Up for reelection, Sheriff Lupe Valdez has had a rocky first term, but as Democrats strengthen their hold on the county, will that matter?
You could argue there is no local race in all of Texas more important than the one for Dallas sheriff. If the Republicans can’t outdraw incumbent Lupe Valdez, whose first term was marked by bad headlines, embarrassing stumbles and, most of all, a notoriously mismanaged jail, then the GOP will start to look like a rusty band of gunslingers who will have surrendered the second biggest county in the state.
Four years ago, Valdez upended politics in Dallas when she beat Republican Danny Chandler to become sheriff. It wasn’t just that she was a Latina Democrat, although that certainly contributed to the drama. It was also that she happened to be a lesbian, a fact that she neither hid nor trumpeted. At a time when voters around the country were choosing to ban gay marriages and re-elect President Bush, Bush’s former town just elected a gay sheriff. Needless to say, people here who follow politics—and those who don’t—were shocked.
Now up for reelection, Valdez is no longer the fresh-faced, barrier-breaking candidate, but an underwhelming incumbent quick to spin why the jail she runs has flunked every state inspection under her watch. But in a sign that politics in Dallas may have irrevocably turned blue, most observers tag Valdez as the favorite to beat Republican challenger Lowell Cannaday.
Just don’t take that to mean people are gushing over her accomplishments.
“I am a Democrat, and unfortunately I am going to have to support Lupe Valdez, ” says Jesse Diaz, a president of a local LULAC chapter. “The previous sheriff left a mess for her to clean up—and a lot of this was left on her lap. But she’s made some mistakes, and clearly she’s paying the price.”
Of course, that price may only come in the form of the occasional bad headline. After the 2006 elections, when Dallas Democrats -- bankrolled in large part by the big pockets of Dallas attorney Fred Baron -- won every countywide contest, Valdez is now running for the dominant party.
(See earlier Texas Watchdog stories on Fred Baron here, here and here.)
And if the sheriff wins reelection, after Republicans have targeted her seat for years, the GOP may be vulnerable in far bigger contests.
“This will show that the Texas Democratic party is on the rise, “ says Hector Nieto, the spokesperson for the state Dems. “Once you start winning the most populous counties in the state, you’re on the verge of winning statewide elections.”
Chickens Coming Home to Roost
Once upon a time in Dallas County, Lowell Cannaday would’ve been an unbeatable candidate for sheriff, with a resume that would seem to lead him neatly to the job.
A 28-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, Cannaday ascended to the rank of assistant chief before leaving to lead the cop shop in Irving in 1994. There he oversaw a force of 300 officers before retiring ten years later. In 2005, he was elected to the city council before vacating his seat to mount his run for sheriff last year.
But Cannaday is far from a safe bet, and, in fact, seems a bit gloomy that he has to run as a Republican.
“If it were a race on qualifications, I’d be a lot more comfortable,” he says in an interview with Texas Watchdog. “This not a partisan politics issue; this is a question in regard to law and order and public safety.”
Well, tell that to big bird. Recently, the Dallas GOP filmed a video where a suspiciously human-looking chicken strutted outside a fundraiser for Lupe Valdez taunting the incumbent for refusing to debate the challenger. In fact, Valdez did agree to a series of debates, (GOP chair Jonathan Neerman says that came after the party produced the video) and her campaign quickly derided the video as a publicity stunt.
But although the GOP short film found an audience on local blogs, such as the Dallas Observer blog Unfair Park, it highlighted a bleak state of affairs for Dallas Republicans. Four years ago, it would have been beneath the GOP's dignity to garner publicity in this way for one of its candidates. In fact, the party wouldn’t have to do much of anything other than put its candidates on the ballot and play a little golf until Election Day.
For his part, Cannaday, who is hard at work hitting neighborhood association meetings across the county, says that he didn’t know anything about the clip until someone pointed him to YouTube. But he declined to say the spot was out of bounds.
“In my campaign I’m going to run really hard on my qualifications, and in those areas where my opponent has not performed well, I will go after that,” he says. “I don’t want to ridicule anybody in the process.”
Here Comes the Rooster
If the chicken video was good, clean fun—really it’s difficult to be too outraged by a grown man squawking—an anti-Valdez Web site, titled offwithherbadge.com, marks a nastier side of this election. The site, which Cannaday and the Dallas GOP disown, features a sketch of a grinning Valdez with her sheriff’s cap turned askew. Even worse is the final line of the Web site: “Let’s be honest. She needs to go because she’s a royal idiot.”
Which is not to say that Valdez hasn’t invited criticism about her intelligence. In 2006, the sheriff of Dallas County flunked her Texas Peace Officer’s exam, generating snickers throughout her own department. That the law enforcement test is not considered to be particularly difficult—many of Valdez’s own employees whispered that they passed it on their first try---only added to the rap on the sheriff: That she is all hat and no cattle.
An obscure federal agent with scant local law enforcement experience before her election, Valdez has struggled at her number one job responsibility: Running the jail. And if she loses in November, that will be the reason.
Since Valdez has taken office, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards has flunked the Dallas facility ever single year—each time drawing more scornful coverage from local press. Some of the infractions weren’t the sheriff’s fault, particularly the lack of staffing at the facility. In fact, Valdez labored hard to address that problem lobbying the Dallas County Commissioners to add more than 250 new jailor positions during the most recent fiscal year.
But state inspectors also cited a range of management and maintenance issues that point directly to how Valdez runs the facility. Even worse for the sheriff, her jail attracted the unwelcome attention of the feds. Two years into her term, the United States Justice Department launched an investigation of Valdez’s jail that led to a federal lawsuit naming her and Dallas County as defendants.
Jail Failures
The feds' report, which often reads like a macabre movie script, fleshed out two general allegations: The first is that the jail fails to provide adequate medical care for its inmates, even for those who lay close to death. That one falls less on the sheriff than its outside medical provider. But the second allegation—that the facility is neither safe nor sanitary—reflects directly on Valdez.
Leaking toilets, clogged showers, and heavy concentrations of swarming flies hovering over bathroom drains all make up the gothic scenes in the feds' complaint. Which makes you wonder what exactly Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price was thinking when he recently introduced the sheriff in her press conference announcing her plans for reelection. There the Democratic warhorse tried to make the case for Valdez, repeatedly referring to the sheriff as the “clean-up woman.”
For Valdez’s supporters, the jail’s myriad of problems trace back to her predecessor, Republican Jim Bowles. Even though under his watch, the facility only flunked one inspection in 20 years, Bowles was himself a cantankerous, polarizing figure. Toward the end of his tenure, Bowles squabbled with the county commissioners, who, in turn, failed to pay for guards and basic maintenance improvements. He left Valdez, her supporters claim, with a demoralized department and a neglected jail, and she has worked valiantly to remedy both.
“I think she’s doing her best to correct problems that were at the jail when she took over the job,” says Sam Coats, a former airline executive who plans to run for Dallas County judge in the Democratic primary against Jim Foster. “Certainly she’s made some mistakes, but her heart is in the right place and she is doing her best to run an effective jail.”
Can Do Cannaday?
Although Lowell Cannaday oversaw a $40 million budget as Irving police chief, his own plan to remedy the problems of the Dallas County jail falls short in the details department. He merely talks about bringing a business-minded approach to the place, using phrases like “making systems work.” But he does add that it’s about time for Valdez to stop laying the blame for her department’s struggles on the sheriff from 2004.
“I can’t tell you what kind of conditions the jail was in when she took over, but at some point in time the sheriff has to take responsibility for what’s there,” he says at his Irving home while waiting for vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s convention speech. “It’s been four years now, and that’s a long time for the state and the federal government to be continuing to intervene."
Interestingly, the crux of the complaint against Valdez—that she runs a jail that routinely neglects minorities and the mentally ill—is a rather liberal one. But Dallas Dems have steadfastly backed the sheriff with no high-profile defections to date. It’s hard to see how Cannaday can win if he doesn’t cross the aisle and snag votes from the opposing party.
But the former chief did receive a boost last week when 14 law enforcement groups backed his campaign, including several groups representing sheriff’s department employees. Even more surprisingly, one of the associations that backed Cannaday is the Dallas Chapter of the Latino Peace Officers Association, which criticized the Latina incumbent for being out of touch.
But even with the endorsement of a Hispanic officers group, Cannaday won’t have an easy time winning Latino votes. That’s becauses he supports-and helped design—the Irving Police Department’s controversial 24/7 criminal alien program. Under the initative, Irving jailers notify the feds if a prisoner may be in the country illegally—a practice that Hispanic leaders have said has to led to police profiling.
Even with an election fast approaching, Cannaday doesn’t back off his support of 24/7.
“We’re dealing with people who break the law, “ he says. “Illegal aliens are the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government -- that’s not our job; however, when we start dealing with criminal activity, law enforcement does what it always does and takes care of criminal activity.”
Cannaday says that most of the inmates placed under federal custody are serious offenders, but the Irving Police Department’s own report found that they were largely charged with misdemeanor offenses. In any case, you can expect the Valdez campaign to challenge Cannaday’s stance if just to rile up the Democratic base.
It’s not clear as the race progresses if the election will be a referendum on the jail or a tug of war between two parties, but it’s hard to imagine how an issue like the constitutional rights of hardened criminals will hasten voters to the polls. That’s a shame, says attorney Mark Haney, who has successfully sued the county on behalf of a series of inmates whose lack of medical care led to serious injury and death.
“I don’t know I appreciated how screwed up that place was and how difficult it was to fix, “ he says. “But if they’re fixing it, it’s not apparent in the cases that are still coming out of the jail.”
Then again, who cares what Haney thinks. He lives and works in Fort Worth. Maybe if he dressed up as a chicken, more people would listen.
Comments
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Gehrig Saldana
Thursday, 09/04/2008 - 21:33
Matt, Excellent article. Come back to Dallas!!!
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DSO Employee
Saturday, 09/06/2008 - 16:42
The morale in the Sheriff's Department is worse now than when Bowles ran it. Lupe does not care about her employees and she won't improve things unless she learns to be a manager of people. Her getting stuck in a jail elevator is the most time she has spent in the Jail in the four years she has been in office. She was never a supervisor of people her whole federal career. She never learned that employees are your best asset. Her outside supporters and she herself say that she has promoted many people including minorities during her tenure. This is not true. Her taking credit for promotions is like someone taking credit for the sun coming up each day. These employees tested for those positions thru civil service rules, which have been in effect for many years, before Bowles came into office. She had nothing to do with it. That leaves her actual promotions down to three, all three Chiefs that she brought in from outside that had only reached the rank of Lieutenant in their own departments. None had knowledge of the Jail or having any experience in the management of personnel from an executive Staff level. Her #2 Chief only can handle things like ensuring the bathrooms have toilet paper in them. A fact. Things have not improved and they won't as long as she is in Office.
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