Tarrant County comes through for statewide Republican judicial candidates

The statewide Republican judicial candidates are thankful that Tarrant County voters ruled in their favor.

Wallace Jefferson, Texas Supreme Court chief justice, and two of his colleagues on the court, as well as three GOP candidates for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, mostly got double-digit leads in Tarrant County.

But in Bexar, Dallas and Harris counties, the Democratic candidates had the decisive leads in their races.

Stephanie Klick, Tarrant County Republican Party chairwoman, said fears of seeing the statewide judicial candidates fall was why the party paid for television ads promoting their races in the final days of the campaign.

"You can’t win statewide office as a Republican without winning Tarrant County," Klick said. "We were aware that things were not looking good in Harris County. They had a little tsunami down there."

Democrats say Tarrant County may have helped save the statewide judicial candidates this time, but they shouldn’t count on it in the future. The Democratic Party poured some $800,000 into television ads for the Supreme Court races.

"While Republicans will argue that Tarrant County is still a stronghold, I would argue that it is clear that the effect of Dallas County and Harris County is spilling over into Tarrant County," said Hector Nieto, a spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party. "Voters are clearly tired of one-party rule."

Supreme leads

Jefferson was on the GOP ticket for the Supreme Court along with Justices Dale Wainwright and Phil Johnson. The Supreme Court is the state’s highest civil court.

With 99 percent of the votes counted, Jefferson won re-election statewide with 53 percent of the vote against Democrat Jim Jordan, a Dallas state district judge, with 44 percent, and Libertarian attorney Tom Oxford, with 3 percent.

In Tarrant County, Jefferson had a double-digit lead, getting 54 percent of the vote compared with Jordan’s 43 percent and Oxford’s 3 percent.

Meanwhile, in Dallas, Bexar and Harris counties, Jordan was the winning candidate. In Dallas County, Jordan had a 15-point lead, getting 56 percent of the vote to Jefferson’s 41 percent.

Sam Houston and Linda Reyna Yanez also held double-digit leads in Dallas County over Wainwright and Johnson, respectively, and they held slimmer leads in Harris and Bexar counties. But in Tarrant County, Wainwright had a 9-point lead over Houston, and Johnson came in 10 points ahead of Yanez.

In their races, the Libertarian candidates lagged far behind the Democrats and Republicans.

'Not a fluke’

The pattern was similar in the races for three seats on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Republican Judges Tom Price and Paul Womack had at least 10-point leads over Democratic opponents Susan Strawn and J.R. Molina in Tarrant County. But in Harris County, the Democrats held 4-point leads while building more substantial leads in Bexar and Dallas counties. Strawn beat Price by 17 points in Dallas County.

"I think it is a fair assumption that Democrats are continuing to make gains throughout the state. This is a clearly not a fluke, but a trend," Nieto said.