Showing posts sorted by date for query 2010 green party. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query 2010 green party. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Texas Greens file for 57 state and local offices in 2016

Kuff and Stace both have your Democratic rundown; I had some first-take POV on Tuesday, and yesterday the Green Party of Texas offered their slate for next year.

A total of 57 filed for offices across Texas, and here's the full list.  (I only counted one presidential candidate because recent polling shows Jill Stein with 63%, but she has four challengers, including Kent Mesplay of Texas).  The GPUS presidential nominating convention will be held in Houston next August, with most events occurring in and around the University of Houston.  The state convention will held in April, in San Antonio.

Regular readers here will note that I have been advancing a vote for Stein for president on the expectation that Bernie Sanders will eventually be eliminated from contention as the Democratic Party's nominee, and that his supporters should be welcomed to join the only real progressive campaign remaining after this spring.  Both Stein and the GPTX agree with me.

“The Democratic Party is not going to allow Bernie Sanders to squeak through, so where would we be if we don’t have a Plan B? When Bernie gets knocked out of contention, there would be no place for people to go if not for our campaign. The difference between our campaign and Bernie’s is that we’re not looking for the Democratic Party to save us. We are establishing an independent base for political resistance where we can continue to grow, because there is no relief on the horizon and we need to get busy right now building the lifeboat we’ll need to rescue ourselves and our children.”

Sanders is riding a populist wave in the Democratic primary that closely aligns with Green positions. For Greens who are committed to building an electoral alternative outside of the Democratic Party, we must be prepared to capture as much of this momentum as possible when the super-delegates and other Democratic Party machinery finally close the door on the Sanders campaign. To do this, we will put forward a solid and coordinated slate of candidates this cycle, and we will conduct a Green Party brand awareness campaign intended to let voters know that they still have an opportunity to vote their values and put people, peace, and planet before profit.

Since Texas Democrats and Republicans finally figured out that the way to reduce the electorate's choices back down to two was to file a candidate for every statewide office and let the mindlessness of straight ticket voting works its magic, it becomes imperative that to avoid having to petition for signatures for ballot access in 2018, a statewide Green (and Libertarian, for that matter) needs to hit the 5% threshold in next year's elections.

The statewide offices on the ballot in 2016 are Railroad Commissioner, state Supreme Court (Places 3, 5 and 9), and state Court of Criminal Appeals (Places 2, 5 and 6).  Multiple Democrats and Republicans have filed for those seats, most of them incumbents, and the primary elections in March will determine who bears the D and R standard in November.

The Railroad Commissioner's contest will be the liveliest, with over half a dozen candidates, including former Republican state representative Wayne Christian and three other goombah Republicans trying to out-"most conservative" each other in the GOP primary.  Former Land Commisioner Jerry Patterson's in-and-out dance prior to the filing deadline last Monday ended when he decided he couldn't be a ticketmate with Trump.

Former statehouse Democrat Lon Burnham, infamous perennial Grady Yarbrough -- you should remember him from his 2012 US Senate runoff against Paul Sadler -- and one other are vying to represent the Blue Team.  The Greens re-submit Martina Salinas, who got north of 2% in a 2014 bid for the RRC in a four-way race.

Gadfly had a good suggestion as the best shot for the Greens to hit their 5% number, and I won't disagree.  Quoting...

Cheryl Johnson is NOT running for Place 5 on the CCA, though. And the Democratic candidate, Betsy Johnson, is in a solo practice, which means she probably doesn't have a lot of legal depth she brings to the race. Her Texas Bar page lists, besides criminal practice, real estate and wills/probate.

Judith Sanders-Castro is the Green here; she got 10.45% against a Republican and a Libertarian in the CCA contest in 2014.  She had a long career as a voting rights activist going back to the '80's and early '90's with MALDEF.  Both Sanders-Castro and Salinas should campaign together and work the RGV and urban areas for Latin@ votes in their respective races.  Their success will be key in the bid for continued ballot access.

Besides those two excellent candidates, longtime Travis County activist Debbie Russell is running for sheriff there.  She and I spent time working on David Van Os' campaign for TXAG in 2006.  Deb Shafto, the Green Party's gubernatorial nominee in 2010, will make a run at Sylvia Garcia in Texas Senate 6, and her husband, George Reiter, the past co-chair of the state party, takes aim at Congressman Al Green in CD-9.

The godmother of the Texas Green Party, katia gruene, is a candidate for the statehouse (District 51, incumbent Eddie Rodriguez) and Joseph McElligott, fresh off his bid for Houston city council, will run against Dan Huberty in HD127.  Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee also draws a Green challenge from Adam Socki, a transit/urban planner with engineering outfit HDR.

David Collins, the Harris County Green Co-Chair, posts more.

Monday, November 30, 2015

December 14 is the deadline to file as a candidate for office

Kuff has already endorsed Steve Brown's candidacy -- announced via Tweet -- for HD 27, the incumbent having possibly spent Thanksgiving in the Harris County jail.  Former appeals court justice Morris Overstreet has declared his intention to challenge Kim Ogg and the oafish Lloyd Oliver for Harris County District Attorney in the Democratic primary (don't miss the hilarious comments on Overstreet's bid at Murray Newman's blog).  And municipal court judge Ursula Hall has, via email, recently announced her pursuit of the 165th Civil District Court, held by Republican and Greg Abbott appointee Debra Mayfield.  A website linked to her name advertises "cash advance, debt consolidation and more" at the Google, and Lisa Falkenberg of the Chron had this entertaining report about Hall's last bid for state district court in 2010.  And Stace has even more, including the two Democrats off to a fast start to fill Sylvester Turner's vacated HD 139 chair.

But as far as my desired candidates go... I'm looking at you.

I'd run for something myself if I wasn't half-deaf and concerned that a Christian terrorist might shoot me for being an atheist.  Really (scroll down just a bit from the top).  Even with my history of offensive blog postings that would serve as ready-made oppo research, I'd run for office... if I could only hear the questions posed to me at a candidate forum.

Hearing-impaired atheists need representation too, you know.  But since I can't run, why don't you.  Yes, you.

Run as a Democrat or run as a Green.  The Texas Green Party especially would welcome your candidacy.  (Just don't be a flake or disingenuous about it.)  The fact is that sensible, sane liberals and progressives need to run for office in order to show the multitudes of non-voters that common men and women both lack and deserve a voice in the halls of political authority.  It would be great if you actually won, of course, and 2016 is a Texas Democrat's best quadrennial chance, but running as a Green sends the proper signals to an otherwise inept state party apparatus that working-class folks need a better partner than Texas Democrats have demonstrated for the past twenty years.  If you're going to lose anyway, you might as well lose with your progressive principles intact, and not sold out to a duopolist, center-left, corporate/militarist money-grubbing establishment party.

Hell, if two-time loser James Cargas wants to get his ass whipped by John Culberson a third time, why can't someone with honor, distinction, and integrity do so?  Like you, for example.

We have enough wealthy attorneys, business owners, and professionals holding political office and seeking it.  The One Percent is already well-represented.  We need more women, more people of color, more LGBT and especially more non-rich people in Austin and Washington.

Sort of like climate change, if we don't take action fast about fixing things, we might just be too late.  So it's on us -- err, you -- to make the change we all want to see and need to have happen.

Don't just vote this year; make a bid.  Stand for election somewhere, anywhere.  You literally have nothing to lose and potentially everything for all of us to gain.  The floor is fairly high, and the ceiling is... well, let's say, the roof is open to the sky.  Why don't you go for it?

Take a couple of weeks and decide.  The world is your oyster -- a somewhat bacteria-endangered oyster to be sure, but still yours for the taking.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

The At Large 3 contest

Here are the entrants, as usual from the city's filings page and in alphabetical order.  Via Kuff, who has a post up about this and some mayoral fora upcoming, Mike Morris at the Chronicle's graphic shows the names listed in ballot order.


This race IMHO presents one of the more interesting lineups of candidates among the At-Larges despite its complete lack of diversity (I find AL 1 and AL 4 to be the protoypical mud wrestling matches, with AL 5 demonstrating more of what Houston is all about demographically).  Let's not bury the lede; one of Peterson or LaRue hopefully can push the incumbent Kubosh into a runoff in December.

Peterson has a long and impressive resume': strategist for NASA, leadership experience with environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, chairman of Senate District 11, active with the Bay Area New Democrats -- in short, everything just about anybody on the left could look for in a progressive, activist Democrat.   LaRue voted in the 2014 Republican primary in 2014, and McElligott -- affiliated with the Harris County Green Party, the only such candidate on the ballot -- voted in the 2010 Republican primary.  In a conversation with me, McElligott indicated that he did so strategically in the governor's race that year, for Kay Bailey Hutchison over Rick Perry.  I don't know LaRue's motivation so let's give him the benefit of the doubt that he did the same as McElligott.  (Many more Democrats than will admit it do this.  They even encourage others to do so; that's how weak Texas Democrats have become in midterm elections.)

McElligott has fleshed out strongly progressive policy issues: participatory budgeting (they've given it a go in NYC), repealing TABOR, reforming tax increment financing, advocating public banking and paid leave... sadly, these initiatives are outside the realm of concept for most municipal voters.  They will just screech "soshulist" and point at Bernie Sanders (or Jill Stein).  McElligott's paving the way to real progress for Greens, Democratic socialists and non-Democratic progressives.  Good on him for that.

LaRue is trying to run right down the middle of the partisan divide, rarely a winning electoral strategy at any level these days.  He has campaigned actively, appearing at numerous Democratic functions with photos on his Facebook page, and even making news as he and his husband became the first same-sex couple to receive a marriage license issued in Harris County.  Here's OutSmart magazine's retelling of the day-long saga involving Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart's refusals, County Attorney Vince Ryan's threats of legal injunction, and the media swarm that covered it all day.  Here's an article where LaRue describes his views as centrist and bipartisan, and also that his motivation for joining the race was Kubosh's votes against HERO.  And he's open about chasing moderate Republican votes, so there's that.

Despite his folk hero status, LaRue did not get the GLBT Caucus endorsement, probably due to their distasteful "viability" ratings of candidates.  Kuff underscored this point a couple of weeks ago in his reporting on endorsements.

I simply would not expect a great deal of votes to go to McElligott -- something on the order of the Greens' usual market share in contested races, about 1-2% -- but LaRue and Peterson could spoil each other's chances and let Kubosh waddle back to the horseshoe.  The incumbent and portly bail bondsman has voted against HERO and taken five large, the maximum financial contribution, from Steven Hotze this go-round.  He has a big target on his very wide back.  He got lucky two years ago when the Democrats washed each other out, and his popularity from fighting (and winning) the red-light camera battle with Mayor Annise Parker was at its zenith.  But unless turnout favors the liberal strongholds in the city, we could be looking at a rerun of 2013.

Prediction for the general: Kubosh could skate over thin ice again if Peterson and LaRue split the Democratic vote. If one of the two can get the incumbent mano a mano in December, odds are good that the seat flips.

Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Quick updates on Houston municipal elections

As we wait for Charles' manifesto...

-- Via Stace once more, the Democrats are crowding into AL1 (Costello, term-limited, running for mayor) and AL4 (Bradford, term-limited).

Laurie Robinson, Amanda Edwards and Larry Blackmon will all run for the at-large city council seat to be vacated by C.O. “Brad” Bradford, according to campaign treasurer designations filed in recent weeks.
Bradford, a former chief of the Houston Police Department, was elected to at-large position four in 2009 and is now term limited. The seat in recent years has been held by an African American.

Robinson, who leads a management consulting firm, lost her race for an at-large seat in 2011, and considered, but declined, a repeat run in 2013. Edwards is an associate at the law firm Bracewell and Giuliani, and Blackmon is a retired school teacher active in local politics.

The other open-seat at-large race more quickly drew names: Lane Lewis, chair of the Harris County Democratic Party; Houston Community College trustee Chris Oliver; Trebor Gordon, who successfully challenged Houston’s campaign blackout period; Philippe Nassif, a local Democratic activist; and Jenifer Rene Pool, a leader in Houston’s transgender community are all running to succeed Stephen Costello, who is running for mayor after being term limited.

Not mentioned here is the candidacy of Jan Clark, an attorney/Realtor and the vice-president of the Oak Forest Democrats, who purportedly intends to run in At-Large 5 against Jack Christie.

It seems a shame to let Kubosh in AL3 just skate back in; maybe somebody will grow a pair and take him on.  Christie seems notably the weakest incumbent on council after managing just 55% two years ago against two hapless Democrats (sorry, Noah's dad).

Update: Texpate expands a little on the above.

-- A rarely-cited source of local political news is Aubrey Taylor's blog; he's got the take on the three African American men bidding for mayor (Sylvester Turner, Ben Hall, and Sean Roberts).  HBCM is difficult to read because of its style and graphics, but he has insights into the black community not found elsewhere online.  Taylor sees some obstacles to Turner's front-running status at this early juncture, but goes out of his way to warn anybody from extrapolating that into his disfavoring the state representative's bid for mayor.

Methinks too much warning.

Noteworthy there is Congressman Al Green's early and second-time endorsement of Hall.  As a sidebar conversation, there's a lot that could be blogged about Representative Green (who represented me before 2010 redistricting).  My first falling-out with him was his support of the bankruptcy re-org legislation favored by the big banks in 2005; he's more recently voted in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline.  He might be best known outside of Houston for being a rail hog at SOTU speeches.


He's a big-time holy roller and probably has been friends with Hall since divinity school, the most likely motivation for his crossing the aisle and supporting this Republican in the mayor's race.  While he's been a decent liberal on many issues, including gay rights, when he slips occasionally, they're doozies.  Somebody needs to get the congressman on record in support of or in opposition to the city's equal rights ordinance, and contrast that with his support of Hall, who will no doubt be prevaricating on the topic again.

More as it develops.

Update: Marc Campos has crowned Bill King the monarch of potholes.  That's the best thing that guy has blogged in years.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Feeling vindicated

What I've been saying -- and doing -- for a couple of years now seems to be what others are also now saying and doing.  The idea of an independent progressive movement seems to have found purchase.

This piece at Down With Tyranny! -- which has the details of the New York governor's race -- links to this piece at Jacobin and this piece at The Guardian.  Two excerpts from those follow.

-- "Building outside the Democratic Party":

Everything about this election points to widespread dissatisfaction with a rightward-moving Democratic Party. Democratic voters stayed home. The turnout was a record low in New York State, with Cuomo receiving nearly a million fewer votes than he did in 2010. The Working Families Party (WFP) deployed all their resources to maintain their ballot line, but their campaign literature didn’t mention their candidate for governor: Cuomo. Only the Green Party significantly increased their vote.

Our gubernatorial candidate, Howie Hawkins, got 5 percent and 175,000 votes — nearly triple the number that voted for him in 2010 and quadruple the percentage. Instead of just voting against the Republicans or for a lesser evil, countless people expressed glee at the prospect of voting for someone running on a progressive platform.

Could only happen in in New York, you say?  Happened in California also, where 23 Greens won election across that big blue state, bringing their numbers to 64.

Could only happen in New York and California, you say?  A Texas Green candidate earned 10% in a statewide race for the first time in as long as anyone can remember.  A Texas Green in a contested statewide race with a strong Democratic candidate got 2% of the vote, at least twice as much as the historical average.

-- "America just took a wrong turn. It's time to take a hard left":

(T)here were real victories this week for progressive alternatives on clean energy, economic security and social justice. The extremist blood bath may have painted the country more red, but there were more than a few important – and extremely promising – tea leaves of green. It was even enough to suggest a new, independent, hard-left turn in American politics is still very much possible.

Fracking bans just passed in cities from California to Ohio and even in Denton, Texas – the town at the heart of America’s oil-and-gas boom. In Richmond, California, progressives beat back a multi-million dollar campaign funded by Chevron to defeat Green and allied candidates. Voters in Alaska, Oregon and Washington DC joined Washington State and Colorado in legalizing marijuana, adding to the growing momentum to call off the failed “war on drugs” that has given the US the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Still not buying it?  Would you open your mind a little about it if you read it in the Waco Tribune?

McLennan Community College professor Ashley Cruseturner astutely observed in a recent Tribune-Herald article that one-party rule allows the party faithful to dictate outcomes: “You have this situation where 5 percent of Texas is picking a statewide candidate for the whole state. Whoever is the most motivated in the spring, who can get this tiny group moving, that’s a lot of power.”

It is a lot of power, and concentrated power is not a good thing in a democracy. The results are predictable; we all find it hard not to reward our friends if it is within our power to do so.

(Notice that the author didn't mention the Green Party there.)  What else is being said about this strange phenomenon of the Democratic Party being abandoned by those who voted and those who did not?

-- "Why the Democrats lost... if they really did":

American voters — the ones that bothered to turn out for the elections — made a few things pretty clear. They’re tired of the party infighting. They’re tired of Democrat and Republican extremes. They’re tired of being held hostage by politicians who aren’t actually representing their wants and needs. The odd combination of Democratic policies and Republican politicians that were approved in this last election shows that Americans aren’t defined by two parties and the ideals encompassed by those parties. They are not black or white, but shades of grey, and need to be represented as such. Was it the Democrats who lost? Or the American people speaking in the limited voice allowed them by a two party system? It seems as though the populace of the United States is tired of party rhetoric, and is seeking a middle ground. It may be that the time is ripe to introduce a third party, one that is interested in representing the people, not collecting political gains like so many trophies.

-- And here's your argument for working within the Democratic Party to affect progressive change, from Bonddad.  "The importance of state-level third parties":

As spelled out above, corporatists are thoroughly in charge of the democratic establishment, to the point, it is widely reported, that they would prefer GOP election wins over progressive democratic candidates. See, for example, here.

So, how to make corporatist democrats extinct?  By showing them that they can never win.  And how do you show them that they will never win?  By borrowing a page from the career of Joe Lieberman.

It isn't enough for progressives to primary corporatists. State level third parties, like New York's Green Party, give progressives the ability to stay in elections right through the general election, even if they lose a democratic primary to corporatists.

Yes, this strategy will mean some general election losses over a few cycles.  But when corporatist democrats learn that they cannot win, they will start to disappear.  Progressives will win either as Democrats, or under another party banner.

By the way, this happened before. One hundred years ago, there were active Populist and Progressive Parties in the states (remember Robert LaFollette?). Ultimately they became part of the winning New Deal coalition.

Progressives shouldn't abandon the Democratic Party.  But they should target the corporatists as mercilessly as Tea Party republicans targeted their less-extremist wing, and state level Third Parties are an indispensable part of that attack.

-- And there's still room in my brain for this, which disagrees that reforming the Democratic Party is the best way to go.

If progressives can learn one thing from the 2014 election cycle, it is that they no longer have a place in the Democratic Party.

With Republicans on the offensive, Democratic incumbents and hopefuls spent the entire election running away from anything perceived to be associated with President Obama. In effect, this created numerous Democratic campaigns that ran to the right of a president that was already on a long-standing drift to the right of his own. This is in contrast to the normal state of affairs, which is where Democrats campaign on ideas that appeal to the progressive base and then do not deliver when elected.

This set of events left progressives and even many liberals without the party that they would normally identify with and vote for. The result was a sweeping defeat for Democrats in the congressional and gubernatorial elections, losing their Senate majority in the process.

Warning: a full reading of these links will be extraordinarily provocative for those on the left still trying to make some sense of last week's wipeout.  (Was it just a week ago that some Democrats were feeling hopeful about the end of the day's results?  I confess I had given up some time before early voting concluded; just didn't want to be Debbie Downer to my hard-working friends and neighbors.)

It's definitely going to challenge your thinking about the kind of Democrat you should support in 2016, in 2018, etc.

And that needs to happen.  Either the Democratic Party nationally -- and the Texas Democratic Party as well -- can get its shit together, or it's further on down the road to perdition.   I still like the idea of tempting them with my vote and support in exchange for nominating the right left kind of candidates.  But if they can't manage that then I can easily go Green.

Sure hope I see more discussions on this topic in the future.

Update: In case anybody might wonder, I wouldn't follow David Alameel to the nearest liquor store, much less any revolution he thinks he's going to lead.  You do have to like how he throws Gilberto Hinojosa, et. al. under the bus, though.  That signals some fun times ahead for the TDP.

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

The red tide rolls in

And as Bill O'Reilly observed, goes out again.  We can't explain that (but that won't stop us from trying).  From the top of my ballot....

-- Cornyn 62, Alameel 34, Libertarian Paddock almost 3, Green "Spicybrown" Sanchez, 1.17%.  The historical Texas election trends hold except for Alameel, who was a few points points weaker than the upper part of the Democratic statewide slate.  Does anyone want to see this man carry the banner again in 2016 2018 against Ted Cruz, as he has forewarned us?  For all the purported danger Cornyn was supposed to be in from a primary challenger like David Barton or Steve Stockman, the freaks all came back home to him.  He stands on the cusp of leading the Senate's new majority caucus... if Cruz lets him.

-- Culberson 63, Cargas 34.5, Lib 2%.  I'm just disappointed that Cargas hit the over in my personal handicapping (I had him at 33, which is where he was most of the night) of his second defeat at the hands of Cumbersome.  I'm not going to be voting for any oil and gas attorneys running for anything any more, ever.

-- Abbott 59, Davis 39, Glass 1.40, Parmer .39%.  Everybody underperformed expectations... except Abbott and Parmer.  The worst and latest poll had Davis losing by 16.  There will be recriminations aplenty, but I for one won't be piling on BGTX.  I do not know what the value of their efforts were in terms of raw votes or percentages, but anybody who throws rocks at their Aegean-stables cleaning efforts needs to sit down and shut up.  Frankly the only thing that has motivated a groundswell of Democratic support in Texas in my lifetime  is when there is a tightly-contested presidential primary between an establishment, conservative candidate and a (perceived, at least) left-leaning, agent-of-change challenger.  Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders: pick up the white paging telephone please.

-- Patrick 58, Van de Putte 39, Butler 2.55, Courtney .59%.  LVDP clocked in with about 22,000 fewer votes than Davis in statewide returns that are 98.77% complete at this posting.  That should put to rest any arguments that she would have fared better at the top of the ticket.  This article suggests that either the Latino Decisions poll released on Election Day was off... or that Patrick received some massive amount of the "non-Latino" vote.  I think it's both of those.

As his first agenda item upon the inauguration of his term as Your Lieutenant Governor, Patrick will issue a fatwa declaring that all Texas women will wear burqas for the next two years.  And that's going to be as liberal as it gets, ladies.  I cannot wait to see if he carried the female vote in some equivalent number to Abbott (52-47 by the exit polls).  That's a statement that will be repeated often, you can be certain.  Update: CNN's exit polling says it was a nine-point margin.

-- Paxton 59, Houston 38, Balagia 2.53, Osborne .63%.  Paxton's pending legal issues dissuaded no Republicans from voting for him.  The GOP vote is as monolithic as can be imagined.

-- Hegar 58, Collier 37.67, Sanders 2.67, Shafto .97%.  The first statewide contest that showed some slight erosion away from the two major party candidates.  Libertarian Ben Sanders had the second-highest showing for the Libs in both vote total and percentage; he got twice as many votes as Kathie Glass, the now-two-time Libertarian gubernatorial loser.  Deb Shafto increased her numbers about 15K and half of a percent from the baseline of candidates preceding her on the ballot, largely I think on the basis of her being the Green gubernatorial candidate in 2010.

-- Bush 60.7, Cook 35.3, Knight 2.71, Alessi 1.28%.  George Pee got more votes than Greg Abbott, folks.  And the Green candidate, Valerie Alessi, slightly over-performed ticketmates above her, but not those below, as we will see again in a moment.

-- Miller 58.6, Hogan 36.8, Palmquist 2.87, Kendrick 1.68%.  It's disappointing that my man Kenneth did not see the surge of support I envisioned.  This is the cause and effect of straight ticket voting demonstrated in all its appalling ignorance.  Jim Hogan should not have received a single vote, period.  It's difficult to encourage Democrats to vote when they make choices this poor when they do.

-- Sitton 58, Brown 36.5, Miller, 3.15, Salinas 2%.  The Green, Martina Salinas, benefited from her Latino surname as much as a vigorous campaign, the highest-profile one of all Greens.  She got nearly 93,000 votes, the largest amount of any G in a contested (with a Democrat) race.  Maybe there are a few Texans who like the idea of a committed environmentalist sitting on the board of commissioners that regulate the oil and gas industry in Texas.  Steve Brown, the only African American on the statewide ballot for Democrats, fell short of Jim Hogan's tally despite running an all-out campaign.  And Mark Miller scored almost the highest of any statewide Libertarian in a contested race.

These lower-ballot statewide tilts seem to offer the greatest opportunity for the minor parties to make an impact.  We'll watch and see if they take this lesson to heart for the future.

Back today with a post about statewide judicial races and turnout.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

A four-year-old tale of corruption finally told: Greg Abbott and Houston Votes

The Texas attorney general and Republican gubernatorial candidate's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weekend just got a whole lot worse.  From James Drew at the Dallas Morning News...

On an overcast Monday afternoon, officers in bulletproof vests swept into a house on Houston’s north side. The armed deputies and agents served a search warrant. They carted away computers, hard drives and documents.

The raid targeted a voter registration group called Houston Votes, which was accused of election fraud. It was initiated by investigators for Attorney General Greg Abbott. His aides say he is duty-bound to preserve the integrity of the ballot box.

His critics, however, say that what Abbott has really sought to preserve is the power of the Republican Party in Texas. They accuse him of political partisanship, targeting key Democratic voting blocs, especially minorities and the poor, in ways that make it harder for them to vote, or for their votes to count.

A close examination of the Houston Votes case reveals the consequences when an elected official pursues hotly contested allegations of election fraud.

The investigation was closed one year after the raid, with no charges filed. But for Houston Votes, the damage was done. Its funding dried up, and its efforts to register more low-income voters ended. Its records and office equipment never were returned. Instead, under a 2013 court order obtained by Abbott’s office, they were destroyed.

And the dramatic, heavily armed raid never was necessary, according to Fred Lewis, president of Texans Together, the nonprofit parent group of Houston Votes. “They could have used a subpoena,” he said. “They could have called us and asked for the records. They didn’t need guns.”

The previously unreported 2010 raid coincided with agitation by a local tea party group and Lewis’ testimony in the trial of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land. Lewis had filed a complaint against DeLay that, in large part, led to his indictment on corruption charges.

Abbott, the Republican candidate for governor, declined interview requests. A spokesman, Jerry Strickland, said the attorney general does not recall being briefed by staff members on the Houston Votes investigation.

This is a lengthy piece, and you should set aside some time to read every word. I have a vested interest because Mo Haver (the former head of Houston Votes, mentioned prominently) is my friend, Fred Lewis is an acquaintance, and I was present at the kickoff for their mobilization four years ago.  The efforts of Houston Votes turned into a massive brouhaha -- as the article reveals -- involving three previous Harris County tax assessor-collectors: Paul Bettencourt (he's now poised to be elected state senator, replacing Dan Patrick), Leo Vasquez, and Don Sumners; the head of the now-notorious King Street Patriots/True the Vote, Catherine Engelbrecht; and a handful more of some of the most corrupt and venal Republicans in the state of Texas.

Here it might be useful to point out, via a very handy GIF, the entire substance of voter fraud in the United States.

You should read the entire DMN article, particularly for the backstory on this.

(OAG investigator Jennifer) Croswell said a Houston Votes employee had told her that scanned copies of voter registration applications were given to Lewis and several of them didn’t have personal information redacted.

That, Croswell said, was a felony violation of the Penal Code.

“You are not allowed to copy, scan, reproduce a voter registration application, period. Nobody is allowed to,” Croswell told Haver.

Haver responded that Houston Votes had received voter registration cards from the county in 2008. Printed on the cards was a note directing that copies should be kept for 18 months.

Haver’s attorney said Vasquez, the Harris County tax assessor-collector, had given copies of voter registration applications to King Street Patriots. Haver said Vasquez also displayed them during a news conference. Was that not illegal?

Croswell did not respond.

Croswell left the attorney general’s office a few months after her interview with Haver and is now an Austin police officer. She declined to comment.

And to the end.

Haver, who resigned for reasons of poor health from her job with Texans Together in January 2011, said she believes there was no prosecution because there was no “credible evidence of voter fraud or criminal behavior.”

“From the [voter] registrar to the attorney general to the district attorney, all the players were Republicans, so no one can point to partisan protection from indictment. Instead, one can point to a lack of evidence,” she said.

When Haver was interviewed by Abbott’s office in late 2010, her attorney asked if Haver could get some folders returned to her. They’d been taken in the Houston raid and contained research Haver had done on possible irregularities in how GOP officials in Harris County were handling voter registration.

Haver told the attorney general’s office that the research had no relationship to the Houston Votes investigation. “We kept following up, and they kept giving us the runaround about getting it returned,” she said recently.

In late 2013, Abbott’s office asked judges in Harris and Travis counties for permission to destroy the records seized in the two raids. The request said records contained the names of people who were not suspects, partial Social Security numbers and forged voter registration applications.

When the attorney general’s office received a green light from judges, Haver’s research, which did not contain personal identifying information, was among the materials destroyed.

As is historically the case, this development isn't likely to damage Abbott much with his true believers.  It will provide extra motivation to all those folks working with BGTX to mobilize Democratic turnout, registered and still-unregistered.

It helps everyone understand why Abbott doesn't want to do any debates.  He can't respond 'no comment' when the media asks him about things like voter "fraud" -- and Ted Nugent, and Dr. Murray, and CPRIT, and the Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman rape case, and "driving around" to ask if explosive chemicals are stored near your house, and all of the rest of his myriad of scandals -- in a debate.

And it also reveals once more the depth of the immoral, craven, opportunistic sociopath who sits in the OAG, and who hopes to sit in the Governor's Mansion next January.

Friday, August 01, 2014

Dem nominee for Harris County judge quits race

First at Texpate, courtesy the Chronic:

Democrat Ahmad Hassan has ended his campaign for Harris County judge, saying incumbent Republican Ed Emmett should be given a great big fat pass another four-year term to finish projects vital to the community.

Just wanted to take his vacation this summer after all, I guess.  "Nobody pays attention until after Labor Day" (sic) anyway, you know.  Quitting can't be considered a big surprise, considering...

Hassan unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee as a Republican in 2006; unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for county judge in 2008 and 2010; and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Precinct 3 county commissioner in 2012.

Hassan is really no more a Democrat than Junior Samples doppelganger and ag commish nominee Jim Hogan, but he was the only guy on the spring Democratic primary ballot.  Noah assigns a little blame for that.

With (his high praise of the incumbent) out of the way, I think Hassan totally made the wrong move in dropping out of the race. And I still hold it against the Democrats that a legitimate candidate did not run against Emmett. I don’t know why someone else didn’t run against him, and I am not being rude; I’m legitimately curious. Did the County Party make a decision not to contest the seat, or did they try and fail to recruit someone? I will freely admit that I do not know.

Those are all fair questions, but at this point in the cycle I would rather look forward than backward.  It will be David Collins, the Green Party nominee, against "Hunker Down" Emmett in the fall.

The county judge has come under withering criticism of late (read the comments) for his solitary opposition to the proposal to renovate the Astrodome into a park, the plan advanced by the Rodeo folks and the NFL's Texans.  But he drew no challenger in his GOP primary, and the Harris County Libertarians appear to have skipped the race, so it's incumbent against underfunded, third party challenger.  Collins did collect more than 67,000 statewide votes in 2012 as the Green candidate to the US Senate, with just over 10,000 of those from Harris County.  (That still shakes out under 1% of the total, state- and countywide.)

Unlike Noah, I won't be voting for Emmett. 

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

The Texas progressive dilemma

This post could have been titled 'liberal dilemma', 'Democratic dilemma', 'Green dilemma'...

"Not a Davis campaign email: Abbott still holds big lead":

As Rodger Jones notes, the daily email pounding from the Wendy Davis campaign borders on relentless, with Republican opponent Greg Abbott supposedly doing every nefarious thing on earth, short of sleeping with farm animals.

The goal, of course, is to move the needle. So far, no dice.

"PPP poll highlights areas of concern for Texas Democrats":

Jim Henson, the director of UT’s Texas Politics Project, says the poll (together with others) shows the Texas political balance hasn’t changed much — yet — from where it was in 2010, when Bill White faced Rick Perry. “So far there’s no evidence that this race is disrupting the pattern,” said Henson. “We’re settling in to what we expect from the fundamentals.” The caveat: we’re at a point now, Henson says, where voters are just beginning to tune in. There’s time for the momentum to shift, but we’re settling in to the baseline.

Well, some things are a-changin'. The Texas Libertarian Party had over two hundred delegates at their state convention last Saturday, and Ross Ramsey of the Texas Tribune even covered it.  (Texas Greens, also convening this past weekend, had around 50.  And no media coverage save a couple of bloggers.)  Ramsey wasn't much impressed, though.

The difference between this and the size of the two major parties is vast, even at a time when turnout for the Republican and Democratic primaries in Texas is something of a national joke. It's like the difference between Beer League and Major League Baseball, between paper airplanes and airliners.

Still, watching the delegates churn through rules and argue over ballots and candidates puts the personal back into a political process that often plays out in commercials and mailers and quick meetings with strangers who bang on front doors fishing for support.

The 4:1 ratio of state delegates between the two minor parties is mirrored in Texas election results: the Libs can generally draw about 4% in statewide contested races historically while the Greens get a single percentage point.  Less when the D and the R are well-known, and more -- sometimes much more, as in 15% plus -- in uncontested or low-profile races.

This monolithic political landscape, as we all know, is why Texas is... well, Texas.  It's been like this since at least 1998, when the GOP first waltzed.  With one notable exception: that good ol' Aggie buddy of Rick Perry's, John Sharp, who almost pulled off the upset in the lieutenant governor's race that year.  Oh, how different things might have been: Perry would not have ascended to the governorship upon the (s)election of George W. Bush of the presidency in 2000, Texas would have had a Democratic governor -- albeit one as conservative as most Republicans of that era -- for a couple of years, maybe more; the 'Dream Team' would have never been a thing...

Instead, the most exciting thing liberals have going in the spring of 2014 is an immigration debate between a mayor and a lite guv candidate where Democrats are cheering and screaming, "Bring on 2018!"

This is a hopeful electoral strategy if you're a pre-law undergraduate, I suppose.  The rest of us?  Not so much.

Since the olden days of the late '90's, the baseline, as Henson refers to it in the second excerpt above, has been in the 55-41-4-1% range for Repubs, Dems, Libs, and Greens respectively.  (The Greens did not have Texas ballot access in some of those years; that is its own convoluted history.  And yes, I realize my math adds up to 101% due to rounding.)

Nothing much has changed over the past couple of decades.  Texas remains a state with about 36% of its population of Latino descent and growing, but fewer than half are voters, a figure considerably lower than Latino turnout by percentage of population even in southwestern states like California and Arizona.  Can't fault just the brown folks, though.  Voter turnout by all demographics in Texas is 49th in a good (read: presidential) year, and in off-years like 2010, you get Republican sweeps in the 60-65% range.

Everybody who's been paying the slightest amount of attention already knows all this.  And there's the problem right there: only about 5% of Texans are paying attention at this point in the cycle, and that number will expand to just 15-20% by November.

As has been repeated elsewhere, Texas is not a Republican state; Texas is a non-voting state.  And Texas Republicans are going to continue doing their dead level best to keep it that way.

So all that Democrats can do is put their shoulders back against the boulder, while the Libertarians have to recapture the Tea Pees whenever it becomes clear that the corporate overlords are not going to let them take over the Republican Party, and the Greens need to get all of their statewide candidates to show up at their state convention, for a start.  Somewhere among all of those not-stupid-and-mean conservatives, combined with just a few of the 75% of Texans who do not ever vote except maybe sometimes, when the White House is on the ballot... there's bound to be 50% plus one (or even a 39% plurality).

I sure I hope I live long enough to see the day that the liberal majority in Texas shows up at the polling place, but I'm increasingly skeptimistic that I will.

Update: No worries, I'm not suicidal.

Saturday, March 01, 2014

Lone Star roundup as early primary voting concludes

-- SOP or a bad portent?
 In person and by mail, 105,508 voters cast ballots at 39 early voting locations throughout (Harris) county during the 11 days of early voting. Of those, 75,400 were Republicans and 30,108 were Democrats. GOP voters typically show up in larger numbers in local primaries, but the gap was particularly pronounced this year.

Lots of work for Democrats to do in order to avoid another 2010-like Red Tea Tide.  ICYMI...

Patricia Kilday Hart (wrote in the Feb.1 Houston) Chronicle that, with only 1.4 million (Texas) voters participating in the GOP primary, as few as half the participants – some roughly 700,000 voters – have selected all statewide officials serving Texas’ 26 million residents in recent years.

“It is a tiny fraction of the population who sets the agenda,” says Steve Munisteri, chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. “It is amazing how much influence you can have if you get involved in politics.”

Update: 700,000 Texans ... roughly the population of El Paso.  Just not nearly the demographic.

-- Meanwhile, Washington is coming to town to use Texas as its ATM again.

President Barack Obama will travel to Houston in April to raise money for House and Senate candidates.

That's according to an invitation to the event obtained by The Associated Press.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California are scheduled to attend. Tickets start at $16,200 a person and go up to $64,800 for a couple. Proceeds benefit the Democratic campaign committees in the House and Senate.

The invitation says the April 9 event will take place at the home of John Eddie Williams, a prominent Texas philanthropist and lawyer, and his wife, Sheridan.

We just read something about John Eddie Williams helping Republicans get elected to the Texas Supreme Court, didn't we?  Hey Charles: when people say Democrats and Republicans are all alike, THIS is what they're talking about, not social issues.  It's Republicans and the Tea Party, of course, that have bigger differences than Ds and Rs.

-- And speaking of Republicans, TeaBaggers, and their social issues...

Calling gay people “sodomites” and U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia a “would-be dictator,” the Harris County Republican Party announced it will host a news conference Monday morning in response to Garcia’s ruling Wednesday striking down Texas’ bans on same-sex marriage.

The event at county GOP headquarters seems like a pretty obvious ploy to energize the conservative base in advance of Tuesday’s primary — when, among others, Chair Jared Woodfill faces a challenger from within the party.

According to a release sent out Friday afternoon, party workers and elected officials will “stand shoulder to shoulder with people of faith to denounce the lawless ruling of a federal court seeking to impose the whims of unelected judges on the people of Texas.”

Ripe for a harsh loud protest, but it doesn't sound like liberals are going to pass muster.  Too pacifist for me (and why my Green peeps don't like me, either).

-- More evidence comes to light that Texas executed an innocent man.  As far as social issues in Texas go, abolishing the death penalty is going to be last on the list.  Not in my grandchildren's lifetime, and since I don't have any children...

-- Greg Abbott seems a little upset over the fact that his wife was mistaken for a Mexican restaurant.  And I thought marriage in Texas was exclusive between ONE MAN & ONE MAN...

-- The Texas Tribune is going to try to do a little better about disclosing where they get their money.  Isn't that special.

Campaign finance reporting is transparent. Transparency don't feed the bulldog of how much money influences politics when Greg Abbott's raking in more than $30 million and Wendy Davis isn't that far off, for example, and both will surely bust $100 million by the general. They can file their reports with the Texas Ethics Commission and be as transparent as they're supposed to be. They're still trafficking in a gravy train of political money, and if Evan Smith wanted to do something about that at the Trib, he'd write columns calling for public financing of Texas elections at a maximum, and at a minimum, caps on financial contributions on state races.

But, just maybe Smith doesn't want that.  

The undisclosed money in media is just as bad as the undisclosed money in our political system.  Full goddamned motherfucking stop.

Friday, January 31, 2014

A Lone Star roundup of downballot races and more

Most of the political oxygen is being sucked up by the governor, lieutenant governor, and Senate primaries on both sides of the aisle, so with the deadline fast approaching -- as in Monday -- for Texans who are not yet registered to vote in March, an update on what's happening elsewhere in the left-right tug of war is overdue.


-- Before we move down the ballot, let's note that Dan Patrick has the endorsement of fringe-iest of the right-wing fringe mega-church pastors, John Hagee.  And say no more about that, because, really... what else can be said?

-- In the Republican primary for comptroller, Glenn Hegar says it's all about his money, and Debra Medina says no, it isn't.  Meanwhile, Harvey Hilderbran is saying he can do things even Bob Bullock could not do: bend the IRS to his will.  I suppose in the hypothetical comic-book matchup, Superman can beat up The Incredible Hulk, but only because the big green dude lets his anger get the best of him too often.

(If I have to explain that analogy, then it isn't as funny as I would hope.)

Update: And don't miss the Texas Observer's WTF Friday, starring Hegar and his guns, in a campaign ad called "Freedom".  Because freedumb means never pronouncing "comptroller" correctly.

-- It's not all bad for Texas Democrats; the TXGOP are experiencing their usual difficulties counting their money.  Socratic Gadfly has the links from the Rockwall Herald Banner...

The Texas Democratic Party (TDP) has called for a criminal investigation into alleged illegal election activity at the Rockwall County Clerk’s office, according to a statement released by the organization Wednesday.

In addition, a letter requesting a “cease and desist from unlawful political fundraising activities” was also issued by Chad Dunn, general counsel for the TDP.

A statement from the TDP on Wednesday claims the Facebook page of Rockwall County Clerk Shelli Miller advertised the sale of tickets for  Saturday’s Rockwall County GOP Reagan Day 2014 event and that these tickets could be purchased in Miller’s office at the Rockwall County Courthouse.

Attorney General Greg Abbott is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the event, and due to the involvement of the Abbot campaign in the Reagan Day event, the TDP has asked for an investigation into the alleged illegal activities to be opened.

“It is inexcusable to use taxpayer funded facilities for political fundraising,” TDP Executive Director Will Hailer said in the statement. “The Rockwall County GOP must immediately cease their unlawful activities. This is political corruption, plain and simple.

“A thorough investigation is warranted in this case and it is incumbent on the Attorney General’s office to put election year politics aside and move forward by appointing a special investigator.”

...and Trail Blazers.

The Dallas County Republican Party failed to report more than $60,000 of transactions to the Federal Election Commission, according to a draft of an audit approved by the agency Thursday.

The report, which includes violations from 2009 to 2010, shows that the DCRP didn’t report a $24,000 credit card donation or almost $6,000 in donations from March 2010.

A transfer of $31,000 to a “non-federal” bank account was also unreported by the party. Since the county party works with both federal and state candidates, each facing different rules, it must keep separate accounts to take advantage of the less stringent Texas campaign finance laws.

Back to Gadfly with the wrap.

(S)ince current state Attorney General Greg Abbott, now running for governor, is the guest speaker at the February event, doesn't he need to recuse himself or something? Maybe appoint a Democratic special investigator?

[...]

How do you miss a $24K credit card donation, anyway?  

-- The Chron endorsed John ManBoyLove in the Republican primary for CD-36, to replace Steve Stockman.  They had to pick somebody, I suppose.

--  Paul Kennedy has the state of play in the GOP primary for Harris County district clerk.

Four years ago (Republican) Chris Daniel won the race for Harris County District Clerk over the incumbent (Democrat) Loren Jackson. Under Mr. Jackson's leadership the District Clerk's Office moved out of the Stone Age and into something that resembled our modern times. Alas, Mr. Jackson won election to an unexpired term in 2008 on the coattails of Barack Obama (perhaps you've heard of him) and was swept out in the next election.

Mr. Daniel has moved forward with the changes Mr. Jackson made -- but with a bit more of an eye on the publicity side. He cruises around town in his gas guzzling Hummer with campaign signs in the windows. Subtle is one characteristic no one would ever use to describe Mr. Daniel. [...]

(T)here are some in the Republican community who are upset with Mr. Daniel. Chief among them is the head wing nut in Harris County, State Senator Dan Patrick. Now I wish I could find a clip of Mr. Patrick painting himself blue for an Oilers' playoff game back in the 70's but since YouTube didn't exist back then those clips are rare to find.

The darling in Mr. Patrick's eye is his former employee, Court Koenning. Why exactly he's running for District Clerk isn't quite clear. There isn't exactly what I would call a groundswell of opposition to the way Mr. Daniel is running the office.

Even more curious is Mr. Koenning's website with endorsements from leading wing nuts in Harris County.

Sen. Patrick touts Mr. Koenning as a "conservative leader." State Rep. Patricia Harless says he will be "an outspoken advocate for conservatives at the courthouse." State Rep. Allen Fletcher champions his "conservative vision."

I am still trying to figure out what being a liberal, a conservative, a Marxist or a neo-fascist has to do with running the District Clerk's office. Your job as clerk is to make it as easy as possible for folks to file suits and for the courts to get the filings they need. Your job is to make the process of obtaining certified copies of filings as painless as possible. Your job is to send out jury summonses. That's about it.

This is a lament that could be applied to every single primary contest on the Republican side.  Sid Miller (ag commish candidate) weighs in on Phil Robertson and Duck Dynasty.  Barry Smitherman -- boy, have we mentioned him here a lot -- Tweets a picture of a hangman's noose beside the names of Republican US Senators who favored last year's gun legislation in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.  Jared Woodfill passes judgment on Annise Parker's wedding.  Around and around that carousel goes, and where it stops...

While this is certainly no endorsement of Chris Daniel, it should serve as a warning about the creation of made-for-election issues. I would love to be a fly on the wall so I could figure out what's really going on behind the scenes with this race. My guess is it's being used as a battleground for a fight between the far right wing of the GOP led by Dan Patrick and the more moderate wing led by whoever leads the mythical moderate wing of the Republican Party in Texas. 

More nicely said than me, and still makes the same point: if everybody in the Republican party wants to be like Ted Cruz, then where do the sane conservatives go?


And here's everything else you missed this week, some of it having nothing at all to do with politics.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The non-Wendy Davis Wrangle

I'm confident there will be more conservative poutrage in their full-court press to try and stretch out the not-so-much-a-story for another day.  The rest of us can move on.

-- Dewhurst: Texas teachers are paid "a very fair salary".

"At the end of the day, we're paying our school teachers — when you count in cost of living — a very fair salary," Dewhurst said. "We need to have better results. We need to make sure that we're not just paying more money and we need to look at more choice for parents."

Texas consistently ranks near the bottom nationally in average teacher pay according to many groups that track classroom salaries, including teacher unions. One expert testified in the state's pivotal school finance trial last year that Texas' average teacher pay was about $47,300 in 2009-10 dollars — lower than the national average of nearly $55,000, and less than what 32 other states pay educators.

That trial ended with a state judge determining that the system Texas uses to finance public education is unconstitutional. New testimony is set to resume in Austin on Tuesday.

For a guy who grew up in River Oaks and likely sent his children to private school, this is rich.  It never ceases to amaze me how clueless the 1% can be.  And in a Tea Party stronghold like Texas, this dude is still leading the polling for lite guv.

And guess who's defending the most recent multi-billion dollar cutback of Texas public education in court?  Greg Abbott.  Thank goodness he's such a shitty lawyer.

Update: Charles digs deeper into the public school finance trial.

-- Todd Staples and Dan Patrick have hitched their wagon to the Ill Eagles.

(Patrick) pounded the need for border security by citing "hardened criminals we arrested from 2008 to 2012 -- not illegals who were here for a job, who got four speeding tickets, but hardened criminals -- 141,000 we put in our jails just in four years in Texas."

"They threaten your family. They threaten your life. They threaten your business. They threaten our state," he said, adding that they were charged with 447,000 crimes including 2,000 murders and 5,000 rapes.

(Staples') office in 2010 launched the website ProtectYourTexasBorder.com, which features first-hand accounts of confrontations with violent drug traffickers in videotaped interviews. When a message board on the state-run website quickly filled with postings calling for vigilante justice and killing immigrants entering the country illegally, Staples removed the posts and condemned the remarks, but that episode remains one of the biggest embarrassments of his tenure.

But Staples persisted. He published the book "Broken Borders, Broken Promises" in 2012 and continues to reject federal crime data that show decreasing levels of violent crime and Democrats who accuse Republicans of wildly exaggerating the danger for the sake of politics.

Staples said his office hasn't put a financial number on the losses that encroaching violence has cost Texas crop owners.

"I haven't tried to quantify the cash losses," Staples said. "What we have done though is shown that the violence is real, that we have a failed immigration system that is aiding the drug cartels and giving them cover to come into our nation."

What did I say about fear being a primary motivator of human behavior?  Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, or independent... are you scared yet?

Update: Charles Kuffner calls Patrick a liar.

-- Speaking of the Libs, they lost a gubernatorial candidate over the weekend.

R. Lee Wrights has ended his campaign for the Libertarian Party nomination for governor of Texas. From the former candidate’s website:

We would like to thank the donors who gave when they honestly didn’t have the spare income to justify investing in Lee and his message of Peace and Prosperity. They will always be our beloved friends and family.

[...]

No candidate can persevere unless he has the support of those who wish him/her to run. Unfortunately, I found I had far more broken promises than I had genuine support. Thomas Hill, and Cindi Lewis Maidens before him, are absolutely correct. As nice as they all are I, nor any candidate, can run a campaign on “likes” and “shares” on Facebook. It takes “dollars” and”cents”. Again unfortunately, I had far more of the former than I did the latter.

There are some highly entertaining comments there if you are so inclined. The ones I took note of were those disparaging 2010 nominee and presumptive 2014 front-runner Kathie Glass.

I'll update this post with whatever sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity erupts later today from the mind and mouth of some conservative.  Sure hope they don't keep me busy.

Update: Jerry Patterson, being the least dumb among the four RLGs.

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, one of four contenders for the Republican lieutenant governor nomination, Tuesday reiterated his support for creation of an immigrant guest worker program, allowing students to carry concealed weapons on college campuses and policies to promote "smarter building" on the state's barrier islands.

Patterson, a former state senator who has been land commissioner since 2003, dismissed immigration hardliners' calls to "build fences, no amnesty, deport 12 million people."

While Patterson opposes amnesty for undocumented workers and supports border barriers "where tactically called for," Patterson told the Houston Chronicle editorial board "it's stupid" to implement mass deportations. "I don't want to live in a country with that kind of police power, especially at the federal level," he said.

[...]

Patterson will face incumbent three-term Lt. David Dewhurst, Texas Sen. Dan Patrick and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples in the Republican primary.

"There are three good choices ‑ anyone but Patrick," he said. Asked how he would function as speaker of the House, Patterson replied, "Like (former Democratic) Lt. Bob Bullock without the tantrums."

See?  He's only crazy, not stupid.  (Except for the guns part, of course. That's crazy AND stupid.)

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Wendy Davis is TPA's 'Texan of the Year'

Big surprise, eh?

The Texas Progressive Alliance, the nation's largest state-based association of online and netroots activists, today named State Senator Wendy Davis recipient of its Texan of the Year Award for 2013.

"Senator Davis' actions this year made her a clear choice. Our vote was unanimous," said Vince Leibowitz, Chair of the Alliance. Leibowitz said Senator Davis' June filibuster of Senate Bill 5 on behalf of Texas women and the preservation of reproductive rights was a courageous action that served to galvanize and energize Texas Democrats. "Senator Davis' courage to stand up and block this outrageous legislation helped raise awareness in Texas of the assault on a woman's right to choose that our legislature has waged for the last decade, as well as the extraordinary measures right-wing Republicans in Texas will take both to trample the rights of women and their own colleagues in government," Leibowitz continued.

Not only did Davis' actions draw national attention to Texas, but her filibuster and subsequent campaign for Texas Governor have galvanized Texas Democrats. "We have not seen this kind of excitement for a non-presidential election in Texas in many years. We see Democrats are energized, organized, and ready to take back our state for the people. To a great extend, we have Senator Davis and her courageous actions to thank for this; she served as a unifying figure for our party to rally around, and her actions will both strenghthen the party in the long run and serve to expand our base," said Charles Kuffner, Vice Chair of the Alliance.

Previous Texan of the Year recipients are: Carolyn Boyle of Texas Parent PAC (2006); Texas House Democratic Leaders State Reps. Jim Dunnam, Garnet F. Coleman, and Pete Gallego (2007); the Harris County Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign (2008); Houston Mayor Annise Parker (2009); Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns (2010); and the protesters of the Tar Sands Blockade (2012). There was no award given in 2011.

We also had to briefly consider a non-Texan named Cruz, who got somewhat more than 15 minutes' worth of fame out of reading Green Eggs and Ham during a filibuster of his own... but humbly chose to give all the glory to God President Obama instead.

So Ted's the biggest loser.  Again.

Honorable mentions for Texan of the Year have to include Leticia Van de Putte for her own significant role in Davis' filibuster; Sarah Slamen, aka @VictorianPrude, who burst on the national scene just prior to LVDP and Davis doing so; Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood; Annise Parker (as previously mentioned, the TOY winner in 2009); and Beyonce' (yes, Beyonce').

There's a clear trend with these selections, just in case you're not seeing it -- in which case, and to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a Republican.  I saw a great button the other day, and it said: "Women brought every single politician into this world... and they can take them out."

Here comes the future.

Sunday, August 04, 2013

2014: a year for female political candidates

And not just because of Hillary Clinton or even Wendy Davis. Here's an update on the Kentucky Senate contest, where Mitch McConnell is flailing. Charlie Cook:

In the wake of two polls that show the race between Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes within the margin of error, the race moves to the Toss Up column. Grimes was ahead of McConnell in both surveys; one was conducted by the Mellman Group for the Grimes campaign, and the other was taken by Public Policy Polling.

And from Grimes' Wiki page...

In 2010, Grimes announced her candidacy for the office of Secretary of State of Kentucky, left open by term-limited incumbent Republican Trey Grayson. When Grayson resigned to accept a position at the Harvard Institute of Politics, Governor Steve Beshear appointed Bowling Green Mayor Elaine Walker over Grimes to fill the rest of Grayson's term in office. Despite this, Grimes stayed in the race and defeated Walker by a double digit margin in the May primary.

She went on to face Republican businessman and former Senate candidate Bill Johnson. A main aspect of the campaign was Grimes' opposition to Johnson's proposal to require photo IDs in order to vote. Grimes argued this would take away voting rights from the homeless among others. She also became well known through commercials that showed her elderly grandmothers.

Grimes defeated Johnson with over 60% of the vote. She received a higher percentage of the vote than any other Kentucky statewide Democratic candidate during the 2011 elections and has received much speculation over her possible political future.

Keep in mind that 2010 was a red wave election cycle. Democrats got washed out all over the country (not just in Texas). Grimes' election to KySoS came a year later, when the Tea Party antics were just starting to be felt and understood. So she's good -- it took some sand to run for office as a Dem in a southern state in 2011 -- but she's also lucky. Timing being everything, Alison Grimes is certainly smart enough to put herself in the right place at the right time. That could very well hold true again in 2014. Here's a Politico article with more.

“The goal is not just (to keep it) close, the goal is to win,” Grimes told POLITICO.

And Grimes warned that she is “not going to be bullied” by McConnell’s tough campaign tactics, adding that she is prepared to fight the onslaught of GOP attacks attempting to link her to President Barack Obama, who is deeply unpopular in the Bluegrass State.

“I think the voters of Kentucky are tired of that play,” Grimes said, speaking on her campaign bus. “It seems as if Sen. McConnell wants to run against anyone but me, including the president, the Senate majority leader, leader (Nancy) Pelosi. And, unfortunately, I’m the one who filed my paperwork.”

That's exactly how every single Democrat running against a Republican running against Obama -- which is all of them -- ought to strike back. I'm just hoping Wendy Davis is watching Alison Grimes and her campaign closely.

FWIW, I am reading from KY Dems on another discussion board that they think the wealthy TeaBagger challenging McConnell in the GOP primary has a better chance of winning that Senate seat than does Grimes. That's the usual defeatist attitude we see so often from Texas Democrats. I think it's a dynamic still in play, as Texas Ds have just one candidate for statewide office at this posting.

Women elected to office in 2013 and 2014 are going to make the difference in the kind of state and nation we live in going forward. At least so that we don't have to read any more stories like this.

Update:

"If the doctors told Sen. McConnell he had a kidney stone, he would refuse to pass it."

By God, that's how you fight back.


Saturday, July 27, 2013

What I'm reading this morning (and it's not Carlos Danger or little Prince George)

-- Terminally ill 'Simpsons' co-creator Sam Simon is trying to give away all his money before he goes. In my experience, people who are dying have some of the most profound insights into the world they are departing.

One of the things about animal rights, which is not the only thing that I care about in this world, is that your money can bring success. I see results. There is stuff happening, really good stuff, every week. I'm not sure you get that with a lot of disease charities. If you were donating to environmental causes for the past 20 years, do you think your money is doing anything? Because I don't, and I used to support some conservationist stuff -- Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund. They're treading water. Climate change is a big part of their problem. The environment has been destroyed, basically.

I want medical experiments on animals stopped. They don't do anything, and they don't work. Veganism is an answer for almost every problem facing the world in terms of hunger and climate change. It helps people's health. Meat is the biggest greenhouse gas producer. There's also the cruelty and suffering aspect. When people do meatless Mondays, and when people adopt instead of buying a dog, that's a PETA victory.

-- The military judge presiding over the trial of Bradley Manning is contemplating the verdict (there is no jury):

A military judge is deliberating the fate of an Army private accused of aiding the enemy by engineering a high-volume leak of U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks.

Prosecutors argue that Pfc. Bradley Manning is a glory-seeking traitor. His lawyers say Manning is a naive whistleblower who was horrified by wartime atrocities but didn't know that the material he leaked would end up in the hands of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.

Army Col. Denise Lind began deliberating Friday after nearly two months of conflicting evidence and arguments about the 25-year-old intelligence analyst. A military judge, not a jury, is hearing the case at Manning's request.

Lind said she will give a day's public notice before reconvening the court-martial to announce her findings. The most serious charge is aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence in prison.

Manning's supporters say that a conviction would have a chilling effect on government accountability by deterring people from disclosing official secrets to journalists. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a telephone press conference Friday that if Manning is convicted of aiding the enemy, it will be "the end of national security journalism in the United States."

He accused the Obama administration of a "war on whistleblowers" and a "war on journalism."

Colonel Lind's decision will, obviously, have wide-ranging ramifications. She has promised to give a day's notice to the media and everyone else watching before she declares the verdict.

-- The guy who invented jackpotting (forcing ATMs to spit out cash) -- who had recently claimed that he could cause a person to have a heart attack from a distance of 30 feet by hacking their embedded medical implant -- was found dead last Thursday evening, as he was preparing to reveal the procedure for the national convention of programmers and researchers (yes, hackers) next week.

Barnaby Jack was 35.

--The Houston Press has an investigative piece up about Memorial Hermann: they treat patients who don't have insurance, tell them not to worry about the bills, and then sue them over it when they go unpaid.

--  America is split about NSA spying, but not along party lines:

Something strangely refreshing about the way the National Security Agency data-mining revelations have played out is how it has blurred the usual partisan divides. This was especially apparent Wednesday, when the House voted on an amendment to defund the NSA's spying apparatus. It was Republican-led, but backed by some Democrats. A strange grouping—including the White House; Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.; and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.—all spoke out against the measure. It lost by a slim margin, 205-217 (94 Republicans and 111 Democrats backed the amendment).

That partisan fuzziness on the Hill is also reflected in the general population, as new polling from Pew indicates. Both parties are split on the issue: 50 percent of Republicans disapprove of the program, agreeing with 36 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of independents. What appears to be growing overall is a libertarian mindset on the issue. "This is the first time in Pew Research polling that more have expressed concern over civil liberties than protection from terrorism since the question was first asked in 2004," the report states. Since 2010, the percent of Republicans who feel the government has gone "too far" in restricting civil liberties jumped from 25 percent to 43 percent (Democrats jumped as well, from 33 percent to 42 percent.)

The polling also is indicative of a growing intellectual rift in the Republican Party between libertarians and traditional conservatives. And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie isn't a fan, saying on Thursday, "This strain of libertarianism that's going through parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought." Christie specifically mentioned Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.,  as one of the people with such thoughts. "Do we have amnesia? Because I don't," he continued. "And I remember what we felt like on September 12, 2001."

This is a manifestation of something I have been thinking about over the past year or two; that the conventional, ideological bar graph of left and right is a faulty model in accurately describing the body politic. In fact it seems to be more of a circle, with four orbiting political parties; the Democrats and Republicans closer together, and the Libertarians and Greens clustered.

Two pro-corporate status quo legacy parties whose primary objective is self-perpetuation, not problem-solving. And two that are not; outside the duopoly, looking in. In fact I find that -- while there are still significant differences -- the two largest minor parties have more in common with each other than they do either of the two major parties. That is to say: Greens are closer philosophically to Libertarians than they are to Democrats, and Libertarians less like the GOP than they are Green. With (again) vastly different ideas of means to those common ends.

Anybody want to argue with me about that in the comments?