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Texas Supreme Court election returns, and other Texas judicial races

By Don Cruse

The three sitting members of the Texas Supreme Court facing re-election in 2010 all won handily. With 99.98% of precincts reporting:

Place 3

Debra Lehrmann (R)-I	2,902,897	59.88%
Jim Sharp (D)	1,805,723	37.25%
William Bryan Strange, III (L)	138,567	2.85%

Place 5

Paul Green (R)-I	2,898,421	60.02%
Bill Moody (D)	1,785,890	36.98%
Tom Oxford (L)	143,999	2.98%

Place 9

Eva Guzman (R)-I	2,917,555	60.31%
Blake Bailey (D)	1,722,237	35.60%
Jack Armstrong (L)	197,566	4.08%

These outcomes fairly closely track the performance of other statewide Republican candidates in contested races, in which Republican incumbents received around 60% of the vote.¹

Other Appellate Elections

The two most interesting contests of the night were in the Thirteenth Court and the Third Court. (In each of the other contested races for the court of appeals, the Republican incumbent won with at least 56% of the vote.)

Thirteenth Court: Perkes defeats Yañez

The only incumbent to lose was Linda Yañez of the Thirteenth Court of Appeals (in Corpus Christi/Edinburg), who had first been appointed to the Court in 1993. She lost to Greg Perkes, an appellate lawyer from Corpus Christi.

The Yañez/Perkes race was the closest appellate contest of the night. With 100% of the precincts reporting:

Greg Perkes (R)	136,342	50.81%
Yañez (D)-I	131,965	49.18%

Third Court: Goodwin wins the open seat

The race for the open seat on the Third Court received a great deal of attention locally in Austin. In part, that was because Democratic nominee Kurt Kuhn had drawn a wide range of Republican supporters, including several former Justices of the Texas Supreme Court.

But in the voting booth, the night’s pattern of a Republican sweep continued. With 100% of precincts reporting:

Melissa Goodwin (R)	313,652	57.13%
Kurt Kuhn (D)	235,355	42.86%

1. The exception was Governor Perry, of course, who obtained roughly 55% of the vote in a significantly more contested race.

Full post as published by Supreme Court of Texas Blog on November 03, 2010 (boomark / email).