Austin Chronicle Endorses Rosemary Lehmberg
Travis Co. District Attorney: Rosemary Lehmberg
After 31 years of Ronnie Earle in the D.A.’s chair, some internal personnel pressure was inevitable – and after Earle’s belated retirement announcement, the result is four strong candidates (all assistant district attorneys) to succeed him and to carry on his work in one of the most successful and certainly the most high-profile prosecutor’s office in Texas. The four are also distinct in background and preparation, allowing voters to choose from a range of perspectives – and increasing the likelihood of a run-off. Gary Cobb is an experienced criminal prosecutor and perhaps most attractive to those voters who see the job as primarily a traditional crime-fighting position. Rick Reed has been distinguished by his service in the Public Integrity Unit, doing much detail work on the Capitol corruption cases. (He’s also the only candidate who has explicitly vowed to abjure the death penalty, rarely used here but a crucial question to single-issue voters.) And Mindy Montford has the youth and enthusiasm of the next generation of legal professionals, as well as much support from traditional Democratic sources. But on balance and after much consideration, we agree with Earle that Lehmberg is the overall most qualified of the four to carry on his considerable legacy. She has worked in all the units of the office and has been both a practicing prosecutor and (as first assistant) a chief administrator, with the responsibility and long experience in balancing the demands on the office. Those range from prosecution to budgets to managing personnel and, beyond that, to the complicated political considerations arising from the Travis Co. D.A.’s jurisdiction over state corruption investigations and prosecutions. We are impressed by Lehmberg’s experience in building the office, in developing and expanding innovative and progressive programs, and in her broad sense of the office’s wide-ranging responsibilities, as well as the nuances of addressing high-profile political cases. (We do believe the office needs to be more technologically proactive in working with the defense bar, a legal and political mandate as much as a technical one.) The campaign has had inevitable effects on all the candidates, and it has noticeably strengthened Lehmberg’s public profile and her comprehension that the D.A.’s job is not just administrative, not just prosecutorial, but a communitywide engagement. We believe she will be a better public official because of it.
