On December 18, a Texas trial court ordered the Republican Party to list David Rogers on its primary ballot. He is running for State Supreme Court, place 8. Texas elects its State Supreme Court justices in partisan elections.
Statewide judicial candidates in primaries need 50 signatures from each of the fifteen state court of appeals districts. The party had originally denied Rogers a place on the ballot because one of the petition sheets had a blank for the circulator to print her name, but she accidentally filled in that blank with the county name instead. But Texas precedent is clear that such minor problems do not invalidate petitions, if the petition was signed by the necessary number of validly registered voters. Rogers v Hooper, Travis County, 98th judicial district court, D-1-GN-25-10912.
Rogers is running in the primary against an incumbent, Brett Busby. UPDATE: in a further legal development, David Rogers is off the ballot.
In Texas, political parties formally conduct their own primaries. The Republican and Democratic primaries are considered to be separate elections. If you go to the SOS website, it will appear as if the candidates filed with the SOS or county election officials. But the SOS only provides the servers and internet access. If you asked the SOS to see the ballot application, which for this office includes a petition, they simply couldn’t do so. All they do is give party officials a password to the system and the party officials perform the data entry.
Primaries are formally conducted by the party in each county, so the state party must inform the 254 county parties who is running for each office filed at the state level. The state party literally tells the county parties to go check the SOS website to get the candidate names. One of the first things the county parties do is hold a ballot draw to determine candidate order, so ballots can be printed. In this case, there was a TRO against ballot draws being held.
Party officials are acting in a quasi-official capacity when conducting a primary. If a party chair rejects an application, or mistakenly accepts an application, an aggrieved party may seek a writ of mandamus to compel the party official to act in accordance with the law. In this case, the rejected candidate, David Rogers, filed suit against the Republican Party of Texas, state party chair Abraham George, and the general counsel of the RPT, Rachel Hooper. Hooper was the first listed respondent (in a case of this sort, the two parties are styled Relator and Respondent).
Unknown to me is whether the RPT had rejected the Rogers petition, or the Busby campaign had complained, and the RPT then made a determination. The RPT might or might not have been vigorously defending their decision.
It is common for petitions for the State Supreme Court to be challenged, typically for gotcha reasons.
There is ongoing litigation regarding another Supreme Court position. It was filed directly with the Supreme Court of Texas. (25-1107)
Clarification: A temporary restraining order was granted last week (Dec. 18), but not made permanent on Monday after a hearing (Dec. 22). Team Rogers is now making a plea to a Dallas-based appeals court. Below is our most recent press release. Merry Christmas Eve!
>>Denied Supreme Court Candidate Files For Ballot Access in Dallas Appeals Court
Rogers: It should not take a Christmas miracle for a name to appear on ballot
– our highest legal traditions demand ballot access be protected
AUSTIN – “Peace on earth to men of good will.”
This traditional angelic greeting is repeated often at Christmas, but appears to have been forgotten by election machine bosses slamming their office doors to shut out thousands of voters during the holiday.
After Monday, when he was denied a temporary injunction to restore the place given him by voters on the 2026 Republican Primary ballot, Texas Supreme Court contender David Rogers filed suit. The suit, filed Tuesday (a “mandamus” in legal language), seeks to force the party Chairman to do his duty, follow the law, and reinstate Rogers on the ballot.
Rogers expressed faith that a Dallas appeals court will agree with a longstanding tradition of showing good will to voters’ wishes to pick their candidates, regardless of alleged microscopic paperwork irregularities.
Rogers, challenging an election machine incumbent for the GOP nod, filed suit in the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Dallas the day before Christmas Eve (see attachments).
On Dec. 18, Rogers had previously won a temporary restraining order in a Travis County court, halting the Republican Party of Texas’s (RPT’s) effort to restrict his ballot access. RPT had pointed to tiny clerical errors on the grassroots-distributed petitions. Texas law, both in two separate laws passed by the legislature, and in a century-long tradition of Supreme Court decisions, have held that such petty paperwork “Karenism” must give way to the fundamental right of voters to choose their candidates.
The election machine incumbent took an unprecedented, desperate step by intervening in Monday’s hearing, calling for Rogers to be kept off the ballot.
Rogers said while it is unlikely the appeal will be heard on Christmas Eve, time is of the essence as ballot printing deadlines loom.
“I’m calling on Texas Republican Chairman Abraham George to do his official duty and certify my petition for a place on the 2026 Primary ballot,” said Rogers, candidate for Texas Supreme Court Place 8. “The Texas Republican party falsely claims I do not have enough signatures for microscopic reasons – but these errors are expressly allowed under two state statutes. Unfortunately for my campaign and my thousands of supporters, the party lawyer got the law wrong. Chairman George made the wrong decision as a result. I’m therefore asking the court to make our state chairman follow the actual law.”
“Over a thousand Texans signed petitions demanding to have me on the ballot, and those men and women have signaled that they are not satisfied with only machine politicians. The machine is trying to silence people’s voices, but the machine can’t stop the signal!” Rogers added, referencing a line from a classic science-fiction franchise that celebrates individual freedom.
In Tuesday’s pleading, Rogers also referenced another tradition: a longstanding Texas Supreme Court doctrine that courts must err on the side of the voter’s power to choose their candidates. “The tie goes to the runner” – a phrase Rogers used to describe the doctrine, referencing a popular baseball tradition that when a runner and the ball arrive at a base simultaneously, the runner is deemed safe by the umpire. Rogers is asking that the Dallas Court of Appeals side with the runner (the candidate) and not tag him out (deny voters’ ballot choice.)
“Our legal system, our culture, is filled with grace and mercy,” Rogers said. “We hope our best common traditions of fairness and freedom will prevail before the Primary election ballots go to the printers and go from there into the hands of the voters of Texas.”
Mr. David Rogers, a two-term City Council member serving Pflugerville, Texas, just north of Austin, is an experienced trial and appellate lawyer whose practice focuses on homeowner defense among other critical topics. Mr. Rogers may be contacted at (512) 923-1836 or info@electmisterrogers.com.
Attachments (2)
–30–