Four white Dallas County civil court judges facing challenges from black and Hispanic women in the Democratic primary encouraged white women to join the races, a controversial move that could dilute the female vote and boost their chances of winning.
Having multiple women in the March 6 primary contests would likely force a May runoff, in which the incumbents hope to have better odds of prevailing because of lower voter turnout.
The judges — Carl Ginsberg, Martin Hoffman, Jim Jordan and Ken Tapscott — have justified the strategy as assuring that voters have the chance to pick from an array of "qualified" candidates, which critics call a thinly veiled shot at the minority women seeking to replace them.
"They are playing games, and those games are going to backfire," said Rev. Frederick Haynes III, senior pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas.
Haynes said the incumbent judges and their cronies are disrespecting black women.
"They are being treated as if they are maids for the party," Haynes said. "They are being told 'We want you to vote for our candidates, but don't think you can run for anything.'"
The black and Hispanic challengers — Aiesha Redmond, Bridgett Whitmore, Kim Brown and Paula Rosales — say they are more than qualified to serve on the civil court bench.
But the incumbent judges and one of their consultants contend that putting the white women in the race gives voters better options.
"They are not stalking horses," said Jeff Dalton, a consultant for three of the incumbents who also has more than a dozen black, Hispanic and Asian clients. "As I understand it, these are people that are in the race so voters can have a range of qualified choices."
The controversy exposes an increasing fissure in Dallas County Democratic Party politics. The demographic shift that catapulted Democrats into power — analysts say women make up about 58 percent of the party's electorate — is threatening white male incumbents whom some view as solid judges or elected officials.
The incumbents and their supporters complain that the changing Democratic electorate has resulted in many challengers driven by opportunity. They bemoan that trial lawyers are using minority women as weapons because they're upset with the outcome of individual cases the incumbents have presided over.
"White liberals sometimes make the same arguments made by Republicans," said former Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, who rankled Democratic Party officials in 2014 when he ran a slate of candidates for judicial posts. "They are all for you until you challenge them. That's the problem we now have in Dallas County."
Watkins said that Democratic Party leaders have not done a good job managing the demographic changes in the county and that white, male incumbents are terrified of being challenged by women.
"This chaotic and unfortunate situation is a direct result of having a weak and ineffective party chair," said Dallas lawyer Chris Hamilton, who is running for chairman of the Dallas County Democratic Party. "We need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot."
But Dallas lawyer Carol Donovan, the current chairwoman, said that the issue has many layers and that she "represents the entire party."
"The incumbents in question are doing a good job, and they didn't start these contests, challengers did," she wrote in a text. "There is some controversy as to why these judges were targeted. I hope that the voters will make decisions on their own and evaluate the qualifications of each candidate."
Donovan did not answer a question about the perception derived from pushing white women candidates in a race in which the early challengers were minority women.
White male incumbents targeted
In Jordan's 160th District Court race, he encouraged Bonnie Wulff and Lynda Lee Weaver to run.
Neither candidate has actively campaigned for the bench, held fundraisers or started a campaign website.
"I think I'd make a very good judge," Wulff said.
Weaver said that she wasn't interested in the lengthy response to questions.
"I am genuinely on the ballot for the 160th," she said. "I want to give voters a choice. May the best candidate win."
Jordan defended the presence of Wulff and Weaver on the ballot and pointed out that his challenger, Redmond, didn't get into the 160th judicial race until days before the filing period ended. For most of the past year, Redmond, who is black, had been campaigning for another judicial post.
"These two women want to run. They're qualified, and they should have the right to do that," Jordan said. "The voters should have a choice. Why is there a problem with that?"
Redmond said any attack on her credentials is "offensive" and the timing of her entry into the race has nothing to do with the issue of putting stalking horses on the ballot.
"At the end of the day, my qualifications speak for themselves," she said.
In Ginsberg's 193rd District Court race, candidates Joan Ballard and Lindsay Williams Harrison did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Ginsberg said all the candidates meet the legal requirements for running and "some are more qualified than others."
"Two of the candidates are board certified, including me," Ginsberg said. "The voters will have options."
Ginsberg, by text message, said "the real controversy" is that one of the candidates, Whitmore, "was recruited to run against me by lawyers who lost a case before me." He dismissed the 2016 case involving former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo's fantasy sports convention. Attorneys for The Fan Expo, LLC, had argued that the NFL improperly contacted players last year through the NFL Players Association and their agents, leading to the inaugural event in Las Vegas being canceled.
"Judges should not be targeted for defeat by lawyers based on a single ruling," he wrote. "Doing so is nothing more than an assault on the independence of the judiciary."
Michael Hurst, who helped lead Fan Expo's legal team, said he did not know Whitmore before she launched her campaign.
"I did not recruit anybody to run against Carl Ginsberg, or to my knowledge neither did my co-counsel, " he said. "I lent my name to support her campaign, as many others have done, as part of the Democratic process."
Whitmore, a trial attorney and former Dallas County prosecutor, said she's challenging Ginsberg because he is "injudicious and intemperate."
"I got into the race because there is a problem with fairness in his court," she said. "I would be more than happy to put my résumé up against any one of the individuals complaining about my lack of experience."
In the 68th District Court, incumbent Hoffman is being challenged by Brown, a black lawyer, and Amanda Ghagar, a white woman he spoke to about getting in the race. Hoffman conceded that he knew some of the operatives gathering signatures for Ghagar.
Ghagar said: "I'm in it for the community."
Brown could not be reached for comment.
"Everybody has a right to run," Hoffman said. "We need to have qualified people in the judiciary."
In County Court 4, Tapscott said trial lawyers Domingo Garcia and Les Weisbrod recruited one of his opponents, Rosales, to run because they were unhappy about a case in his court.
"As I told my story to friends and supporters over the last 60 days, Tanja Martini and Rachel Rider, both civil attorneys who have tried lawsuits in my court, decided to throw their hats in the contest to give Dallas County Democratic voters more qualified alternatives, should Democratic voters not decide to support my re-election," said Tapscott, adding that he has supported numerous minority women for the bench.
He said Rosales is unqualified.
"Her ethnicity is irrelevant," he said. "It is the responsibility of the local Democratic Party to deliver qualified lawyers to the benches in Dallas County. Our justice system is not a game. The Dallas County judiciary is not a jobs program for the mediocre."
Garcia, a former state representative, said he's supporting Rosales because she's the best candidate.
And Rosales, a former municipal court judge, said her "experience and record exceeds" the qualifications for the bench, and she bristled at Tapscott's claim that Garcia and Weisbrod put her in the race. She works as an attorney for Weisbrod's firm.
"These are the types of impediments that qualified women of color have to go through when they run for office," she said.
Paul Quinn College President Michael Sorrell, a lawyer and former political consultant who knows most of the civil court judges, said he was stunned by what was evolving in the races.
"To witness something as absolutely disrespectful to an integral part of our party and our society [black women] from the so-called good guys makes you start to wonder who you can trust," Sorrell said. "It's unacceptable. We have to do better."
