Democratic Candidate Events: Murff, Henley, Radnofsky, Van Os, Bell

Tomorrow at the meeting of the West Houston Democratic Club you can see a debate between CD-07 candidates David Murff and Jim Henley. Charles Kuffner prepared questions for both and their answers can be found at Texas Tuesdays, which is your bookmark for all things candidate-related between now and November. Many of the Texas lefty bloggers you read regularly will be posting and cross-posting there.

US Senate challenger Barbara Radnofsky will hold two press conferences next week to announce her anti-corruption initiatives. She will be in Houston on Wednesday, January 25 and in Austin on Thursday, January 26. CD-31 candidate Mary Beth Harrell will attend the Austin press conference.

“A major moral cost of corruption is our children growing up in a world where lying, cheating, and stealing appear to be acceptable. It’s a world where leaders embrace perjury, take money under false pretenses, and lack any code of honor so they refuse to try to correct the wrongs in which they’re involved,” says Radnofsky. Her initiative will include the following “to do” items for Sen. Hutchison:

1. Renounce perjury
2. Return the money she accepted from El Paso's Tigua Indian tribe, who were defrauded by indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff
3. Make good on the promise she made to the people of South Texas recently when she echoed Radnofsky’s call for a VA hospital south of San Antonio.

The steering committee of the David Van Os for Texas Attorney General campaign will be held in Austin tomorrow (yours truly will be moderating this event), and that coincides with the platform meeting of the Texas Progressive Populist Caucus (at a different location also in Austin).

Chris Bell was at the Alamo today, will be in speaking in San Antonio at noon tomorrow, and will address the state convention of Texas Machinists in Austin also tomorrow afternoon.

If I left someone out, give us an update on your candidate's events with a comment.

Corruption Chronicles: The Week That Was

Here's a boatload of good blogging going on in some of my favorite places:

Fred at Truth Serum points out the hypocrisy inherent in the local Republican blogosphere as they desperately fail to explain away Tom DeLay's slumping polls.

Anna at annatopia met Smoky Joe Barton's Gravy Train at the station today. It made the Traditional Media. A platoon of Texas progressive blogs piled on: BOR, Peoples' Republic of Seabrook, Kuff, Common Sense, Eye on Williamson County, In the Pink Texas, The Agonist, By the Bayou and Wyld Card all had something to say about it, as did Barton's Democratic opponent, David Harris, at his Dkos diary.

Texas Democratic Party Chair Charles Soechting called out Rick Perry for his blatant cronyism regarding the state contracts awarded two of Jack Abramoff's best buddies, which I posted about here and also at HouDems. You can contact Governor Adios MoFo at that last link and tell him yourself what you think.

Remember my post earlier about the Houston Democrats being disinvited from Monday's MLK Day Parade through downtown Houston? Well, here's the backstory.

OK, my mouse finger needs a break. There's a lot of candidate happenings this weekend, and I'll drop them in above this.

One less candidate on the ballot: Alvarado's check bounces

This is kind of sad:

A Fort Worth man, the only Hispanic person to declare for governor, was bounced from the ballot late Thursday after his check to the Texas Democratic Party for the $3,750 filing fee bounced.

The name of Felix Alvarado, a middle school administrator, will not appear on the March 7 party primary ballot, said Charles Soechting, the party's state chairman.

"The position I would have to take is, the filing fee wasn't paid," Soechting said. "It's sad. I hate to see that happen to anybody."

Thursday evening, Alvarado, 63, confirmed submitting his check for the filing fee without sufficient funds available.

"I take full responsibility for that. That's my mea culpa. I overplayed my hand," he said. "I'm disappointed."

In his campaign's contribution and expenditure report covering July through December, Alvarado reported no money in his treasury as of Dec. 31. The report shows that he's taken two campaign loans: $1,000 from a brother and $300 on a credit card.

The ramifications are that the eventual Democratic nominee for governor should be able to escape the primary on March 7 without a runoff, which will make it easier on Kinky Friedman and Carole Strayhorn to secure the 45,000-ish unduplicated signatures from non-primary voters needed to appear on November's ballot.

A four-handed free-for-all for eight months, spring to fall, will make for one hell of an interesting political season this year.

Over 3.200 Katrina victims are still missing

Three thousand two hundred people still unaccounted for, after five months.

More than the number of Americans killed on 9/11; a thousand more than have been killed so far in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Somehow I get the feeling that your government doesn't care quite so much about them as they do those others.

Corruption Chronicles: Lobbyists Gone Wild

Neither of these is particularly new news, but worth lumping together. Emphasis mine, first from the San Antonio Express-News:

Texas Democrats on Wednesday called for Gov. Rick Perry to cancel a $180,000-a-year state lobby contract they contend was used to funnel taxpayer money into Republican campaigns.

Perry's office called the allegations a "baseless, partisan move" and defended the contracts as nonpartisan.

Drew Maloney, a former chief of staff to embattled Rep. Tom DeLay, was one of two lobbyists hired by the Texas Office of State-Federal Relations in 2003 to represent Texas interests in the nation's capital. Once awarded the contract, Maloney made more than $75,000 in contributions to Republican campaigns, both nationally and in Texas.

"It's unbelievable to find, in effect, laundering taxpayer money to put in the coffers of Republican politicians in the state of Texas," said Democratic Texas Rep. Jim Dunnam. "It's an outrage, and it's unbelievable."

The Republican-led Texas Legislature approved spending $1.1 million on the contracts, despite repeated attempts by Democrats to redirect the money into state programs. The contracts expire in 2007.

"Gov. Perry should not continue to waste huge sums of taxpayer money to fund the unnecessary lobby contract of another man who is directly involved in the unseemly activities of Tom DeLay," Dunnam said. "Why do we spend $1.1 million state tax dollars on lobbyists when Texas is home to 32 congressmen and women, two senators and the president of the United States?"

The state lobbyists have helped the state secure more federal money for state programs, said Perry spokeswoman Rachel Novier. "We're getting a really good return on our investments for the dollars that we spend for the Office of State-Federal Relations and for advocating on behalf of Texas in Washington," she said.

Maloney, who could not be reached for comment, is employed by the Washington lobby firm the Federalist Group, which he joined in 2002 "to serve as the chief lobbyist for House Republican Leadership," the group's Web site says. (He was also) a key figure in 2002 fundraising that has led to criminal charges against DeLay and two of his associates, who are accused of using restricted corporate money in Texas campaigns.

Another lobbyist in the office, Todd Boulanger, once worked closely with confessed influence peddler Jack Abramoff. Boulanger has a $330,000 contract with the state.

There's also this, from Harvey Kronberg's Quorum Report Executive Summary of 1/13/06 (emphasis his) :

Today, the Texas Democratic Party Chairman Charles Soechting joined a number of non-partisan organizations in calling for bankrupt lobbyist Bill Ceverha to immediately resign his position on the Employee Retirement System (ERS) Board. Ceverha, who was found to have violated state law in his role as Treasurer for Tom DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), was appointed to the ERS Board by Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, the primary beneficiary of the illegal TRMPAC-Delay 2002 campaign effort.

“If you told friends or co-workers that a bankrupt lobbyist who has violated state campaign finance laws was sitting on the board that oversees a $20 billion retirement fund, they’d say that was nuts,” said Texas Democratic Party Chairman Charles Soechting.

Is this a simple culture of corruption, or has the culture grown out of the petri dish, spread out across the table, and in fact consumed the entire science laboratory?

There was a movie in the Sixties called The Green Slime that this latest episode of the Corruption Chronicles reminds me of.

Wes Clark coming to Texas this month

Eddie at The Red State breaks the news:

Gen. Wesley Clark, former presidential candidate and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, will be in Corpus Christi, TX on January 26, 2006 to announce his support for Juan Garcia's race (campaign website) for Texas House District 32.

As previously suggested here (and Evan deduced it) Clark will probably make an appearance with Bob Gammage on this trip, though a specific stop in Houston isn't yet confirmed.

Update (1/18): That didn't take long ...

Please join
Arthur Gochman, Molly Gochman,
Don Riddle and Greater Houston Area Friends of Bob Gammage

as we welcome

General Wesley Clark

to Houston!

Thursday, January 26th, 2006 for a fundraising reception for

Bob Gammage for Governor

1:00 pm, Hotel Derek, 2525 West Loop South, Houston

Suggested Contribution Levels:

$1000 Host, $500 Patron, $250 Gold Founder, $100 Silver Founder, $50 Friend