Democrats James Montoya and Alma Trejo are headed to a May runoff election to determine who will take on Republican Bill Hicks, the appointed incumbent district attorney, in the November general election.
Montoya received 38% of the votes, with Trejo garnering 35%. The third Democratic candidate in the primary, Nancy Casas, received 27% of the early votes.
The runoff is May 28.
“I was pretty sure this was going to be a runoff,” Montoya said, adding he was “pleased” and “thrilled” to lead his opponents on Tuesday night.
“We’re prepared to go all the way – another three months of blockwalking and speaking with the community,” Montoya said.
Trejo entered the race in October, months after Casas and Montoya, so she said her goal for election night “was just to make the runoff and take it from there.”
She said she’ll take a look at changing her electoral strategy for the runoff election.
“We need to regroup and figure out where we are and what our message is going to be,” Trejo said during an election watch party at Chelito’s restaurant off of Mesa Street. “I want to know what resonated and what didn’t.”
Hicks, who was appointed to the seat in late 2022 by Gov. Greg Abbott following the resignation of Yvonne Rosales, didn’t face any Republican opponents in the primary.
Trejo, 59, served as judge for the El Paso County Criminal Court No. 1 from 2002 until she resigned last fall to run for DA. She campaigned on her experience as both a prosecutor and a judge, and said she was the administrative know-how to run the DA’s office with 175 employees.
Montoya, 33, an El Paso County public defender, promoted his wide-ranging experience – including time spent as a prosecutor in El Paso and on a Native American reservation in Oklahoma – and said he could recruit numerous lawyers to boost staffing in the DAs office.
Casas, 49, emphasized at campaign events a greater need for different parts of El Paso’s criminal justice system – from responding officers to prosecutors – to communicate and collaborate. Casas, currently a county attorney, had worked as a prosecutor for 21 years before she was fired from the DA’s office when Rosales took over.
Rosales, who was elected as the DA in 2020, resigned two years into her term before a trial to remove her from office was to be held. She was criticized for getting thousands of criminal cases dismissed without a trial or hearing, for dismantling the domestic violence unit and mishandling various criminal cases.
On the campaign trail in recent months, all three Democratic district attorney candidates said the DA’s office is understaffed and morale among lawyers is low.
Rosales fired dozens of lawyers and other employees when she took office in January 2021. Chronic staffing shortages after the mass terminations – and disruptions caused by the pandemic – plagued the office throughout Rosales’ tenure, leading several judges to criticize the office for being unprepared to try cases.
Hicks has blamed the ongoing staffing shortage on Rosales, who he said fired nearly half the attorneys in the DA’s office when she took office. In January, Hicks said there were 60 lawyers working in the office when he arrived, and he’s increased that to 80 lawyers since being appointed to the position.
The DA’s biggest task for the upcoming term will be concluding the state’s death penalty case against Patrick Crusius, the suspect in the Walmart mass shooting. Hicks is pursuing the death penalty on state capital murder charges, but it appears unlikely the trial will be set before the November election.
Crusius pleaded guilty last year to federal hate crimes and weapons charges after the U.S. Department of Justice decided not to seek the death penalty for those charges. He was sentenced to 90 consecutive life terms in federal prison, which means he will die in prison.
Crusius’ defense lawyers have accused Hicks of playing politics with the case and burying them in terabytes of case files. Hicks has maintained that defense lawyers have had access to the vast majority of the evidence for more than four years and should be ready for trial.
Since entering the race in October, Trejo reported raising just over $34,000 in campaign donations as of Feb. 26, including $3,000 from the Lozano Meza Law Firm and $2,500 from Wyatt Underwood trial lawyers. She also received $2,000 from Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso, a vocal opponent of the death penalty. And all three of the lawyers defending the Walmart gunman gave donations to Trejo.
Montoya was critical of Trejo for accepting the defense team’s donations. While the three lawyers’ donations were relatively small – $1,100 total – accepting the money from attorneys she would be up against in the Walmart trial if elected “calls into question her judgment,” Montoya said of Trejo on Tuesday as election results came in.
“With a case of this magnitude, why accept the contribution?” Montoya said. “It’s important not only to be impartial, but to appear impartial.
Trejo also funded her campaign with a $10,000 loan, and she outspent her opponents by pouring $141,000 into the race – including nearly $101,000 of her personal funds as of Feb 26. On Tuesday, Trejo said she ultimately spent $120,000 of her own money on the race.
“I was on the bench for 21 years, and I took lawyer donations. My judgment was never clouded. And it’s certainly not going to be clouded on the Walmart case,” Trejo told El Paso Matters. “I put in $120,000 of my own money. So, the implication that $1,100 is going to make me sell out the Walmart case is pretty ridiculous.”
Casas raised just over $49,000 as of Feb. 26, and her campaign spent $111,000 total. Casas put in $82,000 of her own money. Her biggest donor was Noe Valles, a Lubbock-based attorney with the Glasheen, Valles & Inderman injury law firm, who gave Casas $5,000 last month.
Montoya led his opponents by bringing in $69,000 in donations since last year. His biggest donors as of Feb. 26 were attorney James Rey, who gave him $3,500, and Linda Estrada, a candidate for a criminal court judge seat, who gave Montoya $3,000. Rebecca Tarango, a lawyer in the DAs office who’s a prosecutor in the Walmart case, donated $240 to Montoya. She didn’t donate money to Hicks.
Montoya also took out a $40,000 loan, and spent $61,000 on the campaign. Of that, just over $25,000 came from either Montoya’s personal funds or a credit card.
The District Attorney’s Office, which covers El Paso, Hudspeth and Culberson counties, has 175 employees and an operating budget of $21.7 million. The DA serves a four-year term and is paid $198,000, calculated under state statute.
