Houston 2015 elections: Of conflicts, and conflicts of interest

-- Sly makes it official.  Still the betting favorite, IMHO.

-- Via Charles, the grumbling about Harris County Democratic Chairman Lane Lewis juggling party politics and a city council bid has gone public.

There's enough at both those links to absorb, but what slipped mostly under the radar was this complaint in Project Q last month from AL1 entrant Jenifer Rene Pool.  Actually Wayne mentioned it in cautious tones when it broke, and TransGriot seemed a little irritated about it, but other than that, nothing else written about it since.  A lot whispered below the level of my impaired hearing, I'm sure...

Repeating myself, I'll support Lewis in AL1 and suggest that every other Democrat would be wise to run elsewhere, lest a repeat of AL3 in 2013 -- a runoff between Mike Kubosh and Roy Morales after the Dems canceled each other out -- occurs again.

As to whether he should hurry up and quit his chairmanship, that would be perilous at this time for the local Democrats.  Lewis' chief of staff, Diana Patino, just left this week to go to work for Sen. John Whitmire.  The ugly self-inflicted wounds from 2014's debacle barely have scabs, and with the lingering resentments over Battleground Texas' promises/effort/coordination with the county party, less disarray and not more is what is needed now.

So I think Lewis should stay where he is and make the call himself when to hand off to someone else, an heir not being readily apparent to me at the moment.  Much jockeying regarding that is undoubtedly happening outside my view.

Update: Texpate doesn't agree, and wants him to quit as a condition of supporting his council bid.  This is too harsh a demand, in my opinion.

-- Frankly I am delighted to see Jew Don Boney run for city controller against Carroll Robinson.  They have squared off before, and it wasn't pretty.  No matter his own bumpy history, I will be pleased to support former councilman Boney's campaign -- unless I vet the potential candidates for a better one -- because Robinson is not only shady himself but also aligned with the absolute worst political mafia in Houston politics.  I'm looking at you again, Hector Carreno, you slug.  And Reps. Miles and Thompson, you should know better.

But this "lesser of two evils" option once again might let the Republican slip into office.

-- This fellow seems like a qualified individual, but he's playing that "give me money while I decide which seat I want to run for" game.  He also drew hosannas from some of the most conservative Democrats I know, which makes me instantly suspicious.  I'll give Mr. McCasland the benefit of the doubt for now, as his early years suggest he has empathy for the poorest among us.  All of the Bill White connections -- his and those speaking in his favor -- rub me the wrong way, though.  White, for his part, is already (allegedly) supporting Adrian Garcia for mayor.  Big fat red X.

The best source for following what's going in Houston politics is Teddy Schleifer's Twitter feed.

Update: Mimi Swartz's take in Texas Monthly is a good place to catch up if you didn't get on in the beginning, with a couple of tasty morsels like this.

And what about Houston’s large and well-organized LGBT population? “(Chris) Bell has the money gays, Turner has the activist gays,” one observer told me.  [...]

Then there are the white power brokers, those guys who used to call the shots. They remember nostalgically the one-call-away days of mayors Lanier and White, particularly the latter, whose Harvard degree, financial acumen, and sophistication seemed so neatly matched with their vision of a modern city on the rise. Torn now between a questionably loyal (Bill) King and a foot-dragging (Stephen) Costello, the bigwigs are turning from disappointment to despair. Their inability to come up with a world-beater of their own is striking.

Put another way, this race has the potential to evolve into something akin to Bonfire on the Bayou, with the city’s diverse factions warring with one another and within their own ranks.

[...]

... (Annise) Parker’s endorsement might be of questionable value. One day she is said to be leaning toward longtime ally Turner, another day toward Councilman Costello, whose practical, just-show-me-the-numbers approach to city government is closest to her own.

Don't say 'legalize', say 'decriminalize'

Grits.

Judging from the press, the Marijuana Policy Project's lobby day at the Texas Capitol (this past Wednesday) appears to have gone well. See coverage here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Much of the coverage mentioned the professional presentation of lobby-day participants in contrast to stoner stereotypes, which is a good sign, though some reporters still can't discuss the issue without giggling. Happily, it sounds from the coverage like Speaker Joe Straus may be open to allowing bills reducing penalties for low-level marijuana possession to get a vote on the House floor. Bills to that effect have cleared committee in the past but never seem to get set on the House floor calendar.

Meanwhile the press, in reductionist fashion, continues to frame most marijuana issues as being about "legalization." However, though a majority of Texans support that, that's not what's at stake this legislative session. Instead, the bill with the most momentum appears to be Rep. Joe Moody's legislation to create a civil penalty for low-level pot possession, a move which would have kept nearly 65,000 people last year from being arrested and taken to jail while still punishing them. Other legislation by Rep. Harold Dutton and Gene Wu would reduce penalties for small amounts to a Class C misdemeanor.

Sen, Kevin Eltife (R-Tyler) and Rep. Stephanie Klick (R- Fort Worth) have each filed a bill to allow medical marijuana to be allowed specifically for certain epilepsy cases.  Rep. Elliott Naishtat has also carried the decriminalization water for several sessions.

In 2009 a Houston city council candidate who sought my counsel wanted to push for a city ordinance in favor of legal dope.  What I told him is what you see in the headline here.  Six years later, with four states (WA, OR, AK, and CO) and the District of Columbia having legalized, ten states (CA, NV, MN, NY, ME, MA, DE, MD, VT, and RI) having both decriminalized and allowed medical cannabis to be sold and consumed, another nine states (NM, AZ, MT, MI, IL, NH, NJ, DE, Hawaii) and the territory of Guam allowing legal medical marijuana only, and another four states (NE, OH, NC, MS) and the US Virgin Islands having decriminalized pot possession laws ... the rest of the states, including Texas, still sit in prohibition.

As Grits argued in a recent guest column in the Dallas Morning News, I don't view such bills through a "legalization" lens so much as from a "less government" perspective. Jails are a major driver of county property taxes. And, "If you want to cut the budget in a meaningful, sustainable way, you must identify something government is currently doing that costs money and choose not to do it."

Choosing to stop arresting and jailing pot smokers and paying for their indigent defense costs fits that bill precisely. Bottom line: If you want government to cost less, make it do less stuff. And this is one of those things the Legislature could just let the locals stop doing. 

Even though it became an issue in the Harris County district attorney race last year -- the Democratic challenger proposed decriminalizing possession in late July; the Republican incumbent followed suit by the beginning of October --  a Harris County poll released a couple of weeks before Election Day last November (right at the start of the early voting period)  showed 49% opposing legalization versus 43% who favored it.  But as to decriminalizing it, 62% were in favor, and just 29% were against.

Across Texas -- a year ago and according to the TexTrib -- the numbers are much more favorable to legal weed (in some form).

The executive director at the Marijuana Policy Project says 2019 will be the year something finally happens in Texas; he made that prediction last June in the Baker Institute's blog, where the rest of those geniuses are all over the place with their predictions.  And as reported here previously, the US attorney general-designate, Loretta Lynch, stands opposed to all of it: decriminalization, approval for medicinal purposes, and certainly legalization.

The bottom line here in Deep-In-The Hearta is that we're probably still a long way -- as in a few legislative sessions -- from easing the penalties for possession of a few joints, or even so much as allowing its medical use, because progress always makes Texas its last stop.

Who'd like to see me wrong in my prediction?  Hold up your lighters and yell "Free Bird!"

Update: RG Ratcliffe, now blogging at Paul Burka's place, asks the right question: 'Would Texas legalize marijuana if Walmart wanted it?'

Probably the biggest obstacle to the legalization of medical marijuana is the fear that people might have fun through inebriation. And that got me thinking about how Alexis Bortell and Walmart are sort of the same -- only different. Perhaps I think that because of the $435,000 that Walmart heiress Alice Walton poured into Texas political campaigns last year. I couldn’t find any donations from Alexis or her family. There also is a difference between Alexis and Walmart because the inebriating product Walmart is pushing in this year’s Legislature already is legal.

[...]

I don’t want to argue for or against legalizing marijuana or medical marijuana. But I do want to ask the question: Why can’t Alexis get some tender loving care and some THC if Walmart gets its package stores? 

Update (2/24): Charles hints that the Eltife/Klick bills might have the greatest chance of passage this session.  Alexis Bortell's parents find no solace in the current nomenclature, however.  The two opposing views...

“I have been talking to a number of members that feel like this is a way to separate those that want to see the therapeutic benefits of the substance without the potential for abuse,” said Klick, who is a registered nurse. “As is, [these oils] have no street value and no psychoactive effect. If we bump that ratio up, I think we will lose support.” 

Klick said there will also be a loss of political support if her bill is expanded to include other ailments, such as cancer, Crohn's disease or Lou Gehrig's disease.

[...]

As the bill is written, it stands to lose the support of Alexis Bortell, whose story has made national news and struck an emotional chord in Texas. In 2013, when Alexis was 7, she had her first seizure in the family's home in Rowlett, near Dallas. Since then, doctors have struggled to find medication that would offer her relief. 

“As the legislation is written now, Alexis would only be able to use CBD if we could show that there were no other FDA-approved treatments available to her,” said Dean Bortell, a U.S. Navy veteran and computer programmer. “That means trying several dangerous pharmaceuticals that she has already had a bad reactions to. The second one she tried she had trouble with, and we were far below the maximum dosage.”

I repeat: nothing is going to happen with weed this go-round.

Companies try to bust unions at Texas refineries, CA ports

Stand strong, strikers.

Deer Park, TX

In what one local union official is calling a new brand of aggressive strike-breaking tactics, energy companies are trying to lure employees back to work by going around the United Steelworkers union.

BP issued a statement Wednesday that it has begun to train additional replacements for its absent workers while Lyondell-Basell posted an open letter to its striking employees asking them to return to work.

Shell Oil Co. is also asking workers at its Deer Park refinery to cross the picket line. About 50 out of the 800 strikers have done so, said Lee Medley, president of the United Steelworkers Local 13-1.

In the third week of a nationwide oil workers strike, the targeted companies are playing hardball, said Medley, who could not recall another time when companies so openly courted their striking employees. He said the union is contemplating the filing of an unfair labor practice charge against Shell for directly contacting its striking employees.

"The steps they're taking are not novel," said Robert Bruno, professor at the School of Labor & Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

What's unusual, he said, is how quickly the effort began. That tells Bruno that the strike is causing pain for the oil companies. It may be they can't continue to operate with the labor they have or they can't get the production they need, he said. They may believe they have to go on the offensive.

The primary reason this strike is happening is not for increased pay or benefits (although those are, as always, on the table).  The workers want safety improvements at the plants, less forced overtime, and an end to outsourcing of work to contractors.  That's what the oil companies are balking at.  To use only the most recent examples of petrochemical corporation malfeasance, DuPont's LaPorte facility killed four workers three months ago because of shoddy design and inoperable ventilation fans.  The Exxon Mobil refinery in Torrance, Ca, exploded like a nuclear bomb just yesterday morning, with residents still sheltering in place, their homes covered in ash.

The refiners simply don't want to pay what it costs to safeguard their employees.  Look what they will pay the scabs, though.

Over the past few days, companies that specialize in staffing refineries and chemical plants during labor disputes have been advertising in Houston for experienced control room operators.

Madi Corp., for example, has an online job posting offering $48 an hour, plus $40 per day for expenses, along with free hotel and airfare for experienced oil refinery console operators in Houston. Operators are guaranteed a minimum of 60 hours a week but are expected to work 84 hours a week.

"Shift the power to your side of the negotiating table during contract negotiations with your unions," the company's website beckons to employers. It says it can place the "right strike replacement workers in the right jobs" in 24 to 72 hours.

My mouth is hanging open.  Yours?

Update:

Union negotiators on Thursday rejected the latest contract offer from oil companies and said the largest U.S. refinery strike since 1980 may spread to more plants beyond the 11 where walkouts are underway.

The United Steelworkers union (USW) said in a message to members and news media including Reuters that the latest proposal from lead oil company negotiator Royal Dutch Shell Plc failed to improve safety at refineries and chemical plants in an "enforceable way."

The union also told workers not on strike to be prepared to walk out in the coming days.

It's a similar story in Seattle, Los Angeles, Long Beach, CA and other busy West Coast ports, where the cargo operators are cajoling the longshoremen as well.

Long Beach, CA

Seattle, WA

Cargo companies have gone straight to West Coast dockworkers with what they call their "last, best and final" offer in a contract crisis that has choked off billions of dollars in international trade.

In a move very likely to upset union leaders who were negotiating behind closed doors under a media blackout, the employers distributed letters with the contract offer to rank-and-file longshoremen at ports from Los Angeles to Washington state.

Employers appear to hope that union members will conclude the offer — which the letter said includes wage and pension increases and the maintenance of low-cost health benefits — is strong, and dockworkers will then pressure their negotiators to accept it.

One labor expert questioned whether that would work, especially with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which has a history of fighting employers and winning contracts that are the envy of other blue-collar industries. Under the prior contract, which expired in July, average wages exceed $50 an hour, according to the maritime association.

"Handing out the leaflets is a provocative move with questionable gain," said Harley Shaiken, a professor and labor relations expert at the University of California, Berkeley. "We're in the end game, and you don't want to complicate things, and that is the risk."

The letter's "last, best and final offer" language is significant because it could lay the groundwork for the declaration of an impasse and therefore a full lockout of workers by employers.

Meanwhile, negotiators for the union and the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents employers, met with U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez in San Francisco.

The involvement of the nation's top labor official underscored rising political and economic pressure to reach a contract deal and free cargo bottlenecks at 29 ports that handle about $1 trillion of trade annually. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker also attended sessions Wednesday.

I was born into a labor household.  My mom was a teacher and my dad was an OCAW member -- the union for refinery workers before they were consolidated with the Steelworkers -- for thirty-five years.  I remember short and peaceful strikes, and long and contentious ones.  Dad even took a job as a cashier at at Walgreens once to tide our family over when they went out for an extended time.  Here's a great article from the Beaumont Enterprise about the early days (1940s) and the waning of union influence that began after 1980's 114-day strike, a slow slide to obsolescence that continues to this day because of thuggish actions by company men like those described above.

I am all in with the USW and the ILWU as they demand better from the corporations.

Should college degrees and passports be requisites for the presidency?

I say yes, but some say no.  Chris Cillizza, WaPo:

In the wake of Dave Fahrenthold's great piece about Scott Walker's college years, Democrats have begun to openly question the Wisconsin governor's ability and readiness to be president, given that he doesn't have a college degree.

[...]

This seems to me to be a MAJOR strategic mistake that could badly backfire on Democrats if Walker happened to become the Republican nominee in 2016. Here's why...

He lists three reasons.  No More Mister Nice Blog even thinks it's a trap.

Jim Newell argues at Salon that it's a bad idea for Democrats to attack Scott Walker for not having a college degree. As I said last week, I agree -- it comes off as elitist and condescending, in a country where most people don't have a boatload of degrees from fancy schools and aren't quite sure what they think about people who do. I think many voters who hear attacks like this will feel they're being personally insulted. It's a bad move.

And now we have this, from Olivia Nuzzi at the Daily Beast, and I really hope no Democrat tries to follow up...

[...]

The story smells like opposition research fed to a journalist -- but by whom? It could be the Clinton campaign, but it could just as easily be the campaign of a better-traveled Republican, or it could be an organization on the right that's determined to prevent the insufficiently hawkish Paul from winning the nomination. Nuzzi's story certainly lists a lot of travel by a number of Paul's likely primary competitors:

Go ahead and click over; there's lots to take in at all those links.

Sorry, Cillizza and Mister, but this is Texas, and if we weren't allowed to ridicule stupid Republicans, then we wouldn't have much of anything to blog about.  Hell, Juanita Jean would have to close down the beauty salon if the topic of ignorant conservatives was embargoed.  I've also never been keen on politicians whose appeal is to the lowest common denominator.  Bill Clinton said it nicer: "when people think, we (Democrats) win".

I agree with NMMrNB about Rand Paul's humanitarian missions; I can give him a pass on the passport thing.  But Paul has straight up lied about holding an undergraduate degree, and the reason that matters, as David Knowles at Bloomberg pointed out, can be summed up in two words: Brian Williams.  Paul is also adept at trolling the critics of his malaprops, especially those in the media  -- thanks to this guy -- but it strikes me as a little paranoid that a right-wing conspiracy of  "elitist contempt" is active as a loose caucus among the GOP.  Pretty sure that ground is well covered by the TeaBaggers, and while they may succeed in nominating the candidate, I hold some degree of confidence that an ignorant and arrogant conservative cannot get elected president... again.

Yes, GWB barely traveled outside the US before the Supreme Court selected him to the White House.  And he will likely will never again leave the country, for fear of arrest for his war crimes.  But I don't think it's accurate to say that 'the public didn't care' about that in 2000.  Yes, there was a majority of swing voters in 2004 -- some I knew personally, even -- who said they'd like to have a beer with a recovering alcoholic in denial and probably a dry drunk.  (Although I remain unconvinced, personally, that he ever stopped drinking.)  And all that disregards the curious case of those 250,000 registered Florida Democrats who voted for W, who deserve far more of the blame for Al Gore losing than Ralph Nader, a stubborn myth about which I have also written.  Al Gore should have been able to handily defeat W Bush,  but his own errors, many of them unforced, and Murphy's Law (Theresa LePore's butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County, for one) conspired with a few bad apples -- Katherine Harris, Clay Roberts, Choicepoint, etc. --  to spoil 2000 for him.  It is not an accurate statement, then and to this day, that Bush won the presidency in 2000, IMHO.  For the sake of expediency, I'll ignore the shenanigans around Cuyahoga and other Ohio counties in 2004 that helped John Kerry lose in 2004, because like Gore he was his own worst enemy in too many ways well before election day.

But as to the counterpoints to sheepskins and the lack thereof, let's check in first with Susan Newell at US News and World Report (no bastion of liberal media).

We need to take the stigma away from those who choose not to go to college, and we also need to emphasize community college for those who need more education, but not a four-year program. But it’s also not unreasonable to expect that our political elite -- and there’s nothing more elite than being president of the United States -- have a semi-elite level of formal education.

Now let's roll with Rude Pundit's rejoinder, which is closer to where I am (warning: cursing).

See, to conservatives, "college" is itself a signifier of "indoctrinated into leftist beliefs." And, of course, "college" only means the Ivy League. Says (Instapundit's Glenn) Reynolds, after listing the Harvard, Yale, et al credentials of President Obama and the Supreme Court, "All this credentialism means that we should have the best, most efficiently and intelligently run government ever, right? Well, just look around. Anyone who has ever attended a faculty meeting should recognize that more education doesn't produce better decision makers, and our educated mandarinate doesn't seem to have done much for the country." Serious question: Is Reynolds a total cock at his own faculty meetings? And the Rude Pundit has long believed that Ivy League incest has harmed the nation. But the solution is not to say, "Well, obviously, college makes people dumb." It's to say, "Hey, how about some leaders who came from state schools?"

There's much more of this righteous rant, but let's close with this.

As the Rude Pundit has said before, if you believe that colleges are merely bastions of bolshevik liberalism, spend some time with professors in the business majors or, really, the STEM profs. Oh, wait. They believe in science, so maybe not.

As for Scott Walker, let's dismiss his inability to answer a question about evolution as craven political expedience. What does matter is, as governor, he has bought into the right-wing attack on higher education and he wants to fuck the universities of his state with huge budget cuts, just like Bobby Jindal in Louisiana. That shit looks sketchy, especially when you don't have a degree.

If you can be successful at something without a diploma, good on you, future  Bill Gates or Louis CK or Oprah. Obviously, people can be just like you. Except for the almost everyone who can't.

If our American Idiots have devolved enough to fool me twice and elect George W Bush 2.0 -- and I'm not talking about Jeb -- I'll be searching retirement properties in Costa Rica.  Not everyone has that privilege, of course, but everybody we leave behind will mostly be the ones responsible for their own fate.  That would be the people who elect Scott Walker -- or Mike Huckabee or Ben Carson, or Rick Perry or Ted Cruz or Lindsey Graham, or even Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.  And of course the Democrats who couldn't be motivated to vote against any of them.

You're all fending for yourselves if Hillary Clinton screws up so badly she loses like Al Gore.  I'm out.

Update: As if on cue, Walker plays the E card, and Dirty Jobs dude joins the chorus.

Scattershooting sanity: per-diems, Straus v. Patrick, and straight-ticket voting

Not this kind of scattershooting.

-- Following up on this post, the Texas Ethics Commission approved -- despite stated objections from chairman Paul Hobby -- a per-diem increase for state legislators, which means the legions of Austin lobbyists can spend more on plying them with food and drink.  Kirk Watson is a voice of sanity in this regard.

The public would know a lot more about which lawmakers are getting wined and dined under legislation filed Monday by state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin.

Watson filed three bills that would effectively shut down a giant loophole that allows lobbyists — often under pressure from legislators — to avoid naming names when they fill out their mandatory spending and entertainment reports with the Texas Ethics Commission.

Watson said he’s not casting “aspersions” on anyone but hopes his legislation will increase public confidence in state officials as they interact with lobbyists representing various interests at the Capitol. State Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, has filed similar legislation, but Watson's bills take the concept a few steps further. They extend the reporting requirements to spending on relatives of state officials while building in protection against future loopholes.

“Anything we can do to assure confidence in that and assure that it’s being done in the appropriate way, we should,” Watson said. “And that is generally best served by better reporting, better disclosure and more knowledge.”

Do you suppose this is the kind of ethics reform Governor Abbott has in mind when he gives the State of the State later this morning?  Maybe, but I doubt it.

-- There's a real showdown brewing between the Texas House and Senate, which actually means the Speaker and the Lieutenant Governor.  How it pans out might be the biggest story of the 84th session.

House Speaker Joe Straus became the legislative Border Patrol last week, tapping the brake when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick proposed booking the National Guard for an extended stay on the Texas-Mexico line.

[...]

Patrick wants to put in $12 million to keep those troops in place until May, which would give him time to push for a longer deployment during the legislative session.

Straus called him on it, saying in effect that only Gov. Greg Abbott, as the state’s commander in chief, has the power to play army.

[...]

Abbott has not said anything about the arm-wrestling, at least in public.

This tension is not just about the border thing.

In an interview with James Henson, a Texas Tribune pollster and head of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, Straus added to the list that starts with border security. He said there are questions to resolve about blocking colleges’ bans on concealed handguns and opposes the repeal of in-state tuition for certain children of undocumented immigrants. That puts him at odds with Patrick on those issues. During the weeks ahead, we all get to find out whether the House and the Senate are taking the same positions as their leaders on those issues.

But it’s not just about issues, either.

Go read the rest.  Large fault lines are bound to crack open between the Tea Party Caucus and the Sanity Caucus in both chambers.  No bets taken yet on who has or could get the upper hand.  It'll all play out over the next four months or so.

-- Speaking of even more sanity, Republicans agree that straight-party voting in Texas must come to an end.  To wit, State Representative Ron Simmons, Republican from Carrollton:

Virtually all voters educate themselves on candidates at the top of the ticket (president, governor, etc.). But many voters, partially because of straight-ticket voting, make little or no effort to educate themselves on the candidates at the bottom of the ticket running for offices that have the most direct effect on individual citizens — think county clerk, county commissioner, justice of the peace and state representative. These voters simply check the one box, either Democrat or Republican, and move on without giving it a second thought.

This is bad for Texas.

Let me give you just one example. My Democratic opponent last year was the vice presidential candidate for the Socialist Party USA in 2012. In our race, he put forth little effort to inform voters about himself or his platform. However, on Election Day he received about 35 percent of the vote — almost identical to the percentage of the vote that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis received in the district. Even I, a conservative Republican, don’t believe that 35 percent of Democrats in my district are Socialists or believe in what Socialists believe. But the way they voted in November tells a different story.

The answer to this is to join the 39 other states in the U.S. that have no straight-ticket voting. Voters will still be able to vote a straight-party ticket, but they’ll have to take a little extra time to go step by step down the ballot and select a candidate for each elected office. This will hopefully encourage voters to learn about the candidates in each race. But even if voters choose not to educate themselves, they can still vote along party lines or decide to not vote for any candidates in a particular race.

Are our liberty and way of life not important enough to really know whom we’re voting for to run our local and state governments? If people don’t make the effort, those who want to deceive, manipulate and abuse our representative form of government for their gain will be the only ones left standing in our halls of government.

I’ve filed House Bill 1288 to eliminate straight-ticket voting in Texas. I encourage you to contact your state representative and state senator to request their support of this legislation.

I signed.  But I still think it's cool that a Socialist disguised as a Democrat got 35% of the vote in the Dallas suburbs, even if nearly everyone that voted for him was likely a moron.  It was the scourge of straight-ticket votes, after all, that helped Archie Bunker get elected Texas agriculture commissioner, defeating Junior Samples, the (alleged) Democrat.

Another Republican state representative -- not exactly renowned for sanity -- has filed a similar bill, but it limits the partisan designation removal to judicial candidates and county executives.  That's still a good thing.

State Rep. Jason Villalba has filed legislation that would exempt judges and county officials from straight-ticket ballots.

The bill relates to elections in Texas’ largest counties, including Dallas County. The offices of sheriff, district attorney, tax assessor and constable would be removed from party-line voting. Criminal and civil court judges would also be exempt.

“We need to get away from straight-ticket voting and focus more on qualifications, criteria and ability, rather than party affiliation,” Villalba said.

[...]

Villalba, R-Dallas, said he prefers removing all “non-policy making elected offices” from partisan elections, but that would take a Constitutional referendum.

“If we thought we could get a Constitutional Amendment passed, that’s the direction we would go,” Villaba said.

As it stands, Villabla is unlikely to get this bill through the Legislature. Most Democrats and Republicans like the current system.

“It will be a tough one,” Villalba said.

Strong bipartisan support for straight-ticket voting in Texas.  Imagine that.

There is, as you might suspect, a hidden agenda for these bills filed by two Dallas-area Republicans: they think they might have a shot at swinging Dallas County back into the red column.  Despite whatever nefarious intentions may exist, it's still on Democrats to educate their voters and potential ones, turn them out on Election Day, and otherwise put forth the required effort to win elections, not rely on a tool that allows those who can drag themselves to the polling place their fifteen seconds' worth of civic engagement every two years.  Not to be too harsh about it, but it's lazy and a little craven to depend on STV to keep you in power in the big cities where the intelligent people have congregated, and the gerrymandered minority districts Republicans have allowed you to keep.

There's only so much blaming the media in this day and age that they deserve.  I fault the emerging Idiocracy myself, and that includes us all at some depth.