Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown, former Sheriff Lupe Valdez debate before primary runoff
DALLAS COUNTY — One of the closest races being watched in Dallas County is the Democratic primary runoff on May 28th between incumbent Sheriff Marian Brown and her former boss, former Sheriff Lupe Valdez.
Valdez hand-picked Brown to succeed her.
They took part in a debate that I moderated and was sponsored by the Dallas Democratic Forum.
Both Sheriff Marian Brown and former Sheriff Lupe Valdez made their case to dozens of members of the Dallas Democratic Forum on why they should win their Democratic primary runoff next month.
Sheriff Brown said, "We have been leading from the front."
Former Sheriff Valdez said, "I have done it before, and I can do it again."
During the forum, I asked Valdez why she is running against Brown, who she hired as Chief Deputy, one of her top lieutenants.
Valdez said, "Some people said she wants her old job back. I don't want my old job back. There's a lot of stuff I can do. Correctional officers will tell you things are not improving, they're getting worse. So, I made the decision after three years of several folks asking, of seeing, and I did volunteer to come back and help on my own time and was turned down. So, I continually go at we have to make things better."
In response, Brown said she wouldn't have been Valdez's hand-picked successor and appointed by county leaders if she hadn't done a good job as the number three person in the department. "When I hear there are 30 people who've asked my opponent to return, I say to you, there are 2100 employees at the department, what percentage of 2100 is 30? So if there's that percentage that is saying come back, I'm ok with that because I realize that in the real world, if you have 2100 employees, you're not going to please everybody."
A recent report by the Dallas Morning News found that after Dallas County implemented a new computer system in May of last year, inmates in the jail were being "lost".
Attorneys told the newspaper that their clients have been stuck in jail weeks past their release dates, among other problems.
Brown said, "This system does not belong to us."
But the county-owned system is supposed to work with the jail's computer system.
Brown said her staff doesn't want to keep people in jail who shouldn't be there. "We're having to manually do some of our processes because of the system that will not properly communicate with our system. So when you ask what are we going to do about it, we have to continue pressing our partners to help us look manually."
Valdez acknowledged that she and her administration faced a similar problem a decade earlier, when a new computer system left some inmates lost. "Every time there's a system change, there's problems in the courts and the jail."
She said she took action. "The whole department was talking about how Sheriff Valdez rolled up her sleeves, started taking the inmates, transporting them, get them out of there, whatever you need to do to meet the challenge, you do it."
Both Valdez and Brown said what gives them the most satisfaction on the job is identifying what needs to be improved and making it better.
Each woman is a trailblazer.
Brown was appointed in December 2017, and was sworn-in on January 1, 2018.
She was elected later that year and re-elected in 2020.
Brown became the first African-American Sheriff in Dallas County and is one of only a handful of black female Sheriffs in the United States.
In 1988, she became the first African-American woman to be hired by the Duncanville Police Department, where she worked her way up to Assistant Chief.
Valdez was elected in 2004 and became one of the first Democrats to win county-wide in years.
She also became the only Latina Sheriff in the U.S.
At the time, Valdez was one of the first openly LGBTQ elected officials in the country.
She was re-elected multiple times and served until 2017, when she resigned to run for Governor.
Valdez became the first Latina to become a Democratic nominee for Governor in Texas.
Before running for office, she worked for a number of federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security.
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