DISTRICT ATTORNEY
Ogg grabs second term over Huffman.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg defeated Republican challenger Mary Nan Huffman Tuesday, capturing 54 percent of the vote with more than 90 percent of the countywide ballots reported.
Ogg maintained a steady lead over Huffman throughout the night, winning a majority of the votes cast on Election Day, according to unofficial results from the county clerk’s office.
Huffman had not conceded by late Tuesday evening. She said shewould release a statement the next morning.
Facing long odds in an increasingly blue Harris County, Huffman shaped her campaign around Houston’s rising crime rates, accusing Ogg of being too lenient on those accused of committing felonies. An attorney for the Houston Police Officers’ Union and former prosecutor, Huffman promised to seek higher bail amounts and stop giving “sweetheart” plea deals to defendants, blaming Ogg for crimes committed by repeat offenders out on bail.
Ogg, an opponent of Harris County’s misdemeanor bail reform settlement, has defended her approach, saying she tells prosecutors to pursue high bail for those accused of dangerous crimes. She also has touted her office’s indictments against the police officers involved in last year’s botched narcotics raid on Harding Street, questioning whether Huffman’s ties to the police union would prevent her from holding
police accountable.
A longtime prosecutor and former “gang czar” for Houston Mayor Bob Lanier in the 1990s, Ogg’s political career has followed Harris County’s dramatic political shift. She lost her first bid for district attorney in 2014, when Republicanswon the county by double digits, before winning on her second try in 2016, when Democrats decisively won Harris County.
During the latter election, Ogg promised to enact sweeping criminal justice reforms, and she took office along with a wave of other similarly minded prosecutors. She enacted a misdemeanor marijuana diversion program early in her first term and last year expanded a program intended to provide psychiatric help instead of jail time to low-level offenders with mental health illnesses.
Earlier this year, Ogg faced a spirited challenge in the Democratic primary from former prosecutors Audia Jones and Carvana Cloud, both ofwhom accused the incumbent of failing to enact the ambitious reforms she ran on. Ogg won the primary outright with 54 percent of the vote, despite losing support from progressive groups such as the Texas Organizing Project and Houston GLBT Political Caucus, both of which backed her in 2016.
Ogg has said she believes the criticism coming from law-and-order Republicans and liberal Democrats makes up a minority of residents’ views countywide.
“That push for criminal justice reform is coming primarily from the left, and I think that the primary election in March revealed that the mainstream of the Democratic Partywants public safety that includes criminal justice reform, but doesn’t exclude public safety,” Ogg said in late September.