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Lina Hidalgo never thought that she would work in politics or run for office.
She and her family fled their home country, Colombia, as a result of a drug war and arrived in the United States in 2005. She studied law, public policy and the political science in prestigious universities, during which she exercised a decisive influence on the government.
On Tuesday, Hidalgo, a 27-year-old Democrat, narrowly won a surprise election to head Harris County, which includes Houston and is the third most populous county in the country and the largest in Texas. She defeated the 11-year-old Republican president to become the first woman and the first Latina to be elected county judge.
Hidalgo said she decided to run in the elections after the 2016 elections because of the division that was posted there. She has been nominated as a foreign candidate.
"I am not tied to the powers in place," she said in an interview Thursday. "People have been inspired. Their hearts led them to express themselves during a year in which our democracy seemed threatened. "
Tuesday's mid-term elections were different all that Texas had seen for decades. Representative Beto O'Rourke lost to Senator Ted Cruz by less than 3 percentage points in a Senate race, one of the smallest margins in years for a Democrat running for office in the state . Democrats have also overthrown at least two congressional seats, 12 seats in the State House and two Senate seats.
[[[[To see the full results of the Texas elections.]
Hidalgo's victory showed that the elections had also brought about significant changes at the local level, including in Houston's rapidly growing multicultural metropolis. A record number of 17 African American women were elected judges in Harris County as part of a campaign called "Harris County Black Magic Girl".
One of these women, Latosha Lewis Payne, 44, who was elected to the 55th Civil Court, said she was surprised to see that so many black women were elected. She said diversity would "increase fairness and justice in Harris County".
"The effect of having as many African-American women as women in general in the justice system is incredible," Ms. Payne said. "It's one of those things you dream about, but you do not think it's really going to happen."
In her race for the county judge position, Ms. Hidalgo defeated Ed Emmett, who spent eight years in the state legislature before being appointed county judge in 2007 after the resignation of her predecessor. He was elected in 2008 with more than 53% of the votes to complete his mandate and re-elected in 2010 and 2014 with about 60% and 83% of the votes.
On Tuesday, Mrs Hidalgo won 49.7% of the vote and Mr Emmett 48.2%.
Mr. Emmett could not be reached for a comment on Thursday. In a series of tweets, he attributed his loss in part to the simple ballot, in which voters can select the party they wish to vote for and the voting machine automatically selects all the candidates for that party. More than 511,000 voters voted directly in Harris County, which has more than 4.7 million people, compared to about 408,000 votes cast by Republicans.
"Composing this deficit was simply not possible" Mr. Emmett wrote.
But Ms. Hidalgo said that she did not think people were voting solely for the Democrats "by reflex".
"They voted because they knew there were people on the ticket like me," she said.
Last year, Texas enacted a law eliminating direct voting from 2020, in part because it deters voters from seeking candidates.
Critics had questioned Ms. Hidalgo's experience, noting that she had never physically attended a meeting of the Harris County Court of Commissioners, which she would preside at the time. it took office in January. She called this a "no-question", claiming she had watched the live broadcasts of the meetings.
Hidalgo said she had conducted a targeted campaign with TV commercials and door-to-door activities.
"It did not happen by accident," she said at her victory speech on Tuesday. "We have been working on it for 15 months."
Michael O. Adams, chair of the Department of Political Science at Texas Southern University in Houston, mentioned the candidacy of Mr. O. Rourke, a brutal reaction of President Trump and a diverse population of Harris County and its suburbs as an aid to the Democrats of the Houston area. .
He said that without the ballots, he could not have expected Ms. Hidalgo or other local Democratic candidates to win their elections. He stated that Mr. Emmett was a centrist politician who appealed from several parties.
"I know Harris County has evolved or is becoming blue," said Dr. Adams. "I think what happened on the ground is a great effort to exit the vote."
For Ms. Hidalgo, arriving in the United States in 2005 and attending a public high school contrasted with the corruption and violence she had seen in Colombia.
"You can not go to the grocery store without worrying about a bomb," she said. "Everyone knew someone who had been kidnapped."
She studied at Stanford University, where she graduated in Political Science in 2013, the same year she became a citizen of the United States.
After that, she worked for a non-profit organization working to promote press freedom internationally and as a Spanish-speaking interpreter at Texas Medical Center in Houston.
In 2015, Ms. Hidalgo began studying law and public policy at the Kennedy School of Harvard University and New York University.
After deciding to run, she put her diploma on hold. During the campaign, she drew on her past as an immigrant and focused on criminal justice reform, county government transparency, and flood control after Hurricane Harvey and others. violent storms that devastated Houston.
She said about her victory: "I really hope that people will remember this year as well as the year during which people saw and intensified their activities and volunteered for the first time and get involved in campaigns for the first time. "
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