Definitely, my least favorite part of this blog has become the expectation that I do a write-up on the candidates when election time comes around. Y'all have no idea how much it stresses me out! The reason it stresses me out is that in the vast majority of the races, I have two friends running against each other. Usually, those friends are great people and usually, those friends are both very qualified for the office that they seek. That's a no-win situation for me to write about and that is usually compounded when I don't make a clear choice and get called out for wimping out. To paraphrase the late, great Ben Parker, with great blogging comes great responsibility, unfortunately.
While I will reluctantly acknowledge that I sometimes "wimp out" on making a clear choice between two people that I consider to be friends that are qualified for the Bench, I do want to make it clear that I am completely honest about a person's ability to be an elected official even if they are a friend. That situation hasn't come up often in the fourteen years that I've been running this blog, but it has happened. On more than one occasion, I've lost a friend for being honest about my thoughts on him or her as a candidate.
I've also been clear when I've supported who I thought was the better candidate, even though I knew they didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of winning. Over the years, I've been treated with varying degrees of warmth by the candidates who ultimately prevailed despite my endorsement of their opponents.
I write all of this to say to my critics who get mad when they feel that I didn't say enough about one race or the other: it isn't always pleasant, and I will be more than happy to give you a free tutorial on running your own blog if you would like to share a different message than mine. If Don Hooper can do it, so can you!
So, moving on . . .
I broke these write-ups into three parts. This overview, the District Court Races (and District Clerk), and the County Court Races. Otherwise, it would be too damn long.
I wanted to do an overview this year because I wanted to point out (yet again) how much misinformation there has been this year about the Criminal Justice System, and how much it bothers me. I have watched some very honest, brave, and good judges get blasted time and again in the media for doing the jobs that they were sworn to do. I've seen insanely irresponsible reporting lead to death threats against judges for following the law. I've seen them take more blame for murders than the people who actually committed them. The vilification has been off the charts, and completely and totally undeserved.
I recently did something unusual by having a sit-down lunch with someone I had been arguing with on Twitter about these issues. It was a strange set of circumstances that led up to the lunch. A blowhard who calls himself "Common Sense Bob" on Twitter had initiated the idea by threatening to show up at my office with some "friends," and I countered by telling him I would provide food. Unsurprisingly, the Bob didn't show up, but one of the other people did and we had lunch to discuss the criminal justice system.
I think it is a testament to what a toxic environment Twitter is because I actually enjoyed the lunch quite a bit. We fought like children on Twitter but had a great talk in person. We talked for about thirty minutes about things we had in common before we moved on to criminal justice. We listened politely to each other's thoughts on the system. Her experiences as a victim of crime understandably influenced her thoughts in a way that made perfect sense. She agreed with me that I thought the judges were getting all the blame while the District Attorney's Office wasn't being held accountable for their part in the rise of crime. We disagreed on bond reform, but the conversation was cordial and I know that I was glad we had had it. I don't know that it changed my position on anything, but it added to my perspective on many things (including how double-parking as a public official should be considered political suicide).
So here are some of the takeaways that I wanted to point out before talking about the judges themselves:
1. The Relationship between County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Criminal Court Judges ends at Party Affiliation. Love her or hate her, Lina Hidalgo's title of judge does not affiliate her with actual presiding judges in criminal courtrooms. They are all Democrats and that's where the similarities end.
I've got no problem with Judge Hidalgo and as someone with inside knowledge about her staff being indicted, I can tell you that those charges are utter horsecrap. There is a difference between doing something that is bad optics and something that is illegal. Hidalgo may have stepped in some crap on optics, but she didn't break the law. Neither did her staffers, and it turns my stomach to see them being paraded around on political commercials as evidence of corruption.
That being said, I'm nowhere near as invested in the Hidalgo/Mealer contest as I am in the Criminal Court Judges race. If you want to hate on Hidalgo, knock yourself out, but that shouldn't reflect on your choices for the other judges. They have completely unrelated jobs. If you think that Hidalgo is "defunding the police" as brainiacs like Kim Ogg and Mark Herman would have you believe, you are wrong, but even if you were right, that shouldn't reflect on the Criminal Court Judges. That association would be like deciding you hate Whataburger because you once got food poisoning at McDonald's.
2. The Rise in Violent Crime is a Nationwide Trend and Houston is no different than other major cities around the country. It would be comical if it weren't so sad that so many people tend to think that Houston is the only city in the country or world experiencing a rise in violent crime. The pandemic has led to joblessness, poverty, housing crisis for low-income families, depression, and desperation. These are the pillars of a rise in crime - violent and non-violent alike. The Republican Party of Harris County has done a spectacular job of somehow juxtaposing a worldwide epidemic with the local Democrats when it comes to blameshifting. Really, the job they have done has been quite stunning. I'm sure that you have all seen the signs in front yards that say "Tired of Crime? Vote Republican." As if there was no crime in the decades when Harris County was a solidly Republican county.
3. Misdemeanor charges are not usually predictors of future violence. One of the most eye-rolling things that I see on the news is when there is a murder arrest and they point out that the accused perpetrator was out on multiple misdemeanor (or even non-violent felony) bonds, as if the misdemeanor judges should have some Nostradamus-like wisdom about what a person with a theft charge is going to do if released upon society. I do acknowledge that misdemeanor Assault-Family Violence cases are an exception to this, but they are still misdemeanors. They can have all kinds of conditions that prohibit the Defendant from contacting the Complainant, but they aren't going to be held at No Bond. If Republican judges do end up sweeping, don't expect that to change.
4. Judges are not supposed to be an arm of the Prosecution. I have plenty of friends running for judge as Republicans this go-round and they all seem to have jumped on this bandwagon idea that the Republican Party is selling about judges being responsible for stopping crime. That makes for a strong and effective campaign message and all, but it is absolutely contrary to what a judge is supposed to do in his or her job description. Judges are there to call balls and strikes like an umpire in a baseball game. They aren't there to try to help push one side over the other. Any judicial candidate that is embracing the idea that it is their job to "stop crime" is basically casting aside their neutrality in advance, and that's troubling to those who like our judges fair and neutral.
5. The Republican Crime Message has absolutely been Effective. Although I absolutely disagree and detest the message being sent out that a rise in crime is somehow the fault of Democratic judges, there is no denying that the message has been an effective one. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg (who is noticeably not on the ballot this term) has spent thousands and thousands of dollars pumping money into CrimeStoppers so that her friend Andy Kahan could get out the message that a rise in crime isn't the fault of a weak D.A.'s Office, but the fault of judges. I mean, gosh, if even a Democrat like Kim Ogg is saying that other Democrats are not safe for Harris County, then it must be true, right? Mattress Mack is helping pay for commercials during every Astros playoff game and those commercials alternate between talking about how CrimeStopppers needs more money because Harris County is so unsafe and then accusing Lina Hidalgo of being a criminal.
The Republican message is out there loudly and effectively and the local Democratic Party's response has paled in comparison. The non-Presidential election years have historically been good for Republicans (with the exception of 2018 when the Beto vs. Cruz race brought the Dems to the polls in droves), and I expect that the margins will be far tighter this year. I honestly have no prediction on how this year will turn out. Nothing would surprise me.
Whatever your preferences are this election season, please make sure to vote. Make sure to tell your friends and family your thoughts on the Criminal Justice System and the candidates on the ballot. Tell them to get out there and vote, too.
11 comments:
Many good points Murray. Many of your points support why partisan politics should have no place in judicial races. Ideally, we should do away with the D and the R designation accompanying the respective candidates. But then voters would have to research each candidate to determine the most qualified. Unfortunately, the vast majority of voters aren’t willing or able to invest the considerable time it would take to be well versed on each candidate. There are good judges currently on the bench and others that need to be replaced.
As a former prosecutor for more than two decades, I know that the answer to reducing crime is not as simple as replacing all democrat judges with republicans. But in today’s immediate gratification/social media society, we want to believe in a quick and easy fix.
Another proposed “solution” that will definitely not solve our crime problem is hiring 1000 more constables. Quality over quantity. We need law enforcement to focus on violent crimes and crimes that affect the community’s heath and safety. Vice Divisions, Game Room Task Forces, and some of these Crime Reduction Units and Narcotics Divisions (to name a few) that spend inordinate amounts of time and resources with largely ineffective results. They should be retired or the personnel reassigned (assuming the personnel are capable of performing).
Let’s get back to the basics. Less niche units that aren’t effective at combating violent crime and scrap the notion of making Mark Herman the most powerful law enforcement officer in the county. God help us all.
There's lots of social science around the last crime drop in the 1990s and despite lots of ink being spilled lauding law enforcement for the crime collapse it's been pretty convincingly proven that the factors Murray suggests above (economics, in particular) along with the population size of the male cohort between 18-28 has much more to do with crime rate than Barney Fife. Why did we have a smaller cohort of males in 1994? Hmmm. What happened 20 years earlier? You want less crime 20 years from now? Codify Roe v. Wade and reduce the number of males that commit those sorts of crimes. If you can find it (it's out of print) Andrew Kamen's book on the New York crime drop goes into great demographic detail about these pretty simple facts.
“. . . reduce the number of males that commit those sorts of crimes.” Hitler had the same message in 1931: you just replaced “Jews” with “males.” Newman thinks the Republicans’ anti-crime campaign is winning the day for republicans. Maybe it’s Democrat messaging like “abortion fights crime” and “abortion fights inflation” that is winning the day for republicans?
The worst at their jobs award would go to the donkey and the elephant. Misinformation is the new normal in politics.
Comparing people who point out the unintended consequences of interference in family planning to Hitler is exactly why the GOP continues to lose reasonable voters and has to pack their coalition with fantasists motivated by fear and busybody politics.
One could argue that it wasn’t the pandemic, but the mismanagement of the pandemic at the local and federal levels that lead to all the problems we are seeing today. Whether it’s bad optics or illegal, Hildago has lost the respect and confidence of the majority of Houstonians, and it’s time for new leadership.
That’s a pretty partisan argument, Anon 2:07 pm. Either way, it shouldn’t reflect on the judges.
There may very well be a correlation between rising crime rates on more organic policies related to prosecution decisions, but in Harris County in particular it would seem near impossible to prove because you have to factor in the federally mandated bail reform
The rise in crime is because cops get in trouble for arresting criminals when too many of the criminals they arrest are black and brown. It's because liberals can't accept the truth that whites commit less crime.
Anon 1:20,
Congratulations, you’ve easily achieved a place in the Top Three dumbest comments ever posted on the blog. I’d send you an award, but I don’t know who you are. I guess it’s easier being racist when you are anonymous. Burn your cross elsewhere.
Murray, most people vote according the candidate's party affiliation, especially judicial elections given most of us never come in contact with a judge often enough to form an opinion. In the county judge race, Hidalgo has been her own worst enemy in terms of giving ammunition to her opponent. The refusal to debate, the tent city fiasco, the Elevated Strategies indictments, and spending huge amounts of money on expanding specialized services gave Mealer a lot to work with. Maybe you can share more details about why you as an insider believe the indictments to be bogus because as it stands, that whole mess stinks and all the usual characters have been beating that drum since before Mealer was a viable candidate.
I'll admit that it rubs me the wrong way when Hidalgo keeps focusing on her abortion stance or tries to tie Mealer to Trump rather than outline her own accomplishments. After all, what legal authority do county judges have regarding abortion and other than party affiliation, Mealer has never publicly jumped on the Trump wagon that I've seen, Hidalgo trying to blame Mealer for the two county commissioners not attending meetings is another questionable tactic. Of course adding a bunch of cops to the county payroll isn't high on my list of worthwhile expenditures unless all the other components are in place first to utilize all those extra boots.
Voters decide for themselves what is important to them though and more cops seems to be what they want, propelling Mealer from newcomer nobody status to actually leading in the polls. Her big money has only started coming in recently so it will prove interesting to see how it all pans out but I may skip this race altogether because neither of them suits me.
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