Marilyn Burgess
The other contested executive office that we will explore this week is Harris County District Clerk. This office was briefly held by a Democrat following a special election in 2008, but otherwise had been in Republican hands since the 1990’s, along with the other non-Presidential year offices. In 2018 it was won by Democrat Marilyn Burgess, who has had the challenge of revamping jury service during the pandemic. The District Clerk handles all of the filings from 90 courts in Harris County, but most people know it for handling the process of summoning and organizing jurors for the county’s courts. Burgess has overseen projects to do jury summonses electronically, with automated reminders, and has added vouchers for parking, coffee, and meals to the experience. She has other plans in mind as well, which we discussed in the interview. I should note that I did not do interviews for District Clerk in 2018 – it was just too busy a year – so this is the first time I’ve talked to District Clerk candidates since 2014. Here you go:
As with the judicial Q&A’s, more information about Democratic primary candidates, including links to the interviews and judicial Q&As, can be found on Erik Manning’s spreadsheet. I will periodically round up the links to these posts as well.