Budget is at heart of county judge race

Dozens of supporters for Alexandra del Moral Mealer, the Republican candidate challenging Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, packed the room at the Sept. 13 meeting of Commissioners Court, each wearing “Alex’s Army” T-shirts and loudly scoffing when Hidalgo spoke.

Tensions ran high as the court’s two Republican members skipped the meeting, blocking the three Democrats from passing their proposed tax rate unless they agreed to specific terms for funding law enforcement.

Hidalgo argued Republicans are forcing the county to scale back other essential services, and as she commented on the impacts to various departments, Mealer supporters rolled their eyes, laser-focused on their candidate’s goal of hiring more patrol officers.

The ongoing political showdown over the county’s annual budget process has pitted the Mealer and Hidalgo camps firmly against one another, offering voters a clear view of the candidates’ different visions for the role Harris County government should play.

In her first term in office, Hidalgo has expanded the traditional responsibilities of county government beyond infrastructure, law enforcement and flood control, imagining a broader, more holistic role for the county that includes such things as child care, housing stability and reform-minded criminal justice. Mealer, a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan, says she wants the county to go back to the basics and has said she will hire 1,000 additional law enforcement officers if elected and Republicans win a majority on Commissioners Court.

The balance of the five-member court is at stake in this election, with three incumbents up for re-election in competitive races. In addition to the county judge race, Republican Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle is running against Democrat Lesley Briones, and Democratic Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia is in a rematch with Republican Jack Morman, the former commissioner he narrowly ousted four years ago. The court last year redrew both precincts to favor Democrats.

The result could be a 4-1 Democratic powerhouse, the same 3-2 divide or a shift back to a Republican-controlled court.

The county judge race is expected to be close, though Hidalgo still has an edge over her opponent due to the county’s leftward tilt, according to Renée Cross, the executive director of the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs.

“Hidalgo continues to be the front-runner, primarily because of the makeup of Harris County in terms of partisanship,” Cross said. “She does seem to evoke strong emotions in either party. Particularly among the Democrats, she remains very popular.”

Both candidates have highlighted their ethnicity in their campaigns: Hidalgo was born in Colombia and immigrated with her family to the U.S. in 2005, while Mealer’s paternal grandfather immigrated from Spain.

Mealer is hoping to kneecap Hidalgo’s rising political career just four years after the Democrat unseated Republican Ed Emmett in her first-ever run for political office, completing a Democratic takeover of the nation’s third-largest county.

Hidalgo’s 2018 win was fueled by a perfect storm of political factors: voters outraged by the Trump administration, high Democratic turnout for Beto O’Rourke’s campaign against Sen. Ted Cruz and the popularity of straight-ticket voting. She beat Emmett by just over 19,000 votes, out of 1.1 million cast in the race, and 86 percent of her votes came from Democrats who cast straight-ticket ballots, a practice the Texas Legislature since has ended.

Hidalgo’s stature quickly skyrocketed after the 2018 election, as she developed a passionate following among liberals inspired to see a Colombian immigrant elected at age 27 go toe-to-toe with Republican state leaders and veteran county commissioners. At first, there was little sign she would face a serious reelection threat, with Harris County appearing to solidify as a Democratic stronghold by 2020.

Now, emboldened by a combination of factors — the felony indictment of three Hidalgo aides, a sharp rise in homicides mirroring a trend across the country, and favorable national conditions — Harris County Republicans have rallied behind Mealer as perhaps their best shot to reverse their recent struggles. During a hotly contested primary, she won endorsements from key members of the Harris County Republican establishment, including Precinct 5 Constable Ted Heap, former commissioner Steve Radack and popular furniture magnate Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale.

“Alexandra Mealer is a tenacious campaigner,” said Jessica Colón, a Houston-based Republican strategist who is uninvolved in the race. “She has evolved into a savvy, hard-nosed, driven candidate, and she has been incredibly successful in raising the funds necessary to compete with Lina Hidalgo. She has created a political base around her campaign to make her race one of the most important and contested races in the state.”

With varying results coming from the few public polls conducted on the race, there is little consensus on where things stand heading into the final weeks of the campaign.

Hidalgo appeared to gain some breathing room over the summer, when public backlash to the Supreme Court’s scrapping of Roe v. Wade provided a boost to Democrats around the country. The national environment — a key factor in the outcome of the county judge race, political experts say — now appears to be shifting back in favor of Republicans.

Mealer is trying to take full advantage, blanketing the airwaves with campaign ads and outspending the incumbent overall. She had poured nearly $1.9 million of her campaign funds into TV ads as of last week, nearly a 3-to-1 advantage over Hidalgo, according to data from the media-tracking firm AdImpact.

Hidalgo has refused campaign contributions from county contractors since the start of her term, aiming to avoid “even the appearance of a conflict of interest.” Members of Commissioners Court historically have relied heavily on firms that do business with the county to stockpile huge campaign war chests.

While Hidalgo has raised millions from small-dollar donors, she has struggled to keep pace with Mealer, who reported a fundraising haul of $4.9 million from July 1 through Sept. 29, the latest period covered by public campaign finance reports. Like most other candidates, Mealer is accepting campaign donations from county contractors. Her biggest donor was Richard Weekley, a Houston-based developer and mega-donor who contributed $400,000 to Mealer’s campaign.

Hidalgo took in $1.5 million during the same period, less than a third of Mealer’s sum, and she was outspent by more than $2 million. Hidalgo reported having $2 million in her campaign account, giving her a slight edge over Mealer’s $1.7 million cash on hand.

Hidalgo’s ethics argument also been blunted by the felony indictment of three current and former aides on charges of misuse of official information and tampering. She has defended the staffers, who are accused of steering a vaccine outreach contract to a politically connected vendor. Lawyers for the aides have maintained their innocence.

Trading attacks

Hidalgo has touted her record steering the county through several major emergencies, including the COVID-19 pandemic and last year’s winter storm, and establishing programs focused on early childhood education, pandemic recovery and environmental health and monitoring.

More often, though, her campaign rhetoric has focused on fending off attacks from Mealer and throwing her own punches at the GOP nominee.

For the last couple months, Hidalgo has assailed Mealer for not taking a stance on Texas’ abortion ban, including through a TV ad that says Meal-er is “staying silent while women’s lives are in danger.” In an effort to paint Mealer as a “far-right extremist,” Hidalgo has accused her of “sowing doubt in the election results” and being “blindly loyal” to former president Donald Trump.

Mealer calls Hidalgo’s campaign strategy dishonest and has criticized Hidalgo for focusing on abortion rights, a policy area the county judge has no authority over.

“No one really knows what the county judge does. So, I think it’s actually harmful to spend a lot of time talking about issues that aren’t in your control,” Mealer said. “They do that to get you talking about everything but Harris County.”

In an interview, Mealer acknowledged Trump lost the 2020 election and said that, barring any obvious evidence of impropriety, she would accept the results in November if she loses.

Colón, the GOP strategist, said Hidalgo is “looking to infuse other cultural issues into the campaign” to “draw attention away from the fact that she’s made Harris County a more dangerous place.”

While Commissioners Court and the county judge have little practical authority over abortion policy, Hidalgo has argued the court plays a role through its oversight of the county hospital system, which provides reproductive care to residents.

Marc Campos, a longtime Houston Democratic consultant who is not involved in the race, said Hidalgo likely will benefit from low propensity voters who feel motivated to turn out because of abortion rights.

“Harris County is still trending blue,” Campos said, “and I think with the Dobbs case, the whole abortion case, that’s energizing female voters, and I think that’s going to help out Democrats up and down the ticket.”

Crime and public safety

Mealer has focused her campaign on crime and public safety spending, arguing Hidalgo has failed to devote enough funding to county law enforcement amid a rise in violent crime. She says her plan to hire 1,000 additional officers could be covered, at least in part, by cutting county administrative staff, though she has not revealed specific funding plans or committed to any cuts to core services.

“With crime rising, is the focus increasing deputies or is it increasing social workers?” Mealer said. “Because Lina has funded more full-time social workers than she has sheriff deputies.”

According to the County Administrator’s office, the county has added 47 deputies and 12 social workers since 2020.

Hidalgo has scoffed at Meal-er’s police hiring pledge, pointing to the county’s more than 400 unfilled law enforcement positions. She has said the GOP plan would “create hundreds of new positions that may never be filled, while preventing raises for the current police officers and cutting critical funding for flood control, public health, and other areas.”

Mealer has framed those unfilled positions as another failure on Hidalgo’s part, suggesting the county recruit from military bases and offer signing bonuses using federal COVID relief funds.

Hidalgo has been forced to play defense on the issue, with Mealer and other Republicans pointing to a rise in homicides and overall violent crime in Harris County. Houston still trails well behind other big cities around the country, many of which experienced a sharper rise in violent crime. The trend began around the start of the pandemic in 2020, when homicides surged by more than 40 percent in the county, including Houston and the other incorporated cities.

Hidalgo repeatedly has said the county’s main public safety departments — the sheriff, constables and district attorney — have received funding boosts in each county budget since Democrats took control of Commissioners Court in 2018.

While Mealer and other GOP candidates running for seats on Commissioners Court have maintained an intense focus on crime and public safety, those issues are far from the only challenges facing Harris County government, which also is responsible for planning out billions of dollars in flood control projects, overseeing development in unincorporated areas and running public health institutions that provide treatment for a large share of the county’s uninsured, low-income residents.

Hidalgo argues the county judge still can play a role on issues on which the county lacks direct oversight, such as gun control and abortion. She pointed to a recent city-county gun buyback program and county spending aimed at addressing maternal mortality.

“My opponent will often say, well, none of these are county issues,” Hidalgo said. “The community has a position on these issues, and they want to know their leader’s position. And there is something for us to do. ... You can’t just look the other way on so many issues.”