Perry names judge in Houston (re-appoints judge who got the boot by voters in the GOP primary)

AUSTIN Governor Rick Perry has named Reece Rondon of Bellaire to be judge of the 234th district court in Harris County.

Rondon will serve until the next general election, when he can opt to run for a full term.

Rondon is an attorney with Andrews Kurth L-L-P, and is a former judge of the 334th district court.

The Governor has the power to pick whoever he wants for judges, but this one is a typical backhanded Perry stunt. In this one he is outright thumbing his nose at the GOP voters of Harris County who gave this same guy the boot last year!

Reece Rondon, as you may know, was appointed by Perry previously to a vacancy on the 334th District Court in Houston before the 2004 primary. From what I can tell he was a nice enough guy, but Rondon was politically green, hadn't ever done much of anything for the Republican Party, and was criticized at the time of the appointment for being underqualified to be judge, as were several other Perry appointments. To make a long story short, the Republican Primary voters of Harris County went against Rondon he came up for election in favor of another candidate.

For Perry to turn around less than a year later and reappoint the guy that the voters rejected outright smacks of the all around contempt he has for the electorate on judicial matters. He's also pulled stunts like this before, always shunning the expressed will of the electorate when it goes against his cronies. The best known is in 2002 when the voters unseated Perry's RINO pro-abort appointment to the Texas Supreme Court, Xavier Rodriguez. 2 years later Perry decided to get even with the Justice who beat his man, Steven Wayne Smith. He hand recruited an opponent for Smith and saw to it that the guy's campaign was bankrolled.

This seems to be a typical Perry stunt;
he asked for Denton County GOP advice on a judicial appointment here a couple years ago, then completely ignored it, nominating instead the least-qualified candidate - who happens to be an Hispanic woman.

She's a fine person, active (up until then) in local GOP politics, but she was NOT the best-qualified, by a long shot, and we DO owe it to the public to name qualified judges.

OK: her name is Carmen "something-hyphen-"Whorley

Perry seems to like the hyphen types and the Affirmative Action appointments. He also loads the courts with cronies from the big law firms and his political connections.

We have many Perry "stars" on the Harris County judiciary who were appointed over substantially more qualified alternatives. A couple years ago he gave a major criminal bench appointment to the inexperienced son of the county sheriff and then pressured more-qualified candidates out of the race. He's given several nods to junior partner wannabes from major law firms that give him cash, the attorney of the Houston Astros owner and stuff like that.

Rondon was installed in a group of three nearly simultaneous picks last year - David "Jorge" Bernal and Marc Carter were the other two. Carter was picked as a replacement to Ted Poe on the most prominent criminal bench in the county after Poe resigned to run for Congress. Carter was a Democrat primary voter up until two years ago and had only minor low level criminal law experience. His in with Perry: he officed his law firm with the GOP county chairman! Bernal seems to have been picked for no other reason than being hispanic. Before getting the nod he had never lifted so much as a finger for the Republican Party and had never even voted in our primary.

Shoddy picks like these are par for the course for RINO Rick all the way up to the state level. Last month he promoted RINO state rep. Elizabeth Ames-Jones, aka Railroad Commissioner Barbie, to that office even though she has no energy credentials and was an "interior designer" before her wealthy donor husband (who incidentally helps out a lot of Rick's favorite causes) bought her a state rep seat.

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