- State Representative Angelia Orr has decried a false ad from her opponent, Kathaleen Wall, that accuses her of mishandling a 2016 election
- Orr served as Hill County District Clerk, not County Clerk as claimed in the ad, and played no role in election administration
- As an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 2020, Wall was rebuked by the Texas Secretary of State for sending false mailers that encouraged widespread mail-in voting
Republican State Representative Angelia Orr, facing a challenge from self-funded perennial candidate Kathaleen “Kat” Wall, is pushing back against false claims made by Wall’s campaign that she mishandled elections in a previous position she held.
Orr represents Texas House District 13, which includes Bosque, Falls, Freestone, Hill, Leon, and Limestone counties and a portion of McLennan County.
Wall’s ad, which features Dallas-area activist Aaron Harris, features Harris telling viewers, “Back in the 2016 primary, as county clerk, [Orr] was in charge of the election in Hill County and completely bungled her duties. She miscounted votes, over 1,700 more ballots than people who voted, mixed up mail-in votes with early votes, added Democrat voters to the Republican rolls, and even screwed up the machine tallies. You name it, she did it. And when the investigators showed up, she was massively uncooperative.”
Orr, however, never served as Hill County Clerk.
From 2011-2019, Orr served as District Clerk in Hill County. In that role, Orr was responsible for maintaining court records and administering jury panels. As District Clerk, Orr was not involved in the administration of elections.
The incident referenced by Harris in Orr’s ad involved the accidental counting of certain ballots multiple times during the 2016 Republican Primary. Patsy Damschen, who served as Hill County’s Elections Administrator at the time of the incident, resigned shortly after the issues came to light.
The ad broadcast by Wall’s campaign featured brief images of two news articles about an investigation by the Texas Attorney General’s Office into the incident. Neither of these articles mentions Orr nor accuses her of playing any role in the incident.
The Orr campaign decried Wall’s ad as flagrantly dishonest.
“This latest ad may be the biggest lie of [Wall’s] entire campaign, deliberately misrepresenting Angelia Orr’s role in Hill County government in 2016,” said a statement released by Orr’s campaign.
“In her new video, Kat Wall claims Angelia served as County Clerk. That is not true. Angelia served as a District Clerk, not County Clerk, and had no role in election administration contrary to what Kat Wall claims. Voters should ask if someone who doesn’t understand local government should be writing laws.”
Orr’s campaign also emphasized that “[Orr] was never part of the election process, nor was she ever investigated. The official report confirmed that all errors were the responsibility of the elections administrator and their staff.”
Wall, who spent over $14 million of her own money on two failed Congressional campaigns for different Houston-area districts in 2018 and 2020, has spent over $1 million of her own funds in her State House race against Orr.
During her unsuccessful 2020 Congressional bid, Wall found herself at the center of controversy for encouraging widespread mail-in voting and for sending misleading mailers that claimed voters were eligible to vote by mail when they were not.
One mailer sent by Wall featured the Texas State Seal and falsely asserted that the “Texas Secretary of State ruled that voters’ concerns over contracting or spreading the COVID-19 virus and endangering their health by visiting a public polling place meet the election law requirements to be deemed eligible to vote absentee.”
The false information spread by Wall during her 2020 campaign resulted in a rebuke from the Texas Secretary of State’s office.
“We have informed them that certain statements attributed to the Secretary of State’s office are categorically false, instructed them to update voters who have already been contacted, and to immediately cease further distribution,” said a spokesman for the Texas Secretary of State’s office to the Texas Tribune in 2020.
Wall also sent pre-filled mail-in ballot applications to voters with the “disability” box already checked as the reason for voting by mail.
Orr’s leading endorsements include those by President Donald J. Trump, Senator Ted Cruz, Governor Greg Abbott, and several local elected officials in her district. Wall’s endorsers include Montgomery County State Representative Steve Toth, Harris County Republican Party Chair Cindy Siegel, and Dr. Ben Carson.
