After nearly eight years—two terms—in power as the top prosecutor in Texas’ fourth largest county, Democratic District Attorney Joe Gonzales is not running for reelection in Bexar County. And while there is no clear successor, there is no shortage of contenders on the crowded Democratic primary stage. 

Eight candidates are vying to be the Democratic nominee for DA in this solid-blue county. As a debate between those candidates on February 3 emphasized, there are plenty of differences in personality and temperament between the candidates, but not much daylight in their proposals for how to address some of the office’s most pressing issues. (The Democratic nominee will go up against the sole GOP candidate, Ashley Foster, in the November general election). 

Without a clear frontrunner or heir apparent, Gonzales told the Texas Observer the race is wide open—“nobody on the ballot has any kind of edge or lead,” he said. That leaves a big impending hole at the top of a prosecutor’s office that handles about 60,000 criminal cases a year.

With higher-profile politicians, such as longtime state Representative Trey Martinez-Fischer and District Court Judge Ron Rangel, opting against running, the Democratic field of candidates includes a motley crew of largely unknown figures—ranging from those on the left-ish who seek to carry on the torch of progressive reformers to past Republican candidates who vow to enforce a more punitive law and order. 

So what’s at stake? In many ways, the viability of reform-minded prosecutors in a state that’s becoming increasingly hostile to criminal justice reform. Gonzales, who ousted the controversial incumbent Nico LaHood in the 2018 Democratic primary, was part of a wave of liberal prosecutors who got elected to DA offices in the major counties of Texas and nationwide. These officials, which have included at various points John Creuzot in Dallas County, Jose Garza in Travis, and the now-pariah ex-DA Kim Ogg in Harris, have prioritized keeping people out of the system through diversion programs and prosecutorial discretion. 

But these blue-county DAs have increasingly prompted legislative and political backlash in recent years–including with the Republican-held Texas Legislature passing a so-called rogue DA law that allows the state to recall and replace elected local prosecutors for not pursuing charges for certain types of crimes like low-level drug possession, or, in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s overturning in 2022, refusing to prosecute abortion providers.   

Even as Attorney General Ken Paxton seeks higher office, his potential GOP successors are all promising to keep would-be rogue DAs at heel—and Republican leaders at the Capitol are likely to keep pressing new ways to micromanage local prosecutors.

“I do think that whoever ends up in the seat is going to continue to see the pushback that I’ve seen from Austin,” Gonzales said. 

On the ballot for the March primary are three current prosecutors in the Bexar County DA’s office: Oscar Salinas, Jane Davis, and Angelica “Meli” Carrión Powers. Three former prosecutors, now in private practice, are also gunning for the role: Shannon Locke, Veronica Legarreta, and Meredith Chacon. Former Fourth District Court of Appeals Justice Luz Elena Chapa and James Bethke, director of Bexar County’s Managed Assigned Counsel Office, which helps provide defense attorneys to defendants who can’t pay, are also running. 

This choice overload will almost certainly lead to a runoff election in May. 

Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales. (Bexar County)

Voters are being asked to choose from a slate of mostly qualified candidates, with varying levels and breadth of law experience. In part, it may come down to whether voters think experience in the DA’s office is important, or if they think a new perspective is needed. 

Current prosecutors push for the former. “In order to inspire confidence from within the people that try the cases day to day, they have to think, well, ‘you were just in my spot last week,’” Salinas, who’s been a prosecutor for 12 years, told the Observer. 

Jane Davis, 78, has worked in the Bexar County DA’s office for decades and currently leads the Juvenile Division. “I love this office. I’ve been here for 40 years. I don’t want to see it go to pot,” she said in an interview. She clinched an endorsement from the San Antonio Express News shortly before early voting started this week. 

Powers, who didn’t respond to the Observer’s request for an interview, was an assistant DA in Bexar County from 2002 to 2017 has run the office’s Family Violence Division since 2019. 

Bethke has spent about 30 years building programs to make defense attorneys more accessible to low-income defendants, and has led the Bexar County office for five years. He doesn’t see much of a difference between the goals of a prosecutor and a defense attorney. “At the end of the day, whether you’re defense or prosecution, a guiding light for me is equal justice for all,” he said. “A prosecutor has the ultimate control on determining what cases to bring in, what to charge, whether or not to defer into a different type of program.”

Notably, the Texas Organizing Project PAC, an influential progressive group that advocates for bail reform and previously helped elect reformer DAs in Texas, including Gonzales, has thrown its weight behind Bethke. 

Meredith Chacon, who has previously worked as both a victim’s advocate and a prosecutor, stated in the debate that “not all experience is the same.” She’s been a prominent critic of Gonzales, and even tried to challenge him in 2022 as a Republican (she lost the GOP primary to now-state Representative Marc LaHood, brother of Gonzales’ predecessor). Legarreta, who’s also run for office as a Republican before, said during the debate that the DA should have a “balanced” perspective on the system. Chacon and Legarreta did not respond to the Observer’s interview requests. 

If there’s a spectrum of progressivism in the Democratic primary race, most candidates sit in the middle, promising to balance reform with being “tough-on-crime.” At the most progressive end of the spectrum is Locke, a defense attorney with an active presence on TikTok, who has consistently called for the DA’s office to investigate ICE officers and promises to use the position to fight back against President Donald Trump’s agenda. 

“The District Attorney’s office is the place in local government where you can most effectively resist the Trump administration and what’s happening in Austin,” Locke told the Observer. “When I talked to the people that were going to run [for DA], they didn’t see the office that way.” 

On the other end of that spectrum is the former Appeals Court Justice Luz Elena Chapa, who is endorsed by the San Antonio Police Association and Bexar County Deputy Sheriff’s Association and who claims the current DA regime’s purportedly lax prosecution policies has caused a “public safety crisis.” 

Chapa, 52, was the clear target of disdain from other candidates during the early February debate, largely because of her lack of prosecutorial experience and her vague plans to “fully fund” the office, despite that decision lying with the County Commissioners Court. “Anyone saying that they’re going to fund or they’re going to do all of these magical things to get money—that’s an uninformed position because it’s not that easy,” Powers said during the debate. “The DA’s office doesn’t control the budget.”

After referring to her opponents as “junior prosecutors,” Chapa also drew an impassioned rebuke from Locke. “If you think you know everything, you’re a big danger to this community, especially when you know nothing,” he said.

The next DA will inherit an office that’s understaffed and struggling to manage caseloads that are growing in step with San Antonio’s population. Many of the candidates have been openly critical of Gonzales’ handling of these problems.

In his six-plus years in office, Gonzales has led the Bexar County DA’s office through the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic, which halted grand juries and led to a massive backlog in cases. Winning on a platform of “true criminal justice reform” in Bexar County, his efforts have made him a lightning rod for attacks from the right and his own party.

As political pressure and tough-on-crime rhetoric from the state’s GOP leaders grows, some candidates say that Gonzales has been too outwardly defiant and has put a target on the back of the DA’s office. 

“Discretion needs to be used responsibly, and you can’t broadcast that you’re not going to prosecute a certain type of criminal offense,” Salinas told the Observer. During the debate, Davis suggested the office shouldn’t “brag” so much about its progressive moves.

Many of the candidates argue that the DA’s office needs to repair its relationship with local law enforcement. In 2021, Gonzales established a Civil Rights division, tasked with handling cases of excessive force, officer shootings, and custodial deaths—a move that drew the ire of the law enforcement lobby.

“Police associations believe that I created that department in order to go after cops. That’s not what that’s about,” the incumbent said. “That’s about holding everyone accountable, because I’ve said from the very beginning that no one is above the law.”

Still, the candidates do broadly support the incumbent’s less controversial reforms—at least among Democrats—such as the “cite-and-release” program he implemented, which allows officers to choose to issue a fine rather than arresting someone for a low-level crime like minor drug possession. The goal was to reduce the strain on the DA’s office and lessen the penalties for people committing nonviolent crimes. It would also clear up space in the system for violent crime—but detractors argue it lets people stay on the street to commit more crimes. LaHood had tried and failed to implement a similar policy.

Since the program launched, Gonzales said it has kept 13,000 people from being arrested for low-level offenses. All of the Democratic candidates the Observer spoke with approved of the program. Almost all of the Democratic candidates have said the office should focus on violent or “repeat offenders,” which has been a focus of the office strategy for years now. 

Staffing and office morale have also been a consistent problem, according to some of the more than 140 people who left the Bexar County DA’s office during Gonzales’ terms. People complained of overwork, low pay, and micromanagement. 

Gonzales points to Senate Bill 22, passed in 2023, which gave rural counties more money to fund their prosecutors’ offices. He said this led to a drain of experienced prosecutors from Bexar County, in search of more pay for lighter case loads. It’s unclear whether any of the candidates will be able to solve the staffing problem in the office, although several have argued that training and some workload shuffling may do the trick, in the absence of more money from the county. 

No one is running as a self-appointed successor to Gonzales’ regime. And indeed Gonzales has refrained from endorsing anyone in the primary. But he did say that if one of his current division directors—Davis or Powers—makes it into the runoff, they will get his official support. 

How much that nod would help remains to be seen. 

The post A Motley Crew of Dems Vie to Become New Bexar County DA appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By JILL LAWLESS

LONDON (AP) — Fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein files has landed on the gilded wood and plush red benches of Britain’s House of Lords.

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Parliament’s upper chamber is in the spotlight after former U.K. ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson was forced to resign as a member of the Lords because of his friendship with the late sex offender.

The episode has emboldened critics who say the unelected house is antiquated, undemocratic and far too slow at punishing bad behavior by its members. Supporters say the chamber of more than 850 members-for-life who sport the titles of “Lord” or “Lady” is an unwieldy but essential part of parliamentary democracy.

Almost everyone agrees it needs reform, but that task has eluded successive governments.

“It’s a mess,” said Jenny Jones, one of two Green Party members of the Lords. “In spite of our being supposedly a modern democracy, we have a semifeudal system.”

Relic of the past

For most of its 700-year history, the House of Lords was composed of noblemen — not women — who inherited their seats, alongside a smattering of bishops. In the 1950s, these were joined by “life peers” — retired politicians, civic leaders and other notables appointed by the government, among them the first female members of the Lords.

In 1999, the Labour government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair evicted most of the more than 750 hereditary peers, though to avoid an aristocrats’ rebellion, 92 were allowed to remain temporarily.

A quarter century on, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s current Labour government finally introduced legislation to oust the remaining “hereditaries,” calling them an indefensible relic of the past.

The lords have put up a fight, forcing a compromise that will see some hereditary members allowed to stay by being “recycled” into life peers.

“Hereditary peers actually work harder than average peers,” said Charles Hay, the 16th Earl of Kinnoull, who leads the group of cross-bench, or non-party affiliated, peers in the Lords. “It means that you chuck out a lot of people who are actually being effective.”

Most agree that the House of Lords plays an important role in reviewing legislation passed by the elected House of Commons. The lords can amend bills and send them back to lawmakers for another look. But when push comes to shove, the upper house is supposed to give way to the will of the elected chamber.

Critics say the upper chamber has sometimes overstepped the mark by blocking legislation, as with a current bill to legalize assisted dying. It was approved by the Commons but has become bogged down with hundreds of amendments in the Lords.

Lords-a-misbehaving

Long gone are the days when out-of-favor lords could be imprisoned in the Tower of London or beheaded for treason.

Until recently there was little parliamentary authorities could do about peers who committed ethical breaches or crimes.

Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, otherwise known as the thriller-writer Jeffrey Archer, was imprisoned for perjury in 2001, while Lord Black of Crossharbour — the media baron Conrad Black — served a U.S. prison sentence after a 2007 fraud conviction. Under the rules of the time, neither could be kicked out of the Lords.

Since then, the law has been changed to allow members to be expelled for breaching the Lords code of conduct, imprisonment or non-attendance. To this day, no one has been expelled for bad behavior, though a couple have quit before being kicked out, including one who committed sexual assault and another filmed allegedly snorting cocaine with sex workers.

Ex-peers get to keep their lordly titles and the cachet they bring. Mandelson — who in one message asked Epstein: “Need a Lord on the board?” — has lost his job and faces a police investigation for misconduct in public office. But he remains Lord Mandelson.

Also under pressure is Starmer’s former chief of staff Matthew Doyle, now Lord Doyle, appointed to the House of Lords despite his friendship with a man later jailed for possessing indecent images of children.

Removing disgraced lords’ titles would require new legislation, something that has not been done since 1917, when several lords were stripped of their titles for siding with Germany in World War I.

Slow pace of change

Labour remains committed to eventually replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber that is “more representative of the U.K.”

But change is slow. In December, the Lords set up a committee to look at introducing a retirement age of 80 and tightening up the participation requirement.

“Lords reform is glacial,” said Meg Russell, a politics professor who heads the Constitution Unit at University College London. “Things are talked about for decades before they happen.”

The fall of Mandelson, who was appointed to the Lords in 2008 by a previous Labour government, has renewed concern about the quality of members and the way they are selected. Anger among Labour lawmakers about Mandelson escalated into a crisis for Starmer that could yet end his leadership.

Russell says the Mandelson and Doyle controversies show the need to change the way Lords members are chosen. While crossbenchers are appointed by an independent committee, most life peerages are handed out by the prime minister, often to reward aides, allies and donors.

“There’s really no proper quality check and there’s no limit on numbers and it just looks so anachronistic,” she said. “It’s clear that there ought to be more rigorous processes to check people on the way in.”

The Green Party that Jones represents wants to go further and abolish the Lords, replacing it with an elected upper house.

“We should call it the Senate or something and stop this ridiculous class-based nomenclature,” said Jones, whose formal title is Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb. “I’d be happy to be called senator and not lady.”

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD, AP Political Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — As national Democrats search for a unifying theme ahead of the fall’s midterm elections, a California proposal to levy a hefty tax on billionaires is turning some of the party’s leading figures into adversaries just when Democrats can least afford division from within.

Bernie Sanders will be in Los Angeles campaigning Wednesday for the tax proposal that has the Silicon Valley in an uproar, with tech titans are threatening to leave the state. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is among its outspoken opponents, warning that it could leave government finances in crisis and put the state at a competitive disadvantage nationally.

Sanders is planning a late afternoon rally near downtown, and in the past he has turned out overflow crowds in the heavily Democratic city. The Vermont senator, a democratic socialist, is popular in California — he won the 2020 Democratic presidential primary in the state in a runaway. He’s been railing for decades against what he characterizes as wealthy elites and the growing gap between rich and poor.

A large health care union is attempting to place a proposal before voters in November that would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of billionaires — including stocks, art, businesses, collectibles and intellectual property — to backfill federal funding cuts to health services for lower-income people that were signed by President Donald Trump last year.

Sanders wrote on the social platform X that he strongly supports the tax “at a time of unprecedented and growing wealth and income inequality.”

“Our nation will not thrive when so few own so much,” Sanders wrote.

Debate on the proposal is unfolding at a time when voters in both parties express unease with economic conditions and what the future will bring in a politically divided nation. Distrust of government — and its ability to get things done — is widespread.

The proposal has created a rift between Newsom and prominent members of his party’s progressive wing, including Sanders, who has said the tax should be a template for other states.

“The issues that are really going to be motivating Democrats this year, affordability and the cost of health care and cuts to schools, none of these would be fixed by this proposal. If fact, they would be made worse,” said Brian Brokaw, a longtime Newsom adviser who is leading a political committee opposing the tax.

FILE – California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally with Harris County Democrats at the IBEW local 716 union hall Nov. 8, 2025, in Houston. (AP Photo/Karen Warren, File)

Midterm elections typically punish the party in control of the White House, and Democrats are hoping to gain enough U.S. House seats to overturn the chamber’s slim Republican majority. In California, rejiggered House districts approved by voters last year are expected to help the party pick up as many as five additional seats, which would leave Republicans in control of just a handful of districts.

“It is always better for a party to have the political debate focused on issues where you are united and the other party is divided,” said Eric Schickler, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. “Having an issue like this where Newsom and Sanders — among others — are on different sides is not ideal.”

With the idea of taxing billionaires popular among many voters “this can be a good way for Democratic candidates to rally that side and break through from the pack,” Schickler added in an email.

It’s already trickled into the race for governor and contests down the ballot. Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, both candidates for governor, have warned the tax would erase jobs. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a Democratic candidate for governor, has said inequality starts at the federal level, where the tax code is riddled with loopholes.

Coinciding with the Sanders visit and an upcoming state Democratic convention this weekend, opponents are sending out targeted emails and social media ads intended to sway party insiders.

It’s not clear if the proposal will make the ballot — supporters must gather more than 870,000 petition signatures to place it before voters.

The nascent contest already has drawn out a tangle of competing interests, with millions of dollars flowing into political committees.

Newsom has long opposed state-level wealth taxes, believing such levies would be disadvantageous for the world’s fourth-largest economy. At a time when California is strapped for cash and he is considering a 2028 presidential run, he is trying to block the proposal before it reaches the ballot.

Analysts say an exodus of billionaires could mean a loss of hundreds of millions of tax dollars for the nation’s most populous state. But supporters say the funding is needed to offset federal cuts that could leave many Californians without vital services.

By KEN MAGUIRE, AP Sports Writer

MILAN (AP) — Hockey is the top Winter Games sport among gamblers, but curling with its sliding stones, spirited sweeping and cheating allegations has surprised oddsmakers.

Bettors are showing significant interest in the quirky sport, which piques viewers’ curiosity every four years at the Winter Olympics.

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“There’s definitely a stronger curling-hockey split than what was expected,” said Chris Pearce, a senior trader at Caesars Sportsbook.

It’s expected that the handle — the total amount wagered — on this Olympics will far exceed that of the 2022 Beijing Games mainly because legalized sports betting has expanded in the U.S. and these Games are easier to track live because of the time zone.

“The curling alone is going to take seven figures overall — it’s going to take a million dollars overall,” Pearce said. “If you would have told me at the start that that we’d turn over a million on curling, I wouldn’t have believed you, but there’s a lot of interest there.”

The International Olympic Committee says it closely monitors betting on Olympic sports to protect the integrity of the Games. The worldwide aggregate betting volume on the 2024 Summer Games in Paris was a record 11 billion euros ($13 billion), the IOC said.

Summer Games now have nearly three times the number of events than Winter Olympics so naturally get higher figures. But it’s widely expected that betting on Milan Cortina will far surpass that of the 2022 Beijing Games.

Pearce said they had already exceeded their Beijing mark “five or six days in.”

Canada’s Ben Hebert, Brett Gallant and Marc Kennedy compete during a men’s curling round robin match against Switzerland at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

The curling competitions are being held in Cortina, where Sweden beat the U.S. to win the gold medal in mixed doubles. The men’s and women’s team events are in full swing, and the allegations of rule breaking has added a dash of controversy.

“It looks to be one of the more bet-on winter sports under ice hockey,” said Christian Cipollini, BetMGM Sportsbook senior trading manager. “It’s kind of relatable, it’s an easy watch, you can understand it very quickly.”

Some other sports — like speedskating — are over in minutes. Curling takes hours and can include frequent lead changes.

“Curling is one that continues to go live, so that’s what ends up getting it more popularity from a handle standpoint,” Cipollini said.

The handle for a curling match, he estimated, is equivalent to that of a low-to-mid-tier college basketball game.

United States’ flag bearer Erin Jackson arrives during the Olympic opening ceremony at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Gamblers in the US are betting on Americans

Olympic athletes in sports like curling, ski jumping and biathlon aren’t exactly household names, so U.S. bettors tend to default to Americans, Cipollini said.

“It does appear the U.S. bettors, very much so, are more patriotic and willing to bet on their team kind of blindly, where the European countries it doesn’t happen so much,” he said, noting the longer history of sports betting in Europe.

Even when the athletes are well known, gamblers can be quite optimistic, like when they bet on Lindsey Vonn despite her skiing with a torn ACL. The American star crashed in the women’s downhill and broke her leg.

Figure skating is a hugely popular Olympic sport but can be tricker with gambling because the outcome relies on judges’ decisions.

“Basically any event for us, if USA is listed, that’s the one that has the most amount of bets in it,” Cipollini said. “Hockey is a little bit different because Canada is the favorite.”

The NHL-run 4 Nations Face-Off tournament one year ago proved popular with bettors. The showdown in the final — Canada beat the U.S. in overtime — was seen as an Olympic preview.

“If we get a men’s U.S.-Canada game, we think that will be our biggest bet-on hockey game of the year, including NHL finals, all the regular-season NHL games,” Cipollini said.

United States’ Auston Matthews, center, celebrates with teammates after scoring his sides fifth goal during a preliminary round match of men’s ice hockey between Latvia and the United States at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Gambling carries risks

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a ban on sports betting, but scandals involving athletes and officials have followed. Recent polling also suggests that Americans have become increasingly critical of the role of sports betting as bad for U.S. society and sports.

The National Council on Problem Gambling reports that the “rate of gambling problems among sports bettors is at least twice as high as among gamblers in general.”

Public health advocates like the Maryland Center of Excellence on Problem Gambling warn that problem gambling can lead to not just financial and legal problems, but also higher divorce and suicide rates, and can damage job performance. Gambling has become widespread on college campuses, and Common Sense Media recently found that children are also participating.

Advocates recommend apps such as GambBan and BetBlocker, which limit access to gambling sites externally.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics