Opinion

Bexar Democrats' Anglo problem

Karen Crouch has never lost a general election in her two-decade political career. The former county court-at-law judge, however, has experienced some recent trouble making it out of Democratic primaries.

In 2010, after 16 years on the court-at-law bench, Crouch was knocked off by Liza Rodriguez. Last year, Crouch tried to make the leap to the 166th District Court, and fell short in the primary to Laura Salinas.

Crouch's dilemma is symptomatic of a growing trend in Bexar County politics. If the Republican Party has a widely acknowledged Latino problem, local Democrats — at least when it comes to judicial races — have an Anglo problem.

In 2010, the same year Crouch lost her seat, Michael Mery also dropped a primary contest to a Hispanic challenger. The only local court-at-law judge to survive a primary challenge that year was Monica Guerrero, who defeated Deborah Sandheinrich.

Over the last two election cycles, we've seen 11 local judicial races in which Anglos and Latinos have gone head-to-head in Democratic primaries, and Latinos have emerged victorious in 10 of those contests.

This is always an uncomfortable subject to broach. No candidate wants — or deserves — to be reduced to an ethnic category, and no voter wants their voting process to be defined by their last name.

But even local Democrats privately concede the impact of this phenomenon. To be sure, it's not purely a judicial issue: After all, Trish DeBerry felt compelled to add a hyphenated Mejia (her then-husband's surname) to her name when she ran for mayor in 2009. And it's not purely local: Not for nothing is U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett described as the last of the old-guard, Anglo Democrats in Texas.

The ethnicity issue simply becomes more pronounced in judicial races, which tend to be buried near the bottom of the ballot and feature candidates largely unfamiliar to voters. Under such circumstances, the right surname can become a ticket to the general election.

“Although judicial races are probably the ones most likely to affect them, they are the ones the public knows the least about,” Crouch, 52, said. “So they don't know if somebody's competent or not. They vote for a way they identify with that person, whatever that factor may be.”

Over the years, some of Crouch's Democratic friends have encouraged her to use the last name of her husband, Gerald Flores. These days, she's also being approached by local Republicans who want her to switch parties.

Crouch continues to recover from injuries sustained in an October 2011 car accident in Vermont — in which a drunk driver smashed into her car, killing her sister-in-law. She says she's not ready to consider another political run.

Nonetheless, she adds that she's “not closed to the idea” of defecting to the GOP. She downplays her loyalty to the Democratic Party, making the case that a judge's party affiliation is simply a meaningless label required by the electoral system.

“You're not a Democrat on that bench, you're not a Republican on that bench,” she said. “You're a judge and a referee. You apply the law to the facts that are presented to you and move forward.”

Jim Lunz, the godfather of the Bexar County Republican Party, said the politics of ethnicity that dogs local primaries is deeply exacerbated by chronically low voter turnout.

“The few people who vote in primaries are making decisions for all of us,” Lunz said. “You have a preponderance of Hispanics in Democratic races and a preponderance of Anglos in Republican races, and voters see 45 names on the ballot and don't know much about the candidates.”

Lunz argues that judicial races should be split into a separate primary, so that voters can focus more closely on races for local bench positions. Another commonly suggested (but unlikely to be implemented) remedy would be to make Texas judicial races nonpartisan affairs.

Crouch would surely embrace that idea, and she'd have a long line of recently deposed Democratic judges right behind her.

ggarcia@express-news.net

Correction: Former judge Linda Penn was referred to as an Anglo in the original version of this column. Penn is an African-American.