The most boring municipal election season ever

Yes, it's this one.

Ben Hall's team has been arrested for burglary (of thunder).  Eric Dick hasn't even put out any signs, for chrissakes.  Helena Brown and Brenda Stardig -- and Amy Peck and the rest of that Tea Pee gang out in Oak Forest -- are as quiet as churchmice.

Michael Kubosh has apparently put the kibosh on his own campaign. (Turn the cameras back on, buddy! Please!)  Jenifer Rene Pool and Rogene Calvert and all the rest of AL3 are similarly flying well under the radar. Even Big Jolly's post about the candidate forum held at the Pachyderm Club last week put my feet to sleep.

This is a wretched development.  I have never been so bored in my decade-plus of blogging.

To be clear, I like the stealth campaign of Don Cook for mayor.  He's had four LTEs published by the Chronicle.  I suppose I could link to them, if I could find them.  And James Horwitz, the challenger to Jack "You Don't Die from the Flu" Christie, is a great candidate in need of a little more exposure, just like everybody else.

I remember when city council campaigns had some electricity around them.  Even Ben Mendez and Graci Garces seem to have shot their wads early.  (I really thought that nasty "fat" joke was going to be a running battle.  Alas, no.)

And please don't suggest that I read whatever drivel Campos is writing.  The lights aren't on and nobody's home, folks.  It's an empty house.  Nobody wants to break into it, either.  Not even the hungry, homeless people want to crash there.

For today's example, he seems completely unaware of the fact that deathcare monopolist SCI, owner of Forest Park Lawndale cemetery (and every other boneyard in Houston), has a standing offer to purchase the adjacent Gus Wortham golf course whenever the city is ready to sell.  The price has only been going in one direction for years now, and it's not up.  Even the developers won't get interested in bidding for that very prime property, because the neighborhood hasn't gentrified enough for them.  And it probably never will.

I bet if he ever spoke to James Rodriguez once in awhile, he might have become aware of this.

Maybe this will have some fireworks.  Perhaps there will be a poll released on the mayor's race, or someone will sling some piece of mud that's larger than a crawfish mound.

But I gotta say that so far, it's been really lame.

Update: District I to the rescue!

Eastside city council candidate Ben Mendez’s campaign claims he  is being smeared by rumors and innuendos, and denied Mendez  blamed a gang rape of an 11-year-old girl on the clothes she was wearing.

Campaign manager Joaquin Martinez  confirmed  community leader  Bill Lawson has withdrawn his support for Mendez in the District I race. Lawson, a respected former pastor, wrote a letter saying he had “serious problems” with Mendez remarks on the sexual attack, as well as what he called negative campaigning against candidate Graci Garces.

“There have been people saying Ben made insensitive remarks, but Ben didn’t make any,” said Martinez. 

Martinez, you may recall, was a candidate in the SD-6 special last winter.

“Throughout the campaign we’ve had several people who have tried to smear Ben Mendez as a candidate, because he is the frontrunner right now.”

There's no polling of any significance that reflects who is leading in this race; that's just bravado on the part of Martinez.  Personally I don't see how Mendez could possibly have ever been ahead at any time.  And trust me, my opinion carries as much weight as Martinez's and everybody else's (except for the one belonging to Marc Campos, which is worth less than zero as usual).

This development has significance due to Lawson's high standing in the African American community (and the likelihood that black turnout in this year's election might be somewhat higher than in years past).

In the letter, Lawson wrote that he admired Mendez as a civic leader, businessman and a friend, adding he would make a good city representative for  the council district.

“I simply cannot continue to take a stand for underclasses and give public endorsement for someone who would ignore them,” Lawson wrote.

Pretty harsh.  After taking the summer off, it looks like there might be a resumption of hostilities between the Mendez and Garces teams.

I'll pop the corn.

Update: Texpate digs deeper into the details.

Update II (Friday, 9/20): Big Jolly has another kerfuffle involving involving Kubosh and a "racist" e-mail.  My feet are wide awake now.

Women, Wendy, and waiting

A popular topic lately among the chattering class in recent days seems to be that Texas women -- more specifically, suburban Texas women -- might have some role to play in Wendy Davis' political future. 

Ignore Dr. Murray's contention that Chris Bell got 43.3 percent of the 2006 vote.  (He gets the rest correct and I chalk that error up to him needing another intern for fact-checking.)  I just thought I had cleared up this deal a couple of months ago.

Update: it has been pointed out to me that by "major party vote", Dr. Murray accurately pushed up Bell's tally from 29.79% to the 43.3 he cites in the above link.  In other words, he excluded everybody who voted for Kinky Friedman and Carole Strayhorn in 2006 and then called the remainder whole.

I don't believe anyone -- no matter their pedigree -- can simply delegitimize the ballots of over 1.3 million Texans in order to reinforce a premise.

This is what is meant by the adage 'figures don't lie, but liars can figure'.  It is partisan and duopolistic at best -- and duplicitous and disingenuous at worst -- to manipulate data to reach your desired conclusion.  And it strains credibility to its breaking point for any reasonable person to call that 'accurate'.

It's helpful that Republicans -- from "Too Stupid" Robbie Cooper (I have been following this douchebag for years, so that you didn't have to) and "Retard Barbie" Jeff Rutledge all the way to Dave Carney and Greg Abbott himself -- keep pounding home the misogyny.  Conservo-scumbags Tweeting and blogging aren't ever going to be as influential as the experiences of exurban and rural Texas women like these, however. This is what's actually helping turn the worm faster.

A Texas woman who was shamed by her doctor for having a hickey and wanting birth control says she is now forced to drive four hours to a Planned Parenthood clinic for health care due to the state’s new anti-abortion laws.

Athena Mason told KUT that her first visit to the doctor as a student at Texas A&M was awkward.

“I had a hickey and the doctor was just like, you shouldn’t be doing that,” she recalled. “I’m like, ‘It’s a hickey, it’s nothing major.’ But I got a big lecture. [He said] my boyfriend was abusive and all of these things. And then I asked for birth control. I did not hear the end of that. So I said never mind, I’ll go somewhere else.”

Mason started using the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan. But that facility is one of four women’s health service providers that closed in August after the state passed new regulations restricting abortions.

So Mason now drives four hours to the Planned Parenthood clinic in Austin for health care.

Shamed by her doctor because she had a hickey. That's not The Onion, but it should be.

If we could just make Republicans understand that birth control provided to women prevents as many as 71% of all abortions, we might make some progress. Then we could say, "If you cut family planning clinics out of the state budget, you will have more abortions", and perhaps that fact would start to make some moral sense to the pro-birth crowd.

Nah; these are Republicans and this is logic. Who am I kidding?

As Ana Kasparian says, "If you vote Republican, and you have a vagina, you are a moron."  That is sadly and particularly true in Texas.  But as we wait for Wendy Davis to decide to run for governor, that message is already being received -- and understood -- by women everywhere.

Update: The waiting will be over on October 3rd.