Joe Moody, the Democratic nominee for Texas House District 78 in El Paso, is an Assistant District Attorney, who tries cases including DWI and domestic violence.

Joe received his law degree from Texas Tech University after graduating with honors in history from New Mexico State. At Tech, Joe was an active member of the Hispanic Law Students’ Association and a founder of the Migrant Worker Project.

Joe is the son of Bill Moody, a district judge, and Magdalena Morales Moody, a public-school teacher. After law school, Joe managed his dad’s campaign for the Texas Supreme Court, helping Bill to become the top statewide Democratic vote-getter and to carry District 78 with 59.3% of the vote.

House District 78—Texas’s most Democratic district represented by a Republican:

District 78 is now an open seat because the incumbent, Patrick Haggerty, was defeated in the Republican primary. Big mistake!

Though Rep. Haggerty has not had a Democratic challenger in a decade, numerous Democrats have decisively carried District 78 against Republican opponents including Ron Kirk for US Senate (54.6%), Congressman Silvestre Reyes (56.4%), and Joe’s dad running for Supreme Court (57.2% in 2002 and 59.3% in 2006).

As in other legislative districts deemed ripe for Democratic victory, Democratic primary voters outnumbered Republican primary voters better than 2-to-1 this March.

According to the US Census, minorities make up 65% of the district’s population. As a greater share of the relatively young Hispanic population reaches voting age, the district is trending Democratic. The average for statewide Democratic judicial candidates, for example, increased from 43.4% of the vote in 2000 to 53.3% in 2006.

Joe’s professional accomplishments and credentials, his community service, his popular political family name and his Mexican-American heritage are among the assets that will lead to his victory in El Paso's District 78 this November!