AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht played a role in some of the year’s biggest stories in Texas politics: on the inauguration day stage, at Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s historic impeachment trial in the Senate, and in the courtroom for some of the most contentious cases in the country.
State law forces Hecht to leave the court next year, and as he nears the end of his influential career, the longest-serving Justice in Texas’ history sat down for an interview to reflect on what his tenure has meant for Texas.
But he also looked forward, answering questions about how Texas can improve justice for all, and how politics influences that justice – including in a crucial abortion case still pending before the court.
That case involves 20 women, many who almost died from serious pregnancy complications. They argue that the state’s abortion ban does not give doctors the ability to intervene, even when in their best medical judgment they believe it’s necessary for the mother’s life.
Hecht could not speak directly about the case, since it is still pending before the court after a hearing in November, but did comment about how he hoped the court’s action would be perceived by the public.
“I wouldn’t want anything I said to be taken as an indication of what I think about the case or what my colleagues think,” Hecht said. “I want to do everything possible, to make sure that you as a reporter, as the people that were sitting here in the room, the people who are watching on the webcast, come away thinking, ‘Well, that was fair,’ however it comes out,” Hecht added, referencing the process of the hearing in the Zurawski case, which was streamed live and is available to watch online.
“When the decision does come out, I do hope there’ll be some recollection of that and thinking they listened,” said Hecht about the justices on the state’s highest court. “It’s not a political decision for them. It’s legal decision. They have to decide cases all the time that are difficult. We just want it to be we want to not ever do anything that makes it look like somebody didn’t get a fair shake.”
Watch the full interview with Chief Justice Nathan Hecht
The perception of fairness in Texas’ judicial system is an ongoing concern — a 2022 poll by the Texas Politics Project found that 26% of registered voters have a favorable view of the Texas court system.
Texas voters elect their judges, which opens the door to influence from party politics and campaign donations. In some instances, those donations come from lawyers and firms with cases before those judges.
We asked Hecht what judges need to do to convince more Texans that the judicial branch is fair and reliable.
“We need to make it work better,” said Hecht without hesitation. “Here’s what we can’t do: We cannot respond to politics. We can’t change our decisions. We can’t rule one way or another way because somebody wants us to or somebody doesn’t want us to. All of that is off limits. The independent judiciary has got to call it like it sees it.”
Hecht addressed similar concerns about the influence of politics earlier this year in his State of the Judiciary address.
At the Federal level, scrutiny of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas highlights the influence of money on the judiciary. Reports revealed Thomas accepted expensive gifts and trips from wealthy Republican donors, including some who had interests before the court.
“It’s horrible. I mean, I’ve said it’s horrible for 50 years,” Hecht said. “Back in the early 90s, Tom Phillips and I pioneered in limits on campaign contributions. When the first time I ran back in 1988, for this court, there were no limits. A contributor could, the sky was the limit, it could give you as much as he, as he wanted.”
“We said, Oh, no, you can’t give more than $5,000 per person, which seems like a lot. In a $2 million race, it’s not really. Capped law firms, the legislature came in behind us and enacted all of those caps as law, and they’ve been the law ever since,” Hecht said.
“It helps a little bit. Because you can say, well, we do have limits on how much people can get. But it’s it’s just a very troublesome side effect of Texas way of selecting judges,” he said.
Hecht previously faced an ethics case after being accused of violating campaign finance rules. That case was settled in 2016.
Hecht believes there are a lot of improvements happening in the court system that the public does not always know about.
“When people know, for example, that courts in Texas, are working very hard to make sure that people with mental health issues in a case are accommodated, that’s in the criminal system a lot. We have diversion programs to try to help treat people who are not acting out of criminal intent so much as medical issues,” Hecht said, before citing other examples. “When you say here’s what the court system is doing, we’ve done surveys nationally, and people say, Oh, well you tell me that, I didn’t know that, that’s, that’s great.”
Texas law will force Hecht to leave high court
In November, Texas voters rejected a proposition that would have raised the mandatory retirement age for state judges from 75 to 79. Hecht, who turns 75 in August 2024, said he understands why voters want the age cutoff.
“Some years ago, I did some research into why we had the age limit in the first place,” Hecht said. “It was a legitimate response to concern that some people when they enter public office stay longer than they should.”
“I didn’t take offense to it, didn’t take offense to the vote,” Hecht said. “My wife said she was going to vote against it. She said ‘enough’s enough.'”
Hecht made it clear he still believes he can do the job. As he looks ahead to retirement, he plans to stay active, emphasizing the importance of work to help access to justice for the poor.
“I think the best course is to do the best I can do through the end of next year, but I do plan to continue on the administrative work I’ve done to continue to build the court system to make it better, to make the perception of it better, to make sure that we respond to concerns that it’s not diverse enough,” Hecht said. “We’re looking forward to continuing my work and continuing to help the judiciary very much to help access to justice for the poor.”
“I know, diversity has become a very political word, recently. But it doesn’t, just making it political doesn’t do away with the issue. And it doesn’t do away with responsibility of those of us who administer the system, to make sure that it looks fair to everybody,” Hecht added.
Trump, Biden strong favorites in presidential primary poll
Texas’ election day for the presidential primary is March 5, 2024, but early polling suggests there isn’t likely to be much drama in those races.
The Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas polled voters to get their thoughts on the candidates. The results show President Joe Biden at the top for Democrats, and former President Donald Trump leading among Republican voters.
Donald Trump is dominating views of the Republican primary, 65% say that they will vote for Trump right now with much lower amounts for everyone else, according to Jim Henson, Texas Politics Project Executive Director. He added that the poll shows Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with 12% support and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley with 9%.
The poll shows Trump beating Biden among Texas voters 45% to 39% — Henson noted that number is remarkably close to what the vote was in 2020 in Texas.
The campaign for U.S. Senate may be the second biggest primary race on the ballot for Texas Democrats. The outcome of that vote determines who will face Republican Senator Ted Cruz in November’s election.
Polling from the Texas Politics Project shows Congressman Colin Allred with a 21-point lead. State Senator Roland Gutierrez is the next-closest candidate in the crowded field. But almost half of Democrats polled said that they haven’t made up their minds yet.
Dueling Democrats face off in Dallas House District
Dallas-area Democrats face an interesting choice in the primary: Representative Victoria Neave Criado will challenge incumbent Senator Nathan Johnson. Both are respected members of the Texas legislature, but the primary result will force one of them out of office.
“We need somebody who’s going to be standing up and fighting for our community. And so we want to take our fight from the House to the to the Senate,” Neave Criado said.
She said that she believes Johnson has not done enough to thwart what she views as bad legislation from the Republican majority in the Senate.
“The fact is, he doesn’t feel that sense of urgency, but people from our community do feel that concern there. We have to step up to fight when there is so much at risk,” Neave Criado said.
Johnson rejects the idea that he has been ineffective, noting the challenges for Democrats when Republicans hold a 19-12 majority in the Senate.
“If you’re gonna get something done in that environment, you’ve got to work with the people who are there. It doesn’t mean you bow down to them. But you absolutely you can’t win without a majority,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he wants voters to remember bipartisan legislation he’s helped get through the Senate.
“Whether you’re helping people with something like Medicaid expansion, education funding, or the fundamental infrastructural things like water and electricity, I’m working on those big issues,” Johnson said.
Neave Criado said she believes voters are ready for a change in the Senate.
“As Democrats, we need to be having this debate and discussion,” she said. “Are we going to be, you know, are we comfortable with the status quo? Are we comfortable with business as usual?
Republicans prepare for hand count in county primary
Republicans in Gillespie County in the Texas Hill Country decided to change how they count the votes in the upcoming primary election. The party wants to do that count by hand, not by machines.
“If you hand count ballots, you take away the chance that anybody has manipulated with a programming of the machines,” said Gillespie County Republican Party Chairman Bruce Campbell.
Campbell says the party’s decision to count by hand comes after concerns stemming from Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election.
“Even though we did not have any evidence of that happening in our own county, people wondered, how could you protect against it in advance,” Campbell said.
Hand counting the primary results will require the party to hire and train nearly 250 election workers. The party is set to spend more than $12,000 to do that.
Robert Stein, a political science professor at Rice University, says hand counting invites more human error that could alter vote counts.
“They get challenged in court largely because each time you count a hand ballot without a machine by hand, you’re likely to come up with slightly different results,” Stein said.
Party leaders say they’d like to have the votes counted in four hours on election night. But Republican elections administrator Jim Riley said that may be difficult.
“It’s going to take longer than they imagined. I do believe they’ll run into more glitches than they expect,” Riley said.
While Gillespie County Republicans continue to look for election workers, Democrats are contracting with the county to have their results counted by machine. The elections administrator expects results from the Democrats to be shared fairly quickly on election night.
[#item_full_content]