Please don't scare me like that again

The candidate left out in the cold

There have already been several lively conversations regarding the focus of the Texas Democratic Party’s 2006 election strategy, its perceived success or failure, who’s responsible and how to fix it and so on. If you need the backstory, begin there and return here.

David Van Os has made his feelings well-known about the missing support of statewide Democratic candidates from the state party’s apparatus. As anyone who read here occasionally over the past year was aware, I served briefly as the Van Os for Attorney General campaign director for a couple of months in the spring of 2005, and after that in a reduced capacity as statewide coordinator due to my illness (diabetes mellitus with neuropathy in both feet) and my going business concern (annuities brokerage). Here’s a few more places you can go to catch up on DVO's POV if you need to.

But this posting isn’t about that campaign or even that candidate; this is the story of Janette Padilla-Sexton, the woman who ran as the Democratic nominee for HD-144 in southeast Harris County against longtime Republican incumbent Robert Talton.

Here’s the briefest of biographical data: strong progressive (early Dean presidential campaign supporter, among many activist roles), technical writer for the United Space Alliance, single-income homeowner. A citizen-activist for Democrats and progressive causes, she had no prior elective experience and no visible means of campaign support, but her early announcement for the primary might have scared off attorney Rick Molina, who instead challenged -- and lost to -- Ana Hernandez in neighboring HD-143.

Padilla-Sexton also suffered during the campaign season from a variety of physical ailments which ultimately precluded her from active campaigning: meniscus tears in both knees, a misdiagnosis of osteoarthritis resulting in additional and unnecessary doctor’s visits, hospital stays, incorrectly prescribed medication and so on. She did suffer from arthritis as it turned out but not in that particular knee; she also developed high blood pressure, obstructive sleep apnea and some pre-diabetic conditions.

But that wasn’t all she suffered from: several Houston-area Democratic legislators made promises of help of all kinds, but when she called to take up those offers, her calls went unanswered and unreturned. There were some people who leveled with Padilla-Sexton: state representative Garnet Coleman told her that he and his colleagues had discussed her race and come to the conclusion that they could not assist her because “they had to work with Bob Talton on regional issues”. (I contacted Phillip Martin, Coleman’s chief of staff, for a response but my queries went unanswered.) Mostly she got the cold shoulder: Rep. Jessica Farrar was effusive in her initial offers of assistance, but declined to return phone messages when the time came to help. Padilla-Sexton also reached out to Harris County commissioner Sylvia Garcia (mentoring), Sen. Rodney Ellis (about an air quality question), Rep. Scott Hochberg (regarding state education funding), Sen. Mario Gallegos (for adding credibility to her campaign) and Rep. Rick Noriega (for general help and direction), but none of those people returned her calls, either.

So she soldiered on, spending a total of just $8,000 $13,000* -- virtually all of it her own money $8,000 of her own money* -- on her race, and finished with 40.5 per cent of the vote on November 7^th. Talton spent about ten times that. Here’s how she performed in comparison to other statehouse Democratic political novices:

Ellen Cohen: 54.70%

Sherrie Matula: 42.29%

Kristi Thibaut: 41.76%

Janette Sexton: 40.55%

Diane Trautman: 39.87%

Mark McDavid: 38.73%

Chad Khan: 32.61%

Dot Nelson-Turnier: 29.93%

Scott Brann: 29.1%

Pat Poland: 25.00%

Sammie Miller: 22.8%

It’s worth noting that Cohen raised $500,000 for her campaign, with the assistance of many of the previously named legislators, an army of volunteers and the wherewithal to take a ten-month leave of absence from her position as the director of the Houston Area Women’s Center. Thibaut, an adroit fundraiser, collected $150,000 and also a core of vigorous volunteer support. Matula, who ran in neighboring HD-129, benefited from the teachers PAC and strong efforts from the Bay Area New Democrats, Area 5 Democrats and Battleground Democrats -- all clubs that could have chipped in volunteer assistance to Padilla-Sexton as well -- enabling her (Matula, that is) to have extensive blockwalking and phonebanking. BAND, to their credit, provided robocalls to Janette’s campaign. John Cobarruvias, the president of the club, admitted that BAND’s efforts were stretched too thin over the Bell, Lampson and Matula campaigns to provide much in the way of anything extra. So with virtually no help and no resources – no money, no volunteers, consequently no direct mail, blockwalking or phonebanking, not even any campaign literature – Padilla-Sexton performed fourth of eleven political novices. Trautman, McDavid, and Khan all had greater resources and performed less well in their districts.

I believe the overall conclusion is that HD-144 was ripe to flip, but none of the power brokers believed it, and consequently none of them decided to try to make it happen. Privately, I was told disparaging things about Padilla-Sexton that I won't bother rehashing here. So could it also have been her fault, as a candidate with initial shortcomings made worse by her health issues? Possibly. Her experience nevertheless adds evidence to the opinion that there are many Texas Democrats who are just too timid to challenge a variety of status quo beliefs: taking on an entrenched Republican no matter how extreme (perhaps in order to avoid the same sort of challenge in their own districts); a state party structure managed by a couple of inside players controlling the selection and momentum of their perceived “winners”; a governing body (SDEC) which has abdicated its responsibility to hold accountable the unelected decision-makers; and finally the perception that Texas Democrats simply aren’t committed to make a winning effort across the board, no matter the odds.

That’s a defeatist state of mind. It’s a loser’s mentality, or in the words of Chris Bell, a strain of battered-wife syndrome. It flies in the face of Howard Dean’s rather successful 50-state strategy, and ultimately provided very limited Texas results in a year of watershed electoral change across the rest of the United States.

So maybe it was a 49-state strategy, come to think of it (without blaming Dean for leaving Texas out).

I’m sure it’s just coincidence: Matt Angle, the political consultant taking the most credit for the narrowly targeted 2006 legislative strategy, served as chief of staff to former US Rep. Martin Frost -- ejected from Congress in Tom DeLay’s 2004 redistricting gambit -- who was also defeated by Howard Dean in the race for DNC chair.

Bob Schrum would be so proud.

Update (1/24): Easter Lemming provides the verification and the financial corrections, noted by asterisk above. (He worked on Janette's campaign, so it's not quite accurate to say she had "no" volunteers, either). And Stace throws in his dos centavos as well.

A blog is born (and less weighty matters)

Put your hands together for Feet to the Fire, a collaborative effort by some of my favorite people -- including me, of course. Muck will be raked.

-- Another of the Astros journeyman hurlers who sent the team into their glorious 1980 playoff run, Vern Ruhle, passed away at MD Anderson over the weekend. I thought that Ruhle was a tremendous pitching coach and felt bad when the Astros canned him in 2000, coincidentally the same year they began play in Enron Field Minute Maid Park. Crawfish Boxes has a nice compendium of stats (like always) and an old baseball card. Vayo con Dios, Vern.

-- As more global warming news warns, the fair-and-balanced pushback manages to get itself into the Chronic. Shame on you, Eric Berger. All the conservative freaks in town will continue to think the newspaper is too liberal, so you may as well quit trying to appease them.

I'll have more than these bite-size pieces later on as I'm sitting around doing nothing but scratching where it itches all day. (Pajamas media, indeed. I'm wearing sweats.)

Sunday Funnies

(click to view larger)

I smell postpourri

-- excellent point-counterpoint by Markos regarding the 2008 Democratic declareds.

-- there are several conversations going on about the past and future direction and management of the Texas Democratic Party.

-- another Houston police shooting of an unarmed African-American man has a neighborhood on edge. On a lighter note, this is the HPD news I count on HouStoned for.

-- the Texas corporations who benefited the most from Republican administration paid most of the$2 million tab for Rick Perry's inaugural. They include TXU, which is rushing to build several coal-fired plants in Texas. We're also getting gouged by the cellular phone companies. Surprised?

-- Iran got military parts and equipment from the Pentagon. Bush caved on his wiretapping efforts. Cheney thinks it's OK to look at your credit report. The White House visitors logs are now classified 'top secret'.

-- The Sunday Funnies and more tomorrow.

Scaling Mt. Mutombo

I was all set to post about the Rockets and then Norbizness said everything I was thinking (and more, and better):

The most interesting senior citizen player in the NBA reached a milestone (on January 10), as a rejuvenated Dikembe Mutombo collected 19 rebounds and 5 blocks to pass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as second on the league's all-time blocks list. More importantly, I think he's some sort of prince, he speaks 12 languages, he probably never used "Who wants to sex up Mutombo?" as a pick-up line at college bars in DC (although he should have), and, most importantly:

A well-known humanitarian, Mutombo started the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation to improve living conditions in his native Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997. His efforts earned him the NBA's humanitarian award in 2001. In the same year, ground was broken for a hospital in his hometown, the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, with Mutombo personally donating $3.5 million toward the hospital's construction. On August 14, 2006, Dikembe donated $15 million to the completion of the now named Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, named for his mother. When it opens in February 2007, the $29 million facility will become the first modern medical facility to be built in that area in nearly 40 years.

The Rockets, despite injuries to their two main players at different points in the season, are inexplicably 23-13 after blowing out the paper-tiger Lakers (January 10). Unfortunately, they are jockeying for midseason position in the Western Conference, which has approximately 100% of the top teams in the league. Put another way, teams like the Clippers that miss the playoffs in the West would probably be 3 or 4 seed in the pathetic, interest-less Eastern Conference.

Boy, that's cold

Edwards, Obama, Clinton, Clark, Richardson

As Barack Obama prepares to enter the race for the Democratic nomination (the official announcement comes on February 10), the denizens of Daily Kos are conducting their monthly straw poll.

My personal ranking appears in the headline (first to fifth, descending), as would be measured by today's momentum. FWIW, the 15,000 22,000-plus Kossacks have it Edwards, Obama, Clark, Richardson, Kucinich, then Clinton. Which could be one of the reasons Greg is posting so pissy.

"Fight on the Ice", Abbott vs. Van Os, scheduled today

In lieu of the canceled inaugural parade (Eileen gets kudos for best headline, again) the much anticipated "Fight on the Ice" between the 2006 attorney general candidates is on for today, at high noon, in front of the Texas Capitol.

Picture this:

David Van Os, twirling on ice skates like Eric Heiden, swinging a grapple hook like a lasso over his head, slams it into the back of Abbott's wheelchair and yanks his seat from under him. Abbott, his arms waving wildly but his useless legs splayed ridiculously, sails down the Capitol promenade on his backside, gathering speed on the downhill run. He skids all the way down Congress Avenue, bounces off the bridge railing and launches like an Iraqi mortar shot into the air and out into the middle of a not-quite-frozen Town Lake. As Abbott splashes spectaculary into the water, a tremendous cheer erupts from the assembled fight fans back on the south steps.

I can see it as plain as day.

(Hat tip to Phillip for the original inspiration.)

Dr. King speaks out against the Iraq war

Excuse me, I should have said Vietnam (though there is nearly no difference any longer).

Sunday Funnies (re-lo edition)

(The Sunday Funnies, a regular feature formerly appearing here, are moving permanently to this location. Mouse over and click to view larger.)

The TDP's election strategy got hosed -- by Texas Democrats

I owe a long posting on the Austin events I attended this past Monday and Tuesday: the goings-on associated with TDP chair Boyd Richie's presentation at the quarterly Senate District Executive Committee, and his dress rehearsal -- err, blogger's conference the day before, as well as my day at the Capitol for the opening of the Texas Lege's 80th session and the swearing-in of my new representative, Borris Miles of HD-144.

But I wish to begin with a bottom line observation:

The TDP's celebration of their 2006 election strategy -- targeting a handful of selected legislative races -- was blown up 24 hours later by the Craddick Fifteen.

Let's begin with last Sunday afternoon's get-together: on location at the little office on Rio Grande were Texas Progressive Alliancers Anna, Muse, John, Bo, McB and others. On the phone (in the middle of the conference room table) with me were Hal, Marc, Vince, and maybe more.

The very first thing Amber Moon, the party's communication director, said as we began was that there were going to be some breaking-news elements in what the chairman had to tell us, but we could not say anything about them on our blogs until 1 p.m. the next day, when he was to make the same PowerPoint presentation to the SDEC members.

This just doesn't reflect much knowledge about what we do, does it? "Keep a secret," you say? Oh, shurrrrre we will ...

And actually we did. In the interests of, you know, good working relations.

So Boyd got a dress rehearsal for Monday and we got some inside dope, such as the news that the TDP would be filing a lawsuit against Secretary of State Roger Williams and Attorney General Greg Abbott for their failure to enforce HAVA, specifically the integrity of Texans' ballots as they relate to DREs (electronic voting machines), and most particularly straight-ticket votes.

This is very good news, actually; the party has been extraordinarily successful in the courtroom in recent years, and the two attorneys named by Richie as taking charge of this case, Chad Dunn and Buck Wood, are capable litigators.

But most of Richie's remarks -- full transcript here -- were of the self-congratulatory variety regarding the Democratic victories in November, along with the obligatory cheerleading and back-slapping. This spin has always irked me more than a little bit, since the state party all but ignored every single other race in the state that they considered 'unwinnable'.

Monday, January 8: SDEC meeting, Hyatt Regency, Austin

The first part of the general assembly is no secret: Boyd gives his talk but I'm seeing the slides for the first time, and I note that the photos of the six new House members do not include Joe Heflin of Plainview; Donna Howard replaced him for some reason. Following that there were the various committee reports, but the most interesting exchange came when the finance report was given by Dennis Speight.

A handful of SDEC members -- Linda Perez of SD-21 (Floresville), Lloyd Criss of SD-11 (Galveston), Don Bankston of SD-18 (Richmond), Bob Dean of SD-19 (Pecos) -- raised questions about the campaign committee's revenues of $400,000 and its objectives but another SDEC member, Bill Perkison of SD-24 rose and shouted a non-sequitur about candidates needing to raise their own money and called the question, which was acceptance of the finance report.

This rather mundane circumstance has significance because the printed agenda for this meeting contained no item for new business. Richie did call for new business at the very end of the meeting, and when Linda Perez requested the creation of a campaign committee for 2008, that motion was referred to the rules committee for discussion at the next quarterly meeting.

What was apparent to this observer was that the SDEC as a group has generally abdicated its responsibility to direct and execute political strategy, leaving the void that Boyd (and in fairness, Fred Baron and Matt Angle) filled. The new blood on the committee intends to provide some oversight and accountability but they will be stonewalled by the old guard, who seem more interested in preserving the status quo.

The Texas Democratic Party desperately needs a governing body that is more activist and energetic and less beholden to the inertia of longtime members who consider their positions ones of prestige and social networking exclusively, not designed for any real effort.

Tuesday, January 9: Opening Session of the 80th Texas Legislature, Capitol

My bus departed Houston around 8 am with several government students from Westbury High School and a handful of Borris Miles' staff and supporters. It was a grand celebration on behalf of my new rep (details appear in my previous posting).

You've likely read all the analysis regarding the election of the speaker of the Texas House elsewhere, so let me repeat the contention I stated at the top here again:

The Texas Democratic Party's strategy in the last election cycle of maintaining a narrow focus on a few legislative contests was proven to be completely worthless as a result of the Democratic members of the Legislature who refused to stay with their caucus in the election for speaker. Moreover, since a legislative body almost by definition relies on compromise in order to be effective, this minimalist/defeatist strategy continues to be a problem until such time as enough seats flip to retake the majority. That certainly seems a stronger possibility in 2008 with a speaker named Craddick, but unforeseen presidential, economic, and assorted other socio-political scenarios always cloud the future.

The notable lack of a Democrat at the statewide executive level -- a drought entering its second decade -- means that until the party musters the will to get one (or some) elected, we'll be stuck in minority status for longer than ought to be necessary. As long as legislators don't see the state party standing up for statewide candidates, they're not tempted to run for higher office, thus making themselves content to feather their nests with plum committee assignments and the temptations of the trappings of entrenched power. This also means that Democratic bench strength -- having worthy challengers for higher office like senator or governor -- remains illusory.

As to the folly of having Democrats voting for a Republican speaker to support their own interests at the expense of everyone else's, a diarist at Burnt Orange put it best:

Every time a child gets kicked off CHIP, remember the Craddick 15.

When your public schools are once again under-funded, remember the Craddick 15.

When teachers are denied a real pay raise, and their health insurance once again fails to get restored, remember the Craddick 15.

When Jim Leininger forces the Texas House to endure a bloody floor fight on his risky private school voucher scheme, remember the Craddick 15.

When a Craddick lieutenant kills the ethics bill, remember the Craddick 15.

Every time you read an article about Craddick's corruption, self-dealing, being in business with a lobbyist, or collecting rent from a state contractor, remember the Craddick 15.

When (Rep. Will) Hartnett tries to outlaw a woman's right to choose, remember the Craddick 15.

When (Warren) Chisum uses the $14 billion "surplus" to buy down the property taxes of Bob Perry, Louis Beecherl, and Exxon Mobil, instead of restoring health care benefits for kids, or teachers, or the elderly, remember the Craddick 15.

...

When Phil King tries to outlaw stem cell research, remember the Craddick 15.

When kids can't afford to go to a state college because of the skyrocketing price of tuition, remember the Craddick 15.

When homeowner insurance rates continue to skyrocket, remember the Craddick 15.

When a coal plant gets built in your back yard, remember the Craddick 15.

...

When machines malfunction and arms are broken in public after close votes, remember the Craddick 15.

When the open meetings law is ignored, and Craddick lieutenants cut deals in the back halls in secret, remember the Craddick 15.

When tolls roads are built through minority neighborhoods, remember the Craddick 15.

When farmers lose their land through imminent domain so those toll roads can be built, remember the Craddick 15.

When the El Paso Medical School fails to get funded, remember the Craddick 15.

When promises made to the Valley don't get funded, remember the Craddick 15.

When appraisal caps are imposed on local governments, remember the Craddick 15.

When utility rates fail to get reduced and the poor and elderly in Houston and Dallas start dying from the heat this summer because they can't afford to pay double the national average for electricity, remember the Craddick 15.

...

When you see any nutty bill on the floor authored by Frank Corte, Bill Zedler, or Sid Miller, remember the Craddick 15.

When Leo Berman causes racial unrest on the House floor with his "round `em up and throw `em out" solution to immigration, remember the Craddick 15.

When you see Beverly Wooley at the front microphone (with her designer blouse and her Dooney Burke purse) bumble her way through every calendars committee announcement, remember the Craddick 15.

...

When you see a high school basketball team from a minority school represented by a Democrat denied access to the House floor, remember the Craddick 15.

When you see a story about a kid dying at CPS because they are still under-funded, remember the Craddick 15.

When you see the Enterprise Fund invest in some Midland deal, remember the Craddick 15.

When you have to endure a self-serving, pseudo-intellectual history lesson from Aaron Pena, remember the Craddick 15.

Every time you see a Republican lobbyist kissing Patrick Rose's ass, and calling him "Mr. Chairman", remember the Craddick 15.

When you see Bill Ceverha, a bankrupt lobbyist who ran Tom DeLay's TRMPAC, get re-appointed to manage a state fund worth $21 billion dollars, remember the Craddick 15.

Every time you're sitting on your toilet, think about Craddick sitting on his $1000 toilet that was paid for by special interest money and remember the Craddick 15.

There is still lots about Texas Democrats that needs fixing. We got a long way to go and a short time to get there, and worse yet, a bunch of good ol' boys and girls allegedly on our side blocking the way.