The Democratic primary for Dallas County district attorney between former state district judges John Creuzot and Elizabeth Frizell is a story of two halves.

For early voting, Creuzot got 3,707 more votes than Frizell. He also had 1,666 more mail-in votes than his rival.

Election Day belonged to Frizell, who mounted a ferocious rally that nearly knocked out Creuzot. She got 4,767 more votes that Tuesday, but came up 589 ballots short in the local Democrats' version of March Madness.

In any hard-fought campaign, there are lessons to be learned. The biggest student from this contest was national writer and civil rights activist Shaun King.

King and California's Real Justice PAC raised over $100,000 in six days to boost Frizell to the brink of victory.

King learned what most local politicos know: All phases of a campaign are critical.

"Our opponent, in some ways, gamed the system," King wrote last week. "I'm not mad about it, but I need us to understand that if we don't increase the sophistication and nuance of our own political strategies, we are going to lose all over the country."

King said mounting a mail-in ballot campaign never occurred to him, a tactic that would have helped Frizell make up the difference.

"He had thousands of senior citizens mail in voting ballots ... had we gotten just 600 more senior citizens to do this, we would've won," King wrote. "What our opponent knew that we didn't know is that he had quietly amassed nearly 6,000 more votes than us in early voting. We had all the energy, but he had all the votes. So even though our momentum gave us a huge victory on Election Day — we started the day with a 6,000 vote deficit."

District attorney candidate Elizabeth Frizell speaks to supporters during her election party at Delta Charlie's Bar & Grill in Dallas on March 6, 2018. (Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor)

Campaign missteps

King is right. Creuzot won the election in the early voting stage, building a lead and doing enough on Election Day to hold it.

Frizell's problem was not a lack of knowledge about the system, which she clearly has, but a campaign that didn't peak until its final days.

The criminal justice reformers and other activists who backed her waited too late to offer support. Her early vote totals would have been better if her ground forces had been available sooner.

King acknowledges the cavalry came too late.

"We were literally only on the ground in Dallas for a month," he wrote. "We did our best in that month, but we must be on the ground earlier in a race like that."

Frizell also got a boost from the Texas Organizing Project. The group reached 40,000 Election Day voters by paying canvassers an above-average wage to knock on 2,000 doors. About 15 people made telephone calls to push Frizell and promote the issue of ending mass incarceration.

Just a couple more days on the ground could have made a difference.

As for absentee voting, Frizell, as other candidates have before her, made the personal decision not to pay operatives for a mail-in ballot campaign. In Dallas County, mail-in ballots have been known to be the seedy and often illegal aspect of political campaigning.

In theory, there's nothing wrong with aggressive, legal mail-in ballot campaigns that don't abuse the elderly.

Unsavory operatives have so tarnished the process that candidates like Frizell don't want to go near such activity. They'd rather stake their campaign on in-person voting.

Wary of mail-in ballots

It's understandable why Frizell wants no part of mail-in ballot campaigns.

Last year, 700 mail-in ballots in the May municipal elections in Dallas and Grand Prairie were deemed suspicious because they were linked to the same witness, "Jose Rodriguez."

Senior citizens in both cities reported receiving mail-in ballots they never requested — meaning their signatures had been forged. Some said they were also visited by a pushy man claiming to work for the county who wanted to collect their ballots.

In response to the controversy, the Texas Legislature and Dallas County commissioners enacted new policies to curb mail-in voter fraud and the abuse of elderly voters.

Now Dallas County prosecutors are investigating whether someone committed fraud in the handling of more than 1,200 mail-in ballot applications for the 2018 elections.

The applications, which came from West Dallas, Grand Prairie and parts of Oak Cliff, generated 459 ballots that were considered by a county board that reviews provisional and questionable ballots. The ballots came from the same areas where voter fraud was alleged in municipal elections last year.

Frizell says it all stinks, and even though she decided against a recount, she promises to push to make sure her supporters were not cheated.

"I wanted to bring in the new voter, young voters and that's what happened," Frizell said. "I don't want them to walk away and feel like the system is tainted."

Creuzot hired one of the best mail-in ballot campaigners in the business, former state Rep. Terri Hodge.

Hodge, who in 2010 was sentenced to a year in prison for tax evasion, was part of a veteran team led by Dallas consultant Jeff Dalton. She has not been accused of any wrongdoing related to voter fraud, and there's no indication from the district attorney's office that Creuzot's team did anything illegal in the campaign.

Without mail-in ballots, Frizell would have beaten Creuzot by over 1,000 in-person early and election day votes.

As Frizell prepares for her next move, her supporters are taking their lessons to heart.

"Hype and momentum are good, but they must always lead to votes," King wrote.