Rochelle Garza
Civil rights lawyer Lee Merritt suspended his campaign for the Democratic nomination for Texas attorney general on Thursday, clearing the way for top vote-getter Rochelle Garza to face Joe Jaworski in a May runoff election.
More than a week after election day, Merritt, who was less than 4,000 votes behind Jaworski for second place, conceded that he had failed to garner enough votes to make the runoff and endorsed Garza.
“She has demonstrated that she can run a campaign that can energize our base, that reflects the diversity of our party,” Merritt said in a press conference in Houston. “She and I had a conversation yesterday about my plans to join her on the campaign trail to encourage young progressive voters to get engaged in the process.”
Merritt said he was still within a “razor thin margin” of Jaworski but wanted to help consolidate support for Garza so she could focus on winning the general election in November.
“When I got into the race, Rochelle Garza wasn’t in it,” he said. “She represents a young, progressive, forward-thinking advocate that I wouldn’t have joined the race if I thought she was in it. So even if we were to come out ahead, I would encourage the parties to get behind Rochelle Garza and focus on actually flipping that office.”
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In a statement on Thursday, Jaworski said he enjoyed a cordial relationship with Merritt on the campaign trail and wished him well in his law practice.
“I’m looking forward to a robust runoff campaign with Ms. Garza, so that Texas voters can choose the best candidate to defeat Ken Paxton in November,” he said.
In a statement after Merritt’s concession, Garza touted the endorsements from two of her primary opponents — last week, fourth-place finisher Mike Fields also asked his fellow candidates to forgo a runoff and allow Garza to focus on the general election — and made a pitch to Merritt’s supporters.
“To Mr. Merritt’s supporters, I am committed to continuing to fight for our civil rights and to earn your support in this runoff election,” she said. “People of color are the majority of the population of our state, and I look forward to working together with Mr. Merritt to ensure we have representation at the state level and do the hard work of turning out the vote in Texas.”
See here for the background. Both Garza and Jaworski are terrific candidates and either would deserve to be elected in a landslide this fall. As I said before, the advantage to their being a runoff instead of a concession from Jaworski is that this race and these candidates will continue to be in the news, rather than it being all Paxton-Bush. Jaworski has been an okay fundraiser so far, now it’s Garza’s turn to show she can do that, too. Vote for who you like in May, and then support the hell out of the winner.
The story of course notes the absentee ballot tabulation screwup in Harris County and the fact that it left this race in a bit of limbo. The gap between Jaworski and Merritt was indeed thin, but Jaworski’s drew far more support than Merritt in the initial count of absentee ballots in Harris County, and anyone could have surmised that the odds greatly favored him maintaining his overall lead as the other ballots were added into the count. And yet…
Prior to the revelation about the missing ballots, Jaworski and civil rights attorney Lee Merritt had been separated by about 1,400 votes. But with the new Harris County totals, Jaworski picked up about 2,600 votes, and Merritt gained just under 1,000 — not enough to close the gap.
Yes, well it would be difficult for Merritt to close the gap when Jaworski was increasing his lead due to getting way more votes from these ballots. I know math is hard, but it’s pretty simple to just say “the gap grew larger” or “Merritt fell further behind” or some other thing that expressed this basic fact. Good grief.