Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal pulled the plug on his re-election campaign after all Wednesday at the climax of a day of flip-flopping, intrigue, political pressure and clock management.
The local Republican Party officially accepted his one-sentence withdrawal letter three minutes before the deadline for removing candidates from the March 4 primary ballot — and three days after Rosenthal had defiantly vowed to run and win despite a scandal over intimate e-mails he sent to his executive secretary, Kerry Stevens.
The action means Harris County, the nation's leading jurisdiction for sentencing murderers to death by injection, will get a new chief prosecutor next January after eight years of service by Rosenthal. He plans to serve the remainder of his current term through 2008, officials said.
Minutes after Rosenthal's announcement withdrawing from the race, a federal judge scheduled a hearing for this month where Rosenthal will likely be asked to explain how more than 2,000 of his e-mails got deleted over a weekend. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in a civil rights lawsuit against the county have asked U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt to either sanction Rosenthal or hold him in contempt.
In a sworn deposition last month, Rosenthal denied any wrongdoing.
The missing e-mails were later salvaged and given to the plaintiffs' lawyers, records show, but Rosenthal's information technology director couldn't assure them that no e-mails were overlooked.
Rosenthal declined comment in a telephone call after Republican Paul Bettencourt, the county tax-assessor collector, said at a press conference that Rosenthal had done the right thing for himself and the party, "a difficult decision for any 30-year person in government."
"He consulted with his wife, his family," Bettencourt said. "You know, he prayed over it."
Rosenthal became an assistant district attorney in 1977.
Under state law, his withdrawal extended until 6 p.m. Friday the deadline for candidates to sign up for the GOP primary for district attorney. >more
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