UT/TexTrib poll has Kesha Rogers leading the field in Dem US Senate primary

There aren't any other huge surprises in this (historically unreliable) data.

In the Democratic primary, the candidate who has been on the ballot the most times, Kesha Rogers, leads the best-financed candidate, David Alameel, 35 percent to 27 percent. Maxey Scherr had 15 percent, followed by Harry Kim at 14 percent and Michael Fjetland at 9 percent. Voters are largely unfamiliar with those candidates; 74 percent initially expressed no opinion before being asked how they would vote if they had to decide now.

“This is what it looks like when you have a bunch of candidates, no infrastructure and no money,” (polling co-director Jim) Henson said. “The first person to raise some money and run some ads could really move this.”

I think Henson has that accurate; Alameel's voluminous mailings and TV ads should get him into the lead by the time all the votes are counted.  But I warned a couple of my EVBB friends week before last that I feared an Alameel/Rogers runoff, and now it looks like I'm left to hope that the TexTrib's polling lives up to its comically bad reputation.  However there's greater confidence to be found in their other numbers...

-- Abbott 47, Davis 36, Don't know 17.  About right, I would say.  Update: And yes, it is worth noting that this poll concluded before the Ted Nugent crap exploded (pun intended), so the effect of the most significant development of the entire campaign is not reflected here.

-- Cornyn 62, Stockman 16, everybody else in single digits that total 15.  Also about right, and in defiance of what was released last week (somebody is awfully wrong, that's for sure).  The Conservative News distribution probably doesn't save Stockman, either.

-- Dewhurst 37, Patrick 31, Staples, 17, Patterson 15.  Nothing to quarrel over here, either.  Remains to be seen whether Patrick's Ill Eagle flap hurts him; that news also broke after the poll concluded.  But if something like these numbers hold, Dewhurst is toast in the runoff.  Let's note this also.

The Republican nominee will face state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, who is unopposed in her primary. Van de Putte lagged behind each of the four Republicans in hypothetical general election matchups, trailing Dewhurst 44 percent to 32 percent, Patrick 41 percent to 32 percent, Staples 41 percent to 29 percent, and Patterson 41 percent to 30 percent. Undecided voters made up the difference in each race.

That seems like a sensible set of figures for late February, too.  The only other result that so much as raises my eyebrow is Tea Party queen Debra Medina laying waste to the well-funded men in the R comptroller race.

There's going to be some crying at Glenn Hegar's watch party on Election Night.  Hope he doesn't feel the urge to have to shoot anything.

Update: Socratic Gadfly with more on what this might mean for the Green Party Senate candidate, who also needs some free media but isn't well-positioned to take advantage of the publicity.  And Charles breaks things down as well.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance thinks Ted Nugent is an appropriate spokesman for the modern Republican Party of Texas as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff analyzes the turnout issue for Democrats in 2014.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson on the Round Rock members of the Lege reporting to the local business lobby, while leaving out the issues that matter most to the people in their districts, in Schwertner, Gonzales, & Dale Go To The Chamber.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is appalled at Texas Republicans holding a faux hearing on women's health care. Give it up. Republicans have waged a real war against women and their health care. You're not fooling anyone.

It's Ted Nugent's (Texas Republican) party, and we just have to live with it, noted the Texas Observer -- and excerpted by PDiddie at Brains and Eggs. But there were also problemas grandes para Dan Patrick last week.

Texpatriate endorses John Whitmire in the Democratic primary for State Senate District 15.

Neil at All People Have Value was prompted by a visit to Galveston to reflect that we can choose to view ourselves in life on the mainland, on an island or at sea. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Robert Rivard argues that cities and counties are left trying to solve the problems caused by a generation of indifference from Texas' state leadership.

Lone Star Q provides video of Wendy Davis discussing her support of same sex marriage to the San Antonio Express-News editorial board.

Concerned Citizens warns about the animus hiding behind religious exemptions.

Better Texas explains why a higher minimum wage is good for Texans.

Grits for Breakfast highlights the modern equivalent to the Dallas Buyers Club.

Nonsequiteuse gets to the heart of the Nugent/Abbott affair.

Greg Wythe continues his in-depth look at how the voter ID law was enforced in the 2013 election in Harris County.

Burkablog celebrates what would have been Barbara Jordan's 78th birthday.

Chris Quintero witnessed and videotaped two Austin Police Department officers detain and arrest a female jogger for jaywalking and not immediately identifying herself (see here for more).

And Swamplot makes us all feel old by taking a look at the house from Reality Bites, 20 years later.

Big money D donors cross party lines to unseat SCOTX judges

Frankly, this is as fucked up as duopoly politics gets.  I will emphasize the names you should commit to memory.

When Democratic donor and Houston plaintiff's attorney John Eddie Williams recently moved into a $10 million, 24,000-square-foot River Oaks mansion, a group of Houston trial lawyers threw him a house-warming.

(Last week)'s gathering at Williams' home had a more ambitious agenda, however: raising campaign cash for a slate of Republican primary challengers to incumbent Texas Supreme Court justices, drawing largely on traditional Democratic donors.

Combined with an emailed appeal from Dallas Democratic trial lawyer Lisa Blue Baron for the same slate, Wednesday's event makes clear that Democratic trial lawyers are attempting to knock off conservative jurists on their own turf, the Republican primary.

The strategy is steeped in the tragicomic history of Texas's system of electing judges via partisan elections fueled by special-interest money from both ends of the political spectrum. In 1976, Texas voters mistakenly elevated Don Yarbrough to the Texas Supreme Court – apparently confusing his name with the legendary U.S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough. He ended up serving only one year of his term, spending the rest of it in prison for a murder-for-hire scheme.

Nonetheless, efforts in the Texas Legislature to reform Texas' easily manipulated system of judicial selection have been sabotaged for decades by both political parties.

Yeah, that's a big problem, but the bigger problem is the one nobody wants to acknowledge, and that is that there is too much money in our political system already.  And that is a problem almost nobody wants to talk about, much less do something about.

"A lot of money changes hands in the civil justice system, which is presided over by judges," (former TSC justice Tom Phillips) said. "People are going to be interested in how they (judges) get there."

Phillips' views are shared by Mark Lanier, a prominent Republican Houston plaintiff's lawyer working hand-in-hand with the Democratic lawyers to unseat the incumbents this year.

"I think the partisan election of judges is the worst possible way to choose judges. I am not a fan, but I've got a responsibility to play in the system," he said.

He's got a responsibility, but he obviously doesn't want to make any improvements in a system that benefits everybody.  Just a few others like him among the 1%.

Lanier was one of the official hosts of Williams' "housewarming," which benefited Balance PAC, a fund supporting challengers to three incumbents on the Texas Supreme Court: former Rep. Robert Talton, who is taking on Chief Justice Nathan Hecht; Dripping Springs lawyer Joe Pool Jr., who is facing Justice Jeff Brown; and 14th Court of Appeals Justice Sharon McCally, who is challenging Justice Phil Johnson.

"This is a broad coalition of Texans who believe the court has been taken over by multinational corporations," Balance PAC spokesman Eric Axel said. "The court has become afflicted with affluenza."

This is a narrow coalition of wealthy attorneys who are at least correct in that the SCOTX has gone full fascist.

Axel said 74 percent of jury verdicts granted to plaintiffs are overturned on appeal. "If you are a corporation, you know you can win on appeal," he said. "This court is against the average person."

Texans for Lawsuit Reform disagrees, as you might expect. I won't excerpt their response.

What sticks out like the sorest of thumbs is that Crazy M'F'n Bob Talton is their pick to unseat Nathan Hecht.  In what universe is Talton better than Hecht?  I'll tell you: a universe where there are only two colors, black and white.  No shades of grey.  There's no blue or red, just green (and not the healthy shade of green, either).  There's not even a left or right.

If you needed yet another example of why 50% of Texans are NOT registered to vote, and half of the people who are registered don't bother to vote, then here you go.  Once again, when people say, "my vote doesn't matter", or "they're all crooks", THIS IS WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.

Meanwhile, the political consultants who grift from the money men and women are also working hard in their spare time to reinforce the status quo.  If Facebook isn't showing you that, then it's a discussion among Houston folks about how wonderful this article by Ed Kilgore is.

This is nothing more than a whole bunch of not getting it on purpose going on.  You want to see another group of people, much more mainstream, who appear to be completely confused about where their political interests lie?  Look at this.

But to concede one of their points -- and as Gadfly has observed -- the progressive alternative has a long ways to go yet to present itself as viable.  So then here we are... with about 3 of every 4 Texans refusing for a variety of reasons to participate in the electoral process, leaving us all represented by a few wealthy people who are slaves to the extremely wealthy.

I just don't see any way to change any of it in my lifetime, short of what's happened in the Arab Spring nations, and what's happening in the Ukraine, Venezuela, and Thailand at this very moment.  But as this cartoon demonstrates, that development is highly unlikely.

Sunday Funnies