On December 17, Texas Democratic judicial candidate Nadine Nieto filed a lawsuit in state court to remove her opponent from the March 1 Democratic primary ballot in Bexar County. Both women are running for a judicial office.
The lawsuit says the true name of the opponent is Lisa Uresti Dasher, but the opponent listed her name on the declaration of candidacy as Lisa Uresti-Dasher. See this story.
Clicking through to the link, the story is a bit more complicated than your characterization of it. There are also alleged discrepancies involving various statements about how long she lived in the state and district, counter-allegations about the other candidate’s tax history…the story ends by hinting that there may be a long standing rivalry by revealing that the two women attended the same high school and the same college. I’ll need to look at it again to see if it mentioned their ages, to see if that would have been at the same time or not.
Clearly, this contest can only be settled through some form of wrestling, boxing, or mixed martial arts match. No word yet on whether that would involve a tub of mud, jello, creamed corn, or any similar substance.
Any truth serum added to mud, jello, etc. ???
That’s even more speculative.
I like a cat fight.
@Alonso,
I believe Nadine Nieto is quite a bit older since she claims that she has practiced law for 26 years and graduated from law school in 1995. Uresti Dasher graduated from law school in 2010, but taught school for some years. She graduated from high school in 1999. Nieto graduated in 1986.
It is possible this is a factional fight directed against the Uresti’s or maybe within the legal community – trial lawyers vs. defense lawyers, etc.
Careful readers will note that the defendant is the Bexar County Democratic Party. Because primary elections in Texas are administered by the political parties, applications are filed with party chairs who are responsible for determining if the application complies with form and procedure. Since this office (district judge in county with more than 1.5 million people) requires a petition the chair is required to at least make a perfunctory review. Because the county chairs are acting in a quasi-public role the application are public records. So in this case, the Nieto campaign went to the Bexar party chair and got the application. It is quite probable they also checked the petition. Since it was not mentioned in the story, it must have been OK.
It is quite common for county parties to hold petition signing parties for judicial candidates, so it is even possible that the party recruited one or the other candidate.
Note that this procedure differs from that for Libertarian opponents. They have to file with the state chair AND pay the poll tax to the SOS, both by the same deadline. While there is an explicit review and challenge deadline for primary candidates, there is none for convention candidates, a likely due process and equal protection violation.