{"id":309177,"date":"2026-05-26T13:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/309177\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T13:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:30:10","slug":"texperts-county-attorneys-and-voting-rights-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/309177\/","title":{"rendered":"Texperts: County Attorneys and Voting Rights \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-521177 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Texperts_Square_HPM_wide.jpg\" alt=\"Texperts\" width=\"962\" height=\"760\"   data-eio=\"p\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The county attorney serves as the county&#8217;s chief civil lawyer, handling various civil issues, including advising county officials, representing the county in lawsuits, and ensuring local government is following the law.<\/p>\n<p>Sign up for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonpublicmedia.org\/hellohouston\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, when voting rights are challenged at the local level, it&#8217;s often the county attorney who defends election officials or helps guide the county&#8217;s legal response.<\/p>\n<p>In the audio above, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uh.edu\/class\/political-science\/faculty-and-staff\/professors\/rottinghaus\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Brandon Rottinghaus<\/a>, a University of Houston political science professor and co-host of Houston Public Media&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonpublicmedia.org\/shows\/party-politics\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Party Politics<\/a>, explains what county attorneys do, which local election officials they work with, and how they defend the county from state overreach.<\/p>\n<p>Featured Guest: Jonathan Fombonne, Harris County Attorney<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The county attorney serves as the county&#8217;s chief civil lawyer, handling various civil issues, including advising county officials,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[7050,11080,288,405,39321,10620,41571,2245,56,58,57,50942,66,287,27,11753,2279,6506],"class_list":["post-309177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-brandon-rottinghaus","tag-county-attorney","tag-elections","tag-harris-county","tag-harris-county-attorney","tag-harris-county-elections","tag-harris-county-voting","tag-hello-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-jonathan-fombonne","tag-local","tag-politics","tag-texas","tag-texperts","tag-voting","tag-voting-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309177","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=309177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}