The Harris County Judge debate ran 10 minutes. Both campaigns blame the other, and nobody has published the tape.

The Harris County Judge debate between Letitia Plummer and Orlando Sanchez went offline about 10 minutes in on September 7 and never came back. Each campaign blames the other, and the recording that would settle it has not been published by anyone.

Why it matters

This race decides who presides over a $3.09 billion county budget, a property tax rate now headed up 7.6 percent, and the flood and jail decisions that follow from both. Voters were offered a debate and got about 10 minutes of one.

What happened after that is a dispute between two campaigns, conducted entirely through statements. It does not have to stay that way, because the first 10 minutes were recorded.

By the numbers

10 minutes, roughly, is how long the stream ran before it went offline. It did not resume.
6:30 p.m. Central, Monday, September 7, the scheduled start. It was Labor Day.
40 minutes is how long Plummer’s campaign says she waited for a promised replacement stream that never arrived.
3 host organizations: LULAC Sixty, the Menudo Club and the Culture Commission Coalition. The moderator was KPRC 2’s Stephania Jimenez.
Zero rescheduled dates announced as of September 13, six days later.
Zero outlets have published the recording.

What the coverage buried

The tape. The debate ran on a stream KPRC 2 carried on its own site and on YouTube, which means roughly 10 minutes of audio and video exists of the exact window both campaigns are arguing about. Not one of the stories written about this pointed at it.

The two fullest accounts are built from opposite sides and neither says so plainly. Hoodline’s version of the audio failure comes from the Plummer campaign, including the detail that she could not hear Sanchez or the moderator. Texas Scorecard’s version comes from the moderator, from Sanchez, and from viewers, all of whom it reports heard the audio fine. Those are not two reports of what happened. They are two sets of interested parties, and the reader is left to pick.

One checkable note on the record: the KPRC page that carried the live stream returned a 404 error when checked on September 13.

The other side

The strongest case for letting this go is that a dropped stream is a logistics failure and not a scandal. Three volunteer civic groups put on a virtual debate, the platform buckled under the traffic, and that is an ordinary thing for technology to do. Nobody has produced evidence of anything worse.

That case is largely right about the cause and it still does not end the matter. The candidates themselves made this a public dispute, one of them accusing the other of quitting and the other accusing the first of failing to connect. Both claims are about a 10-minute window that was recorded. Releasing the file costs the host groups nothing and would retire the argument in an afternoon.

What to watch

Whether LULAC Sixty, the Menudo Club, the Culture Commission Coalition or KPRC 2 release the recording of the first 10 minutes.
Whether a rescheduled date is set, and whether both campaigns agree to the same format.
The November 3 general election, and how many more debates fit before it.
Whether either campaign repeats its account once the recording is available.

Bottom line

Two campaigns gave incompatible accounts of the same 10 minutes, and the press wrote up both without reaching for the file that would decide between them. This is not a hard story to finish. Somebody has the recording, and until it is posted, every version of this is a statement from a person who wants to win.

Sources

Editorial