Houston Grassroots Democratic Voter Guide for the May 2024 Elections (Part 2)
What’s on the ballot in Harris County on Tuesday, May 28, 2024?
So first of all, Houstonians vote a lot. In May of 2024, we’ll vote in TWO elections (May 4th AND May 28th), something a friend of mine has dubbed the Harris County Hustle.
If you are curious to see who I recommended for the recent May 4th Elections, check out Part 1 of this guide. All of my picks for positions in Harris County won. School board races were more mixed.
Endorsement Summary for the May 28th Harris County Election
486th Criminal District Court: Gemayel Haynes
Senate District 15: Molly Cook
House District 146: Lauren Ashley Simmons
Harris County Constable, Precinct 5: Jerry Rodriguez
House District 139: 🤷🏻♂️
Tax Assessor-Collector: Annette Ramirez
Important Dates for the May 28th, 2024 Houston Area Elections
DEADLINE TO REGISTER: April 29th (already passed)
EARLY VOTING: Monday, May 20th, through Friday, May 24th (7 a.m. – 7 p.m. Monday through Friday)
DEADLINE FOR MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION: April 23rd (already passed)
ELECTION DAY: Tuesday, May 28th (7 a.m. – 7 p.m).
Important Resources for the May 4th, 2024 Houston Area Elections
Government Pages
Community Perspectives
Harris County Hustle- Still getting situated, but this project from Andrea Greer exists so that people know that there are two elections in May in Harris County. Spread the word so people vote twice and do the Harris County (Vote) Hustle!
What’s on the Ballot?
The May 28th Harris County Democratic Party runoffs will feature races for the the 486th District Court, State Senate District 15, State House Districts 139 and 146, Justice for the 14th Court of Appeals (Place 3), Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector, and Harris County Constable Precinct 5.
Why are we having runoffs?
If no candidate receives 50% of the vote in county elections, the top two candidates in a given race face off in a runoff at a later date. May 28th is the later date for candidate races that took place in March of this year.
The winners of the runoffs face the Republican challengers in the county general election in November of this year on the ballot with federal races such as the presidential election.
Endorsements
486th Criminal Court - Gemayel Haynes
The 486th Judicial District Court is probably the most overlooked race in the Harris County Democratic Primary.
As many Harris County Democratic primary voters can attest, the party has unified behind the need for a changing of the guard at the Harris County District Attorney’s office. The DA, Kim Ogg, was defeated by a 3-1 margin. However, Ogg’s chief of staff Vivian King is still running for judge.
Chief of staff is not just a day job that you do alongside your political career. It’s a political job that transcends bureaucratic work. In other words, the buck of the Ogg Administration stopped with Kim Ogg, but Vivian King’s job was to hold a corner of the buck when it stopped.
And Vivian King now holds a fair share of bucks. The Ogg-King Administration paid Texas GOP general counsel Rachel Hooper $174K to investigate County Judge Lina Hidalgo; Hooper even wrote grand jury questions for Commissioner Jack Cagle.
The administration likely let Jared Woodfill off the hook for possible fraud charges even as Woodfill was embroiled in an ongoing scandal for bringing young men to work out of his law partner Paul Pressler’s home despite allegations against Pressler for abusing young men as part of the Southern Baptist Convention scandal.
The Ogg-King Administration completely lied about misdemeanor bail reform, not only reversing its position after taking office but also falsely blaming the policy for crime spikes with bunk data and false conclusions.
The administration has weaponized their office to attack political opposition under a legal double standard, and even attacked local bureaucrats, including a doctor for handing out COVID vaccines that were set to expire.
Mismanagement runs rampant; after running off voices of reason for years一including Tom Berg, Lauren Byrne, and the person who eventually defeated Ogg, Sean Teare一chaos and incompetence reign, resulting in policies such as a broken intake system that holds people who never should have been arrested, jeopardizing the safety of everyone involved.
Ogg even recently brought in Ken Paxton to investigate staffers of County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the latest chapter in the Ogg-King administration’s yearslong funding and policy fight with the overwhelming majority of the local Democratic Party.
And yet Vivian King is still her Chief of Staff.
King has made her own mistakes, too. Last year, she was blasted as “not credible” by a high court judge for her behavior as a defense attorney prior to joining the DA’s office. King had promised to file a petition for appeal on behalf of a client, then ghosted him for 18 months before finally responding that she had meant to say she would not file it, blaming her mistake on a typo.
Said the high court judge, who went far beyond the requirements of the ruling to comment on King’s behavior:
“While the errors that occurred in this case are particularly egregious, and are hopefully rare among attorneys across the state, this case serves as yet another reminder for all appellate attorneys of the effect of failing to stay on top of their responsibilities.”
Early in King’s tenure as Ogg’s Chief of Staff, King also assisted a private organization (Crimestoppers) facing a county audit in her official capacity with the District Attorney’s office after the organization stonewalled an investigation into its finances. Worse, King actually sat on their board at the time of the audit.
Crimestoppers has taken a well-documented partisan turn in recent years. Its CEO spreads false information about judges at Republican clubs. Her husband donated $20K to Greg Abbott. DA Kim Ogg raised $500,000 for the organization through civil asset forfeiture funds.
The organization has had financial trouble ever since purchasing a $10 million HQ (its current CEO was at the helm at the time), and its financial receipts and fundraising decisions since then are revealing. In 2015, they borrowed $5 million.
Then, per the NY Times:
“In 2017, the year the first loan payments came due, Mr. Abbott awarded the nonprofit a $4 million grant from a criminal-justice fund overseen by his office, according to state records. It made up 70 percent of Crime Stoppers’ total revenue for the year, according to the group’s I.R.S. filings.
Despite the size of that grant, the governor’s office did not issue a news release about it, a spokeswoman said. Crime Stoppers’ annual report that year listed only one monetary donation over $1 million. The donor was “anonymous,” a designation the governor’s office said it did not seek for its grant. Crime Stoppers said it did not try “to hide the gift.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Abbott said he supported the grant because he and Crime Stoppers share “the same commitment to prioritizing public safety.”
Texas’ education agency later paid $2 million to Crime Stoppers after a 2018 recommendation from Mr. Abbott, who suggested that the Houston organization expand its school safety program.
Including Mr. Abbott’s grant and the education agency’s funding, the state supplied about 43 percent of the nonprofit’s revenue from 2017 to 2020 — up from less than 1 percent in the previous four years, records show.”
Crimestoppers ads ran consistently during the 2022 World Series broadcasts, suspiciously placed between media spots taken out by Republican County Judge candidate Alex Mealer assailing Lina Hidalgo and her staff, a transparent attempt at electoral assassination. Both groups of ads featured Mattress Mac as a method of crystallizing the attack.
Also per the piece in the Times:
“On one recent “Breaking Bond” video, the hosts reported that four of the Democratic judges they had highlighted had lost their primaries.
“Wow, I guess people really are paying attention,” Mr. Kahan said.
“Yes, thank you so much,” said Randy Wallace, the Fox reporter, pointing at the audience. “I mean, people are starting to make a difference.””
All of this took place with Vivian King running Defeated DA Kim Ogg’s office.
Gemayel Haynes comes to the bench with a great track record as an attorney. He has been lauded for his character by experienced prosecutors such as Berg and Byrne, and has been a public defender, a prosecutor, and a criminal defense attorney. He knows the law and would follow it on the bench.
You can tell by how he talks about his work that he is passionate about the need to be fair to everyone in the courtroom. Gemayel spoke at a forum about how he was selected as the jury foreman, and what a surprise it was to be picked because attorneys so rarely are chosen. He wanted to participate as a jurist, but was also honored to be trusted by his peers to be the foreman. When the trial was concluded, he said the verdict and sentence did not surprise anyone in the courtroom.
Haynes comes from a union family that moved to Houston after much of their life was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Everything about how he acts and thinks says that he would make a great judge.
He is one of the hardest working candidates on the trail, and someone I am proud to endorse for the seat.
Senate District 15 - Senator-Elect Molly Cook
Senate District 15 was initially a crowded primary, with six candidates. Almost all of the candidates are known across several communities in Houston. One was even a former congressional candidate.
Now, we are down to two candidates: Molly Cook, an ER nurse and organizer who served as the sparkplug of the movement that passed Houston’s Prop B last November, and Jarvis Johnson, the current state house representative for house district 139.
I have endorsed Molly Cook, and with loud declaration. She matches my three key leadership criteria: sharp-mindedness, big-heartedness, and courage. Molly tells the truth. She builds bridges. She is in it for the right reasons.
Senator-Elect Cook is officially the incumbent in this race after defeating Johnson in the May 4th Election by 12 points. Her victory party was 100 of Houston’s most active organizers, many of whom helped get Prop B across the finish line and prevent TXDOT from ramming through a remodel of the I-45 project (the project may still happen, but they have not yet, to this day, broken ground).
The election night victory party for Senator-Elect Cook was electrifying and marked one of the most impressive urbanist activist victories in the history of the city. My hope is that the grassroots left in our city builds on that momentum and turns it into a sustainable, longterm adjustment to the nature of our city’s political psychology.
As bad as the Texas Legislature is, given the opportunity to make the place better, Molly can do it.
House District 146 - Lauren Ashley Simmons
Warning: This race has gotten nasty, and I am going to talk about it because hateful behavior must be called out for what it is. So if you don’t want to read anything graphic, feel free to skip this endorsement writeup.
HD-146 and SD-15 are the races that have been most closely followed by the media this election cycle.
HD-146 was a barnburner in the first round. Simmons finished with 49.5%, a mere 60 votes from crossing the 50% threshold. Incumbent Shawn Thierry was about five points back. Black Lives Matter Organizer Ashton P. Woods, who previously picked off around 1/3 of the vote against Thierry in a previous election, finished with a little more than 6% of the vote. Woods backed Simmons immediately after the election.
I have spoken about why Simmons is the right choice, and Thierry is the wrong one. Developments that have occurred since my March voter guide have only made Simmons a better choice. She is running an excellent field strategy, and her viral moment telling F. Mike Miles the truth about his plan to dismantle HISD has only become more validated.
Thierry has in turn become more of a disaster. All signs point to her complete descent into a cheerleader for the right flank of the Republican Party, and it could not have come at a worse time. The GOP is currently in a Civil War, and neither side is worth joining, but one is distinctly more dangerous in the immediate term.
Thierry has taken thousands of dollars this cycle from the Deasons, a rightwing Texas billionaire family. In the past, Darwin Deason has given $1 million to the America First Super PAC, and more than $400K directly to the Trump campaign. He supported Ted Cruz for President in 2016 before showering Trump and Co. with cash in the aftermath. He told Mitch McConnell to repeal ACA or said he would get all of his fellow plutocrats to stop donating to Republicans.
Deason has given Thierry $10K of his own money, and $15K from his pro-voucher PAC, the awkwardly titled "Family Empowerment Coalition.” More than one third of her donations have come from traditional Republican donors like Deason.
Taking big checks from billionaires who favor the privatization of schools while the state dismantles our city’s largest school district is bad enough. Heck, Thierry’s general track record unto itself is bad enough. She’s out of step with the party on basic public education principles and fundamental civil rights.
Thierry consistently mischaracterizes her own position and the positions of others on the issues. She voted for three bills that were outside of the Democratic Party platform last legislative session.
One was a book-banning bill that targeted allegedly “sexually explicit” material, but actually imposed requirements on schools and individual staff that would strain the resources of the programs through intense and arduous review of thousands of books in a library. It was written vaguely enough to target plenty of other kinds of books referencing sexuality, such as LGBTQ-friendly material.
And yet the upshot of the bill has been even worse than previously imagined. Thierry and Company have released the new Red Scare, as fanatical school board blocs in districts across Texas call in favors from their fellow perverts to read passages from books slowly whole apologizing. Many of these folks run churches of thousands of people. Some openly back Shawn Thierry.
School board trustees who are in tune with these measures have set up committees in their districts to create strict local policies that systematically squeeze our library staff and expand the nature of the book ban. Books about DEI and racism are apparently too controversial; we wouldn’t want kids to know that this country once enslaved people, and that Texas was where a lot of the worst slavers settled (six generations later, some of their offspring hold office at the Legislature, or sit on the boards of community institutions and energy companies).
And Thierry pushed for all this, either foolishly thinking it wasn’t a possibility or knowing it was and not caring.
Another bill banned gender-affirming care for any kids under 18, and this might be where this year’s house district race has become its most grotesque.
A few weeks ago, she appeared on a podcast mischaracterizing the Democratic position on trans kids, claiming that Democrats opposed any restrictions on “cutting off” kids’ genitals. She even likened the vote to the age of consent for getting a tattoo (she starts talking about it near the 20 minute mark).
Thierry is peddling misinformation. The Democratic Party’s position is and always has been that any decision regarding a child’s gender should be between medical professionals, the parents, and the child. This is, in fact, the position of all major bodies of medical experts: gender affirming care is effective, and medically safe when monitored.
It would confuse and frustrate her argument for her to have to acknowledge that science has come to the conclusion that demanding a person identify as the gender of their biological sex is harmful to them, and that allowing them to consider who they are isn’t. If she were an inquisitive person, she would know that the kind of surgery she is talking about isn’t all that the bill banned, and that the bar for any of these procedures is already very high. Representative Ann Johnson even tried to attach an amendment that would make that bar even higher.
Per the Tribune:
“Rep. Ann Johnson, whose district borders Thierry’s, offered an unsuccessful amendment that would have permitted trans teens from receiving such care if two doctors and two mental health professionals approved — a high bar intended to assuage concerns that treatment such as hormones could be carelessly prescribed. Johnson declined to comment.
Thierry skipped the vote on the item, as well as all 18 other Democratic amendments. Thierry said that her positions reflected the views of her constituents.”
Thierry’s position, which matches the position of the Republican Party at large, is that the government should decide what to do, specifically the government of Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, and the many other flunkies propped up by Dunn and the Wilks.
You know, the folks Thierry hugged and celebrated with after the bill passed.
So far, our state government has decided to sic CPS on families with trans kids. Many families are fleeing the state. Paxton is trying to force organizations that support trans rights to hand over information about the people for whom they advocate.
Meanwhile, a small group of locals in Thierry’s precinct have picked up her rhetoric and run with it. They have their own signs and literature saying “say no to sex changes for children” and “End Black Genocide.”
Thierry should disavow it and retract her statement, but she won't. She'll continue to bend the truth and run to the right for coverfire.
We will see just how much the public agrees or disagrees with Thierry’s horrible trcover fire and behavior some time after 7PM on Tuesday, May 28th.
Vote Simmons.
Harris County Constable, Precinct 5 - Jerry Rodriguez
To be honest, I find most of what these two say to be similar, but what I like about Jerry is that he returned the Indivisible Houston survey and said that he supports misdemeanor cash bail reform and has pledged never to take money from bondsmen, poker rooms, or private prisons.
He is also like the inverse of Kristi Noem in his campaign ads.
Check it out:
House District 139 - 🤷🏻♂️
House District 139 features HCC Trustee Charlene Ward Johnson and Acres Homes Super Neighborhood President Angie Thibodeaux.
I don’t like to define people by their spouses, but it is relevant to mention in this race that Ward Johnson is Jarvis Johnson’s ex-wife, particularly since his campaign has given her at least $2,000.
Ward Johnson, like her husband, has received $2,500 from the Charter Schools Now PAC. She was also the subject of the funniest scandal of the election cycle in the Harris County March primary, appearing to sip on an alcoholic cocktail while attending a meeting for the HCC Board remotely from the location of her own fundraiser. And her issue page is fairly sparse.
Does that mean vote for Thibodeaux?
No. Angie Thibodeaux’s features little to no policy and abstract language in the policy areas she does talk about. She makes absolutely no major promises and expresses no clear beliefs about many important Democratic issues: abortion, gun violence, the environment, healthcare, public education are all absent from her platform. The only statement we have from Thibodeaux on public education is in response to questions from the Houston Chronicle. Both Thibodeaux and Ward Johnson supposedly supported increasing teacher pay and ending the state takeover of HISD, which are good positions, albeit easy to take.
But the real trouble came in response to a question about Greg Abbott’s voucher plan. Ward Johnson opposes it.
“Thibodeaux did not take a stance on school vouchers and said she wants to examine school curriculum to get a better understanding of why the GOP is pushing to promote private education in the first place.
“I think we need to dive into the details, dig deep and see what the root of the problem is,” Thibodeaux said. “Why are we having this discussion in the first place? What brought the bill about?”
OOF.
I have tried to present enough information for voters so they can split the hairs they like, but the bottom line is that the good people of District 139 will have to pressure their next representative in Austin. It would be great if the winner did a good job and proved me wrong.
Tax Assessor-Collector - Annette Ramirez
I have been sitting on the fence in this race for several reasons. First, my instinct is to reject anybody who works for Kim Ogg outright. In case my endorsement of Gemayel Haynes over Vivian King near the top of this article did not explain clearly enough why that is the case, you can read my post dedicated to just how dangerous Ogg has been to people during her tyrannical reign. It was written before some of the worst stories about Ogg even came out.
Denise Broadnax works for the DA, and oversees the intake division at the office. However, unlike Vivian King, Broadnax started there twenty years ago. In spite of the intake division being a complete mess, I wonder how much we can blame her for it, as Ogg pretty much takes full credit for rearranging it and messing it up. Besides, Broadnax isn’t an attorney. Her administrative work is not what messed up intake.
So why Ramirez? Because she has a clear, well outlined position on voter registration, a complete website, and an active campaign. Her professed policy positions remind me of the incumbent Ann Harris Bennett’s original pitch. All told, Bennett did a great job on the voter registration side early in her tenure. I also remember asking an employee quietly years ago at a registration location if the county was better under her, and they said that it had improved compared to her predecessor. Not exactly a scientific poll, but I asked for a reason.
Regardless of who wins, we need to make sure to campaign for them. Steve Radack is a monstrous proposition for the office overseeing voter registration in Harris County. Harris County should strive to defeat him by massive margins.
Go Vote!
Tell your friends to go to the polls!
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About the Author
Daniel J. Cohen is an advocate in Houston, Texas who has led multiple successful grassroots campaigns for both issues and candidates. As one of the most active pro-democracy Houstonians since November of 2016 and the founder of Indivisible Houston, he has grown a volunteer army of more than 2,000 democracy advocates across the Houston area; led successful grassroots communications efforts to flip federal, state, and county seats (TX-07, HD-134, County Judge, and District Attorney); secured earned media through traditional and social media channels estimated at more than $100,000 million in value with an all volunteer staff and an annual budget of less than $25,000; built coalitions with organizations, independent community leaders, and media at the local, state, and national level; and organized, promoted, and led some of the largest marches in the history of Houston.
Cohen has been published or quoted by Houston Chronicle, Texas Tribune, Texas Monthly, Houston Public Media, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, Washington Post, and other major media.