Hey, remember when we had to have those dumb Harris Central Appraisal District (HCAD) Board of Directors special elections in May of 2024, because of a completely obscure provision of a 2023 Constitutional amendment that had been passed in 2023? Turnout was ridiculously low, those positions have little power or authority, and of course we had to have runoffs because there were more than two candidates in two of the races. All of them were non-partisan, per the new law, which meant nobody knew which candidates were Dems and which were Republicans. And no one has heard a thing about any of this since then, because again, they have little statutory authority and most of us have few to no interactions with HCAD.
Well, guess what? All those positions are up for re-election this November. Why didn’t you see them on your primary ballot in March? Because again, per the law they are non-partisan, so we will get another multi-candidate no-partisan-identifiers pileup that will almost certainly result in December runoffs, when nobody will be paying attention, for these offices that nobody pays attention to already. And one of them will serve only two years – the others will serve four – before having to be elected again (in the way of the State Senate and the SBOE after the first post-redistricting election), so we’ll get to have these on our ballots every two years forever. Isn’t this so much fun?
I’ve been aware of these elections for a few weeks now, in part because of a candidate reaching out to me about it, but I’d been completely unable to find 1) any coverage of this anywhere, and 2) a lineup of who’s running. The HCAD website has a “HCAD Board Election” link on it, but all it takes you to is the announcement of the election with instructions on how to file for it. I called them twice to try to get a list of candidates, but no one I spoke to knew anything about it. (They did their best to be helpful, I have no complaint about that, they just weren’t informed about it.) I finally got what I needed from the County Clerk’s office, and I needed the assistance from them because you needed to do a bit of trickery to find that list:
– From HarrisVotes.org, go to “Candidates” in the top ribbon, and click on Seeking Public Office.
– Scroll down to the section headed “Search financial filings”.
– Click on CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION AND EXPENDITURE REPORTS FOR VARIOUS COUNTY OFFICES, which will open a new tab.
– This is the normal search window for campaign finance reports, but also for things like designations of treasurer and other public forms. Click on the menu for “Category”, and click on “APPLICATION FOR A PLACE ON THE BALLOT(HCAD)”, all the way at the bottom.
– Choose a “Date (From)” of July 1 or earlier, and a “Date (To)” of today, and click Search.
– Voila! There are the eight candidates running for HCAD Board of Directors this November.
Here they are, with my annotations, the HCAD Board of Directors candidates:
Place 1:
Kathy Blueford-Daniels – Incumbent, Democrat, former HISD Trustee. Here’s my interview with her when she ran in the 2024 special election.
Beverly Barrett – Republican, originally going to be a candidate for HCDE, which you can see in that website.
Place 2:
Chris Ehlinger – Democrat, I’ve done an interview with him which will run soon.
Jourdyn Wilson – Democrat, based on her campaign Facebook page. I was unaware of her, will reach out for an interview.
Claudio Gutierrez – Republican, who ran for HD147 in 2024 per Ballotpedia. His website was not functioning when I looked him up.
Place 3:
Ericka McCrutcheon – Incumbent, Republican, also a non-functioning website. Past candidate for City Council.
Cris Moses – Past candidate for HISD Trustee, District II, which suggests Democrat, but no clear evidence on his website or via cursory Google searching.
Jesus Nieto – Possibly the former candidate for Katy ISD? If so, he’s a Democrat. I didn’t see anything definitively linking that person to this candidacy, so your guess is as good as mine.
Place 1 is easy, vote for Kathy Blueford-Daniels. Places 2 and 3, we’ll circle back. For sure, if you belong to a Democratic club or organization, do your due diligence and issue endorsements as you see fit. We’re already voting with very limited information in these races. Every little bit will help.
As was the case in 2024, I’ll keep an eye out for coverage. If you are or know more about any of these candidates, please leave a comment and tell us more. Also, if you reside in a county with at least 75,000 people, you will have these elections on your November ballot as well, as you had in May in 2024. You should find out more about who’s running in those elections.
It is indeed the same Jesus Nieto who ran for Katy ISD. I talked to him a couple weeks ago when he was collecting ballot signatures.
Jesus is the same candidate that ran for KatyISD. And regarding Jourdyn used to, or maybe still, works for Vikki Goodwin on the campaign. I don’t think Jesus has officially announced but someone told me Jourdyn did at some point on Facebook. Neither have an social media or websites up yet (even though people start voting in a month)