The 2020 primary elections are over in Texas, and that is great news for those who need to tune out for a while to retain their sanity before November.
This blog is a long time coming and should have been started about judges in Harris County long ago, because, let's face it, there were a lot of shitty Republican Judges in Harris County back before Beto's nearly successful Senate run dealt a death blow to nearly all the local Republicans who had been running the show in Harris County for years. Which explains why straight ticket voting is now being eliminated. Austin was just fine with that as long as it helped Republicans, but now that it hurts them here in the last big County in Texas to go blue, eliminating straight ticket voting will probably curb the democratic tide a little, so they think.
But voters hate it because it makes them have to think and because thinking is going to make the lines long in November.
That being said, I want to point out some losers from last night who I'm not sorry to say are going to be leaving us in January.
First up, the 80th District Court. Because the general election in County level races in November will likely go to the Democratic candidates, democratic candidates winning their primary are likely to win in November. The judge of the 80th District Court is Larry Weiman, an old white man with a law degree and roots from New England. Running against him was Jeralynn Manor, a black gal who is from closer to home in Louisiana and got her law degree here in Houston at TSU- Thurgood Marshall School of Law, an historically black college. Judge Weiman's past experience and learning is certainly more impressive than his opponent's, almost certainly broader and deeper. But this is more than offset by the fact that the man never shuts the fuck up. He. Never. Shuts. The. Fuck. Up. He probably has no idea how tiresome his never-ending rabbit trails become to counsel and parties in his Courtroom, because they're obviously too scared to tell him and his staff must be too. Because he is definitely one of the hardest working judges in the courthouse, he will probably find his loss a surprise. But his overemphasis of jury trials and his lack of timeliness when it comes to desk work hurt him and drew a primary challenger. Let's hope she will grow into the position and bring back balance and efficiency to the 80th, not a one man's crusade to meet every voter in the County through the jury system.
Next, we have the 333rd District Court. I think this Court is cursed by one bad judge succeeding another. Tad Halbach was the last Republican Judge in this Court. I voted against him when the voters threw him out in 2016 but Darryl Moore turned out to have inherited the same problems, so I talk about them together. Number one is that both men lack patience and have an elevated view of themselves. They're obviously the smartest men in the room, and the conversation between the two attorneys and the bench amounts to nothing more than a pissing contest between the judge and the attorneys to see who's smarter. Halbach was lazy when it came to making rulings in a timely fashion, and careless of how he affected the lives of the people who came before him. As funny little coda, after Halbach lost the election he started marketing himself for mediation services as a "retired judge." This is obviously false, but I never suspected him for being a man of character. But he knew the law.
When it comes to understanding the law and its nuances, Moore is inferior to his predecessor. He bluntly attacks legal problems with his few critical tools. He poses silly questions as simple yes or no propositions, and when the attorney explains his more nuanced position Moore rudely interrupts the attorney with accusations of dodging his obtuse questions. This Judge Judy style doesn't belong in District Court in Texas, but at least Judge Judy is fast. Moore lets things drag on too long and his courtroom stays packed late into the morning because of it. Let's hope the completely unknown primary winner Brittanye Morris makes a good judge in the future, but it's doubtful given she's only been out of law school five years. That's not enough time to learn what you need to know to be a trial judge in District Court and it's not even enough time to completely prepare your brain defenses against all the crazy-ass ways opposing counsel tries to get in your head when you're a baby lawyer. Imagine her lack of experience in front of two seasoned bullshitters and she's going to be hard pressed to make the right decision. Best of luck anyway.
It's a weird day when a bunch of old white men are going to be running around the courthouse having to kiss ass to a bunch of young black women who are fast becoming the the majority demographic on the downtown courthouse bench. The serendipity of Harris County recently turning blue has really brought out some opportunists. While I don't mind qualified candidates winning benches, I'm starting to think that at this point in Harris County politics, the more wrongly spelled or African sounding your name is, the better chance you got.
And speaking of old white dudes, on the Republican I thought we might see Russ Ridgway being ousted from his bench as Justice of the Peace, Precinct 5, Place 1 by challenger Mike Wolfe. In a prior version of this post, I thought this happened but I did write this on election night. Unfortunately, both have the disadvantage of not being lawyers, and the public has the disadvantage of suffering through their legal ignorance. In a large county, you should have to be a lawyer to be justice of the peace. From the perspective of real professionals, it seems odd to maintain respect for individuals who are unqualified for the offices they hold. But the respect is for the office, not the man.
Russ Ridgway manages his docket very poorly. He puts his eviction docket early in the morning and his too careful examination of every detail of each case extends long into other civil and criminal dockets throughout the day, so cases are often called in scattershot fashion. Some of his staff is extremely rude. The plump mexican lady can be kinda iffy, but the bailiff is the worst. He yells at you for the stupidest reasons and disturbs the whole court doing it and the judge does nothing to correct him. Anyway, Judge Ridgway is an affable guy who makes fair rulings, but he really drops by the ball by not controlling his staff's rudeness and by allowing people to talk too long in Court. This is one of my pet peeves. Stop treating every pro se like a baby, stop letting them tell their life story. Get to the facts, shut up them up when they go off into irrelevant bullshit, make a ruling and move on. I only wish the one lawyer in this primary race, Adrianna Higginbotham, would have won.
We will post in the future about more judges in Harris and surrounding Counties. As we gather more information on how these judges are doing, we can help voters make some real informed choices about their civil court judges in Harris County. Let's face it, unless you're spending time in the trenches with these judges, you're not going to know; and the most of the information out there about these people is useless because its either campaign propaganda, or impossible to scroll through because the endless ads on your local newspaper's website keep moving your fucking text.
