{"id":191035,"date":"2026-03-05T01:59:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T01:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/191035\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T01:59:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T01:59:14","slug":"two-democratic-candidates-headed-for-runoff-to-claim-nomination-for-harris-county-district-clerks-seat-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/191035\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Democratic candidates headed for runoff to claim nomination for Harris County District Clerk\u2019s seat \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"Darrell<\/a>Darrell Jordan Jr. (left) and Jose \u201cAlex\u201d Maldonado (right) will face off in a May 2026 primary runoff race for Harris County District Clerk.<\/p>\n

Two candidates will proceed to a runoff election to receive the Democratic nomination for the Harris County District Clerk\u2019s position. <\/p>\n

The Democratic ticket for the position was crowded with eight candidates vying for the seat, none of whom received more than 20% of the vote in the primary election, according to unofficial results on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Darrell Jordan Jr., who served as a county court-at-law judge for eight years, received just over 19%, while 23-year-old educator Jose \u201cAlex\u201d Maldonado received 18.9%. The top two candidates will proceed to a runoff election in May<\/a> before a general election in November. <\/p>\n

Sign up for the Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

The district clerk is the top custodian and registrar of Harris County, overseeing a staff of more than 600 employees and at least 110 statutory and specialty courts. District Clerk Marilyn Burgess\u2019s office processed 5.8 million civil and criminal court documents last year.<\/p>\n

Eight Democrats and one presumptive Republican nominee \u2014 former District Clerk Chris Daniel \u2014 quickly threw their bids into the race after Burgess abruptly announced she wouldn\u2019t seek reelection last year. In September, she said she had no plans of seeking another elected office after garnering backlash from county commissioners for voting on a salary grievance committee to raise her own salary by $81,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though county legal staff said her vote, which was perceived as a potential conflict of interest,<\/a> didn\u2019t appear to be illegal, Commissioner Adrian Garcia called for the issue to be placed on the county’s next legislative agenda. <\/p>\n

In a statement announcing her intention to resign<\/a>, Burgess raised concerns about an apparent disparity in salaries among Harris County elected officials. She said she was prompted to file the salary grievance in an effort to expose a financial disparity between elected officials and other county positions that “do not have as many responsibilities.”<\/p>\n

The proposed salary increase would have raised Burgess’ pay from $179,000 per year to $260,000, but the proposal died after commissioners failed to support it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Darrell Jordan Jr. (left) and Jose \u201cAlex\u201d Maldonado (right) will face off in a May 2026 primary runoff…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[75678,75845,39794,288,405,4164,75846,56,58,57,66,223,287],"class_list":["post-191035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-district-clerk","tag-district-clerk-marilyn-burgess","tag-election-2026","tag-elections","tag-harris-county","tag-harris-county-commissioners-court","tag-harris-county-district-clerk","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-local","tag-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}