Hernandez Handily Beats Vargas In Travis County Sheriff's Race

TRAVIS COUNTY, TX — Democrat Sally Hernandez earned a second term as sheriff of Travis County on Tuesday, handily defeating her Republican rival by 40 points.

Hernandez's win was a commanding one, securing 399,112 votes or 70.1 percent of the vote against Republican rival Raul Vargas who secured 170,193 votes.

The results were final, but yet unofficial, into the wee hours following Election Day. Still, the math — was simply too insurmountable for the contender seeking to unseat incumbent Hernandez who won with a mammoth margin of nearly 230,000 votes.

While on the stump, Hernandez had expressed a desire to build on her first-term priorities — the centerpiece being her plans to have a women's jail — without wading into city politics. By contrast, Vargas had telegraphed a mission to influence control on municipal action in Austin — the first major city to have "defunded" police by reallocating some functions to social services.

Polls in Texas opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m.

Results will be updated as they come in:

Sally Hernandez (D): 399,112

Raul Vargas (R): 170,193

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While campaigning, Sheriff Hernandez — a 38-year law enforcement veteran — expressed a desire to build on her first-term priorities without wading into city politics. Conversely, challenger Vargas has run a campaign critical of previous budget reallocation — a process colloquially known by the "police defunding" misnomer — by the Austin City Council, which shifted some $150 million from the police department to outside agencies.

Vargas has voiced concern over the homeless plight in Austin, an urban ill that came into greater focus over the summer when council members sought to soften rules related to encampments and panhandling on city sidewalks. Hernandez has taken a more hands-off posture in terms of exerting influence on municipal practices.

She expressed as much in her campaign materials: "We’ve accomplished a lot to improve the criminal justice system," she wrote on a prior campaign page, "but there’s still so much work left to do."

The ideological fissure was retroactively illustrated by the stance Hernandez took in 2017 when Gov. Greg Abbott demanded expanded sheriffs' cooperation in helping to ensnare undocumented immigrants — yielding a scenario critics viewed as casting local law enforcement agencies as de facto satellites of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The sheriff's refusal to issue detainers for the agency on misdemeanant undocumented immigrants — placing them on 24-hour holds until ICE could fetch them to process them for deportation — earned wrath of the governor. In retaliation of her stance, Abbott cut state grant funding from myriad local agencies — most having nothing to do with law enforcement — as punitive measure.

Vargas invoked Hernandez's defiance of ICE cooperation as part of his campaign literature in challenging her, explaining he thought he had hung up his hat after a 35-year law enforcement career: "However, when Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandezmade and announced her decision not to enforce ICE detainers, Raul felt she allowed a personal viewpoint and social pressure in Austin to direct the path of a law enforcement agency and instead of doing the right thing," his website reads. "Not only was Sheriff Hernandez ignoring federal laws and releasing undocumented and illegal persons back onto our streets, she also failed to provide the proper mindset, vision and culture of common sense throughout the entire department. A failure that struck Raul's family directly."

Given his overwhelming defeat, the ploy didn't work — particularly at a time of growing discontent with law enforcement.

Those stark ideological contrasts between the two candidates — and the ultimate outcome of the election favoring the more progressive of the two contenders— could have yielded something of a barometer on how the public expects its law enforcement officials to behave while still steadfastly maintaining law and order.

Elections totals are total but unofficial tallies from the office of the Travis County clerk.