Dallas County judge race narrows to two with clear differences
Republican Wade Emmert and Democrat Clay Jenkins, both lawyers, represented their party’s interests during the 2008 state representative race pitting Linda Harper-Brown and Bob Romano.
Emmert helped Harper-Brown protect her thin lead in a recount, while Jenkins tried to secure any votes that should have gone to Romano.
Harper-Brown, the Republican, won by 19 votes.
“He and I made the comment that this may be the first of our two face-offs,” said Emmert, a Cedar Hill City Council member. “Round 1 went to me, I suppose.”
For Round 2, the stakes are much higher.
Though both downplay it, the Emmert-Jenkins contest will help determine the political dynamic of the Dallas County Commissioners Court.
Some similarities
Emmert and Jenkins are at similar stations in life.
They are 40-something lawyers from Baylor Law School who have become emerging stars on the local political scene.
And they are family men with young children who have backed away from negative campaigning.
But Emmert’s and Jenkins’ respective paths to their nominations were different.
After working as Barack Obama’s presidential campaign lawyer in Dallas, Jenkins gobbled up endorsements from the Dallas County Democratic establishment and quickly raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his campaign against Foster and Dallas County Schools Board president Larry Duncan.
Though he needed a runoff to put Duncan away, there was little doubt that he would become the party’s standard-bearer.
Emmert was already on the Cedar Hill City Council, but like Jenkins, was unknown to most Dallas County voters.
As Democrats quickly rallied to support Jenkins, Emmert had to scramble for the Republican support and money he needed to build a campaign.
Other big-name Republicans, including former Dallas City Councilmember Mitchell Rasansky, considered running for the GOP nomination. That would have made Emmert’s path more difficult.
But Rasansky opted not to run for county judge, and Emmert was unopposed in the Republican primary.
“I built my campaign one supporter at a time,” said Emmert, the rare GOP countywide candidate from southern Dallas. “He came into it as the establishment candidate.”
Diverging views
While Emmert and Jenkins agree that Dallas County needs new leadership, transparency in government, southern Dallas development and a more efficient government, their party affiliations and political ideology make them different.
Emmert is a conservative Republican, while Jenkins is an ObamaDemocrat.
Jenkins has urged county commissioners to get out of the way and let District Attorney Craig Watkins handle an investigation of ConstablesJaime Cortes and Derick Evans.
In contrast, Emmert has questioned whether the district attorney is acting in the best interest of Dallas residents. And he supports an outside party taking over any criminal investigation.
“There are similarities there about our background,” Jenkins said. “But for our race, we have differences on the issues.”
Both men say they want the campaign to be about ideas and issues, not negative, partisan attacks.
“We have a commitment to having a pretty civil dialogue,” Jenkins said.
Emmert agreed.
“I really don’t perceive it as a battle,” he said.
credit: Dallas News
