The Texas Organizing Venture (TOP) is wading into Bexar County’s crowded Democratic District Legal professional major race, endorsing James Bethke, who serves as director of Bexar County’s Managed Assigned Counsel Workplace.
The statewide progressive group is a formidable political ally with deep pockets, serving to increase District Legal professional Joe Gonzales over then-incumbent Democrat Nico LaHood in 2018.
It’s additionally come underneath fireplace lately for its bail reform work, together with posting bond for a person who went on to kill six folks in Bexar County in 2023.
Gonzales’ connections to progressive justice reform teams dogged his time as DA and continuously made the workplace a goal of Texas’ GOP leaders. A nationwide group aligned with Democratic megadonor George Soros gave $1 million to his first marketing campaign, and his workplace was later criticized permitting the justice reform group Wren Collective super entry to their work.
TOP’s endorsement is among the many first high-profile indicators of help in what has change into a crowded contest to steer the prosecutor’s workplace in Texas’ fourth-largest county.
Gonzales isn’t looking for a 3rd time period this 12 months, and the 2 biggest-name candidates who checked out operating to switch him, state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio) and district courtroom Decide Ron Rangel, determined to not run.
Bethke launched his marketing campaign this week and is pitching himself as a candidate targeted on public security reforms and rebuilding belief within the justice system.
TOP’s endorsement may go a great distance in a area of little-known candidates making an attempt to construct help past conventional courthouse and political networks.
“I’m honored to have the help of the Texas Organizing Venture,” Bethke mentioned in a press release Tuesday. “Their dedication to empowering on a regular basis Texans and strengthening belief between communities and authorities displays the sort of justice system I consider Bexar County deserves — one which listens, serves, and treats each individual with dignity.”
The crowded area of candidates looking for the Democratic nomination contains: former Fourth Court docket of Appeals Justice Luz Elena Chapa (D), prosecutors Oscar Salinas and Angelica “Meli” Carrión Powers, who serves as chief of the Household Violence Division within the DA’s workplace, felony protection attorneys Veronica Legarreta, Shannon Locke and Meredith Chacon, who ran in Republicans’ DA major in 2022, Jane Davis, who serves as chief of the DA workplace’s Juvenile Part, and James Bethke, govt director of the Managed Assigned Counsel Workplace.
All eight candidates will face off in a San Antonio Report debate on Feb. 3.
The primary take a look at candidates’ fundraising for the race will come Thursday, the place semi-annual marketing campaign finance stories are due.
