Cooke County Judge election notes

First, please, no Chicago respondents if I do get any hits. Read how the county name is spelled.

With that out of the way? I didn't run candidate questionnaires in my papers, as the weekly shopper-blus had well beaten me to the punch and with staffing belts tightened here, I just have so much time. Well, the regular countywide paper jumped in, itself, with a candidate questionnaire for just county judge candidates on Friday. I suspect it won't do one for county court at law judge, the other contested countywide race, let alone the primary-contested race for the one commissioners court precinct.

So, I'm looking primarily at its questionnair in the Gainesville NOT DAILY Register, which still has that word in its masthead even though it became a semiweekly a full year ago, and dropped from five-day daily to triweekly before that in the first couple of months after COVID hit in 2020. (I think CNHI was eyeballing a drop to triweekly even without COVID, but knowing its level of management, who knows if they were thinking, at all.)

But, I digress.

OK, responses to one question caught my eye.

That was about caseloads in the district attorney's office. I find it "interesting" that two of the three current candidates for Cooke County Judge, both members of the current commissioners court, haven't noted they have taken a pass in the past on voting for more attorneys for the Cooke County DA's office, when asked about its backlog. County Judge Steve Starnes has been in office more than a year, and since he was appointed to a vacancy, local DA John Warren raised it once, before the current budget was finalized. Precinct 4 Commissioner Leon Klement heard Warren mention it in 2020 as well.

Starnes talked about getting a state to add another district judge. That doesn't help the DA's office if it is shorthanded on attorneys. Klement said that the commissioners court doesn't have the authority to tell the DA how to improve criminal justice systems in the county. True, but not the issue at hand. The commissioners court DOES have the authority to adjust the budget to add more attorneys, paralegals, or whatever, to the DA's staff. As for "facilitate dialogue" on this issue? Not needed. Warren's asked and you've said no. Former county judge John Roane mentioned space and a visiting judge. The visiting judge is no more bueno than a new district judge. The space? It's something he's fixated on. Denny Hook, the unopposed Democratic candidate for the position, either didn't answer the question or else had it cut; the Register also didn't run his mug.

Note: While I vote outside the duopoly when I can, and while I also have said that, at the local level in smaller counties, county-level races really aren't partisan, it will be nice to have a D at the local level in the fall.