Green Party submits petitions to qualify for Texas ballot

*As a Democratic precinct chair I cannot -- and do not -- endorse or support any of the Green Party candidates.

There were no TV cameras Monday in front of the Texas Secretary of State's office building south of the Capitol. No crowd of cheering supporters. But statewide coordinator Kat Swift with the Green Party of Texas says the dozen or so boxes filled with signed petitions spoke louder than a roaring crowd.

Swift: "And we have with us 93,000 petitions roughly of Texas voters, who did not vote in the primary, who want to see the Green Party on the ballot."

That's more than double the 44,000 signatures needed to get a political party on the Texas ballot.

[...]

Beyond that, it costs real money -- from $100,000 to $500,000 to pay a company to collect the signatures. That's where the Free and Equal Elections Foundation stepped in. Christina Tobin is founder and chair of the non-partisan foundation.

Tobin: "What we do is we gather signatures for candidates nationwide across the political spectrum. From Greens to Libertarians to Constitution to disenfranchised Democrats and Republicans."

And in Texas, the group also helped the Green Party raise the money needed to pay for the signature collection. Richard Winger edits the website Ballot Access News, a clearing house for information from across the country. He says Texas is considered one of the five hardest states to get on the ballot, basing his claim on the 2008 presidential election.

[...]

Meanwhile, the Secretary of State's office says it will validate the signatures and have an official ruling of whether the Green party made the statewide ballot sometime in the middle of June.

More from the Independent Political Report:

Assuming they get on the ballot, the list of candidates who will qualify for the ballot is as follows:

Bart Boyce Governor
Deb Shafto Governor
Herb Gonzales, Jr Lieutenant Governor
Edward Lindsay Comptroller of Public Accounts
Art Browning Railroad Commissioner
Jim Howe US Congress, District 11
Ed Scharf US Congress, District 23
Paul Cardwell State Board of Education, District 9
Ryan Seward State Representative, District 94
Joel West State Representative, District 144
Don Cook County Clerk, Harris County
Roger Baker County Clerk, Travis County
Earl Lyons County Clerk, Bexar County
kat swift County Commissioner, Pct 2, Bexar County
Chuck Robinson Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1, Place 1, Bexar County
Joy Vidheecharoen-Glatz Justice of the Peace, Pct 3, Dallas County
Jeffrey Dale Glatz County Surveyor, Dallas County
Esther Choi County Clerk, Dallas County

Don't miss the comments at that link. Shafto and Cook, you may recall, ran as Houston city council candidates under the Progressive Coalition banner in last November's municipal elections.

Here's a bit from the afore-mentioned Ballot Access News:

This is only the second time that the Texas Green Party has submitted enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. The first time was in 2000, and the party polled enough votes in 2000 so that it was automatically on the ballot as well in 2002. Parties in Texas must poll either 5% for any statewide race, or 2% for Governor. Parties that get 2% for Governor enjoy qualified status for the next four years, but parties that get 5% for any statewide race only gets qualified status for the next two years.

Lastly, our freaky TeaBagger buddy at the Ellis County Observer:

I don’t think the Dallas County surveyor position will hold up, unless the Greens have a hidden secret that the surveyor position was never abolished. And, state law requires that in order for a minor party to be automatically given ballot access after this year, they must score 5 percent in a statewide race. So, the Green Party candidate for Comptroller should easily get that, since Republican Susan Combs only faces Libertarian Mary Ruwart in November. A three-way race for Comptroller should get that coveted 5 percent.

And the worst is yet to come

Laurence Lewis:

Fifty miles of Louisiana's coastline already have been hit, including a major pelican rookery. The Louisiana marshes served as nurseries for shrimp, crab and oysters. Will the local fishing industry survive? Even if it does, how long will it take for even moderate recovery, and how many jobs will be lost, both temporarily and permanently? Those marshes also served as a buffer for New Orleans, when hurricanes hit. This just keeps getting worse. And it will take many years for nature to break this mess down.

Among other ominous developments, BP is responding to the EPA's order that it seek an alternative to the dangerous chemical dispersant it had been using by saying it intends to continue with the one it has. Who is in charge, here? Gulf Islands National Seashore is imminently threatened not only by the oil, but by those chemicals. And the government official leading the response to the disaster says only BP has the expertise to plug the leak, and he trusts they are doing their best. Which raises the question of why we entrust entire ecosystems to the expertise of a corporation whose best is a continuing catastrophe.

The magnitude of this disaster is so overwhelmingly large that it's easy to overlook the ways in which it is very small. As in the human scale. The people on Grand Isle who will lose their businesses and their jobs. Those employed in the Louisiana fishing industry. Those employed in the industries that depend on the catch. Those living and working on the coast of Florida, and beyond. The people for whom this disaster could not be much larger. And all the fragile ecosystems that will be destroyed.

This is a teaching moment, for us all. It should be a learning moment. If someone would take this moment to teach. So that enough people would learn. So that we could, collectively, do what needs be done. On the large scale. On the small.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is enjoying the last week of school before summer vacation as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

WhosPlayin notes that the Dallas-Fort Worth area has once again failed to meet its 8 hour ozone attainment, forcing TCEQ to implement contingency measures. Have you had your two teaspoons of ozone today?

Rand Paul explains why Texas Republicans don't mind pollution, notes CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme.

Off the Kuff kicks off the official countdown to KBH's 2012 re-election announcement.

Gas and greed divide neighbors in Argyle, TX. A tale of avarice, lies and corruption and civil disobedience in the Barnett Shale brought to you by TXsharon at Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

Bay Area Houston will be attending the Sunset Commission review of the Texas Department of Insurance on Tuesday.

There's a common thread of arrogant ignorance that runs between Rand Paul and the Texas SBOE, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs pulls the string.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson shows that the "big 3" get skittish on certain budget cuts. That won't be the case after the election: Perry, Dewhurst, Straus playing politics with budget cuts.

Libby Shaw says Thank You Rand Paul. The brash-talking ideologue has broken the right wing's first rule: don't tell me what you really think. See more at TexasKaos.

Neil at Texas Liberal reflected on how glad he is that we have a well-armed federal government from freedom-snatching folks like Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Jose Lima 1972 - 2010

For Jose Lima, it was time. And to those who knew and played along side him, it came way too soon.

Lima, the former Astros pitcher who became a fan favorite almost overnight for his flamboyant personality and fledgling musical career as much as his meteoric rise – and equally fast fall – on the mound, died Sunday of an apparent heart attack at his home in Los Angeles. He was 37.

Known affectionately as “Lima Time,” the veteran of 13 major league seasons and six teams joined the Astros in 1997 in a multiplayer trade from Detroit to begin a 4½ -season stint with the team.

His best year came in 1999, when he went 21-10 with a 3.58 ERA in a career-high 35 starts en route to earning All-Star honors and helping the Astros to a third consecutive National League Central title.

News of the righthander’s death reached the Astros as they prepared to take on the Tampa Bay Rays in Sunday's series finale at Minute Maid Park.

Without question one of the brightest talents -- and personalities -- to grace the locals.

At his best, Lima won a combined 37 games in 1998-1999 and looked primed to become one of the most successful pitchers in franchise history.

But Lima could never replicate the effort once the team moved from the cavernous Astrodome to then-Enron Field, where the field dimensions played mind games on the pitcher.

He went 7-16 in 2000 and 1-2 in 2001 before being traded back to Detroit. He finished 46-42 as an Astro with a 4.77 ERA. For his career, he went 89-102 with a 5.26 ERA.

Lima’s last major league stint came in 2006 with New York Mets, with whom he lasted just four starts. He also had a stint in the Korean league in 2008 and the independent Golden Baseball League last year.

He had recently rejoined the Los Angeles Dodgers, for whom he pitched in 2004, as a member of the Dodgers Alumni Association.

He used to own a home on a golf course south of Houston where I played occasionally and sometimes that meringue music was blasting so loud you could have heard it inside the Dome.

He lived a full life in a short time. RIP.

Black underpinnings

That's not a reference to any subjectified opinions about her future Supreme Court decisions, either.

U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, doing the customary meet-and-greet with the senators who will decide her fate as a Supreme Court nominee. Whether Kagan leans left or right in her judicial demeanor is for court observers to debate. But in matters of style, she is unabashedly conservative.

... Kagan took the anti-style offensive several steps further. She put on rouge and lipstick for the formal White House announcement of her nomination, but mostly she embraced dowdy as a mark of brainpower. She walked with authority and stood up straight during her visits to the Hill, but once seated and settled during audiences with senators, she didn't bother maintaining an image of poised perfection. She sat hunched over. She sat with her legs ajar.

Kagan made her debut as a U.S. Supreme Court nominee dressed in a hip-length emerald-green jacket, black underpinnings, sheer black hosiery, sturdy black pumps, a strand of pearls and matching earrings. Her style was tidy and conservative but with a generous sprinkling of frumpiness of the sort that federal Washington can't resist -- at least when in front of a camera's intruding lens. 

Even for the Fashion and Style section this is a truly offensive, ridiculously sexist article. Did I just miss the media vetting of John Roberts' and Sam Alito's underwear? The scrutiny of their leg position while sitting?

Ohhhhh yeah, it's about the all important lesbian question.

Tied up in the assessment of style -- Kagan's or anyone else's -- is the awkward, fumbling attempt to suss out precisely who a person is. For Kagan, that means folks are using fashion as a limited tool for making sense of her sexual orientation (Well, she's 50, a bit plain and never married!) and then going on to the larger question of whether being gay or not matters on the high court. (Doesn't everything matter -- including whether one has a small-town background or an inner-city one -- in how one interprets the world?)

So the chatter on the Internet and in the coffee shops, turns to the lesbian archetypes: the Birkenstock-wearing, crunchy granola womyn; the short-haired, androgynous type; and the glamorous, lipstick-wearing Portia de Rossi girl. What does Kagan's short hair mean? Or the fact that she wears makeup?

I have plenty of issues with Kagan's potential views as a SCOTUS justice, but this article just should never have been written, much less published by the Washington Post. Even (especially?) in the Society section.

Update: Maybe Robin Givhan, the author of the Washington Post piece excerpted above, really is a misogynist.