Party Time

It wasn’t just another obligatory holiday party, the kind of work-related seasonal gathering only made palatable by good liquor and plenty of it. On December 7, most of the guests who arrived at the far North Dallas home of lawyer Bruce Priddy actually wanted to be there. They shared something in common–a closeness, a camaraderie, a defeat. They were former Democratic judicial candidates who had spent the past year on the campaign trail together, hoping to do what no Democrat had done in a decade–actually win a contested judicial race in Dallas County.

This would be a final “get-together,” or so said the invitation e-mailed by Priddy, who lost his race by 17,000 votes despite a wry sense of humor and a penchant for yard signs. There would be “no name tags, no fundraising, no Republicans, no 60-second résumés, no explaining to strangers why you should be a judge, no candidate sign-in sheets. Just fun, friends and food.”

Each guest was asked to bring a Christmas tree ornament made of discarded campaign material: One sculpted snowflakes out of campaign head-shots, another designed a red ball out of her campaign disclosure statement. Dallas County Democratic Party Chair Susan Hays brought a case of champagne, the same champagne she had purchased for an election-night victory that never occurred. The voters sent all but one of the 24 Democratic judicial candidates back to their sorely neglected law practices. Only Sally Montgomery attended the party as a winner, narrowly defeating Republican Judge Bob Jenevein in what was widely perceived as “the nastiest race in Dallas County.” Although the cocktail party banter remained more lighthearted than downhearted, (“Democrats know how to have fun,” Hays says), the conversation would invariably turn to the election as candidates sought to understand just where things went wrong.

This election cycle was supposed to be the year of the “Dream Team,” the year that Democrats would finally bust the Republican monopoly over the courthouse. All the signs were there: White flight to adjacent counties and a burgeoning Hispanic community had Dallas trending Democratic for the past several years. There was no George W. Bush leading the Republican charge–or at least there wasn’t supposed to be. Instead, the Democrats would have their own big draw at the top of the ticket: a team of minority candidates, Tony Sanchez for governor and Ron Kirk for U.S. senator, who would energize the traditional Hispanic and African-American base of the party and get out the vote. And if conventional wisdom held–as goes the top of the ticket so goes the bottom–Dallas County would deliver many Democratic judges to the courthouse steps.

Only it didn’t.

Four Democratic judicial candidates came within a whisper of winning, garnering more than 49 percent of the more than 400,000 votes cast countywide, and no Democratic candidate did worse than 46 percent. Although statewide, Democrats did better in Dallas County than the rest of Texas, Sanchez received only 46 percent of the county vote and Ron Kirk barely eked out a hometown majority with 50.2 percent. “The dream team didn’t turn out to be dreamy enough,” Hays says.

Democratic Party activists figured that Kirk would take Dallas County by at least 5 or 6 percentage points, and they were flat out depending on it to get their judges elected. What they didn’t figure was that George Bush would so nationalize the local election he would make it a referendum on his presidency and the war against Iraq. “It might sound like spin, but the Republicans had a presidential turnout in a nonpresidential year, and we didn’t,” says former Dallas County Democratic Party Chair Ken Molberg.

Democratic number crunching seemed to bear him out: “While 45.4 percent of registered voters cast ballots in heavily Republican precincts,” Hays says, “only 33.2 percent of registered voters bothered to vote in heavily Democratic precincts.” The Republican message (support our president) and its tepid Democratic response (support our president) energized the Republican base and kept many Democrats at home. Sanchez and Kirk waged an expensive air war on TV and radio, but they may have neglected the ground war of door-to-door canvassing and phone banks. Local Republicans, on the other hand, led by their newly elected county Chair Nate Crain, engaged in an impressive countywide get-out-the-vote effort. “The bottom line is, they got their vote out, we didn’t, and we still managed to get close to even,” Hays says.

With the county evenly split along partisan lines, issues that might otherwise define a judicial candidate–gender, incumbency endorsements, name identification, integrity–came more heavily into play.

“Being a female was worth a point on Election Day,” says attorney Bruce Rothstein, the coordinator of the Democratic judicial campaign effort. “Our weakest results were when our men ran against their women. Our strongest showing was with Sally Montgomery and Lisa McKnight, women who ran against men.”

McKnight, who lost her race by a mere 1,768 votes (“If Ron Kirk had taken the county by 55 percent, I would be a judge today”), faults The Dallas Morning News for its endorsement of her opponent, incumbent Craig Fowler. “I try not to be bitter about it, but it was the shocker of the century,” she says. “Particularly when the News went out of its way not to endorse Fowler in the Republican primary.” Rothstein believes a nod from the Morning News is good for another percentage point and was also surprised by the Fowler endorsement. His ethics had been called into question by a Channel 8 news investigation and the resulting public reprimand he received from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct for engaging in a “quid pro quo” relationship with an attorney whom Fowler hired privately for a nominal fee and later appointed as a guardian ad litem in his court at a “grossly” inflated fee. McKnight, however, says she didn’t fully exploit her opponent’s negatives, not the way Sally Montgomery did against Bob Jenevein.

“Sally and Bob were like a train wreck,” says one former Democratic judicial candidate. “They would take nasty personal jabs at each other at nearly every candidate’s forum.” Montgomery was a former Republican judge who turned Democrat after a bitter primary defeat in 2000. Working her old connections among the Republican women’s clubs, she brought to their attention a public finding by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct that Jenevein had engaged in willful misconduct by holding a news conference in his court and declaring his intention to file a grievance against an attorney who had questioned the integrity of Jenevein’s wife.

Although Montgomery had her own deficits–low Bar poll numbers and no endorsement from the Morning News–these were offset by some Republican swing vote, her gender, her attack campaign and a familiar ballot name.

Oddly enough, fund raising–the bane of every judicial candidate’s existence–didn’t have as much impact on the campaign as might be expected. “The difference between candidates who spent $10,000 and those who spent $200,000 was maybe a point and a half,” Rothstein says. “It is hard to see how sums spent translated into very many votes.”

It irks Republicans that they lost even one bench: “We are celebrating our victories,” Nate Crain says. “But we will be watching Sally Montgomery, and in 2006, we will be putting up one of the best judicial candidates in Dallas County to run against her.”

Democrats, too, are focusing on the Montgomery race, but more as a harbinger of success. They are already fielding candidates for the 2004 election and hope for a more level playing field, one unfettered by Bush and his specter of war. “Even in the midst of a hurricane,” Rothstein says, “we managed to take one step forward. Admittedly, it was a tiny one.”

As Bruce Priddy’s Christmas party drew to a close, a small crowd gathered in front of his computer, watching election returns from Louisiana’s U.S. Senate runoff. Throughout the evening, Republican challenger Suzanne Terrell was narrowly leading Mary Landrieu, whose win might mitigate the humiliation Democrats suffered when losing the Senate in an off-presidential year. Around 11 p.m., Democrat Landrieu pulled slightly ahead and won.

Raising his beer, Ken Molberg thought to himself, “There is a Santa Claus after all.”