Four years after she unexpectedly ousted a well-liked Republican to lead the nation’s third-most-populous county, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo is in a pitched reelection battle against a well-funded Republican opponent — imperiling her party’s hopes that the Democratic superstar could one day ascend to statewide office.
Hammering the 31-year-old incumbent over the county’s high number of homicides and the criminal indictment of three Hidalgo staffers, Republican Alexandra del Moral Mealer has mounted a robust challenge against Hidalgo — prompting GOP donors to open their wallets for the chance to halt Hidalgo’s political career and retake the seat they lost in 2018.
A West Point graduate and ex-Army captain who served for a decade in Afghanistan, Mealer has put Hidalgo on the defensive over the county’s crime numbers — which mirror trends seen in most major U.S. metropolitan areas during the COVID-19 pandemic — and a criminal court backlog that dates back to Hurricane Harvey, before Hidalgo took office.
