Scattershooting Adrian Garcia and Hillary Clinton, two of the worst possible options for public office

-- Chris Bell reminds everybody in Houston again that Adrian Garcia, much like Hillary Clinton, is simply unfit to serve as a public leader.

"If you're leading what you call the largest mental health institution in our city, then how those inmates were treated becomes a very significant issue," Bell told a packed auditorium at the University of St. Thomas, where candidates had gathered for a mayoral forum on behavioral health. "You were supposedly the leader of that jail, and how could you have created a system where nobody told you of such a horrific incident?"

In response:

"It shouldn't have happened. It definitely should not have happened under my watch. But when I found out about it, I took full responsibility. I took action," Garcia said. "I put policies and procedures in place to keep it from happening again."

That's an admission of guilt. While a noble gesture, it still disqualifies him from office.

-- Speaking of Clinton...

While she was secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote and sent at least six e-mails using her private server that contained what government officials now say is classified information, according to thousands of e-mails released by the State Department.

[...]

The extent of the redactions in e-mails sent by Clinton and others, including ambassadors and career Foreign Service officers, points to a broader pattern that has alarmed intelligence officials in which sensitive information has been circulated on non-secure systems. Another worry is that Clinton aides further spread sensitive information by forwarding government e-mails to Clinton’s private account.

Benefit of the doubt:

But it also highlights concerns raised by Clinton and her supporters that identifying classified material can be a confusing process, and well-meaning public officials reviewing the same material could come to different conclusions as to its classification level.

Yes.  Why hasn't someone ever fixed this since email became prevalent (at a minimum of) fifteen years ago?

Is Hillary Clinton as president the person most capable of fixing it?  If you think so, there's a bridge in the desert on sale with your layaway tag on it.

-- More and more people are coming to the inevitable, inexorable conclusion that she is one final, small disaster away from fumbling the White House to the Republicans.  They're still imploring other Democrats to join the race.  I don't think any more candidates are needed personally, but whatever.

She is still going to beat Trump, or Carson, or Bush, or Cruz, or whatever other piece of flotsam the GOP floats.  But she is also in the excruciating process of beating herself, and the outcome of that fight is still to be determined.

More lighter, funnier fare on emails from Vox.

The At Large 4 contest

Now that we know ballot order, let's go forward listing the candidates that way.  As a reminder, Kuffner has audio interviews with a lot of these folks posted already, and Wayne is posting questionnaires returned to him from those responding.

• Amanda Edwards
• Jonathan Hansen
• Larry Blackmon
• Laurie Robinson
• Evelyn Husband Thompson
• Matt Murphy
• Roy Morales

It might be worth repeating (scroll to the end) that Houston blacks consider AL 4 to be theirs, and that is likely to hold true in this cycle with Edwards and Robinson, both African American Democratic women with solid networks of support.  They present as the best qualified and most progressive choices.  Robinson ran for AL 5 previously in 2011, finishing third behind then-incumbent Jolanda Jones and now-incumbent Jack Christie.  She is the chief executive of a high-profile management consulting firm.  Edwards practices law at Bracewell & Guiliani, and has a wide-ranging background of political and social justice efforts.  Blackmon -- this Chron piece thinly describes him as a retired school teacher active in local politics -- also carries a good resume' and the endorsements of three black Texas House members; he's been overshadowed to some degree by Edwards and Robinson.  Edwards has racked up most of the endorsements from Democratic clubs and groups to this point.

Either of the three has the skill set to be an effective council member.  But two of the three are unlikely to be in a runoff together, so we must handicap the likely (conservative) challengers.

Morales is a name we all know and distrust by now.  He's lost more city council and mayoral general elections and runoffs than I care to document.  But his Republican activism and Latino surname may once again be enough to get him second past the post.

Husband Thompson is the widow of astronaut Ron Husband, who perished in the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster.  That's pretty much it for her online campaign as a prospective city council member.  No website, no Facebook page.  There's a story here about how she met, courted, and married her second husband, and too much for my digestion about the strength of their faith.  I'm going to presume, until she says otherwise on the record, that she's a Christian conservative and an opponent of HERO.

That leaves Hansen and Murphy.

Hansen is your basic pro-business, inherited-wealth, pull-yasef-up-by-ya-bootstraps Republican.  He recently engaged in some good old-fashioned political ball-busting of Murphy on HERO, without revealing his own position on the ordinance.  Murphy is the "pro-family fiscal conservative" in the contest, and I would surmise based on his flip-flop on HERO -- as detailed at Hansen's blog -- that he indeed does have the requisite hypocrisy needed for Houston's worst Republicans to vote him into the runoff.

Prediction for the runoff: Toss-up between Edwards and Robinson (with a small chance given to Blackmon) squaring off against Murphy.

HEROes and haters

The Chron chronicles a thirty-year of history of proud homophobia in Houston city elections (too much alliteration?), and outs the 'Bathroom Caucus' on your ballot in November.

A flurry of candidates opposed to Houston's anti-discrimination ordinance finalized bids for City Council in the waning hours before last Monday's filing deadline, setting the stage for a multi-race campaign against the controversial ballot measure known as HERO.

With the latecomers, the fight to repeal HERO now is poised to extend into all of the at-large and most of the district council races, in addition to the mayor's race.

At first glance, the lineup harkens back to the "Straight Slate" of 1985, when conservative power broker Steven Hotze organized challengers to run against incumbent council members who supported job protections for gays employed by the city.

Dr. Hotze, you haven't evolved a bit since 1985.  That was the year Louie Welch's "shoot the queers" comment went viral without an Internet, and in one night, "Don't Shoot Louie! T-shirts became best-sellers.  Read Mayor Annise Parker's account of the irony of representing the city of Houston (as comptroller at the time) at Welch's funeral in 2008.

"We have been approached by candidates who oppose the bathroom ordinance," said Jared Woodfill, spokesman for the anti-HERO campaign. "And we have encouraged people to run who oppose the bathroom ordinance, as have other organizations who have the same goal of defeating the ordinance."

[...]

Of City Council members running for re-election, five oppose the ordinance... They are joined by at least 11 council hopefuls, many of whom launched their bids before it became clear the ordinance would be on the ballot.

Others, such as pastors Willie Davis and Kendall Baker, as well as former teacher Manny Barrera and Siemens sales executive Carl Jarvis, filed to run on the last day.

Emphasis mine.  If you need to reminded why it's important to tax the churches...

Houston Area Pastor Council Director Dave Welch, who is helping to run the anti-HERO campaign's church-based efforts to rally voters against the law, said his group does not "officially enlist or recruit candidates."

He added, however, that he did broadly encourage those active in the church to seek office.

"In general, we encourage people to run for office and be politically involved," Welch said. "It's pretty hard to have a good government if you don't have good people in government. (HERO) certainly, it certainly provided an inspiration and motivation for some of the folks in our churches to run."

It reminds me of Ken Paxton's brethren and sisteren asking their local TeaBagger sheriff candidate why more lethal force is not used at the border.  But that's a digression.

You should go and finish Rebecca Elliott's and Kat Driessen's article; Chron municipal election coverage scores a D- in my gradebook, but the blind hog found a few acorns in this piece.  Nothing against the two reporters; responsibility for the newspaper's continued failure to cover local news adequately rests higher up the Hearst food chain (another digression).

Just note the names in bold above, and ask the question every chance you get of any candidate: "Do you support or oppose the equal rights ordinance?"  Everybody running for office needs to be on the record.

Texas Leftist posts the map and the list of all the American cities that have similar ordinances on the books (dozens) and the instances where a transgendered woman assaulted someone in a bathroom (not once).  And TransGriot reminds us about the potential economic losses associated with repealing the ordinance, which reminds me that it's time to remind you to sign this petition.

The Weekly Wangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance remembers the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and honors the spirit of its survivors as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff recaps Ken Paxton's first day in court. It won't be his last.

Libby Shaw, writing for Texas Kaos and contributing to Daily Kos scolds the Republican Party for its cruel war on immigrants. Earth to the GOP: Stop picking on immigrants and do your jobs.

Socratic Gadfly turns a skeptical eye to Constitutional-era pop historian Joseph Ellis, and rakes him over the coals for writing something barely historical, but that adds to Constitutional myth-making.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme watches the Republican war on Latinos continue with throwing attorneys out of detention centers and denying birth certificates to citizens.

Houston city council races dominated PDiddie's Brains and Eggs this past week, with At Large 1, At Large 2, and At Large 3 all profiled and prognosticated.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson also covered the Texas attorney general's many legal troubles, noting they are not going away anytime soon, in Paxton's problems pile up.

Texas Leftist analyzed the "debate" between Jorge Ramos and Donald Trump on immigration, and Dos Centavos also added his two cents.

TXsharon at Bluedaze spent some time in Fracking Hell, aka the Eagle Ford shale, and lived to tell us about it.

Neil at All People Have Value expressed distress over how we drive in Harris County and asked that we be careful on our roads. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Ryan Holeywell and Stephen Klineberg debunk myths about Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston, while Ethan Raker shows how interacting with Katrina evacuees affected opinions about them.

Grits for Breakfast seemed surprised and perturbed at Texas media for seemingly ignoring one of the most important laws going into effect on September 1: raising the threshold for property theft crimes.

Carol Morgan commented on the many instances of disaster capitalism in "When the Parasite (the 1% and the corporations) Kills the Host (the rest of us)".

Trail Blazers covered the removal of the statue of Jefferson Davis from the grounds of the University of Texas.

Juanita Jean gives the idiots protesting at the HISD Arabic language immersion school a piece of her mind.

The Makeshift Academic builds a model to estimate how many people would benefit from Medicaid expansion.

jobsanger graphed the polling that shows Americans are split on whether to tax churches or not.

Paradise in Hell observes a rite of passage for George P. Bush.

HOUequality reprinted Pulitzer-winning writer Lisa Falkenburg's op-ed: "Anti-(HERO) campaign's scare tactics need to be flushed".

Erica Ciszek explains her anxiety about bathrooms.

Lawflog explained why Hearne's supervisor of the city's street department is being paid to sit in jail.

Chip Brown calls out Baylor President Ken Starr in the Art Briles/Sam Ukwuachu case.

Stephanie Stradley explains why the Deflategate case matters.

And Fascist Dyke Motors got a little creeped out on her recent visit to New Orleans.

Sunday Funnies

The At Large 3 contest

Here are the entrants, as usual from the city's filings page and in alphabetical order.  Via Kuff, who has a post up about this and some mayoral fora upcoming, Mike Morris at the Chronicle's graphic shows the names listed in ballot order.

• Michael Kubosh
• John LaRue
• Joseph McElligott
• Doug Peterson

This race IMHO presents one of the more interesting lineups of candidates among the At-Larges despite its complete lack of diversity (I find AL 1 and AL 4 to be the protoypical mud wrestling matches, with AL 5 demonstrating more of what Houston is all about demographically).  Let's not bury the lede; one of Peterson or LaRue hopefully can push the incumbent Kubosh into a runoff in December.

Peterson has a long and impressive resume': strategist for NASA, leadership experience with environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, chairman of Senate District 11, active with the Bay Area New Democrats -- in short, everything just about anybody on the left could look for in a progressive, activist Democrat.   LaRue voted in the 2014 Republican primary in 2014, and McElligott -- affiliated with the Harris County Green Party, the only such candidate on the ballot -- voted in the 2010 Republican primary.  In a conversation with me, McElligott indicated that he did so strategically in the governor's race that year, for Kay Bailey Hutchison over Rick Perry.  I don't know LaRue's motivation so let's give him the benefit of the doubt that he did the same as McElligott.  (Many more Democrats than will admit it do this.  They even encourage others to do so; that's how weak Texas Democrats have become in midterm elections.)

McElligott has fleshed out strongly progressive policy issues: participatory budgeting (they've given it a go in NYC), repealing TABOR, reforming tax increment financing, advocating public banking and paid leave... sadly, these initiatives are outside the realm of concept for most municipal voters.  They will just screech "soshulist" and point at Bernie Sanders (or Jill Stein).  McElligott's paving the way to real progress for Greens, Democratic socialists and non-Democratic progressives.  Good on him for that.

LaRue is trying to run right down the middle of the partisan divide, rarely a winning electoral strategy at any level these days.  He has campaigned actively, appearing at numerous Democratic functions with photos on his Facebook page, and even making news as he and his husband became the first same-sex couple to receive a marriage license issued in Harris County.  Here's OutSmart magazine's retelling of the day-long saga involving Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart's refusals, County Attorney Vince Ryan's threats of legal injunction, and the media swarm that covered it all day.  Here's an article where LaRue describes his views as centrist and bipartisan, and also that his motivation for joining the race was Kubosh's votes against HERO.  And he's open about chasing moderate Republican votes, so there's that.

Despite his folk hero status, LaRue did not get the GLBT Caucus endorsement, probably due to their distasteful "viability" ratings of candidates.  Kuff underscored this point a couple of weeks ago in his reporting on endorsements.

I simply would not expect a great deal of votes to go to McElligott -- something on the order of the Greens' usual market share in contested races, about 1-2% -- but LaRue and Peterson could spoil each other's chances and let Kubosh waddle back to the horseshoe.  The incumbent and portly bail bondsman has voted against HERO and taken five large, the maximum financial contribution, from Steven Hotze this go-round.  He has a big target on his very wide back.  He got lucky two years ago when the Democrats washed each other out, and his popularity from fighting (and winning) the red-light camera battle with Mayor Annise Parker was at its zenith.  But unless turnout favors the liberal strongholds in the city, we could be looking at a rerun of 2013.

Prediction for the general: Kubosh could skate over thin ice again if Peterson and LaRue split the Democratic vote. If one of the two can get the incumbent mano a mano in December, odds are good that the seat flips.