Hidalgo County voters will join 19 other counties in deciding the 13th Court of Appeals races in the March primary, according to information from the Texas Secretary of State.
Races set after the filing deadline Monday include the Democratic primary for chief justice, which will be between Justice Dori Contreras and Ray Thomas. Ernie Aliseda is running unopposed in the Republican primary for the same post.
Contreras has served as Place 6 justice on the court since 2003 and Thomas is a McAllen attorney. Aliseda serves as a University of Texas regent and as a municipal court judge in McAllen, where he is also an attorney.
Others running unopposed are Rudy Delgado as the Democratic candidate for Place 4 justice and Jaime Tijerina as the Republican candidate.
Delgado has served as 93rd state District Judge for more than a decade and Tijerina is Mission’s deputy city attorney and a former state district judge.
Justice Gina Benavides is the Democratic candidate for the Place 5 seat, which she has held since 2007, and Clarissa Silva, a Nueces County assistant district attorney, is the Republican candidate. Since they too are running unopposed, they will face each other in the November general election.
The candidates for the Place 2 seat also face no challengers in their parties’ primaries. Justice Nora Longoria is the Democratic candidate and Corpus Christi attorney Greg Perkes is the Republican candidate. Longoria has held this seat since 2013 and Perkes previously held the Place 3 seat from 2011 to 2016.
The 13th Court of Appeals serves 20 counties throughout South Texas and the Coastal Bend with offices in Edinburg and Corpus Christi.
This post was updated to include that Greg Perkes filed to run in the Republican primary for the Place 2 seat on the 13th Court of Appeals. He was not listed as having filed by the Texas Secretary of State’s Elections Division when this story was first published Dec. 12.
