For more than 15 years, attempts by Democratic candidates to run for trial court benches in Dallas County have been futile missions reserved only for optimists and neophytes. Democrats began losing their seats on trial benches in the 1980s and they all but conceded trial court elections to Republicans in the 1990s as the GOP gained every single countywide elected position. The Republican hold on the county has been considered so strong that Democrats have only bothered to put one or two countywide judicial candidates on the general election ballot in recent years.
But political analysts and politically active lawyers believe the Nov. 5, 2002, general election may be historic for one reason � a Democrat could actually win a Dallas trial court bench for the first time in more than a decade.
The changing demographics in urban Dallas County favor Democrats making this year ripe for a change, analysts say. They point to the fact that 27,000 more Democrats voted in Dallas County during the March 12 primary elections that Republicans.
And active and highly visible statewide races at the top of the ballot � including popular former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk who’s running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat � may bring out weary Democratic voters like never before. Even Republicans say it’s possible that a strong Democrat could break the countywide bench this year.
One thing is for certain. Democrats are making noticeable moves for Dallas benches, running 24 candidates for 52 available county benches. It’s not exactly a full-court press. But even some Republicans believe the days of uncontested general elections for judges are over in Dallas.
“Because Democrats have not been successful for so long it’s been: ‘Why bother?’ ” says David Finn, a former Republican Dallas County criminal court judge. “ But ‘why bother?’ has turned into ‘why not?’ “
Finn, who was part of a 1998 trend where Republican challengers took on incumbent judges in the GOP primary, says the battle has finally expanded to the general election. And it’s unlikely to stop � especially if a Democratic judicial candidate is successful in 2002.
“Nobody wants to put their head into a buzz saw,” Finn says of Democrats’ renewed attempts for the bench. “But if there is a change in the political demographics, more people are going to step up.”
STEPPING UP
Two Democrats who’ve stepped up and have better than average shots at Dallas benches, according to several political observers, are Patrick Strauss and Dan Patterson.
Both men chose to run for open seats, both have comparable legal experience to that of their opponents and both are life-long Democrats.
“It may be better to be a Democrat this year than a Republican,” says Strauss, who’s running for the 160th District civil bench, and whose father, Olin B. “Gus” Strauss is a Democrat and judge of Jourdanton’s 81st District Court in South Texas.
Strauss and candidates like him saw a chink in the Republican armor as President George W. Bush carried 52 percent of the vote in Dallas County in 2000, a county in which he lived before being elected Texas governor in 1994 and was expected to win handily.
Strauss is a corporate lawyer and partner in Dallas’ Hallett & Perrin, whose downtown big-firm connection has netted his campaign coffers about $100,000 � the most of any of his fellow Democratic judicial candidates. Strauss believes if he wins, other candidates like him will follow. And quality candidates are important for the trial bench when the county’s political demographics are in flux, he says.
“If demographics trend Democrat and we select some qualified candidates like Patrick Strauss, that should be a blessing for both Democrats and Republicans,” Strauss says. “The downtown establishment should be happy with me. I’m very comfortable, really, in any situation. The long and short of it is if it does trend Democratic, we’re going to be thankful that we do have good qualified candidates on the bench.”
Joe Cox, a Republican appointed by Gov. Rick Perry in August to the 160th District Court after David Godbey was nominated to the U.S. District Court bench in Dallas, says he knows being elected to the bench as a Republican won’t be the cinch it’s been in previous elections.
“People said, ‘Oh, you’re a Republican, you’re going to win.’ But that’s not absolutely so,” Cox says. “I’m going to have to work hard and I will.”
Cox, who also has raised about $100,000 for his campaign, says his r�sum� and his opponent’s r�sum� are similar. Both were Dallas big-firm litigators � Cox was at Hughes & Luce until his appointment and Strauss was with Haynes and Boone until 1992. Both went to the University of Texas School of Law and both were endorsed as “qualified” by Dallas’ nonpartisan Committee for a Qualified Judiciary.
“But there are some differences,” says Cox, who stresses in his campaign that he has a stronger record of donating time to providing legal services to the poor. “And the difficult part is getting the voter to see those differences.”
Patterson, like Strauss, chose to run for a seat that did not have an elected incumbent. He faces Neil Pask, chief of the misdemeanor division of the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, for the Dallas County Criminal Court No. 2 bench.
Patterson, a Dallas criminal-defense solo, says the timing was right for him to run for judge.
“I’ve been a prosecutor for six years and I’ve been a criminal defense lawyer for 6 years,” says Patterson, who says he’s been a Democrat ever since the first grade when he cast a straw poll vote for Lyndon B. Johnson for president. “And it’s a pretty good time to make a run.”
Patterson, like many Dallas Democrats, was encouraged by Dallas solo Mary Ann Huey, who was the only Democrat who ran for a civil trial bench two years ago and came within one half of a percentage point of beating incumbent Republican Bill Rhea for the 162nd District bench in the 2000 general election.
“I thought well, OK, it’s a viable thing,” says Patterson of his decision to run. “And I wasn’t going to switch parties to do it.”
Like the Strauss-Cox race, there has been little rancor in the race between Pask and Patterson, Pask says. There is mutual respect between the candidates as Pask had once supervised Patterson in the Dallas DA’s office.
Pask believes the races for criminal courts will be won by traditional campaigning rather than party affiliation.
“I think it’s a big unknown as to how the voters will fall this time around,” Pask says.
Campaign money is thin for the criminal court races, Pask says. Because traditionally large donors such as big civil law firms are not as interested in criminal court races, criminal court candidates generally rely on smaller donations from criminal-defense attorneys, friends and party loyalists. Patterson says he’s raised about $20,000 while Pask says he’s raised about $8,000.
“Judicial candidates on the criminal side will not rely on a lot of campaign donations,” Pask says. “You have to rely on yard signs and door-to-door campaigning to get you through the election.”
Huey, who moved to Florida two years ago after her narrow defeat, says she’s flattered that her campaign has inspired other Democrats to run for the bench.
“Had I known that nobody gave me a chance, I might have reconsidered running,” says Huey, who now works as an associate in Coconut Grove’s Coffey & Wright. “I realized later that it was such a shock because the campaign was seen as hopeless. But not in my mind.”
Ken Molberg, a Dallas employment lawyer and member of the Texas Democratic State Executive Committee, began recruiting lawyers to run for trial court benches a year ago. This time, he didn’t have much trouble finding willing candidates. Some came to him, others he asked to run.
“People would hear things and pop up and we’d encourage them. I don’t want to I.D. the ones I recruited,” Molberg says. “But, you know, I talked to a number of them before they ever filed.”
Huey’s performance in the 2000 election was one of the main reasons Democrats stepped forward this year, Molberg says.
“It really sparked a lot of attention. And keep in mind these people who are on the ticket are serious people first and foremost,” Molberg says.
“We weren’t going to load up the ballot with anybody and everybody that we could find,” Molberg says. “We wanted credible experienced people and that’s what we’ve got.”
The Democratic slate of judicial candidates contains a few good people, according to one prominent politically active Dallas attorney. But several of them are unknown quantities with much less experience and credibility in the legal community than their Republican opponents, according to the attorney, who does not want to be identified.
“I think it’s a mixed bag,” the attorney says of the Democratic judicial slate. “And that’s being charitable.”
BREAKING THROUGH
Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, believes it won’t be long before Dallas County is a two-party county, much like Bexar County where Democrats and Republicans share the county’s benches.
The Hispanic population in Dallas County has grown by 90 percent over the past decade. Jillson says. And Hispanics have been traditional Democratic voters, even though Republicans have tried to make inroads with them in recent years.
“I think that the Democrats will break through in a race or two,” Jillson says of the Dallas judicial races. “And once one breaks through, they’ll realize that voters are ready. That’s what the Republicans are worried about � if the dike breaks a real flood might follow.”
Rob Allyn, a Dallas Republican political consultant, believes a strong Democratic candidate can win a judgeship in Dallas, but it’s unlikely the party will make any significant gains.
“This is the most engaged general election that we’ve had in Dallas County in 20 years. But the truth is the numbers have been close for a long time,” Allyn says. “But we as Republicans have been winning this closely divided county for years.”
Allyn believes Democrats have gained by subtraction in Dallas County. As traditional Republican voters have moved out of the county to nearby suburbs, the Democratic voters have grown at a faster rate than Republican voters.
Republicans must reach out to Dallas’ growing Hispanic population if they are to survive, Allyn says. “The future of the Republican Party in Dallas is written in Spanish,” Allyn says.
Regardless, Allyn doesn’t expect Democrats to make a strong showing in the courthouse races. Voters like to think of the Republicans as the “law and order” party � a belief that transcends political lines, he says.
“When it comes to the judiciary, they like Republicans,” Allyn says of Dallas voters. “If you were choosing a nurse or a kindergarten teacher, you’d choose a Democrat. But for a judge or a cop or a general, you want a Republican.”
