Callanen unfairly targeted by Jones campaign
Jacque Callanen is biased.
That is to say Callanen, the elections administrator for Bexar County, harbors a clear bias in favor of voting. She can barely contain her enthusiasm when local voters turn out in big numbers — or her disappointment when those turnout numbers fall below expectations.
If Callanen has any other biases, they haven’t been apparent in her 23 years serving in the county elections office, the last 13 as elections administrator. During that time, she has been a model for how to maintain fairness in a job that is a perpetual hot seat.
Nonetheless, over the past week, the campaign of congressional hopeful Gina Ortiz Jones, and a group of prominent local Democrats who support her, have stained Callanen’s reputation in a quest to flip a congressional seat that is probably out of reach.
The back story is that Jones currently stands a little more than 1,000 votes behind Congressional
District 23 Republican incumbent Will Hurd in an election that drew more than 200,000 voters.
The day after the election, the Texas Democratic Party filed an open records request with all 29 counties in the sprawling congressional district, seeking names and contact information for anyone who submitted provisional, mail-in, military or overseas ballots.
The Jones campaign wanted a chance to contact provisional voters to make sure they knew about the Nov. 13 deadline to cure their ballots.
Callanen declined to respond to the open records request, correctly citing the Texas Administrative Code, which states that provisional ballot lists are not public information until after a county’s early voting ballot board has fully reviewed the provisional ballots and “Provisional Ballot Affidavit Envelopes and the List of Provisional Voters have been returned to the General Custodian of Election Records.”
That law emerged from a 2014 election in which Williamson County turned over its provisional voter list before completing its ballot review and provisional voters allegedly were besieged with phone calls from campaign operatives.
So Callanen, under great political pressure, complied with the law.
On Sunday, however, seven former and current Democratic elected officials — including Joaquin and Julián Castro, José Menéndez and Trey Martinez Fischer — signed on to a letter accusing Callanen of making “misleading and problematic statements” and stating that their only interest was in making sure every eligible voter “has the unfettered opportunity to cast their ballot.”
In fact, the provisional ballot process already offers that opportunity. What these elected officials wanted to protect was not the right of people to vote, or even the right of voters to cure their ballots, but the right of politicos to call up those provisional voters and push them to get their ballots fixed.
The attacks on Callanen grew stronger this week with a court filing from the Jones campaign, seeking a temporary restraining order (ultimately denied by District Court Judge Stephani Walsh) that would force Callanen to turn over contact info for provisional voters.
Jones’ motion also alleged that Callanen’s handling of the situation “put in serious doubt her ability to effectively perform her duties and comply with state law.” This is shameful stuff. Jones put everything she had into this race, and it’s perfectly understandable that she wants to make sure every single vote gets counted. But there was no need to sully the reputation of one of Bexar County’s most dedicated public servants.
“It’s not fair to attack an elections official who’s following the law,” said Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos, whose office administers elections in this state. “Jacque is one of the best elections officials in the nation. She doesn’t deserve this.”
We’ve been down this road before.
In 2010, when the city — not the county — started repairing the parking lot at the Claude Black Center during early voting, a group calling itself the Bexar County Voting Rights Coalition alleged East Side voter suppression from Callanen’s office.
That same week, the San Antonio Observer depicted Callanen as a member of the Ku Klux Klan on its cover. Her great sin? Her elections office had not yet purchased space in the Observer for an advertisement listing election day polling sites (although that very issue of the tabloid included an elections office ad with early voting info).
Callanen helped this county transition from paper ballots to touchscreen machines. She did her best to smooth the implementation of a controversial state voter ID law that she never asked for.
In 2014, she and her staff canceled their Christmas plans when then-Gov. Rick Perry called for a state Senate and House special election right after the holidays — the eighth election Callanen’s office handled that year.
Jones and her Democratic backers have every reason to be frustrated by the results in District 23. But they have no excuse for directing that frustration at Callanen.