Late last night (and more musings about election results)

-- Glitches push final tally into early morning hours:

There were a few problems coming up with a final tally on Tuesday’s election because of a political party oversight and mostly technical difficulties, pushing the night’s last count to at least 2 a.m. Wednesday.

After a few early-evening hiccups that led to the first results posting 90 minutes after polls closed Tuesday, midnight-hour issues emerged.

First, the Republican primary in precinct 256 had its results stored on a corrupt card, which meant workers had to pull results from another database or, as a last resort, from each e-Ballot station.

An unidentified Democratic precinct had a faulty machine, creating the need to merge results from more machines than planned to arrive at a final total.

Then around 11 p.m., Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart revealed that 1,500 to 2,000 mail ballots that had arrived since Friday still had not been processed.

As well, there’s the possibility that some of the tightest races may turn when ballots from active-duty service members arrive since they have an additional five days past the election for their votes to show up and be counted. Provisional ballots also take a few days to process.

So, there’s a huge asterisk on the Harris County results at this point early Wednesday.

It’s been a rough night.

Yes, and Stan Stanart is an incompetent fool. As you will recall, I observed this process a handful of times during Beverly Kaufman's tenure. She always had EV results posted within one minute of 7 p.m., and she always had enough ballots counted for the local network affiliates to call all but the closest races by their 10 p.m. newscasts.

Unless Stanart fired all the people who used to work for Kaufman (doubtful), the real evidence here is that the brand-new Harris County Clerk doesn't know how to run an election that ran on autopilot in the years before he was elected.

We could have had Ann Harris Bennett in that slot, who in November will challenge the guy who knocked off incumbent Don Sumners last night. Ignore the ramblings of Gadfly Bettencourt in that link.

-- It was a good night for the slate mailers and Super PACs last night. And a bad one for some of Joe Straus' henchmen (aka the 'moderates' in the Texas House).

(E)lection night results brought bad news for some key Straus lieutenants in the Texas House, including Rep. Rob Eissler, R-the Woodlands, chairman of the House Education Committee. Eissler, who lost to challenger Steve Toth, may have suffered from complacency as his campaign latest finance reports showed an unspent balance of $650,000.

In North Texas, Rep. Vicki Truitt, R-Irving, another Straus chairman, also fell to a tea party challenger, Giovanni Capriglione. And in East Texas, Rep. Mike “Tuffy” Hamilton, another Straus ally paired in a redrawn district with an incumbent, lost to Rep. James White.

All the defeated incumbents were targeted by Empower Texans, a conservative group which spent close to $120,000 trying to defeat Straus by portraying him as too moderate to lead the Texas House. Financed by Midland oilman Tim Dunn, the group was behind the 2011 effort to oust Straus from the Speaker’s office.

There will be more Mucus involved in the Speaker's race in the run-up to January 2013 and the opening day of the Texas Lege, but my early guess is that the Democrats provide Straus enough cover to get re-elected.

-- Ted Cruz wants five debates with David Dewhurst between now and the runoff on July 31. And Paul Sadler wants in on them, too.

First of all, nobody wants to be tortured with a debate every two weeks between these two conservatives. Not even the most hardcore TeaBagger could stand it.

Secondly, Sadler himself only got 35% of the vote in a 4-way race, so his runoff opponent Grady Yarbrough should be included if Sadler gets in. That by itself is a travesty, as the Austin Statesman notes...

Yarbrough is a perennial candidate who has run as a Democrat and a Republican in previous elections.

Yarbrough has barely any online presence, yet he ran second in the Democratic statewide primary for the US Senate. Apparently the Mensas who voted for him thought he was Ralph.

And unless this a one-party red state like Communist China, the debates should include the Green, David Collins, and the Libertarians -- all six of them. (Unless you want to hold off on the debates until they elect one of the six at their state convention, the second week of June.)

-- Lissa Squiers led wire-to-wire, finishing with 40% of the Democratic vote in CD-07. James Cargas trailed with 34, and Phillip Andrews had 24.

The absolute best results of the evening, IMHO.

-- Highs and lows locally: Lane Lewis prevailed but Steven Kirkland did not. Two bright spots in Texas House races: Lon Burnham won, Leo Berman lost.

-- I'm not going to give a damn so hard about the DA race in Harris County it will be profound.

-- These Twitter compilations must stop. If I want to read a Twitter feed, I'll go to Twitter.

More as always from the Godfather.

Greg Abbott scolds himself

It was his strategy to bypass the DOJ and pre-clearance by going directly to court with the Republican redistricting overgrab. He thought the two GOP judges would be in their corner.

He was wildly wrong, and now he's bitching about the outcome.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office on Friday slammed an interim redistricting map proposed by a three-judge panel in San Antonio, saying the federal jurists overstepped their bounds in redrawing House and Senate district lines that could cost Republicans a half-dozen seats next year.

"Contrary to (a) basic principle of federalism, the proposed interim redistricting plan consistently overturns the Legislature's will where no probability of a legal wrong has been identified," Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, said in a statement.

The three-judge panel had to create the interim maps for the 2012 election because a trial in Washington, D.C., on whether the redistricting plans approved by the Texas Legislature this year conform to the U.S. Voting Rights Act will not take place until after candidates have to file for office.

Greg Abbott's view of the law is so warped that it consistently makes him a laughingstock.

Update: Burka.

Republican sources tell me that there is disgruntlement toward the attorney general among Republican House members. Their gripe is: The attorney general’s office had a “lackadaisical” attitude toward the case; or, alternatively, “Abbott didn’t have his A team on this.”

Abbott’s ballyhooed strategy was an attempt to win the case through forum-shopping. The AG’s legal team thought they had figured out how to wire around the Obama Justice Department, which was to choose the option of taking the case before a three-judge federal court in the District of Columbia and bypass a trial by moving for summary judgment on all the maps in controversy. The problem is, the two Bush appointees on the panel didn’t take a partisan position. [...]

One unexpected problem Abbott encountered at the San Antonio trial is that one of his own expert witness–John Alford, a political science professor at Rice University– went south on him. Alford testified that he would have done things differently from the Legislature’s congressional redistricting map that Abbott was defending...

I didn't realize how fundamentally incompetent and corrupt the man was until I worked on the campaign of the man who ran against him in 2006. Of all of the profoundly ignorant, nakedly raw partisan schmucks running the state of Texas -- from Rick Perry, John Cornyn, David Dewhurst, Kay Bailey, and David Dewhurst trickling all the way down to Susan Combs, Jerry Patterson, and Todd Staples -- Greg Abbott is the worst. And the most dangerous.

You can be certain that Abbott will do everything he can to subvert the will of the federal court which slapped away his party's overzealous gambit for permanent super-majority status.

On the other hand, one of the conservative cabal's junior partner in Houston, Paul Bettencourt, gets it. Almost:

"I don't think the Democratic Party could have hoped to have a plan drawn like this if they controlled had been able to participate in any meaningful way at the Legislature," said Paul Bettencourt, a former executive with the state Republican Party and former Harris County tax assessor.

Fixed it for ya, Quitter. That's pretty much what I said yesterday.

This will be how the statewide Republicans will run their campaigns in 2012: completely against Washington D.C., much like Rick Perry conducted his 2010 re-election. 'EEEvil, evil feds want to tell Texans how to live', blah blah blah. Dewhurst is already doing it. The "Obama/socialist,DemocRAT" rants will only get louder.

That tea is weak. And stale.

The Republican party declares that 'government doesn't work' and then demonstrates its premise on a daily basis. No jobs bill. No budget deal. No tax increases. No, no, all the time no.

No voting without your photo id, no pensions for anybody unless we can let Wall Street get their hands on it, no money for schools and teachers, no money for Planned Parenthood's birth preventive education.

And you get even more 'No' if your skin is brown, you are female, homosexual, and/or you're not a Christian.

But there's plenty of tax breaks for oil and gas companies who foul the environment and lots of great deals for crony capitalists. The better friend you are of Rick Perry's, or the more money you can give to Republicans, the better off you will be. It's the classic example of the 1% waging war on the 99%.

And the only reason to keep the focus on abortion and gay rights is to keep the ignorant and the poverty-stricken distracted. Distraction is, in fact, the primary tool in their toolbox. A president misleads America about the costs to get a prescription drug bill passed, paying off Big Pharma cronies to the tune of $1 trillion dollars? Republicans snooze. President exaggerates intelligence to fool Americans into going to war against Iraq, costing 4,800 American soldiers' lives and over $800 billion? GOP snores, snorts, and rolls over.

President accelerates a loan guarantee to Solyndra, loan goes bad costing $500 million? The tried-and-true faux outrage erupts.

You like this? Want more of it? Keep voting for these vile Republicans.

Texas Republican comings and goings

It's still Williams v. Williams for a DC seat, just a smaller one.

Weatherford car dealer Roger Williams switched from the U.S. Senate race to a race for Congress this morning, finishing up a swap that began last week with calls to supporters in and around the new CD-33.

He's the second candidate to jump. Former Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams switched to the congressional race last week, opting out of the crowded GOP pack seeking to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Senate.

Roger Williams is a former Texas Secretary of State and has been a successful fundraiser for other candidates while never seeking office himself. The new district includes all of Parker County and part of Wise County, but the biggest part of the population is in the portion of Tarrant County that's included. It's one of four new seats in Congress coming to Texas because of its population growth over the last decade. Williams started with endorsements from Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief, Arlington City Councilman Robert Rivera and state Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford.

The bats are already out. On the eve of the announcement, opponents circulated a flier with news clips about Patty Williams, the wife of the candidate and the president of the family's car dealership, lobbying Congress to win federal bailouts for Chrysler and other car manufacturers in late 2008.

Moncrief is *gasp* a former Democratic state senator. Expect that to be a point of contention in this GOP primary.

The Texas Senate adjourned sine die this afternoon, but Robert Miller posted these rumorings last night about Republican state senators and their wannabes shuffling about. I'll embed more links to the various players later on as your scorecard.

1. SD 5 -- Although no final decision has been made, the odds are that Sen. (Steve) Ogden retires and does not seek reelection. Rep. Charles Schwertner is eyeing the seat.
2. SD 7 -- We will know soon whether Sen. Patrick's exploratory committee for the U.S. Senate has been successful. If Patrick files for the U. S. Senate, former Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt will run for SD 7 and perhaps Rep. Patricia Harless.
3. SD 10 -- This seat was drawn to elect a Republican, and Sen. Wendy Davis is highly unlikely to be reelected if she runs. Rep. Kelly Hancock is certain to run, and Rep. Vicki Truitt, Rep. Mark Shelton and Dee Kelly, Jr. are considering it.
4. SD 11 -- Sen. Mike Jackson is taking a hard look at running for Congress in the new CD 36. If he does, expect Rep. Randy Weber to run for his Senate seat and perhaps Rep. Larry Taylor.
5. SD 25 -- Sen. Jeff Wentworth has long been rumored to be retiring after the legislative session. If Sen. Wentworth retires or does not seek reelection, expect Rep. Lyle Larson to run.

Weasel/turncoat Aaron Pena defies my predictions and opts to stay in the Texas House. Update: Former NFL offensive lineman Seth McKinney, also the son of recently-resigned Texas A&M chancellor Mike McKinney, declared his campaign to replace Fred Brown in HD-14 within moments of Brown's announcement at the conclusion of Wednesday's special session that he would retire. Update II: And just like that *snap* ... McKinney drops out. Must be a record for shortest campaign ever. Rebecca Boenigk and former Brazos County Tax Assessor-Collector Buddy Winn are also in.

I wonder if there are any Democrats running for anything (besides Sen. Davis running to keep her job, that is). Eddie Lucio isn't. Oh yes, here's one: Julian Castro accepts the task that Tom DeLay could not complete; take out Lloyd Doggett.

Anything else on the Dems? Maybe we should ask the new executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, Bill Brannon. Bill?

Political races to watch in 2011 *with updates*

Via Texas on the Potomac's Richard Dunham (no, Houston's municipals did not make his cut):

One sign of the off-year election malaise: The vote with the greatest national significance all year long might be a summertime presidential straw poll in Iowa.

[...]

The Chicago mayoral race

Can former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel come home again? The trash-talking, hard-charging Democrat is the favorite to replace Mayor Daley, but he can't afford to take anything for granted. The diverse field includes former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, Rep. Danny Davis, former Board of Education president Gery Chico and City Clerk Miguel del Valle.

Davis has already pulled out and called for African-American voters to support Moseley Braun against the Rahminator.

The Iowa Republican presidential straw poll

The most important vote in 2011 isn't even a real election. It's the Republican Party of Iowa's 2011 Iowa Straw Poll, set for Aug. 14 at the Iowa State Center in Ames. This is an early test of White House wannabes' organizational skills — and an early chance for presidential campaign "spinners" to practice their craft.

Iowa is Huckabee territory. He'll win this beauty contest, and I'll join others in predicting that the Huckster becomes the eventual 2012 Republick nominee.

Dunham's less intriguing picks are here. The only other item worth noting is that Dallas mayor Tom Leppert may step into a GOP primary for the US Senate in 2012. That would be against the enigmatic Kay Bailey, should she deign to stand again for re-election (I predict she will not). He'll be the only non-Teabagger in that race if he does, which means he'll get slaughtered. As far as that primary goes, pay attention only to those who prostrate themselves before the Tea Pees, such as the Williams twins ... Roger and Michael.

Jockeying  for Houston city council positions has barely begun, as several incumbent Democrats in both the statehouse and the courtrooms hit the unemployment line with the changing of the calendar. Some decisions will wait to be made until the redistricting maps for the four new 2012 Congressional seats are known, sometime this spring. Recently retired Sylvia Garcia would be at the top of anyone's list, to be sure.

My favorite municipal elections rumor du jour has former state representative Ellen Cohen considering a run for the 'C' seat being vacated by term-limited Anne Clusterfuck Clutterbuck, who's already not-so-quietly marshaling forces and funds for a challenge to Mayor Annise Parker.

Update III: Kuffner links to Houston Community News, which has more on this development.

Then there's good ol' Bill King, who's busy giving everybody on both sides "tips". Campos likes him, so he's not entirely friendless.

For those of you plugged in to the local rumor mill, what are you hearing? Let me know in the comments. Who -- besides Aaron Pena in the RGV, of course -- wants to run for Congress in 2012? And/or city council or mayor in 2011?

Update: Kuffner, as always, has more.

Update II:

In addition to former police chief and current City Council Member C.O. Bradford, one potential candidate that has warranted frequent mention is former Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt.

The "Taxman," as he often refers to himself, has grown into a foil for Parker on water rate increases and the city's upcoming fight to pass a drainage fee after it was mandated by Proposition 1, a referendum voters narrowly approved in November.

Parker didn't have much to say about a potential Bettencourt candidacy, except a dig or two:

"One can only hope," she said at her Wednesday press conference, laughing loudly.

Loren Jackson, Ann Harris Bennett, and Diane Trautman

The Houston Chronic got most of the rest of their endorsements way, way wrong, but these they got right.

District Clerk: The duties of this office include summoning jurors for the district and county criminal courts, maintaining court records, preparing daily court dockets and receiving child support payments.

The choice for voters in this contest is easy. Democratic incumbent Loren Jackson has done an excellent job upgrading the electronic capabilities of the office and making it more efficient and user-friendly. On his first day in office, Jackson created an express window lawyers had long sought so they could quickly file papers and return to the courts. 

He has also expanded the online availability of court documents, and if the Texas Supreme Court approves, Jackson plans to open a free e-filing portal allowing lawsuits to be filed electronically. (He) says it will save litigants filing fees, cut down on printing, processing and storage costs, and reduce the number of trips lawyers must make to the courthouse. 

Jackson's efforts have won him overwhelming support in the legal community. On the Houston Bar Association Preference Poll, members chose Jackson over his opponent by 1,270 to 200. Voters should follow their lead.

County Clerk: In this contest to replace retiring incumbent Beverly Kaufman, the Chronicle endorses Ann Harris Bennett, a veteran of more than 14 years' service as a district court coordinator.

The duties of the county clerk include administering county, state and Houston municipal elections as well as maintaining records for county courts and Commissioners Court. The office also issues marriage certificates and records deeds, birth and death certificates and assumed names, wills and probate documents.

Bennett opposes turning over the election functions of the office to an appointed election administrator as advocated by some county officials. She supports eventually converting to voting machines that provide a paper record that can be used for recounts. Bennett also promises to work closely with District Clerk Loren Jackson to upgrade the technology and efficiency of the clerk's office.

County Tax Assessor-Collector: In this contest to fill the unexpired term of Republican Paul Bettencourt, who resigned shortly after his election in 2008, the Chronicle endorses the Democrat who narrowly lost to him, Diane Trautman. The incumbent appointed by Commissioners Court, Leo Vasquez, lost to a challenger in the GOP primary.

The duties of this office include collecting more than $5 billion in taxes annually for 66 taxing entities, selling license plates and vehicle titles, and maintaining county voter rolls.

A former bank lending and trust manager, Trautman now teaches ethics and management to graduate students at Stephen F. Austin University. She pledges to restore non-partisan leadership to a service position too often used in the past to promote the political views of the occupant.

There's really no comparison between these three and their GOP counterparts. They comprise the very worst of extremist, TeaBagging ideology and would only exacerbate lingering problems.

TDP sues Vasquez, he wails

Boyd Richie's statement:

“In 2008, the Texas Democratic Party was forced to take legal action in Federal Court to protect Harris County voters from the inappropriate, partisan actions of former Voter Registrar Paul Bettencourt, whose office rejected tens of thousands of legitimate voter registration applications.

“When Leo Vasquez took office following Bettencourt’s sudden resignation after the 2008 election, he defended his predecessor’s actions. However, when the Texas Democratic Party presented the Court evidence of the serious misdeeds in the Harris County voter registration office, Vasquez ultimately agreed to a settlement, providing hope that those inappropriate practices had come to an end.

“Unfortunately, we believe Leo Vasquez violated the terms of our agreement last week, based on statements and information he distributed at a press conference that resembled a political pep rally. At that event, Vasquez made reckless accusations against a non-partisan organization based on a “review” of voter registration applications conducted by a group called “True the Vote.” In order to conduct such a review, Vasquez apparently provided the group access to the same applications he refused to provide the Texas Democratic Party last year, when he argued in Federal Court that such documents contained confidential information such as date of birth.

The DOJ is going to have to get involved down here.

“All Harris County residents should be deeply disturbed by how easily this office disregards election law and federal court orders and by how casually they distribute voters’ confidential information. Just last year, well-documented reports revealed that deputy voter registrar Ed Johnson was selling driver’s license information to Republican candidates as part of an illicit side-business with Republican state representative Dwayne Bohac.

“Given Mr. Vasquez’ actions last week, we have been forced to take legal action to make sure his office does not repeat the same kind of practices that denied almost 70,000 Harris County citizens the right to register and vote in 2008.”

Vasquez does have a response, but it isn't very calm or measured ...

“Houston Votes has taken off its non-partisan mask by sending in the Democratic Party machinery to fight its losing battle. They can’t deny the evidence this Office has put forward of their misdeeds; so, they try to divert attention by once again slandering this Office again.

“The Tax Office has, per the law, fully and completely processed each and every application that has been submitted to it, even those that evidence obvious questionability. It is our duty to refer that questionable work over to law enforcement.

“It is the Texas Democratic Party that is making reckless and baseless allegations. No third party group has been granted access to any confidential information of any voter outside of legal open records requests available to any citizen. We continue to zealously guard voter data.

“The Tax Office met today with representatives of the Democratic Party to discuss their concerns. However, the Democrats were not interested in discussing actual facts. As we have seen in the past, their lawsuit is just about political posturing.

John has called for Vasquez to step down. I concur.

OpenSourceDem on a Harris County elections administrator

Occasional contributor OpenSourceDem is responding to this post of mine.

When you realize that Sir Thomas More was pretty much a creep (before becoming a Saint on a legal technicality), you may not be in favor of a “utopian ... non-partisan, unelected official” running elections.

Um, that would be like the county jails, toll roads, sports stadiums, and drainage ditches.  Think about it!

Here is a practical alternative to an Elections Administrator who would be accountable to ... nobody:

Diane Trautman is Tax Assessor-Collector and focuses on tax matters, countering the endless, high-pitched whine from Dan Patrick and Paul Bettencourt, who are both still on the air. Here’s a clue: “Uniform taxation of real property ad valorem” is progressive, popular, and very, very constitutional. And here’s another clue: To do that the Tax Office needs to manage the property records efficiently and impose a “stamp tax”, not to raise revenue so much as to force disclosure of transaction prices.

Ann Harris Bennett is County Clerk and manages elections, including voter registration and history records, responsibly.

Loren Jackson manages the Jury Wheel and provides for the security of personal identity and integrity of property data across all county and state database systems that now, by design, expose Harris County citizens to criminal identity theft, discriminatory pricing, disenfranchisement, and official oppression.

All of the government data and meta-data -- save for keys and valuable or derogatory personal information that is not necessarily or legitimately in the public domain -- should be open and well documented publicly and professionally. To assure this, database and tabulation technology should fall under the routine auspices of a non-partisan and technically proficient county Testing and Audit Board, as well as subject to periodic involvement of non-partisan election officials and workers.

This is not utopian. It is very practical and basically how things worked when Houston was a “bi-racial city in which the rule of white, male (lawyers) was taken for granted”.  That is a quotation from Steven Klineberg from Tuesday night's Brown Bag ... well, except for the lawyer part.  What has happened since then is that as Houston and Harris County have become more “diverse” racially, the white, male (lawyers) have retreated behind legalism, bureaucracy, and police-powers to maintain their control and privileges by replacing pervasively crude, racial discrimination throughout local government and commerce with even more pervasively sophisticated, computer-mediated, economic discrimination throughout local government and commerce.

The result is right-wing and left-wing intellectuals arguing over the literary heritage of Ayn Rand while white, male (lawyers) extract more monopoly rent from government concessions and share it among themselves. What we have here today is one political establishment (bi-partisan!) and a criminal financial superstructure together with a criminal underground economy made palatable by bread, circuses, cute puppies, and mumbo jumbo for a majority-minority middle-class of working families.

Net, net: this gets us a lot of elections and not many voters -- the highest incarceration and lowest political participation rates of cities in our league. It does not get us to republican democracy by any stretch of definitions or imagination.

You can stay in Utopia, but I’m going to Texas!

An elections administrator for Harris County (?)

Harris County should consider appointing a bureaucrat to take over election duties from two elected officials who currently split the job, County Judge Ed Emmett said.

Emmett said he plans to ask Commissioners Court next month or in July to authorize a study of the costs and consequences of such a change.

Harris County's tax assessor-collector registers voters, a job that accompanied its duty to collect poll taxes. The county clerk runs elections. Both are elected.

Thus, taking voter registration out of the tax assessor/collector's office and elections management out of the county clerk's office and combining them into an elections administration department, under the supervision of an appointed county official, is the idea. And I like it.

Proponents of an elections czar say an appointee would be insulated from accusations and lawsuits alleging partisanship in carrying out the duties of the office.

In late 2008, the state Democratic Party said in a lawsuit that then-Tax Assessor Paul Bettencourt, a Republican, had illegally blocked thousands of people from registering to vote. The lawsuit was settled last fall. Bettencourt resigned in December 2008 to work in the private sector, just weeks after being elected to a third four-year term.

“The Democrats' lawsuit against the tax office and Paul Bettencourt's abrupt departure were game changers,” Emmett said. “It brought to everybody's attention that any time you have partisan offices running elections, you're just sort of leaving yourself open to lawsuits.”

The legacy of Quittencourt. He now runs a company that negotiates with the Harris County Appraisal District to get property taxes lowered for homeowners, marking time for his next electoral opportunity.  Continuing with Chris Moran at the Chron ...

There was talk of tinkering with the county's elections machinery at the time. County Clerk Beverly Kaufman and newly appointed Tax Assessor-Collector Leo Vasquez opposed it. No formal proposal emerged.

“I was glad because I didn't want to lose a lot of my people,” Kaufman said.

But Kaufman is retiring, and her endorsed successor lost the March primary election for the nomination to succeed her. Vasquez lost his Republican primary.

That opens a window for proponents in which they can largely avoid the turf war over taking money, people and power from the tax assessor and clerk. Kaufman herself restarted talk of an administrator when she sent Emmett information about it a month ago. Now that she is leaving office she supports an elections administrator, she said.

“This is the ideal time, when you're not pulling the rug out from somebody that's already doing it,” she said.

No incumbent owns any turf to lose, but the challengers bidding to replace them are howling:

Democrat Ann Harris Bennett and Republican Stan Stanart, the November candidates to succeed Kaufman, both said they oppose an elections administrator.

“The voters don't have any way of removing (an appointee) when they're not happy with the performance,” Stanart said.

Democratic tax-assessor candidate Diane Trautman agreed with Stanart, though her released statement had a more partisan bent.

“Now that his hand-picked appointee for tax assessor and Beverly Kaufman's chosen successor for county clerk have been rejected by voters, Ed Emmett wants to change the rules,” Trautman said. “He wants to make sure that the next time he appoints someone to oversee elections processes in Harris County, that person cannot be removed by the voters.”

Republican tax-assessor candidate Don Sumners said, “It's not broken. We don't need to fix it.” He said he suspects the plan is retaliation for his past public criticism of Commissioners Court.

The partisan PDiddie would love for this crucial bit of democracy to fall under the control of Diane Trautman and Ann Harris Bennett. But the (perhaps utopian) idea of a non-partisan, unelected official has great appeal -- assuming it could actually happen.

Statewide, an administrator is used in 77 of the 254 counties, including Bexar, Dallas, El Paso and Tarrant. By state law, an election commission consisting of the county judge, the tax assessor, the county clerk and the heads of the local political parties hires and fires an elections administrator.

The leaders of the county's Republican and Democratic parties condemned the idea.

GOP Chairman Jared Woodfill said the party took a stand against an administrator two years ago. “It's another level of bureaucracy that we didn't need,” Woodfill said.

Democratic Chairman Gerry Birnberg said there is no party position on the matter but that he may take it up if the idea gets traction at Commissioners Court.

Charles Kuffner has more, including these questions:

Does this person have to be periodically re-appointed, or re-confirmed? Under what conditions can he or she be fired? How can you isolate this person from political pressure, yet ensure they are accountable?

All important considerations. I think my condition would be someone with prior metro county experience outside of Texas -- thus somewhat removed from the Republican Party of Texas' unique view on what constitutes free and fair elections. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Greg Abbott. Update: ... and so is Kuffner.

Gene Locke plays the hate card

I told you he wasn't a Democrat.

A cluster of socially conservative Houstonians is planning a campaign to discourage voters from choosing City Controller Annise Parker in the December mayoral runoff because she is a lesbian, according to multiple ministers and conservatives involved in the effort.

The group is motivated by concerns about a “gay takeover” of City Hall, given that two other candidates in the five remaining City Council races are also openly gay, as well as national interest driven by the possibility that Houston could become the first major U.S. city to elect an openly gay woman.

Another primary concern is that Parker or other elected officials would seek to overturn a 2001 city charter amendment that prohibits the city from providing benefits to the domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees.

"The bottom line is that we didn't pick the battle, she did, when she made her agenda and sexual preference a central part of her campaign,” said Dave Welch, executive director of the Houston Area Pastor Council, numbering more than 200 senior pastors in the Greater Houston area. “National gay and lesbian activists see this as a historic opportunity. The reality is that's because they're promoting an agenda which we believe to be contrary to the concerns of the community and destructive to the family.”

So at this point you may be wondering, what does a good Democrat (sic) like Gene Locke have to do with this slime?

(Locke) strongly distanced himself from a previous anti-gay attack against her that ultimately proved to have been a hoax. But he has made recent efforts to court some of the staunch social conservatives who are either actively planning on attacking Parker's sexuality or strongly considering it.

He appeared at the Pastor Council's annual gala last Friday and was encouraged several times by State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, a featured speaker, to stand for conservative values.

Locke has also met with and sought the endorsement of Dr. Steven Hotze, a longtime local kingmaker in conservative politics and author of the Straight Slate in 1985, a coterie of eight City Council candidates he recruited who ran on an anti-gay platform. ...

Republican consultant Allen Blakemore, a longtime Hotze associate who spoke on his behalf, said he is considering mailing out a slate of endorsed runoff candidates, and Parker's sexuality is a “key factor” in his decision.

Ah, the exquisite stench emanating from Harris County's freak right: Stephen Hotze, Dan Patrick, Allen Blakemore. And all of their minions. Did I forget to mention Paul Bettencourt? Although he thinks Locke isn't coming out forcefully enough against gay rights.

Former Harris County Tax Assessor Collector Paul Bettencourt, another Republican close to Hotze, said that if Locke wishes to unite a strong African-American base with social conservatives, they will need his assurance that he will not seek to overturn the charter amendment.

Responding to the same debate question as Parker last month, Locke said same-sex benefits allow governments and businesses “a competitive advantage” and said he “would favor that,” although it would not be the first thing on his plate.

“That's not going to motivate us to come out and vote for somebody,” Bettencourt said of social conservatives. “You cannot get the positive good conservative turnout if you're trying to undo charter amendments. It's a line drawn in the sand. You just can't have it both ways.”

Kuffner and Muse have more to say about this development. Locke's campaign is also doing something funny with Democratic precinct chairs' e-mail addresses, which is a far cry from gay-baiting the electorate but in keeping with a organization so desperate to win that they will do whatever it takes -- lie, cheat, steal, misinform, obfuscate, smear, and fear-monger.

Epic fail.

Clerk Kaufman retiring

Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman, a one-time Waller County farm girl who oversaw record-keeping and election functions of the nation's third largest county, announced Friday she will not seek a fifth term next year. ...

n 1994, Kaufman was appointed to fill an unexpired term as county clerk after the death of Molly Pryor, who had been appointed eight months earlier after the death of longtime clerk Anita Rodeheaver.

Duties of the county clerk include maintaining records for commissioners court, probate and civil courts; overseeing records of real property, tax liens and vital statistics, and supervising elections.

Congratulations and enjoy your retirement, Ms. Kaufman.

Let the speculation begin on her 2010 potential successors. Councilwoman and Vice Mayor Pro Tem (and DNC member) Sue Lovell is widely rumored to be interested in the post, though we likely won't hear anything about it from her until after the November municipal elections. Hector de Leon, Kaufman's director of communications and voter outreach, could have an interest; 2006 Clerk candidate and 2008 judicial candidate James Goodwille Pierre may as well.

Republicans will line up to replace Kaufman, too. Their ranks could include former and very temporary District Clerk, Theresa Chang; the man she replaced when he unsuccessfully challenged County Judge Ed Emmett, Charles Bacarisse; and Tom Moon, whose long record of both Republican activism and government service includes a stint working for both Kaufman and former tax assessor/collector Paul Bettencourt.

Dwayne Bohac and Ed Johnson probably have ruined their chances.

What names are you hearing bandied about, from either side of the aisle?

Update: Carl Whitmarsh advances the name of Sue Schechter.

Conflict of interest in Harris County's voter registration office

You actually thought that when Paul Bettencourt suddenly resigned, and the Texas Democratic Party's lawsuit revealed his voter registration shenanigans (recall the Wite-Out Caper?) that they were cleaning up their act over there? Well, you were wrong:

"This is as blatant a case of election corruption that I have seen,” said Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project, a Democrat activist group.

The Lone Star Project’s complaint revolves around Ed Johnson.

Johnson is the associate voter registrar at the Harris County Tax Assessor Collectors office, but according to state documents, that's just his day job. Johnson is also a paid director of a small company that provides voter data to Republican candidates for office. That company, Campaign Data Systems, billed at least $140,000 in 2008.

"It gets to the fundamental rights in a democracy and that is the right to participate in an election. You've got an individual who has got a partisan axe to grind and that person is determining who gets to vote and who doesn't," Angle said.

No one from the Assessor-Collector's office would comment on the accusation. According to them, this is because a lawsuit against the office that was filed after last year’s General Election could be affected.

As usual, it's not so much the crime as the cover-up:

"The fact that it has a (negative) appearance could have a chilling effect on voter’s confidence," said 11 News Political Expert Bob Stein

Stein says that there is no sign of any legal ethics violation from the documents he has seen, but they could be viewed negatively.

"I think that these are legitimate activities, partisan activities none the less. But the fact that he is not disclosing them and did not think to disclose them, probably raises questions whether he even thought it might be embarrassing to his employer," Stein said.

Already some political adversaries are speaking out.

"That is corruption by definition. You shouldn't have election officials that moonlight as partisan political hacks,” Angle said.

Stein would not go that far, but did say that “at the very least, it was a very embarrassing and awkward position."

Ed Johnson -- recall his testimony on Voter ID, and that of his consort George Hammerlein during the last legislative session -- has to be fired immediately by tax assessor-collector Leo Vasquez. And that would be only a necessary first step.

Charles Kuffner elaborates on the incriminating connection: Johnson's moonlight employer is owned by Rep. Dwayne Bohac. Bohac, like most of the rest of the hard-right in the Texas Lege, humped Voter ID to the detriment of thousands of pieces of important legislation.

And that's the latest accomplishment brought to you once again by the alumni of the Tom DeLay School of Advanced Political Corruption.

Update: See the KHOU video report. And read the Lone Star Project's comprehensive report on the entire sordid affair.

Harris County's plan for voter registration

I like the sound of this, so let's keep an eye out for how effectively it is implemented:

County Tax Assessor-Collector Leo Vasquez has put together a coalition of private organizations and large employers to make sure that residents who move within or to the county get an on-the-spot chance to fill out fresh voter registration applications.

Moving into an apartment or buying a dwelling involves signing lots of papers. Now the Houston Apartment Association and the Texas Land Title Association will make sure the papers include voter registration forms, Vasquez said Wednesday.

Continental Airlines and the Houston Independent School District are the first employers to join the coalition by ensuring that registration forms go to workers who update their personnel records with new addresses.

“Let’s hit people when they are trying to make one of those moves,” said Vasquez, who was appointed in December to succeed fellow Republican Paul Bettencourt, who resigned from his elected post.

Some poor word choices there, Leo, but the effort seems to be well-directed:

Vasquez said he created the voter registration coalition without regard to such controversies. He also said he does not plan to play a partisan role.

Registered voters who move without updating their registrations can, in most cases, vote on Election Day at the polling place for the precinct where they formerly lived. With the rise of early voting participation, where voters live within the county matters less because they can vote at any early voting station.

Having to return to an old neighborhood to vote sometimes discourages voters from casting ballots, Vasquez pointed out, so updated registrations make participation easier.

Vasquez also hopes the program will make the volume of voter registrations more consistent through the year. Typically, address changes and other registrations peak a few weeks before each election. These spikes lead to last-minute errors by those who fill out the cards and a processing backlog at the voter registrars’ office, according to Vasquez.

Fair enough. Let's see how it goes.

An elections administration department in Harris County?

Liz Peterson has a good update here on the continuing saga of difficult democracy at the ballot box in the nation's third-largest county:

The departure of Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt has opened the door for some discussion of whether his successor should inherit the job of maintaining Harris County's voter rolls, a duty assigned to that office in the days of Jim Crow poll taxes.

State law allows Commissioners Court to assign that responsibility to the county clerk, who already conducts elections and counts the votes, as long as the county clerk and the tax assessor-collector sign off on the plan. The court also can create an independent elections administration office to handle all election-related duties.

Seventy-three of Texas' 254 counties have established separate elections offices, including every large, urban county but Harris and Travis. Nineteen other counties have assigned the voter registration role to the county clerk.

Earlier this month, Republican precinct chairman Jim Harding proposed moving the rolls to the County Clerk's Office, saying that would "streamline all of the voter activity from initial registration to final certification of an election under county clerk leadership."

Republican County Judge Ed Emmett and Democratic Commissioners Sylvia Garcia and El Franco Lee have said the idea of moving the rolls is worth discussing, though little consensus has emerged over how that should be done.

Emmett said he would be open to shifting those duties to the county clerk but opposed the creation of a new elections administration office. Garcia said she prefers the idea of an elections administrator because that person would be prohibited by law from making political contributions or endorsing candidates or ballot measures. Lee said he is not sure either change would do enough to make the voter registration process more transparent and user-friendly.

So Commissioner Garcia -- who abandoned her support of Diane Trautman for tax assessor/collector and voted for Leo Vasquez last week -- and Commissioner Lee are for the idea; Judge Emmett is lukewarm, and most of the rest of the parties involved are against it: Clerk Kaufman, TA/C Vasquez, and Commissioner Radack ...

For her part, Republican County Clerk Beverly Kaufman said she is not interested in adding voter registration to her many responsibilities. And newly appointed Tax Assessor-Collector Leo Vasquez said he believes the current system is very efficient.

"Why create yet another organization, another layer of bureaucracy in Harris County government?" Vasquez said of the elections administrator idea. "It just doesn't make sense."

The idea could also face significant opposition from Republican Commissioner Steve Radack, who said he would not vote for an elections administrator under any circumstance. He said the the current system offers checks and balances while allowing voters to judge whether the tax assessor-collector and the county clerk are doing a good job.

"I think that's good and healthy for the electoral process," he said.

An elections administrator would be appointed by a county elections commission composed of the county judge, the tax assessor-collector, the county clerk and the chairmen of both political parties.

Firing the administrator would take a four-fifths vote of the county elections commission and a majority vote of Commissioners Court.

Oh yeah, there's Federal-Indictment-Any-Day-Now Eversole:

Republican Commissioner Jerry Eversole declined to comment, saying he would make his opinion known if the topic came up during a court meeting.

Don't expect to see anything come of this entirely worthwhile proposal.

Vasquez likely to replace Bettencourt

I didn't exactly predict it, but it looks like they took my hint:

Leopoldo Vasquez, a corporate finance professional who serves on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice board, appears to be the leading candidate to replace Paul Bettencourt as Harris County tax assessor-collector.

Calling the Yale and Columbia-educated Vasquez "very respected and very intelligent" Commissioner Steve Radack said Friday he planned to nominate Vasquez at Tuesday's (12/23) meeting.

Neither Radack nor County Judge Ed Emmett officially would confirm his selection because court members are barred from polling one another outside of meetings.

But Emmett said Vasquez is definitely on his short list.

"I would call him a very, very great choice," Emmett said

Vasquez, 42, did not return a telephone call seeking comment today.

He is chief financial officer for Maximus Coffee Group and Cadeco Industries. Prior to serving on the TDCJ board, he was a commissioner for the Texas Department of Licensing & Regulation.

I'm guessing he isn't a Democrat, which would violate one of Emmett's own pronouncements. What else would we expect from this bunch, though? Last we heard of Commissioner Toilet Plunger, he was helping Joan Huffman violate election law.

Update: This Houston Press article from 2003 sheds more light on Vasquez.

"Vote for Chris Bell" Weekly Wrangle

Tomorrow is Election Day in SD-17. Be sure and vote for the only candidate demonstrating real reform. Here's this week's edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance's weekly Round-Up.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is amazed that today's America is repeating the 1930s era of economic depression and prohibition. America's Second Biggest Waste, War on Drugs describes how prohibition of medical marijuana keeps profiteering Big Pharma and the greedy military/industrial complex in the money, while hurting legitimate patients. Keeping medical cannabis illegal hurts everyone.

Joan Huffman's campaign for Texas Senate reached new lows during early voting last week, notes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs. First she violated election law by holding a campaign rally down the hall from an EV polling location, and then her campaign made smear robocalls to Democrats in the middle of the night. Let's put an end to this kind of politics and elect Chris Bell.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston has the top 10 reasons Paul Bettencourt quit.

jobsanger discusses America's broken and bloated healthcare system, and decides the best solution offered to date is Rep. John Conyers' National Health Insurance Act (HR 676).

Some unsolicited advice for Republicans from CouldBeTrue of South Texas
Chisme.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson discusses the likely federal stimulus and its implications on infrastructure in Texas in their posting entitled "Possible stimulus money for infrastructure creates debate on spending priorities".

This week, Mayor McSleaze at McBlogger takes on Kay Bailey and speculates on who is best positioned to take her on in 2010.

Off the Kuff finishes up his series of precinct analysis posts with a look at CD-10.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks at what could have been contained in Rick Perry's suspicious envelope.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted about Houston mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett writing in the Houston Chronicle about cuts in emergency care and job reductions at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. These cuts, impacting the uninsured and a city reeling after a hurricane, are a classic Texas story of kicking the little guy while he is down.

Vince at Capitol Annex notes that sources are denying that state Sen. Leticia Van De Putte (D-San Antonio) will be leaving the Texas Senate for a position in the Obama administration.

Harris judicial candidate Pierre sues to overturn November result

Because of the voting registration failures of Paul Bettencourt, of course:

The Democratic candidate who lost a Harris County judicial race by 230 votes last month is asking a court to make him the winner, saying a variety of alleged vote count and voter registration failures by the county cost him a victory.

Democrat J. Goodwille Pierre, a lawyer who manages small business programs for the Houston airport system, is no stranger to voting rights lawsuits; he said he worked on such issues in Texas for the liberal group People For The American Way, particularly on behalf of Prairie View A&M University students registering in Waller County.

Now the first-time candidate is filing suit on behalf of his own campaign against Republican civil court Judge Joseph "Tad" Halbach of the 333rd District Court.

This lawsuit is only slightly related to the TDP's own, filed yesterday, which points to the same shenanigans.

Both suits now allege that outgoing Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, a Republican who also serves as voter registrar, rejected legitimate voter registration applications.

Pierre's lawsuit also cites a non-partisan ballots board's rejection of about 5,800 ballots cast by voters who, according to records from Bettencourt's office and other agencies, had not been properly registered. The ballot board chairman said some of the ballots, after being processed by Bettencourt's staff, had information obscured by correction fluid.

"Had all persons who cast a vote in this race been allowed to have their vote counted; it would have changed the outcome of the election by providing Pierre with more votes than Joseph "Tad" Halbach," the suit said. "Moreover, various irregularities make it impossible to ascertain the true outcome of the election."

Ah, the Wite-Out caper again. Recall that it was the GOP ballot board chairman who caught it?

But Republican Jim Harding, a retired Houston business executive who chairs the ballot board of about 35 people, said the counting process was delayed by faulty work by Bettencourt's staff.

The problems included hundreds of voter forms whose information the registrar's staff masked with white correction fluid and then altered with new information, Harding said.

As ballot board members determined whether ballots should be counted, he said, they wanted to have confidence in the accuracy of the registrar's research.

But "that kind of confidence is not replicated here, and then when they see this 'white-out' all over the place they get nervous," he said.

I don't know what to expect out of Pierre's complaint, other than to draw more heat to Bettencourt's misadventure. Pierre is a respected local attorney and Democratic activist; he also challenged Kaufman for the county clerk's position in 2006.

With the breaking news earlier this afternoon that Joan Huffman has likely violated campaign election law by holding a political rally in the same building as an early voting poll, one thing we know for certain is that Vince Ryan is going to be one busy guy.

Huffman violates campaign law with rally at poll

Posted about half an hour ago. Paul Bettencourt probably told her it was OK:

Joan Huffman's campaign for state Senate appears to have broken the law against campaigning on property where voting is taking place, Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman said today.

Republican Huffman, opposing Democrat Chris Bell in next Tuesday's state Senate District 17 runoff, hosted a barbecue luncheon for voters today inside the Tracey Gee Community Center in far west Houston. Early voting in the state Senate election is taking place through Friday in another room in the same building.

Commissioner Steve Radack, a Republican, said he attended the luncheon along with Huffman and urged people to vote for her. She is a former felony court judge.

Under state law, it is a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $500, to campaign for or against a candidate "within 100 feet of an outside door through which a voter may enter the building in which a polling place is located."

Radack said a member of Kaufman's staff working at the early voting station took no action after checking into a complaint by a voter. But Kaufman said the event was "ill-advised" and should not have taken place there, regardless of the distance between the two rooms inside the community building.

Kaufman said it was up to a voter to pursue any charges against the campaign. The voter who complained to the election worker said she, indeed, would do so.

Just another reason to go vote for Chris Bell (as if you need one).

Yesterday's Bettenquit Follies

Houston's "blizzard" kept me from attending the TDP presser and from posting this update yesterday. Alan Bernstein was there and files this report (as they say on teevee). At the end of the excerpt are a couple of emphasized portions:

"Mr. Bettencourt's late-night resignation announcement is his attempt to avoid bringing to light the inner workings of his office over the past several years and still does not ensure that the problems surrounding Harris County voter registration will be resolved," the state (Democratic) party said Wednesday in a statement distributed by Houston lawyer Chad Dunn.

Republican Bettencourt, the tax assessor-collector, said it was ridiculous to suggest he and his staff purposely foiled voter registrations or that his resignation was triggered by the lawsuit.

...

Dunn, the Democrats' lawyer, said the lawsuit was expanded to, among other things, include as plaintiffs four people whose voter registration applications were stymied by what the party calls the county's "unlawful and hyper-technical voters registration activities." The lawsuit alleges Bettencourt's staff has disenfranchised voters by using unwarranted technical reasons for rejecting their registration applications.

Bettencourt said the four were rejected for routine, justifiable reasons involving their paperwork, and that the registration system in the county works well.

"You are going to have mistakes made," he said. "What you do is fix them."

The bipartisan ballot board that decided whether to accept provisional ballots cast by voters whose names were missing from the Nov. 4 rolls accepted some that Bettencourt's staff had classified as incomplete. His staff was unable to get thousands of registrations onto the rolls before early voting.

Bettencourt apparently still will have to give pre-trial testimony in the lawsuit after this month and will be represented by the new county attorney, Democrat Vince Ryan.

That first part above is why I believe that a new tax assessor/collector/voter registrar deserves to be relieved of the VR portion of their job title. As explosive as the legal complaint of malfeasance is, the fact that thousands of people didn't get to vote because their paperwork (a postcard, mind you) couldn't get processed in time reveals a incompetence of the rankest order on the part of Bettencourt and his staff. Put aside the partisan rancor and even the alleged criminal mischief for a moment: can a new department head get this job done more effectively than an incumbent with several years of experience at it? I'd have to be pessimistic, no matter how talented that person may be.

Bettencourt kept the inner workings of the voter registration process as secretive as he could. The FNG is going to have to do many things better, and one is to open up the process to observers -- media, political party, and otherwise -- in a significant way. Not for nothing, but Beverly Kaufman has a few cycles of experience dealing with HCDP observers like myself and John Behrman (and others before us) analyzing the county's vote counting -- with us suggesting changes, arguing for more security, and so forth. She has -- grudgingly at times -- moved closer and closer to our requests for improved e-Slate integrity, including L&A and parallel testing, tightened chain-of-custody security, and more. She hasn't done every we have asked; she fights us some and slow-walks us too much, but she has certainly demonstrated far more openness and allowed more "sunshine" into the vote tabulation process conducted by her staff than Bettencourt ever had a nightmare about.

If commissioners court intends to seriously address the mess that is voter registration in Harris County, it will remove the task from the purview of the tax assessor/collector's office and give it to the county clerk.

As for Vince Ryan defending Paul Bettencourt against a TDP lawsuit, that is going to be comedy gold down the road.

Tuesday's Bettencourt Follies

This promises to be the holiday gift that keeps on giving. First, the Texas Democratic Party will have a press conference tomorrow morning to announce the next step in their legal action against Paul Quittencourt:

Bettencourt's announcement that he would resign came suspiciously the day after additional legal activity was undertaken by the Texas Democratic Party—action which could shed light on misdeeds that have occurred within Bettencourt's office for years. It appears Paul Bettencourt is hoping that he can sneak off behind a late-night resignation announcement and the problems facing his office will simply go away. But that is not the case.

“The TDP will continue its efforts to bring accountability and transparency to the Harris County voter registration process. And Paul Bettencourt will have to take responsibility for any wrongdoing that has occurred within his office,” said TDP attorney Chad Dunn.

Wednesday December 10, at 10:30 a.m., at 1300 McGowen in Midtown. I'm going to try like hell to be there.

And Liz Peterson has a couple of interesting developments to report:

The Harris County Administration Building is still abuzz with rumors over who'll get picked to replace Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt.

The most intriguing scenario mentioned so far involves the possible nomination of Commissioner Sylvia Garcia, who would give up her seat to position herself to challenge County Judge Ed Emmett in 2010 or to run for a statewide office.

Picking Garcia would give a Democrat control of the voter registration process, something that party has got to want. But Emmett would get to pick her replacement, likely giving the GOP a fourth seat at the table.

Garcia said the rumor is "absolutely not true."

Color me skeptical as well. But this is definitely more intriguing ...

The new Republican supermajority could just move the voter registration duties from the tax office to the County Clerk's office, headed by Republican Beverly Kaufman.

That idea, apart from any Garcia chatter, is already being circulated by Jim Harding, a Republican who chairs the county's bipartisan ballot board.

Last month, he blamed faulty work by Bettencourt's staff for delaying the counting process. Harding's comments triggered a bit of a brouhaha after Bettencourt left an emotional message on his answering machine.

In an e-mail to Commissioner Jerry Eversole, Kaufman and leaders of the Harris County Republican Party, Harding said such a move would "streamline all of the voter activity from initial registration to final certification of an election under County Clerk leadership."

This shift of responsibility seems to me to be distinctly possible, given the controversy of Bettencourt's tenure as voter registrar, the steadier reputation of Kaufman, and more significantly the rumors of her retirement before 2010, when the election of County Clerk is scheduled to appear on the ballot. I doubt Ms. Kaufman is anxious to take on the management of this rather large task at the end of her career. Furthermore, Councilwoman Sue Lovell is strongly rumored to be interested in the job, with Kaufman in the race or not (Kuffner notes Lovell has a few unfriendlies).

More juicy details in tomorrow's Follies, without a doubt.

A couple dozen people want to replace Quittencourt

Jockeying began in earnest Monday for the post being vacated by Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, who announced late last week he was resigning to take a private-sector job.

At least two dozen names were being floated, including potential Houston mayoral candidate Bill King, ousted District Clerk Theresa Chang and Republican political consultant Court Koenning, who was the chief of staff for state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston.

Diane Trautman, a Democrat who lost to Bettencourt in the Nov. 4 election, nominated herself as well, saying Bettencourt's decision "deprived the voters of an opportunity to decide who will lead the tax office at this critical time in our county's future."

The choice now falls to the five members of Commissioners Court, where the Republican Party's three-seat majority makes the selection of a Democrat unlikely.

The court is not expected to discuss the vacancy at today's meeting. The next regularly scheduled meeting is Dec. 23, though the panel could call a special meeting before then. Bettencourt said he is willing to stay on the job until Christmas.

What a swell guy. Let's continue breaking down Liz Peterson's article:

Chang, whom the court picked to replace District Clerk Charles Bacarisse when he resigned to challenge County Judge Ed Emmett in the Republican primary, is the most prominent person openly campaigning for the position. Mary Jane Smith, Chang's campaign consultant, said Chang already has expressed interest to some members of court. ...

Bacarisse also has been mentioned as a possible candidate, but he laughed when asked about his interest in the job. He said he is committed to his role as vice president for advancement at Houston Baptist University.

Confirms my (revised) suspicions from Sunday.

King, a former Kemah mayor and councilman who previously was managing partner of the law firm that collects delinquent taxes for Harris County and other local governmental entities, shrugged off speculation that he would seek the position. He said he had not given the idea much thought because he is focused on a possible run for Houston mayor or council.

"I guess if the Commissioners Court was interested in me doing it, I would at least talk to them about it," he said.

Overwhelming enthusiasm on your part, Mr. King. You're right; it's probably a lot more work than you really want to do.

Koenning, a former executive director of the Harris County Republican Party, did not return a call.

Among the other possible contenders are four current or former state representatives, four former Houston council members, a Republican judge who recently lost his seat last month, and three others who recently lost bids for various offices.

Mark Ellis, one of the former Houston councilmen named as a possible candidate, said he is happy with his job at an investment bank and wants to continue helping oversee the development of freight and commuter rail in Harris and Fort Bend counties as head of the Gulf Coast Freight Rail District Board.

"I'm interested. I'm intrigued. I'm flattered, but at the end of the day, I think they need to pick somebody who would really want to be a serious candidate for that position, and right now, that doesn't really fit with my life," said Ellis, who has a 4-year-old daughter.

Some current and former members of Bettencourt's staff also have been mentioned as possible successors, including Tom Moon, who spent five years in the tax office's voter registration department before joining the County Clerk's Office.

Moon said he has thrown his hat in the ring, but "it's a very small hat, and it'll probably get stomped on."

I mentioned that Vince mentioned Ed Johnson. Moon and I have exchanged eye contact on Election Night a time or two at Clerk Kaufman's ballot cave. He's as dry and low-key as this quote indicates.

Dwayne Bohac is one of the state representatives interested. I'm guessing Crazy Bob Talton, formerly of HD-144 and HCRP chair Jared WoodenHead's law partner -- also one of the defeated in the scrum last March for the right to replace Nick Lampson in CD-22 -- is a name in the hat as well. Recent GOP councilpersons include Michael Berry and Pam Holm. There's more than 20 Republican judges who lost their jobs last month. Oh yeah, Tommy Thomas and Mike Stafford. I'm pretty sure neither one of those two is in the running.

Another guess: nobody currently serving in the Lege is going to get it. At least not until Tom Craddick's fate is known, and unless a meteor falls from the sky and takes him out, that won't be before January 13, when the Texas Legislature convenes for its 81st session. We'll have somebody by December 23, as Peterson indicates.

Commissioner Sylvia Garcia said she is backing Trautman, but knows there is little chance the education professor would prevail. She said she also has asked lawyers to investigate whether there is a way for the court to call an election before 2010. Barring either of those options, she said the court should appoint a "caretaker" who will promise not to run for re-election in two years.

"I think it is an affront to the voters, and I think the voters should speak loudly," she said. "We should really hear a public outcry about this and why we're being put in this position."

Sylvia is trying to muster some outrage, but nobody whose vote matters is paying her any attention.

Bettencourt has said serious discussions about his new job did not occur until after the election. He said the January filing deadline for re-election is so early, incumbents have no way of knowing where they will be in life nearly a year later.

"People can express whatever opinion they would like, God bless 'em," he said.

God bless you too Paul, you sorry son of a bitch.