Page 14 - Florida Sentinel 11-16-18

Political
17 Black Women Sweep To Judgeships In Texas County
The photo was unforget- table: 19 black women, all dressed in black, gathered in a mock courtroom in Thur- good Marshall School of Law. All of them were running for judgeships in November.
On Tuesday, 17 of them won their races by double-dig- its in Harris County, Tex., the nation’s third largest county, which includes Houston. Each of the lawyers, all Democrats ranging in age from 31 to early 60s, will join the bench in Jan- uary for four-year terms in the civil, criminal, family and pro- bate courts.
“Although we were doing everything we could — block walking, phone banking. I wasn’t confident that it would turn out the way it did,” said Latosha Lewis Payne, 44, a longtime lawyer in Houston who was one of the 17.
Each of the women de- cided individually to run. Some in the group had to win primary races in March. But once they realized they were all running against Republi- can incumbents in the fall, they rallied around a slogan called “Black Girl Magic” to celebrate the accomplish- ments of black women.
“We thought that it would probably make sense to de-
Seventeen black women were elected as judges in Harris County, while two who ran for statewide judicial positions, standing in the front, lost their races. But they remain county judges. CreditCredit Christin Mcqueen
two of the last three presiden- tial-year votes. The county is 42 percent Hispanic, 31 per- cent white, 20 percent black, and 7 percent Asian.
The two women in the photo who lost their races — both making bids for statewide office — were al- ready county judges, so they will keep their seats on the bench.
“All of us started running for our benches in early sum- mer 2017, so there wasn’t any real thought given to any of us potentially making history,” Ms. Tanner said. “We were just trying to win our respec- tive races.”
Ms. Payne, one of the women who prevailed on Tuesday, said the changes would go beyond the cosmetic because the women’s back- grounds would shape their rulings.
“We talked about coming in and being more compas- sionate,” Ms. Payne said of her newly elected colleagues. “Being more understanding of the poor and disadvantaged that come into the judicial sys- tem.”
She added, “I hope that our election will usher in courts that ensure an equal opportunity for justice for all.”
velop a campaign around us,” said another winning candi- date, Germaine Tanner, 43. “In the course of that, we got to really know each other. We became not only colleagues, but friends. It really kind of just happened.”
The photo was featured on hundreds of posters across the county, especially prominent in African-American neigh- borhoods, on billboards and even door hangers.
“All of the data suggests
that African-American wo- men are the core of the Dem- ocratic Party base, so it made sense to excite the electorate and design something around them,” said Dallas Jones, a Houston-based political con- sultant who came up with the “Black Girl Magic” campaign. “We wanted to show the power of having diversity in the courts.”
Mr. Jones used the image to mobilize voters across the electorate. In one
push, he deployed teams to go to nightclubs and concerts and reach out to millennials. “It wasn’t just, ‘Hey, look at this picture,’ it was ‘Hey, look at this picture and take action,’” he said. “Go to the website and commit to vote. The 19 judges were a great opportunity to tell the story of the changing demographics of our county.”
Harris County had its largest turnout for midterm elections in its history, while also surpassing its turnout in
GOP Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith Running Against Black Man Sparks Outrage For Racist Joke About Happily Accepting An Invitation To A ‘Public Hanging’
It seems that even in 2018 there are still some politicians who don’t realize public lynchings aren’t the sort of thing you can’t casually joke about to your constituents.
Sunday, white Republican Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith found herself in a world of trouble after a video surfaced which shows her admitting at a public
ment addressing the video. “In a comment on Nov. 2, I referred to accepting an in- vitation to a speaking engage- ment,” she told the Jackson
Free Press.
“In referencing the one who invited me, I used an ex- aggerated expression of re- gard, and any attempt to turn this into a negative connota- tion is ridiculous.”
But given that Missis- sippi’s unsettling history of having the highest number of lynchings of African-Ameri- cans of any state, advocates like Cristen Hemmins, the chair of the Lafayette County Democrats, think her state- ments were particularly prob- lematic.
“With the history of lynch- ing of Mississippi, you just don’t say something like that,” Hemmins told The Washington Post. “I can’t even imagine the kind of mind that would come up with a throwaway phrase like that. I’m a Mississippian. No- body I know talks like that. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”
Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy
event that she’d be “on the front row” if she were invited to “a public hanging.”
According to The Hill, the incident took place on No- vember 2nd, although the context for such a jarring statement still remains un- clear. The timing of the reve- lation couldn’t be any worse considering Hyde-Smith is currently running an emo- tionally charged campaign against Democrat Mike Espy, who might just happen to be the first Black U. S. Sen- ator from Mississippi since 1883 if he won.
The Clarion Ledger re- ports that Hyde-Smith and Espy are scheduled to go
head to head in a runoff on Nov. 27 since neither candi- date was able to get more than 50 percent of the vote during the November 6th midterms.
“Cindy Hyde-Smith’s comments are reprehensible,” a statement from Espy’s campaign said in response to the clip. “They have no place in our political discourse, in Mississippi, or our country. We need leaders, not dividers, and her words show that she lacks the understanding and judgement to represent the people of our state.”
Hyde-Smith, who has been endorsed by President Trump also released a state-
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