Should Lauren Davis even be on the ballot?

I’m going to back into this story a bit. I’ll get to why I think GOP candidate Lauren Davis was living in Puerto Rico when she should have been living in Texas if she wanted to run for the top spot on the Dallas County Commissioners Court. But you need to know two things first. One, the head of the Commissioners Court is called a judge. Currently that is Democrat Clay Jenkins. He’s not a judge who wears a black robe and sends people to jail. He’s the county’s chief executive. Think of him as the mayor of the county. Pretty easy civics lesson, right? Two, this story didn’t originate with a tip from Jenkins or anyone else in politics. Early voting started Monday. Election Day is November 8. Given how late we are in the process, it would be natural to assume that someone on the blue side of the ballot fed me information to hurt a rival. Not the case. This story started on a dog walk.

The other thing I knew about Davis was that earlier this year some questions had arisen about whether she satisfied the residency requirements to run for county judge. She needed to live in the state for the year prior to the March 1, 2022, primary in which she beat challenger Edwin Flores. Here is what the Dallas Morning News reported in January: Republican County Commissioner J.J. Koch “said Davis did not have a Dallas address for much of 2021 and had no record of ever voting in a Republican primary in Dallas County.” Dallas County GOP chair Jennifer Stoddard-Hajdu “said she had never met Davis until hours before the candidate filing deadline [in December 2021]. At that time, she said Davis mentioned she had sold her home in Dallas and lived in Puerto Rico until the summer of 2021.” And Stoddard-Hajdu “told the News that although she initially had concerns about Davis’ voting record and residency, she agreed to accept her application for candidacy with advice from the state Republican party.”