Ugh.
Cynthia Bailey
The date of Houston’s stalled city council District B runoff is again in question after the third-place finisher in the race moved forward with an appeal of a court order earlier this month that the runoff go on without her.
The runoff, currently scheduled for May 2, could be delayed if a ruling is not final by March 9. The election was pulled from the Dec. 14 ballot, when a dozen other city runoffs were decided, because of the litigation.
Lawyers for Renee Jefferson-Smith previously indicated they had not decided whether to pursue an appeal of Visiting Judge Grant Dorfman’s ruling that the runoff between the top two vote-getters in the November election, Tarsha Jackson and Cynthia Bailey, should go forward.
On Thursday, however, Jefferson-Smith’s legal team filed what is called a docketing statement with the appeals court, indicating they were moving forward.
“We will request that the Court stay the City of Houston Election for City Council Member for District B pending appeal pursuant to” the Texas Election Code, the filing said. It listed a lawyer not previously involved in the case, Dorsey Carson, Jr., as lead attorney.
[…]
Jackson said she thinks Jefferson-Smith and her backers are just trying to delay the election at this point, and she called on leaders to do something to stop the delays.
“This appeal is not fair to the people of District B, it’s not fair to me and the other 12 candidates who ran to represent District B,” she said.
See here for the previous update. I suppose leaders could try to pressure Renee Jefferson-Smith into dropping the appeal, but you’d think if that might have worked she wouldn’t have filed it in the first place. At this point, a fast ruling from the court is the best bet. What a freaking mess this has been.
The visiting judge is well aware that the petitioner R J smith would not have an adequate remedy on final appeal in lieu of this Fact grant Dorfman orders an election and removes the petitioner from the election contest ,Judge Dorfmans ruling is incorrect ,Seeing no others from the election that did not file as interveners in the case Judge Dorfman should have ordered the election to be inclusive of RJ Smith because he chose to remove Smith from the ordered election contest She is entitled by statue to seek judicial review of Dorfmans order and his order must be stayed Because the law gives great weight to the fact that she would not have adequate remedy on a final appeal . Effectively *****R J Smith and all parties should agree to ad her to the run off and bring the court case to a close***** – Remember that all parties could agree to ad her and make her appeal Moot .( Thus known as out of court settlement)