The district clerk’s office has a budget of $1.5 million and employs 25 full-time deputy clerks. It manages more than 12,000 active files and 300,000 closed files and collects about $2.5 million a year in filing fees and other costs.

Matkin implemented a program two years after she became district clerk that in eight years has collected $3 million in fines and fees from those convicted of crimes, funds that before went uncollected.

“I am proud of the performance of my office,” Matkin said in a previous interview. “I am very proud of the quality of work put out by our employees, the innovations made in the running of the office and the technological advances we have made to upgrade the performance of the office. I think the voters should look at experience and qualifications, and I hope they do.”

Matkin said she thought she had done what she needed to do to win the election, but said straight-ticket voters were too much to overcome.

“I would have preferred to have retired on my own volition as the last countywide Democrat standing, but the public has spoken and they will get a new district clerk,” Matkin said.

Matkin graduated from Baylor University and Baylor Law School and worked as a prosecutor in McLennan County from 1976 to 1982.

She was in private practice from 1982 to 2004 and is a past president of the McLennan County Bar Association, a former board member of the Brazos River Authority, a former member of the Governor’s Commission for Women and is secretary and a board member for Friends for Life.