The full Texas story is still being written, as massive Democratic gains continue to get tallied. Beto O’Rourke may have narrowly lost the Senate race, but the movement he helped fuel has transformed Texas and put it straight onto the path of “purple” status in 2020
Among those gains: the courts. And they matter. In fact, Karl Rove’s first target in leading the Republican takeover of Texas was exactly that—the courts.
First, the extent of our victories:
In key urban counties, it was an outright judicial electoral massacre.
And down ballot, in the big urban counties, Democrats romped. For example, all 59 Democratic judicial candidates running in Harris County (Houston) won.
This is all great from a practical, policy standpoint. Here’s an example:
Pending before the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals is a high-profile case over the capital city’s new paid sick leave ordinance. In August, the court temporarily blocked the local measure from taking effect; last month, lawyers for the city askedthe court to allow the ordinance to go into effect.
Why would the courts block a city’s paid sick leave ordinance? Because they’re conservative assholes, that’s why. That 3rd Court of Appeals now has an incoming Democratic majority. And while the Texas Supreme Court remains in Republican hands, they can’t overturn all of the thousands of decisions these appellate courts decide. Not to mention, those Supreme Court seats will be juicy electoral targets in upcoming election cycles.
But in Texas, judgeships have an additional benefit for Republicans: Historically, the party that holds the courts, gets the political cash. Sounds corrupt as hell, because it is, but it’s the political reality on the ground. Karl Rove knew this, and began his Texas career by focusing on the courts. Jerome Armstrong and I wrote about this tactic in our book Crashing the Gates:
Direct-mail guru Karl Rove put a bull’s-eye on [Texas’] top Democrats and set out to take each one down—with an unconventional startegy. Rove went for the jugular—cutting off big business money flowing to Democrats—by getting Republicans elected to the Texas judiciary. As these judges handed down pro-business rulings, those businesses responded by shifting their campaign contribution dollars to Republicans.
“A lesser consultant or analyst might have overlooked that. They might have said, ‘you know what? I’m going to go and get some people to run for the legislature.’ And ‘I’m going to get some people to run for county office,’” Jim Moore, author of Bush’s Brain (a.k.a. Karl Rove), told us when we met over lunch at an eatery in Austin.
Does that mean that retaking the courts will redirect that cash back to Democrats? Let’s hope not—today’s Democratic Party is different, motivated by new concerns. The 19 black women judges elected in Harris County alone certainly don’t look like the old-school southern conservadems Rove took out. This new generation of jurists seems more interested in reforming the state’s criminal justice system, protecting consumer interests, and looking out for workers than in propping up a-hole corporations.
With liberals now able and willing to fund candidates at levels that counteract and even exceed corporate dollars, there’s no need to take that dirty money.
And massive demographic changes are themselves reshaping the political landscape. Did you know that over next 10 years, 2 million Latinos will turn 18 in Texas and about 95 percent of them will be eligible to vote? Oh yeah. Change is coming.
Times have changed, so there's no need to recreate the Rove strategy. There are new, better strategies to pursue.
But it does mean that Republican successes in turning the judiciary into their own cash cow are coming to an end. And that, in itself, is worthy of celebration.