Sometimes the fiercest action occurs outside of public view.
Four judicial candidates withdrew from their 2026 election bids after incumbent judges and other Democratic opponents filed lawsuits alleging their candidacy filings contained forged signatures and other irregularities.
Allison Mathis, a candidate for the 180th District Court; Anna Eady, a candidate for Harris County Criminal Court at Law No. 3; Angela Reese Mckinnon, a candidate for 295th District Court; and Velda Faulkner, running for the 190th District Court, all withdrew from their races last week, Harris County Democratic Party Chair Mike Doyle said.
A judge on Monday ordered the removal of three candidates from the ballot.
While the challenges levied against Faulkner and McKinnon were largely built on procedural issues — including, in Faulkner’s case, failing to list the name of the office she sought on her original filing — those brought against Mathis and Eady alleged the pair’s election filings contained signatures that were “forgeries or fraudulent,” according to Eady’s opponent, defense attorney Carlos Aguayo, in his complaint against the Harris County Democratic Party.
Mathis and Eady used the same circulator to collect signatures to file their candidacy, records show.
Mathis, a criminal defense attorney, stood by the circulator’s work.
“The allegations are unproven, unsubstantiated and I feel like this is an example of why people get disgusted with politics,” Mathis said. “I think when there’s Democratic in-fighting, it gives Republican arm strength to say these elections are unfair and that’s not true.”
Mathis withdrew from the race to avoid potentially exorbitant legal costs in fighting off her primary challenger, Stephanie Morales, in the courts.
“My choice was to start litigating this — I’m not a civil litigator — with an elections law attorney who charges $400 an hour,” said Mathis, who is not a party in the challenge. “The timelines on these are so fast … I would need to get an attorney and start employing them around the clock.”
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Candidates seeking a place on the ballot for judicial positions in major Texas counties, such as Harris and Bexar counties, are required to gather signatures from a minimum of 250 eligible voters in addition to paying a filing fee, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s website. Otherwise, candidates must collect triple that to forgo the filing fee.
Some signature collectors, also known as circulators, for judicial candidates may gather support from people at political party events or from shoppers at grocery stores.
I try to go to events where I know judicial candidates will be gathering petition signatures, because I know what a pain that is. The filing fee is $2500 for candidates in counties with at least 1.5 million people. I’m not sure where the provision is about triple the fee if no petition signatures are gathered, but I can understand why someone would be reluctant to fork over $7500 for the privilege. I can also understand why someone wouldn’t want to take on the legal fees to defend against this kind of challenge. It’s not at all great from a democracy perspective, but here we are anyway.
I’m not sure which of the three candidates out of the four named in this story will no longer appear on the ballot. If the fourth one remains and winds up winning the primary, that would be awkward to say the least. I remain a defender of the judicial election process, certainly against the half-baked proposals that won’t make anything better yet still pop up every cycle, but I feel like there ought to be a better way to get candidates on the ballot than this. As I don’t have a fully-formed proposal that has a snowball’s chance in Lubbock of getting anywhere myself, I’ll leave it here.