Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

Endorsement watch: Constables

Posted on February 24, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Chron runs its endorsements in the Democratic primaries for Constable, in what I believe is now the last of their recommendations. They didn’t get off to a good start, however:

Harris County Commissioners Court draws the constable precinct lines with each decade’s U.S. Census, often to achieve political aims. The process has produced wide disparities in precincts’ geographical areas and budgets — the latter also in the hands of commissioners. Precinct 5 in west Harris County, for example, encompasses 370 square miles with 1 million-plus residents. Precinct 6, in Houston’s East End, covers 32 square miles and serves about 170,000 residents.

Uh, yeah, no. Not unless you consider “every fifty years and counting” to be “with each decade”. Totally unforced error here, y’all.

With that said, here’s who they endorsed. Note that the only contested primaries for Constable were on the Dem side, so all of the endorsements are in those races.

Alan Rosen for Precinct 1, Dem

Since becoming constable of Precinct 1 since 2012, Alan Rosen has tried to help the young, the old, the mentally ill, the homeless, the drug-addicted. He also serves those everyday folks just trying to live their lives in safe neighborhoods. We think Rosen, 55, should continue that work.

Nevertheless, this endorsement is giving us heartburn.

Jerry Garcia for Precinct 2, Dem

Precinct 2 Constable Jerry Garcia needs few words to explain why he deserves a second term: “Proven results. I did what I said I would do.”

His record supports that.

Constable Sherman Eagleton for Precinct 3, Democrat

Eagleton is eloquent about fighting crime, getting drugs off the street and stopping illegal dumping. He embraces body cameras and citizen videos. And he is adamant that statistics are part of modern policing.

But there’s something old-fashioned, in a good way, about Eagleton, 58. He brags about wellness checks for senior citizens, and he loves a program called “Coffee with a cop.”

The controversies on Eagleton’s watch don’t faze us.

Chronicle stories from 2021 show that he hired Chris Diaz, a former Precinct 2 constable who was voted out of office after egregious errors in his campaign finance reports surfaced.

“I gave him a second chance, and he’s doing a great job,” Eagleton says. “He told me he had baggage, and I told him, if you don’t do what’s right, I’ll send you down the road.”

In 2017, Eagleton took a different approach with Milton Rivera, a Precinct 3 chief deputy accused of sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace behavior. After a Harris County Attorney’s Office investigation, Eagleton fired him.

Jerome Moore for Precinct 5, Dem

Two Democratic primary candidates for Precinct 5 constable, both experienced law enforcement officers, know how it feels to be mistreated by police.

Gerardo “Jerry” Rodriguez, 41,says he was 19 and leaving a hot dog restaurant when he and his friends were wrongly arrested and hauled off to jail.

Jerome Moore, now 50, says he was 24 and in a car with three other young Black men when police ordered them to halt. “We’re gonna teach you guys to stop,” he remembers one officer shouting. “Shut up!”

Moore and Rodriguez say those run-ins inspired them to become law enforcement officers.

[…]

It’s a close call, but we give the nod to Moore.

Currently a lieutenant, he spent two years working as chief deputy to the constable in Precinct 2. He has more administrative experience than Rodriguez, a sergeant. Moore can manage the precinct’s complicated budget.

“I can do the job on day one,” he says.

Silvia Treviño for Precinct 6, Dem

Precinct 6 Constable Silvia Treviño is part of a political dynasty in Houston’s East End. She no doubt benefited from name recognition when she won the office — two years after her husband stepped down from it because of a criminal conviction.

Her challenger in the Democratic primary, Art Aguilar, 49, is a former Precinct 6 deputy who has some good ideas and understands the office’s inner workings. But we believe running a multimillion-dollar agency requires more management experience than appears on his résumé.

Treviño, a former Houston police officer, didn’t respond to the editorial board’s invitations to discuss her re-election bid. In the past we’ve criticized her for gaps in her knowledge of the constable’s office and law enforcement issues.

We recommend her this year in hopes that eight years of on-the-job training have alleviated those shortcomings.

James “Smokie” Phillips for Precinct 7, Dem

Three veteran Houston lawmen are running in the Democratic primary to succeed longtime Precinct 7 Constable May Walker. Walker, who’s retiring, has not endorsed a successor.

Precinct 6 is home to half a million people in south Harris County, including Third Ward, South Park, Sunnyside and Reliant Park. No Republican is running in the historically Democratic district, so this primary will decide the election.

Seeking the office are Gary Hicks Sr., Michael Coleman, and James “Smokie” Phillips.

Hicks, 62, a former HPD officer, works now as a warrant officer and mental health specialist in Constable Precinct 1.

His knowledge of community-oriented policing reflects his decades as a street cop. But we believe he comes up short in administrative experience necessary to run an agency like Precinct 7.

That leaves a hard choice.

[…]

We believe Phillips’ experience in the Precinct 7 office gives him an edge.

See here for more on the Rosen-induced heartburn. I’ve done Constable interviews in the past, most recently in 2012, but there were just too many candidates and not enough time. Read these endorsements, look at the Erik Manning spreadsheet to see who else has been endorsed by whom, and go from there.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Alan Rosen, Constable, Democratic primary, Election 2024, endorsements, Harris County, Jerome Moore, Jerry Garcia, Sherman Eagleton, Smokie Phillips, Sylvia Trevino | Comments Off

2024 Primary Early Voting, Day Three: Settling in

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Sorry I didn’t get to this yesterday. Too damn much news. Here we go.


Year    Mail    Early    Total
==============================
2012   5,875    6,317   12,192
2016   8,167   10,231   18,398
2020  13,793   17,735   31,528
2024   4,447   17,897   22,344

2012  12,450   13,464   25,914
2016  11,085   14,869   25,954
2020  13,944   16,856   30,800
2024   3,119   22,433   25,552

As a reminder, Dem totals are on top, Republican ones on the bottom. Here are the Day Three totals for this year, and here are the final totals from 2012, 2016, and 2020.

One point to note, the 2012 primary was that weird one that happened in May because of the litigation over the redistricting maps. Because it was in May, the first week of early voting did not start with a holiday, so the 2012 totals through that first Thursday are actually for four days, not three. Going forward, add one more day for 2012 and you’ll be in the right place. As you can see, at least from the Dem perspective it didn’t matter that much.

Dems are now ahead of the 2016 pace and behind in 2020, though the latter is almost entirely because of the difference in mail votes. Dems cast 22,785 mail votes as of the last day of EV in 2020, out of 38,667 mail ballots sent. A total of 23,849 mail ballots have been sent this year, so expect the gap between the two years to remain wide, though perhaps a little less so as we go on. On the Republican side, well, they don’t do much mail anymore.

Mail ballots and the relative lack of them on the GOP side are an item that Derek Ryan addresses in his first statewide early vote report, which covers the first two days. The lack of a real statewide (non-Presidential) primary on that side probably contributes to that, but the change in behavior pushed by you-know-who is I think the main factor.

I voted yesterday, at the SPJST Lodge, which was not a new location for me but one that made sense given the way my day was going. Have you voted yet? If not, when do you plan to?

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged absentee ballots, Democratic primary, early voting, Election 2012, Election 2016, Election 2020, Election 2024, Harris County, primaries, Texas, turnout | Comments Off

More Dem primary polls from UH/Hobby Center

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I asked, and I received.

Just months after a bruising campaign for mayor of Houston, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is leading her top challenger in the 18th Congressional District by five points, suggesting the closest race for the position in decades.

A survey of likely Democratic primary election voters by the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston found 43% plan to vote for Jackson Lee, while 38% support former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards. Another 16% said they are unsure who they will support.

“Congresswoman Jackson Lee has near universal name recognition, having represented the district since 1995, coupled with her run for mayor just a few months ago,” said Renée Cross, senior executive director of the Hobby School and one of the researchers for the project. “That name ID, along with strong support from women, Black and older voters, has given her a boost, although the race is still very competitive.”

A third candidate, Robert Slater, drew 3% of the vote.

Jackson Lee is the choice of 52% of Black voters, compared to 36% for Edwards; women voters, 47% to 33%; and older voters, 52% to 33%. Edwards is strongest with Latino voters, at 43%, compared to 29% for Jackson Lee; Independent voters, 45% to 31%; voters aged 45-64, 44% to 35%; and men, 46% to 39%.

Survey respondents generally support the incumbent in other high-profile congressional and state legislative races, although a large number of voters say they remain unsure who they will support. Several races without an incumbent on the ballot appear wide open.

Mark P. Jones, political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and senior research fellow at the Hobby School, said even relatively well-funded candidates have struggled to gain traction in some open seats, including state Senate District 15, left vacant after longtime incumbent John Whitmire was elected Houston mayor in December.

“Among the front runners, Jarvis Johnson has served in the Texas House of Representatives since 2016 and previously on Houston City Council, and both of the other top contenders are Democratic Party activists who have previously run for public office,” Jones said. “But all three are relatively close – Johnson and Molly Cook each drew support from 18% of likely voters, while 14% said they will vote for Todd Litton. With 37% saying they are unsure who to support, the race will very likely end in a May runoff.”

None of the other three candidates in the race has support from more than 6% of voters.

See here for the previous poll results, all of which I remind you again to take as interesting bits of information and not carved-in-stone truth. Poll details are here and the landing page for the 2024 Dem primary in Harris County is here. I’ll quote from that (scroll down to Report 2) for the executive summary:

U.S. Congressional District 7: 78% of likely Democratic primary voters intend to vote for U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, while 11% support Pervez Agwan. 11% of likely Democratic primary voters are unsure.

U.S. Congressional District 18: U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee holds a 5 percentage point lead in vote intention over Amanda Edwards, 43% to 38%, with 3% intending to vote for Robert Slater. 16% of likely Democratic primary voters are unsure.

Texas Senate District 15: Frontrunners for Texas Senate District 15 include Jarvis Johnson (18%), Molly Cook (18%), and Todd Litton (14%), followed by Alberto Cardenas (6%), Karthik Soora (5%) and Michelle Anderson Bonton (2%). 37% of likely Democratic primary voters are unsure.

Texas House District 139: Rosalind Ceasar has 12% of the vote, followed by Angie Thibodeaux, 10%; Charlene Ward Johnson, 8%; and Mo Jenkins and Jerry Ford, each with 4%. 62% of likely Democratic primary voters remain unsure.

Texas House District 142: State Rep. Harold Dutton is leading with 38% of the vote, followed by Danyahel (Danny) Norris, 7%; and Joyce Marie Chatman and Clint Dan Horn, each with 6%. 43% of likely Democratic primary voters are unsure.

Texas House District 146: 40% of likely Democratic primary voters plan to vote for State Rep. Shawn Thierry for Texas House District 146, while 16% support Lauren Ashley Simmons and 4% support Ashton Woods. 40% of likely Democratic primary voters remain unsure.

Note: Sample sizes vary in the district races. Refer to the report for specific populations and margins of error.

I expected Rep. Fletcher to be in the lead, though not quite by that much. I expected Rep. Jackson Lee to be in the lead, though perhaps not by that little. I am not surprised by the closeness of SD15. I don’t read anything into any of the State House races, those are just too chaotic to get a handle on. And that’s all I got.

UPDATE: The Jackson Lee campaign has since sent out this memo from a poll conducted I presume on behalf of the campaign, which shows SJL leading Amanda Edwards by a 55-26 margin, with 3% for Slater and the rest undecided. It also contains this footnote:

ii The Hobby School of Public Affairs released data showing the race to be closer between Jackson Lee and Edwards. However, compared to LRP, who has been conducting both primary and general election polling in this district for over a decade, the Hobby poll has this electorate being more white, more male, and younger. These factors all benefit Edwards, though Jackson Lee still has a lead among these demographic groups in the LRP poll.

The poll memo is all we get, and one should always apply an extra level of scrutiny to internal polls, since the campaign that sponsors them has the option of not releasing any they don’t like, which is not how public polls work. My point is simply that each poll is a single data point, and one should hesitate to draw too much from any individual poll.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Amanda Edwards, Angeanette Thibodeaux, Ashton Woods, Beto Cardenas, CD07, CD18, Charlene Ward Johnson, Clint Horn, Congress, Danyahel Norris, Democratic primary, Election 2024, Harold Dutton, Harris County, HD139, HD142, HD146, Jarvis Johnson, Jerry Ford, Karthik Soora, Lauren Ashley Simmons, Lizzie FLetcher, Michelle Bonton, Mo Jenkins, Molly Cook, Pervez Agwan, polls, Rosalind Caesar, SD15, Senate, Shawn Thierry, Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas, The Lege, Todd Litton | 1 Comment

The Mike Miles “efficiency report”

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’m going to reserve judgment on this for now, but it is fair to say that I start out with a nontrivial amount of skepticism.

Nearly a year into the state takeover, appointed Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles says he has uncovered long-standing inefficiencies, wasteful spending and redundancies that he plans to fix to free up money to support his school reforms without drawing down district savings.

The superintendent said the plan unveiled Tuesday will support the addition of over 100 schools to his New Education System next year, paying for higher salaries and other elements of his controversial reform program. Though Miles did not give an estimate of how much the cuts will save or how much the expansion will cost, he promised his planned corrections would keep the district’s rainy-day fund above $850 million.

Previous Superintendent Millard House II’s administration had predicted that fund would drop to about $550 million by the end of the next school year.

“In order to increase the salaries at NES schools, we have to find efficiencies in the rest of the system,” Miles said. “The increase will be offset by efficiencies.”

The eight-part plan released Tuesday points to corrections in wasteful purchases, unnecessary contracts and ineffective staffing practices as steps HISD can immediately take to save tens of millions of dollars moving forward.

Overhauls to district transportation and maintenance services will further cut down on “inefficiencies” in the long run, Miles said. The superintendent said that decades worth of mismanagement had led HISD to a precarious position, and that “systems” were to blame rather than individuals.

[…]

Robert Sanborn, president and CEO of the education advocacy group Children at Risk, said the report successfully illustrates the magnitude of the issues facing HISD, and that he believes in Miles’ ability to correct the district’s budget. But whether Miles is capable of winning over a largely distrustful public may be another story.

“I don’t think that this guy lies. He really cares about the data … and it doesn’t take much to convince people there’s inefficiencies at HISD,” Sanborn said. “The cons to this are that I feel like inherent in this report is a little bit of mistrust of their own staff, and I think that will be hard internally. There’s already a morale issue, and I’m not sure if some of these things really help, and morale is not addressed in this as well. And I don’t think it’s Miles’ strength to address morale.”

You can find a copy of the report here. I have skimmed it but not given it a thorough reading yet. The Houston Landing provides a summary and some context.

Miles declined to name a dollar amount that he believes HISD can save through addressing the inefficiencies named in the report, but he said they would be enough to plug budget holes, which suggests the total may be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We will save enough money to pay for the reforms that we need to put in place,” Miles said.

Miles, who was appointed by Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath in June, has repeatedly claimed previous HISD administrations poorly managed the district’s roughly $2 billion budget. He said the issues identified in the Tuesday report represent “normal dysfunction” for large, urban school districts, but at a concerning scale. The structural issues behind the inefficiencies have persisted for years, or even decades, he said.

“I think the level (of inefficient practices) here was higher than I expected,” Miles said. “There was some level of, ‘Wow, this is worse than a typical urban district.’”

Miles cited examples including:

About 1,000 people remained on HISD payroll after they no longer worked there, some for several years. Only a handful continued to receive paychecks.

Spending about $20 million on 175 school buses he said HISD didn’t need.

Running buses under capacity, resulting in per-student transportation costs about five times higher than the national average — roughly equivalent to the cost of each student taking an Uber or Lyft to and from school.

Spending $26 million on overtime pay, with 650 employees last year accruing overtime hours exceeding 30 percent of their earnings.

Overspending on contracted services. HISD planned to spend about $300 million on contracted services last year, according to budget documents. Miles said he will cut $50 million for the 2024-25 budget.

Miles did not provide a detailed breakdown of changes he plans to make or evidence backing up some of the claims. For example, Miles did not name specific contractors that he believes are unnecessary.

HISD officials also did not explain why their data shows a dramatic, previously unreported decline in bus ridership, which contributed to their calculations showing transportation inefficiencies. Miles’ report suggests HISD’s bus ridership has dropped 65 percent since 2018-19, when the Legislative Budget Board said about 25,000 students took the bus each day. Data published by the state shows buses traveled about 35 percent fewer miles between 2018-19 and 2022-23.

[…]

In 2018, HISD’s school board requested a third-party review of the district’s operations from the Texas Legislative Budget Board, seeking to identify ways to streamline its expenditures. A year later, the legislative committee released its findings: HISD could save up to $237 million over five years — less than $50 million per year — if it undertook a number of efforts to restructure operations, including closing as many as 40 underutilized schools.

Miles acknowledged the 2019 report raised many of the same problems and possible solutions that his team identified in the efficiency report, but said his plan will spur savings at a larger scale.

In 2021, two years after the release of the budget board’s report, HISD leaders said they had saved roughly $6.7 million over two years, a fraction of the projected savings, by implementing some of its recommendations.

Miles has previously overstated the extent of his cost-saving measures when, in July 2023, he said his team had cut over 2,300 jobs from central office, including eliminating roughly 670 occupied positions. A Houston Landing investigation, however, found Miles had only let go of about a third as many employees as he said he had, while increasing the pay for the upper echelons of district administrators.

When a reporter asked Miles about the overstated central office cuts during a Tuesday press conference, Miles downplayed the exaggeration.

“What does it matter whether there’s 2,000 or 2,100 (cuts)? I will get the mission accomplished by cutting the people that we need to cut,” Miles said.

Again, I have only skimmed the report, so I’m not going to try to address anything specific. I have a few high level thoughts for now.

– I will stipulate up front that there are likely some big savings that can be had by making HISD leaner, more modern, more efficient, however you want to put it. Any large organization is going to be doing things that are outdated, redundant, unnecessary, not providing good value for the expenditure, and so on. Some of them will be relatively easy and uncontroversial to implement. Many will encounter some level of resistance – your “special interest” is my vital program, and so forth. One can accept that there are savings to be had while remaining aware that the topline promises – the “up to $X in savings” claims – are almost certainly overstated.

– All of this would be true even if Mike Miles had a sterling record of accuracy, transparency, and delivering on promises. He does not, with this story providing numerous receipts, and as such it would be wise to adjust one’s expectations downward. Not to zero by any means – again, there absolutely are savings to be had. Just, understand the source here and adjust accordingly.

– The devil is very much in the details here. What specific changes will be proposed, and what is the estimated savings from them? It’s all pie in the sky until we have the full story, and again that would be the case no matter how one perceives Mike Miles.

– It’s important to remember that whatever does get proposed, these changes will have an effect on the people of HISD – students, teachers, and staff in particular. It may well be that the best thing we can do in this situation is to cut that program or reduce those services or whatever else, even if it is detrimental to some number of people in HISD. We should be honest about that, that’s all I’m saying.

– All that said, there should be achievable savings, there certainly are bad processes now in place, and this sort of work, which was already in the early stages before Miles got here, is necessary and urgent. I remain skeptical – we all should – about how much there actually is to save, both as a theoretical matter and as a practical one. But the exercise is worth doing, if it is done well. And again, we’ll see how that part of it goes. The Chron editorial board is optimistic, and the Press and Houston Public Media have more.

Posted in School days | Tagged budget, HISD, Houston, Legislative Budget Board, Mike Miles, New Education System, school buses, schools | 1 Comment

Dispatches from Dallas, February 23 edition

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: the Dallas City Manager resigns; the Mayor gets divorced; the City of Dallas passes a bond package; election news across the Metroplex; the upcoming charter election in Dallas; education and police news; Black history; and another zoo baby in Fort Worth.

Also it’s early voting time, so don’t forget to get out and vote this week or over the weekend.

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Philip Glass.

The biggest news in Dallas this week is the surprise resignation of T.C. Broadnax, our city manager, who’s been at odds with Mayor Johnson for a while now. Broadnax survived an attempt to fire him in June 2022, but apparently he was figuring out how to go on his own terms. WFAA scooped everybody on Broadnax’s effort to have the council sack him, triggering a clause that would let him set his own last day (June 3) and avoid any employment restrictions by the city. He also kept Johnson from suggesting that he’d masterminded Broadnax’s departure. The Texas Tribune has the story in statewide context (though their story is missing the context of the WFAA scoop); the Dallas Observer has local reactions.

Also, unsurprisingly, the mayor and council are already at odds over how to pick Broadnax’s successor.

Speaking of Mayor Johnson, he’s also been all over the news in the last few weeks, mostly over the many and consequential votes he’s missed at City Council meetings he’s skipped including two on the city bond election (more on that below). Johnson doesn’t attend DFW airport board meetings either, sending substitutes from the City Council instead.

But the big reason Johnson has been in the news this month is his divorce, which might have proceeded quietly if he hadn’t subpoenaed a D Magazine reporter. D Magazine sent one of his colleagues to cover the divorce. Now everybody knows Johnson’s wife caught him at the house with his girlfriend, then a city staffer, in 2021 and that the girlfriend travelled with him last summer. The DMN reports that the mayor also paid more than $110,000 to the woman’s consulting firm last year according to campaign records. Johnson has issued a statement about the divorce. While I generally don’t think much of social media reaction articles, this one from the Dallas Observer sums up the vibes around this mess. Also there’s no direct evidence that any of this has anything to do with Johnson’s love of travel and his aversion to showing up at City Council meetings, but if there are more shoes to drop, someone is going to drop them.

Also, as mentioned in a number of these articles, there’s an online petition to get him to resign, which is not going to happen. I’ve seen some advertisements for it on social media, but they’re going to need more than 100,000 signatures to get a recall on the ballot and that’s what it’ll take to haul Johnson’s butt out of the Mayor’s chair before the end of his term in 2027.

Popping back to the city bonds, the council approved a May election date for a $1.25 billion bond package. D Magazine has an explainer about what’s in the bond and what’s not (repairs to City Hall, as this DMN editorial complains). As expected, nobody is particularly happy with what’s in the bond, particularly housing advocates and advocates for the Tenth Street historic community. I expect we’ll be hearing a lot more about that between now and the May election date.

In other news:

The Star-Telegram issued an endorsement in CD 26: Scott Armey, Dick Armey’s son. Their entire slate can be found here and as with the CD 26 recommendation, it’s mostly whatever you want to call the not-MAGA crowd, with re-election recommendations for a lot of the Paxton impeachers.
The Texas Tribune has a report on the Democratic primary in CD 32. Based on what I know (I’m in CD 24), the reporting here seems sound.
KERA has a piece on candidate residency with a great headline: When it comes to Texas politics, residency for candidates is ‘a state of mind’. Ain’t that the truth.
The DMN has news about Trump endorsements for the primary opponents of four of the “rural 16” in the state House who voted against vouchers. These four also voted to impeach Ken Paxton.
I always thought that letting people go to the polls for free on mass transit was a good thing, but Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare disagrees. The County chose not to fund a program with Trinity Metro on a party line vote. Quote: “I don’t believe it’s the county government’s responsibility to try to get more people out to the polls.”
While we’re talking about O’Hare and his pet projects, his big voter integrity task force found is considering three cases of alleged fraud for prosecution. These three cases are the result of all complaints about voter fraud in Tarrant County in 2023, by which we can see it was a huge problem.
Once the Dallas bond election is over, we’ll be knee-deep in proposed amendments to Dallas city charter, which are coming up in November. Here’s another explainer. The Dallas Observer has a list of possible changes coming to a ballot near me. I notice that one of the items on the possible list changing who runs the city when the mayor’s away. Here’s a piece about a proposal that failed to make it to the ballot: an attempt to move city elections to November in odd-numbered years.
Also in the mix for big changes here in Dallas: land-use changes. DMN reporter Sharon Grigsby has a commentary piece on the proposed Forward Dallas city planning document, which has alarmed local homeowners who think it’ll get rid of the single-family home zoning designation. Forward Dallas is a planning document, but won’t change zoning rules. It’s complicated stuff, and if you’re trying to make sense of it, here’s explainer about its placetype designations. I’m still wrapping my head around Forward Dallas myself and I live here, so don’t be surprised if it’s confusing to anyone who isn’t deep into urban planning.
One of Texas’ social media outrages this week has been Libs of Tik Tok going after a male teacher at Hebron High School who wore a pink dress to Spirit Day. Apparently his students encouraged him to wear the dress. Social media went to war, with Greg Abbott being disgusted and Texas Democrats being disgusted at him. No word yet on whether the teacher is out of a job permanently.
The Star-Telegram has a fact check on US Rep. Roger Williams’ claim that 90% of small businesses have been hit by ‘illegal immigrant’ crime. (No.) Related: One of the Star-Telegram’s op-ed writers has gone down to the border near Eagle Pass and written about her experience. I don’t agree with all of her conclusions, but I do like the first-hand view of the border.
Let’s talk about local environmental news. Activist Janie Cisneros is suing the city of Dallas for refusing to accept filings for amortization, or scheduled closure, of the GAF shingle plant in West Dallas. This the next step in West Dallas’ longtime struggle to get the plant out of town. Meanwhile, in Joppa, local activists trying to get rid of the TAMKO shingle plant have discovered there’s no record of a permit the site has needed since 1987. Oops. Meanwhile in Fort Worth, Mayor Parker has opposed the development of a new concrete plant. TCEQ plans to hold a public meeting sometime in the coming months and has extended its comment period until the end of that yet unscheduled meeting.
Axios has a piece about how the fact that the Adelsons own the Sands doesn’t mean the league will become more involved with legal gambling, no sir. Put a pin in that because I expect we’ll be revisiting it, certainly here in Texas.
As you know if you’ve been reading these updates for a while, the Tarrant County jails have problems. The county is cutting ties with a private jail near Lubbock that violated the state’s minimum jail standards. Meanwhile, as this article about a town hall back in January notes, there have been 60 deaths in the jail’s custody since 2018, though it’s not clear whether that number includes inmates in private jails or just the jails in the county. Sherriff Waybourn claims they all died of drugs or natural causes. Just to give you an idea of who he stands with, check out this fundraising report from last month, which includes a donation from our friends at Defend Texas Liberty. And last month, Tarrant County approved a $200,000 settlement with an inmate who was beaten at the jail, incurring broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a broken cheekbone. The settlement did not include an admission of wrongdoing.
The Dallas County jail system passed a surprise jail inspection this year after previous failures but does have some shortcomings to fix.
This week I learned that there’s a secret legal opinion that requires the Dallas police oversight board to investigate only those cases that have already been investigated by Internal Affairs. This comes in the wake of the news that the investigation into the case of Dynell Lane, the veteran who was mocked by Dallas police after he was refused the use of a restroom with a medical card, has been delayed.
The DMN interviewed two former Southlake PD officers who were fired for writing a swastika on a whiteboard. They claim one of them was calling another officer a “ticket Nazi” for writing too many tickets.
Dallas and Collin counties, along with everybody else, were supposed to have a Sexual Assault Response Team in place and submit a report to their commissioners’ court by the end of 2023. Both counties blew that deadline. Other major counties, including Tarrant, Travis, and Harris, and even Denton County, have managed produce their report in a timely fashion, but the Dallas County Commissioner’s Court barely even knew what the Observer was looking for. I’m disappointed in my elected officials.
This week a Fort Worth neighborhood was flyered by Nazis. The URL on the flyers linked to an East Texas neo-Nazi group. No word on whether they’re connected to other Nazi/neo-Nazi trouble in Fort Worth in recent months.
The city of Fort Worth and Tarrant County have also had their share of major league resignations recently. First, the city auditor has resigned after about 18 months in office; he’ll be replaced in the interim by the auditor whose retirement triggered the search that found him. Meanwhile, the Star-Telegram reported on the ‘toxic leadership style’ of the Tarrant County Public Health Director. He resigned the next day, after a closed-door meeting with his name on the agenda.
Sandi Walker, one of Keller ISD’s trustees resigned after she let a documentary crew film students without permission from the board or parents. The Fort Worth Report has some more details and discussion of next steps. The DMN has an editorial about Walker, an anti-woke Patriot Mobile type (the documentary she had to quit over is being made by a Dutch evangelical group), and the dangers of school board capture. As they note, this is the second Keller ISD trustee to quit in less than three months, which is what happens when narrow-minded political activists take over your local school district.
In good education news: D Magazine has a writeup of 10 Dallas ISD Programs or Schools You Should Know About That Aren’t Magnet Schools. I’d only heard of about half of these, but I don’t have kids and I live in an area zoned to Richardson ISD.
Fort Worth’s Gladney Center is merging with another adoption agency on the east coast. Edna Gladney, the organization’s namesake, is one of those tough Texas ladies from the early part of the 1900s who got things done: in her case, helping unwed mothers and getting their kids adopted, and getting the stigma of bastardy off birth certificates in Texas. Even though I came of age in the years when reproductive rights were protected, I knew that if you got pregnant and couldn’t get an abortion, you went to the Edna Gladney people.
A docuseries coming our way will cover the work of Colossal Biosciences, which uses genetic engineering to save creatures on the edge of extinction. They’re also trying to bring back the dodo, which, fine, but I’ve seen Jurassic Park.
Here’s a fascinating piece of Black history about the first Black special officer in Fort Worth, who was hired to patrol Black areas and police the Black community under Jim Crow. He held the job from 1896 to 1905, and was apparently run out of town a few years later.
Another piece of Black history I learned about this week is is the story of Silvia Hector Webber, the ‘Harriet Tubman’ of the Underground Railroad to Mexico. There’s a forthcoming book on Webber based on recent research into her papers; that’ll go right on my TBR list.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway has donated $2 million toward the National Juneteenth Museum under development in Fort Worth. The donation gets the museum to the halfway point in its campaign.
Bailey’s Bar-B-Que in Fort Worth was the oldest barbecue in Texas owned by the original family. It’s now been sold to the folks at Panther City BBQ, a Texas Monthly top 10 barbecue, who will keep the old school alive.
And last, but not least, another zoo baby for you: Baloo, a baby colobus, was born January 24 and is already out where zoo visitors can see him.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged Dallas, guest post, linkdump, Texas | Comments Off

The Shawn Thierry situation

Posted on February 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Trib covers one of the more important primaries in Harris County this cycle.

Rep. Shawn Thierry

That Senate Bill 14 would pass was not in doubt.

The legislation, which would bar gender-transitioning care for children and teens, had universal Republican support and merely awaited final sign-off by the GOP-led House.

The only surprise that May evening in the Capitol was when Rep. Shawn Thierry, a Democrat from Houston, strode to the front of the chamber and announced she was breaking with her party to support the bill.

Children must be protected from transgender care because of its risk of harm, she said, citing precedent in Texas for allowing only adults to get tattoos, use tanning salons and purchase tobacco products. She said teenagers’ brains are not developed enough to make potentially irreversible medical decisions.

“This debate… was never about erasing trans children,” Thierry said in a tearful 12-minute speech. “For me, this discussion is about how to best protect and care for these children as they navigate through the challenging journey of finding the best version of themselves.”

Thierry’s remarks ignored that treatment decisions for minors can only be made by parents or legal guardians, as well as the consensus of major medical groups that gender-transitioning care should be available to children and teens in the care of doctors.

Republicans were quick to praise Thierry as a brave politician willing to buck her radical party. To Democrats, who watched the speech in stunned silence, she had betrayed their party’s commitment to protect LGBTQ+ rights and vulnerable Texans.

“It feels defeating, when you’re a Democrat in the Texas Legislature,” said Dallas Rep. Jessica González, one of several gay members of the caucus. “The last two legislative sessions had the most conservative bills. That’s why it’s even more important for us to stick together.”

The political fallout is spilling into the Democratic primary, where in her bid for reelection Thierry faces two challengers. One of them, labor organizer Lauren Ashley Simmons, is well funded and has secured the support of several Democratic officials — including sitting House members — and progressive groups like the influential Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus. A Democratic club in Houston censured her, accusing Thierry of turning her back on the gay and transgender community.

Thierry, whose small-dollar donations have largely dried up, now relies heavily on wealthy Republican donors to fund her campaign.

More than a third of Thierry’s donations over the past year came from individuals or groups who typically support Republican candidates, a curiosity in a predominantly Democratic district. They include $10,000 from Doug Deason, a conservative activist, and $15,000 from his pro-school voucher Family Empowerment Coalition PAC.

While she’s not the only Democrat in the House to have voted with Republicans on those bills, Thierry’s race has become a referendum on whether elected officials who do not fully support LGBTQ+ causes can remain in good standing with the Democratic Party. Thierry is insistent she can, and said her votes last year reflected the will of her constituents.

Thierry, who declined to sit for an interview but spoke briefly to The Texas Tribune by phone, said most of the criticism of her on LGBTQ+ issues comes from white progressives outside her district, who do not represent her base of more socially conservative, religious Black voters.

“I didn’t just jump out against … my constituents,” Thierry said. “Clearly, I have a good pulse of how the majority of the people in my district feel. I really do. I’ve lived here forever.”

But it’s a knife in the back for gay and transgender residents in District 146, who previously viewed her as an ally. The LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Texas endorsed Thierry as recently as 2022.

Ashton Woods, a gay man and founder of Houston’s Black Lives Matter chapter, accused Thierry of lying about her constituents’ support for her LGBTQ+ positions. He said the representative previously presented herself as an ally of the gay and transgender community, but in reality is solely interested in the views of a small group of mostly elderly supporters that agree with her.

“I don’t know who she’s talking to in my age group,” said Woods, 39. “She’s seeking a safe space where people share the same ideology as her.”

[…]

Anger with Thierry over her votes last year has created an opening for labor organizer Lauren Ashley Simmons, with a faction of Democrats coalescing around her.

Simmons, who has never before sought elected office, said residents encouraged her to run after a video of her criticizing the state takeover of Houston ISD exploded in popularity online. With two children in the district, Simmons was worried about Republican attacks on public education and felt Thierry was unresponsive to constituents about the issue.

She was shocked to see Thierry’s remarks on SB 14, which she felt were “ripped from the Republican national agenda.” Why not make a 12-minute speech on the most pressing issues in District 146, she wondered, like gun violence and the lack of grocery stores?

Simmons, 36, likened the plight of the parents of trans children to her own daughter’s treatment for sickle-cell anemia, which includes an experimental chemotherapy drug and opioids.

“Those are decisions that are hard for me and her dad to make with her medical team,” Simmons said. “I get really nervous when we start passing legislation about what decisions parents can make about their children’s health care.”

I also pointed out Rep. Thierry’s new funding sources when I rounded up the January finance reports for state office seekers. As noted in my post about the Chron’s endorsement of Lauren Ashley Simmons, my interview with Simmons is here and my interview with Ashton Woods is here. While we could try to get past the wrongness of Rep. Thierry’s votes (for some value of “we”, of course; it’s a lot easier for a straight guy with straight kids like me to say that) and mumble something about how some other Dems made the same votes, it’s the “fuck you” attitude coming from her, exemplified in her “the gay ones” comment in her endorsement meeting with the Chron, that just takes this well over the top. Rep. Thierry may prevail in this election – there’s clearly a generation gap on these issues, which you can see from the two supportive comments for her in the piece, and as older voters tend to dominate in primaries that works in her favor – but she’ll never be a factor again. When her last day comes in the Lege, whenever that is, it will be good riddance to someone who could have done good things but chose to throw that chance away. The Chron, which has a followup article on the reaction to “the gay ones”, has more.

UPDATE: And now this.

Days after facing backlash for making insensitive comments, Democratic officials are blasting Texas state Rep. Shawn Thierry for misleading voters in a campaign mailer after using their image in likeness without their permission.

The campaign mailer features four photos: two of Thierry smiling with supporters at a rally, another with her alongside Houston City Controller Hollins smiling in front of the Barbara Jordan Memorial Parkway sign, and another with her and Democratic U.S. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, where both hold a certificate that’s hard to read. Between all four images reads “Shawn Nicole Thierry, the qualified Democrat for House District 146.”

Hollins and Clyburn released a statement Monday morning denouncing the representative for using their likeness as an endorsement in the political mailer. They said they have reached out to her campaign to stop distribution.

“I was truly shocked. It was a brazen act because Representative Thierry is highly aware of the fact that I’m supporting her opponent in this race,” said newly elected Houston City Controller Chris Hollins in an interview with Chron Monday. He said he was shocked last week when he received a message from a constituent about the controversial campaign mailer with the Houstonian asking Hollins if his endorsement had changed. “Imagine what’s going through my mind when I see a picture of myself in a Shawn Thierry campaign ad. I thought it was incredibly dishonest.”

Hollins added that Clyburn, a veteran politician in the U.S. House of Representatives, didn’t know who Thierry was before he was told of the mailer.

“Texas State Representative Shawn Thierry is misrepresenting a photo she took with Congressman Clyburn as an endorsement in her reelection campaign,” Clyburn said in the press release. “Congressman Clyburn does not support Shawn Thierry, nor has he endorsed her. We have contacted her campaign and advised them to cease using his likeness in her campaign materials immediately.”

Hollins said Thierry’s comments showed a “lack of judgment and temperament” that showed she’s not the best person to represent her district.

“The lack of judgment and the lack of the kind of temperament that you would want to see in a leader was evident,” he said. “To make an off-hand comment like that was so disrespectful to the LGBTQ-plus community, and it’s not in line with Democratic values, period. And this seat was drawn by Republicans to be a safe Democratic [district], and so we deserve someone who’s going to be representing Democratic values, and Shawn Thierry is not that person.”

Wow. I don’t know if this was a screwup or a sign of desperation – candidates who are confident in their position are much less likely to misrepresent who their prominent supporters are, precisely because it leads to this kind of negative attention – but either way it’s pretty brutal. I’m not shedding any tears.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Ashton Woods, censorship, Democratic primary, Election 2024, Equality Texas, gay rights, HD146, HGLBT Political Caucus, Jessica Gonzalez, Lauren Ashley Simmons, libraries, Shawn Thierry, Texas, The Lege, transgender rights | 3 Comments

Paxton attacks Catholic non-profit that ministers to immigrants

Posted on February 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Wow.

A crook any way you look

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is seeking to shut down Annunciation House, an El Paso Catholic nonprofit organization that has provided shelter and other services to migrants and immigrants for decades.

“The chaos at the southern border has created an environment where (nongovernmental organizations), funded with taxpayer money from the Biden administration, facilitate astonishing horrors including human smuggling,” Paxton said in a statement Tuesday. “While the federal government perpetuates the lawlessness destroying this country, my office works day in and day out to hold these organizations responsible for worsening illegal immigration.”

Ruben Garcia, the founder and director of Annunciation House, denounced the attorney general’s action in a statement Tuesday night.

“The attorney general’s illegal, immoral and anti-faith position to shut down Annunciation House is unfounded,” Garcia said.

He had raised concerns last year that Texas’ crackdown on immigration could imperil the work of church-based groups on immigration.

“The church is at risk because the volunteers are asking themselves, ‘If I feed someone who’s unprocessed, if I give someone a blanket who’s unprocessed, if I help them get off the street, am I liable to be prosecuted for that?’” Garcia told a bipartisan delegation of U.S. senators visiting El Paso in January 2023. “Shame on us, that on this day, this is even being brought up in the United States.”

On Tuesday, Garcia said his organization provides a vital service, and warned that other organizations could be at risk of actions by Paxton.

“Annunciation House has kept hundreds of thousands of refugees coming through our city off the streets and given them food. The work helps serve our local businesses, our city, and immigration officials to keep people off the streets and give them a shelter while they come through our community,” he said. “If the work that Annunciation House conducts is illegal, so too is the work of our local hospitals, schools, and food banks.”

[…]

According to court records, investigators with the Attorney General’s Office went to Annunciation House’s South El Paso office on Feb. 7 and served the agency with a request to examine records related to its operations.

Annunciation House’s received a temporary restraining order the next day from 205th District Court Judge Francisco Dominguez of El Paso that blocked the attorney general from enforcing the order for records.

“Annunciation House wishes to provide you the documents to which you are entitled under law. This will require study and work on our part, and unfortunately litigation as well because it is impossible to comply with your deadline, and we remain concerned about the legality of certain aspects of your request,” Jerome Wesevich, an attorney for Annunciation House, said in a Feb. 8 email to the Attorney General’s Office.

Paxton’s office on Tuesday filed a counter-claim against Annunciation House, seeking to overturn the temporary restraining order and to strip the nonprofit of its right to do business in Texas. The attorney general alleges Annunciation House is violating state law by refusing to turn over the requested records, and should be shut down.

The records sought by Paxton’s office include “documents sufficient to show all services that you provide to aliens, whether in the United States legally or illegally,” and “all documents provided to individual aliens as part of your intake process.”

Dominguez has scheduled a hearing for 1 p.m. Thursday on Annunciation House’s request for a temporary injunction, which is a stronger step than the temporary restraining order he issued earlier this month.

I’ve run out of adjectives strong enough to describe Ken Paxton, so I’ll just ask someone to explain to me, in small words, how this is not an infringement on Annunciation House’s religious freedom. This matter is in state court for now, but I think we can all see the bills that will be filed next session to explicitly outlaw, if not criminalize, what Annunciation House is doing. From there, it’s just a matter of time before it lands on SCOTUS’ doorstep.

One more thing:

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat, issued a statement “sounding the alarm” to other NGOs and organizations helping migrants that Paxton’s suit is “clearly going to be a strategy for the MAGA extremists.” Escobar said she met with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland last week and asked that the Department of Justice investigate “what I believe are horrific civil rights violations.”

“If Mr. Paxton believes that Annunciation House merits investigation, he should apply that same standard to Gov. Greg Abbott, who has literally transported a similar population across state lines,” Escobar said, referencing Abbott’s strategy of busing migrants to Democratic-led cities.

Paxton’s lawsuit comes as some Republicans in Congress have sought to eliminate federal funding for NGOs helping migrants along the border. U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, a San Antonio Republican, said he believed the request for more funding was a “big part” of what sank the bipartisan border bill that Senate Republicans blocked earlier this month.

“It’s very evident that the gravy train of money to NGOs is over. That well is dry,” Gonzales said at the time. “There is no appetite in both the House and the Senate to entertain any additional funding for these NGOs.”

You misspelled “Because we’re all Donald Trump’s bitches”, Rep. Gonzales. And he’s supposed to be one of the “moderate” ones.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged Annunciation House, border, El Paso, immigration, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Texas, Tony Gonzales, Veronica Escobar | 2 Comments

Endorsement watch: The Civil courts

Posted on February 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

You’ve heard me complain about the Chron editorial board’s lack of endorsements for the Civil District Courts – they did not endorse in those races in 2022, and it sure looked like they were going to skip them again this year. Turns out they were just taking their time, because on Tuesday morning we got a full batch of endorsements. Let’s see what we have.

District Judge, 125th Judicial District — Kyle Carter

Kyle Carter, 47, was among the first wave of Democratic judges elected in 2008. His Houston Bar Association judicial evaluation numbers are middling with 33 percent giving him an overall “excellent” rating and 26 percent “needs improvement.” Lawyers gave us a similar lukewarm assessment, describing him as too political. We appreciated his even-keeled temperament in the screening and he told us he goes out of his way to treat everyone fairly. This year he’s drawn two challengers.

[…]

District Judge, 127th Judicial District — Denise Brown

Elected in the 2008 Democratic wave as well, [R.K.] Sandill received our endorsement in 2018 for Texas Supreme Court when he ran against John Devine, an ethically compromised and ideologically driven justice. Sandill, 47, has a reputation for being smart and blunt. In our screening he said he comes prepared and doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time, noting that all his court proceedings are online: “come watch the livestream of the 127th and see what happens.” His numbers from the Houston Bar Association judicial poll are middling, though 30 percent of the respondents said he “needs improvement” for “impartiality.” That concerns us, as have anecdotal accounts from lawyers who told us they it necessary to donate to get a fair shake. Sandill is known for his prolific fundraising, which, again, can be a warning sign. He had more cash on hand than other district court judges in Harris County. He told us he’s spent money on implicit bias training for the Houston Bar Association and new lactation pods in the courts, but also said without hesitation that “we’re spending half a million dollars on the race.” Yes, he does have “a primary to win,” as he said, but that level of fundraising and spending undermines the appearance of a fair judiciary, especially if lawyers feel compelled to contribute.

[…]

District Judge, 133rd Judicial District — Nicole Perdue

The incumbent isn’t running for reelection and voters have a choice between two impressive candidates. Nicole Perdue, 53, graduated from South Texas College of Law and has practiced law for more than two decades. She interned with the chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court and the chief of the First Court of Appeals. A specialist in employment litigation, she also serves as an appointed legal representative for minors.

[…]

District Judge, 151st Judicial District — Mike Engelhart

Michael Engelhart, 53, was part of the 2008 wave of Democratic judges and receives some of the highest marks of any civil court judge in the Houston Bar Association survey. His court’s non-jury verdicts, 45, and jury verdicts, also 45, since 2019 are about average, and the number of cases on his docket, 2,734, is on the lower end. He has a stellar reputation for preparedness and decorum, and his challenger, Erica Hughes, did not identify any deficiencies other than to say she would have more jury trials.

[…]

District Judge, 152nd Judicial District — Robert K. Schaffer

Judge Schaffer, 71, is the gold standard. Few judges in Harris County, or the state, have received as much recognition. He was elected administrative judge by his peers in 2013, a position he held for eight years, helping steer the courts through COVID. Chief Justice Nathan Hecht appointed him to the Texas Supreme Court Advisory Committee. The Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists named him judge of the year twice. He’s the highest-rated civil judge in the Texas Bar Association survey. His trial numbers and docket aren’t comparable to the others because of his time as an administrative judge.

[…]

District Judge, 164th Judicial District — Cheryl Elliott Thornton

Judge Thornton, 66, gets low ratings in the Houston Bar Association’s survey: 55 percent say she “needs improvement” for “uses attorney’s time efficiently.” She has the biggest backlog of all the civil courts with 3,988 active cases on her docket. Elected in 2020, Thornton says that she inherited a backlog that was particularly bad, not just because of Hurricane Harvey and COVID, but because the 164th didn’t have a permanent judge after her predecessor was indicted for fraud. Thornton told us, “We try to move things out as fast as we can within a year, but the reality is when I came into this court, my oldest case was 2009.”

[…]

District Judge, 165th Judicial District — Jill Yaziji

Judge Ursula Hall didn’t attend the editorial board screening for this race and let us know later that she missed because a family member had a serious illness. We understand that personal circumstances can affect anyone’s work, for weeks or even months. In the 165th, however, lawyers and their clients have had to wait several years for rulings. After more than a dozen reprimands, the 1st Court of Appeals threatened Judge Hall with contempt proceedings. The State Commission on Judicial Conduct gave her a public warning and ordered her to obtain additional education for failing to rule in a case. Her Houston Bar Association ratings are abysmal with 86 percent saying she “needs improvement” in the “rules decisively and timely” category. The court administrator figures tell the same story: only 20 non-jury verdicts and 29 jury verdicts since 2019, and a backlog of 3,085 active cases.

[…]

District Judge, 333rd Judicial District — Tracy D. Good

The least we can expect of a judge is to step aside from cases in which they have a clear relationship with the defendant.

Apparently, Judge Brittanye Morris, 33, didn’t know that. Shortly after winning the 333rd District Court race in 2020, she ruled in favor of a developer named Ali Choudhri but “failed to either disclose her relationship” or recuse herself. That finding comes straight from an official reprimand by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. When we asked Judge Morris for her side of the story, she remained remarkably composed, saying “didn’t know Mr. Choudhri very well” and that “I was a pawn” in the war between him and another developer.

I’ve just quoted a bit from each, so please go read the rest. They did the work on this, using available data and talking to attorneys who have cases in these courtrooms, and I appreciate that! Very much! It’s why I wanted them to do these. One can certainly quibble with any individual choice they made, but they gave us a lot of useful information. Use it as you see fit.

The useful information I have is the judicial Q&As. I have them for most of the candidates in these races:

Judge Kyle Carter, 125th Civil District Court
Lema Mousilli, 125th Civil District Court
Andrea Zepeda – I did not get a response

Judge R.K. Sandill, 127th Civil District Court
Denise Brown – I did not get a response

Nicole Perdue, 133rd Civil District Court
Brandi Croffee, 133rd Civil District Court

Judge Mike Engelhart, 151st Civil District Court
Erica Hughes, 151st Civil District Court

Judge Robert Schaffer, 152nd Civil District Court
TaKasha Francis, 152nd Civil District Court

Judge Cheryl Elliott Thornton, 164th Civil District Court
Joy Dawson Thomas, 164th Civil District Court

Jill Yaziji, 165th Civil District Court
Judge Ursula Hall – I did not get a response

Judge Brittanye Morris, 333rd Civil District Court
Tracy Good, 333rd Civil District Court

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Andrea Zepeda, Brandi Croffie, Brittanye Morris, Cheryl Elliott Thornton, Democratic primary, Denise Brown, Election 2024, endorsements, Erica Hughes, Harris County, Jill Yaziji, Joy Dawson-Thomas, judicial races, Kyle Carter, Lema Barazi, Mike Engelhart, Nicole Perdue, RK Sandill, Robert Schaffer, TaKasha Francis, Tracy Good, Ursula Hall | Comments Off

Texas blog roundup for the week of February 19

Posted on February 22, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance will get back to you after it’s finished its world tour of Presidents Day mattress sales, so in the meantime please enjoy this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged blog roundup, TPA | Comments Off

2024 Primary Early Voting, Day One: And we’re off

Posted on February 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s Early Voting time, everyone’s favorite time of the year. I’m just going to get right into it, I’m sure there will be stories to note later but for right here and right now, it’s just the numbers. Here are the Day One totals for this year. Here are the final totals from 2012, 2016, and 2020. As of Day One from those years, with Dems on top and Republicans below:


Year    Mail    Early    Total
==============================
2012   4,644    1,570    6,214
2016   6,344    3,292    9,636
2020  11,571    6,819   18,390
2024   3,769    6,279   10,048

2012  10,027    3,380   13,407
2016   8,172    4,548   12,720
2020  12,890    5,411   18,301
2024   2,448    7,347    9,396

My early thought was that Dems would be right around the 2016 turnout is good for at least one day. I’ll take my victories where I can. Dems are slightly ahead of Republicans, which is closer than I’d expect in the end but may not mean anything right now.

Mail ballots are obviously down from 2020, which as we know was weird in more ways than any of us would like to remember. I wouldn’t read too much into that. For what it’s worth, Dems had 22,144 mail ballots sent out as of Tuesday, with a couple more days in which they can be sent, while that number is 7,691 for Republicans. I feel confident saying that more Dems will vote by mail when all is said and done.

That’s it for now. I’ll do these most days but probably not every day. When do you plan to vote? I might do it today or tomorrow, we’ll see.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged absentee ballots, Democratic primary, early voting, Election 2012, Election 2016, Election 2020, Election 2024, Harris County, primaries, turnout | Comments Off

Judicial Q&A: Lillian Alexander

Posted on February 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

(Note: As I have done in past elections, I am running a series of Q&As for judicial candidates in contested Democratic primaries. This is intended to help introduce the candidates and their experiences to those who plan to vote in March. I am running these responses in the order that I receive them from the candidates. Much more information about Democratic primary candidates, including links to the interviews and judicial Q&As, can be found on Erik Manning’s spreadsheet.

Lillian Alexander

1. Who are you and what are you running for?

I am Lillian Henny Alexander and I am running for the 507th District Court in Harris County, Texas.

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

The 507th Family District Court handles a variety of family-related cases, including but not limited to divorce, marital property disputes, name changes, enforcements, child custody, child support, adoptions, termination of parental rights, cases involving the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, and other related matters.

3. Why are you running for this particular bench?

I am pursuing this particular bench with a profound sense of purpose, fueled by my experiences as a lawyer, volunteer, and, most significantly, as a daughter of a teacher and a working mother to two young children. The challenges faced by working parents are not merely legal matters to me; they are deeply personal. Navigating the complexities of family court is not an abstract concept but a reality that I intimately understand.

As a mother, I have experienced firsthand the strains of balancing a demanding career with the joys and responsibilities of parenthood. My perspective is fresh and grounded in the daily struggles of working people who often find themselves entangled in the intricate web of family court proceedings.

In reference to the Houston Chronicle Editorial board’s statement, “Judge Maldonado, the county’s longest-serving family judge, is its lowest-ranked and her time on the bench leads us to believe that someone else would do a better job”.

4. What are your qualifications for this job?

I have practiced family law for 13 years since I was licensed in 2011. I operated independently as the sole practitioner in handling hundreds of family law cases. I have acquired substantial courtroom experience, actively engaging in legal proceedings related to family law matters. This encompasses representing clients in diverse cases, including divorce hearings, child custody disputes, and child support matters. My courtroom experience extends to effectively advocating for clients’ interests and my ability to litigate effectively in the realm of family law.

My extensive experience is rooted in addressing the everyday legal challenges faced by ordinary people. My clients are working class truck drivers, plumbers, teachers, people that are not rich. To accommodate their financial situations, I offer flexible payment plans and frequently provide case discounts, understanding the financial strains they may face, whether it's supporting their children’s school supplies or meeting child support obligations. Many of my clients, not being financially well-off, find resolution through mediation, as they prefer to avoid the costs associated with prolonged trials, often due to work constraints. Every individual, regardless of their financial status, deserves exceptional legal representation. My commitment is to serve as an attorney for the person next door, someone relatable and trustworthy, offering fair pricing that reflects my belief that being a family law attorney isn’t about becoming wealthy. It’s about providing quality legal assistance to people who remind me of my own family.

5. Why is this race important?

This election holds significant importance as we stand at a pivotal moment in the 507th, with over 57% expressing dissatisfaction with the perceived fairness and courtesy of the court. As a candidate, I bring a spirit of upliftment and humility to the role of serving as a family court judge.

Fundamentally, a judge’s duty is to transform the perception of the court from being accessible only to the wealthy or privileged to a space open to all who seek its services. The Family Court must consistently uphold principles of fairness and impartiality, regardless of one’s background, circumstances, or connections. It should serve as an arena where everyone is treated equitably, ensuring that the law is applied justly and consistently.

A judge’s responsibility is not to make the courtroom easier for some while making it harder for others. Rather, it encompasses a solemn obligation to safeguard the rights and interests of working people, acknowledging their unique challenges within the legal system.

6. Why should people vote for you in March?

I possess the necessary experience to serve as a family law judge, along with the requisite judicial temperament. However, I firmly believe that being an effective judge entails more than just experience; it demands a dedication to fairness, compassion, and a sincere understanding of the myriad challenges confronting families in our diverse community. Your vote for me signifies support for a family court judge committed to enacting positive change, placing the needs of our families above personal ambitions, and cultivating an atmosphere where every individual is treated with the utmost respect and dignity.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2024, Harris County, judicial races, Lillian Alexander, Q&A | 2 Comments

UH/Hobby Center polls Harris County Dem primaries

Posted on February 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Make of this what you will.

Sean Teare is leading incumbent Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg by a nearly three-to-one margin in the upcoming Democratic primary election, according to the latest survey from the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston.

Among likely voters, 59% plan to vote for Teare, while 21% support Ogg. Another 20% said they are unsure.

“Kim Ogg has been at odds with some members of the local Democratic party, most notably in her interactions with the Harris County Commissioners Court,” said Renée Cross, senior executive director of the Hobby School and one of the researchers for the project. “That hasn’t gone unnoticed by some primary voters. Others may be concerned about well-publicized issues in the courts.”

Support for Ogg is highest among independent voters who intend to vote in the Democratic primary election, with 31% supporting Ogg. That compares to 44% of independents who back Teare.

The survey, which was released today, also found strong support for U.S. Rep. Colin Allred in his race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, with 66% of Harris County primary voters saying they will vote for Allred, compared to 7% for his top rival, state Sen. Roland Gutierrez. Harris County is expected to account for one out of every six votes cast statewide in the March 2024 Democratic primary election.

Almost two-thirds of voters, or 63%, plan to vote for incumbent Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. None of the other candidates in that race drew more than 2% of survey respondents.

The UH/Hobby Center main page for this election is here, and a more detailed breakdown of the data is here. They also found that Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee led Umeka “UA” Lewis by a 41-7 margin, while Annette Ramirez “led” in the race for Tax Assessor with 12%; everyone else was in single digits and about two thirds of voters didn’t know yet who they supported. There were no questions about support or approval for President Biden, though that was touched on in their previous statewide survey, and at least as of today there was no polling of either of the two Congressional races or SD15.

Polling is hard and polling in specialty races like primaries is harder, so while this is all interesting and may well be reasonably accurate, I would take it all with some level of skepticism. Not because of any specific issues or complaints, just that we don’t have any history of similar polls to compare this to and there very likely won’t be any other polling to provide further data. I think the numbers are plausible enough – I’ll be very interested to compare them to the final numbers – I just know that I will grind my teeth down to the gums every time I see this poll referenced in a news story as an immutable fact. This is interesting data. It may turn out to be very accurate and prescient data. But right now it’s a data set of one, and that can only tell us so much. I’m just asking you to keep that in mind.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Annette Ramirez, Christian Menefee, Colin Allred, Democratic primary, District Attorney, Ed Gonzalez, Election 2024, Harris County, Harris County Attorney, Harris County Sheriff, Harris County Tax Assessor, Kim Ogg, polls, Roland Gutierrez, Sean Teare, Senate, Texas, Umeka Lewis-Piccolo | 2 Comments

Endorsement watch: For Teare

Posted on February 21, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Chron makes their choice in the biggest local primary, and their choice is Sean Teare for District Attorney.

Sean Teare

When we endorsed Harris County’s top prosecutor, District Attorney Kim Ogg, for a second term in 2020, we credited the Democrat with prioritizing a fair criminal justice process “that engenders trust in the system.” We have applauded her bold reforms and brave calls, such as diverting low-level marijuana cases, ending prosecutions of people found with trace amounts of drugs, tossing wrongful convictions, supporting unpopular exonerations of innocent men, and instituting a cultural sea change that prioritizes justice above winning.

“The exoneration of innocent individuals is as important as the conviction of guilty ones,” Ogg said after the exoneration of Lydell Grant in 2021, flipping the script of some of her predecessors. “The highest responsibility of a prosecutor is to see that justice is done.”

Nearly four years later, with a string of high-profile case losses on her record, a stubbornly high backlog of criminal cases dating back to Hurricane Harvey, a reputation for mercurial management, frayed relationships with the commissioners who fund her office, and a perception that she lets personal grudges and politics cloud her judgment, she has lost some of that trust. Even among once-ardent supporters.

That includes Sean Teare, the former prosecutor now vying for her job in the Democratic primary. He says he returned in 2017 to the DA’s office from private practice specifically to work for Ogg, who immediately promoted him to lead the vehicular crimes division. Over time, he says he observed how Ogg’s decisions and shortcomings as a manager affected the agency’s mission to protect public safety: “I’m running to restore the integrity, to restore the competence in that office,” Teare told this editorial board in a side-by-side interview with Ogg. He added: “What you haven’t heard in seven and a half years is the elected DA admit that she’s part of the problem and in some cases, the problem.”

To be clear, the DA’s office isn’t an island. It’s part of an intricate system in which stakeholders such as prosecutors, police, judges, forensic lab staff and politicians weighing budget requests must depend on each other to keep the gears of justice turning. No matter what. No matter if a hurricane floods the courthouse, as happened in 2017, or a global pandemic sends crime surging, as happened from 2020 through 2022. In her own office, which processes tens of thousands of criminal cases each year, Ogg, 64, often must delegate life-altering decisions to her subordinates.

“We can’t micromanage every case,” Ogg told us. “So, we rely upon the training we’ve provided them and the supervision that we try to provide them to make the best decision based on their judgment at the time.”

Even so, Ogg is responsible for overarching decisions that influence everything from employee morale to public trust in the criminal justice system to outcomes in the courtroom. Incidentally, our concerns with endorsing her for a third term are not necessarily the same that led county Democratic precinct chairs to vote 129-61 to admonish Ogg for not adequately representing Democratic values. Their complaints included Ogg’s investigation of fellow Democratic officeholders. In our view, Ogg was justified if not duty-bound to investigate elected officials regardless of party. We make no bones about Ogg doing her job; we’re concerned she’s not doing it effectively enough.

My interview with Sean Teare is here and my interview with Kim Ogg is here, and you should listen to them both if you haven’t already. This is a long op-ed that covers a lot of ground, more about Ogg than Teare though there’s plenty about him, and it is also worth your time.

In addition to some nods in Republican primaries, the Chron also makes endorsements in the two contested Democratic primaries for Supreme Court.

Born in Dallas and a graduate of the University of Texas law school, Randy Sarosdy worked for 24 years in Washington D.C. with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, often defending corporate clients in labor, environmental and intellectual property cases. Those are the sorts of complex civil cases that go before the Texas Supreme Court. He relocated to Austin and, after six more years with Akin Gump, joined the Texas Justice Court Training Center and became a teacher for new judges, including justices of the peace, who are not required to have a law degree.

Sarosdy, 71, also served as the executive director of the Texas Center for the Judiciary. One of the important but underappreciated aspects of the job on the Supreme Court is leading statewide initiatives that improve the judicial system or increase access to justice. Sarosdy is particularly well suited for that work. His motivation to run, he told us, is to protect fundamental rights under the Texas Constitution. He notes, correctly, that in the wake of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, state courts now play a greater role than before around abortion and voting rights.

[…]

Voters have the choice between a deeply qualified justice serving on an intermediate appellate court and a district judge who appears to be drawn to quixotic quests to effect change.

Bonnie Lee Goldstein, 62, has a breadth of experience that’s well suited to serving on the Texas Supreme Court. She has 20 years in the judiciary including 11 as a municipal judge, six as a civil district judge and three on the 5th District Court of Appeals in Dallas. If she wins in the primary, she would face Jane Bland, a well-respected justice. Goldstein told us she believes voters should always have a choice, and she’s certainly the most qualified one.

The other primary candidate is Joe Pool, a district judge in Hays County who has run for Supreme Court three times before in Republican primaries, though he seems to be more of a crusader than a partisan.

The first race is for Place 2, the second is for Place 6. I don’t have anything for you on them, I didn’t send my Q&As to the statewide candidates. For what it’s worth, after reading this endorsement piece, I’m in agreement with the Chron’s assessments.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Bonnie Lee Goldstein, DaSean Jones, Democratic primary, District Attorney, Election 2024, endorsements, Harris County, Joe Pool, Kim Ogg, Randy Sarosdy, Sean Teare, Supreme Court, Texas | Comments Off

Any early thoughts about what primary turnout might look like?

Posted on February 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Why yes I do, thanks for asking. The early indicators are that we are in for lower than usual turnout.

With President Joe Biden facing only token opposition in the Democratic primary and Trump pulling away on the GOP side, the presidential race won’t be driving voter turnout, leaving that work to lower-budget campaigns that have a fraction of the resources to do that work.

That has Republicans and Democrats bracing for what could be half the turnout that would normally happen in a year with competitive primary elections. In 2020 and 2016, for instance, when there were competitive presidential primaries, Texas had more than 4 million voters cast ballots.

In 2012, with both races already essentially decided before Texas voted, just 2 million people showed up to vote — 16% of the electorate.

“Historically, the primaries always have relatively low turnout,” said Billy Monroe, a political science professor at Prairie View A&M University.

But it gets even worse without a hot presidential primary drawing voters to the polls, he said.

Turnout in the November 2020 presidential election was 66%, compared with just 25% for the primary elections.

That lower primary turnout has real ramifications down the ballot, where candidates for Congress or the Legislature have to change their tactics compared with a big turnout election where the primaries are getting a lot of attention.

“It totally changes the dynamics,” said Ford O’Connell, a veteran GOP campaign strategist. “The universe of voters you can count to show up is decreasing.”

The article has a chart showing total statewide primary turnout for Presidential years for both parties combined, but that’s not granular enough for me. This is what I want to see:


Year   Harris D   Harris R     State D     State R   HD Pct   HR Pct
====================================================================
2020    328,496    195,723   2,094,428   2,017,167   15.68%    9.70%
2016    227,280    329,768   1,435,895   2,836,488   15.83%   11.63%
2012     76,486    163,980     590,164   1,449,477   12.96%   11.31%
2008    410,908    171,108   2,874,986   1,362,322   14.29%   12.56%
2004     78,692     82,212     839,231     687,615    9.38%   11.96%

“HD Pct” is the percentage of statewide Democratic turnout that came from Harris County; “HR Pct” is the same for the Republican side. If you needed another way to visualize the mantra that Harris County is Democratic now, there you go.

I don’t have any deep thoughts here. Before I put this chart together my thinking was we Dems will have better turnout than 2012, mostly because there are several high-profile non-Presidential primaries, but won’t get to 2020 levels. Maybe we’ll be around where 2016 was, I dunno. Ask me again after early voting starts.

I do expect Dems to beat Republicans in turnout in Harris County. We have two Congressional primaries with candidates that have raised over a million dollars, we have the open SD15 race and the District Attorney race and a couple of State House races and even the Tax Assessor race, which is lower profile but still involves an open seat and a group of active candidates. Oh, and also that US Senate primary, in which some money is being spent.

That latter race may drive higher Democratic turnout statewide than Republican turnout. There are a bunch of State House primaries into which a ton of money plus the direct involvement of Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton will drive voters to the polls, but there are only so many of those and there isn’t that much beyond them. I don’t want to go too far out on that branch because I don’t know what the county race situation is in some high-population deep red places, but at least Dems have one statewide race to generate interest, and as noted there’s action in Harris County. We’ll see where that takes us. I’ll check on this as we go forward.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Democratic primary, Donald Trump, Election 2004, Election 2008, Election 2012, Election 2016, Election 2020, Election 2024, Harris County, Joe Biden, President, primaries, Texas, turnout | 2 Comments

Judicial Q&A: Judge R.K. Sandill

Posted on February 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Judge R.K. Sandill

1. Who are you and in which court do you preside?

I am Judge R.K. Sandill, and I have presided over Harris County’s 127th Civil District Court since 2009.

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

State civil district courts have original jurisdiction for civil actions over $200 that do not involve issues related to family proceedings, juvenile cases, or criminal actions.

3. What have been your main accomplishments during your time on this bench?

Since my inauguration in January 2009, I have resolved more than 21,000 matters and tried over 1,600 cases. I am the only civil district court judge in Harris County who adjudicates all cases filed in his court, including seizure/forfeiture and tax cases.

I have also worked to expand access to the justice system by requiring implicit bias training for all court appointees, incorporating anti-bias instructions in all my jury charges, and allowing for the automatic rescheduling of trials for all lawyers who are expecting the birth or adoption of a child.

4. What do you hope to accomplish in your courtroom going forward?

I want to continue my legacy of progress for Harris County District Court to make justice more inclusive. That can be done by expanding accommodations to the average citizen who cannot readily attend court, participate in juries, or see the court as a place where only bad things happen to regular people. Expand my ad hoc mediation program that allows for free mediation so parties can settle disputes without huge financial burdens.

I plan to incorporate AI into daily court processes to make the more routine parts of the judicial process more efficient.

5. Why is this race important?

The decisions made in civil court have profound social and economic impacts throughout our county, state, and nation. Those impacts touch the lives of persons far beyond the parties involved in any given case. We see more and more that our very Democracy is being challenged in courts across the country, often beginning in the district courts. I want to remain on the bench to ensure that the rule of law is followed and that the residents of Harris County have hard-working jurists who operate with fairness and integrity.

6. Why should people vote for you in March?

When I was elected in 2008, it was a monumental shift in Harris County politics. It paved the way for Democratic majorities in County Government, a new Democratic Congressional district, and increasing the size of the Harris County Democratic Legislative delegation. There is now a poignant attack on democracy and it has been slowed in our courts. We must hae our best in these positions, and I believe my experience and record show I am prepared to serve another four years.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2024, Harris County, judicial races, Q&A, RK Sandill | 2 Comments

Early voting for the 2024 primaries begins today

Posted on February 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox:

Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth announces that Tuesday, February 20, starts Early Voting for the March 5 Joint Primary Elections. The polls are open February 20 to March 1, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., except Sunday, February 25, noon to 7 p.m. Harris County has countywide polling, which means voters can go to any of the 79 early vote centers open across the county.

“Political parties hold primary elections to determine their candidates for the November General Election,” explained Clerk Hudspeth, the county’s chief election official. “While this is a presidential election this year, voters will also vote for Texas officials running for office at the federal, state, and local levels.

In Harris County, the Democratic Primary has 119 races, and the Republican Primary has 122. However, voters will only vote in contests connected to the address where they are registered. Voters will see from 56 to 65 contests on their ballots, depending on where they registered to vote and which primary election they are voting in. Voters can view and print a sample ballot to take to the polls on our website.

“Texas is an open primary state; citizens do not have to register with a party to vote,” added Clerk Hudspeth. “During an election cycle, voters may participate in either primary election but not both. At the polls, voters must choose whether they want to vote in the Republican or Democratic primary when they check in.”

The following forms of photo ID are acceptable when voting in person:

Texas Driver’s License issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)

Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS

Texas Personal Identification Card issued by DPS

Texas Handgun License issued by DPS

United States Military Identification Card containing the person’s photograph

United States Citizenship Certificate containing the person’s photograph

United States Passport (book or card)

Voters who do not possess and cannot obtain one of these forms of photo ID may fill out a Reasonable Impediment Declaration (RID) at a Vote Center and present another form of ID, such as a utility bill, bank statement, government check, or voter registration certificate.

Additional election information is available at www.HarrisVotes.com . For news and updates, follow us on social media at @HarrisVotes.

See here for more on the joint primary, which may be a one-off or may be the new normal depending on what the next Lege does. We at least will have only one page to print and scan now, so hopefully that will facilitate things a bit. You can find the early voting locations here and here. I may pick a new place to try this year, there are a couple between where I live and where I work that I’ll consider. If you’re not in Harris County, Houston Landing has some information for you about where to vote.

Here’s a list of all my interviews and Q&As so far:

Karthik Soora, SD15
Michelle Bonton, SD15
Molly Cook, SD15
Rep. Jarvis Johnson, SD15
Todd Litton, SD15
Beto Cardenas, SD15

Nasir Malik, SD07

Annette Ramirez, Tax Assessor
Danielle Bess, Tax Assessor
Jerry Davis, Tax Assessor
Desiree Broadnax, Tax Assessor
Claude Cummings, Tax Assessor

Christian Menefee, Harris County Attorney
Umeka Lewis, Harris County Attorney

Kim Ogg, Harris County District Attorney
Sean Teare, Harris County District Attorney

Amanda Edwards, CD18

Pervez Agwan, CD07
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, CD07

Melissa McDonough, CD38
Gion Thomas, CD38

Marquette Greene-Scott, CD22

Danny Norris, HD142

Lauren Ashley Simmons, HD146
Ashton Woods, HD146

Mo Jenkins, HD139
Charlene Ward Johnson, HD139
Rosalind Caesar, HD139

Justice Richard Hightower, First Court of Appeals, Place 8

Justice Peter Kelly, First Court of Appeals, Place 9

Justice Jerry Zimmerer, 14th Court of Appeals, Place 3
Velda Faulkner, 14th Court of Appeals, Place 3

Justice Charles Spain, 14th Court of Appeals, Place 4

Justice Meagan Hassan, 14th Court of Appeals, Place 6

Judge Kyle Carter, 125th Civil District Court
Lema Mousilli, 125th Civil District Court

Judge R.K. Sandill, 127th Civil District Court

Nicole Perdue, 133rd Civil District Court
Brandi Croffee, 133rd Civil District Court

Judge Mike Engelhart, 151st Civil District Court
Erica Hughes, 151st Civil District Court

Judge Robert Schaffer, 152nd Civil District Court
TaKasha Francis, 152nd Civil District Court

Judge Cheryl Elliott Thornton, 164th Civil District Court
Joy Dawson Thomas, 164th Civil District Court

Jill Yaziji, 165th Civil District Court

Judge Brittanye Morris, 333rd Civil District Court
Tracy Good, 333rd Civil District Court

Allison Jackson Mathis, 338th Criminal District Court

Vivian King, 486th Criminal District Court

Judge Julia Maldonado, 507th Family District Court
Lillian Alexander, 507th Family District Court – coming tomorrow

Juan Aguirre, County Criminal Court at Law #16
Ashley Mayes Guice, County Criminal Court at Law #16

Fran Watson, County Probate Court #5
Chavon Carr, County Probate Court #5
Troy Moore, County Probate Court #5

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Democratic primary, early voting, Election 2024, Harris County, Harris County Clerk, interviews, judicial races, primaries, Q&A, Teneshia Hudspeth, Texas | Comments Off

Endorsement watch: Sticking with SJL

Posted on February 20, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Chron, in what I believe is its final endorsement of interest for this cycle, stays with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee in CD18.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Jackson Lee, Espinosa told us, “has a track record of really stepping in for families.”

That record rarely shows up in the Congressional record, where the congresswoman is consistently ranked one of the most effective lawmakers. But what really makes her effective is her seniority, her institutional know-how, and her ability to get the right person on the phone when her constituents need it — whether it’s opening an emergency warming shelter in northeast Houston during a hard freeze or making sure a grieving grandson can make his evening flight.

That’s why we are sticking with Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and encourage voters to do the same.

We did not meet with Robert Slater, whose fundraising numbers suggest he’s not a viable candidate in this competitive race.

But the other competitor in this primary cannot be written off. The impressive Amanda Edwards, 42, is the first real threat to Jackson Lee since she took office since 1994. Edwards’ policy chops and savvy (she’s a municipal finance attorney) made her a standout on Houston City Council. She was also out in the community fixing up homes after Hurricane Harvey.

Edwards was hailed as a rising star in 2019, when she stepped down from City Council. But since then, she’s struggled in elections: First she got buried in a crowded primary race for U.S. senator in 2020. Then, after she entered the Houston mayor’s race, Jackson Lee jumped into it at the last minute, undermining Edwards’ likely sources of support. Edwards dropped out of the mayor’s race, and ran for what appeared to be Jackson Lee’s open congressional seat.

If Jackson Lee had won the mayor’s race, Edwards would have been a shoo-in for this seat. But of course, Jackson Lee didn’t win. And now she wants to keep her old seat.

There’s a chance that Jackson Lee’s mayoral loss has hurt her enough to leave the door open for Edwards. In this race, Edwards has raised far more money than Jackson Lee. The younger candidate has, it seems, used that money in part for glossy campaign videos that present her as the candidate with a fresh perspective with deep Houston roots, ready to take the torch.

On policy issues, there’s little difference between the two candidates. And in a few areas, including technology, we even believe Edwards would be the better policymaker. She wants to think about systems — whether immigration or disaster recovery or health care — to get things done more efficiently. In our meeting, she recalled her father’s battle with cancer: “I happen to be someone who, at a very early age, witnessed systemic breakdowns,” she said.

Most elections, as others have noted, boil down to “Experience matters” versus “It’s time for a change”. That is entirely the choice here, and I understand anyone making either one. (Those who will vote for Slater, I have to ask: What election did you think you were voting in?) You can listen to my interview with Amanda Edwards here; I trust you know enough about Rep. Jackson Lee to do without an interview, though I did try to get you one. As I noted before, my gut says that Rep. Jackson Lee will win, but it won’t be easy and I won’t be shocked if this intuition is wrong. If there’s any polling data out there, I am unaware of it.

In re: SJL’s mayoral debacle maybe hurting her in the CD18 primary, Campos (a big Whitmire booster) thinks it should. I disagree – I don’t think this Mayoral election was nastier in any way than others were. That’s partly because SJL had no money in the runoff, which contributed to her margin of defeat and quite likely the lack of nastiness, since she had no budget for any scurrilous attacks, at least of the old fashioned kind. That same lack of resources might be keeping this race on the civil side as well; there are plenty of Edwards ads out there, but they’re all about her. We’ll see if that makes a difference.

Further reading: this Trib story about the CD18 primary. Much of it is ground we have covered here – the Mayor’s race and its timing, Edwards’ fundraising advantage, that recording of SJL berating staffers – but this bit was of interest:

The runoff election for the Houston mayor’s race stretched over nine congressional districts overlapping Harris County. Jackson Lee beat Whitmire among voters in her own district but only by a narrow two-point margin. Vincent Sanders, a Harris County Democratic Party precinct chair, said that’s a signal that the congresswoman could be vulnerable.

“It did show some cracks in that solid image of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee,” he said. “That’s kind of where we are and it did show that she was somewhat vulnerable,” he said.

Jackson Lee’s battle to retain her seat is made tougher by 2021 redistricting, Sanders said. because the 18th district now inhabits more young white professionals who do not have the same level of loyalty to her as longtime district residents.

“A lot will come down, I think, to turnout and particularly the ability of Edwards to turn out younger voters and Anglo voters, because if the turnout is predominantly African American and older, that’s going to benefit Congresswoman Jackson Lee,” [Rice poli sci prof Mark] Jones said.

There’s something to what Vincent Sanders says, though again I think her lack of money for the runoff needs to be taken into account. No money means no ground game. I firmly believe that one reason SJL scored fewer votes in December than in November is that she didn’t have the resources needed to remind her voters that they needed to get back out there and vote again. Job #1 in any election is to make sure everyone you want to vote for you knows there’s an election and that you’re in it. Hard to do when you don’t have any money.

But again, we’ll see. The rest of that story reminds us that while Edwards has scored some nice endorsements, SJL still has tons of institutional support, and that will carry some weight in a primary. We’ll know soon enough.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Amanda Edwards, CD18, Congress, Democratic primary, Election 2023, Election 2024, endorsements, Houston, Mayor, Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas | 2 Comments

Judicial Q&A: Justice Jerry Zimmerer

Posted on February 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Justice Jerry Zimmerer

1. Who are you and in which court do you preside?

Jerry Zimmerer, incumbent Justice 14th Court of Appeals, Place 3.

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

The Texas Court of Appeals primarily hears cases involving appeals from trial courts in both civil and criminal matters. This includes

Civil Appeals: These can involve various issues such as contract disputes, family law matters (e.g., divorce and child custody), personal injury claims, property disputes, and appeals from administrative agencies.
Criminal Appeals: These cases involve appeals from criminal convictions in trial courts. The Court of Appeals reviews whether errors during the trial affected the case outcome or violated the defendant's rights.
Juvenile Appeals: Cases involving juveniles, including delinquency matters and appeals from decisions of juvenile courts.

Overall, the Court of Appeals serves as an intermediate appellate court in the Texas judicial system, reviewing decisions from trial courts to ensure they were made correctly and fairly according to the law.

3. What have been your main accomplishments during your time on this bench?

When I took office, I had three primary initiatives for my first term:

1st was to eliminate the backlog.
2nd was to use my office as a vehicle to promote democratic values.
3rd was to help facilitate our Democratic Primary Process through a series of voter education tools.

I have succeeded in each of these initiatives. But I am not done; I have more to do next term.

4. What do you hope to accomplish in your courtroom going forward?

I hope to maintain a prompt docket, writing clear opinions that help explain the law.
I want to help develop and support the State Bar of Texas in creating a new specialization called "Effective Administration of Justice." This would create a new credential for judges and help them develop processes to run court dockets better and manage cases.

5. Why is this race important?

The appellate court's role is to provide a forum for the resolution of legal disputes, interpret laws, and ensure that the government's actions align with the principles outlined in the Constitution. The appellate courts ensure a system of checks and balances, promoting accountability and preventing any branch from accumulating unchecked power.

6. Why should people vote for you in March?

Education Matters: I hold three law degrees, did my internship at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and am credentialed by the A.A. White Institute in International Commercial Arbitration.
Experience Matters: This year, I will celebrate 40 years as a practicing trial lawyer and judge.
Family and Life Experience Matters: I come from a long line of strong women. I have raised two strong daughters.
Endorsements Matter: AFL-CIO, LGBTQ+, BAND, and others.
Caring Matters: More than all the above, I care about the state of our judiciary. Our courts should not be extensions of our political parties but rather a place for reason to prevail.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged 14th Court of Appeals, Democratic primary, Election 2024, Jerry Zimmerer, judicial races, Q&A, Texas | Comments Off

Our one page ballot

Posted on February 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good news.

Harris County voters and election workers can look forward to one major improvement in the upcoming March primaries: the county’s lengthy ballot now fits on one piece of paper, rather than two.

The change is due to a recent software upgrade from Hart InterCivic, the manufacturer of Harris County’s voting machines, that allows the ballot to be printed with two columns.

“We typically have one of the largest ballots in the nation,” said Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth, who took over election duties in September after the Texas Legislature abolished Harris County’s elections administrator position.

Hudspeth said reformatting the paper ballot was near the top of her list of priorities when she took on the role.

[…]

Harris County had 12,833 spoiled ballots in the Nov. 2022 election, a high volume that resulted from frequent paper jams, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s office preliminary audit findings.

Auditors found that multiple voting locations reported problems specifically with the acceptance of the second page of the ballot.

In the weeks after that election, then-Elections Administrator Cliff Tatum called for improvements to the system that would reduce the number of paper jams.

Election judges have been surprised and relieved to hear about the one page ballot, Hudspeth said.

County officials are considering it a big win, as well.

“Clerk Hudspeth and her team deserve a ton of credit for making this change happen,” said Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia’s spokesperson Scott Spiegel. “Doing democracy in Harris County just got a whole heck of a lot more efficient because of this effort.”

Very good to hear, although one wonders what took them so long. Formatting a second column hardly seems like a breakthrough in graphic design or technological innovation. I know enough to know these things can take more time than you’d think they might, but still. Better late than never. And pour one out for Cliff Tatum, who recognized the problem but wasn’t able to be there for the fix.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Clifford Tatum, Election 2022, Election 2024, elections administrator, electronic voting machines, Harris County, Harris County Clerk, paper ballots, primaries, Teneshia Hudspeth, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

Endorsement watch: Really? That guy?

Posted on February 19, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

For some reason, the Chron endorses Rep. Harold Dutton in HD142.

Rep. Harold Dutton

As a graduate of Fifth Ward’s storied Wheatley High School, Rep. Harold Dutton has never equivocated on his legislation that enabled the state takeover, or “giveaway,” as Dutton calls it, over poor performance. And he still doesn’t express regret despite drawing two primary challengers who question it.

“When I looked at the reading scores for third graders, it was appalling,” he said of the schools in his district. Sure, he’s pushed for higher literacy standards and more screening for reading disorders for students to get the help they need, but for many he’s simply the guy who brought state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles to town.

[…]

[T]his board has found common ground with the representative’s sense of urgency around the issue of schools and systems that fail students routinely. We endorsed him in the last primary that he very nearly lost.

This time around, his challengers shared an emphasis on education but both objected to the takeover and the loss of local control. Both were passionate but failed to persuade us they’d be better legislators in this tough political climate than the incumbent has been. Danyahel “Danny” Norris, 43, a studious lawyer, current plaintiff in a legal challenge to Texas voter laws and a former professor who helped expand adult education opportunities as a member of the Harris County Department of Education board, said he would’ve preferred other options, perhaps fining districts with bad scores and reinvesting the funds in struggling campuses. Attempting to manage a district’s budget this way doesn’t strike us as a better idea.

Clint Horn, 48, a personable pastor who works in leadership learning and development at MD Anderson Cancer Center, underscored the need for more accessibility to elected officials, something constituents currently displeased with Dutton might relish.

Their priorities largely overlapped with Dutton’s: fully funding public education, supporting early childhood education and opposing school vouchers, for example.

As for differences, while both challengers dinged Dutton for his decision not to cast a vote on the impeachment of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, the biggest divide seemed to emerge around transgender-related legislation. Horn described himself as holding a lot of conservative views and also being willing to listen to others. He sided with Dutton on several issues, including bills Dutton supported to require youth athletes to compete only according to their gender assigned at birth and another to ban puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans kids. Norris diverged here saying the bills were overzealous.

My interview with Danny Norris is here. That picture of Dutton, which is from his campaign website, has got to be from his freshman legislative year of 1985. Click on the link to the Chron’s editorial to see something contemporary. If that were his biggest sin I wouldn’t care. It’s time for a change, let’s just leave it at that.

Next, the Chron endorses Bill Burch for Railroad Commissioner.

Bill Burch

Bill Burch recalls being one of the first people on the scene when a blowout on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico caused a massive explosion. As a well-control emergency response expert, he’s been called to help manage oil-related disasters across the globe from Algeria to Kuwait to the Niger Delta.

Few of these disasters, he said, rival the level of groundwater contamination and environmental malpractice he’s seen all across Texas as a result of the lax oversight of Texas’ oil and gas industry. While the Texas Railroad Commission purports to both promote that industry and protect the state’s natural resources, the reality is the agency has, for years, only shown interest in doing half of that job. Christi Craddick, the incumbent Republican chairwoman on the commission whose seat Burch is vying for, is so entrenched in the industry that she owns numerous mineral interests and refuses to recuse herself when the agency makes rulings on companies whose stock she owns.

Burch, 49, brings a level of expertise — and, we would hope, integrity — that is sorely lacking in the agency. He has a deep understanding of the technical complexities of drilling, wastewater disposal and even seismic activity, which has become a significant problem in parts of the oil-rich Permian Basin in West Texas. Even though he’s never run for office or held a government post, there is no question Burch has done his homework on the Commission. He can rattle off the number of districts the agency oversees and the inadequate number of inspectors they employ. If elected, he said he would propose dispersing inspectors across the state to monitor hundreds of oil wells and rigs, and push to raise their pay to attract and retain quality talent. Critically, for an agency that allows oil and gas companies to vent and flare methane and other toxic gases into the air with impunity, Burch said he would reject every requested flaring permit except in emergency situations.

“The Railroad Commission is intentionally set up to be a self-funded, self-regulated industry with lack of resources,” Burch told us. “They don’t want environmental regulations in the state of Texas. Under-funding the agency removes their ability to have any kind of teeth to hold operators accountable and enforce the laws.”

I got nothing for you on this one, I didn’t try to do interviews for this race. Just didn’t have the time to make it a priority. Check out Burch’s website and that of his opponent, Katherine Culbert, to learn more. The Chron cited Culbert approvingly as well, saying she had the proper qualifications but they preferred Burch. At least we don’t have any Grady Yarbrough types this time around. I note with some interest that the Erik Manning spreadsheet shows Culbert as having voted in the last four Republican primaries. That’s always going to stand out – sometimes that means the person is a convert, sometimes it means they’re up to no good. Looking at her website and her personal and campaign Facebook pages I don’t see anything that sets off red flags for me. But look for yourself and see what you think.

The Chron endorses Ashley Mayes Guice for the new Harris County Criminal Court at Law #16.

Ashley Mayes Guice

Fortunately, Harris County Democratic voters have two accomplished primary contenders competing for the bench. Juan J. Aguirre, 57, is a Del Rio native who has been a criminal defense attorney in private practice for nearly two decades, with experience in all 16 misdemeanor and 26 felony courts. Although he has been practicing for nearly a decade more than his opponent, Ashley Mayes Guice, we were more persuaded by the kind of experience Guice has under her belt, and feel certain she would hit the ground running.

Guice, 40, was raised in Katy and has practiced criminal law since 2011, with stints as a prosecutor and as a public defender. She has “sat in every seat in a courtroom a lawyer could possibly sit in,” she told us.

In 2022, after Judge Erica Hughes of Criminal Court-at-Law No. 3 was appointed to a federal immigration bench, Harris County Commissioners Court named Guice her replacement. Guice said she wasted no time in her 11-month tenure, presiding over four jury trials and decreasing the docket size by 20 percent. After the timing of her term didn’t allow Guice to run for the bench as an incumbent, the county court-at-law judges voted to keep her on as staff attorney. That birds-eye view Guice has gained by offering legal and ethical assistance to the judiciary on an administrative level would serve her well as a judge, helping her to run her docket smoothly and efficiently.

We appreciated that both Aguirre and Guice were sensitive to factors that lead to recidivism, as well as issues of indigent defense and mental health jail diversion. But Guice stood out for her evenhanded take on bail, which she was adamant about not using “as an instrument of oppression,” she said, even as she has revoked bonds in cases where someone charged with a misdemeanor went on to commit a higher-level offense.

My judicial Q&A with Ashley Mayes Guice is here, and my Q&A with Juan Aguirre is here. Always nice to have two strong choices.

And finally, the Chron went for another judicial challenger by endorsing Lillian Alexander in the 507th Family District Court.

Lillian Alexander

Judge Julia Maldonado, the county’s longest-serving family judge, is its lowest-ranked. In the 2023 Houston Bar Association poll, 51% of responding lawyers gave her “Needs Improvement,” the lowest grade. For “Demonstrates impartiality,” 52%. For “Follows the law,” 54% flunked her. For “Is courteous and attentive to attorneys and witnesses,” 58%.

She told us that she treats “everyone with dignity and respect” but we’ve seen problems with her temperament during our most recent endorsement screening and ones in the past.

Our editorial board values experience, so we tend to favor incumbents. In this case, Maldonado’s time on the bench leads us to believe that someone else would do a better job.

Her opponent in the Democratic primary, family law attorney Lillian Henny Alexander, promises to run a more respectful courtroom, and one that’s more hospitable to the everyday people who end up there. Alexander, 37, is a graduate of Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law. Being the mother of two young children, she says, makes her especially sensitive to the needs of working families.

“People come to us in crisis,” says Alexander. “For some it’s the first time they’ve ever been in a court. We owe it to them to hold ourselves accountable.”

My Q&A with Judge Maldonado is here. I have just today received Lillian Alexander’s Q&A responses, so you will see them a little later this week. I will take this opportunity to once again implore the Chron editorial board to get back to doing endorsement screenings for the Civil Courts. Not doing so leaves a gaping hole in our knowledge base.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Ashley Mayes Guice, Bill Burch, Clint Horn, Danyahel Norris, Democratic primary, Election 2024, endorsements, Harold Dutton, Harris County, HD142, Juan Aguirre, judicial races, Julia Maldonado, Katherine Culbert, Lillian Alexander, Railroad Commission, Texas, The Lege | 2 Comments

Weekend link dump for February 18

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“That Electric Toothbrush Botnet Story Is Totally Fake“.

“HBO is developing another Game of Thrones spinoff series.”

“The results are consistent across the board: conservatives are simply less connected to reality than liberals.”

Some thoughts from Scalzi about the non-beta version of BlueSky and other social media outlets.

RIP, Bob Edwards, longtime host of “Morning Edition” on NPR.

“I am absolutely SHOCKED at @CBS for introducing the Deaf performers at today’s pregame #SuperBowl and then not showing even one second (or more) of their performance… as has been tradition for the last 30 years. WHY!?”

“Fans of FX’s acclaimed Fargo anthology series may have to let the just-completed fifth season of the series tide them over for a while. Creator Noah Hawley is currently working on FX’s upcoming Alien series, and there is no timeline for Fargo’s return.”

Dora the Explorer was the Super Bowl hero we didn’t know we needed.

“Here is the difference (singular) between white and non-white evangelical Christians”.

“Donald Trump’s months-long effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election culminated on a single, now-infamous day: Jan. 6. But there was an alternate scenario gamed out by Trump’s lawyers — one that would have expanded the hours of indecision caused by the Trump campaign’s efforts and stretched out the process for weeks, all the way until Jan. 20, 2021, the Constitution’s ironclad deadline for the transfer of power. If their scheme succeeded, these lawyers hoped, Joe Biden would never take office.

“Google has long struggled to contain obituary spam — for years, low-effort SEO-bait websites have simmered in the background and popped to the top of search results after an individual dies. The sites then aggressively monetize the content by loading up pages with intrusive ads and profit when searchers click on results. Now, the widespread availability of generative AI tools appears to be accelerating the deluge of low-quality fake obituaries.”

“Workers who help bring Disneyland’s beloved characters to life — including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Cinderella — are looking to unionize.”

Congratulations to Jenny Cavnar, the first female play-by-play announcer in MLB history.

“After working in the minor leagues for the past eight seasons, umpire Jen Pawol is one step closer to reaching the majors as she’s been assigned to work in the Grapefruit League during spring training beginning later this month. […] Pawol is the first woman umpire to work a spring schedule since Ria Cortesio in 2007, but a woman has never umpired a regular-season game. Pawol could be the first as she will be one call away once the regular season begins.”

“Most of America’s eyes on Sunday might have been on Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas but about halfway across the country 1,600 miles away in Indiana, the Indianapolis Zoo celebrated a different kind of victory — the birth of a rare white rhino.”

“The first dinosaur was named 200 years ago. We know so much more now”.

The Pale Blue Dot, 34 years later.

“Amazon is facing a lawsuit accusing it of misleading Prime subscribers by charging them an additional fee to stream movies and TV shows without ads.”

RIP, William “Bill” Post, who is credited as being the inventor of the Pop-Tart.

RIP, Don Gullett, former MLB pitcher for the Reds and Yankees who was on four consecutive World Series champions.

RIP, Scott Swoveland, Houston artist who created the iconic mural at local gay bar Mary’s.

“Long before Iowa star Caitlin Clark hit her first long-range three or signed her first autograph, Pearl Moore set a scoring standard for women’s basketball that has stood for 45 years.”

That said, congratulations to Caitlin Clark. Lynette Woodard and Pistol Pete, you’re next.

“I have been open with [the 30 MLB franchise owners] about the fact that this is going to be my last term.”

“That’s what happens with guns”.

True The Vote continues to be a bunch of lying liars who lie a lot.

RIP, Lefty Driesell, Hall of Fame basketball coach who put Maryland on the NCAA map, started the Midnight Madness tradition, and led four different programs to over 100 wins each.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | Comments Off

The Devine connection to Woodfill and Pressler

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Birds of a feather. A very rancid feather.

In 2022, the Texas Supreme Court declined to kill a high-profile sex abuse lawsuit against former Southern Baptist Convention leader Paul Pressler and his longtime law partner, Jared Woodfill.

For Justice John Devine, the case involved some familiar names: Years before taking the bench, he had worked at Woodfill and Pressler’s small Houston law firm. In fact, Devine’s tenure at the firm overlapped with the time that the plaintiff, a former employee of the firm, was allegedly molested by Pressler.

Two other justices, who previously worked for the law firm representing the plaintiff, recused themselves. Devine didn’t — and instead dissented from the court’s 5-2 decision that allowed the suit to go forward after a challenge to its statute of limitations.

The lawsuit would eventually make public numerous other abuse allegations against Pressler. It also prompted a deposition last year in which Woodfill testified that he had for years used the firm’s funds to pay young men to work out of Pressler’s home despite repeated warnings of his predations. Woodfill was not accused of sexual abuse in the lawsuit.

Devine’s campaign website, Supreme Court biography and profile on WestLaw, a major legal repository, do not mention his work at the firm, Woodfill & Pressler LLP, which had about 10 employees during Devine’s time there.

But the Texas Tribune reviewed thousands of pages of court records in lawsuits handled by Woodfill & Pressler LLP, and found that Devine was listed as an attorney or guardian ad litem with the firm at least 27 times between 2002 and 2008, including nine suits that were filed while the plaintiff in the sex abuse lawsuit worked for the firm as Pressler’s personal aide.

Asked last week about his involvement with the firm, Devine downplayed his work there and said he had no reason to recuse himself because he had “no personal knowledge of the facts” in the lawsuit or a financial stake in the firm or the case’s outcome.

“There was no basis for me to recuse from the case,” Devine wrote in an email to the Tribune. “I had no financial interest in the case; never participated in it; and had no personal knowledge of the facts. Two decades ago, I jointly tried some cases with Jared Woodfill. But we were never law partners; I had no financial interest in his firm; and I had no knowledge of the firm’s inner workings. I never worked with Pressler. My understanding was that he was just a name on the door.”

[…]

Devine, a Republican who joined the Supreme Court in 2012, is up for reelection this year, and is the only justice facing a challenger in the March 5 statewide primary. His opponent, Second District Court of Appeals Judge Brian Walker, has centered his campaign on questions about Devine’s ethics, including in the Pressler case and in other instances in which he ruled on lawsuits brought by Woodfill.

“I have a hard time believing that Judge Devine didn’t know about the allegations,” Walker said in an interview. “It’s clear to me that he was still trying to help Woodfill and Pressler out when he essentially voted to keep the lawsuit from moving forward.”

Two other justices, who previously worked for the law firm representing the plaintiff, recused themselves when the suit was considered by the Supreme Court, though they did not provide reasons.

Legal experts acknowledged there are often gray areas when it comes to judicial recusals — particularly in Texas, where justices are elected and can find themselves presiding over legal disputes that involve political allies and supporters.

But they cited the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, which requires judges to preserve the “integrity and independence of the judiciary” and avoid “impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.”

“I don’t think that this is a close call,” said Heather Zirke, director of the Miller Becker Center for Professional Responsibility at the University of Akron School of Law. “Judges have a duty to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”

See here for the Paul Pressler files. This story brings a lot more receipts about the Devine/Woodfill/Pressler relationship, so go read the rest. He’s the worst judge on that bench and he deserves all of the pressure that can be placed on him. And there are be plenty of other reasons to vote against Devine, including his role in upholding all of the cruel and life-threatening abortion restrictions the state now enforces. That’s the goal of the Find Out PAC, which is targeting the three Justices who are up for election this year, including Devine. I’m always a little skeptical of these efforts, as it will take a ton of money to move the needle and we don’t have much of a track record in that regard. But it’s there and they’ve picked a good target. A little more attention to this aspect of the Devine dossier couldn’t hurt as well.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Legal matters | Tagged Election 2024, Jared Woodfill, John Devine, lawsuit, Paul Pressler, rape, sexual harassment, Southern Baptist Convention, Supreme Court, Texas | Comments Off

Judicial Q&A: Joy Dawson Thomas

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Joy Dawson Thomas

1. Who are you and what are you running for?

Joy Dawson Thomas, 164th Civil District Court Judge in Harris County

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

A district judge may hear and determine motions, including motions for new trial, petitions for injunction, applications for the appointment of a receiver, interventions, pleas in abatement, dilatory pleas, and all preliminary matters, questions, and proceedings, and may enter judgment or order on them. These duties are stated in the TX Government Code, Title 2, Subtitle A, Chapter 24, Subchapter A, Section 24.003(d)

3. Why are you running for this particular bench?

This Court is underperforming. Specifically, has a shameful backlog, delayed availability for hearings and trials and undesirable judicial temperament.

4. What are your qualifications for this job?

I’ve been a magistrate judge in Harris County for three years conducting in-person hearings daily while maintaining a kind judicial temperament; practicing attorney for seven years conducting hearings and trials in multiple counties; I teach Trial Advocacy at Thurgood Marshall School of Law; I teach Texas Government, Federal Government, Civil Liberties and Texas Politics at the University of Houston- Downtown; public servant for 12 years in the capacity of law enforcement; I have 231 hours of continuing legal education training, including 51 hours of ethics training, in the year of 2023 alone.

5. Why is this race important?

The longer the current condition persists, the longer citizens and their attorneys remain in damaged conditions uncertain of when/if they will be made whole. Untreated injuries, unpaid bills, unnecessary compounding fees, prolonged pain and suffering, etc.

6. Why should people vote for you in March?

I will address the huge backlog of cases and issues with courtroom access by implementing more efficient Court operations. Specifically, setting status coferences, issuing docket control orders and ordering mediations for old cases; more dates available for attorneys to have hearings and trials and consistent and transparent communication with staff, attorneys and pro-se litigants while maintaining a kind judicial temperament.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2024, Harris County, Joy Dawson-Thomas, judicial races, Q&A | 1 Comment

SB4 lawsuit has its day in court

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

We’ll see what happens.

Lawyers for the Biden administration and Texas faced off in a federal court in Austin on Thursday to argue whether a new state law that would allow police to arrest people suspected of crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally should go into effect next month.

Senate Bill 4, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed in December, is Texas’ latest attempt to try to deter people from crossing the Rio Grande after several years of historic numbers of migrants arriving at the Texas-Mexico border.

The law makes illegally crossing the border a Class B misdemeanor carrying a punishment of up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders could face a second-degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison. The law also requires state judges to order migrants returned to Mexico if they are convicted; local law enforcement would be responsible for transporting migrants to the border. A judge could drop the charges if a migrant agrees to return to Mexico voluntarily.

On Thursday, attorneys representing the U.S. Department of Justice and several nonprofit organizations that have sued the state argued that only the federal government can enforce immigration laws. They said that precedent set by federal courts makes clear that states are prohibited from enacting their own restrictions on entry to and removal from the U.S.

Brian Boynton, a deputy assistant attorney general arguing on behalf of the DOJ, rejected the notion that there is an “invasion” at the southern border, a refrain Gov. Greg Abbott has repeated to justify his border efforts.

Boynton also denied that the federal government has “abandoned” its duty to enforce immigration laws.

“There has been no abandonment,” Boynton said during a roughly hourlong argument in a packed courthouse. He added that the federal government has removed more than 400,000 migrants from the country since May, when the Biden Administration ended Title 42, the Trump-era policy that allowed officials to quickly expel migrants from the country.

[…]

In December, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project sued Texas on behalf of El Paso County and two immigrant rights organizations — El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Austin-based American Gateways — over the new state law.

The following month, the Justice Department filed its own lawsuit against Texas. The lawsuits have since been combined.

The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one.

A major point of contention between the opposing parties was whether SB 4 would allow migrants to access the asylum process, which they are entitled to under federal law. Boynton said that if a migrant were arrested under SB 4, they would not have a chance to claim asylum and could be sent back to Mexico, even if that country refused to accept them.

Lawyers for the state of Texas, however, said the law would not impede the asylum process. Ryan Walters, an attorney representing the state, suggested that migrants prosecuted for illegally crossing the border could apply for asylum from a Texas prison.

“There have been a lot of assumptions about the law,” Walters said. “Federal law enforcement can still come in and do credible fear interviews. There’s no difference from other cases where migrants are in Texas custody.”

But U.S. District Judge David Ezra said during the hearing that judges presiding over SB 4 cases will ultimately be forced to decide whether to abide by federal or state law. While SB 4 states that a court “may not abate the prosecution of an offense” on the basis that a federal determination of the immigrant’s status is pending, federal law asks that courts do take an immigrant’s asylum application into account.

Ezra also took issue with the fact that SB 4 would allow state judges to hear felony immigration claims. Typically, federal judges with lifetime tenure, known as Article III judges, have jurisdiction over cases where federal prosecutors seek criminal charges for immigration offenses, such as illegal entry.

“Someone who faces a possible 20-year sentence won’t have the benefit of an Article III judge,” Ezra said. “That is an issue of some concern.”

Ezra asked the state’s lawyers considerably more questions than he asked of the DOJ lawyers. He took jabs at state lawmakers, stating that “a little more care should have gone into drafting” SB 4, and at several points he joked that the state’s attorneys were in a difficult position.

Ezra rebuffed the state’s argument that there is an “invasion” at the border.

“I haven’t seen, and the state of Texas can’t point me to any type of military invasion in Texas,” Ezra said. Abbott has invoked the word “invasion” to describe the influx of migrants at the border because a clause in the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from engaging in war unless invaded.

“I don’t see evidence that Texas is at war,” Ezra said.

At the same time, Ezra said he sympathized with the state’s concerns about the border.

“This court is not unsympathetic to the concerns raised by Abbott,” said Ezra, noting that he has lived in immigration hot spots such as Phoenix and Tucson as well as on the border in Del Rio. “I’m very familiar with the concerns and to some substantial degree agree with those concerns.”

Ezra said at the end of the hearing that he would try to make a decision as soon as possible and well ahead of March 5, when SB 4 is scheduled to take effect. He predicted that his decision would be appealed and that the case would ultimately make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

See here and here for the background. My prediction, for those who don’t feel like clicking the links, is that the plaintiffs will get their restraining order, the Fifth Circuit will put the restraining order on hold, and nobody knows what SCOTUS will do. This shouldn’t be complicated or mysterious in any way since precedent is both clear and recent that states cannot do what Texas is trying to do, but we live in a world where too many courts don’t care about that. And so I don’t know how this will play out.

On the politics side of things, while Democrats are attacking Republicans in Congress and the Senate for scuttling the border bill they themselves had demanded as ransom for funding Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, maybe we could aim some of those attacks at Greg Abbott and his squadron of cosplaying Republican governors, too? I mean, I did not care for that deal that was struck in the Senate and I think it is unconscionable to offer up so much Republican red meat at all, let alone without getting a DREAM act and a path to citizenship, but the case one can make that they got everything they asked for and then threw it away on Donald Trump’s orders because he prefers to have the chaos as a campaign issue really is a salient one and will resonate with voters. It’s also not like we’ve got anything that has worked any better. Just, please, start mentioning Greg Abbott’s name when you talk about this, that’s all that I’m asking at this time.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged ACLU of Texas, American Gateways, Congress, Donald Trump, DPS, El Paso, Election 2024, Greg Abbott, immigration, Joe Biden, Justice Department, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, lawsuit, Mexico, SCOTUS, Senate, Steve McCraw, Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project, The Lege | Comments Off

Endorsement watch: Three big ones

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Chron races to finish up their primary endorsements before the start of Early Voting. Three more for your consideration:

They endorse Rep. Lizzie Fletcher in CD07.

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher

Ever since Democratic voters picked her to take on and eventually defeat a nine-term Republican incumbent in 2018, U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher hasn’t had a primary challenger.

That changed this year, in part because the 7th Congressional District was redrawn, shifting west and south of downtown Houston, and looping in Alief and parts of Sugar Land. The district is also one of the most diverse in Texas: 30% Hispanic or Latino, 21% Black and 22% Asian, according to census data.

Pervez Agwan, an engineer and renewable energy developer who was born to immigrant parents from India, is making the case that because the district is now solidly blue — Fletcher carried it by 27 points in the 2022 general election — its interests have shifted to the left.

Agwan, 32, is running on an unabashedly progressive platform that includes supporting a single-payer universal health care system, doing away with dark money and corporate influence in our political system, and pushing for a cease-fire between Israel and Palestine. But he couldn’t articulate how he’d be effective in getting legislation passed in Washington.

Agwan has also been hit with a lawsuit in which he was accused of sexual harassment by a former campaign staffer who says he tried to kiss her in his office and kept her from leaving after she rejected him. Agwan told the editorial board that he vehemently denied the woman’s claim and referred to the lawsuit as a “circus” centered on a “small workplace dispute.” Even if the allegations aren’t true, his response was dismissive, lacking the seriousness the lawsuit deserves. While Agwan raised more than $1 million in 2023, he has burned through it quickly and ended the year with less than $100,000 on hand, according to campaign finance data.

Fletcher, 49, is a well-liked three-term incumbent who works as hard as any member of the Texas delegation. She stays engaged with her constituents, holding quarterly public meetings and dozens of public events, and says she’s brought $643 million in federal taxpayer dollars back to her district. She has proven she can work across the aisle in an extremely polarized and narrowly divided House of Representatives. She’s introduced a range of legislation with bipartisan support such as bills to improve mental health care for seniors on Medicare and create funding streams for clean energy and resiliency projects in coastal communities.

Yet Fletcher also hasn’t lost sight of core issues important to the Democratic base. Her bill incentivizing states to expand Medicaid was included in President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Fletcher authored a bill that would protect abortion patients who need to travel out of state to receive care and help them pay for it, which passed the House but failed to get a vote in the Senate.

My interview with Rep. Fletcher is here and with Pervez Agwan is here. I encourage you to listen to them. The subjects of the lawsuit and how Agwan would approach passing his legislative agenda were discussed, so this is an opportunity for you to hear how he responded.

They endorse Rep. Jarvis Johnson for SD15.

Rep. Jarvis Johnson

In the fight to fill the state Senate seat vacated by Houston Mayor John Whitmire, voters will have to consider not just policy priorities, but also the strategy to get anything accomplished. As it is, even Republican senators can’t get much done without the personal blessing of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Democrats hardly stand a chance.

We think Jarvis Johnson will be able to squeak through a few wins.

With experience as a Houston council member and a state representative since 2016, Johnson has a pragmatic view of how to get things done.

In his first term in the House, he championed a vocational education bill that became law.

“I was successful in working with my colleagues to help understand that industry across the state of Texas need skilled laborers,” he said. “But that was in 2017. We know things changed dramatically over the years.”

For Johnson that means not taking what he describes as Republican “bait and switch” moves. Instead of reacting to culture war provocations, he said he wants to be proactive about pursuing his policy goals: defending and funding public education, passing criminal justice reform, protecting Texans from environmental degradation and more. In the House, he’s pursued restrictions on concrete batch plants, created a sickle cell registry that Gov. Greg Abbott later spitefully vetoed, part of his vengeance against opponents of school vouchers. Johnson also rallied around legislation to raise the age to buy assault rifles.

As an experienced politician, Johnson, 52, brings a certain blunt sensibility about the lawmaking process.

“Anybody who makes a donation to my campaign, that means they have access,” said Johnson, “Doesn’t mean that they get a yes.”

Some might find his frankness off-putting. We don’t, but several of his challengers represent a far more idealistic version of politics.

At the crowded table, Molly Cook, 32, stood out the most as a possible foil to Johnson’s battle-tested insider pragmatism. The ER nurse, who has been running for Whitmire’s seat since before he left it, is strategic in her own way to get things done.

“I bear witness on a daily basis to the kind of suffering that our policy causes,” she said.

First, as a reminder again, I interviewed all six of these candidates:

Karthik Soora
Michelle Bonton
Molly Cook
Rep. Jarvis Johnson
Todd Litton
Beto Cardenas

You should listen to those interviews and decide who you like best. What Rep. Johnson brought to the Chron editorial board he also brought to our conversation, minus the bit about his campaign donors and what they do or don’t get from him. That’s a tale as old as Texas, and I think it’s fair to say that Views Differ about its merits. There are six qualified and engaged candidates in this race, I can make a case for just about any combination of them to make it to the runoff. As I recently advised someone, you should have at least a top three in mind so you’ll be prepared for the overtime period.

They endorse Lauren Ashley Simmons in HD146.

Lauren Ashley Simmons

We saw an unexpected glimpse of Thierry’s short temper and poor conduct when we met with the four-time incumbent and one of her challengers, Lauren Ashley Simmons. (Ashton Woods did not meet with us.) After a combative and petty performance that was beyond the debating showmanship we typically see, Thierry again interrupted Simmons during what was supposed to be her closing statement. Simmons, 36, was noting that she had earned the support of three of Thierry’s colleagues.

“The gay ones,” Thierry interjected sharply.

It was a frustrating end to a difficult screening in which neither candidate was able to share a full accounting of her experience and goals.

[…]

In between the interjections in our screening, Simmons managed to share some of her life story and pitch herself as a grounded candidate with deep experience representing vulnerable communities.

Raised in Third Ward, Simmons became pregnant at 19 and her safety net evaporated. She was rejected for food stamps multiple times. When she was arrested for shoplifting baby clothing and food, she told us, a compassionate judge dismissed the charges, allowing her to continue her education. Since then, she’s worked as a union representative with the Houston Federation of Teachers and is working to organize a group for parents in the Yates High School feeder pattern, hopefully expanding to Worthing and Sterling High Schools as well in Houston ISD, to amplify parent voices amid the takeover. That was the experience she drew on when she confronted state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles in a video that garnered online attention for her pointed concerns about the loss of voter representation and parental accountability in the district where her own children are currently students.

“I’m not a politician,” she said, “I’m a community advocate.”

She’s also organized to raise the minimum wage that’s been stubbornly stuck at $7.25 for years here in Texas, helping people get to Austin to testify and meet with legislators.

“I work directly with the people who are most vulnerable to our systems and decisions that come out of Austin,” she said.

My interview with Lauren Ashley Simmons is here and my interview with Ashton Woods is here. There’s quite a bit more in this endorsement piece on Rep. Thierry than there is on Simmons, including some of the good things she has done in the Lege and a lot of bad, but I wanted to focus on Simmons, so go read the piece yourself for the rest. Though honestly that “the gay ones” quote really tells you all you need to know.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Ashton Woods, Beto Cardenas, CD07, Congress, Democratic primary, Election 2024, endorsements, HD146, Jarvis Johnson, Karthik Soora, Lauren Ashley Simmons, Lizzie FLetcher, Michelle Bonton, Molly Cook, Pervez Agwan, SD15, Senate, Shawn Thierry, Texas, The Lege, Todd Litton | 1 Comment

Judge rejects Paxton’s “but I’m an orphan!” motion

Posted on February 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

A crook any way you look

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton remains on track to be tried for felony fraud this spring after the presiding judge shot down his attempts to have the charges thrown out.

During a Friday court hearing in Houston, Harris County District Court Judge Andrea Beall rejected Paxton’s arguments that his right to a speedy trial had been violated.

Beall’s decision means that, barring another unexpected delay, Paxton’s securities fraud trial will kick off on April 15. The proceedings are much anticipated; the attorney has been under active indictment for nearly nine years. He has pleaded not guilty.

Special prosecutor Brian Wice applauded Beall’s decision and said Paxton was the reason these cases have not yet gone to trial.

“We think that the general’s fingerprints, footprints and DNA were all over the delays,” said Wice, a private criminal defense lawyer brought on to represent the state after the local district attorney recused himself.

During the hearing, Paxton’s defense attorney Dan Cogdell blamed the prosecutors for much of the delay. He said their attempts to be paid — which have been unsuccessful since 2016 — put off the trial for years.

“That’s what this food fight has been all about,” Cogdell said. “This case has been pending longer than three out of four of my marriages lasted.”

Other factors that led to the delay included the prosecution’s successful motions to move the case from Collin to Harris County, Hurricane Harvey and COVID-19.

[…]

Wice rejected Cogdell’s arguments that they were responsible for the delays and said Paxton has been “living [his] best life” since he was indicted. Paxton has been re-elected two times since 2015 and has also amassed more than $6 million in out-of-state properties, Wice said, an apparent reference to reporting from The Wall Street Journal and The Texas Newsroom.

In a surprise move Friday, Schaffer left the prosecution. He told The Texas Newsroom that he and Wice disagreed with whether Paxton should face a jury at all.

Schaffer added he and Cogdell came to an agreement on Thursday that Paxton would face no prison time or fines, and that the charges would be dropped in exchange for Paxton agreeing to a period of supervision.

But Wice objected, Schaffer said, insisting the case go to trial.

“It was a win-win for the state. It was a win-win for [Paxton],” Schaffer said.

Schaffer said rather than being paid, he has shelled out about $150,000 in his own money “for the pleasure” of prosecuting Paxton. With 18 other paying clients in the hopper, and his disagreement with Wice, Schaffer said it was time to leave.

Cogdell confirmed he and Schaffer had a deal “in principle” that Wice scuttled.

“[Wice] likes the sound of his name in the media, this coming from me,” Cogdell told The Texas Newsroom. “He has always been very, very invested in this case.”

Schaffer was replaced with Houston-based attorney Jed Silverman.

Speaking to the media after the hearing, Wice said Silverman was ready to take on the challenge and said letting Paxton avoid a trial now would be unconscionable.

“To me, that was worse than a slap on the wrist. That was, ‘gee, let’s get you a cocktail, a hot meal and a breath mint.’ And that wasn’t going to happen on my watch,” Wice said.

Cogdell objected to the replacement in court, saying Wice didn’t have the authority to bring Silverman on. He also took issue with the fact that Silverman recently presented an award to Wice for his legal work.

Judge Beall rejected this concern, noting it would bar Silverman from being a juror on the case but not a prosecutor. It is unclear whether Paxton’s team will formally object to Silverman’s appointment.

The parties will hold another hearing on March 20 to hash out any last-minute pre-trial issues.

See here and here for the background. You can now mark March 20 on your calendar and figure out your travel and accommodations plans for April 15.

The Chron adds on.

Brian Wice, one of the prosecutors, said Paxton has been free on bond for most of the case, a privilege people unable to afford bail lack.

“Unlike those folks in the holdover, Paxton is living his best life,” Wice said.

Judge Andrea Beall asked both sides to tally the number of days Paxton had spent behind bars and how many court appearances he had made.

His jail time has amounted to about a day after he quickly made bail. He has appeared in court at least four times in Harris County and other occasions in Collin County, the lawyers said. Cogdell conceded it wasn’t a lengthy amount of time.

Beall said both sides earlier agreed that the April trial date would work with their schedules and dismissed Paxton’s motion. Cogdell described the ruling as expected.

Well, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take, right? And Paxton’s billionaire buddies are good for the legal bills, so what the hell. My favorite thing about this, other than the ruling itself, is that this is how the headline originally appeared on the Chron’s webpage:

Yep, they filed it under “Local crime”. I can’t think of anything more fitting. The Press has more.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged Brian Wice, Collin County, Court of Criminal Appeals, Dan Cogdell, Harris County, Jed Silverman, Ken Paxton, Kent Schaffer, Servergy, special prosecutor, Texas | Comments Off

Mayor Whitmire appoints a new Metro Chair

Posted on February 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Congratulations and welcome aboard.

Mayor John Whitmire on Tuesday announced CenterPoint Energy executive Elizabeth Brock would lead the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s board of directors. If approved, Brock would be the first Hispanic woman to lead the transit agency.

“She brings a ‘customer first’ mindset, which is exactly the thinking our community deserves,” Whitmire said in a release announcing the choice. “Safety and reliability are key for all who depend on or commute alongside public transportation. I am confident that Elizabeth will use her results-driven expertise to drive Metro to deliver a user-friendly and fiscally responsible transit system to all. She understands that my priority is providing mobility options for all Houstonians.”

Brock’s appointment as Metro chair is pending approval of the City Council, as well as Metro’s board, which typically accepts the mayor’s choice. She replaces Sanjay Ramabhadran, who served as Metro chairman for two years and as a board member for nearly eight, during which the agency started work on the first projects of its $7.5 billion long-range plan.

[…]

Metro is working with the Federal Transit Administration to finalize its final route and secure environmental approvals for the 25-mile University Corridor bus rapid transit, as well as a $600 million planned BRT line within Loop 610 along Interstate 10.

Much of that progress will be up to Brock and potentially additional new Metro members. As mayor, Whitmire appoints five of the nine members of the Metro board, including naming his preference for chairperson. Tuesday’s announcement only named Brock, leaving the other members in place.

Compared to Turner, who championed transit investment as part of what he called a “paradigm shift” in mobility across the city, Whitmire has been critical of Metro’s recent performance.

In his address after being ceremonially sworn in as mayor, Whitmire blamed Metro for road conditions because “buses tear up streets.” Metro devotes about 20% of its revenue from the 1-cent sales tax it receives to street repairs, as part of the voter-approved general mobility program.

Whitmire has also questioned the rush to some designs. At campaign forums prior to his election, he questioned the immense cost of some Metro projects, relative to Houston’s low transit ridership, and noted that all agencies must heed residents’ concerns about lack of street access and loss of private property.

“The public supports infrastructure,” Whitmire said after a forum on Nov. 15. “But everybody, including Metro, needs to level with them and be transparent about what is going on with some of these plans.”

I don’t know anything about Ms. Brock other than what is in this story, so I don’t have much to say beyond “congratulations and welcome”. I haven’t see much of a reaction from the transit and mobility folks as yet, just this “welcome and let’s work together” statement from LINK Houston. Better than anything oppositional, but it doesn’t give me much to work with. There is as the story notes a bit of apprehension in this community, as well as some words of warning from Harris County and a “don’t mess things up” editorial from the Chron, so it will be nice to get some clarity from the new Chair. Until then, we presume and hope for the best.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged bicycles, BRT, buses, Commissioners Court, Election 2023, Elizabeth Brock, Federal Transit Administration, Harris County, Houston, John Whitmire, LINK Houston, Mayor, Metro, Rodney Ellis, sales taxes, Sanjay Ramabhadran, Sylvester Turner, University line | 1 Comment

Endorsement watch: Ramirez, Haynes, Watson

Posted on February 17, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Three endorsements for your consideration from the Chron.

Item one: Annette Ramirez for Tax Assessor.

Annette Ramirez

During the last meeting Ed Emmett led as the county judge, back in December 2018, Harris County Commissioners Court unanimously passed a little-noticed change to toll road collections. Instead of contracting with the outside law firm of Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson to go after drivers with unpaid tolls, the commissioners decided to transition to handling it in-house through the county attorney.

“During my time here, some of the saddest things I had to deal with were people who had racked up toll road fees that were exorbitant,” Emmett said, recalling constituents who ended up with thousands in fees for a charge that started off around $40.

A curious thing happened once the change went into effect in April 2019. The county didn’t lose revenue even though violation fees charged to drivers dropped by 45%. How is that possible? It seems that the county attorney arranged modified payment plans. More people paid up. The resolution of violations increased by 12%, according to Commissioner Rodney Ellis. The only loser appears to have been a collection firm that lost out on a lucrative and “predatory practice” as Ellis puts it.

How is all this related to the Democratic primary for Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector? We believe what worked with collecting tolls can work with property taxes as well, though it’s a more complex undertaking. We’re supportive of a candidate who can help that happen and leery of one who might try stand in the way. In May 2022, in another little-noticed vote, county commissioners once again were unanimous in asking the county attorney to create a plan to takeover from Linebarger the collection on new cases of people behind on their property taxes.

The five Democratic candidates running for tax assessor-collector all have impressive resumes. Annette Ramirez, 51, has the most relevant experience. As a practicing tax attorney for Aldine ISD, she handled delinquent taxes in-house. She’s done the job the county’s trying to accomplish at a larger scale. There are roughly 40,000 new delinquent accounts per year in Harris County.

We believe Ramirez would be the best partner to work with the county attorney on collecting taxes responsibly and in a way that does not unfairly add fee after fee until homeowners abandon their inheritance. The problem affects low-income communities the most. Many families struggle to figure out who owns a house after a parent dies without a will.

That was a good thing that former Judge Emmett and the Court did. All of the Tax Assessor candidates that I interviewed talked about the topic of delinquent taxes and how best to collect them without forcing a homeowner out of their residence, and they had varying plans for how to do it. You can listen to those interviews, beginning with the one for Ramirez, here:

Annette Ramirez
Danielle Bess
Jerry Davis
Desiree Broadnax
Claude Cummings

Item two: Gemayel Haynes for the new 486th Criminal District Court.

Gemayel Haynes

[Vivian] King, 65, now first assistant to District Attorney Kim Ogg, touts her influence in changing a culture at the DA’s office that under some previous administrations seemed to value winning cases over pursuing justice.

We admire her passion and storied career but considerations of fairness, judicial temperament and a sense of accountability lead us to recommend her opponent, Gemayel Haynes, 41, assistant chief at the Harris County public defender’s office.

Haynes has 16 years in practice compared with King’s 31 years. Like King, he’s worked as a prosecutor and in private practice. He’s never tried a death case; King has tried two, including one that resulted in an acquittal on the capital murder charge. He points out that King has never worked for a public defender’s office, which, to be fair, didn’t exist during much of her career. She did handle appointments to represent criminal defendants.

Haynes says his time at the PD’s office has made his approach more well-rounded, not more lenient: “I can look at things from all angles and I’ve done that my entire career,” he told us in a side-by-side screening with King. “I am not a zealot.”

He says he’s endured personal loss to crime: his cousin was murdered in front of the family home. He understands the great responsibility judges have to weigh defendants’ rights in bail decisions right alongside public safety: “You do have people who are out on bail that make mistakes; they commit new offenses,” he said. “The consequence for that should match the level of the infraction.”

The first few paragraphs are devoted to candidate Vivian King; there’s no mention at all of the third candidate in the race, Roderick Rodgers, who I suppose maybe didn’t show up for the screening. My Q&A with Vivian King is here. Haynes (and for that matter Rodgers as well) did not send me Q&A responses, but he was a candidate in 2022 and filled out my questionnaire for that primary. His responses for when he was running for the 183rd Criminal Court are here.

Item three: Fran Watson for the new Harris County Probate Court #5.

Fran Watson

To shape that shiny new court, we recommend Fran Watson. Her experience working in courtrooms sets her apart from her opponents: She’s currently the staff attorney for Probate Court 2, and has served as an associate municipal judge.

Watson also has a compelling life story. At age 14, after losing her mother to substance abuse, she became her family’s caretaker; and, after too many absences, was expelled from school. She knows, first-hand, the kind of stress felt by the people appearing in probate court.

We were also impressed by probate lawyer Chavon Carr. She advocates adding wraparound services that would help opposing parties find collaborative solutions; and believes that probate courts need to do more outreach, so that everyday people understand things like how much chaos they can spare their loved ones simply by having a will.

Troy Moore, the third candidate in the race, is an experienced probate lawyer.

My Q&A with Fran Watson is here, with Chavon Carr is here, and with Troy Moore is here. It is indeed nice to have good choices.

The Chron’s full list of endorsements so far is here. I’m glad to see the Chron endorsing outside of just the criminal courts, but I sure wish they would take the time to review and endorse in the races for Civil Court as well. There are a lot of contested races over there, and while I have my Q&As and the various club and org endorsements via the Erik Manning spreadsheet, having that extra data point from the Chron is helpful. As a non-lawyer, I appreciate having all the data I can get. Maybe next time.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Annette Ramirez, Chavon Carr, Claude Cummings, Danielle Bess, Democratic primary, Desiree Broadnax, Election 2024, endorsements, Fran Watson, Gemayel Haynes, Harris County, Harris County Tax Assessor, Jerry Davis, judicial races, Roderick Rogers, Troy Moore, Vivian King | Comments Off

Interview with Marquette Greene-Scott

Posted on February 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Marquette Greene-Scott

And here we are at the final interview of the cycle (no, I was never able to get something scheduled with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee), though I may find more to do for the runoffs and the May HCAD election. As noted yesterday, my interest in these last two interviews is to help provide a bit of visibility to candidates in lower profile but still important races who are clearly of higher quality than their opponents. Marquette Greene-Scott is a Louisiana native who transplanted to Fort Bend in 2010. She has been a math teacher at both the high school and collegiate level, and fulfilled a dream of going to law school while a working mom. She has now been a practicing attorney for 19 years, licensed in Louisiana and Texas. She currently serves on the City Council and as Mayr Pro Tem in the city of Iowa Colony. We had plenty to talk about, and you can hear it all here:

cakuffner · Marquette Greene – Scott Interview 021224

PREVIOUSLY:

Karthik Soora, SD15
Michelle Bonton, SD15
Molly Cook, SD15
Rep. Jarvis Johnson, SD15
Todd Litton, SD15
Beto Cardenas, SD15
Annette Ramirez, Tax Assessor
Danielle Bess, Tax Assessor
Jerry Davis, Tax Assessor
Desiree Broadnax, Tax Assessor
Claude Cummings, Tax Assessor
Amanda Edwards, CD18
Pervez Agwan, CD07
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, CD07
Christian Menefee, Harris County Attorney
Umeka Lewis, Harris County Attorney
Kim Ogg, Harris County District Attorney
Sean Teare, Harris County District Attorney
Danny Norris, HD142
Lauren Ashley Simmons, HD146
Ashton Woods, HD146
Melissa McDonough, CD38
Gion Thomas, CD38
Mo Jenkins, HD139
Charlene Ward Johnson, HD139
Rosalind Caesar, HD139
Nasir Malik, SD07

And that’s a wrap for interviews. I still have a couple of judicial Q&As to run, which you will see shortly. I hope this was helpful to you in making your candidate choices. Early Voting starts on Tuesday and I’ll be all over that. You can keep track of all my interviews and judicial Q&As on the ever indispensable Erik Manning spreadsheet.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged CD22, Congress, Democratic primary, Election 2024, interviews, Marquette Greene-Scott, Texas | Comments Off

Judicial Q&A: Justice Meagan Hassan

Posted on February 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Justice Meagan Hassan

1. Who are you and in which court do you preside?

My name is Meagan Hassan and I am currently a Justice on the Fourteenth Court of Appeals, Place 6.

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

We handle appeals from every kind of trial court in our ten-county region. We review the record from the trial court, analyze whether any errors were made by the trial judge or the parties, and determine whether questions of law need to be decided or if there is already settled law that determines the outcome. We handle all kinds of cases – from evictions to capital murder, from custody issues to car accidents, from probate issues to large corporate contract disputes; the only things we don’t hear are appeals from death penalty cases and post-trial criminal habeas motions.

3. What have been your main accomplishments during your time on this bench?

The Fourteenth Court of Appeals is the most evenly divided appellate court in the state, with a complement of five Democratic justices and four Republican justices. This requires a great deal of negotiation among the panel members (three on a regular appellate panel; nine when the whole court sits together en banc). I have been responsible for 250 majority opinions from my own chambers, have written 19 concurrences and 30 dissents myself, and have also written three en banc decisions for the majority of the court (among the most that any intermediate Justice in Texas has written in the past five years). Since we were elected in 2018, we have managed to catch up on our previously backlogged docket and we are now deciding cases in a timely manner. I also have made a discernible difference in the jurisprudence of my court and the lives of people who live in this district. I can give you two examples of opinions I wrote where I worked hard to accomplish good for the community and the individuals involved:

The first was a criminal case involving a black man stopped by police in Waller County for a traffic violation. During the course of his 45-minute traffic stop, a burglary took place nearby. After releasing the man from the traffic stop, the officer learned of the burglary and went back to arrest the man for it. He was tried to a jury, convicted, and sentenced to 20 years in state prison. On appeal, I discovered the timeline of the traffic stop and the robbery created an impossibility: the man could not have committed the crime. I was able to convince my panel and write an opinion that reversed and remanded the case to the trial court and showed that he could not have committed the crime. The trial court then dismissed the case and the man was released from prison only 2 years into a 20-year wrongful sentence. August v. State, 588 S.W.3d 704 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2019, no pet.).

The second case was a parental termination case involving a Honduran immigrant who spoke limited English. When a neighbor called CPS to report her for neglecting her children, she cooperated fully with the investigation. The CPS investigator determined that the claims of neglect were untrue but asked her to take a drug test anyway. The test came back positive for trace amounts of drugs and her children were removed and put into foster care. She eventually could not complete the requirements of the family service plan (which was not provided to her in Spanish as required by law) and her rights to her children were terminated. On appeal, I wrote for an en banc court holding that our previous caselaw that permitted children to be removed from their parents when the parents tested positive for drugs *without any connection to abuse or neglect* was incorrect and reversed 20-year precedent of our court. The Texas Supreme Court thereafter declined to take the case. In re L.C.L., 599 S.W.3d 79 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2020, pet. denied) (en banc).

4. What do you hope to accomplish in your courtroom going forward?

Appellate justices work differently than trial court judges do. Because we work in panels of three (and sometimes all nine), we have to find common ground and work together to ensure the administration of justice not just for that case, but for the state of the law in the entire region. I will continue to work with my colleagues on both sides of the political spectrum to ensure justice is done for the people we serve.

5. Why is this race important?

These courts are incredibly important to the administration of justice in Texas as a whole. Around 90% of cases that are decided in the intermediate courts of appeals do not get reviewed by the Texas Supreme Court or the Court of Criminal Appeals, so we are the default court of last resort. It matters who we elect to these positions – we need justices who understand the way the law currently works and who have extensive experience (either as judges or litigators) so that we can fairly administer justice for the benefit of the people in our districts. These races are also under attack across the state by big-money interests from the top levels of the Republican Party because we have been so effective in the past five years.

6. Why should people vote for you in March?

I am proud of the work I’ve done in difficult cases on an ideologically divided court. I understand how important it is to work as a team in these positions – we are not single judges that work alone. The quality of the teammates matter and I have the experience and ability to make tough decisions and to follow them up with solid law that can convince my colleagues to join me.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged 14th Court of Appeals, Democratic primary, Election 2024, judicial races, Meagan Hassan, Q&A, Texas | Comments Off

Food Not Bombs gets temporary ticketing reprieve

Posted on February 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Pending a ruling from the judge, so this could be very temporary or it could be for the duration of the lawsuit.

A U.S. District Court judge on Wednesday ordered Houston to temporarily stop enforcing a law that requires city permission before anyone can serve more than five people in need on public property.

The order marked a significant victory for Food Not Bombs, a group that has provided free meals outside of Central Library downtown for roughly two decades and received nearly 100 tickets for doing so since 2023. The ruling is a part of the group’s federal lawsuit against the city claiming that the food service is a form of constitutionally protected protest. To win a preliminary injunction, the lawyers had to prove that they were likely to win at trial and that irreparable harm could happen if the court did not intervene.

“It’s beautiful to see that common sense will prevail,” said Brandon Walsh, the named plaintiff. Requests for comments from the city were not immediately returned Wednesday evening.

Food Not Bombs must pay a bond of $25,000, according to the ruling. The bond will be lowered to $2,500 if the group agrees to provide trash receptacles and hand sanitizing stations, as well as ensure people do not block the street and sidewalk during meals. Those members who serve food must also attend a food safety training session.

During the two-hour hearing Monday afternoon, Judge Andrew Hanen asked about the city’s regulations on giving food to those in need. Food Not Bombs argued he should view the case as a First Amendment issue, saying the law wrongfully abridged the rights of a group to protest government spending on defense when basic needs went unmet. City attorneys countered that it was a matter of public health, and the city needed to make sure people were safe from food poisoning or disease spread by vermin.

The Houston ordinance at stake is known as the city’s food-sharing ordinance. Passed in 2012, the law makes it illegal to give away more than five meals to people in need without permission from the property owner, even if the property is public, such as a sidewalk. The mayor at the time, Annise Parker, gave permission to continue sharing meals outside Central Library, where the informal group of volunteers had been serving for roughly a decade.

In 2023, then-Mayor Sylvester Turner made changes. The Houston Health Department updated its policy to require that every approved charitable food location on public property have 10 dedicated parking spaces and two portable restrooms with handwashing stations that would be available all day, every day. The city installed restrooms and handwashing stations at its only approved location — a police parking lot on Reisner Street near the Municipal Courthouse.

Houston also began paying a nonprofit with a long history of serving the homeless to provide meals at the site on the same evenings that Food Not Bombs serves outside the library. Officers warned Food Not Bombs that it would no longer be allowed to provide food at its customary location and encouraged the group to relocate to the Reisner Street lot.

But volunteers continued to provide meals outside the library, arguing the city law was immoral, necessitating civil disobedience. Houston police officers in March started ticketing Food Not Bombs, and Turner took to social media to say that he believed the meals brought homeless people to the area and discouraged families from using the library.

See here for the background and read the rest, there’s a good summary of the arguments and the questions the judge was asking. I’m a little skeptical of the plaintiffs’ case but I don’t think it’s implausible and I can see how the judge might accept it. I also don’t think what the city is trying to do is unreasonable; as the story notes, the city is using its approved location for charitable feeding as part of its strategy to provide housing to those who need it. Maybe they’re being too rigid, maybe they’re stretching things to make their point, I don’t know, but they’re not doing this arbitrarily. What I’d really like here is for the city and Food Not Bombs negotiate an agreement that works for everyone, because what’s been happening does no one any good. I don’t know how to get there from here, but perhaps the forthcoming ruling will provide some direction and/or incentive towards that end. I’ll keep an eye on this.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Annise Parker, Charitable Feeding Program, Coalition for the Homeless, downtown, Food Not Bombs, homelessness, Houston, Houston City Council, Houston Department of Health and Human Services, John Whitmire, lawsuit, Sylvester Turner, Texas Civil Rights Project | 1 Comment

Dispatches from Dallas, February 16 edition

Posted on February 16, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have election news of all sorts leading into the primary. Early voting starts next week! We also have a grab bag of items from the last six weeks from the hotel explosion in Fort Worth last month to the unveiling of a new mural honoring Juanita Craft in South Dallas last week. We also have another zoo baby for you to enjoy!

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Ludovico Einaudi.

Let’s start with election news. As you know, we’re about to start voting in the primaries in this part of Texas, and a lot of people have opinions.

The Fort Worth Report ran stories about the Republican debates they sponsored for Tarrant County candidates last week. This week they have the Democratic candidate debates for CD 12, HD 97, and Tarrant County precinct 1. Here’s a second story about the Precinct One Democratic race. In Precinct 8, we have a residential eligibility case that will be heard on March 1. The Star-Telegram has a voter guide out for Fort Worth and Tarrant County including an overview, the Star-Telegram’s recommendations, and sample ballots for both primaries.

Meanwhile, in Dallas, we have the DMN’s recommendations, which are mostly pro-incumbent and anti-Paxton on the Republican side, including Craig Goldman in CD 12 and Frederick Frazier as the best of a bad lot in HD61. (He’s the sign stealer.) Which is not to say they won’t choose none of the above or even withdraw a recommendation the way they did in the Republican primary in SD 30 when their man turned out to be open to secession. Their ballot guide will generate the set of candidates on each side of the aisle for your address.

There’s also a grab bag of local stories that might interest folks:

The Texas Tribune on Jasmine Crockett from last month and this Dallas Observer piece about Jrmar Jefferson, her primary opponent, who seems to be one of those perpetual loser candidates with a side of how it’s fraud when he loses.
KERA on Ken Paxton’s beef with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. It says something about how low Paxton can go that I’m almost feeling sorry for Sharon Keller.
The Star-Telegram has noticed that Greg Abbott’s endorsements rest solely on how candidates feel about vouchers.
The Texas Tribune has an explainer about the Republican primary for CD 26, Michael Burgess’ seat, where the frontrunners are the mayor of Southlake and Dinesh D’Souza’s son-in-law.
One of the candidates in CD32, Colin Allred’s seat, is a trans lawyer who is president of the Dallas LGBT Bar Association. I wish her good luck, but there are some bigger names in that field and even if there’s a runoff, I don’t think Ms Butcher will be in it.
The Observer has a piece on how the border issues are affecting the race for our Senate seat this year.
If you want to visit the elections office in Dallas, you need to take a car, because you can’t get there on public transit.

And last but not least, because everybody should know about this one: Laura Pressley, a voter fraud activist from Austin, held a poll watcher training session at a church in Arlington on Tuesday. When a Star-Telegram reporter turned up to check it out, they refused the reporter entry. I don’t usually do archive links but I really want you to read this story, so please take a look.

In other news:

a summary of the lawsuits

turned control of the property over to the owners

At the same time people are complaining about their current Atmos bills (I certainly got sticker shock with mine last month) and Atmos is asking for a 15% rate increase.
The DMN’s Watchdog is also down on the electric utilities for their Soviet-style corruption and wow, ain’t those fightin’ words! It won’t fix all the problems, but Rep. Greg Casar of Austin is trying to get the Texas grid connected to the national grid. We know it won’t happen in this dysfunctional Congress, but I’d like to thank him for trying.
From last month: one of the Star-Telegram’s regular opinion columnists takes on Confederate Heroes Day. Good for him and good for Nathan Hale, who has been trying to get the “holiday” off the calendar.
Here are some recent posts about Dallas’ city pension plan shortfalls: the DMN on how the council wants to top up the DPD and DFD pension funds before they top up city employee pensions; an explainer from D Magazine after last month’s big council meeting to discuss the matter; and a Dallas Observer explainer. As Houston voters know, there is no easy solution for pension shortfalls and it’s going to come out of our pockets one way or another. I feel your pain.
Dallas City Council member Cara Mendelsohn, who is Jewish, had her home vandalized with antisemitic graffiti last week. The DMN’s editorial board rightly condemns the antisemitic attacks against her.
Now that the dust is starting to clear from the Adelson/Sands purchase of the Mavericks, people are asking whether the team is staying in Dallas or just in the Metroplex. This is a question with broader implications; it’s not just the Sands folks who are ready to bring gambling to DFW. Unsurprisingly the Dallas City Council is ready to get their cut and might even want to push for legal gambling in the Lege in 2025.
In case you were wondering, here’s how much tax revenue DFW Airport generates for the two big cities it serves: “In 2022, Fort Worth received $10.1 million and Dallas received $13.1 million from the sharing agreement.”
There’s a new children’s hospital coming to Dallas and here’s what you should know about it.
After public outcry, Fort Worth PD has released part of its chase policy with the rest still redacted. Other area municipalities have released their policies. Also there are more police chases in North Texas than you might think. One statistic from that last link: one in every four Irving police chases has reached or exceeded 100 mph. Yikes!
The police chief in Denton resigned this week. It’s “personnel-related”, so keep your ears peeled for why.
The DMN’s City Columnist has a scathing commentary on the housing debates in Dallas. Gentrification and affordable housing are issues everywhere but rising house prices and the fact that a lot of construction in the city is upgrading existing stock makes them worse here.
From last month: did you see that Collin County’s favorite Ken Paxton finally said something about his out-of-state properties? He did not break any laws and did nothing wrong, of course.
Radley Balko eulogizes the late Dallas DA Craig Watkins.
Things I never thought I’d see: the DMN is crowdfunding for reporters! The DMN’s explanation and commentary from CultureMap. In related news, I was notified this month that my subscription to the DMN is increasing from about $24 to $33 a month.
At least 10 DFW area school districts have had to close schools since the beginning of January. And 200 DFW area schools are at higher risk of a measles outbreak. Get vaccinated, folks.
Fort Worth ISD would like to do more to teach civics, but state law makes it hard by banning a lot of activities as “woke”.
The thief who stole all the animals from the Dallas Zoo early last year is incompetent to stand trial. Animal cruelty charges against him have been dropped but he’s still on the hook for two counts of felony burglary.
US Rep. Roger Williams, whose district extends into the southwest part of Fort Worth, says 90% of small business hit by ‘illegal immigrant’ crime. You will not be surprised to learn the data disagrees with him.
In related news, Joe Biden cannot shut the border down on his own, he’s already doing many things that he does have authority to do, and some other things that Republicans want him to do are illegal and violations of international law, especially around asylum.
The president of UNT in Denton is resigning effective August 1. The Texas Tribune has a good overview of his term.
UT Arlington has upgraded its planetarium ahead of April’s solar eclipse.
I missed the Fort Worth Stock Show while I was recovering from surgery, but I’m pleased to report that the grand champion steer sold for $340,000.
Dallas’ Landmark Commission has voted to designate White Rock Cemetery in north Dallas, a historic Black cemetery, a historic landmark. This is the first step in getting it protected from development. I thought this cemetery must be in my neighborhood when I first read about it, but it’s several miles north of where I live, which is about a mile north of the top of White Rock Lake.
Dr. Phil McGraw, the daytime TV star, is launching a TV network in north Texas. I’m just the messenger. You don’t have to watch it.
The DMA’s current building is now 40 years old.
Here’s the latest on the planned Juneteenth museum in Fort Worth.
The Longhorn Ballroom has been officially added to the National Register of Historic Places. Now I really need to go see a show there.
Irving is throwing money at Toyota Music Factory like it’s a sports stadium instead of a music venue. It’s been open since 2017 and the city council just voted $30 million in incentives to them. I have seen shows at Toyota Music Factory; it’s on the same plan as the venue in the Woodlands or the one at the F1 racetrack in Austin.
At the corner of Malcolm X and MLK in South Dallas, there’s now a mural of Juanita Craft, the Dallas civil rights activist on her birthday, February 9.
Stewart Copeland of the Police will be doing an artist residency at SMU this spring and will be leading a symphony concert in April. I didn’t know, but am not surprised to learn, that Copeland is also a Grammy-winning composer. Now to get tickets to that concert where he’ll be leading the college orchestra in rearranged Police hits.
SMU also has a fantastic-looking punk and post-punk exhibit centering on the work of Buzzcocks designer Malcolm Garrett this spring. That’s also going on my to-do list.
In zoo news, the Fort Worth zoo has announced the birth of baby Jameela, a Western lowland gorilla. Her mother, Sekani, showed symptoms of pre-eclampsia, so the zoo intervened to give Sekani a Cesarean section. Mother and baby are both well, but Sekani sadly hasn’t bonded with Jameela. The zookeepers are trying to bond her with a surrogate mother instead. Enjoy some photos of Jameela from the zoo’s Instagram.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged Dallas, guest post, linkdump, Texas | Comments Off

Interview with Nasir Malik

Posted on February 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Nasir Malik

My next two interviews, the last two that I have completed for this cycle, were not ones that I had originally planned on doing but were inspired in part by the Chronicle endorsements of the candidates involved. Because of my interest in interviewing candidates, I generally try to stay neutral so that everyone is able to trust me. There are obviously exceptions, and one of them is in races where there’s a candidate who’s making a clear effort and one who’s done nothing other than pay the filing fee. Both of these races and these candidates match that profile, and so today I’m talking to Nasir Malik, who is taking on Paul Bettencourt in SD07. Malik is an immigrant, a businessman in the residential construction industry, a volunteer in Klein and Humble ISD Mentoring programs, and unlike the incumbent someone who will work to make his district and the state a better place. This race is a longshot by any definition but we’re never going to make progress if we don’t have good people willing to run in them, and the least I can do is highlight those folks for you. So here’s my interview with Nasir Malik:

cakuffner · Nasir Malik Interview 020724

PREVIOUSLY:

This is it, the final week before Early Voting. You can keep track of all my interviews and judicial Q&As on the ever indispensable Erik Manning spreadsheet.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2024, interviews, Nasir Malik, SD07, Senate, Texas | 2 Comments

Judicial Q&A: Judge Cheryl Elliott Thornton

Posted on February 15, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Judge Cheryl Elliott Thornton

1. Who are you and what are you running for?

I am JUDGE CHERYL ELLIOTT THORNTON, Judge of the 164th Civil Judicial District Court. I am a native Houstonian who has practiced primarily civil law for over 35 years. I graduated from Lamar High School in Houston, Texas and received my BA from Trinity University and my MA from St. Mary’s University both in San Antonio, Texas. I received my JD from Thurgood Marshall School of Law. I am married to Peter Thornton, my campaign manager and retired professor from Texas Southern University.

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

This is a civil court which hears cases with damage claims from $200 to ad infinitum. It is the trial court of general jurisdiction for most civil cases. In Harris County this court hears such cases as personal injury, employment, election, property, contracts, debts and civil cases which are not otherwise assigned to other civil courts.

3. What have been your main accomplishments during your time on this bench?

One of the initial accomplishments after taking the bench was to bring stability to this court as the Presiding Judge of the 164th Civil Judicial District Court. This Court faced additional hardships other than the freeze, sharing courtrooms due to the great flood and hurricane displacement. It also had a leadership void since it lacked a permanent Judge for almost two years. Together with my great team we were able to safely do trials even in the pandemic and began to tackle the backlog in the Court which was the result of all of the before mentioned hardships. We also began and still allow Zoom hearings which has proven to be invaluable in assisting with the backlog.

4. What do you hope to accomplish in your courtroom going forward ?

I hope to continue to move cases along as expeditiously as possible. It is my goal to have cases completed within one year. When I took the bench my oldest case was a 2009. Through hard work I have addressed the backlog and have made significant headway and will continue to do so in my second term.

5. Why is this race important?

This race is so important because, again, this community, Harris County, must decide what type of leadership it desires. It must decide does it want a Judge who has the experience which should be required for the position such as myself who has practiced in the district courts for over 30 years as a civil litigator and who has the requisite judicial experience. Or by stark contrast, is it looking for an individual who has never practiced in the civil district courts but ran for this court because it had the shortest line. I believe, again, the right choice will be made and the voters will choose a person of CHARACTER, EXCELLENT EXPERIENCE that they can TRUST. The voters will reelect JUDGE CHERYL ELLIOTT THORNTON.

6. Why should people vote for you in the March primary?

In initially running for this seat I stated that the people should vote for me because I not only have the needed legal skills, but I also possess the social skills needed to properly service the people that come before this court. By electing me in 2020 to be Judge of the 164th Civil District Court I have shown that faith in me was justified. I am the proven commodity and have proudly and efficiently served as the Presiding Judge of the 164th Civil Judicial District Court. Further, I am the only one in this race who has had experience practicing in the district courts prior to taking office. My opponent has NEVER practiced before any civil district court and is in no way qualified to hold the position of Civil District Court Judge.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged Cheryl Elliott Thornton, Democratic primary, Election 2024, Harris County, judicial races, Q&A | Comments Off

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