Progressives Win Two Texas District Attorney Races

In the weeks leading up to Tuesdays primary election, voters in two of Texas most populous counties were bombarded with warnings that their safety hinged on voting down two reformist district attorney candidates.

Incumbent Travis County District Attorney Jos Garza was lenient on rape and child sexual assault and put a political bullseye on police officers, his Democratic primary opponent Jeremy Sylestine alleged without evidence. Mailers sent by a dark money group baselessly accused Garza of filling Austins streets with pedophiles [and] killers.

In Harris County, incumbent District Attorney Kim Ogg, who was elected in 2016 on a reformist platform but later veered right and fought against cash bail reform, claimed she was facing a primary challenge from progressive Sean Teare because she did not agree to open the doors of the jail to violent offenders. 

Despite the fearmongering, voters in both counties overwhelmingly chose the candidates promising to reform the criminal justice system. Garza and Teare were declared the winners on Tuesday night after early returns showed Garza with 67% of the vote and Teare with 75% . 

Anonymous dark money organizations spent untold dollars promoting lies and peddling misinformation to try to scare voters into turning their backs on progress, Garza said in a Tuesday night victory speech. This community didnt take the bait, and Im so grateful to all of you for that.

Although both candidates will face Republican challengers in the November general election, they are running in counties that lean Democrat. 

Garza, a former public defender, and labor and immigrant rights attorney, was elected Travis County district attorney in 2020. In an interview with The Appeal , he promised to prosecute police violence, cease prosecution of low-level drug offenses, oppose the construction of a new jail, work to protect immigrants from deportation, rarely seek prison sentences longer than 20 years, and never seek the death penalty. 

Garza has made good on some of those promises. He indicted 19 police officers for assault during Black Lives Matter protests, started a restorative justice program , and expanded pretrial diversion programs to avoid conviction and incarceration for certain offenses. He also joined several prosecutors who pledged not to prosecute people for abortions after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. 

Unsurprisingly, Republicans and law enforcement groups mobilized to oust Garza. Last year, state Republicans passed a law allowing prosecutors to be removed from office for declining to prosecute certain offenses. All prosecutors exercise discretion in choosing which cases to pursue, but this bill was clearly aimed at removing progressive prosecutors. Shortly after the bill passed, the Republican candidate who lost the 2020 district attorney race to Garza wrote a petition for Garzas removal. Harry, who was living in Florida, recruited Travis County residents to file the petition. 

Sylestine, who started his career as a public defender and then spent 15 years in the Travis County district attorneys office, was recruited by a group of wealthy business people who insisted, inaccurately , that crime had risen in Austin under Garza and that his reforms were to blame. In fact, incidents of homicide, rape, robbery and burglary have deceased since Garza took office, according to Austin Police Department data . Sylestines campaign attracted support from Austins police union and a group called Save Austin Now, which pushed to reinstate criminal penalties for being homeless in public . 

Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla, which is headquartered in Austin, emailed his employees on Tuesday, encouraging them to vote for a new district attorney who will actually prosecute crimes. Musk, who also owns X (formerly Twitter), urged his 175.4 million followers on the platform to vote for a new DA, in a post that was deleted by Wednesday morning. 

The truth is, Republicans tried to infiltrate our primary, Garza said during his Tuesday night speech. How did that work out for them?

Ogg, who lost her primary reelection on Tuesday, made history in 2016 when she became Harris Countys first openly gay top prosecutor and the countys first Democratic DA in decades. In a county known as the execution capital of the U.S. , Ogg promised to reduce the use of the death penalty, supported misdemeanor bail reform and diversion programs for low-level marijuana possession cases. 

Shortly after Ogg took office, a federal judge ruled that Harris Countys bail system was unconstitutional. Initially, Ogg praised the ruling and the class action lawsuit that brought about the decision. But in 2019, she reversed course , and fought against a proposed settlement, which would largely end the use of cash bail for misdemeanor offenses.

Around that time, Ogg complained that too many dangerous misdemeanor offenders were avoiding pretrial detention, listing people accused of domestic violence, stalking and driving under the influence. 

During her time in office, Oggs rhetoric increasingly aligned with the anti-reform camp. She accused the countys mostly Democratic judges of being too lenient in setting bail amounts.

We are fighting those bonds low, insufficient bonds daily in court, Ogg said in 2022. It has become the new battleground for public safety.

That year, Oggs office filed criminal charges in more than 4,500 cases that judges said lacked probable cause . Meanwhile, 28 people died in custody while awaiting trial in the overcrowded Harris County Jail. More than 40% of Oggs January campaign contributions came from the bail bond industry. 

Teare, a former prosecutor in Oggs office, told Bolts , a criminal justice and voting rights publication, last month that Ogg fostered a culture of fear in her office where prosecutors are wary of dismissing weak cases, allowing pretrial release or offering plea deals for lower charges. On his website , Teare states his support for misdemeanor bail reform, linking to a study that found it did not lead to increased crime. Unlike Garza, Teare has not pledged to not seek the death penalty. 

In an interview with Texas Monthly , Ogg accused Teare of running a campaign of political tricks backed by Jewish billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, a common talking point among right-wing conspiracy theorists and anti-Semites. Although a Soros-funded PAC contributed ad buys and polling help to Teare, Soros also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect Ogg in 2016, Texas Monthly noted.