Candy Evans: On Election Day, Your Vote Will Affect Your Home And Its Values

Today is Election Day in Texas — the primaries — and we will vote for the Democratic and Republican nominees who will face off with party opponents in November. The winner of that contest will go on to then shape our state and city for the next few years.

Among the top political battles: Attorney General Ken Paxton faces a third-term challenge from three significant Republican primary contenders, including one with a politically famous name: George P. Bush. Governor Greg Abbott also has a number of GOP challengers, though it’s likely he will face Beto O’Rourke in November.

There are critical primary races for Congress, notably nine contenders for the seat of retiring U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX 30). Collin County U.S. Rep. Van Taylor (R-TX 3) also faces a significant challenge, in part due to revelations that he has been having an affair for several years and a snub from Donald Trump. All are important races to determine how our state, region, and country will run.

But when it comes to the safety in your home, or while you are loading groceries into your car at Tom Thumb or Costco, no race is more important than that of our Dallas County District Attorney.

That’s why, if you vote in the Democratic primary, I ask you to vote for Elizabeth Frizell.

John Creuzot has spent the last three years of his first run in office creating policies aiming to reduce the number of criminals circulating through our county’s criminal justice system. His goal, he has said, was to do so without sacrificing public safety.

In my opinion, he has failed. In our Preston Hollow neighborhood, for example, a woman was murdered in her own driveway one sunny afternoon. At least one of the young men who was arrested in connection with the slaying was a violent criminal who should not have been left on the streets.

Creuzot is being challenged by a strong, smart woman who is also an attorney and former judge, Elizabeth Frizell.

“I have the data,” he said in an interview with KERA. “When I’ve talked to individuals in the community and explained the policy and explained what the numbers are, they haven’t had a problem.”

John Creuzot on KERA’s “Think” with Krys Boyd

But he doesn’t have the data. And Creuzot’s progressive, California-esque policy to not prosecute people who steal food, diapers, or formula valued between $100 and $750 if the theft – a Class B misdemeanor – was not for financial gain, has given criminals an edge and hog-tied police.

Creuzot’s goal to reduce mass incarceration comes at the cost of security for the neighborhoods of Dallas and downtown. Just two weeks ago I moderated a panel discussion on the tremendous growth we are seeing in downtown Dallas and Uptown, where crime is so bad citizens are now considering private police patrols plus license plate monitoring systems. Do you know what destroys real estate growth? Crime.

Frizell also wants to prioritize reducing mass incarcerations (who doesn’t?), but takes issue with Creuzot’s unilateral approach that didn’t involve the community.

“He didn’t sit down and make sure he had buy-in from all the different departments in the criminal justice system.”

Elizabeth Frizell on “Think” with Krys Boyd

Another important distinction between the two: Creuzot decided it was no longer necessary to make indictment recommendations to grand juries. He felt the recommendations to the citizen panels who issue indictments violate any presumption of innocence for the accused, and erases a double standard. As a result, Dallas County grand juries no longer make indictment recommendations, which Frizell strongly disagrees with because she believes it’s the district attorney’s job to train their prosecutors.

“In grand jury, I’m going to train my prosecutors to make a recommendation in every case, whether you’re an officer, whether you’re not an officer, as to whether or not the case should be officially charged,” she said.

Elizabeth Frizell on “Think” with Krys Boyd

Creuzot also pulled some other politically motivated actions that don’t pass the smell test. He prosecuted two police officers for incidents that occurred during the downtown protests that turned violent in the summer of 2020, officers who had been cleared by a grand jury, right before early voting started. Those cases had been sitting on his desk for two years. One of the cases has a victim who cannot be located!

“Soft on crime” district attorneys across the country (L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and Portland) are to blame for the spikes we are seeing in violent crime in major U.S. cities. New York City, at last, has a mayor (a former police officer) who gets it.

Nationwide, homicides were up 30 percent in 2020, and the murder rate in 22 major US cities was up 44 percent in 2021 as compared to 2019, according to the Council on Criminal Justice. What happens when the murder rate goes up in the city? People move to the suburbs or exurbs. Case in point: rural land sales were crazy last year in Texas. Total land sales for 2021 surpassed 2020 by 17.8 percent. That was despite a fourth quarter with 953 fewer sales than the same period of 2020.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, Texas recorded 1,283 rural land sales, significantly fewer than the 2,236 sales in the fourth quarter of 2020. Fourth quarter 2021 may have dropped off only because of a lack of inventory!

The winner of today’s primary will face former District Attorney Faith Johnson, the only Republican running in the primary, whom Creuzot beat in 2018. But Dallas real estate cannot afford four more years of DA Creuzot.