L-R: Judge Craig Smith,Judge Dennise Garcia and Judge Bonnie Goldstein.

Emboldened by their party’s 2018 general election victory in which candidates took eight seats away the from the GOP on the all-Republican Fifth Court of Appeals, three sitting Dallas Democratic state district judges are already announcing planned runs for the appellate court in 2020.

The challengers include Dennise Garcia, judge of 303rd Family District Court, who will run for the seat currently held by Justice Bill Whitehill; Bonnie Goldstein, judge of the 44th Civil District Court, who will run for the seat currently held by Justice Ada Brown; and Craig Smith of the 192nd Civil District Court, who will run for the seat currently held by Justice David Bridges.

While Democratic candidates for the Fifth Court beat their Republican opponents by a collective 6 percent margin during the 2018 general election, there’s no guarantee that history will repeat itself in 2020, Garcia said.

“We’re not taking anything for granted. You still have to work hard and campaign. I don’t think we’ll be the only ones running. I think there will be a crowded field,’’ said Garcia, who previously ran for the Fifth Court in 2016 and came close to beating incumbent Republican Justice David Schenck.

Garcia, Goldstein and Smith do not have to give up their district court benches to run for the Fifth Court.

“And we’re running in part because I’m interested in making sure there is a diversity of voices. With the retirement of Fifth Court Chief Justice Carolyn Wright, there will be no one on the court with substantial family law experience,’’ Garcia said. “I also want to make sure that there are good quality candidates for a strong court of appeals.’’

Chad Ruback, a Dallas appellate lawyer, said demographic shifts within the Fifth Court’s six-county jurisdiction have made it more favorable for Democratic candidates.

“I’m not the least bit surprised these three judges have filed, especially after the Democratic rout last month,” Ruback said. “That being said, it’s always tough to predict judicial race outcomes, and the court of appeals is far from a sure thing for either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party these days.’’

Ruback noted that voter turnout was unusually high in Texas during the 2018 general election because of the high-profile U.S. Senate race between Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke and incumbent Republic Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Without a marque race like O’Rourke/Cruz, who knows what the turnout will be in the next election cycle?” Ruback said. “While Beto didn’t prevail, he did prevail in getting fantastic Democratic turnout. And that may very well have impacted the turnout on the court of appeals races.’’

Democrats also took every seat up for grabs on Houston’s First and Fourteenth Courts of Appeals, Austin’s Third Court of Appeals, and San Antonio’s Fourth Court of Appeals, during the 2018 general election, establishing majorities on nearly all of the state’s busiest urban appellate courts.

Chris Kratovil, an appellate lawyer who is managing partner of the Dallas office of Dykema, believes the only way Republicans can retrieve their majorities on urban intermediate courts of appeal is through legislative action.

“I think you could see the state government intervene to protect a Republican intermediate appellate court judiciary,’’ Kratovil said, adding that the Republican state lawmakers might make a move to either combine the courts of appeals or redistrict them.

“The question to me is, does the political will exist to make it happen? As we’ve seen in Wisconsin and in Michigan, if you’ve got a legislature with a strong political will, they can ram through measures that are nakedly partisan,” Kratovil said. “And because this issue in many ways snuck up on the state GOP, I don’t know if the political will exists or not.”

“If this is ever going to get done, this is the time you’ll see it happen,” Kratovil said of next year’s session of the Texas Legislature. “This may be the last time you see super majorities in both the House and Senate and a conservative Republican governor.’’