Odus Evbagharu
When Rep. Jon Rosenthal decided to run for Railroad Commissioner this year, it meant he was not running for re-election to HD135. Stepping up to take the baton from him is his longtime staffer and Chief of Staff Odus Evbagharu. The son of immigrants and longtime Cy-Fair resident, Evbagharu is a small business owner and political activist. You probably know him from his time as HCDP Chair, where he was the youngest and first Black person to serve in that role. I interviewed him when he ran for Chair, which you can listen to here. You can listen to this interview here:
Here’s the transcript, courtesy of Greg Wythe. You know what you’re getting, a couple more of these and then an HCAD interview. Let me know what you think.
PREVIOUSLY:
Rep. Jon Rosenthal – Railroad Commissioner – Transcript
Sen. Nathan Johnson – Attorney General – Transcript
Clayton Tucker – Ag Commissioner – Transcript
Sen. Sarah Eckhardt – Comptroller – Transcript
Commissioner Adrian Garcia – Harris County Commissioners Court, Precinct 2 – Transcript
Shaun Finnie – CD02 – Transcript
Michelle Palmer – SBOE6 – Transcript
Chris Ehlinger – HCAD Position 2 – Transcript
Jesus Nieto – HCAD Position 3 – Transcript
Benjamin Flores – Land Commissioner – Transcript
Michelle Williams – HD127 – Transcript
Tyler Smith – HD138 – Transcript
Josh Wallenstein – HD133 – Transcript
Cris Moses – HCAD Position 3 – Transcript
Sara McGee – HD132 – Transcript
From the primaries:
Leticia Gutierrez – CD09 – Transcript
Christian Menefee, CD18 (from the special election) – Transcript
Rep. Sylvia Garcia, CD29 – Transcript
Melissa McDonough – CD38 – Transcript
Justin Early, CD31 – Transcript
Staci Childs – HD131 – Transcript
Letitia Plummer – Harris County Judge – Transcript
Abbie Kamin – Harris County Attorney – Transcript
Traci Gibson, HCDP Chair – Transcript
People are receiving mail ballots, voting has commenced in Harris County.
While Houston area voters have sometimes supported candidates with unfamiliar surnames (Dale Gorcyznski and Bruce Tatro come to mind), I would expect Evbagharu will run behind other Democrats in this district just for that reason. His opponent is Liz Ramos, arguably a more familiar name.
Re: LAST NAME HEURISTICS IN JUDICIAL RACES
@ Mainstream:
It’s hard to test the surname hypothesis empirically, at least in real elections (as opposed to a experimental setup with volunteer college students where they are given a pretend ballot with variations on candidate name, sex, race, etc. (with other info about the candidates being held constant in each iteration) to sort out each variable’s impact, if any.
That said, we now have a real-life supreme court race featuring Hawkins vs. Hawkins, i.e. no difference in the last name.
The most important factor in vote choice is, of course, party, but here we also have female vs. male. It’s Kristen Hawkins vs. Kyle Hawkins. So that’s two more variables known to matter while the last name is invariant (constant).
In judicial races, females have a huge edge in Democratic primaries. But is this true of general elections with a very different and much larger electorate?
Consider Gordon Goodman, who lost to Kristen Hawkins with only 24.4% in the Democratic primary in 2026. This is the same jurist that beat Republican Jane Bland in 2018 with 50.9% (in the 1st COA race). So he had previously succeeded in a race in a much larger district and was running in 2026 as a candidate with 6 years of appellate experience while Kristen Hawkins had been sitting on the Harris County District Court bench. And yet, this time, he lost big time.
What about his success in 2018? Was the name “Bland” a liability in 2018?
Hardly so for Bland did very well in her subsequent SCOTUS race with the very same last name, albeit as an incumbent. In 2020 she prevailed over her Democratic opponent Cathy Chang with 55.2% of the vote (with female not being a factor), and with 56.2% in 2024 over Democrat Bonnie Lee Goldstein (with female also not being a factor). Where Chang and Goldstein both liabilities, relative to the opponent being Bland?
Hawkins vs. Hawkins in 2026 is not only a partisan contest, but also one of a female challenger against a male incumbent. Will Kristen Hawkins have an edge on that account of her sex even though Kyle Hawkins is the incumbent on the higher court whose rulings Kristen Hawkins was bound to follow as a trial-court judge while having no (or only minimal indirect input) in shaping them? Kyle Hawkins is already on the court, although by appointment and not yet for very long.
Or might incumbency perhaps be worth less for Republicans this year, or even backfire?
Again: It’s not easy to sort out what marginal impact the nature of a candidate’s last name may have in low-information judicial contests. But with multiple parallel judicial election races in the same election, we can also see that there is some variability in vote margins among candidates of the winning party. So party-label isn’t all, and when races are competitive (such as in urban counties and appellate districts), a small portion of the vote may become outcome-determinative. Suffice it say that it’s difficult to tease out the relevant factors, even after all ballots have been cast and analyzed.
But if a candidate thinks it’s indeed a liability, he or she or it can alway petition a court for a name change: A pacifist candidate, for example, could petition for a change to WorldPeace or Kumbaya. And why stop with surnames.
How about becoming Moderato Mainstream? Melody Inde Middle? Sanity N. Goodjoyce anyone? Creativity known no bounds if Goodmann or Liebefrau wont’ do the trick.
As we has already been demonstrated, though, Bland does not appear to entail any detriments. Or Gorcyznski, for that matter. Maybe the Democratic Party has a problem with good men, not to mention judicial ones. They appear to be a vanishing half-species.
There is research on this, which can be located via Google Scholar. See, e.g.,
Harris, Jacob. “Does Brown beat Biesiada? Name fluency and electoral success.” Electoral Studies 88 (2024): 102759. AI summary: The paper posits that name fluency functions through the likability heuristic, where low fluency names generate a negative affective state, causing voters to subconsciously perceive candidates with low fluency names as less likable.