As the Dallas County Judge Race Gets Personal, Could a Surprise Be Coming on Election Day?

Dallas County is reliably blue. Everybody who follows politics knows that, right? Democrats hold all but one seat on the Commissioners Court, with J.J Koch the only Republican. Justices of the Peace Al Cercone and Steve Seider and Constable Ben Adamcik are the only other Republicans serving in elected office in county government, according to the Texas GOP's website.

So, it seems unlikely that Lauren Davis, an untested Republican candidate with no experience in office, could take the top elected county post from the hands of a long-time Democratic incumbent. Even some of Davis' own party members expressed doubts about her candidacy as she ran an insurgent primary campaign. She nevertheless trounced favored son Edwin Flores, taking 68.4% of the primary votes. And she is raising a lot of money and spending it on advertising. Her campaign signs are thick on the ground.

"She has tremendous grassroots support," said Jennifer Stoddard Hajdu, Dallas County Republican Party chairman.

Still, her opponent in November, County Judge Clay Jenkins, has held the job for more than 10 years, Democrats still rule the roost and his reelections have been mostly quiet affairs. If there were such a thing as a cinch bet in politics in 2022, Jenkins' reelection could be it.

But before you lay your money on the line, remember that unlikely isn't the same as impossible, and consider these words: "Sometimes there are people who are unlikely that show up at a particular window of time when they're there to do a job, and it turned out to be, in the long view, a serendipitous thing for Dallas County because I don't think anybody would have done the job that needed to be done."

That's from former GOP County Commissioner Maurine Dickey, talking in 2010 about Jenkins' predecessor, County Judge Jim Foster, a Democrat. Foster, dubbed the "accidental judge" because he was the only Democrat to file for the race back when everybody knew the county was red, fell into the job in 2007 as the blue tide began sweeping the county.

By the time Foster faced Jenkins and one other candidate in a primary in 2010, about the only people who were saying nice things about him were Republicans like Dickey. Among his own party, he was widely considered a "doofus."  (To be honest, the Observer applied that word to him a few times ourselves, but we weren't alone, and some of his own party members said much worse. Looking your way, John Wiley Price.)

The point of rehashing this history is to raise the question: Could Jenkins' campaign be suffering from a little hubris? We put that question to SMU political science professor Cal Jillson, our go-to expert on Texas politics. No, he said. Jenkins' campaign might just be feeling confident for good reason. He doesn't anticipate a November surprise.

Jenkins, he points out, "is a different breed" from Foster. No one is calling him a doofus, even if they disagree with his politics. (Davis is calling him things that are arguably worse, though.)

"I think it's going to be difficult to unseat Jenkins," Jillson said. The basic turnout in county elections trends toward Democrats, and overcoming that is hard. Davis is running an energetic campaign, raising $669,606 from July until the end of September. But television advertising is expensive, and Jillson says he hasn't seen much of it in this campaign.

"It's very difficult to move the needle with flyers in peoples' mailboxes," Jillson said.

One way to grab voters' attention is to go negative, and the Davis campaign appears to have learned that lesson, enlivening what is usually a fairly staid race with a series of attacks on Jenkins' character.

"It is a bit unusual to have [a negative campaign] at the county judge level, at least over time, and that if we are seeing this in 2022, it provides yet another example of how local politics are becoming infected with partisanship (a power struggle, really)," Professor Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, chair of the political science department at the University of North Texas, told the Observer.

"Dallas has been Dem for some time," he continued. "I think Republicans see an opportunity, what with Jenkins' support of strict COVID restrictions, to possibly steal this race. The way you do that is to go negative. And when you are attacked, going on the attack is a typical response … an arms race of negativity fueled by a fair amount of spending."

According to her campaign website, Davis decided to run because of resentment of Jenkins’ support of mask mandates and other COVID response strategies during the height of the pandemic. Davis, who operates an upscale barbershop chain with her husband, has accused Jenkins of attacking freedom and damaging small businesses. She also claimed he lied about his his family’s educational background and alleged he wore blackface 40 years ago during a prank break-in while in college.

Jenkins' campaign has repeatedly denied that the judge wore blackface but accepted responsibility for the break-in, saying in an email, “Judge Jenkins apologized then, when he was 19, and continues to be sorry for the poor judgment he exhibited at the time.”

At the same time, Davis, who is white, has compared her children's refusal to follow school mask mandates to protests during the civil rights movement. "They sat in class like Rosa Parks," Davis said in an interview with far-right broadcaster John Fredricks on Real America’s Voice.

Parks was arrested and fined in Alabama in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. The Observer asked her if she saw any problem with comparing her children's mask stance to Rosa Parks' defiance while also accusing Jenkins of wearing blackface. “I don’t know that they’re necessarily comparable,” she said on the phone, talking of her comments about Jenkins and her kids.

In an email from Jenkins’ campaign, representatives said they were “disappointed to see such divisive vitriol, based on lies and misinformation … This race should be about abilities and ideas.”

That's a high-minded notion, especially in 2022, and perhaps it's a sign that Jenkins is feeling confident about his race. Still, even Jillson, who doesn't think an upset in November is likely, notes that a little fear can be a healthy thing for politicians hoping to win. "Just remember what your high school track coach told you," he said. Even when when you're leading the pack you should "lean into the tape" at the end.