This whole situation is so unfortunate, and more than a little infuriating.
Cynthia Bailey
The two candidates who qualified for a stalled runoff in Houston City Council’s District B joined hands in unity on the steps of City Hall Friday, condemning the lawsuit filed by the third-place finisher that led officials to remove the race from the Dec. 14 ballot.
“We want to vote! We want to vote!” Tarsha Jackson and Cynthia Bailey chanted with about 40 others from the Texas Organizing Project, which has endorsed Jackson in the race and advocated for Bailey to remain on the ballot.
The candidates at the center of the contested election have taken the dispute from the courtroom to the community as they wait for legal proceedings to resume.
“I’m not going to throw a rock and hide,” Renee Jefferson-Smith, who narrowly missed the runoff and filed the lawsuit, said Thursday night at a meeting of the Acres Homes Super Neighborhood Council.
“It makes no sense to have a candidate on the ballot (if) her votes do not count,” Jefferson-Smith said. “If (Bailey) were to win in the runoff, she would not be able to take the seat. That’s what the law says. I didn’t write it, but that’s unfair.”
[…]
Jefferson-Smith initially asked a state district court judge to declare Bailey ineligible. When Judge Dedra Davis denied that request last Friday, Jefferson-Smith’s attorney filed three additional motions: an appeal of the ruling, a “mandamus” appeal seeking to replace Bailey with Jefferson-Smith on the runoff ballot, and a separate lawsuit contesting the election results.
The First Court of Appeals denied the mandamus appeal early Friday, but the ruling did not affect Jefferson-Smith’s motion contesting the election. That lawsuit triggered a portion of state law that county officials said forced them to put off the race until the suit is resolved.
Bailey’s attorney hailed the denial of the appeal as a second court victory in the saga, while Jefferson-Smith’s lawyers said it was expected after the county postponed the runoff.
See here, here, and here for the background. I have no idea what the courts will do, and I have no idea how long it may take them to do it. If we’re very lucky, we may get this race on the ballot in January, at the same time as the HD148 runoff. If not, well, who knows how long this may take.
Jefferson-Smith has said she didn’t pursue the lawsuits out of any animus toward Bailey, but the law wouldn’t allow her to take the seat, which she thinks is a disservice to voters. Her lawyers have cited a case in Galveston from 2006, in which a candidate was elected to city council despite a well-known felony conviction and then was removed from office.
“It makes no sense to have a candidate on the ballot (if) her votes do not count,” Jefferson-Smith said at a neighborhood meeting earlier this week. “If (Bailey) were to win in the runoff, she would not be able to take the seat. That’s what the law says. I didn’t write it, but that’s unfair.”
[…]
[State Rep. Jarvis] Johnson, a former District B councilman himself, said he would file a bill in the next legislative session to clarify the state law at the center of the litigation.
“The fact is if you have the right to vote, then that means you should have the right to run for office,” Johnson said.
The simplest scenario is we get the runoff, maybe on January 28 and maybe later, we get a winner and that person takes office and we’re done. We could get a runoff at some point, and after a Bailey victory another lawsuit is filed that removes her from office, in which case a whole new election has to be held. We could get what amounts to a do-over in B, in which Bailey is declared ineligible to be on the ballot but the judge refuses to declare that this means Jefferson-Smith gets to replace her so we start over. I have a hard time imagining a judge booting Bailey and putting Jefferson-Smith on the ballot in her place, but this whole thing is so crazy I hesitate to insist that anything is impossible. I applaud Rep. Johnson for pursuing a legislative fix for this mess, but since we all know the right answer is to allow full rights to felons who complete their sentences and we also know that Republicans will not support that bill, I don’t expect anything to get fixed. I don’t know what else to say.
This is some internecine stuff. Such a shame. Who advised Jefferson-Smith on this? Comes off as a sore loser (putting it nicely).
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