SANCHEZ FACT CHECK: "COURT SAID IT WAS OK" FOR TEXAS SUPREME COURT JUSTICE TO ENDORSE CANDIDATE....NOT!!!

By Juan Montoya
Not content to sit on the Cameron County Commissioners Court n court as a holdover while  County Judge Pete Sepulveda – himself an appointed officeholder – ignores his statutory duty to replace him "as soon as possible," Pct. 4 commissioner  and county judge candidate Dan Sanchez is now misinterpreting the law.
Sanchez, who has worn his campaign button as he sits with the rest of the commissioners court deliberating the issues before it, told Brownsville Herald reporter Frank Garza Jan. 16 that a Texas Supreme Court decision made in the case involving one of its own justices stated that a Special Court of Review found that "the First Amendment trumped the Canons of Judicial Conduct."
Sanchez said that Seanna Willing, the executive director of the Texas Commission of Judicial Conduct, had told him that the special court of review had concluded that "a judge's free speech rights outweigh the state's interest in regulating activity to endure a fair and impartial judiciary."
The issue came up in the Sanchez case because his brother, 444th District Court Judge David Sanchez, has been actively campaigning for Dan to the point of wearing his campaign T-shirt and asking county voters for their support.
A judicial cannon 5 states that "a judge or judicial candidate shall not authorize the public use o his name endorsing another candidate for any public office, except that either may indicate support for a political party."
In fact, if one reads the case cited by Sanchez (In re Honorable Nathan Hecht-No. A-2006-1), Special Court of Review never touched upon the First Amendment issue.
"We must determine whether public statements of a judge supporting a nominee to the United States Supreme Court violate the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct...If so, we must determine whether the Texas Code abridges the petitioners freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, because we conclude petitioner did not violate the Canons, we do not address the constitutional question." 
In other words, the case involving Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht never concluded – as Sanchez blithely told the reporter – that in Hecht the court had found that "the First Amendment trumped the Canons of Judicial Conduct."
That is not the only difference that Sanchez hedged on in the interview.
He said that wearing his campaign button during court sessions was "in bad taste" and had been an oversight on his part. But Sanchez neglected to tell the reporter that videotapes of previous court meetings showed that it was not the first time that he had worn the button.
There are other differences. Justice Hecht was admonished by the Judicial Commission for making statement in support of Harriet Miers, his former law firm colleague and later Special Counsel to Pres. George Bush. Bush was nominating her for the U.S. Supreme Court Judge when Hecht made his statements of support for her confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
The Hecht hearing before the Special Court of Review addressed a matter involving a nomination which was to be voted on by the Senate. There is no election. The Sanchez candidacy and his brother's endorsement for the Democratic Party involves an endorsement for a partisan election, a horse of a vastly different color.
If we are to believe that Dan Sanchez's repeated wearing of his campaign buttons in the commissioners court was merely an "oversight" and "in bad taste," than we will also believe that he somehow "misinterpreted" campaign case law as well.
Did Sepulveda get his legal reasoning from Sanchez also when he told a news reporter that he would wait until the Democratic primaries to appoint someone to replace Sanchez as Pct. 4 commissioner instead of following the statute that he replace him "as soon as possible"?
Political considerations, it appears, trumps the law in Cameron County.