As of 10 p.m. Tuesday, there were nothing but blue skies in Fort Bend County as it appeared Democrats would sweep the hotly contested races for county judge, commissioners and district attorney.
Dexter McCoy was leading Daniel Wong 60 percent to 40 percent in the county judge’s race. If he prevails, McCoy will be sworn into office in January along with April Jones, who will take over the Precinct 4 commissioner seat that McCoy vacated. Brian Middleton, the first African American elected as Fort Bend County DA, is expected to return for a third term.
It was a long road to the judge’s seat for McCoy. His March primary forced a runoff against Sugar Land Municipal Court Associate Judge Rachelle Carter, whom McCoy defeated with 74 percent of the vote.
But by the time McCoy secured the Democratic nomination, the Republican candidate for county judge, Daniel Wong, had already been appointed to serve as interim judge. The appointment was made by a visiting Republican judge from Galveston County, and many, including McCoy, suspected it was an effort by the GOP to give Wong an advantage in the general election.
Fort Bend County’s political parties have been bitterly divided for years, but the attacks ramped up when Democrat-turned-Republican County Judge KP George was convicted of felony money laundering this year and came in last in the GOP primary that Wong won.
Wong hired MAGA Republican Trever Nehls as his chief of staff, even though Nehls was the GOP nominee for a U.S. Congressional seat that his twin brother Troy previously held. When County Attorney Bridgette Smith-Lawson sued Wong, claiming his interim appointment expired in June, he responded by stripping her office of its authority and moving employees into a newly formed civil litigation division.
Since the validity of Wong’s appointment was called into question in June, McCoy and fellow Democrat Grady Prestage have boycotted most of the commissioners court meetings, contending that the gatherings are illegal and any action taken while Wong is presiding could be challenged in court.
If McCoy and Jones are elected Tuesday and Prestage is re-elected as anticipated, the Democrats will have a 3-2 majority on commissioners court in January. As of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Prestage was leading his challenger Tony Aranda with 75 percent of the vote.
A trial on whether Wong’s appointment is valid is slated to begin later this month but will likely be deemed unnecessary based on the outcome of the election. It’s unknown whether he will preside at the November and December meetings, and if he does, whether McCoy and Prestage will return.
A Texas Southern University poll conducted last month predicted that voters in Fort Bend County, the most diverse in Texas, would vote Democrat in most races, including statewide contests. Fort Bend County has close to 1 million residents, 29 percent of whom are white, 25 percent Latino, 22 percent Asian American, and 20 percent Black.
McCoy is Black; Wong is Chinese American, but experts predicted that the African American voters would show up to the Fort Bend County polls in unprecedented numbers for the midterms, some with the sole intent of potentially unseating Republicans like U.S. Senate hopeful Ken Paxton.
“What’s locking this race in for Dexter McCoy is that Black voters punch above their population weight in Fort Bend County as a share of the electorate and they’re voting at a 90-10 margin for the Democratic candidates,” said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones, who helped conduct the TSU poll.
The Precinct 4 commissioner’s race also had its share of controversy.
The top two vote-getters in the March Democratic primary were Brittanye Morris and April Jones, followed by Nicole Roberts. None of the candidates in the five-person race got 50 percent of the vote, which forced a runoff.
Then Roberts accused Morris of falsifying her residency documents by claiming an address in Fort Bend County that was occupied by a family to which Morris had no ties. Roberts and others said at the time that Morris, a former Harris County district judge, lived in Houston. Morris was temporarily removed from the runoff ballot, bumping up Roberts, but a judge later reversed the action.
Jones was poised to defeat Republican Ken Mathews, holding a 69 percent lead late Tuesday.
District Attorney Brian Middleton was expected to safely secure the position he’s held for two terms. At press time, Middleton was leading challenger Shawn McDonald, a former prosecutor and judge, with 61 percent of the vote.
Middleton faced criticism earlier this year during his prosecution of George, the former county judge, for money laundering. Misdemeanor charges regarding a social media hoax were eventually dropped, but George’s attorney Jared Woodfill maintained that Middleton was aware of the scheme while it was happening and turned on George as part of a political vendetta. Middleton denied all allegations of misconduct.
McDonald focused his campaign on criticizing Middleton for being too lenient on defendants accused of murder, rape, armed robbery and domestic violence.
