EV totals: First impressions

After a delay of nearly one hour past poll closing, the Harris County Clerk managed to post some of the early-vote (EV) tallies from the Texas primary held today, and here's some first impressions of the races I have previously focused on.

-- Paul Sadler appears to be headed to a runoff with one of the two African American candidates in the race for Democratic nominee to the US Senate. Sean Hubbard is trailing in 4th statewide, and fairly badly. On the Repub side, David Dewhurst will be in a runoff with Ted Cruz. There will be blood.

-- In CD-07, Lissa Squiers has a small lead over James Cargas. Phillip Andrews is well back in third. This race will go to a July runoff.

-- In the contest for 215th District Court, Judge Steven Kirkland is losing by a 2-1 margin to the libelous Elaine Palmer.

-- The voters of Harris County weren't fooled by Keryl Douglas, however; she is losing to Lane Lewis for Democratic Party County Chair by a margin of about 55-45.

In other races of note...

-- In the GOP race for Harris Co. District Attorney, Judge Mike Anderson is trouncing incumbent Pat Lykos. And on the Democratic side, buffoon Lloyd Oliver leads Zach Fertitta.

-- Harris County tax assessor/collector TeaBaggin' Don Sumners is getting turned out by the Republicans in his race against Mike Sullivan, also by a 2-1 margin.

-- Supreme Court Justice David Medina is leading in his 3-way primary battle, but with just 39%.

-- Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, Beto O'Rourke leads incumbent Congressman Silvestre Reyes in the Dem primary. A true upset in the making.

-- At the HouChron's live-blog, the odious Texas Sparkle reports that several Republican Texas House committee chairs are losing their races: Tuffy Hamilton, Vickie Truitt, Sid Miller, Chuck Hopson, and Rob Eissler. 

-- All three state referenda on the Democratic ballot are passing handily; casino gambling by the smallest margin at 73%.

-- Romney has clinched, Obama appears to be avoiding a primary embarrassment.

Again, these are mostly EV totals only; as of 9 p.m. the Harris County Clerk's office has barely counted any votes cast today. Having worked this beat previously, I can say this has all the earmarks of a major malfunction.

We'll find if I am right or wrong about that in a few days. You can go follow the results on into the night elsewhere; I have a big day tomorrow and won't be back here until early in the morning.

Update: I should have guessed. Clerk Stanart blames the Democrats for the "technical difficulties".

What a POS.

Election Day Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance says "on to the runoffs!" as it brings you this holiday week and election day roundup.

Off the Kuff looked at the latest strange poll results from UT and the Texas Trib.

This week WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the continuing right-wing assault on public education in Texas.

The endorsement of the three previous Democrats who lost to John Culberson is hardly a worthy vote of confidence, but that didn't deter one candidate in CD-07, who went on to suggest that he would win the November contest by 51.3%. That spin, however, was topped by his estimate of 73% of fewer than one hundred people in a straw poll at a barbecue suggesting "overwhelming" support. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs reminds you that if a Congressional candidate exaggerates this wildly in May, he just doesn't deserve to be on the ballot in November.

Lightseeker explores what the triumph of Republican fear mongering and pandering means to our poitical futures here in Texas and throughout the nation. Check out Sobering Thoughts on Our Political Future over at TexasKaos.  

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme applauds the efforts of AACT Now in getting out the vote. Please continue through November.

Ten things you should know about the demographics of Texas

Via Vanessa Cardenas and Angela Maria Kelley at the Center for American Progress (and provided to me via Facebook by Mini Timmaraju, who will be speaking at the TDP's state convention in Houston in a couple of weeks). Republished here in whole.

=============

1. Communities of color are driving population growth in Texas. Texas is one of five states in the country where people of color make up the majority of the population. Between 2000 and 2009 Hispanic population growth accounted for 63.1 percent of all growth in the state. Texas’s black and Asian populations — 2.8 million people and 850,000 people, respectively — were the third largest in the country in 2010.

2. The majority of children in Texas are children of color. For children under age 5 in the state, children of color outnumbered non-Hispanic white children 2.2-to-1 in 2011. According to the Children’s Defense Fund, in 2009, 64 percent of the state’s children were of color.

3. Houston is the most racially and ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the country. According to a report from Rice University, the percentage of Latinos in the region increased dramatically from 20.8 percent in 1990 to more than one-third at 35.5 percent in 2010. This thriving racial and ethnic diversity places Houston at the head of the state’s rapid demographic changes.

4. Nearly a third of immigrants in Texas are naturalized — meaning they are eligible to vote. In 2010 immigrants comprised 16.4 percent of the state’s total population. That year there were 1.3 million naturalized U.S. citizens in Texas, approximately 32 percent of immigrants in the state.

5. Voters of color make up a growing portion of the Texas electorate. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Latinos accounted for 20.1 percent of Texas voters in the 2008 elections. African Americans and Asians comprised 14.2 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively, of the state’s voters that same year.

6. Even more Latinos are eligible to vote but are currently unregistered. According to the political opinion research group Latino Decisions, there are 2.1 million unregistered Latino voters in Texas in 2012. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that there are an additional 880,000 legal permanent residents (green card holders) in Texas who are eligible to naturalize and vote for the first time. Put together, this means Texas has close to an extra 3 million potential voters this fall.

7. The Department of Justice blocked a Texas voter ID law that threatened to disenfranchise Hispanics. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, far fewer non-Hispanic voters — 4.3 percent, compared with 6.3 percent of Latino voters — lack a proper photo ID, which voters would have been required to show under the law. Texas’s own state data listed 174,866 registered Latino voters without an ID.

8. Communities of color add billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs to Texas’s economy through entrepreneurship and spending. The purchasing power of Latinos in Texas increased more than 400 percent from 1990 to 2010, reaching a total of $176.3 billion. Asian buying power increased by more than 650 percent in the same period to a total of $34.4 billion. And in 2007 Texas’s nearly 450,000 Latino-owned businesses had close to 400,000 employees, and sales and receipts of $61.9 billion.

9. Immigrants are essential to the economy as workers. In 2010 immigrants comprised 20.9 percent of Texas’s workforce. As of 2007, 21 percent of Houston’s total economic output and 16 percent of Dallas’s economic output was derived from immigrants.

10. Immigrants contribute to the state economy through state and local taxes. In 2010, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented immigrants in Texas paid $1.6 billion in state and local taxes.

Ripoffs at Texas gas pumps

And we're not talking about the price per gallon.

State inspectors have found hundreds of gas stations in the greater Houston area -- 350 or more -- that likely stiffed motorists because of poorly performing pumps.

Data from the Texas Department of Agriculture shows about one in five inspected stores or stations had least one pump, sometimes more, that failed to meet standards, according to analysis by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. In the greater San Antonio area, 99 of 509 inspected stores were operating at least one malfunctioning pump.

The cost to consumers may be nominal, as little as 3 cents, or as much as $3 per fill-up -- depending on the problems.

Yes, we have had long discussions here about this topic previously. In 2010, Democratic ag commish candidate Hank Gilbert found gas pump stickers in Tyler with Rick Perry's name on them, which meant they hadn't been inspected since 1997.

But to refresh: the regulatory body responsible for gas pumps in Texas is Weights and Measures, overseen by the Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Todd Staples. Before him, that title was held by Susan Combs, another powerfully unqualified statewide office-holder. And before her... Rick Perry.

Weak regulations, shoddy compliance, lax oversight... all weighted in favor of Big Business. Where have we heard that before?

Oh, but the responsibility for enforcement of the law lies with some other incompetent Republican. Can you guess who?

The office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has responsibility for suing gas station owners who intentionally defraud motorists. Over the past five years, the Attorney General's Office has filed one such lawsuit. That case followed inspections of Sunmart gas stations in July 2008. The investigation revealed that 58 percent of the company's Texas gas pumps were shortchanging customers. The Attorney General's Office sued Sunmart's owner, Petroleum Wholesale LP, and a Harris County jury ordered the company to pay $30 million in restitution to customers, penalties and fees to the state. The verdict was later thrown out on a procedural issue. Court records indicate the case is on appeal.

At least 900 Houston-area customers complained to the state during the one-year period. Stuart, the man who stopped at the Shell station near Washington and Studemont, was one of them, prompted by his surprise the day his Jeep Grand Cherokee took nearly 20 gallons of gas.

Let's be fair; AG Abbott has been pretty busy with a few other things. But not anything that might happen in 2014. No sirree.

For every conservative who has complained about weak regulations, shoddy compliance, and lax enforcement with respect to Ill Eagles: where's your outrage now? You're getting ripped off nearly every time you fill up your tank, and all you're doing is bitching about Obama.

How much more evidence do you need that Republicans just don't know how to govern? There hasn't been a Democrat elected to statewide office for 18 years in Texas, and yet conservatives still want to blame them for everything that's wrong with this state.

Hell, Republicans march in lockstep to the polls to give the most incompetent among themselves a PROMOTION.

Who is the bigger bunch of stooges -- Republican elected officials or the people who keep on voting for them?

Monday Funnies (a shout-out to Keryl Douglas and Elaine Palmer)

And especially those who would fall for their BS.

We honor all of the brave men and women this Memorial Day who gave their lives for our freedom... to eat everything in sight.

Sherwin Williams for President.

Wage theft in the city of millionaires

Stace has blogged extensively about this previously; here's The Nation picking it up now.

For two years running Houston has added more millionaires to its population than any other city in the United States. Near-millionaires are enjoying some nice upward mobility, especially those involved in the oil and gas industry.

Low-wage workers, on the other hand, aren’t faring too well in the city. In fact, a recent report from Houston Interfaith Worker Justice (HIWJ) estimates that low-wage workers lose $753.2 million annually due to wage theft. Wage theft can occur in many ways, including: workers being denied the minimum wage or overtime pay; stolen tips; illegal deductions from paychecks; people being forced to work off the clock; or workers getting misclassified as independent contractors so they aren’t entitled to overtime or benefits.

“We’re not talking about a worker here or a worker there, it’s something that has a lot of ripple effects,” says José Eduardo Sanchez, campaign organizer with HIWJ. “It impacts families, communities and local economies.”

Although there are laws on the books against wage theft, there are problems with understaffing, enforcement, and jurisdiction disputes in institutions like the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, the Texas Workforce Commission, and the courts.

When companies don't pay their workers, that's stealing. Unless the companies are going out of business, it's criminal and should be prosecuted.

Mayor Annise Parker has expressed some empathy for the plight of the victims even as she has clarified that it is the state of Texas which has jurisdiction to address the issue.

The city’s Legal Department initially analyzed the proposal and said that wage theft is addressed by state statute. But Mayor Annise Parker’s office contacted HIWJ to express her interest. HIWJ is now working with her administration on policy proposals that would create a process for a fair hearing and link wage theft violations to the suspension and revocation of city licenses, permits and contracts. Other options to collect additional damages from employers are being explored as well.

Sanchez says the mayor’s action was “surprising” given the initial response from the city.

“But now it’s a matter of holding the politicians accountable and really pushing for enforceable aspects of this legislation,” says Sanchez. “Because there’s an easy way for this to become one of those good policies on paper—nice sentiment, nice words—but not enforceable.”

A little late for some of you, but something to consider if you're casting your ballot on Tuesday.

-- Who cares more about the companies and their owners and managers who steal from their employees than they do about the victims of wage theft?

-- Who cares about the real victims of wage theft: the families? The single parent households and the children who go to bed hungry every night? That conservative crap about "they shouldn't have had children if they couldn't afford them" no longer washes because the Republicans in Austin, as we know, are now cutting off funding for birth control, along with women's wellness exams and cancer screenings.

There's some statistics at the Nation link at the top for the United States if you scroll down a ways. Here's a few.

US poverty (less than $22,314 for a family of four): 46 million people, 15.1 percent of population.

Children in poverty: 16.4 million, 22 percent of all children, including 40 percent of African-American children and 37 percent of Latino children.

Number of poor children receiving cash aid: one in five.

Poverty rate for people in female-headed families: 42 percent.

Poverty rate for children under age 5 in female-headed families: 59 percent.

Single mothers with incomes under $25,000: 50 percent.

Single mothers working: 67 percent.

 But here's the one that really jumped out at me:

Americans with no income other than food stamps: 6 million, 2 percent of population.

You know for certain which side the Republicans are on, and it won't ever be the working poor. But what about the Democrats? Some of them are for "free markets, entrepreneurship, and liberalized trade", which should be an easy enough dog whistle to decipher. Or just look at their record, as contrasted with their challenger's.

This isn't brain surgery, folks. You can vote for a 100% plutocracy party, or one that's roughly 50%. (You can also vote for neither one.) As always -- and as my friend Neil likes to say frequently -- it's up to you.

Memorial Day Funnies

Post EV, pre-ED snips

-- Paying to play in the GOP primary.

This election season, some prominent Republicans are calling foul on the political "slate mailers" that show up in your mailbox. Critics say the mailed advertisements -- which endorse a slate (or list) of candidates -- are textbook examples of "pay for play" politics.

Three well-known Houston Republicans -- Steve Hotze, Terry Lowry and Gary Polland -- publish newsletter/mailers that have an outsized influence on election returns. But do the endorsements involve a shakedown? In the case of the Lowry and Polland newsletters, a candidate seeking an "endorsement" usually purchases a pricey advertisement that far exceeds the cost of a mailer. Hotze's newsletter doesn't carry ads, but critics claim that candidates must employ his friend, political consultant Allen Blakemore, to win an endorsement.

Recently, Houston attorney Ed Hubbard set off a firestorm when he wrote on the political blog Big Jolly Politics that "most voters don't understand that (the mailers) are not official evaluations from the local party, but instead, are paid-for propaganda from one person or organization intended to influence the outcome of the primary." Hubbard suggested that a better system would be a party-sponsored candidate guide, much like the League of Women Voters.

"Candidates are victimized by this," said Hubbard. 

First, click on the names with links above, which will take you to the HouChron's archive of stories about the high-dollar whores in the Harris County Republican Party. Second, the link to Ed Hubbard writing on BJ has been removed, but the folks at Breitbart.com have the excerpt, and even they are embarrassed for the locals.

How low must you go to be a Republican scorned by the heirs to Andrew Breitbart's legacy? Lower than a rattlesnake's anus in a wagon rut, that's how low.

I just don't know who to feel sorrier for, the poor victimized GOP candidates or the sheep carrying the slate cards to the poll with them. To commemorate Ralph Waldo Emerson on the occasion of his 209th birthday, let's revisit his words on groupthink:

“A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.”

-- Alas, more political junk mail, this time from Democrats...

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office is investigating how political mailers from at least one candidate running for Precinct 1 constable were sent to the home addresses of current deputies employed by that precinct.

Some law enforcement information, including the home addresses of officers, is exempted from the Texas Public Information Act.

Kyle Johnston, who is handling mail for the Alan Rosen campaign, said he was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury this week, but that his appearance was then delayed. Johnston said investigators showed him two hand-addressed envelopes containing Rosen political mailers and was asked whether he knew anything about them.

When Johnston asked what was wrong with the mailers, he said the investigators told him, “It’s who they went to and how they went about getting that list.”

Johnston said he designed the mailers as part of his work with the campaign, but did not mail the letters in question. He said he suspects the inquiry may be politically motivated and an effort to hamper Rosen.

“I do the bulk mail. I don’t do first-class stamps and hand-written envelopes,” Johnston said. “If (deputies) are getting my mail it’s because they’re a voter that lives in Precinct 1. There’s nothing in my databases that says ‘law enforcement,’ nor was I provided a list of law enforcement officers or anything like that.”

If I never have to blog another fucking word about mailers, life will be simply grand.

You realize we could eliminate many of these problems by limiting campaign spending, don't you?

-- Finally, a word about turnout in the Harris County primary elections: dismal.

Possibly spurred by a hotly contested U.S. Senate race and a presumed-but-not-final presidential candidate, twice as many Republicans showed up to vote in person - 60,347 - compared with 30,142 Democrats.

Republicans also greatly outpaced Democrats in the number of mail-in ballots requested and returned. 

Well, I suppose the Crips can hope that many of their voters crossed over to cast ballots for Ron Paul and Craig James in the Bloods primary.

-- State conventions are happening all across Texas weekend after next. The Democrats are coming together here in Houston, the Greens are assembling outside San Antonio near Bandera (they will be hosting David Cobb's Move to Amend roadshow on Friday June 8), and the Republicans and Libertarians are both meeting in Fort Worth. All that should make for lots of fun political headlines.

Happy Memorial Day weekend and don't forget the reason why we're off on Monday.

Update: Oh yeah, this is kind of important.

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department announced today that it will monitor primary elections on May 29, 2012, in Fort Bend, Harris and Jefferson Counties in Texas, to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other federal voting rights statutes.  [...]

Federal observers will be assigned to monitor polling place activities in Fort Bend and Jefferson Counties based on the attorney general’s certification.  In addition, Fort Bend is subject to a court order entered in 2009, which requires the jurisdiction to comply with the minority language and assistor of choice requirements of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the requirements of the Help America Vote Act.  The observers will watch and record activities during voting hours at polling locations in these counties, and Civil Rights Division attorneys will coordinate the federal activities and maintain contact with local election officials.

In addition, Justice Department personnel will monitor polling place activities in Harris County.  A Civil Rights Division attorney will coordinate federal activities and maintain contact with local election officials.

"Squiers endorsed by none of the three Democrats who lost already to Culberson"

Thank goodness for small favors. From the Cargas campaign e-mail earlier today:

In the upcoming May 29 Democratic primary all three prior Democratic candidates for Congressional District 7 have endorsed James Cargas, a Houston public servant, as the person who can defeat the incumbent congressman and serve in Congress with honor and distinction.  John Martinez, who ran in 2004, Jim Henley, who ran in 2006, and Michael Skelly, who ran in 2008, have all thrown their support behind James Cargas. 

I feel certain that the Cargas campaign simply forgot to note that Lissa Squiers ran as a write-in candidate for Congressional District 7 in 2010, because no Democrat dared to relive the woes of Martinez, Henley, and Skelly. Thus no one filed.

As the demographics and views of Harris County change, each democratic (sic) candidate earned more than the person before.  Martinez received 33.3%, Henley received 38.5%, Skelly received 42.3%, and, if a Democrat had run in 2010, that person would likely have received 46.8%.

Uh, no. No, that mythical Democrat wouldn't have come close to 46.8%. Because 2010 was a wipeout for Democrats, and most of those who ran in Harris County and across the state of Texas got well under 40%. But let's not spoil the fantasy.

If the same trend continues, Cargas will cross the winning threshold and earn 51.3% of the vote. It’s time for Congressional District 7 to turn blue, and James Cargas is the person who will make it happen. 

You can wake up now.

James Cargas isn't likely to pour millions of his own money into a Congressional race like Skelly did, nor does he have the warmth and personal appeal of Jim Henley -- a man whom I respect a great deal, but is simply mistaken this time around. Mr. Martinez is provided here as the third of the three-for because he has a Latino surname. Thus the continuation of the Cargas campaign as a 'stealth Latino' goes on, despite the campaign e-mail's disclosure in the very last line...

Cargas and his wife, Dr. Dorina Papageorgiou, are members of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral.

To be fair, James Cargas is probably a very fine gentleman. I don't know him, haven't met him. I've heard far more about him from others than I ever wanted to know from people who do, and most of it is as far from the definition of 'public servant' as it can be. Recall this data from one of my very first posts on the topic:

In January of 2007, Illumina Energy (the new name of PowerSol) un-registered James Cargas as a power marketer and replaced him with Hector Carreno. The contact addresses and phone numbers remained the same, although the email address changed. Why swap out Cargas? Because it was time for him to go to work for the city, advising them on who to buy power from. Let’s see, a power broker hires you for awhile, then sends you off to advise city hall on buying what he sells. How convenient!

[...]

How did Cargas get linked to Carreno this way? We have to roll back the calendar to introduce a pivotal player to the story; Emil Pena. Pena is a lifelong lobbyist; he’s good at it and has an impressive list of clients. He has lobbied for beer, cigarette, oil, and gas companies. But he made his name in the energy arena. He participated in the energy regulator/lobbyist revolving door, while also funneling money from energy companies to candidates they’d like to buy. This was noted by Texans for Public Justice in their report on PACs active in the 2000 election cycle, in a sidebar titled Stealth PAC.

James Cargas, Hector Carreno, Emile Pena. Google them for yourself if you think I'm being biased.

Since 2008, James Cargas has worked for the City of Houston as their energy advisor. However, he continues to use advocacy groups and local clubs to push his insider agenda.

Cargas is a past Deputy Director of the North American Energy Standards Board, and is still a member. At a recent meeting, Emil Pena presented the idea that “system safety” might apply to shale gas, and explained how it could be implemented quickly. Now, as a lobbyist for oil companies, this advice probably seems quite reasonable to Pena: profits first, safety later … as PR damage control, maybe? For his part, Cargas proudly claims his involvement in NAESB, and seems perfectly content with their worldview. This is far from the “public service” attitude I expect in a city employee!

Cargas is also on the Board of the Energy Bar Association, where he basically says “alternative energy will not happen in Texas, due to existing regulations”. (.pdf, page 3) One might interpret this as “don’t bother trying to compete with my partners; we’ve got the market sewed up.” Again, not the attitude I would hope for from someone advising the city on energy purchases, but all I could expect from an energy trading insider.

===

James Cargas deserves to lumped with his partners, Carreno and Pena: fossil fuel fans, shills for Big Oil & Gas, profiting off pushing their poisonous products, pinching OUR pennies for their pockets. No law against any of that … this is America, after all. But is this who we want making the law of the land, our land, our water, our air? No! Cargas is undeserving of our respect, much less a Democrat’s endorsement or vote.

If you think we need another energy lobbyist and attorney representing us in Washington, then you've got your man. If you would rather support a conservative Democrat than an actual one, you've a better choice: Phillip Andrews. I've met Phillip twice, both times at Sean Hubbard events, and dined with him at one of those. From what I can tell he represents an improvement over Cargas (albeit barely).

But if you want to vote for a Democrat who represents the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, who will represent the people and not the powerful, who owes nothing to any special interests, AND who can defeat John Culberson without pie-in-the-sky projections, then your choice is Lissa Squiers.

That's as plain and simple as I can make it.

Update: In another indication that the Cargas campaign either doesn't understand much about percentages, or is engaging in a fudge-up with the numbers that would make the people who valued Facebook at 38 envious, yet another e-mail is circulating which purports to divine the results of a straw poll -- taken over the weekend among 78 people who attended the HCDP Club Carnival -- as indicating Cargas has "overwhelming" support.

I'm starting to be embarrassed for them.

Texas judge brags in campaign mailers about stopping EPA

Bloomberg:

With aspects of the case still pending in his courtroom, Judge Trey Loftin sent fliers to voters saying he forced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to back down.

Loftin, who is campaigning to keep his state judgeship in a county west of Dallas, also sent out materials with the image of talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who credited the judge’s ruling in favor of driller Range Resources Corp., based in Fort Worth, Texas, for getting the EPA to reverse course.

(Image from Parker County Blog, an avid supporter of the judge)

What Loftin might be suggesting here -- besides a separate case that EPA settled with Range in March -- is the resignation of Dr. Al Armendariz from his post as director of EPA's South Central region just last month. While the mail piece doesn't quite go that far, reported eyewitness accounts have the judge commenting in campaign appearances that his court decisions resulted in Armendariz's firing.

Except of course that Armendariz wasn't fired. Continuing from the Bloomberg article, which quotes the following text right off the back of Loftin's mailer:

“The EPA, using falsified evidence provided by a liberal activist environmental consultant, accused and fined a local gas driller of contaminating wells,” according to a campaign flier for Loftin’s campaign. President Barack “Obama’s EPA backed down only after Judge Trey Loftin ruled that the evidence was ‘deceptive.’”

At least the law is fairly clear.

The Texas code of judicial conduct prohibits judges from commenting on pending or impending cases "in a manner which suggests to a reasonable person the judge’s probable decision."

That would be Canon 3 B .10 of the Code.

"A judge shall abstain from public comment about a pending or impending proceeding which may come before the judge's court in a manner which suggests to a reasonable person the judge's probable decision on any particular case."

Let's read more reactions to this (apparent) ethical breach.

“The problem of having judges run for office is that sometimes they cross a line in trying to get elected,” James Alfini, a professor of law at South Texas College of Law in Houston and co-author of a book on judicial ethics, said in an interview. “In this case, I think he crossed a line.”

[...]

Even without specific references, the mailer may cause a reasonable person to think Loftin was biased in the case, said Keith Swisher, a professor of law at the Phoenix School of Law and expert on judicial ethics. “The fact that a specific name wasn’t used doesn’t provide” an out, Swisher said in an interview. ...

Judge Loftin's primary challenger delicately weighed in as well.

“I don’t think a judge should ever comment about a case pending in his court,” Craig Towson, Loftin’s opponent in the Republican primary on May 29, said in an interview. “One could feel slighted if you have a judge commenting on the case.”

A complaint will have to be filed with the state commission on judicial conduct for any action to proceed further. So we'll wait and see what happens.

Update: WFAA in the Metroplex reports that Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler, who was quoted in a separate mailing as endorsing Loftin, called the county's residents with a recording that stated he in fact did not endorse the judge, and furthermore did not authorize the use of his name or photo in the mistaken mailout.

(Whatever one may think of Judge Loftin's actions in this regard, it appears that Sheriff Fowler is pretty mad about the endorsement that wasn't. Robo-calling all the landlines in the county -- even an exurban one like Parker -- isn't cheap.)

No chance Ron Paul endorses Gary Johnson

The Independent Political Report, via Reason:

Ron Paul campaign manager/spokesman/family member Jesse Benton told reporters during a phone conference May 15 that there would be no chance of any endorsement of Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson by Ron Paul. Benton said that Ron Paul endorsing Republican presumptive nominee Mitt Romney was not out of the question. 

Here's the rationale.

Ron Paul ran as a Libertarian for President in 1988, but has served separate stints as a Republican in Congress before and since, and has run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2012. His son Rand Paul is a freshman US Senator from Kentucky and is considered by many to be a future presidential aspirant as early as 2016; other Paul family members are also rumored to have a possible future in politics. 

And here's some of the recent history. I'm emphasizing the names of the players in bold.

Subsequent to his return to Congress as a Republican, Ron Paul has continued his involvement with alternative political parties to some extent, speaking at a number of their events and endorsing a number of their candidates. [...]

In 2008, former Republican Congressman Bob Barr, a Libertarian National Committeeman in 2006-8 who had also supported (2004 Libertarian presidential nominee Michael) Badnarik, ran as the Libertarian presidential candidate and famously earned the Paul campaign’s ire by first agreeing to, then at the last minute refusing to participate in a joint press conference with Dr. Paul, Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, Ralph Nader (who was running as an independent, as he had in 2004, and ran as a Green in 2000 and 1996), and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney. The press conference was planned as a way to announce agreement between these candidates and Dr. Paul on several key issues, and in turn Paul was to suggest that voters consider these four candidates as better alternatives than Obama and McCain without making a specific endorsement. After Barr, who was on the premises, refused to appear with the group on stage and instead offered Ron Paul to become a substitute VP candidate for the Libertarians, Paul responded by endorsing Baldwin. 

Barr backed Gingrich earlier this year but has recently endorsed Romney.

This gives every indication that the Kook Caucus is slowly coming together behind Mitt -- though I believe Tom Tancredo is still a holdout --  even as the relatively sane conservatives offer a legitimate third option in Gary Johnson and Jim Gray, whose nominations as Libertarian Party standard-bearers for 2012 were chronicled here.

Charles Kuffner doesn't agree -- and maybe it's just me who is more aware of third-party efforts while most everybody else remains not -- but I believe the minor parties in Texas are collectively going to exceed much more than their traditional 1-2% of the statewide vote. I think it could be as much as 5% for all of them combined, perhaps a bit more. We'll see.

The traditional media discovers Sean Hubbard

This is a good thing.

The young Democrat likes to remind audiences that Joe Biden was 29 when he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware, and like the current vice president, Hubbard is articulate, engaging and well-versed on the issues. During a Houston debate a couple of weeks ago, he did not hesitate to engage the presumptive GOP front-runner, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who is more than three decades older and who has nearly 15 years more experience in office. Hubbard won the KUHF News live blog poll immediately following the debate.

In a state where a Democrat has not won statewide office since 1994, Hubbard's chance of taking the oath of office in Washington next January is even less likely than the Astos sweeping this fall's World Series. And, yet, his quixotic candidacy may offer a boost to his beleaguered party. Along with Julian Castro, the vastly more experienced mayor of San Antonio, Hubbard could be the party's face of the future.

Influential Democratic consultant Harold Cook surprised - and irritated - some of the party faithful recently by making just that point. On his "Letters from Texas" blog, Cook noted that Hubbard "would be the kind of Democratic nominee more capable of attracting new folks to the Democratic column."

Here is about ten minutes' worth of Hubbard doing some Q&A in Sherman recently.



This is it, Texas Democrats. A moment of truth, clarity, peace love and understanding.

Sean Hubbard is your man. THE man. If you fall back on a tired old Blue Dog to run against whatever POS the Republicans nominate, you won't crack 40%.

The party has fallen and it can't get up... for nearly twenty years now. And Paul Sadler can't lift a thing, bless his heart. Good man, poor timing.

Get Hubbard on the ballot and you will begin to see the peeping dawn of a renaissance, or keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting better results.

Your choice.

Update: As usual, Neil and I agree right across the board.