Dallas County DA-elect Hawk zeroed in on distrust of Watkins

Republican Susan Hawk seized the Dallas County district attorney’s office by appealing to fed-up Democrats ready to dump incumbent Craig Watkins.

Even before her campaign took flight last fall, Hawk put together a steering committee of business leaders, Republicans and some Democrats to determine how to pull off an upset victory.

And though she ran as a Republican, the former state district judge stressed to voters that party ideology had nothing to do with her approach to criminal justice.

“We established that the community had lost trust in the DA,” said Mari Woodlief, Hawk’s chief strategist. “The big thing was taking a nonpartisan approach to the election. What everyone wants in a DA is to have someone they can trust and who will make them feel safe.”

Hawk’s greatest weapon against Watkins was Watkins himself. Over the course of his second term, he systematically ruined alliances with several members of his own party, including judges and Darlene Ewing, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party.

Watkins’ political miscalculations allowed Hawk to marry her Republican base with independents and Democrats at long last disenchanted with their one-time hero.

Tuesday’s results showed Watkins winning most of southern Dallas, but Hawk cut into his margins while maintaining dominance in the north. Many Democratic voters didn’t include Watkins in their otherwise straight-ticket ballots.

Hawk said Wednesday that her message that the district attorney’s decisons should not be political appealed to Democrats.

“When politics come into play, bad decisions are made,” Hawk said. “Being down there [at the courthouse] for 20 years, and being elected both as a Republican and a Democrat, my philosophy never changed, as a judge or as a prosecutor, of upholding and enforcing law. It stayed the same: It shouldn’t be about politics.

“That’s one thing that resonated with voters. To me it’s common sense.”

Meanwhile, the rest of Tuesday’s Democratic slate eased to comfortable victories against their Republican rivals.

Watkins was the only Democrat to lose a countywide contest Tuesday and the first to be beaten by a Republican since 2004.

“Dallas County held up as a Democratic county, and it also fired its district attorney,” said political strategist Matt Angle. “It wasn’t Republicans beating a Democrat. It was Democrats deciding they no longer wanted their DA.”

Angle, one of many Democrats who in 2006 helped Watkins become Texas’ first black district attorney, said Watkins did great things in the DA’s office but failed to become a party leader.

“One by one, he damaged relationships to the point where he could no longer sustain himself politically,” Angle said.

Mark Littlefield, Watkins’ chief campaign consultant, said Watkins’ battles with the news media and with other Democrats probably contributed to his failed re-election bid.

“Craig Watkins spent the last two years running against The Dallas Morning News, running against some people inside his own party,” he said. “When you look at the vote difference between other Democrats on the ballot and Craig Watkins, there were tens of thousands of Democrats who decided to either skip this election or vote for Susan Hawk.”

Watkins, known nationally for exonerating the innocent, could not be reached for comment. His spokeswoman at the district attorney’s office said he was not at work Wednesday.

Littlefield acknowledged Watkins’ minimal campaign efforts, with little fundraising success or door-to-door campaigning to encourage voter turnout. He said the district attorney, who this year allowed his prosecutors to run against sitting judges without resigning first, hoped for a “transformative election cycle within the Dallas County courthouse.” But those efforts “weren’t always met with acceptance or enthusiasm, and that diminished the financial support he had.”

With Watkins crippled by a lack of funds, Hawk targeted his core voters — African-Americans in southern Dallas County — with little resistance.

She unleashed campaign mailers in the county’s Democratic precincts that highlighted Watkins’ public disputes with Judges Lena Levario, Angela King, Julia Hayes and Elizabeth Frizell, all minority women.

Anti-Watkins Democrats campaigned for Hawk in southern Dallas County, telling voters that they could still vote the straight party ticket but leave Watkins off their ballots. The chant “Two checks away from a new DA” became a rallying cry for Hawk. It was a quick way to inform voters on how to maneuver the long ballot.

“People saw what was happening in Dallas County,” said Hawk. “This was a race that crossed geographical, party lines and race lines as well.”

Now that Hawk has won, she begins the task of putting together her top staff and examining how she wants to revamp the office before she takes over Jan 1. She said Wednesday that she has thought about who might fill those positions but was not ready to publicly name them.

But Hawk said that she doesn’t foresee any “mass firings” at the DA’s office, although she said wants to surround herself with key people at the top. Hawk said she wants to start a mentoring program for young prosecutors and give them a chance to succeed.

“As far as cleaning house at the DA’s office, that’s not what I’m going to do,” Hawk said. “The morale is already low enough, which is not fair for those young lawyers.”

gjeffers@dallasnews.com; jemily@dallasnews.com; smervosh@dallasnews.com