Showing posts sorted by relevance for query paul bettencourt. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query paul bettencourt. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, September 03, 2021

The Sine MF'n Die Wrangle from Far Left Texas


The carnage will continue -- redistricting lies ahead -- sometime after the long weekend, subject to Governor Helen Wheels' next summons.


And TXElects, with a spot of good news (subject to the call in the third special session).

SB 97 by Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) would have required various “audits” and “reviews” of, and “explanations” from, county election officials. It passed the Senate today on a 17-14 vote but did not make it over to the House for further action. At least one Republican voted against it.

It's apropos that statehouse Dems managed to screw up one last time before the end came.


Recriminations both accurately and falsely ascribed with respect to the origins of SB8 are still circulating, so I'll post that separately.  Let's survey the rest of the damage left behind by Hurricane IDontGiveaDamn, aka the Texas GOP.

ICYMI ...


And the bail reform bill got a lot of concerned attention from the people whose opinions I respect on criminal justice issues.


Ross Ramsey of the TexTrib and Matt Davies of Newsday, in cartoon form, provide the summary of the week's events.


I'll also address the coming redistricting fight already under way in a forthcoming post.  Lots more ahead, so I'll close with some laugh-to-keep-from-crying.

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Sunday, December 28, 2008

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.

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Wednesday, November 05, 2008

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from yesterday: The UGLY

These are all fugly, actually:

-- John Cornyn, John Culberson, Paul Bettencourt, and Ted Olson.

-- Still no statewide Democrat. Mark Thompson and the Supremes -- Jordan, Houston, Yanez -- all came up just short.

-- Ugliest of all: Dominionist David Bradley is re-elected to the Texas State Board of Education.
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Monday, November 17, 2008

The Weekly Wrangle

Here's this week's Texas Progressive Alliance blog post round-up.

Barfly at McBlogger takes a moment to remind all of us that we better not fu*k with Barbie.

Ruth Jones McClendon gets the Speaker's race dangerously wrong says CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme.

Vince at Capitol Annex takes a look at the race for Speaker of the Texas House and provides answers to two important questions: is a secret ballot legal and will a secret ballot doom Tom Craddick?
Read more »
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Sunday, November 23, 2008

How my precinct voted

Matt Stiles provides the data link; if you live in Harris County you can enter your precinct number and see how yours performed. As precinct captain I take great pride in these results:

Registered voters: 2,940
Votes: 2,133

72.55% turnout, well above the county average.

PRESIDENT
John McCain (R): 852
Barack Obama (D): 1,235

Forty-six of my neighbors voted for Bob Barr or some write-in candidate (or did not vote at all in the race for the White House). Obama carried my precinct 59-41.

U.S. SENATE
John Cornyn (R): 844
Rick Noriega (D): 1,133
Yvonne Adams Schick (L): 67

Noriega's margin of victory, 55.4%-41.3, almost precisely matches the statewide result in reverse (Cornyn carried Texas 54.82 - 42.83, with 2.34% for Libertarian Schick).

DISTRICT ATTORNEY
Pat Lykos (R): 894
C.O. "Brad" Bradford (D): 1,031

Bradford won 53.55 - 46.45 while losing the county (and the contest) 50.21 - 49.79.

COUNTY JUDGE
Ed Emmett (R): 987
David Mincberg (D): 967

Ah, the ticket-splitters are revealed.

COUNTY ATTORNEY
Mike Stafford (R): 837
Vince Ryan (D): 1,064

DISTRICT CLERK
Theresa Chang (R): 864
Loren Jackson (D): 1,025

SHERIFF
Tommy Thomas (R): 783
Adrian Garcia (D): 1,159

The sheriff-elect got 59.68 % to the incumbent's 40.32, a little better than his overall countywide margin.

TAX ASSESSOR-COLLECTOR
Paul Bettencourt (R): 944
Diane Trautman (D): 949
Jeffrey McGee (L): 73

The only real disappointment among my precinct's results.

It would be interesting to know what the straight-party votes were, as well as the outcome in the SD-17 contest. But I need to stay busy for the next month getting Chris Bell into the Texas Senate.
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Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Bloglunch with Mike Sullivan

Last Friday, the Harris County tax assessor/collector's new media and communications manager, Justin Concepcion -- he recently moved over from Mayor Annise Parker's office --  arranged a sit-down with us blogger types.

John filed a brief report about it already, and Noah has been a fan of Sullivan's for some time.

Sullivan's term as TA/C so far is in marked contrast with his way-too-high-profile predecessors Paul Bettencourt, Leo Vazquez, and Don Sumners.  (Between the three of those assholes, it seems I have written more than fifty blog posts.)  Sullivan appears to have figured out that the tax office doesn't need to make headlines, and that's to his credit.

Sullivan really wanted to brag a little on the improvements in customer service he's made, which include shortening the queues at the 16 branch offices and taking credit cards as payment for vehicle license registrations.  We wouldn't let him, however; much of our focus was on the voter registration side of things.

Mike Sullivan knew he had a big job ahead even before he was elected TA/C of Harris County. He just didn't know HOW big.
(photo courtesy Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle)

Let's get some advisories out of the way first: it's too late, as of yesterday, to register to vote in Houston's municipal elections on tap.  You still have time to make sure you have the proper photo identification in order to do so, and here's everything you need to know about that.  Make sure you get that done, and do it now.

Sullivan was avuncular and candid in our hour-long meeting.  He makes a good impression as an administrator and his record so far seems to reflect that competence.  I'm still not bowled over by his efforts to be bipartisan (or non-partisan, as the case may be).  He demurred when asked about things connected with the controversies of the recent past in regard to voter registration; he said that purging of the voter rolls is continuous and ongoing and in coordination with the Texas Secretary of State, John Steen.  But he dodged my questions about whether he favored or disfavored the creation of a county elections administrator.  The topic of True the Vote and Catherine Engelbrecht unfortunately did not come up.

And I am not at all impressed with his appointment of voter registration manager Albert Cheng.  Greg has a couple of posts on Cheng's testimony during this past summer's redistricting hearings, and how badly he misunderstands the concept of "candidate of choice".

But overall, like John and Noah, I admire Sullivan's work ethic and his efforts to improve the county's tax office are apparent.  I just won't ever be a fan of the man's politics.  He does, however, set an example that other Republicans would be wise to follow: leave the BS about Obama outside and do your job.

I'd like to see a lot more of that.

Update: Greg and Charles were also in attendance.
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Saturday, October 11, 2008

Conservatives keep on shrieking 'fraud'

Following the revelations that ACORN registered Tony Romo and a few other Dallas Cowboys to vote in Nevada, the knee-jerk Republick outcry shifted suddenly from "ILL EAGLES" to "FRAUD". Closer to home, the Local Twos found a few dead folks who voted in the Texas primary in March.

That led, predictably, to a little LBJ bashing. (Really though, what do the conservatives have left to complain about? Since John McCain has been forced to talk down the bigots showing up at his rallies, they can no longer claim even with a half-straight face that Barack Hussein Obama is a terrorist. Team Maverick sidekick Sarah Barracuda got gaffed by the Republican investigation in the Alaska legislature that found her guilty of abusing her authority, so her stock is going to keep plummeting. Republicans across the country from the White House to the statehouse to the courthouse are about to be washed out to sea under a blue tsunami, and the panic and desperation is palpable.)

Regarding ACORN:

ACORN registers lots of lower income and/or minority voters. They operate all across the country and do a lot of things beside voter registration. What's key to understand is their method. By and large they do not rely on volunteers to register voters. They hire people -- often people with low incomes or even the unemployed. This has the dual effect of not only registering people but also providing some work and income for people who are out of work. But because a lot of these people are doing it for the money, inevitably, a few of them cut corners or even cheat. So someone will end up filling out cards for nonexistent names and some of those slip through ACORN's own efforts to catch errors. (It's important to note that in many of the recent ACORN cases that have gotten the most attention it's ACORN itself that has turned the people in who did the fake registrations.) These reports start buzzing through the right-wing media every two years and every time the anecdotal reports of 'thousands' of fraudulent registrations turns out, on closer inspection, to be either totally bogus themselves or wildly exaggerated. So thousands of phony registrations ends up being, like, twelve.

And as for anybody voting with a deceased person's registration, they ought to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the task of updating voter registrations falls to the county tax assessor-collector (Matt), and because Harris County maintains a vital records database that includes death certificates, there's really no excuse beyond bureaucratic incompetence that allows for 4,000 dead people to remain on the voter rolls.

Fortunately we have a great alternative to Paul Bettencourt on the ballot next month, and her name is Dr. Diane Trautman.
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Monday, December 15, 2008

"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.
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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

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.
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Thursday, November 09, 2006

OK. I suppose I'm a little encouraged

by this:

Harris County Democratic and Republican officials have looked at Tuesday's local election results and they agree: The GOP-dominated county government could be recaptured by Democrats as soon as 2008.

"Believe me, it's being discussed," said Republican Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, a conservative leader. "It's an amazing wake-up call," said Republican County Commissioner Steve Radack.

In an election when many ethnic minority voters didn't vote, Republican judicial candidates on the bottom half of the Harris County ballot won by an average of fewer than four percentage points — 52 percent to 48 percent.

The average margin four years ago was more than nine points.

If minority voters had been energized, as they might be in the 2008 presidential year, it could have been a Democratic sweep, some analysts said. They point to Dallas County, long a GOP stronghold, where Democrats claimed every countywide seat elected Tuesday.

Here's what political analysts and party officials are seeing:

Countywide judicial races are considered a good indicator of party feelings. There are so many of them that voters tend to choose based on party affiliation rather than knowledge of individual candidates or issues. The Houston Chronicle calculated the combined GOP margin of victory for all contested races for state district courts, which are elected countywide.

It was 3.9 percentage points, the smallest since at least 1998.

Some Republicans evaluating Tuesday's results said conservatives didn't get out to vote. Others said the problem might be that fewer Republicans voted straight-party tickets because the governor's race included two independent candidates. Those lost straight-ticket votes might have benefited down-ballot judicial races that voters otherwise didn't bother with, Radack theorized.

Democrats noted that the margin in the judicial races was close even though ethnic minorities who generally vote Democratic skipped the election, which featured few Hispanic or non-Hispanic black candidates in showcase races. In the 11 state House districts within Harris County that have Anglo majorities, voter turnout Tuesday was 36 percent. In the 12 with non-Hispanic black and Hispanic majorities, the turnout was 26 percent. Local Republicans faced a national political current Tuesday that they hope is temporary -- congressional scandals and wide dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq.

But the demographic trends are long-term: The Hispanic population is booming and the Anglo population is not.

"The Republican Party is not attracting minority voters the way it should. I've been saying this for 10 years," Radack said. Former Harris County Democratic Chairwoman Sue Schechter said she regrets the party didn't put more money into the judicial races this time. It might have made a difference, she said. Rice University political science professor Bob Stein said an immediate effect of Tuesday's local and national results could be interest from talented Democrats who realize they have a legitimate chance to be elected next time around.

Radack predicted trial lawyers, stung by lawsuit limitations enacted by Republicans, will pour money into the races.

When state District Judge Katie Kennedy stepped down in 1999, she was the last countywide Democratic officeholder. In the closest Harris County judicial race Tuesday, Democrat Mary Kay Green got 49.4 percent of the votes against Republican incumbent Annette Galik for a family-court bench. The margin of victory was 6,800 votes, but the "under vote" — the number of people who voted in other races on the ballot but not that one — was 51,000. There's no way to tell which candidate would have benefited most had those 51,000 voters made a choice for the 245th District Court.

But the demographic and political trends seem clear.

"Doomsday is coming," said UH political science professor Richard Murray.

Radack said factors such as the independent gubernatorial candidates and national scandals made things worse this year. But the handwriting was on the wall for anyone who cared to read it, he said.


Many of the minority/majority precincts in Harris County (one of which I chair) had, to be kind, an under-representation at the polls on Tuesday. But from a Texas perspective, it also appears that our Democratic base in El Paso and the Valley sat this one out in large measure.

That cost the Democratic Party some judges, county-wide and statewide.

Was it the fault of the candidates? The TDP, and Boyd Richie specifically? The voter registration effort, or the GOTV one? How about the media? Or should the voters themselves take some blame for being blase' ?

Everybody catches a little bit, I suppose, but it may be something we can improve on next go-round.

I must say however that I believe this incremental strategy is bullshit. There was constant repetition from the party machinery in Austin that this was a rebuilding year, that we should only focus on a few select races, that the efforts of fund-raising and spending would be on infrastructure and rebuilding for 2008 and not on candidates and races in 2006, because there was really no hope of achieving anything any grander like capturing a statewide office.

Congratulations, Mr. Richie. Your strategy was executed flawlessly.

A closing thought from my man David:

I must add that despite the results in Texas, I'm ecstatic about the Democratic takeover of the Congress. These midterm results may have saved the country from dictatorship and civil war.

The Bushite arctic freeze is thawing nationally but in Texas we're still iced in. Fight 'em on the ice.

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Sunday, December 07, 2008

The Bettencourt Bailout Follies

Republicans BJ from LST (in the comments here) and the blogger formerly known as Sedosi pooh-pooh my speculation of Charles Bacarisse to replace Paul "Cut-and Run" Bettencourt as Harris County's tax assessor/collector/voter registrar -- which actually serves as a great relief to me. Another source reports that Bacarisse is very happy in his current job with Second Baptist Church. Thank God for small favors.

The Diane Trautman Appointment Campaign is in high gear. I wish I could be enthusiastic about its prospects. Really I do. Dr. Trautman's loss November 4 probably hurt worse than any. But I cannot see Emmett (and Radack and Eversole) going along with her selection. Nor do I see a new spirit of bipartisanship on commissioners' court.

Vince reports that Golden Parachute Paul has suggested his top henchman, Ed Johnson, for the slot. That would be a big FU to everybody except the most rabid of Voter ID acolytes. The speculation from the right seems to frequently mention defeated district clerk appointee Theresa Chang (she replaced Bacarisse and then lost to Loren Jackson). And perhaps Emmett has another lickspittle in mind whose name is currently under the radar. If there is some Latino Republican that could fit the bill, Emmett could do himself and the Harris County GOP a huge favor by making that person his choice.

Chang offers a sorely-needed minority face for the locals; she's at least familiar with county bureaucracy, and she may or may not be an extremist. That's probably enough for her to get the job.
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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

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.
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