| UNFAIR PARK | NEVER- ENDING ROW BY PATRICK STRICKLAND T he headline was startling. Last Tuesday, the New York Post ran a front-page print story titled “Tex Mess,” claiming that Presi- dent Joe Biden’s administration had strong-armed El Paso officials into not declaring a “state of emergency” over mi- grant arrivals. The story, which cited an anonymous of- ficial, quickly spread among Texas Republi- cans from the state’s governor on downward. The problem? When asked if the claims were true, El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said, “Absolutely not.” After the story broke, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott quickly shared the article on Twitter, writing: “White House urged El Paso offi- cials not to declare a state of emergency over the city’s migrant crisis.” The state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, similarly took to Twitter to share the New York Post story, claiming that Biden had “created this crisis on our border intentionally,” adding: “Turns out his team intentionally tried to cover it up as well.” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz jumped into the fray, arguing that the White House is “trying to cover up the crisis they created and have ig- nored for nearly two years.” When Fox News interviewed Mayor Leeser last Wednesday, he dismissed the claims wholesale, saying the city intends to “continue to work with our federal govern- ment.” Late last month, Leeser said during a City Council meeting that the White House had asked El Paso not to declare a state of emer- gency, though he never said the federal gov- ernment pressured the city. The drummed-up row between Texas of- ficials and the Biden administration is the latest series of conflicting claims about the border. Since Biden took office in January 2021, 4 4 Texas Republicans have accused his admin- istration of “open-border policies,” with Gov. Abbott launching the controversial border clampdown Operation Lone Star in March last year. As the midterm elections near, many con- servative Texas officials and lawmakers have escalated anti-migrant rhetoric and have placed the border at the center of their campaign efforts. Last Thursday, Paxton’s office an- nounced that the attorney general had filed a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief in an on- going legal battle between Texas and Louisi- ana on one side and the federal government on the other. That court case revolves around Texas and Louisiana’s claims that the Biden ad- ministration is “letting thousands of deport- able criminal aliens walk freely in communities across America,” according to a press release by Paxton’s office. Since its inception, Operation Lone Star has seen thousands of Texas Department of Public Safety officers and National Guard troops sent to the southern border with Mexico. The operation includes arrests, the return of migrants to federal authorities and the busing of thousands to cities including Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York. Abbott has defended the operation against growing criticism. During a debate with Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke late last month, the governor insisted that border communities “needed relief, and busing was one of the ways that provided them relief.” Abbott also claimed O’Rourke would “perpetuate” Biden’s “open-border poli- cies,” a charge O’Rourke denied. “No one is for open borders, not the least of us who actually live on the borders,” O’Rourke said during the debate. Last week, Abbott renewed a border secu- rity disaster declaration he first introduced in May 2021. El Paso County wasn’t among the counties included in the declaration. This week, the governor has shared a se- ries of campaign ads including video en- dorsements by county sheriffs. In one video, Lavaca County Sheriff Micah Harmon said he backed Abbott because “he took the bull by the horns” to crack down on migration. In another video, Zapata County Sheriff Ray Del Bosque said Abbott had earned his El Paso didn’t claim a state of emergency. Brad Greeff/iStock photo endorsement by “stepping up and helping us Texas sheriffs secure our border.” During the first 11 months of the 2022 fis- cal year, which ended in September, federal authorities documented more than 2.1 mil- lion migrant apprehensions on the U.S.-Mex- ico border, a sharp uptick when compared with the previous fiscal year. Numbers for September are not yet available. ▼ ELECTIONS DALLAS GOP COUNTY JUDGE CANDIDATE LAUREN DAVIS TAKES ON INCUMBENT CLAY JENKINS. BY DARBY MURNANE AND PATRICK WILLIAMS FIGHTING DIRTY D allas County is reliably blue. Every- body who follows politics knows that, right? Democrats hold all but one seat on the Commissioners Court, with J.J Koch the only Republican. Justices of the Peace Al Cercone and Steve Seider and Con- stable Ben Adamcik are the only other Re- publicans serving in elected office in county government, according to the Texas GOP’s website. So, it seems unlikely that Lauren Davis, an untested Republican candidate with no experience in office, could take the top elected county post from the hands of a long-time Democratic incumbent. Even some of Davis’ own party members ex- pressed doubts about her candidacy as she ran an insurgent primary campaign. She nevertheless trounced favored son Edwin Flores, taking 68.4% of the primary votes. And she is raising a lot of money and spend- ing it on advertising. Her campaign signs are thick on the ground. “She has tremendous grassroots sup- port,” said Jennifer Stoddard Hajdu, Dallas County Republican Party chairman. Still, her opponent in November, County Judge Clay Jenkins, has held the job for more than 10 years, Democrats still rule the roost and his reelections have been mostly quiet affairs. If there were such a thing as a cinch bet in politics in 2022, Jenkins’ reelec- tion could be it. But before you lay your money on the El Paso mayor denies White House pressured him to not declare a state of emergency. line, remember that unlikely isn’t the same as impossible, and consider these words: “Sometimes there are people who are un- likely that show up at a particular window of time when they’re there to do a job, and it turned out to be, in the long view, a seren- dipitous thing for Dallas County because I don’t think anybody would have done the job that needed to be done.” That’s from former GOP County Com- missioner Maurine Dickey, talking in 2010 about Jenkins’ predecessor, County Judge Jim Foster, a Democrat. Foster, dubbed the “accidental judge” because he was the only Democrat to file for the race back when ev- erybody knew the county was red, fell into the job in 2007 as the blue tide began sweep- ing the county. By the time Foster faced Jenkins and one other candidate in a primary in 2010, about the only people who were saying nice things about him were Republicans like Dickey. Among his own party, he was widely consid- ered a “doofus.” (To be honest, the Observer applied that word to him a few times our- selves, but we weren’t alone, and some of his own party members said much worse. Look- ing your way, John Wiley Price.) The point of rehashing this history is to raise the question: Could Jenkins’ campaign be suffering from a little hubris? We put that question to SMU political science professor Cal Jillson, our go-to expert on Texas poli- tics. No, he said. Jenkins’ campaign might just be feeling confident for good reason. He doesn’t anticipate a November surprise. Jenkins, he points out, “is a different breed” from Foster. No one is calling him a doofus, even if they disagree with his poli- tics. (Davis is calling him things that are ar- guably worse, though.) “I think it’s going to be difficult to unseat Jenkins,” Jillson said. The basic turnout in county elections trends toward Democrats, and overcoming that is hard. Davis is run- ning an energetic campaign, raising $669,606 from July until the end of Septem- ber. But television advertising is expensive, and Jillson says he hasn’t seen much of it in this campaign. “It’s very difficult to move the needle with flyers in peoples’ mailboxes,” Jillson said. One way to grab voters’ attention is to go negative, and the Davis campaign appears to have learned that lesson, enlivening what is usually a fairly staid race with a series of at- tacks on Jenkins’ character. “It is a bit unusual to have [a negative campaign] at the county judge level, at least over time, and that if we are seeing this in 2022, it provides yet another exam- ple of how local politics are becoming in- fected with partisanship (a power struggle, really),” Professor Matthew Esh- baugh-Soha, chair of the political science department at the University of North Texas, told the Observer. >> p6 OCTOBER 27–NOVEMBER 2, 2022 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 DALLAS OBSERVER DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.com dallasobserver.com
