Brazos County District Attorney up for vote Tuesday

BRAZOS COUNTY, Texas (KBTX) – For the first time since 2013, District Attorney Jarvis Parsons is running against an opponent, Maritza Sifuentez-Chavarria.

The candidates will appear on ballots for Republican voters on Tuesday. Parsons has not been challenged since taking office and the candidates have a working history with eachother. At one point, Sifuentez-Chavarria worked under Parsons in the D.A.’s office as Assistant D.A.

While both are running on the Republican platform, they most disagree on how to handle growth.

“I’m really proud of my team,” Parsons said. “We are very efficient and effective when it comes to disposing of cases and trying cases. The Office of Court Administration, get all the numbers from every single county in Texas and they look at what’s called our clearance rate and performance measures, and I’m proud to say that in Brazos County, at the District Attorney’s Office, we are eighth in the state or in the top 3% of the state in terms of clearing our cases with a 115% clearance rate over the life of my tenure as district attorney.”

Sifuentez-Chavarria says changes need to happen.

“There’s some fractures and there are some improvements that we can make and knowing that and knowing that we have the growth that we have coming in 2060. There’s just no way that we can sustain that without those improvements,” she said. “We’re moving, we’re changing, society’s changing, and what we learn about jurors is that they change quickly, their standards change, evidence changes.”

Issues on campaign finances arose after a new report showed Houston-based donor, Todd Overbergen, funded more than half of Sifuentez-Chavarria’s campaign.

KBTX spoke with her when this happened. Sifuentez-Chavarria said she and Overbergen had similar concerns regarding the D.A.’s office.

“He doesn’t believe that our current office handles mental health cases properly. That was his concern that he made known to me. When he asked Mr. Parsons about mental health when he tried to present that stuff, he was rejected. That is exactly what my perception has been,” she said.

In a statement from Parsons, he says the money should be returned by his opponent.

“Because I treated a defendant like everyone else who commits new crimes while on probation, his father got mad at me, and contributed over $46,000 to my opponent’s campaign,” he said.

In a paid ad published days before the election, Overbergen released a statement endorsing Sifuentez-Chavarria, saying he is supporting Brazos County elections as an Aggie and was recruited to help fund the campaign by “city management”. He acknowledges deciding the D.A.’s office needed a change after his son’s prosecution but explains there are additional concerns.

“Texas A&M is negatively recruited in sports due to the approach of prosecution of athletes and students compared to other conservative communities with significant student populations,” the statement read in part.

Letter of Endorsement from Donor Todd Overbergen by KBTX on Scribd

(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “https://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();