Houston's Fox26 television reported shortly before 10 p.m. Friday that Paul Bettencourt had turned in his resignation. The station attributed it to unnamed sources. The Chronicle had the story on its Web site at 11:50 p.m..
While officials like former County Judge Robert Eckels praised Bettencourt's work modernizing the office (see the Chronicle story), he was a figure of some controversy: A conservative Republican who advocated against tax increases, critics said he over-politicized his office, which cost him the endorsement of The Chronicle's editorial board in the November elections.
From reporter Matt Schwartz's story in The Chronicle this morning:
He had been accused several times in recent years of overzealously purging the voter rolls and blocking new registrations. The Harris County Democratic Party sued Bettencourt last month, complaining of his handling of about 7,000 provisional ballots cast in the Nov. 4 election and accusing him of illegally rejecting voter registration applications. He denied any wrongdoing.
Friday night, Harris County Democratic Party Chairman Gerald Birnberg said he expected Bettencourt to resign at some point, believing he had an interest in statewide office.
In an October investigation, Texas Watchdog identified more than 4,000 voters on the Harris County rolls whose personal information matched that of people listed as dead by the federal government. Officials in Bettencourt's office said earlier this week that they plan a review of those names, but the review will be after the first of the year.
Update: There is reaction about the Bettencourt resignation bouncing around the blogosphere. In fact, we learned it about it ourselves last night from the guys at blogHouston, which has a pretty good conversation going on about Bettencourt bailing.
Also check out Off the Kuff, Bay Area Houston and Stace Medellin.
Texas Monthly's Paul Burka is weighing in, too.
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