Christina Montes, a 44-year-old Democratic candidate for judge of County Court at Law No. 2 in El Paso, Texas, is married to a man required to register as a sex offender for life, and the victim was one of her own relatives, court records reviewed by the Daily Mail have revealed.
Her husband, Juan Manuel Montes, also 44, was charged with indecency with a child by contact and sexual performance by a child over a 2011 incident involving a 12-year-old girl. He took a plea deal in 2013. The charges were dropped in 2020 after he completed seven years of community supervision, but under Texas law, he must still update his information on the state sex offender registry four times a year, for life.
Christina Montes now wants voters to hand her a seat on the bench. She faces a Democratic primary runoff on May 26. The winner takes office January 1, 2027, for a four-year term.
The couple married in 2006, records show, five years before the sex offense charges were filed. El Paso Matters reported that the 12-year-old victim was a relative of Christina Montes herself. That detail alone raises a question most voters would find hard to set aside: a woman seeking judicial authority chose to remain married to a man who sexually victimized a child in her own family.
Neither Christina nor Juan Manuel Montes responded to the Daily Mail's request for comment. Pictures posted on Christina Montes' Facebook page showed the couple campaigning together at recent events, a choice that suggests she sees no political liability in the association, or at least hopes voters won't notice.
The case is hardly the only time sexual misconduct allegations have shadowed a Democratic candidate. But the details here carry a particular weight. This is not a distant association or a decades-old rumor. It is a marriage, ongoing, public, and apparently untroubled by its own history.
The sex offense charge was not Juan Manuel Montes' first brush with the law. His arrest record stretches back to 1998 and includes charges for possession of a prohibited weapon, robbery, and forgery. All of those earlier charges were dismissed.
Then came the 2011 incident with the 12-year-old girl. The plea deal in 2013 placed him under community supervision for seven years. When that period ended in 2020, the charges were formally dropped. But the lifetime sex offender registration requirement remained, a permanent mark that Texas reserves for the most serious offenses against children.
The trouble didn't stop there. In 2018, Juan Manuel Montes was among a group of so-called "bounty hunters" working for 9ONE5 Bail Bonds who were arrested after they were accused of kidnapping a woman and a child. The motive, court records stated, was an effort to get a person out on bond to turn themselves in. The kidnapping charges were later dropped due to insufficient evidence, El Paso Matters reported.
Christina Montes represented 9ONE5 Bail Bonds in a lawsuit connected to that incident. The intertwining of her legal practice with her husband's criminal entanglements paints a picture that voters deserve to see clearly before casting a ballot.
Christina Montes obtained her law degree in 2018 from Whittier College School of Law, which is now defunct. She passed the Texas State Bar in 2019 and operates the Montes Law Firm, which specializes in criminal, family, and immigration law.
Her professional credentials are thin enough. But the personal record adds more weight. The couple has been previously charged with contributing to non-attendance after their children accumulated a significant number of unexcused absences at school. Christina Montes describes herself as a mother of six on her Facebook page.
Accountability in public life is not a partisan concept, but Democrats have struggled to enforce it within their own ranks. Recent episodes, from a Florida congresswoman found to have committed 25 ethics violations to other cases of Democratic officials facing serious legal scrutiny, suggest a pattern of looking the other way when the political brand is at stake.
On top of everything else, Christina Montes is facing a lawsuit from the previous landlord of the building that housed her law office. The suit alleges breach of contract. It is one more legal complication for a candidate who wants to preside over other people's disputes.
One detail in the court records stands out for its sheer audacity. The 171st District Judge Bonnie Rangel, who approved the plea deal that resolved the sex offense charges against Juan Manuel Montes, donated $150 to Christina Montes' campaign. Rangel is retiring this year.
A $150 donation is small money. But the optics are terrible. The judge who signed off on a plea deal for a man charged with sexually assaulting a child later contributed to the campaign of that man's wife, who now wants to become a judge herself. In any courthouse, that kind of entanglement would raise eyebrows. In an election, it should raise alarms.
The broader pattern of Democrats facing legal and ethical accountability continues to grow, and voters are right to wonder whether the party's vetting process exists at all, or whether it simply doesn't apply when the candidate checks the right ideological boxes.
The May 26 Democratic primary runoff will decide who sits on the County Court at Law No. 2 bench in El Paso. The position carries real power. County courts at law in Texas handle misdemeanor criminal cases, civil disputes, and family law matters. The judge who holds that seat makes decisions that directly affect families, defendants, and victims.
Christina Montes is asking El Paso voters to trust her judgment. Her judgment, as the record shows, includes marrying a man later charged with a sex crime against a child in her own family, remaining with him through the plea deal and community supervision, campaigning alongside him publicly, and representing the bail bond company tied to his kidnapping arrest.
She graduated from a law school that no longer exists. She passed the bar in 2019, barely six years ago. She has been charged, alongside her husband, for her children's chronic school absences. She is being sued by her former landlord. And the judge who approved her husband's plea deal kicked in money for her campaign.
None of this is disqualifying in a strict legal sense. Texas law does not bar a candidate from running because of a spouse's criminal record. But elections are not courtrooms. Voters are allowed, expected, even, to weigh character, associations, and judgment. That is the entire point of self-governance.
When scandals like this surface, the question is always whether the political system will hold candidates accountable or simply look the other way. Recent history offers plenty of examples of what happens when accountability takes a back seat to partisan loyalty.
Christina Montes has not publicly addressed her husband's sex offender status, the nature of the victim's relationship to her, or how any of it bears on her fitness for the bench. The Daily Mail contacted both her and her husband for comment and received no response.
El Paso voters deserve answers. Did she know about the 2011 incident before charges were filed? Has she ever addressed the matter with local Democratic Party officials? Does she believe a lifetime sex offender registration for her spouse is relevant to her candidacy for a judicial seat that handles family law?
Silence is not an answer. And in a race for a judgeship, where public trust in impartiality and character is the whole currency, silence is a disqualifier in everything but name.
A courtroom demands honesty. So does a campaign. El Paso voters can decide for themselves whether they're getting either one.
