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Woodie Jones, a partner in Alexander Dubose Jones & Townsend in Austin
Shake-Up in the Judiciary
November 05, 2008
Lawyers in Harris County are waking up to what will be a very different courthouse come January. A surge of voters who packed the polls to vote for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., helped the Democrats in a near sweep of the more than 20 civil and criminal benches, tossing out some longtime Republican incumbents who've been judges for more than 20 years.
Only four GOP incumbents survived, including 190th District Judge Patricia Kerrigan, 333rd District Judge Tad Halbach (by a few hundred votes), 334th District Judge Sharon McCally and 351st District Judge Mark Ellis.
It would appear that Republican Pat Lykos, a Harris county senior district judge, bested Democrat solo C.O. Bradford by a narrow 5,000 vote margin in last night's election. But that's still a maybe at this point, according to both candidates. There are still 7,000 provisional ballots to be counted — those in which voters show up without voter registration cards, forcing the Harris County District Clerk's office to certify them — and that could turn the race. Bradford says the clerk's office is currently counting those ballots and will certify the election on Nov. 17.
In statewide races, all of the incumbents on Texas' all-Republican high courts easily held onto their jobs, including Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, and Justices Dale Wainwright and Phil Johnson. Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Tom Price also held off a strong challenge by Democrat Susan Strawn.
But the most fascinating races of the night came in the intermediate appellate court races in large urban counties on courts that were thought to be safe Republican seats.
Ken Law, the Republican chief justice of Austin's 3rd Court of Appeals who's been a lightning rod for criticism because of his management of the court, lost his seat to former 3rd Court Judge Woodie Jones, a Democrat.
Races for Houston's all-Republican 1st and 14th Courts of Appeals were decided by the thinnest of margins and resulted in a Democratic breaking through on the 1st Court for the first time in a decade. Democrat Jim Sharp defeated Republican Ed Hubbard for a spot on the 1st Court after Hubbard bumped off incumbent Sam Nuchia in the Republican primary. (Nuchia was a former Houston police chief; it's been a bad election cycle for former Houston police chiefs.)
Five other races for the 1st and 14th Courts were decided by 2 percentage points or less. For example, 1st Court Chief Justice Adele Hedges held onto her job by less than one percent of the vote — a mere 30,000 votes — of the 1.5 million cast in her election. Those are the kinds of election results that virtually guarantee a Democratic challenge to all of the Houston appellate judges in upcoming elections.
Three Republicans running for Dallas' 5th Court of Appeals had a wild ride as well. Although all three Republicans won, including incumbents David Bridges and Kerry Fitzgerald, both judges traded leads several times with their Democratic challengers during the election night before the final vote tally gave Bridges and Fitzgerald wins by two percent margins. Republican Mary Murphy, a state district judge in Dallas who was running for an open seat on the 5th Court, maintained a lead throughout the night and ended up winning the bench by 2 and half percentage points.
