Promising sweeping changes, José Garza, co-executive director of the Workers Defense Project, has won the election for District Attorney in Travis County, making him the top state prosecutor in Austin.
Garza defeated Republican lawyer Martin Harry 70% to 30%, winning 393,808 out of 563,908 votes cast, according to results posted by Travis County.
The winner had captured the Democratic Party nomination in a July runoff election against incumbent Margaret Moore, a Democrat. Garza, however, identifies politically as a Democratic Socialist (DSA), according to an interview he gave to Jacobin, a socialist magazine.
He spent the final day of the campaign at the University of Texas at Austin, meeting students. In an interview, Garza said, “Our strategy has been to chat with folks after they vote to get their friends and family to vote as well.”
“Obviously, this pandemic has changed the way that we interact with voters. So we have called voters, texted them, done lit drops — making sure to keep safe and keep our distance. But we’ve seen incredible enthusiasm throughout the cycle.”
Republican Martin Harry had warned that electing Garza would usher in an era of lawlessness. He promised to enforce all laws uniformly, stating that “a DA that ignores the law or violations of the law erodes public respect for both.”
Garza responded to this in the interview, saying, “The reality is, the Republican in this race has not put forward a single serious idea to address the gross racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.”
“Travis County voters have rendered a verdict on how seriously they have taken the Republican’s criticism. The number one job of the District Attorney’s Office is to keep our community safe. And what we have said from the beginning is that’s where our focus needs to be.”
He went on to say that the DA office has been using the majority of its resources on “low-level, non-dangerous offenses. And at the same time we have not spent enough time or resources investigating more serious offenses like sexual assault, for example.”
Pressed to clarify where the District Attorney’s Office would draw the line on which felony crimes would be prosecuted and which would not, Garza said, “We will end the prosecution of low-level drug offenses. And what I mean is the possession of all substances of a gram or less.”
Asked about drug trafficking offenses, he said, “When we win, the possession or sale of a gram or less — we are going to use our resources on more serious offenses.”
During the primary election, Margaret Moore, a Democrat, argued that the District Attorney’s Office already had shifted resources away from low-level drug prosecutions, but she still wanted the discretion to prosecute dealers who might pose a threat of violence.
During a televised candidate forum, she said, “So we have shifted resources away from the lower-level drug cases. But we are also focusing on cases where there’s possession with intent to deliver, or there’s some sort of violence associated with it. And what is happening in this county right now is an increase in violence related to narcotics trafficking. And we know we have to deal with that.”
Garza said of his win, “Throughout the course of this election we’ve seen overwhelmingly people who live in Travis County voting to fix our broken criminal justice system.”
