Court Opinion

ID: 9768722
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 13:46:17.992168+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:03:16.580317
License: Public Domain

MAUZY, Justice,
concurring.
Six months ago, a majority of this court broadly construed article III, section 19 of the Texas Constitution to prevent Pattilou Dawkins from running for state representative. Dawkins v. Meyer, 825 S.W.2d 444 (Tex.1992). While acknowledging the harshness of that result, the court solemnly declared that “the power to change such a result lies not in our hands, but in the hands of the sovereign people of the State of Texas.” Id. at 450. Today, though, the court has no such compunctions about changing the law. To reach the result it desires today, the majority belatedly overturns the decisions relied upon in Dawkins, and gives to Jeff Wentworth the relief it denied to Pattilou Dawkins.
I dissented from the majority’s decision in Dawkins, and adhere to my view that article III, section 19 should not be lightly applied to prevent voters from electing the candidate of their choice. For that reason, and for additional reasons specific to this case, I join the majority’s decision to grant the writ of mandamus.
This is not the first time since Went-worth’s appointment to the Board of Regents that the Chairman of the Republican Party has been asked to certify him as eligible for the legislature. Nor is it the second, third, fourth, fifth, or even the sixth. After a special election in 1988, Wentworth was reelected to the legislature in both 1988 and 1990. In each of those years, the Chairman of the Republican Party bore the responsibility of certifying Wentworth as eligible in both the primary and the general elections. See Tex.Elec. Code §§ 172.028 (primary), 172.122 (general); see also § 141.032 (requiring party chairman to review candidate’s application to determine whether all requirements are met). On each of those occasions — and again in the 1992 Senate primary and run*772off1 — the Chairman of the Republican Party certified that Wentworth was eligible for the office he sought.
This time, though, the Chairman of the Republican Party has changed his mind. After certifying Wentworth as eligible for the Texas Legislature half a dozen times, the Chairman now argues that Wentworth has been ineligible ever since his 1987 appointment to the Board of Regents. This change apparently arises from nothing more than mere whim: the main cases on which the Chairman relies are almost thirty years old, and there has been no change in Wentworth’s status to make him any less eligible now than he was in 1988.
I would hold that, under these circumstances, Respondent Chairman Meyer is es-topped from declaring Wentworth ineligible. When a candidate has been certified as eligible on six prior occasions, and there has been no subsequent change affecting his eligibility, a sudden decertification by the party’s chairman is both arbitrary and unfair. This sort of game-playing by party officials harkens a return to the days of political bosses and smoke-filled rooms, when the ordinary voter was effectively shut out of the decision-making process.
I welcome the court’s new approach to article III, section 19. I regret, however, that this change comes too late to restore the candidacy of Pattilou Dawkins. Given the short time between the two decisions, the court’s change of attitude seems as abrupt and arbitrary as Meyer’s decision to remove Wentworth from the ballot.

. See Tex.EIec.Code § 172.121 (requiring state chairman to certify candidates for placement on runoff ballot).