical agenda isn’t so bad” — singling out Hinojosa by name — before launching into the donation plea.

“Our team has built the best voter turnout infrastructure in the country,” the email reads. “When fully operational, it gives us the resources we need to DEFEAT radical Leftists like Gina Hinojosa and KEEP TEXAS RED!”

Abbott warns of Democrats pouring resources into the state.

“We are facing a fight like we have NEVER seen,” the email reads.

[…]

Abbott, who’s seeking his fourth term, has consistently defeated challengers by double digits, his closest margin being 2022 when he defeated Democrat Beto O’Rourke by 10.9 points. That year, Real Clear Politics had Abbott leading polls by 10.4 points on average.

Abbott can see the “writing on the walls,” Hinojosa campaign spokesperson Tommy Kubitschek said.

“Momentum is clearly behind Gina as voters get to know her plan to save public schools and secure the American Dream,” he said. “This race continues to tighten because after 12 years of Greg Abbott, Texans are paying more and getting less.”

Beto got 49.93% in Tarrant County in 2018 while losing the state by 2.5 points. Biden got 49.31% in 2020 while losing the state by six. Allred got 48.91% in 2024 while losing the state by eight. So three things from that: One, we’re still waiting for a Dem to crack fifty percent in Tarrant County. I feel pretty confident this will be the year for that. Two, The fact that Dems continued to be this close in Tarrant in years where the statewide results were farther apart is itself evidence of Tarrant’s blue shift. In a year where Dems are merely close at the statewide level, you should expect better performance in Tarrant County as well. In a year where Dems are winning statewide, well, you get the idea.

And that’s point three, for the coattails to be enough to carry the likes of Tiffany Burks and Alisa Simmons to victory, we’re going to need the likes of James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa to not just carry Tarrant County but be comfortably above fifty percent. Again, I think that is likely to happen – if the polls are even close to correct, it’s a near certainty. Greg Abbott and his team knows this as well. He’s not just trying to win his own election, something he’s not used to having to do, he’s trying to limit the damage downstream. Keep that in mind as you see their increasingly hysterical ads.