It’s been a heated race for Smith County Precinct 1 Constable, with several lawsuits filed to remove candidate Willie Mims Jr. from the race and while things appeared to cool off, an appeal to one of the lawsuits has brought the heat back.
A hearing took place on January 21 for Garmon v. Smith County Democratic Party Chair Michael Tolbert, and a visiting judge placed a temporary injunction on Mims.
"It's supposed to say that my votes wouldn't count,” Mims explained. “They [a district judge] do not have authority to tell someone their votes do not count at this level.”
After the hearing, where Mims’ attorney was not present, he consulted his attorney as well as the Texas Democratic Party Primary director about Texas’ Election Code and what happened in the courtroom.
“They told me to push forward, keep running my campaign, and hopefully I'm successful," Mims said.
Mims filed an appeal, Bobby Garmon vs. Michael Tolbert, chair of the smith county democratic party vs. Willie Mims with the 241st District Court. He included himself as an intervenor, which according to Mims allows him to share his evidence and for his votes to be counted in the race.
"Because they have a lot of discrepancies on what they done,” Mims said. “They did not prove their case, they only listened to one side and the judge’s mind was already made."
According to the petition, Texas Election Code was broken with the timeliness of the lawsuit filings and the date of the court hearing.
"Everything expired,” he said.
Sec. 141.034. LIMITATION ON CHALLENGE OF APPLICATION (a) “An application for a place on the ballot may not be challenged for compliance with the applicable requirements as to form, content, and procedure after the day before any ballot to be voted early by mail is mailed to an address in the authority’s jurisdiction for the election for which the application is made.”
Early voting ballots for the March 3 election were mailed out the week before the hearing took place.
“My votes will count,” Mims said. “What the judge put in place, it’s not valid.”
Mims says that if he does receive the majority of votes to become Precinct 1 Constable, the temporary injunction would be in limbo.
“I’m all about running a fair campaign, clean, no mess because we all got to get along,” Mims said.
CBS19 reached out to Bobby Garmon and he declined to comment.