Payback, TXGOP style

When you go up against these thugs, you better be well-armed and well-prepared.

Nearly seven months after the 4th Court of Appeals ruled prosecutors had missed the deadline to file a contempt claim against local defense attorney Michael McCrum, the decision was reversed Wednesday by Texas' highest court for criminal matters.

The Court of Criminal Appeals opinion again opens the possibility that McCrum — currently serving as special prosecutor in the case against Gov. Rick Perry, who is also accused of professional misconduct — could spend up to six months in jail if found in contempt of court.

McCrum has denied any wrongdoing.

The Bexar County district attorney's office filed the contempt motion against McCrum in January, several months after a trial in which his client, Taylor Rae Rosenbusch, was convicted of intoxication manslaughter.

Prosecutors alleged McCrum had instructed Melanie Little, a punishment-phase witness who had served as Rosenbusch's addiction counselor, to “get lost for awhile,” turn off her cellphone and take a long lunch to avoid coming back to testify.

He was also accused in court documents of having told her “the DA was out for blood” and “wanted Taylor to be put away for a long time.”

A contempt hearing began in January, but it was halted after McCrum's attorneys took the case to the San Antonio-based 4th Court of Appeals, arguing that the state missed its deadline. The 4th Court agreed, ruling in February that the state was five days late.

The article goes on to detail some of the long-standing grievances between McCrum and the Bexar County DA's office.  Bad blood indeed.

The Fourth Court of Appeals, noteworthy for its seven women justices -- several are Latina -- has jurisdiction over thirty-two Central and South Texas counties, and the evidence suggests that it is a good mix of Democrats and Republicans.  The Court of Criminal Appeals is an entirely different kettle of (Republican extremist) fish.  Presiding judge Sharon "Killer" Keller is someone I've long blogged about; she has her own ethical challenges.  Three of the nine seats on that court are on your November ballot, and one of the Republican candidates, Bert Richardson, is the man who appointed McCrum special prosecutor.

That could make for some awkward moments next year in the CCA building.

I'd like to see more develop out of this investigation or hearing or whatever it may be called as it moves forward, but I expect McCrum and his counsel to be ready and able to defend his integrity, should the claims against him proceed.

I just don't think Rick Perry's indictments are going away so easily.

Update: More from Texas Lawyer.

The Friday Night Fight

A few more things worth noting as we move closer to the action.

They’ve sniped at each other from afar, blasted the airwaves with TV ads, held rallies, made phone calls and raised money.  Now, for the first time, the candidates for Texas governor will face each other in person in a live, televised debate.

Attorney General Greg Abbott, the front-runner, has the most to lose in the high-stakes Friday night encounter. The Republican is favored to win and has been limiting his unscripted public appearances lest he blow his sizable lead.

Despite his front-runner status and longevity in Texas politics, Abbott has only appeared in one formal TV debate as a statewide candidate — a 30-minute 2002 encounter with then-Democratic attorney general candidate Kirk Watson, the Abbott campaign confirmed.

I'm not sure how Abbott's campaign defines 'formal', but he did appear with Barbara Radnoksy, his Democratic challenger and Jon Roland, the Libertarian, on Houston public television's 'Red, White, and Blue' in 2010.  She called him "Rick Perry's consigliere".  I posted about it here; the video link is still alive.  It's accurate, however, that Abbott completely ignored David Van Os in 2006 (I know this because I helped run that campaign).  And Van Os also ran against Abbott in 1998, for the Texas Supreme Court, a contest I'm certain was covered in the same great detail as today's media does SCOTX races.  The scalding truth is that Greg Abbott has pretty much coasted through his several elections.  Not this time (even if the general consensus suggests it).

“For Abbott, it’s going to be seen more as a source of risk than opportunity,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “He needs to stay on message for Republican voters and not produce anything that is a headline the next day that will disturb existing patterns.”

Or, in football parlance, Henson predicted Abbott’s strategy will be: “Play defense, declare victory and exit the field.”

Yeah, we'll see how that goes.  It should be fun to see if he can avoid screwing up.

The one-hour debate, hosted by The Monitor newspaper, will be held in the Rio Grande Valley at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance this Friday at 6 p.m.  Davis won a coin toss and elected to take the first question.  Each candidate gets a minute to respond to questions, and the opponent will be offered a 45-second rebuttal.

There will be ample opportunity for fireworks when the candidates are prompted to ask their opponent a question.

Voters can tune in to a livestream of the debate at The Monitor newspaper’s website, themonitor.com.  TV stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, including KEYE in Austin and WOAI in San Antonio, will also air the debate live, organizers said.

C-SPAN will re-broadcast the debate at 9 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, the network said.  The Monitor is sponsoring the one-hour debate along with KGBT Action 4 News, the local CBS affiliate, and KTLM Channel 40, the Spanish-language Telemundo TV station.  The candidates will be grilled by Action’s 4’s Ryan Wolf, KTLM’s Dalila Garza and The Monitor’s Carlos Sanchez.

So what about that polling, anyway?

...The best way to “know” what’s truly going on, besides polling everybody (or having an actual election), is to use an estimate based on the average (loosely speaking) of the public (i.e., non-internal) polls that have followed professional norms of disclosure. As already stated, one poll is usually pretty robust if that’s all you have, but two are better than one, and three are better than two. In the case of the Abbott-Davis contest, the averages show — even with intermittent polling from various sources — about a 12- to 13-point gap in Abbott’s favor.

This estimate makes a fair amount of intuitive sense, particularly if you factor in the margins of error in the public polls we have to work with in Texas. Polls come with a margin of error, which in most of the Abbott-Davis polling has been 3.5 to 4.5 percentage points. So a poll that posits an 8-point race could be a 4- or 12-point one, and an 18-point race could be a 22- or 14-point one. Based on previous vote margins in Texas (for example, Rick Perry’s 55-42 defeat of Bill White in 2010), a 12- to 14-point race — somewhere between the two numbers that have been so heavily reported — sounds plausible right now.

Noah said a few days ago that he thought it was ten.  Fifty-five to forty-two sounds about right to me today, same as Rick Perry versus Bill White four years ago as the TexTrib noted.

Senator Davis is going to have to break some huevos in order to scramble this race.