Kim Ogg
It’s time to start the interview series for the fall elections. As you know, I did interviews with various Democratic primary candidates earlier this year. As a rule, I’m not going to re-interview candidates that made it to the fall ballot, since in most cases there isn’t much ground to cover that wasn’t already discussed. The one exception to this rule is Kim Ogg, the Democratic candidate for District Attorney in Harris County. There has been a lot that has happened since March – the day I did this interview with her was the day she was making her charges public about DA Devon Anderson’s handling of the Ryan Chandler case – so this was a chance to catch up on those items. I don’t think Ogg needs much of an intro at this point, but you can go read what I wrote for her primary interview if you need to. Here’s the latest version:
I will have more interviews in the coming weeks.
Ogg continually refers to the DA as the highest law enforcement official in the county. Maybe she thinks she is running for the position of Sheriff or maybe she is stretching the definition beyond where most go with it.
That she thinks she is going to bully all the police agencies to do things her way and assume her priorities is a curious notion too. That she believes making trace cases or pot cases is going to put officers right back on the streets and “save three hours” forgets that those agencies are still going to require their officers to write a report, tag evidence, and establish ID on people without any; the bringing a physical body to jail is typically the shortest part of the process. It may well save the DA’s office some time if they streamline the process but it is not going to save anyone else much. Thinking these minimal savings in time will magically alter how any of the agencies will then be freed up to pursue cartels, burglars, or rapes just shows a lack of understanding from someone who claims to have been such a policy making insider.
There are other issues, like the way she kept hinting at helping minorities more (“especially minorities…”), hiring yellow journalists to dig up anything to exaggerate as “dirt”, taking credit for national trends in crime reduction (based on demographics, nothing she did), the weakness of her transparency claims, and the like but I still believe my comments from January apply regarding how she has been a failed candidate so many times while employed for the people, how her daddy got her the positions she was in (born of privilege), and how little she actually did in any of them for all those years make her a lesser qualified candidate than Anderson.
“I’m getting the impression that Ogg’s primary strength as a candidate for some is that she’s running as a democrat. She spent her obligatory 6+ years in the DA’s office after law school, her record modest as a prosecutor, before being appointed to head the city’s anti-gang task force courtesy of her father’s political ties. No one asked can come up with a single thing she did in this role at the city other than collect a paycheck, no policy changes or other actions tied to her that made a difference. She then bailed to work as the head of Crime Stoppers, continuing the same policies that had been established before her reign and little changing afterwards as well. Over the years since school in the late 80′s, she has run for political office repeatedly and lost every single time; each of her jobs after the DA’s office best suited as having limited actual duties to allow her to run for elected offices.
I’ve met her a number of times over the years and she seems like a nice woman but the more I listened to her interview, the more I thought she was out of her league. Street level cops directed to leave alone end drug users in favor of targeting cartels and high level criminal activity, aside from the fact that the DA doesn’t direct ANY local law enforcement agencies or their policies, is a fantasy straight out of Hollywood. Blanket policies like trace cases (either accepting all of them or none of them) is a cop out, by all means change state law if you don’t like it but use the tools the legislature supplies you as needed.
All of her discussion regarding shifting arrests again raises the issue that the DA does not control law enforcement priorities (the cities and county do that), she does this repeatedly during her interview. Her discussion about integrity and trust is problematic thanks to some of the cases she prosecuted (Joshua raises one such case), just as the way she claims she was a prosecutor before DNA testing was available is half true; she was there at the advent of local DNA testing when establishing better priorities and forcing agencies to test if a case needed it could have been accomplished (rather than allow the city to build up thousands of untested rape kits, for example). That she also claims, toward the end of the interview, that she should get our votes because she has been a public servant almost her entire adult life was a bit weird too, understandable at this juncture primarily because she needs to beat Lloyd before trying a real candidate with superior credentials.”
of course charles kuffner wont ask kim ogg about the state of texas vs wilton earl bethany,this was the case where kim ogg took the 17 year old to a trial by judge =not jury using perjuried testimony by her =star=witness,kim ogg admits it,she used the chain of custody of the crimes weapon by using the perjuried affidavit on the stand agianst the teen bethany=the kid wasnt even the evil doer=kim prosecuted him under the “law of parties”=i personally begged kim ogg to write to the governor in 1997 2001 2007 to ask for the young man to be paroled=she refused everytime=to date the young man is still in prison=even though hes been up for parole since 2005,the facts are =kim ogg lied to convict a young teen in 1991=i was there,i was 16 years old and she passed the witness, when i was on the stand=ill never forget the look in kim oggs eyes=she knew by the look on her face,that the public would one day know about her actions to my friend.i will vote for devon anderson and i would ask all my friends to do the same…joshua ben bullard the state of texas vs wilton earl bethany……
Joshua, I saw that local crank “Big Jolly” was still smarting from the beating his preferred candidate (Pat Lykos) took so he is of course encouraging people to discard all the problems Ogg has to favor her. Ogg has all sorts of problems with her past and you can bet that at least a few of them will come out closer to voting time but Anderson is likely a shoe in given the magic “R” beside her name. If Anderson doesn’t win the election by a substantial number of votes it will be a miracle, not just because she is truly better qualified for the position or for winning every(?) election she has ever run for (the opposite of Ogg by the way).
And despite Ogg going negative in this campaign, Anderson has left all sorts of dirt on her opponent alone, not even playing the “partner” card like many of her peers would have done by now.