Criminal justice implications of Texas 2010 elections

Yesterday's election included several notable results from a Texas criminal justice perspective:

As expected, all the statewide races went Republican, including Michael Keasler handily defeating Keith Hampton to retain his seat on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Hampton's percentage was notably lower than D candidates for CCA judgeships in past cycles, and contrary to my prediction lower than Bill White's totals. Attorney General Greg Abbott easily sailed to reelection.

A whopping 15% of the Texas House of Representatives turned over, all flipping to Republicans who won 22 new seats. House Corrections Committee Chairman Jim McReynolds numbered among the unexpected casualties, as rural Texas essentially turned completely red, just in time for redistricting. The result led Paul Burka to declare "The Democratic party will not be a factor in Texas politics for a decade. I guess that’s not such big news. They haven’t been a factor for the past decade." That sounds about right.

What that means for criminal justice reform remains unclear, though one reader emailed to opine that "Progressive criminal justice legislation may have been set back a decade in this election.  Just sayin.'" I'm not sure I buy that. Chairman McReynolds' loss is significant, but none of the other Dems who took a hit were particularly leaders on criminal justice reform topics, and much of Texas' reform legislation in recent years has passed in the House with bipartisan majorities. Even conservatives don't want innocent people falsely convicted, and it was GOP concern over rising corrections costs that spurred prison diversion legislation in 2003 and 2007.

It remains to be seen whether 22 new House members change that dynamic: A lot depends on who is Speaker and who chairs the House Corrections Committee. But the overall problem of a bloated corrections budget in the face of a gaping budget shortfall really doesn't change much. Indeed, with so many new members (and the Governor) elected on "no new taxes" pledges, to my mind the prospects for closing prison units and significantly cutting the corrections budget probably just got brighter. If you're not going to raise taxes, cutting costs is the only remaining way to balance the budget, and the corrections budget comes nearly 100% from state general revenue.

In Dallas, DA Craig Watkins eked out a victory after trailing in the count for much of the night. Though at one time Dallas Dems indulged speculation that Watkins' campaign may have coattails, on election night he "was one of the Democratic Party's lowest performers" in Dallas, reports the Dallas News, being outpolled by county-level judicial and commissioners court candidates, where Democrats generally found more success.

Democrats lost ground in Houston, both on the commissioners court and in local judicial races, where they'd swept nearly all 2008 contests. This year it was the GOP sweeping most of the Harris judicial seats. Those races will likely be quite competitive again in 2012, one would expect.

Remarkably, both Houston and Baytown passed measures banning the use of red-light cameras, following the lead of College Station which ended their use in a plebiscite last year. That's encouraging. I hope it leads to more local initiatives to repeal them and potentially legislation at the statehouse to end this local money-grab once and for all. Clearly whenever Texas voters are asked their preference on red-light cameras, they're consistently turning them down.

Overall, my take is that national trends overwhelmed local concerns in many of these races. The old adage is that "all politics are local," but the opposite appeared true yesterday. At the national level, a few pundits have suggested that GOP victories in the face of the continuing economic crunch may amount to the dog catching the car, and with a $25 billion budget shortfall there's a lesser extent to which that's true in Texas, too. Republicans' biggest prize is solid control of the Texas Legislature during redistricting, though even gerrymandering of state House districts may.be more difficult with so many new incumbents in swing districts to protect.

In any event, the stage is now set for the 82nd Texas Legislature, which thanks to redistricting, the budget crisis and all the rookies who'll need to learn the ropes on the fly, promises to be a particularly stressful session.