Lawrence E. Meyers

Meyers graduated in 1970 from Southern Methodist University in University Park. He obtained a Juris Doctor in 1973 from the University of Kansas School of Law in Lawrence, Kansas. Years thereafter, he received a Master of Laws degree in 1998 from the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville, Virginia.[1]

After obtaining his law degree, Meyers was briefly an assistant district attorney in Montgomery County, Kansas. Between 1975 and 1988, he practiced civil, criminal, and appellate law in Fort Worth, where he was also a substitute municipal judge for three years. He has also been an instructor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Meyers and his wife, Barbara Jean Meyers (born 1948), reside in Fort Worth and have two children, Kelli and Clay.[2]

From 1989 to 1992, Meyers was an associate justice of the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth, an intermediate appeals court.[2] In 1992, Meyers ran for the Court of Criminal Appeals, the court of last resort in criminal cases in Texas. In the Republican primary election, he polled 282,640 statewide votes (54.5 percent) to his intra-party challenger, Ed Gray, who received 236,249 (45.5 percent).[3] In the November general election Meyers narrowly unseated the Democratic incumbent, Pete Benavides, 2,732,689 votes (50.5 percent) to 2,677,996 (49.5 percent). In the 1998 Republican primary, Meyers won re-nomination, 248,972 votes (57.2 percent) to Herb Hancock's 186,017 (42.8 percent).[4] Meyers was subsequently handily reelected in the general elections of 1998, 2004, and 2010.[1]

After his party switch, while remaining on the Court of Criminal Appeals, Meyers sought the Place 6 seat on the Texas Supreme Court, a civil judicial body. He was handily defeated by Republican Jeff Brown, a temporary appointee of Governor Rick Perry. Brown polled 2,772,056 votes (60.3 percent) to Meyers's 1,677,341 (36.5 percent). Another 146,511 votes (3.2 percent) went to the Libertarian Party nominee, Mark Ash.[5]

Meyers has been a judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals since 1993; he has been the only Democrat in a statewide office in Texas since December 2013, when he switched parties. Columnist Ken Herman attributed Meyers's defeat for the Supreme Court largely to his party switch and voter tendency to vote a straight Republican ticket in Texas and the view by some Republicans that Meyers had not sided sufficiently with the prosecution in criminal cases. Meyers said that his party bolt was motivated by the influence of the Tea Party movement on the Texas GOP.[6]

In 2016, during the primaries, three Republicans campaigned for the nomination to oppose Meyers in the general election: Mary Lou Keel, Ray Wheless, and Chris Oldner. Eliminated in the primary, Chris Oldner, drew a critical 500,510 votes (25.2 percent)[7] while Mary Lou Keel led the primary with 784,414 votes (39.4 percent) to Ray Wheless's 704,772 votes (35.4 percent). As a result, Keel, judge of the 232nd District Court in Harris County, and Wheless of Allen in Collin County met again in a runoff election on May 24, 2016. Keel then narrowly defeated Wheless in the runoff, 185,257 votes (51 percent) to 178,272 (49 percent).[8] On the Democratic side, Meyers polled 970,066 votes while running unopposed in his party's primary.

In the November 8 general election, Meyers was unseated by the Republican Mary Lou Keel, who polled 4,790,800 votes (54.9 percent) to his 3,496,205 votes (40.1 percent). Two other candidates held the remaining 5 percent of the ballots cast.[9] Keel had predicted that she would win based on party labels. Few Democrats have won any statewide offices in Texas since George W. Bush unseated Ann Willis Richards for governor in 1994.