Austin Archives - Bolts https://boltsmag.org/category/austin/ Bolts is a digital publication that covers the nuts and bolts of power and political change, from the local up. We report on the places, people, and politics that shape public policy but are dangerously overlooked. We tell stories that highlight the real world stakes of local elections, obscure institutions, and the grassroots movements that are targeting them. Wed, 06 Mar 2024 17:00:34 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://boltsmag.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/cropped-New-color-B@3000x-32x32.png Austin Archives - Bolts https://boltsmag.org/category/austin/ 32 32 203587192 “Playbook of Fear” Fails to Sway Voters in Austin and Houston DA Races https://boltsmag.org/houston-austin-da-elections/ Wed, 06 Mar 2024 04:12:24 +0000 https://boltsmag.org/?p=5884 José Garza, Travis County’s reform-minded DA, prevailed on Tuesday. In Harris County, Democratic voters ousted DA Kim Ogg, who battled with her party in recent years.

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A despondent teddy bear sits below a grainy picture of Travis County District Attorney José Garza, flanked with a warning that says “Garza is filling Austin’s streets with pedophiles and killers.” The alarmist mailer, sent to voters by a dark money group, lit up the final days of Austin’s DA race. Challenger Jeremy Sylestine denied any involvement, calling the mailer “demagogic” and “extreme.” So did other high-profile critics of the first-term DA.

But while no one claimed responsibility for the mailer, it mirrored the language that Garza’s opponents have long used to say his reforms ushered in a period of lawlessness, despite data showing crime is on the decline.

Sylestine claimed that Garza painted a “political bullseye” on police officers, and aired an ad accusing him of being “lenient” on child sexual assault. The local police union similarly accused Garza of “targeting” cops for “political gain,” or giving a “sweetheart deal to a child predator.” The head of the local GOP called for his criminal prosecution and said that Garza has “declared war” on the police. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused him of caring more about “the radical agenda of dangerous Antifa and BLM mobs than justice.” And they all routinely singled out the support he received in 2020 from a PAC associated with George Soros, the billionaire who has supported progressive causes and emerged as a leading foil for the right. 

On Tuesday, Garza easily beat back his opposition, prevailing over the well-funded Sylestine in the Democratic primary.

As of publication, Garza leads Sylestine 66 to 34 percent. Garza will be heavily favored in November against Republican Daniel Betts, in this staunchly blue county. 

Bob Libal, a Garza supporter and Austin-based reform advocate, said he was inundated toward the end of the campaign by “extreme fearmongering rhetoric,” text messages and images that falsely portrayed Austin as a “dystopic, crime-ridden place” with criminals “roaming the streets.” 

Libal told Bolts that Garza’s win “speaks to the broad popularity of progressive criminal legal reforms in Travis County, even up against an extremely well-funded campaign operating from the playbook of fear.” 

Over in Houston, Harris County DA Kim Ogg has employed a similar playbook during her tenure in office, long accusing proponents of criminal justice reform of filling the streets with violence.

On Tuesday, she lost overwhelmingly in the Democratic primary to challenger Sean Teare, a former prosecutor in her office. She trails 78 to 22 percent as of publication.

While Ogg won her first term in 2016 on promises of reform, she then became one of the leading antagonists of Harris County’s landmark bail reform, which expanded pretrial release for people accused of low-level offenses. “We see judges right now letting dangerous misdemeanor offenders out,” Ogg complained in 2019. After voters elected some progressive county officials in 2018, she frequently battled with them. Ogg painted the frightening picture of a “new battleground for public safety” that pitted her staff against local Democratic judges, whom she blamed for letting violent defendants walk. (The Harris County jail has remained overcrowded and in violation of minimum safety standards.) 

“When you have murderers running around on multiple bonds… it’s a scary time,” she said.

Again this year, Ogg went after her challenger, Teare, for being “Soros-funded”—ironically, since her first win in 2016 was fueled by more than half-a-million dollars in spending from a PAC with ties to the billionaire. While benefiting herself from heavy financial support from the bail industry, Ogg claimed that Soros backed Teare because she “did not toe the line on bail and did not agree to open the doors of the jail to violent offenders.” 

Teare told Bolts last month that Ogg spread a “culture of fear” in her office. He says the DA has caused line prosecutors to overcharge some cases, be too aggressive in plea offers, and resist pretrial detention, for fear of backlash over a specific case of recidivism. “That’s the way you don’t get in trouble,” he said. 

Teare has said he supports the misdemeanor bail reform and he pledged not to take campaign donations from the bail industry. His website features a study that showed the increase in pretrial releases did not increase crime.

Sean Teare won his race against incumbent Harris County DA Kim Ogg in Tuesday’s Democratic primary (photo from Facebook/ Sean Teare for DA)

In his victory speech on Tuesday, Teare thanked the Texas Organizing Project, a progressive organization that has backed local reforms, including an initiative to drive people out of jail, and that endorsed him this year. 

“When they put their mind to a race, they go all in,” Teare said. “Jumping in behind me is something that I’ll remember forever.”

Still, Teare has also carved out an overall moderate persona compared to Ogg’s unsuccessful challengers four years ago. For instance, he declined during the campaign to criticize Ogg over the death penalty, saying he agreed with an incumbent who has sought capital punishment many times. As a former prosecutor, Teare brought a different background to the race than Garza, a former public defender and labor lawyer, did in Austin. 

In the general election, Teare will face another former prosecutor, Republican Dan Simons. He will be favored in a county that leans Democratic, though not as heavily as Travis.

He benefited during the primary from the erosion of Ogg’s relationship with the Democratic Party. As Bolts wrote last month, nearly 200 local precinct chairs adopted a party resolution in December that said Ogg had “abused the power of her office to pursue personal vendettas against her political opponents, sided with Republicans to advance their extremist agenda, and stood in the way of fixing the broken criminal justice system.”

Daniel Cohen, who heads the group Indivisible Houston, helped organize the resolution against Ogg. “This is a new model of accountability within the party, within the community,” he told Bolts. He said that most of the resolution’s proponents were motivated by reading coverage of how Ogg was “weaponizing” the power of her office against adversaries like County Judge Lina Hidalgo, former judge Franklin Bynum, whom Ogg petitioned to remove from the bench, and County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who repeatedly opposed budget increases that Ogg requested.

For Cohen, the throughline between the various Democrats whom Ogg has targeted is that they supported the county’s misdemeanor bail reform. “It’s a pretty clear pattern in terms of the people who she fights.” 

And Ogg kept attacking former allies during the primary campaign, for instance telling Texas Monthly that the Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus, which had endorsed her in the past and endorsed Teare this time, does not represent “truly gay people.”

In Austin, Garza maintained a far more harmonious relationship to his own party—benefiting for instance from the endorsements of the two Democrats who represent Travis County in Congress, Lloyd Doggett and Greg Casar

Travis County DA José Garza (Photo from Facebook/José Garza )

But he has a far more hostile relationship with Republicans—and while that’s unlikely to cost him his job in the general election, Garza’s critics are plotting to get him out through other means.

Garza has piloted a swath of reforms over his first term, including ramping up restorative justice and pretrial diversion programs to reduce the number of people with criminal convictions. In 2022, his pledge, alongside some other DAs to not prosecute abortion cases drew ire from Texas Republicans, who last year passed a law that authorized courts to remove prosecutors for declining to prosecute certain cases. Garza is now facing a legal petition to remove him under the new law.

Local police groups have also signaled support for such efforts after Garza filed charges against more than a dozen officers for using excessive force; Garza dropped the cases in December but told Bolts he still intends to continue pressing for “systemic change” in policing.

That threat of removal will loom large over the rest of the year, and Garza’s likely second term.

On Tuesday night, though, Garza started off by celebrating his victory. He told his cheering supporters, “Tonight, we scored a major victory for our progressive movement and for criminal justice reform.”

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Austin Voters Embrace Civilian Police Oversight in Saturday Election https://boltsmag.org/austin-approves-civilian-police-oversight/ Mon, 08 May 2023 18:36:59 +0000 https://boltsmag.org/?p=4626 Tragedy and scandal have bolstered the Austin Police Department’s reputation for violence and racism in recent years. Austin cops often treat mental health crises like violent crimes, killing or traumatizing... Read More

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Tragedy and scandal have bolstered the Austin Police Department’s reputation for violence and racism in recent years. Austin cops often treat mental health crises like violent crimes, killing or traumatizing people who need help. And they have responded aggressively to people protesting police conduct, seriously maiming several people during the large demonstrations following George Floyd’s murder and making Austin a hotspot for head injuries from police crowd control weapons during the 2020 protests. 

Activists in Austin have advocated for greater civilian oversight in response. A coalition of progressive organizers pushed the city council to amend the city’s contract with the Austin Police Association (APA) in order to reduce barriers to accountability and to create an Office of Police Oversight. But the police union fought back, attempting to leash the newly empowered watchdog by blocking it from conducting independent investigations into complaints of misconduct against officers. 

Their confrontation came to a head this weekend. Activists put an ordinance on the municipal ballot to bolster and codify the powers of civilian oversight in the city. The police union and its supporters retaliated with a petition drive of their own, which deceptively bore the same name as activists’ version, and succeeded in putting a competing ordinance in front of voters to weaken oversight.

Austin voters on Saturday decisively sided with police reformers. A resounding 70 percent approved Proposition A, the measure that would bolster oversight of police. They overwhelmingly rejected Proposition B, the version supported by the police union, which received support from only 20 percent of voters.

Kathy Mitchell, a longtime advocate for police accountability in Austin who helped organize the campaign for Prop A, says the results illustrate strong support in the city for robust civilian oversight of police, and voters’ frustration at police efforts to push back against their organizing of recent years. 

“We have literally tried everything, there was no other way to enforce the stronger standards for oversight other than going to the voters and saying, ‘Okay, you’re going to have to show that this is something you expect,’ Mitchell said. “And now they have.” 

Mitchell says she hopes that Prop A’s strong showing empowers city officials to begin changing police oversight as early as this week, including pushing for independent review of complaints against officers and cases involving police violence. 

The results in Austin were a stark contrast to the overwhelming defeat of a different police reform ballot measure 80 miles south in San Antonio, which also held its municipal elections on Saturday. As Bolts reported last month, San Antonio activists petitioned for a more sweeping ballot measure, also called Proposition A, that sought to decriminalize weed and abortion as well as reduce arrests and jail time for minor charges, but faced inflammatory rhetoric and well-funded opposition from the police union and much of the city’s political establishment. 

Only 28 percent of San Antonio voters supported Prop A on Saturday. The result was a decisive win for the San Antonio Police Officers’ Association, one of the most powerful and combative police unions in the country. “Tonight, the voices of our great city were heard and heard loudly,” Danny Diaz, the union’s president, said during a victory party Saturday night. “We will not become another statistic, we will not tolerate criminal leniency, and we will not allow our city to crumble.” 

Prop A’s organizers issued a statement after the election accusing the police union and its supporters of “spreading fear tactics and lies” in its campaign against the ballot measure. “We still have to do a lot of public education. We’ve been doing it for several years and we’re going to continue,” Ananda Tomas, executive director of the police reform group that led the effort, told reporters Saturday night, according to the San Antonio Current. “We know when we’re at the doors and we break all of these things down, that folks are with us.”

The police union in Austin was no less defiant than San Antonio’s despite its defeat. “The APA simply will not stand by while this city and anti-police activists operate with blatant disregard for state law and the rights and protections afforded to our hardworking men and women,” the Austin Police Association tweeted on Saturday night.

Mitchell says it’s telling that the union is talking about state law and seems to be appealing more to Texas’ Republican leaders at this point than to local voters.

The Austin Police Association is advocating for a bill drafted by Republicans in the legislature that would prohibit civilian oversight of police departments that has already passed the Texas Senate and is now pending in the House. The legislation, which would undermine Austin’s new oversight ordinance by blocking access to police information until the department finishes investigating itself, mirrors measures that Republicans have pushed through elsewhere in the country

State-level Republicans have stepped in to protect local police in other ways. Republican governor Greg Abbott has publicly decried the prosecution of Austin police who brutalized protesters, and even appointed one of the officers indicted for assaulting demonstrators in 2020 to a state law enforcement commission. 

“Increasingly, and this has been going on for a while, APA is turning to the GOP to save itself from its own community,” Mitchell said. “They have decided strategically to stop talking to Austin, and that is remarkable, because they are our employees.” 

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Greg Casar Wins Congressional Primary, Defying Attacks on Criminal Justice Reforms He Championed in Austin  https://boltsmag.org/greg-casar-wins/ Wed, 02 Mar 2022 06:59:49 +0000 https://boltsmag.org/?p=2649 Greg Casar has long been a rising star for Texas progressives. Since becoming Austin’s youngest city council member in 2015, the former labor organizer has pushed to decriminalize marijuana and... Read More

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Greg Casar has long been a rising star for Texas progressives. Since becoming Austin’s youngest city council member in 2015, the former labor organizer has pushed to decriminalize marijuana and outdoor camping for unhoused people in Texas’s capital city, and to reduce funding for the local police department, prompting attacks by the state’s GOP-dominated legislature.

Now Casar is likely heading to Congress, riding his local notoriety as well as endorsements by the country’s leading left-leaning politicians to overwhelmingly secure the Democratic nomination in a safely blue congressional district on Tuesday. 

Casar’s leading rival Eddie Rodriguez, a longtime Texas House member from Austin, made the election into a referendum on the policies Casar had championed in the city. Rodriguez attacked Casar for supporting lifting the local ban on camping in public, sending voters fliers echoing GOP talking points and calling Casar’s policies “disastrous” for the city. Primary voters apparently disagreed, with Casar trouncing Rodriguez and two other challengers with 62 percent as of publication. 

“Our campaign has built a movement of working people, from San Antonio to Austin, who are ready to fight because our futures depend on it,” Casar said in a press release on Tuesday night. “Progressive policies are popular. And we’re going to pass them for Texas working families.”

But Casar’s promotion to Washington, D.C., comes in the wake of the rollback of some of his signature policies back home—in part due to statewide Republicans who regularly target the local progressive policies championed by Casar. 

After the protests that followed George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Casar helped make Austin one of the only cities in the nation to steer significant levels of police funding away from cops and toward other city services. But the state GOP passed a law effectively strong-arming Austin into restoring police funding, which is now a record high $442 million, and preventing other Texas cities from ever reducing police spending. During Casar’s tenure on the council, Austin also required private employers to provide paid sick leave but the all-Republican state supreme court knocked down the ordinance.  

Casar told the Texas Observer last month, if he is elected to Congress, he will aim to turn the tables and “override the legislature” instead. 

The policing reforms championed by Casar and his allies have also been hotly contested in Austin. In May 2021, after the city council decriminalized homelessness with Casar’s push, a conservative group put an initiative on the ballot to walk back the move, and voters approved it, fueling talk of a backlash against the council’s policies. 

Other progressives lost their own bids further down-ballot in Travis County on Tuesday. Bob Libal, a longtime activist who ran for county commissioner opposing a multi-million dollar jail construction project, lost by a wide margin to an incumbent who supported new jail spending. Andrew Hairston, a candidate for the office of justice of the peace who vowed to fight evictions and was endorsed by the local DSA chapter, also lost to an incumbent.

Casar, Libal, and Hairston all  hoped to build on a string of major progressive wins in Travis County in recent years, including the 2020 district attorney’s race that ushered in José Garza, who like Casar is a former labor organizer and was endorsed by national progressive leaders. Last year, Libal and other local activists successfully pressured the county to pause its plan to build a new jail, and Austin voters overwhelmingly rejected a fearmongering campaign asking them to super-charge the city’s police budget. 

Two weeks ago, Garza announced indictments against 19 police officers accused of assaulting and injuring protesters during the 2020 Black Lives Matter marches, an unusually strong move by a prosecutor that local progressives celebrated. But one of those 19 indicted officers likely secured a runoff spot on Tuesday in a Republican primary for a state House district that encompasses parts of Austin and has been drawn by the GOP to be safely red. Governor Greg Abbott, who easily won his own Republican primary race on Tuesday, recently floated offering pardons to Austin cops convicted of brutalizing protesters, a reminder of the preemption hurdles local progressives could continue to face. 

Celebrating his win Tuesday night, Casar credited the larger organizing that he says helped usher him to victory. And he did not shy away from uplifting the local policies and movements that prompted Republican attacks for years and were demonized by some in his own party during the primary. 

“We built this movement, here in Austin down to San Antonio, up and down I-35, throughout this state we built this together,” he told supporters in Austin. “We built it striking at fast food restaurants fighting for $15, we built this fighting for survivors of sexual assault, we built it fighting for sick days, we built it fighting for our unhoused brothers and sisters. We built it marching in the streets for the movement for Black lives. We built this through wins and losses.”

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