A Blue Wave Could Sweep Greg Abbott’s Handpicked Houston Judges Out of Office

In Texas’ most populous county, the judges who preside over the roughly 50 felony and misdemeanor criminal courts have been riding a political tiger for a decade now. Back in 2016, Republicans dominated these criminal judgeships, but starting with that year’s elections Democrats took control of most of the judicial positions that oversee the fates of accused Houstonians and other Harris County residents. Then, in 2024, Republican voters flipped one of those criminal courts along with a number of other local courts in an election that fueled GOP hopes of regaining a county once thought lost to the left. These criminal court judges control how everything from marijuana possession to murders make their way through the court system. 

This year, though a blue wave seems to loom, Governor Greg Abbott has promised to use his massive campaign warchest to create a “dark red” Harris County, which would mean a swing back to a judiciary led by Republicans, a party that is consistently hostile to criminal justice reform—though experts say partisan affiliation is not always a reliable indicator of how judges run their courts. 

Damon Parrish II, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, said that once judges are in place partisan affiliation is less important than fealty to the law. “I think the judges people are perceiving as being nice or defense-friendly or amenable are really judges that are more concerned with the law,” Parrish said.

Texas is one of only nine states with partisan judicial elections. In other states, “it doesn’t mean that the judge doesn’t have a political ideology, but it feels like you’re voting for someone who would rule independent of political ideology,” said Miltonette Craig, criminal justice professor at Sam Houston State University. 

Among the most animating political issues in Harris County—at least prior to this cycle—has been defendants’ access to bail. The issue’s local salience has stemmed in part from a 2019 federal consent decree, limiting the ability of misdemeanor court judges to require cash bail from the poor, and in part from a brew of some high-profile criminal incidents, local public-safety agitators, and long-running controversy around a politically mercurial Democratic district attorney. That, plus bail remains a big business—and therefore local interest group—in Harris County: In 2026 alone, judges in Harris County have required more than half a billion dollars in bail from defendants pre-trial, about 90 percent of that in felony cases. 

In recent years, even some Democrats in charge soured on bail reform. That former DA, Kim Ogg, called bond hearings “the new battleground for public safety” in 2022, decrying what she called “low, insufficient bonds.” And Houston Mayor John Whitmire, also a Democrat, publicly inflated the number of people out on bail in discussions with city council last year. In 2022, the Houston Chronicle editorial board based its judicial endorsements almost entirely on the judges’ record on bail. They interrogated candidates about specific cases in which someone was presumably let off easy. 

In one high-profile 2025 incident in Houston, Austin Collette allegedly killed his girlfriend and himself while out on a $250,000 bond related to a 2019 murder. In Collette’s case, the judge had granted bail after the defense and prosecution both agreed.

“These horrifying cases can drive political pushes for tougher pretrial policies, even though they’re abnormal,” Craig said.

Over recent election cycles and legislative sessions, Abbott and other state leaders joined wholeheartedly in bail-related fearmongering and bashing Harris County and Houston Democratic leadership. In January, a constitutional amendment passed by the Legislature and approved by voters last year took effect that allows judges to deny bail for more types of crimes. Previously, judges could only deny bail to people charged with capital murder or who had violated their bond conditions. This means anyone accused of a crime like murder—who are presumed innocent under the law—can be held without bail for months or years before they ever get to plead their case to a jury. 

But even in this new context, judges retain discretion in most bail decisions, and the judge in charge of a court determines how quickly cases move.

“Having a judge that is attuned not just to keeping the public safe, but also safeguarding the defendant’s constitutional rights is really, really important,” said Travis Fife, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. He added, “Public safety and constitutional rights are not mutually exclusive choices.” 

In November, 17 Harris County criminal district judges are up for election. These are the judges who handle felony cases and therefore decide whether to issue bail or even dismiss cases. Currently, 11 of these seats are held by Democrats and six by Republicans—all six of whom were appointed by Abbott, as seats were left vacant by judges who resigned, got promoted, or died. 

Perhaps the most noteworthy battle featuring an Abbott appointee is taking place in the 496th District Court. Democrat Ramona Franklin—dubbed “one of the county’s worst judges”—handily lost her reelection bid for the 338th District Court in 2024. During her tenure, she racked up complaints from lawyers, kept people in jail awaiting court-appointed defenders, and even went 15 months without presiding over a single case. 

She’s vying for another shot on the bench, after she surprisingly prevailed in the Democratic primary. In July, the Houston Chronicle editorial board published an early endorsement of Franklin’s opponent, with the headline: “Hey Houston Democrats, please vote for this Republican judge.” That judge is Dan Simons, who narrowly lost to Sean Teare in the 2024 race for Harris County district attorney. In January 2025, Abbott appointed Simons to his position, and in that time he’s developed a good reputation as a jurist, per the Chronicle. 

In the 232nd District Court, Democrat incumbent Josh Hill—who has weathered conservative opposition campaigns in the past—is up against a former judge (and former Dem) Chuck Silverman. Silverman led the 183rd District Court starting in 2019, but he lost his primary in 2022. He developed a reputation for detaining “hundreds of pretrial defendants on high bond,” before supporting a 2020 lawsuit aimed at reining in felony cash bail. 

Incumbent Judge Hilary Unger, the democrat in charge of the 248th District Court, found herself in the middle of bail-related controversy in recent years, after some defendants she granted bond to went on to commit other crimes. Unger is up against Republican David Overhuls, a former prosecutor-turned-defense attorney who has never run for office before. 

Meanwhile, all but one of the county’s 16 criminal courts at law, which handle misdemeanors, are up as well. The one position not up for election is Criminal Court at Law 16, led by Republican Judge Linda Garcia. Among the other 15, 12 are currently held by Democrats and three by Republicans, and all are contested this November. 

These misdemeanor courts are subject to the federal consent decree that has kept Harris County’s misdemeanor bail reform in place since 2019, which followed a lawsuit against the county for unconstitutional practices. Under the decree and a local rule, most people charged with misdemeanors are released on personal bonds, meaning they didn’t put up any bail money, after being arrested. According to the most recent report from the court-appointed independent monitor for the agreement, the number of people arrested for misdemeanors has decreased under the decree.

But the agreement is being challenged. Texas Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton says that new state laws requiring cash bail for certain misdemeanor crimes invalidate the consent decree. His efforts to get the decree overturned are making their way through the courts with minimal roadblocks, but Harris County is still operating in compliance with the agreement.

While judges operate within the confines of the consent decree, they can make decisions regarding whether a defendant may pose a risk to public safety, and they have control over extra bail requirements. Currently, all of the sitting Republican misdemeanor court judges, and none of the Democratic ones, have joined in Paxton’s challenge to the decree. 

But, despite the historical salience and ongoing relevance, as November’s elections near, judicial candidates today are not as vocal about bail as they have been in previous cycles. Perhaps because politics has belatedly caught up to the fact that violent crime is down in Houston, or because reformers have been scared away from the issue, or because the Legislature has steadily decreased local control of the matter altogether.

Doshie Piper, coordinator with the Texas Organizing Project, thinks some judges are “too scared to talk about” the problems with cash bail for fear of being blamed for anything that goes wrong while a person is out on bond. 

“People are intimidated. They don’t want to be seen as soft on crime,” Piper said. “Campaign attacks or an accusation can really get people not to vote for you, so they don’t want that smoke.”

Brandon Rottinghaus, political science professor at the University of Houston, pointed to the other explanations: that crime rates are down and the state “effectively took ownership of the bail issues” that had been such a flashpoint in local politics. 

This could mean that these downballot races, which always fly under the radar compared to top-ballot elections for the other branches of government, will be even further from voters’ minds than usual—a possible gift to Democrats in this particular midterm. “The quiet paradox of judicial elections is the less voters’ attention paid to individual judges, the more important the county’s overall partisan environment is,” Rottinghaus said.