By Anthony Rios — Democratic activist in Harris County.
Kim Ogg has gone full MAGA.
Earlier this month, she co-authored a flagrantly political joint editorial with Lying Ted Cruz that leveraged the memory of a dead child to score political points.
Not satisfied the following week, she went the extra mile and endorsed the senator for reelection.
The week after that, she teased a press conference to the public to fuel the rightwing political machine’s false narrative that the 2022 Elections had been compromised. In a release that focused on the accused’s status as an “election official,” Ogg revealed that she was bringing charges against a county employee for double billing on his timesheets, admitting in the presser that there was no evidence to undermine the confidence of the elections. The whole setup was a distraction to carry Greg Abbott’s water on election issues.
Is Ogg acting out of pure belief? She’s not known for that and has been caught in various lies during her career, particularly over misdemeanor bail reform and falsely blaming Democratic judges for crime spikes.
What seems more likely is a party switch in the hopes that Trump wins and throws her a plum job. Ogg is a lame duck; when the clock turns to 2025, she’s out of office, and Democrats hate her, which is why she was defeated by 50 points in the March primary. She has entered the job market, and from here on out, only Republicans will hire her. We shouldn’t be surprised if we see her endorse Trump in the coming months.
Regardless, next year we will have a new DA in Sean Teare, and won’t have Kim Ogg to kick around any more.
Some of Ogg’s key supporters are still in power, though. Despite the DA’s many misdeeds, despite Democratic precinct chairs admonishing her, and a super-majority of primary voters deciding to dump her from office, several elected officials stuck by Ogg. This includes all Democratic party leaders who supported Ogg, with at least a few collecting checks from her campaign payroll. There needs to be accountability from the people who supported Kim Ogg. They need to recant their support, or they should not keep their seats.
Senator Carol Alvarado may one day run for Congress or try to win the Houston Mayor’s race. Alvarado not only endorsed Ogg but also went out of her way to attend the county Democratic Party’s steering committee meeting for the first time ever to vote against admonishing the DA.
District Court Clerk Marilyn Burgess endorsed Ogg. Like her ally Marilyn has had questionable hiring practices hiring a man from True the Vote a voter suppression organization. Despite him lying on his application, and being fired for bigotry from the sheriff’s office.
Annise Parker defended and endorsed Ogg throughout the entire cycle. Parker called for the HISD takeover as early as 2018. She openly admitted not voting for County Judge Lina Hidalgo the DEMOCRAT in her first election and suggested she would not in her reelection bid, even when Hidalgo faced far right maga diehard Alex Mealer. Post January 6th Annise Parker willingly chose to suggest she supported an election denying Republican. She has been suggesting that she will primary Lina Hidalgo in 2026 and has long coveted being county judge. She will no doubt try to use this as an opportunity to rally the conservative Democrats and take revenge for her ally Kim Ogg.
Other Ogg supporters included Representative Maryann Perez and Constable Jerry Garcia.
It is also worth mentioning that Ogg’s Chief of Staff Vivian King is managing to slide into a judicial seat. She has already been repeating GOP talking points tagging Democratic judges with increasing crime.
All these people looked the other way or participated in Ogg weaponizing her office to go after her political opposition, and to attack loyal Democrats. They all look the other way as she did dirty work for the GOP.
Kim Ogg represents the worst mistake the local Democratic Party has made in my lifetime. People are allowed to make mistakes, but if amends are not made, then they must be held accountable, or else we will pay for it later.