Inadvertent losses
Fed-up midterm straight-ticket voters ousted some really good public servants.
The perils of straight-ticket voting were on full display Tuesday in Harris County.
Longtime County Judge Ed Emmett, a moderate Republican who’s arguably the county’s most respected public official, was ousted by Lina Hidalgo, a 27-year-old graduate student running her first race. She is bright, determined and obviously fearless. She’s also got her work cut out for her as the chief executive-elect of a county more populous than 26 states. We hope she succeeds, but residents can be forgiven for being squeamish about how Hidalgo will lead the county and, by extension, the region’s 6 million people, through the next hurricane.
Over at the courthouse, State District Judge Marc Carter, a caring Republican jurist and former Army officer who pioneered a court that gave countless military veterans a second chance, was defeated by Democrat Frank Aguilar, who didn’t even appear to be running a formal campaign. We attempted to reach him for an endorsement screening but couldn’t find so much as a campaign website. In 2010, while working as a magistrate judge, Aguilar was placed on unpaid leave after being charged with assaulting a woman he was dating. He was later acquitted, but that doesn’t mean he’s somebody we should elevate to a state district judgeship.
Sure, plenty of the judges who got the boot had a swift kick coming. Among them is a slew of Republican criminal court-at-law judges who have demanded that the county waste millions in taxpayer money on private lawyers to defend their use of an unconstitutional bail system that discriminates against the poor. But among the defeated is Mike Fields, the only Republican judge who declined pricey legal counsel in the case.
Chief among the judges who got his comeuppance: Juvenile Court Judge John Phillips. For years, straight-ticket voting helped the ill-tempered Republican retain his bench, but this time, it cut the other way. Phillips once took away children from grandparents he deemed too old, and another time took away a newborn, still-nursing baby from a rape victim he deemed too young to help raise the child.
In 2014, Phillips’ Facebook page was mixed with posts encouraging people to vote straight-ticket Republican and other posts depicting undocumented immigrants as fat and lazy, disparaging Islam and linking President Barack Obama to terrorists.
Last month, the Chronicle’s Keri Blakinger reported how Phillips and another juvenile court judge who lost his bench, Glenn Devlin, sent a troubling number of teens, nearly all of color, to juvenile prison at younger ages and for less-serious offenses than their fellow judge down the hall, Mike Schneider.
Devlin seems to have responded to his loss with a judicial temper tantrum, recklessly releasing offenders en masse and simply asking them whether they planned on killing anyone before letting them go.
“Apparently he was saying that’s what voters wanted,” public defender Steven Halpert told Blakinger.
Unfortunately, Schneider — a dedicated judge with a reputation for fairness — was swept out of office as well.
This is the price we pay for the drive-thru convenience of straightticket voting. Of course, this year it wasn’t just about convenience. People were fed up. In Harris, a large urban county that leans Democratic, the frustration produced a blue wave locally. Voters said they wanted to voice their outrage about the president’s divisive policies and rhetoric by punishing any incumbent who dared run under the same banner. Nationally, that strategy helped the Democrats retake the U.S. House. Locally, our zeal to throw out the bums cost us some of our best servants — leaders who routinely do what’s right, leaders who put people before party.
On Tuesday, many voters put party before the leaders. That sends a message, too — and not an encouraging one to decent, qualified people who are thinking of getting involved in politics. They need to know a job well done will be rewarded, that their family’s sacrifice will be appreciated, that merit is still a currency in public service.
The good news is that straight-ticket voting will be banned in Texas as of the 2020 election. Hopefully, that will encourage more Texans to work their way through the ballot, selecting each candidate individually. Hopefully, it will encourage voters to do their homework. The Houston Chronicle editorial board will have our endorsements ready to help, just as we did this year.
The state and county have to do their part, too, by ensuring that the election process has enough locations, booths and workers to accommodate a burdensome ballot that can’t be completed with one click. Legislators should treat the end of straight-ticket voting as one step toward the elimination of judicial selection via partisan elections.
The historic turnout in the midterms was inspiring, but we can’t lose sight of the point of these elections. It’s not merely to win. It’s to pick good, capable people to be our voice in Austin, in Washington and over on county commissioner’s court.
We should choose our spokespeople carefully. Voting is a right. Voting well is our civic responsibility.
This is the price we pay for the drive-thru convenience of straight-ticket voting. Of course, this year it wasn’t just about convenience. People were fed up.