State Appellate Courts Serve as Intermediaries Between

Republicans dominate Texas politics — but their stranglehold is especially noticeable in the courts.

Republicans concur all 18 seats on the state’s two high courts. Of the state’southward 14 appeals courts, Democrats hold majorities on just iii. On the other 11 courts, Democrats have no seats at all.

Democrats are hoping to flip that reward on Election Day. In their optics, the stars have aligned. They have a high-profile liberal darling running a competitive race for U.Due south. Senate at the meridian of the ticket. They accept a controversial Republican president expected to generate backlash in his first midterm elections. And enough judicial seats are upwardly for election that Democrats could flip the four sprawling appellate court districts that serve Austin, Dallas and Houston. Hillary Clinton won those districts in 2016, merely the courts are currently held entirely by Republicans.

If Democrats tin sweep those races in 2018, they’ll take control of one-half the state’s appeals courts. And strategists say that goal is in sight.

“Democrats are gaining ground every day,” said Keir Murray, a Autonomous strategist working on judicial races in Houston.

Long coattails?

Appellate judges, who serve every bit the intermediaries between the state’southward scores of trial courts and its two high courts, are rarely top of mind for voters. Instead, judicial candidates rely on straight-ticket ballots, and lean heavily on the popularity of their parties’ leaders.

This twelvemonth, Democrats are taking heart in that Beto O’Rourke, an El Paso congressman locked in a tight race confronting incumbent U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, has progressives across the state energized. Strategists predict that even if he can’t topple Cruz, O’Rourke could bring out enough support in battleground areas similar Dallas to flip some state House and Senate districts.

Democrats hope courts volition be on that listing, too. Merely O’Rourke’s coattails will accept to be long.

No Democrat has been elected to the Dallas-based fifth Court of Appeals since 1992. The half-dozen-county district includes liberal-leaning Dallas, but also some of Texas’ most reliably cherry-red areas. In Dallas, as in Houston and Austin, big, urban centers contribute the lion’south share of the judicial district’s electorate, but right-leaning rural and suburban voters in surrounding counties have handed victories to Republicans for the past several election cycles. Merely the 4th Court of Appeals, based in San Antonio, has a partisan split with Democrats in the majority. The Legislature controls these maps; the districts have changed only twice since 1967, most recently in 2005.

This year, Democrats are hoping to narrow their losing margins in the deepest-cerise counties and pick up votes in city centers. Only Republicans are skeptical that that strategy will push them over the top.

“We’re definitely going to win. There’s no question in my mind,” said Bunni Pounds, a Republican strategist and former Congressional candidate working on several Republican judicial campaigns in N Texas. But she besides acknowledged that turnout then far indicates that Republican victories may not be as handy as they take been in the past.

“The turnout is in models with the presidential year, which ways our percentages will exist lower,” she said.

Ken Molberg, a district judge in Dallas, ran for fifth Court of Appeals in 2014 and came up nearly 72,000 votes short. This year, in another attempt, he’southward confident things will be unlike. Molberg, a former Dallas County Democratic Party chair, has accumulated several hundred chiliad dollars — an impressive sum for such an unstudied race — and said his region of the state is “ground zero for the party this become around.”

“The potential to switch this court in i election bicycle is there, and it would be somewhat earthquake-like if that happened,” Molberg said. “It’s a tough race all the way around, but my analysis is that it can exist done.”

Molberg is the best-funded of the eight Democrats battling Republicans for seats on the 13-justice court. But he said the slate will likely succeed or fail every bit a group.

“I don’t call back individual campaigns have any effect at the courtroom of appeals or district court level. … That’s an example of where you’re most entirely dependent on direct-ticket voting,” said Jay Aiyer, a political science professor at Texas Southern Academy. “At the courthouse level, information technology’s easier for i political party to dominate.”

Voters rarely differentiate much between down-ballot judicial candidates. A adult female may outperform a man, or a Hispanic-sounding name may brand a betoken or two of divergence, merely for the most part, the candidates volition “sink or swim” together, Murray said.

That ways if Democrats win at all, they’re more likely to win large. Courts that serve urban areas could flip entirely, not just inch toward the middle.

That would yield much-needed ideological diversity, Democratic candidates said.

“There is a existent conformity, a uniformity of judicial thought on these courts that I think would really do good from different feel,” said Meagan Hassan, who’southward running as a Democrat for the Houston-based 14th Courtroom of Appeals. She pointed to the tiny fraction of dissenting opinions written by Houston-area appellate judges, arguing that ideological balance is needed for the critical decisions these courts make.

In Tyler, for example, an all-Republican court of appeals struck down as unconstitutional the state’south new “revenge porn” constabulary. The 3rd Courtroom of Appeals is currently weighing the city of Austin’s paid sick exit ordinance. And state appellate courts are the last appellate stop for the vast majority of criminal cases in the state — yet many state appellate judges accept no background in criminal law.

Democratic wins, Hassan said, “would bring residue to the court that hasn’t existed there in 25 years.”

“If non at present, when?”

Harris County has the longest ballot in the country, with 75 judges up for ballot, said Harris County GOP chairman Paul Simpson. Republicans at that place take mobilized to forestall ballot fatigue and keep Democrats from flipping the two appellate courts in the surface area.

“We’re working doubly hard, all the way down the election. Best I can tell, they’re hoping Robert Francis O’Rourke carries the whole election for them,” Simpson said, using Beto O’Rourke’s full name.

That may not be a bad strategy.

Harris County, the country’s most populous, long held out as Republican, but in recent years has begun to tinge bluer. In the Houston area, Aiyer said, it’s “only a matter of time” before the appellate courts flip, as well.

The story is much the same hundreds of miles west in fundamental Texas, where Democrats have fielded candidates in all iv races for the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals.

Mike Toth, a Republican appointed to the court by Gov. Greg Abbott in September, is fighting to concord onto his seat in an appellate court race that’s proved perhaps the ugliest in the country. Toth has embraced Trump-mode campaign issues (one mailer prominently features the president’s face) and accepted thousands in campaign donations from the hardline bourgeois group Empower Texans, which recently had an ethics-related example revived past the appellate court. Democratic challenger Gisela Triana, a district gauge in Travis County, is hoping Toth is controversial enough to propel her to victory. All told, more than $1 million has been raised for the downward-ballot contest.

“Voters understand the importance of the judiciary today more than e’er,” said J.D. Rimann, Toth’s campaign director. “We are taking cipher for granted and are working difficult to attain every voter we tin earlier Ballot Twenty-four hour period. We are confident that Republicans will agree the Third Court of Appeals.”

Asked whether Democrats tin can pull off a sweep, Chari Kelly, a well-continued Austin prosecutor running as a Democrat for a different seat on that courtroom, didn’t hesitate.

“Oh yes,” she said. History is her guide: Two years ago, when Clinton won the Central Texas judicial district, two Republicans ran unopposed and won seats on the court.

“The blue wave came. There was no i in that location,” she said. This year, she said, Democrats are poised for that wave — be information technology a tsunami or a ripple.

“If non now, when?” Kelly asked.