331st District judge defeated by attorney

Before her 2-1 victory in the primary race against longtime 331st District Judge David Crain, defense attorney Chantal Eldridge faced a David and Goliath-proportion battle, according to her campaign treasurer, Leslie Boykin.

Crain, who did not respond to requests for comment, has run the 331st District felony court since 2010. His campaign raised more than $40,000, almost 20 times more than Eldridge, and he snagged four times more endorsements, including that of the Austin Bar Association.

Two days into early voting, the American-Statesman published a story detailing a 2006 Austin police investigation into an accusation by a 16-year-old foreign exchange student that she had sex with him while he was staying in her home, which resulted in no charges and which Eldridge has denied. The report was based on police records obtained by the Statesman that indicated that the student’s return to Brazil was one of the reasons the charge was dropped.

And yet, as Boykin pointed out, even within about a week of the accusation surfacing, early voting results released Tuesday night showed Eldridge was still beating Crain with about 68 percent of the vote.

That number only rose Tuesday when she ended Election Night with about 69 percent of the vote. With no Republican opponent, Eldridge had clinched the seat.

Eldridge declined an interview request and referred the Statesman to Boykin, who said voters blamed Crain’s camp for trying to smear her.

“No one believed that about her, and people that didn’t even know her were angry at Judge Crain for playing things that way,” Boykin said. “She’s very glad that the voters of Travis County listened to the issues and not the uncorroborated, unsubstantiated attacks.”

Eldridge ran during an election cycle marked by a record number of women running for Congress and a record number winning their primaries or advancing to runoffs. Boykin said she also thought that energy factored into Eldridge’s success.