Primary Conclusions -- On to the General Election

The Democratic Primary

The Democratic primary turned out well.

Linda Yanez was more experienced than Susan Criss, and I am not surprised that Yanez won the nomination to face Phil Johnson in fall.

Likewise, Sam Houston was the better qualified candidate as compared to Baltasar Cruz, and it reflects well on the Democratic electorate that they chose Houston to face Dale Wainwright in the fall.

The Coming General Election

Johnson versus Yanez

Challenger Linda Yanez versus incumbent Phil Johnson presents Texas voters with a clear choice. Yanez is a progressive Democrat, and Johnson is a moderate Republican. Leaving aside party affiliation, only one of those two candidates has the word "moderate" ascribed to them. I like Johnson in this race because he has been conservative, but not outrageously conservative. While there have been ethical questions raised about more than half of the Justices on the Texas Supreme Court, Johnson has remained above the fray.

Houston versus Wainwright

Houston ought to win this one. In contrast to Johnson, Wainwright is one of the most ethically challenged on the Texas Supreme Court:

Justice Wainwright paid a total of $12,400 to rent a Houston office during his 2002 Supreme Court campaign. The month after he won that race, Justice-Elect Wainwright paid a deposit to a luxury apartment development in Austin: Gables at Town Lake. Wainwright paid Gables a total of $6,983 in political funds for utilities, deposit and rent from December 2002 through August 2003. During this period Wainwright also used political funds to pay $604 in utility bills to the City of Austin. Wainwright then appears to have moved to a more permanent Austin residence in August 2003.30.... Justice Wainwright’s payments to Gables at Town Lake appear to be clear violations of Texas Election Code provisions that prohibit a candidate or officeholder from converting a political contribution to a “personal use.” Lawmakers who ordinarily reside outside Travis County are the only state officials legally permitted to spend political funds on residential costs, according to a 1984 Ethics Advisory Opinion. A 1993 Ethics Advisory Opinion directly tackled the issue of whether or not appeals judges can legally spend political funds on housing. That opinion concluded that, “An appellate judge may not use political contributions to pay the expenses of maintaining a residence in the city in which the court sits.”

Jordan versus Jefferson

I am still evaluating this race, and am not ready to endorse yet.

I Endorse Sam Houston in the Democratic Primary

Having read the Dallas Morning News endorsement of Sam Houston, I also endorse Sam Houston:

We...'re comfortable recommending Houston attorney Sam Houston, whose law partnership and background in business-related legal affairs equips him for the types of cases that dominate the Supreme Court's docket.

Meanwhile, his opponent, Dallas attorney Baltasar D. Cruz, displays a shocking penchant for verbosity. If he were to win a judicial seat, we worry that his difficulty keeping statements brief and focused would threaten to overwhelm a court already facing a significant backlog.

Where Mr. Cruz expounds at convoluted length to seemingly simple questions, Mr. Houston responds with clarity, thoughtfulness and brevity.

Mr. Houston also has an impressive list of high-profile endorsements, and his campaign war chest – $111,650 vs. Mr. Cruz's $2,500 – shows he is prepared for a statewide race.

Our opinion of Mr. Cruz hasn't changed from when he ran in a 2006 county election. His opponent, we felt, was unacceptable. After getting acquainted with Mr. Cruz, we decided neither deserved a recommendation.

This race boils down to judgment and judicial temperament. Mr. Houston has it, and Mr. Cruz clearly lacks it.

Here is more hilarity from Cruz:

Virtually every aspect of modern American life has been improved by the Democratic Party over the opposition of the Republican Party. The civil rights laws of the 1960s (including specifically the prohibitions on discrimination in providing public accommodations and services, the Fair Housing Act, and the Voting Rights Act), child labor laws, the creation of labor unions, collective bargaining, the minimum wage, the forty hour work week, extending the right to vote to women, Social Security, Medicare, the Department of Agriculture (including the Federal food inspection program), the Pure Food and Drug Act, OSHA, rural electrification, federal aid to education, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Open Records Act are all examples of Democratic initiatives passed over Republican opposition. The Republican Party's shameful opposition to civil rights for African Americans alone is inexcusable. In addition, every Republican President since Ronald Reagan has shown contempt for the laws of the United States, international treaties, and the Constitution of the United States and created and/or exacerbated serious domestic and international crises. Reagan's illegal sales of arms to Iran (in violation of the Arms Export Control Act), illegal arming of Iraq (as reported in Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq by Alan Friedman) illegal funding of the contras in Nicaragua (in violation of the Boland II Amendment), illegal mining of Managua harbor (a terrorist act which caused millions of dollars of damage to international shipping), support of governments employing death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala, deregulation of the Savings and Loan industry, massive irresponsible tax cuts which resulted in record deficits (exceeded only by Bush I and then Bush II) while hypocritically making unemployment benefits taxable, sharing of military intelligence with Saddam Hussein (including satellite photographs of the region and actual building of a satellite downloading station for Saddam Hussein in Baghdad so that he could directly download our satellite pictures of the region and camouflage his scud missile launchers so that we could not find them when we subsequently went to war with Iraq), reckless teacher in space publicity stunt, tragic military excursion to Lebanon, and subversion of this country's environmental laws by appointing coal mining and oil company lobbyists and executives to enforce our environmental laws and revise our environmental regulations, failure to timely address the AIDS epidemic, sales of national forests to lumber companies, approval of ketchup as a vegetable in school lunches, commemoration of dead Nazi soldiers and SS officers by laying a wreath at Bitburg Cemetery in Germany, attempt to give tax breaks to private religious institutions with racist policies such as Bob Jones University (which at the time prohibited interracial dating), and policy of refusing to timely investigate complaints to the EEOC before limitations periods on discrimination claims elapsed, are but a few examples of Republican policies and initiatives which I still find personally offensive and have reinforced my identification with the Democratic Party. The Bush administration's ill-conceived Iraq policy, which I condemned in a letter published by the Dallas Morning News on February 16, 2003, which violates the legal principles established in the Nuremberg War Crimes Indictment (by conspiring to wage a war of aggression in violation of international treaties and international law and actually planning and waging a war of aggression in violation of international treaties and international law), bombing of civilian neighborhoods in Iraq in violation of international law, subversion of the Open Records Act, violation of international treaties prohibiting torture, employment of secret prisons in violation of international law and international treaties, widespread program of illegal searches without warrants, illegal international kidnaping and rendition operations, policy of undermining U.S. environmental laws (as described in Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.), failure to fund Superfund, passage of a bankruptcy bill which benefits credit card companies and harms consumers, treasonous revelation of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, destruction of government records, and misuse of the Department of Justice to pursue a political agenda rather than enforce laws against discrimination and other legitimate activities, which have been defended and supported by the Republican Party, as well as the Republican Party's repeated widespread efforts to suppress the African American vote and intimidate African Americans from voting, have further reinforced my dim opinion of, and prevent me from associating myself with, the Republican Party while reinforcing my identification with the Democratic Party.

Comments Posted by Baltasar D. Cruz @ 8:13 PM Sat, Feb 02, 2008

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was sponsored by Democrats Hubert Humphrey (D-MN) and Mike Mansfield (D-NY) after John F. Kennedy gave a speech (on June 11, 1963) in which he called for legislation "giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public — hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments," as well as "greater protection for the right to vote." After Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson renewed the effort to get this legislation passed, over the opposition of 1964 Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and future Republican Presidents George. H. W. Bush, who consistently voted against civil rights legislation, and Ronald Reagan (who repeatedly campaigned against civil rights legislation). As a result of this and other landmark civil rights legislation introduced and sponsored by Northern Democrats and signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, the South turned Republican. Although many Northern Republicans voted for the civil rights laws passed in the 1960s, these would not have been introduced without the support of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, over the opposition of the likes of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. Republican hero Reagan also was outspoken in his opposition to the Fair Housing Act during his campaign for governor of California in 1966 and declared that: "If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house he has a right to do so." Years later, Reagan campaigned in the South for the Republican presidential nomination on an anti-integration platform in 1976 and 1980 and chose Philadelphia, Mississippi (where civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were famously murdered in 1964 and only Federal convictions ensued after all-white juries acquitted the murderers under state law) to give one of his first general campaign speeches in 1980, condemning the Federal Government's encroachment on "state's rights!" As President, Ronald Reagan actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (which he had previously characterized as "humiliating to the South") and even vetoed bills to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation and to impose sanctions on South Africa's apartheid regime (both vetoes were overridden thanks to the leadership of Congressional Democrats)! In addition, Republican efforts to suppress the black vote by spreading flyers with false information in black neighborhoods and making intimidating telephone calls to African American voters seem to recur every election cycle in many parts of the United States. In short, the Republican record on civil rights is disgraceful.

Ethics Shmethics: The Texas Supreme Court

Texas Supreme Court judges Nathan Hecht, Paul Green, and David Medina all have serious ethical problems which should result in their ousting at the ballot box. But none of those judges are on the ballot.

Susan Criss is on the ballot, however, and her problems run much deeper. Here is an article that appeared in a Washington DC newspaper:

"A good example is the hundreds of thousands of dollars plaintiffs' lawyers are stuffing into the campaign coffers of Galveston District Judge Susan Criss, who is running for the Texas Supreme Court. The bulk of Criss' campaign contributions come from plaintiffs' lawyers who have business before her court, namely personal injury lawsuits against BP stemming from a 2005 refinery explosion. Draw your own conclusions."

Here is a similar complaint from a South East Texas newspaper:

"We only can speculate why a horde of plaintiff's lawyers with cases currently pending before Criss, who is running for Texas' Supreme Court, felt compelled to stuff tens of thousands of dollars into her campaign.

But thanks to the wonders of electronic campaign finance disclosure and the Internet, we now know that it is so. Voters can draw their own conclusions.

At issue is what Criss does when she isn't on the campaign trail. In her day job seated on the District Court in Galveston, currently she is presiding over hundreds of potentially lucrative personal injury lawsuits against oil giant BP stemming from the 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery.

Of the more than $260,000 Criss reported raised for the campaign in the last six months of 2007, almost all came from South Texas plaintiff's lawyers. Many of them are the same ones who have been aggressively courting and cultivating those BP cases assigned to her Galveston court.

Among Judge Criss' most loyal supporters are BP-focused plaintiff's outfits including Williams Kherker ($25,000), Burwell Burwell & Nebout ($10,750), the Krist Law Firm ($10,000), Bailey Perrin Bailey ($7,500), and the Alexander Law Firm ($5,000).

All of the above have filed more than a few cases against the company. If we believe their marketing rhetoric, they remain on the hunt for Texas City plaintiffs.

Here's the rub: more than any other member of the Texas bench, Judge Criss' management of her BP cases promises to have a serious impact on the eventual 'value' of all BP explosion lawsuits against the company."

A virtual spokesman for the Criss Campaign has also outlined Linda Yanez's use of campaign funds to pay for meals for campaign volunteers. This has been documented, and it is an ethical issue (or at least a judgment issue).

It is simply inaccurate to imply that Republican judicial candidates have ethical problems while the Democratic candidates do not. No one has alleged any scandal about Phil Johnson, who is a Republican but a fair minded judge.

A Judge, Not a Politician

Here is a statement from Justice Phil Johnson about his judicial philosophy:

As a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, I consider it my duty to the people of Texas, and to those who have gone before us, to interpret laws, not make them.

My commitment to the law comes from over 20 years of private practice, 6 years as a Justice and Chief Justice of the 7th District Court of Appeals in Amarillo, and my service on the Texas Supreme Court since 2005. While serving on the Court of Appeals, I considered and helped dispose of over 2,400 appeals and authored over 600 opinions.

I will strictly interpret and apply the law as written, regardless of personal views or the parties involved.

If you agree that judges should not legislate from the bench, I hope that I can count on your help in the campaign and your vote in 2008.

Susan Criss and Linda Yanez Stiff Media

Criss has been reversed for violating the press's First Amendment right to report the shenanigans going on in Criss' kangaroo court:

The Texas Constitution affirmatively grants the rights to freedom of speech and of the press: “Every person shall be at liberty to speak, write or publish his opinions on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that privilege . . . .” Tex. Const. art. I, §8. … Similarly, article I, section 8, provides that “no law shall ever be passed curtailing the liberty of speech or of the press.” Tex. Const. art. I, § 8. … Government-imposed secrecy denies the free flow of information and ideas not only to the press but also to the public. … The trial court restricted the discharged jurors’ right to speak to “the press, media, or others,” because it concluded that the additional, incremental publicity would cause imminent and irreparable harm to the judicial process by making it even more difficult to empanel a jury. … Further, the trial court’s conclusion that voir dire would be inconvenient does not satisfy the Davenport standard. … The trial court was not concerned about the media harassing the jurors. There exists no concern about protecting the secrecy of juror deliberations because the trial ended before the conclusion of the plaintiffs’ case, without any jury deliberations. We conclude that the gag order in this case is unconstitutional under article I, section 8 of the Texas Constitution.

Now it appears that Criss campaign mouthpiece Vince Liebowitz at CapitolAnnex makes the excellent point that Linda Yanez has also failed to show the proper respect for the media's blogger cousins:

Yes, there are political websites that do paid content. But they aren’t blogs, and Yanez should know better than to say that they are. It is nothing more than a not-so-thinly-veiled attempt to paint the Blogosphere as a bunch of paid political hacks.

Liebowitz knows what he's talking about because he often runs long word-for-word excerpts from Criss campaign press releases with Liebowitz's "bloguritation" being published at the same moment those press releases are released as paid campaign advertisements elsewhere. It is no wonder Liebowitz gets "inside" scoop from the Criss campaign.

Sounds like neither Criss nor Yanez loves the media as much as they should!

Vote to re-elect Phil Johnson to the Texas Supreme Court.

Mid-January Campaign Finance Reports

The campaign finance reports are out in this race and they are interesting.

Appeals Court Justice Linda Yanez is reporting $78,289.38.

Trial court judge Susan Criss is reporting $260.057.

Supreme Court Justice Phil Johnson is reporting $122,260.79.

Interestingly, both Yanez and Criss are getting flack.

Over at the Criss campaign's first choice for leaking dirt to the blog-o-sphere, there is an excellent report that Yanez is spending too much money on food for campaign meetings:

I was taking a random look-see at campaign finance reports after being struck down with some pretty bad bronchial symptoms yesterday, and came across Linda Yanez’s finance reports for her tenure on the 13th Court of Appeals.

One thing that struck me was that Yanez seems to eat out a lot. A whole lot. Between 2001 and 2005, Yanez spent campaign funds–over $11,000 worth–on meals. The Olive Garden, Logan’s, Luby’s, and Blue Shell in McAllen seemed to be favorites–as was the Cornerstone Grill in her hometown of Edinburg.

On the other hand, Criss's problem isn't where she spending the campaign cash but who she's soliciting it from. Criss is reporting $317,000, but is getting some flack about how much of that cash is from lawyers with BP cases and other business currently pending in her court.

Since Criss has invited skeptics to "take another look at her finances," I did.

If you leave aside the lawyers supporting Criss and the in-kind contributions from the Democratic Party, Criss is reporting only $12,601.57.

If you exclude contributions from unions which Criss's father is associated with, the Criss's fund-raising figure drops to $8,471.51.

The fact that so much of Criss's campaign cash comes from lawyers is not, by itself, worrisome because it is lawyers, after all, who know the judicial candidates best (in fact, most of Justice Johnson's money is from lawyers and I suspect the same is true of Yanez).

What is alarming is the percentage of Criss's contributions from lawyers with big cases in Criss's court:

For example, Ernest Cannon just settled the most recent BP case where Criss was the judge, and Cannon gave Criss $5,000.

The Alexander law firm has a number of BP cases as a result of running ads to gather up those cases, gave another $5,000.

Rob Ammons is another lawyer with many BP cases currently before Criss, and he and his firm gave Criss $5,250.

Alton Todd's law firm brags about its BP cases in the firm website, and he and his firm gave Criss $5,750.

James Nebout's firm website brags about having over 85 BP cases, and he and his firm have Criss $10,750.

Brent Coon settled the only other BP case that has been tried so far, and he has 100 other BP cases, and his law firm gave Criss another $1,000.

Ron Krist, who made headlines when Criss let him flip from representing BP plaintiffs to representing BP in her court, gave Criss another $10,000.

The Provost Umphrey firm's website brags about its BP cases, and the firm and its lawyers gave Criss $15,500.

But most alarmingly, John Eddie Williams, who has has a whole website devoted to BP litigation where he brags about having 150 BP cases, gave Criss a whopping $25,700.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Here is a nice editorial wrap up of Criss's BP-gate find-raising scandal:

Criss' campaign cash

Maybe they like the way Galveston District Judge Susan Criss has ruled on their lawsuits? Or they hope they will benefit from her decisions, sometime in the near future?

We only can speculate why a horde of plaintiff's lawyers with cases currently pending before Criss, who is running for Texas' Supreme Court, felt compelled to stuff tens of thousands of dollars into her campaign.

But thanks to the wonders of electronic campaign finance disclosure and the Internet, we now know that it is so. Voters can draw their own conclusions.

At issue is what Criss does when she isn't on the campaign trail. In her day job seated on the District Court in Galveston, currently she is presiding over hundreds of potentially lucrative personal injury lawsuits against oil giant BP stemming from the 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery.

Of the more than $260,000 Criss reported raised for the campaign in the last six months of 2007, almost all came from South Texas plaintiff's lawyers. Many of them are the same ones who have been aggressively courting and cultivating those BP cases assigned to her Galveston court.

Among Judge Criss' most loyal supporters are BP-focused plaintiff's outfits including Williams Kherker ($25,000), Burwell Burwell & Nebout ($10,750), the Krist Law Firm ($10,000), Bailey Perrin Bailey ($7,500), and the Alexander Law Firm ($5,000).

All of the above have filed more than a few cases against the company. If we believe their marketing rhetoric, they remain on the hunt for Texas City plaintiffs.

Here's the rub: more than any other member of the Texas bench, Judge Criss' management of her BP cases promises to have a serious impact on the eventual "value" of all BP explosion lawsuits against the company.

Susan Criss's Latest Constitutional Violation

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Judge Susan Criss has a history of disrespecting the Bill of Rights.

Her latest violation of the US Constitution involves a serious breach of the First Amendment.

Deservedly, Criss has received a boatload of bad press over this most recent violation of the US Constitution.

As the Houston Chronicle explained the situation, Criss "told the panel and four female alternates that they could speak to her and the lawyers involved in the cases that settled, but not to media and others, such as plaintiffs' lawyers with separate pending lawsuits against BP."

The Daily News of Galveston was more candid:

Freedom to speak has court appeal, by Heber Taylor

Texas’ First Court of Appeals recently overturned a gag order prohibiting jurors from speaking to the press.... The order was issued by State District Judge Susan Criss in a case involving the explosions at BP’s Texas City plant in March 2005. About 4,000 people filed suit....

The Daily News, through its attorney, Charles Daughtry, contested the order on principle.... The Daily News ... was not interested in talking to every juror in every case before the court. However, we think all citizens — not just newspaper reporters — have that right.

The appellate court agreed.

The Constitution says that, while people can be held responsible for what they say and write, they can’t be prevented from speaking and writing. The government cannot, in other words, exercise prior restraint.... Jurors do not have to talk to reporters or to ordinary citizens. But they have the right to do so, if they wish. And ordinary citizens, including reporters, have the right to try to talk to them.

That’s the way it should be — even in cases as extraordinary as those filed in the Texas City tragedy.

The Southeast Texas Record had the most biting criticism of Criss's violation of the US Constitution:

Judge Criss, meet the First Amendment

The people have a right to know what happens in their courts.

That's, in essence, what the Texas First Court of Appeals said in slapping down Galveston District Judge Susan Criss, who in September tried to silence-until-further-notice jurors who served in her courtroom.

They made up a rare panel that heard arguments in the only civil trial thus far over the 2005 explosion at BP's Texas City refinery.... What did they think of the plaintiff claims? Was BP's defense credible? Was Judge Criss fair? ... In ordering the dismissed jurors not to talk with friends, family or media about what they had experienced, Criss wasn't about to give our reporters or anyone else the opportunity to ask.

In short, she wasn't about to give the public a chance to judge our justice system's performance for itself. That's until further notice, or when Judge Criss personally decided the world was safe to hear the jurors' unvarnished reflections.

Thankfully, lawyers from the Hearst-owned Houston Chronicle took Criss to task for her abuse of power and a higher court agreed, ordering her gag order lifted....

To the contrary, our justice system works best when it's out in the open for all to see. Only lawyers-- and power-hungry judges-- benefit when it's cloaked in darkness.