A Switch of Parties by a Statewide Appellate Judge and Other Political News about Texas's Supreme Court

Texas state judges are elected by the voters, except when they are appointed to fill unfinished terms. Texas's highest court-- whose jurisdiction is generally limited to civil matters-- is the Texas Supreme Court. For criminal matters in the Texas state system nothing is higher than the Court of Criminal Appeals. Their courts' jurisdiction cover the state-- every county. All of the courts above the trial level and lower than those two have jurisdiction over multiple counties. To apply to seek nomination of the Democratic or Republican parties for offices covering more than one county, one applies at the respective party state headquarters in Austin. If you try to find from the state Republican web site who the candidates are, the that site sends you to the Texas Secretary of State's site. which did not say and does not say that it is complete. I assume that after the last three days, SecState's site is current. Understand that they do not promise it is, and know that a person with a writ could get anything changed.

Day before yesterday I published lineups based on premature SecState information for which I am heartily sorry.

It is obvious to me that reporting the Texas appellate court races will require more than one post. This post will be about l'affaire Meyers and other SCOTX news. I will follow up with posts about the contest for a seat on the Beaumont bench and for seats on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and Texas courts of appeals' races.

1.  Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judge Lawrence Meyers switched from my Grand Old Party to the Democrats to run against Jeff Brown for a Texas Supreme Court seat. Don't know the backstory to this, but and Cynthia Hampton and I, among many others, don't understand why he's doing this. He does not have to leave his seat on the  CCA to run to be a Supreme. His CCA term ends January 2017. The Democrat blog Burnt Orange Report points out that this makes Meyers

the first Democrat statewide officeholder since the second millennium of the common era (1998). Here's what Jeff Brown looks like.

Poor fellow, he has drawn repeat candidate Joe Pool, Jr. as a primary opponent, who is discussed in the post after next I missed him the first couple of days.
2. The Chief Justice race is covered in a subsequent post; this corrects an error in an earlier version of this post.
3. Democrat Corpus/Edinburg Appeals Court Justice Gina Benavides

challenges Republican incumbent Jeff Brown.

4. The battle for Place Eight is covered in a subsequent post, correcting that contest's nonappearance in an earlier version of this post.