Texas Democrats' biggest win on election night may have been the courts

[LeftInTX]

Democrats flipped four major state appeals courts, toppling 19 incumbent Republican appellate judges.

by Emma Platoff Nov. 8, 201812 PM

It wasn’t Beto O’Rourke.

But in the sleepiest branch of government — the judiciary — Texas Democrats cleaned up on Election Day, flipping the four influential state appeals courts that serve Austin, Houston and Dallas. Democrats now hold majorities on seven of the state’s 14 appeals courts. Before Tuesday, they held seats on just three.

On a night of close margins and purple counties Texas’ minority party hailed as moral victories, these were major wins. The sweep has thrown off the balance of the state’s judiciary, which before Tuesday was the best example of Texas Republican hegemony. And it has teed up an ideological tension between newly Democratic courts of appeals and the state’s all-Republican high courts.

“This is a big, big, big win for us in Texas,” said Gilberto Hinojosa, chair of the Texas Democratic Party. “It’s one of the significant waves that we had.”

State appeals courts sit between Texas’ scores of trial courts and its two high courts. They are intermediate courts — meaning their papers get graded by the state’s two high courts, the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which remain fully in Republican hands.

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/11/08/texas-courts-appeals-2018-midterms-beto-orourke/

[Gothmog]

1. I have some good friends who won on the two Houston court of appeals

Normally these candidates do well in Harris County and get killed in the other 14 counties. This time the candidates won Harris County by over 100,000 votes each and then picked up another 30,000+ votes in Fort Bend County

[LeftInTX]

2. I know. I was worried about some of our incumbents on the Fourth

They all won and we picked up two seats.


Only one Republican left on the Fourth.

[California_Republic]

3. Beto-ed! The importance of having dems it every office