In Harris County Sheriff primary, best choice is Ron Hickman

Here we go again. Harris County Republicans have to pick a candidate to run for Sheriff in November. Hopefully our nominee will cross the finish line in November and take the office back. Well, I suppose the correct term is to “keep” the office since it is currently occupied by a Republican but since he wasn’t elected to that position, I’ll stick with “take” it back.

On the surface, we have three qualified candidates. If, of course, the surface is all we talk about. All three have been involved in law enforcement for a significant amount of time. That is the surface.

Scratching beneath the surface, one candidate stands out for not only being involved in law enforcement but for his administrative experience in law enforcement. That candidate is current appointed Sheriff Ron Hickman.

After being appointed Sheriff, Hickman had a very short window to clean up Adrian Garcia’s mess and decide if he wanted the job full time. The decisions he made were not those of a man willing to do anything to keep his job. He made tough decisions, made a lot of people angry, but today the Harris County Sheriff’s Office is a far better place than the one he inherited. Sometimes, you have to do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may. Hickman was willing to take that chance and he has to be credited for that.

The other two candidates are simply not qualified to perform the administrative duties required of the Harris County Sheriff.

We do need to talk about one candidate, Carl Pittman. He has garnered a lot of endorsements from the grassroots of the Harris County Republican Party. He has brought in outside influencers such as Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Sheriff Richard Mack, and Ted Nugent. Those guys influence a certain segment of the voters that want to secede, do away with the federal government, return to state sovereignty, however you want to say it. They envision the Sheriff’s job as the last defense against the federal government’s overreach and if you read the comments on various Facebook pages, Carl is embracing that approach.

Maybe that will work. A Harris County Sheriff just might turn back the bad feds. I doubt that but hey, it’s a point of view.

The real problem with Carl is his past. He can explain it away all day long but it is there and it will affect the entire Republican ticket should Carl win the nomination. I won’t repeat the worst of it here but do a search of the website if you are curious and want to know the entire public record that Carl has to live with. I will repeat this from what I wrote in 2012:

Patricia Pittman

“one night he tried to strangle me and I started to scream and then he took another hand and put it over my mouth and said, “you make one word and I’ll kill you…”

Kristi Pittman

“He was just so mad at me and he hit me one time and it kind of…over here in the rib area.”

….

Now, maybe it is true that both women lied. Maybe it is true that the police reports filed in years past are false. I don’t know the truth about that, only those three individuals do.

Listen to those recordings. Do you really think that people are going to ignore those recordings if played over and over in October by the Democratic nominee? Will they simply accept on faith that Carl is just bad at picking women? Will they also ignore the full transcripts of what Carl is alleged to have done to his wives? As I said before, I have no idea who is telling the truth but I do know that this stuff is public and will be used against all Republicans in November if Carl is the nominee. In my opinion, as always.

You’ll decide who you want to vote for and that’s fine with me. We all make choices based on any number of factors. I happen to put a lot of importance on how a single candidate will affect the entire Republican ticket.

And I think that Ron Hickman is the best choice for Harris County Sheriff.