Conservative Texas Justice Terry Jennings Bucks GOP to Become Democrat
It was just after presiding over a same-sex wedding, in January, that the formerly Republican Justice Terry Jennings, of the Texas First Court of Appeals, started thinking more seriously about changing his party affiliation.
Jennings had been considering becoming a Democrat for years as he grew increasingly dissatisfied with the way the Republican Party had trended toward the fringes, turning “moderate” into a dirty word, he said. And as his children, two daughters in college and a son in high school, continued to ask their dad why he still identified as a Republican, Jennings said the question continued to grow harder to answer.
Then came the wedding.
When others commented to him that deciding to preside over a same-sex wedding was a decision many other Republican judges may not have made, “that's when I started thinking, Well maybe I'm not in the right party then,” Jennings told the Houston Press in an interview Monday.
The change-over makes him the only Democrat among the nine justices on the First Court of Appeals. Democrats make up just 12 of 73 jurists on the state's 14 courts of appeal.
Read more: http://www.houstonpress.com/news/conservative-texas-justice-terry-jennings-bucks-gop-to-become-democrat-8847239
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