Former Carrollton Mayor Matthew Marchant recently tweeted claims that sitting Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins misled the public regarding his past in a candidate questionnaire for the Dallas Morning News.
“Here’s local media darling Clay Jenkins claiming he’s ‘the first in his family to go to college’ on his 2022 DMN questionnaire,” Marchant tweeted along with three screenshots supporting his claims. “And here’s his bio showing his dad’s storied legal practice. And *then* here’s a story in the Baylor paper showing he’s Baylor royalty.”
https://twitter.com/matthewmarchant/status/1575898196408082438?s=46&t=ymS79T-lGTnWWcC13kWtPQ
In one of the screenshots, Jenkins was asked if he had ever been arrested for misdemeanor or felony charges as part of a candidate questionnaire.
Jenkins responded, “Over 30 years ago, as a young undergraduate at Baylor University, I was arrested for two misdemeanors: reckless driving and trespassing.”
Jenkins went on to say, “I realized how close I came to throwing away my opportunity to become the first in my family to graduate college by engaging in immature college pranks.”
Marchant then contrasted Jenkins’ claim with two separate screenshots that appear to contradict this claim that he was pursuing the first college degree in his family’s history.
The first featured a biography of Jenkins for a trial lawyer website in which his father’s esteemed legal practice was touted.
The page read, “In 1989, [Jenkins] returned home to work with his father, Warwick H. Jenkins, who founded the firm in 1948 and practiced until his death in 2001.”
Post-secondary law schools have been operating in Texas since the late 1800s and early 1900s.
More incriminating, however, was a screenshot of an article Marchant sourced about Baylor University’s “First Families,” which is an award given to “Baylor families who have had at least two generations attend Baylor and who uphold the traditions and values of the university.”
At the time that article was written, four families were set to receive the award, and the Jenkins family was among them.
“The families are all interrelated and have had 61 members attend Baylor over the past six generations,” Louis Graves was quoted as saying in the article.
Clay Jenkins was specifically named in the article as one of the current attendees at Baylor University descending from these four families.
The Dallas Express reached out to Clay Jenkins through his official Dallas County email, as well as his campaign website, for comment on the apparent discrepancy between what he claimed in his candidate questionnaire and the contradictory records sourced by Marchant.
As of the writing of this article, we have not received a response from Jenkins.
Lauren Davis, the republican nominee for Dallas County Judge and Jenkins’ November election opponent, retweeted Marchant’s post.
She added a quote from a recent article from the Dallas Morning News that read, “If Sommerman would misrepresent a minor item in his résumé, how can he expect voters to trust him about anything?”
The quote was from the newspaper’s endorsement of incumbent J.J. Koch for Dallas County commissioner in which they lambasted his opponent for misrepresenting himself on his resume.
Davis also said in her retweet, “[Jenkins] misrepresents he’s first in [his] family to attend college — yet DMN endorses… why the double standard?”
The Dallas Express reached out to the Dallas Morning News as to the apparent discrepancy and if it would change their endorsement in the race, at the time of press, they have not responded for comment.