We’re up to four now.
Lt. Jeff Stauber confirmed Thursday he is running for Harris County sheriff.
“It’s the job that I always wanted. There’s no doubt that I could lead this agency,” Stauber said.
Now a lieutenant assigned to the court division, Stauber, 52, has been with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office since 1986.“I’m not a career politician. I’m a cop,” he said.
[…]
Stauber said an “outsider” to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office would have a steep learning curve.
“It’s almost like they are a fish out of water. I know how the Sheriff’s Office works. I’ve done everything,” he said.
He spent more than a decade patrolling the streets of Harris County – both as a deputy and sergeant – along with tours of duty as an investigator and at the jail.
If elected, Stauber, a Democrat, said he would transfer licensed deputies from “underwater basket-weaving positions.”
“There is too much fluff in different areas. I want to get back to the basics,” Stauber said. “We need more people on the streets.”
As we know, outgoing CM Ed Gonzalez announced his entry a couple of days ago. According to the HCDP primary filings page, two other candidates – Jerome Moore and Theodore “Ted” Perez – have also gotten in. This makes me a little nervous, since as we have seen from the various At Large Council races, having more candidates does not lead to better results, especially in races where most of the candidates are not well-known. Gonzalez has a bit of an edge here, but one City Council district is tiny compared to all of Harris County. Gonzalez got 9,388 votes running unopposed in 2009. That’s barely more than half the number of votes that Delores Jones got when she ran against then-Sheriff Adrian Garcia in the sleepy 2012 primary (go to page 20 to see Sheriff results). Assuming both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders remain active on the ballot next year, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more votes than that to at least ensure getting into a runoff.
Stauber would be an acceptable candidate to me if it came to that, but I can find nothing on either Jerome Moore or Ted Perez in Google. The last thing we need here is an accident. The serious contenders in this race – Gonzalez (who had $20,290 on his July finance report) for sure, Stauber maybe – need to raise enough money to make sure the voters know who they are and that they’re running. Otherwise, it’s a crapshoot, and crap is what we may get. I’m sounding this alarm now because there’s no time to waste – Early Voting for the 2016 primaries begins February 16, 2016, which is barely more than two months from now. We have an excellent chance to take the Sheriff’s office back, as long as we don’t screw up and accidentally nominate a zero. Let’s make sure we get this right.