Author Topic: Houston voters threw out the bums, and the best, too [Editorial]  (Read 670 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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Houston voters threw out the bums, and the best, too [Editorial]
« on: November 08, 2018, 12:32:52 pm »
Houston Chronicle 11/7/2018

The perils of straight-ticket voting were on full display Tuesday in Harris County.

Longtime County Judge Ed Emmett, a moderate Republican who’s arguably the county’s most respected public official, was ousted by Lina Hidalgo, a 27-year-old graduate student running her first race. She is bright, determined and obviously fearless. She’s also got her work cut out for her as the chief executive-elect of a county more populous than 26 states. We hope she succeed,s but residents can be forgiven for being squeamish about how Hidalgo will lead the county and, by extension, the region’s 6 million people, through the next hurricane.

Over at the courthouse, State District Judge Marc Carter, a caring Republican jurist and former Army officer who pioneered a court that gave countless military veterans a second chance, was defeated by Democrat Frank Aguilar, who didn’t even appear to be running a formal campaign. We attempted to reach him for an endorsement screening but couldn’t find so much as a campaign website. In 2010, while working as a magistrate judge, Aguilar was placed on unpaid leave after being charged with assaulting a woman he was dating. He was later acquitted, but that doesn’t mean he’s somebody we should elevate to a state district judgeship.

Sure, plenty of the judges who got the boot had a swift kick coming. Among them is a slew of Republican criminal court-at-law judges who have demanded that the county waste millions in taxpayer money on private lawyers to defend their use of an unconstitutional bail system that discriminates against the poor. But among the defeated is Mike Fields, the only Republican judge who declined pricey legal counsel in the case.

Chief among the judges who got his comeuppance: Juvenile Court Judge John Phillips. For years, straight-ticket voting helped the ill-tempered Republican retain his bench, but this time, it cut the other way. Phillips once took away children from grandparents he deemed too old, and another time took away a newborn, still-nursing baby from a rape victim he deemed too young to help raise the child. In 2014, Phillips’ Facebook page was mixed with posts encouraging people to vote straight-ticket Republican and other posts depicting undocumented immigrants as fat and lazy, disparaging Islam and linking President Barack Obama to terrorists. Last month, the Chronicle’s Keri Blakinger reported how Phillips and another juvenile court judge who lost his bench, Glenn Devlin, sent a troubling number of teens, nearly all of color, to juvenile prison at younger ages and for less-serious offenses than their fellow judge down the hall, Mike Schneider.

More: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Houston-voters-threw-out-the-bums-and-the-best-13372899.php

Offline IsailedawayfromFR

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Re: Houston voters threw out the bums, and the best, too [Editorial]
« Reply #1 on: November 08, 2018, 02:08:46 pm »
I saw that John Culberson lost his congressional seat as well.

50 years it has been in GOP hands.

He was a squishy RINO when I lived a decade in his district, and was surprised he made it each year.

Need a true conservative running so perhaps the path has now been cleared for 2020.
No punishment, in my opinion, is too great, for the man who can build his greatness upon his country's ruin~  George Washington

Offline Night Hides Not

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Re: Houston voters threw out the bums, and the best, too [Editorial]
« Reply #2 on: November 08, 2018, 02:27:15 pm »
It was a bloodbath in North Texas. My rep Matt Rinaldi, was soundly defeated in the Beto Wave.

We had the only Ted Cruz sign up for several blocks.

Makes me glad Amazon isn't coming here, bringing more libs with them. Purely political move for them, NY & VA will bleed them dry in taxes.
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

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