Senate special election update

RG Ratcliffe at the Houston Chronic (bold emphasis throughout is mine):

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, according to several reliable sources, has been telling Republicans in the past week that her current plan is to send Gov. Rick Perry a letter next month announcing her intention to resign from office effective on either Dec. 31 or Jan. 1.

By doing that, Hutchison remains in the Senate through this fall's health care debate while also giving Republicans who want to run for other offices when the dominos fall a chance to shuffle their campaigns. The two most obvious instances are Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who likely wants to run for Hutchison's Senate seat, and Attorney General Greg Abbott who wants to run for lieutenant governor.

The filing deadline is Jan. 4, 2010.

The move also would put the ball in Perry's court for naming an interim senator and then calling a special election to fill Hutchison's term through 2012.

Now Kay Bailey said six weeks ago: "The actual leaving of the Senate will be sometime -- October, November -- that, in that time frame", so this obviously appears to be a change of plans. Kay Bailey waffling on previous statements is nothing new; it does however affect the timing of the special election significantly ...

If she resigned at the end of the year, she would force Perry to make the interim appointment before Jan. 4 if he wanted to give the position to someone such as Dewhurst who has to make a choice about running for re-election. It also might push him to allow the Senate special election to occur on the uniform election date in May so that race won't interfere with the governor's race.

Perry can declare an emergency and hold the election sooner, but state law forbids him from setting the special election on the same day as the primary.

There is a high likelihood either way that the Senate race and governor's race would overlap. The potential exists for a gubernatorial primary in March, with a runoff in April, followed by the Senate special in May with a runoff in June. Four major elections in four months.

I (and Harvey Kronberg) had previously written that the special would likely be during the holidays -- between Thanksgiving and Christmas of this year -- on the previous declaration by Kay Bailey that she would cut and run in "October, November".

What changes here is the likelihood of any Democrat running for Senate -- be they named Bill White or John Sharp -- shifting into the race for governor at the last minute. With a four-month timeline between resignation, appointment, and special election, either man is much less inclined to cede the Senate nom to the other.

The other potential clusterfuck is if Perry does NOT name Dewhurst to the vacated seat, leaving him cock-blocking Abbott, who similarly impedes Ted Cruz and Dan Gattis Branch (both of whom have already raised a million bucks each for that race), and so on. A five-month campaign puts a little pressure on the various GOP fund-raisers, with whatever eventual gaggle of Republicans -- Michael Williams, Roger Williams, Florence Shapiro, Elizabeth Ames-Jones, blahblahblah -- vying for caysh with Perry and Hutchison (who have no limits on the amount they can raise for a gubernatorial contest). I'm pretty sure Perry wanted to avoid that, not to mention sharing headlines and dates of campaign events around the state and so on.

And some of those incumbents are going to decide not to make the run, keeping their safe seats in the Texas Senate or the Railroad Commission rather than gamble on the US Senate.

But really: who knows if Kay Bailey means what she is rumored to be saying THIS time?

Anybody need more popcorn?

Friday Funnies "Dancing with the Czars" edition

Mighty oaks and ACORN

Hey Robbie, you five-day-old douchesack, take your tongue outta Glenn Beck's anus and look around; maybe you'll see something besides right-wing shit.

ACORN has received a grand total of $53 million in federal funds over the last 15 years -- an average of $3.5 million per year. Meanwhile, not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars of public funds have been, in the last year alone, transferred to or otherwise used for the benefit of Wall Street. Billions of dollars in American taxpayer money vanished into thin air, eaten by private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, led by Halliburton subsidiary KBR. All of those corporate interests employ armies of lobbyists and bottomless donor activities that ensure they dominate our legislative and regulatory processes, and to be extra certain, the revolving door between industry and government is more prolific than ever, with key corporate officials constantly ending up occupying the government positions with the most influence over those industries. ...

So with this massive pillaging of America's economic security and the control of American government by its richest and most powerful factions growing by the day, to whom is America's intense economic anxiety being directed? To a non-profit group that devotes itself to providing minute benefits to people who live under America's poverty line, and which is so powerless in Washington that virtually the entire U.S. Senate just voted to cut off its funding at the first sign of real controversy -- could anyone imagine that happening to a key player in the banking or defense industry?

Local frothing idiots aside, the manipulation of the masses of fools on the right would continue to be laughable if it weren't spreading like swine flu at the day care.

If one were to watch Fox News or listen to Rush Limbaugh -- as millions do -- one would believe that the burden of the ordinary American taxpayer, and the unfair plight of America's rich, is that their money is being stolen by the poorest and most powerless sectors of the society. An organization whose constituencies are often-unregistered inner-city minorities, the homeless and the dispossesed is depicted as though it's Goldman Sachs, Blackwater, and Haillburton combined, as though Washington officials are in thrall to those living in poverty rather than those who fund their campaigns. It's not the nice men in the suits doing the stealing but the very people, often minorities or illegal immigrants, with no political or financial power who nonetheless somehow dominate the government and get everything for themselves. The poorer and weaker one is, the more one is demonized in right-wing mythology as all-powerful receipients of ill-gotten gains; conversely, the stronger and more powerful one is, the more one is depicted as an oppressed and put-upon victim ...

It's such an obvious falsehood -- so counter-intuitive and irrational -- yet it resonates due to powerful cultural manipulations. Most of all, what's so pernicious about all of this is that the same interests who are stealing, pillaging and wallowing in corruption are scapegoating the poorest and most vulnerable in order to ensure that the victims of their behavior are furious with everyone except for them.

UPDATE: John Cole highlights what might be the most telling aspect of all of this: demands for a "Special Prosecutor" into Obama's so-called "relationship with ACORN" from the very same circles that vehemently objected to investigations into torture, illegal government spying, politicized prosecutions, military contractor theft, Lewis Libby's obstruction of justice, and virtually every other instance of Bush-era criminality. Those, of course, are the very same people who, before that, demanded endless inquiries into Whitewater and Vince Foster's "murder." There's nothing more valuable than petty, dramatic "scandals" to distract attention from what is actually taking place.

This is, obviously, the Fauxtrage we were waiting for this week. The Chron's Nick Anderson has the summation: