Quasi-Republican wins DEMOCRAT Travis County District Court primary (over hack incumbent)

"You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality, nor take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous."
Deuteronomy 16:19

This is pretty funny:

There will be at least four new district judges in Travis County after final results of the 2020 primary election came in early on March 4.

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In the 353rd district court, Madeleine Connor defeated Tim Sulak, the incumbent serving in that position since 2011 in a closely contested race, winning by fewer than 2,000 votes. Connor received 50.6% of the vote to Sulak's 49.5%.

Sulak built an early voting lead of more than 6,000 votes in early voting, but Connor's election day margin of 48,514 votes to Sulak's 37,652 was enough to give her a narrow victory.

Both Wahlberg and Sulak were endorsed by a majority of respondents to the Austin Bar Association and Austin Criminal Defense Lawyers Association preference poll.

If you've been around awhile, you'll remember Madeline Connor. She ran for the Third Court of Appeals as a Republican in 2012. She lost to Scott Field, who was subsequently a victim of the Democrat wave in 2018.

We're not really sure what to say.  Connor seems to have...issues.  The Statesman did a write up of her and her campaign about a month ago.

Reading the Statesman article, it seems that Connor has voted in both parties primaries.  And that she's run for office multiple times in each party.  There's nothing necessarily wrong with that.  Although we remember Connor running around in 2012 and telling anyone who would listen that she was Ms. Tea Party.  She now claims that judicial positions should be "non-partisan."  At a minimum, that suggests a certain lack of convictions.  Telling people whatever they want to hear in order to obtain elected office doesn't exactly suggest a strong judicial temperament.

On the other hand Tim Sulak, the incumbent, is a hack.  We have a very specific reason from 2013 why we don't like him.  So we're happy to see him lose.

It's impossible to know why this happened.  Although it's a Democrat primary, and the female candidate defeated the male incumbent.  Identity politics is probably a good guess.  But it's just a guess.

Bottom Line: Pretty funny.

"Sick Leave" Lawsuit: #atxcouncil's Pathetically Weak Case produces Surprisingly DECENT Rulings

"Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?!?"
Matthew 20:15

Late this afternoon, Travis County [Democrat] District Judge Tim Sulak predictably ruled against a temporary injunction of the city's of Austin's pending "sick leave" entitlement...but a couple of subsequent rulings were a gigantic rebuke to the city's case.

At issue were various motions by the respective parties to have "interveners" (ie. fancy lawyer term for third parties who join a lawsuit) removed from the case.   The plaintiffs (ie. TPPF and their clients) sought to have the "Workers Defense Project" removed as interveners in the case.  The Defendent (ie. the City) sought to have the Attorney General's office removed.  Judge Sulak granted the plaintiff's motion while denying the defense's.  In other words, a Liberal Democrat Judge in Travis County just ruled that Workers "Defense" Project could not proceed on the case, but that KEN PAXTON's office can.  You read that correctly.  That really happened.

It's impossible to overstate how HUGE Worker's "Defense" Project thrown off the case is.  For the (blessedly) uninformed, Worker's "Defense" Project are the socialist storm troopers who've been pushing this entitlement since Day 1.  They're also Greg Casar's former employer.  They're side by side with Casar in everything he does.  Today's ruling was a direct rebuke to Greg Casar!  And by a liberal Democrat Judge, no less! (But the Attorney General's office can stay....)

As for the rest of the case, it went as expected.  Judge Sulak denied the temporary injunction.  But in the process it exposed how bad the city's legal argument is.  The City is arguing that they passed a benefit mandate, not a wage mandate.  They're then arguing that the state law in question only applies to "wages."  Thus, there's no conflict with state law.  Even a non-lawyer can understand the hair-splitting stupidity of that argument.  The city lawyer even had to admit there was no case law to back up his claim the state didn't have authority to intervene.

It's also worth noting that the city seems determined to gaslight the financial impact of this ordinance upon the defendants.  At one point, the city's attorney called such expenses the "cost of doing business," not "injury."  He later made a bizarre analogy between the so-called "sick leave" entitlement and paying parking meters.  And that's on top of their various acts of gaslighting yesterday.

This case is headed to the 3rd Court of Appeals.  The exact details of how that will transpire remain to be seen.  Both sides have grounds to appeal aspects of today's rulings.

Bottom Line: Coming from a liberal Democrat judge in Travis County (Tim Sulak no less), today's rulings were better than expected.

TPPF Lawsuit Against #atxcouncil's "Sick Leave" entitlement has first hearing

"Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?"
Matthew 20:15

This afternoon, we attended the first hearing for the TPPF lawsuit against the City of Austin's so-called "sick leave" entitlement; two takeaways stand out.

The first is that Tim Sulak is the presiding judge.  Longer term readers will remember him from the 2013 Austin ISD bond lawsuit.  We stand by everything we said at the time and suggest his presence is all you need to know.

The second is that the City's strategy is going to be chubbing and misdirection.  With the ordinance scheduled to go into effect on October 1st, the city doesn't want to give an appeals court a chance to issue a temporary injunction.  So stall, stall, stall....

Today's hearing was supposed to cover the plaintiff's request for an injunction on the ordinance.  That didn't stop the city from wasting an hour trying to get other issues considered in front of the injunction.  During this discussion, the city's attorney claimed that businesses aren't suffering harm because the ordinance hasn't gone into effect yet.  That level of arrogance and ignorance was the hallmark of the city's performance.

Ellen Troxclair was the first plaintiff's witness for the injunction.  Troxclair explained the lack of Austin-specific data accessible to council during it's deliberation.  She also pointed out that council didn't have the final ordinance language available until the day of adoption.  On cross-examination, the city's attorney attempted to gaslight Troxclair by asking her a bunch of irrelevant questions about her opinion of sick leave as an employee benefit.

The second plaintiff witness was Douglas Rigdon, who runs the Strickland Christian School in South Austin.  The Strickland school is one of the plaintiffs in the suit.  Strickland is significantly less expensive than the average private school (max tuition = $5kish).  Strickland's low tuition business model would fall apart if the city's ordinance were to go into effect.  Ridden suggested Strickland might have to eliminate teacher bonuses, or lower cash salaries for teachers, to comply.  Higher tuition is given.  The city's attorneys responded by belittling Rigdon's business model, belittling tuition increases, and suggesting Strickland borrow money to cover the costs of the ordinance.

Bottom Line: We'll get into the meat of the legal arguments tomorrow, but a very revealing day today.

Judge Tim Sulak and the El Paso Stadium Boondoggle

Cahnman's Musings frequently listens to talk radio via 690 KTSM in El Paso.  Because we listen to this station, we've kept an eye on the ongoing boondoggle of El Paso's new minor league baseball stadium.  It was strong armed through the political process through the usual suspect of local government contractors and special interests.  When citizens objected, they took the city to court and (through some weird foible in state law), it ended up in the Austin courtoom of Judge Tim Sulak.  In that ruling, Judge Sulak did what Judge Sulak does best:

District Judge Tim Sulak on Wednesday sided with the city of El Paso, ruling that the process to demolish city hall and move forward with the ballpark project was legal. 

"It is my judgment, based on the evidence, the authorities and the arguments that the authority to issue and the actions taken to secure or obtain, the public securities are legal and valid," Sulak said at Wednesday's declaratory judgment hearing.

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Wednesday's ruling also allows the city of El Paso to sell bonds to fund the project.

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The decision can be appealed, but the Judge set a surety bond of $1 million.That means if they appeal within 30 days, the opposition of the city needs to put that money up.

In other words, Judge Tim Sulak has a pattern of making it prohibitively expensive for concerned citizens to challenge big-government special interests.

Judge Tim Sulak Kept Dead People on Texas' Voter Rolls

After yesterday's travesty, this ruling from last year isn't surprising:

Texas officials were temporarily barred by a state judge from ordering county election officials to purge presumably dead voters from registration rolls because the initiative may violate the election code. 

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed yesterday by four Texas voters who were told they would be purged from voter-registration lists as deceased. They asked state court Judge Tim Sulak in Austin to stop the state from striking about 77,000 names from the rolls, arguing the plan violates the Texas election code and the U.S. Voting Rights Act. 

The secretary of state is “restrained from further instructing the counties to remove any other names from the voter rolls,” Sulak said in his order. “Plaintiffs are entitled to temporary injunctive relief.”

In other words, yesterday wasn't the first time Judge Sulak abused his office to protect governmental entities from citizen inquiry.

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Reader can contact Judge Sulak via his campaign Facebook Page.

Judge Tim Sulak Demands $15 Million Taxpayer Ransom

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Eighth Amendment, United States Constitution

Cahnman's Musings spent the morning at the 353rd District Court of Travis County, Judge Tim Sulak presiding.  We were there to observe the Travis County Taxpayers Union's (TCTU) lawsuit against Austin Independent School district (AISD) we've discussed previously.  To quote Wendy Davis, we witnessed a raw abuse of power.

Judge Sulak ruled in favor of the district.  That wasn't surprising.  The outrageous part was the shackles Judge Sulak put on a potential appeal.

Judge Sulak ruled TCTU must post a $15 million bond ($15,000,000) to protect the district before an appeal could proceed.  Obviously, TCTU doesn't have that kind of money.  In other words, a Democrat judge made it prohibitively expensive for a citizens group to petition their government for redress of grievances.

On one level, this isn't surprising.  Judge Sulak and AISD are part of the Travis County's progressive mafia (Sidenote: This is the same progressive mafia that is protecting Rosemary Lehmberg).  On the other hand, demanding a fifteen million dollar ransom to allow a citizens lawsuit against a governmental entity to continue is (to our knowledge) unprecedented.

In announcing his ruling, Judge Sulak admitted that, even if he disagreed with it, TCTU made a reasonable case against the district.  Judge Sulak's ruling was designed to protect AISD from having the case heard in front of judges who aren't in the pocket of big education.  This isn't over....

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Readers can contact Judge Sulak via his campaign Facebook page.

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Update: More from Fox 7 Austin: