There’s a new slate of endorsements from the Chron up, all for Criminal District Court races. More Republicans, mostly incumbents, were endorsed than Dems, but in many cases it was close. Of interest to me was the first appearance of one-star candidates, reflecting the Chron’s new star rating system. One of the one star candidates is a Republican, and one is a Democratic, who was also the focus of a sidebar editorial about the perils of voting a straight ticket.
There are two ways to look at this. One is as that editorial says, that as long as we elect judges via a partisan political process, we ought to take the time to at least know who the standout candidates are and do our best to elect and retain the best of them, regardless of the party label. The other is that the only way to change the Republican Party as it now stands is to give it an epic, all-encompassing beatdown at the polls, and if a cost of that is the loss of a couple of good judges, well, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I’m not going to suggest a path for you – you’re all a bunch of intelligent and discerning individuals – but this is the real choice as I see it.
While I believe the Chronicle endorsement might have a small impact on races like CD7 and HD 134 I highly doubt they will hve more than a marginal impact on the judicial races unless it is incredibly close. More likely Dems sweep all the countywide races with the exception of Ed Emmett.
The most telling thing in that editorial is that whenever both candidates are decent, they don’t actually disagree on anything. Partisan elections for trial judges is the height of stupidity.