Don’t buy the “Texas Is Turning Blue” Myth

I can’t help but remember that all these polls that have Democrat Hillary Clinton within striking distance of Republican Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential election in Texas are the same ones that had Democrat Wendy Davis within striking distance of Greg Abbott in the Texas gubernatorial race just two years ago. Even I drank the Kool-Aid that time around — Wow!, I thought. Perhaps Wendy might have a shot at this.

And what happened? Abbott crushed her. Devastated her. Wasn’t even close. Abbott’s margin of victory was 20 percentage points.

Trump will carry Texas Tuesday, although not by the 16-point margin Mitt Romney won it in 2012 or even the 14-point margin by which John McCain carried the state four years earlier. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump wins by double digits, say around 10.5 percent.

I also suspect Hillary Clinton is going to win the presidency Tuesday and, if that is indeed the case, Democrats’s chances of winning anything statewide in Texas anytime in the near future are completely destroyed. The one thing Texas Republicans hate more than Democrats, especially national Democrats, is Hillary Clinton. In 2018, when Texas will hold its next statewide elections, Republicans will turn out to the polls in record numbers, some to vote for Republican statewide candidates, but many more to register their hate of a Clinton administration.

But there are other, even more significant, reasons Texas will not be turning blue, at least within my lifetime.

First, there are no possible Democratic candidates out there. Can anyone name a Texas Democrat that could run a legitimate statewide campaign? The only ones who come close are the Castro bothers (U.S. Rep Joaquin and his twin, HUD Secretary Julian) but both of them are considered too politically savvy to take on Abbott, especially when you throw in the fact that Abbott had $28 million in his campaign chest at the end of June. No Democrat can match that financial advantage, which will only grow much larger by the time the 2018 elections roll around.

The same is true in the U.S. Senate race. If there is any significant competition for Ted Cruz in his re-election bid, it will come, not from Democrats, but from a possible Republican challenger in the primary, namely Land Commissioner George P. Bush or former Gov. Rick Perry. Lt Gov. Dan Patrick might even think his solid support from the Trump wing along with this obvious Tea Party credentials could carry him to a victory over Cruz in the primary. Other possibles include a trio of GOP congressmen, Michael McCaul, Jeb Hensarling or even Louie Gohmert, although I think Gohmert is more likely to challenge John Cornyn four years hence. What Democrat stands a chance against any of those? Davis? Leticia Van de Putte, whose last statewide race also ended in a 20-point loss?

Second, the Texas Republican Party, in no manner whatsoever, mirrors the national GOP. The Tea Party is firmly in control of the Texas Republican Party. On the national level, the Tea Party is nothing more than an irritant with some, albeit limited, influence that is losing its strength with the insurgency of Trumpism into the party. The only Republican who has anything to fear is more traditional pro-business Republican Speaker of the Texas House Joe Strauss, who faces another Tea Party revolt. The real question in Texas politics is not whether Texas can turn blue, but which faction will control the Republican party: traditional business Republicans, the Tea Party or Trump’s supporters?

And while a lot has been written about how women, especially suburban women, are drifting into the orbit of the Democratic Party nationally, that is definitely not the case in Texas – both white males and white females are solidly Republican, regardless of where they live.

Not only that, the Texas Hispanic population, while largely anti-Trump, is not necessarily as much anti-GOP. They are thankful that a Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill allowing for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities for immigrants in the country illegally. They remember that bill was signed into law by Republican Gov. Perry. And they are also fond of Abbott’s Mexican-American wife Cecilia, All Republicans need to do to continue their political domination in Texas is split the Hispanic vote, or at least not lose it by more than 55 percent, and, to date, they have been successful in doing that.

Admittedly, most of this "Texas is trending blue" foolishness is coming from political observers located outside the state of Texas and it seems especially popular among former Texas who are Democratic dreamers living outside the state. Those of us who live here, unfortunately, have to live with the political realities, as painful as those realities might be for me and my fellow progressives.

New poll shows Perry beats Cruz in G.O.P Senate primary

Just say ‘no’

The Texas Constitution is a mess — a statement that is probably as revelatory as saying rain is wet. In my view, a constitution should outline basic government principles. The Texas Constitution consists of whatever dumbass ideas legislators had at any given moment.

For that reason I have always voted against any new amendment to the Texas Constitution and will continue to do so until (1) a constitutional convention agrees on a completely new document that achieves what a constitution is supposed to accomplish, or (2) I die. I have a feeling I know which will come first.

But I actually have specific reasons to vote against these proposed amendments and since early voting on these issues have already started, it’s time to state my case.

Prop. 1: The last thing Texas government needs to be doing is taking money away from school districts. I know, legislators are promising they will reimburse the districts, some how, some way, but where have I heard those kind of empty promises before?

Prop. 2. This is worthwhile, but it simply should not be a part of a state constitution. Simple enabling legislation will accomplish the same kind of housekeeping.

Prop 3. This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to make it more difficult to prosecute crooked politicians like Attorney General Ken Paxton. It’s the legislators protecting their own and it’s shameful.

Prop. 4: Why this should be a part of a state constitution boggles the mind. The only reason I can think of is that some of our lawmakers are deeply in debt or extremely beholden to owners of professional sports teams,

Prop 5: Nothing particularly wrong with it except it is not a constitutional principle.

Prop 6: The only reason I see for this proposal is that animal rights activists have these right wing nuts who run our state government paranoid. Come on. Get serious. Does anyone really believe this groups will have any affect on hunting and fishing regulations in Texas?

Prop 7: This is another plan for the legislature to take money out of one fund in put it into another instead of simply doing the right thing which is providing for more funding. This type of legislation should be the subject of legislative debate during regular sessions and not locked into the constitution.

I know that most Texas voters don’t pay any attention to these amendments and just hit the "yes" key because they think it’s the proper thing to do, even if it isn’t the right thing to do. What I’m saying is that all these propositions will undoubtably pass by large margins. But that doesn’t mean they should.

A couple of things I’d like to get off my chest

Listening and reading about their wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality, I’m wondering how Texas’ Republican leadership can, in good conscience, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, when they know they don’t believe in the pledge’s last lines. This is especially true of that real nut job, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who was quoted as saying "I would rather be on the wrong side of history than on the wrong side of my faith and my beliefs." That must mean his faith and his beliefs to do not include tolerance since so many other religious leaders supported the ruling. Just one example: "This is a day of celebration for my church community," said Kim Rogers, pastor at Central Presbyterian Church in Austin. "The God I hold dear to me doesn’t push people away." But I guess to Patrick the faith and beliefs of others are just not worthy of consideration. That, my friends, is a textbook example of bigotry.

Speaking of wailing and gnashing of teeth, I noticed none of those spewing invectives at the New York Knicks for chosing Kristaps Porzingis with the fourth pick in Thursday’s NBA draft suggested someone the Knicks should have selected instead. Hey, there were no turnaround players in this draft, no Anthony Davis, no LaBron James, no Kevin Durant, no Tim Duncan, no Shaquille O’Neal, no Hakeem Olajuwon, no Michael Jordan, no Larry Bird, no Magic Johnson, certainly no Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. This draft was comparatively deep in good players, but not really that many very good players. The first pick in the draft, Kari-Anthony Towns, had the lowest points-per-game average of any player ever picked No. 1 in the 68-year history of the draft. And if Porzingis can put some muscle on his skinny frame, he could turn out to be as good a pick as anyone else in this draft. Yes, he could also be a major bust, but so could Towns and Jahill Okafor, two players selected ahead of Porzingis. And there have only been a handful of players chosen at the four spot that have really turned out to be major stars in the league — Russell Westbrook in 2008, Chris Paul in 2005, Chris Bosh in 2003, Stephon Marbury in 1996, Dikembe Mutombo in 1991 — but plenty of good journeymen. If Porzingis turns out to be the latter, that wouldn’t be all that bad.

Only Republicans can make Texas blue

Texas Democrats can take a lesson from this most recent statewide election: There is nothing — absolutely nothing — they can do to elect one of their own to a statewide office.

Want proof? You would think that competency might triumph over ideology in an election. Not so, here in Texas. Look at the comptroller’s race. I’m betting 90 percent of the Republicans who voted for the Republican nominee for comptroller couldn’t tell me what his name is. Didn’t matter. He was a Republican. Now the comptroller is a fairly important office: It’s the comptroller’s job to tell the legislature how much money it will be able to spend over any two-year cycle. If the comptroller gets the estimate wrong, as was the case with incumbent Susan Combs, legislators will be forced to make extreme spending cuts they don’t have to make, which is largely the reason for the massive and ultimately unnecessary cuts the legislature made in 2011 to the state’s public education system.

In November’s election, voters had a choice between electing as comptroller an accountant, who was a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (yep, that’s all one word now), or a rice farmer. Now which makes more sense when it comes to handling the state’s financial forecast? Trick question because the rice farmer won. By 20 percentage points. Strictly because he was a Republican.

See what I mean? Putting far more qualified candidates on the ballot isn’t going to do anything to help Democrats win statewide elections.
Comedian Jon Stewart summed it up pretty accurately during a recent stay in Austin.
"You poor bastards," Stewart told his live audience. "Democrats in Texas are like the drunk guy at the bar who won’t stop hitting on a girl, even though we know she’s a lesbian; ‘no, no, no, dude, trust me. I can flip her, I just need time.’"
Only Republicans can help Democrats win. That’s right. Democrats can’t win in Texas — they simply are going to have to wait for Republicans to screw it up and lose.

How might that happen? It’s going to take a combination of things, some of which you may not want to happen. Such as, the Texas economy is going to have to tank. Big time. Full-scale depression. Food lines. Massive, widespread unemployment. If such a disaster befalls the state, voters will start thinking about changing the leadership in Austin.

But that’s not all. As everyone knows, the Hispanic population is growing quite rapidly in Texas and, for a while, it was thought Hispanics would automatically vote Democratic. The last election proved that was not true. Gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott won slightly more than 40 percent of the Hispanic vote and no Democrat is going to win Texas while Republicans are winning 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. (It didn’t help Democrats that the reputation of their nominee, Wendy Davis, was centered largely on her pro-choice stance which is not all that popular with Hispanics, most of whom are Catholic.) For Democrats to have a chance to win in Texas, the Republican leadership is going to have to do something really, really stupid that will result in angering the Texas Hispanic population to the point where they will be taking to the streets as in the civil rights protests of the 1960s. Massive deportations, stripping those living here legally of their citizenship, repealing the Dream Act — something along those lines.

And finally, for the Republicans to lose, they must nominate a real doofus to head up the ticket. I’m talking about an idiot of the first order, someone like this guy, perhaps even worse.

And if there’s that perfect storm — when all three of those scenarios come together at one time — Democrats just might have a chance to win a statewide election in Texas.

Protect the women and children — he’s running and bumbling again

You would think he would learn from his disaster four years ago, but apparently not. Our own dear Gov. Hair is running for President again.

This was readily apparent by two recent actions. First, he went off to Iowa to chat with citizens who rebuked him in the Hawkeye two four years ago. Now, give me one good reason why anyone in their right mind would journey to Iowa unless it was to place some chips early for the Iowa caucuses, the first test for anyone thinking about aiming for the Oval Office.

Second, he sent a whole bunch of National Guard troops to the Rio Grande Valley to handle what he is calling our "immigration crisis." Why would he do that? What does he hope to gain? What will National Guard troops do? What is happening these days at the U.S.-Mexican border is that hundreds of children, slightly more than 27 percent of which are coming from Honduras, which has the world’s highest murder rate, are coming to the border and immediately surrendering to U.S. Border Patrol agents. They aren’t trying to sneak into the United States illegally. So what’s the National Guard’s role in this? No, this is just our demagogue governor grandstanding for his Tea Party base so that he can establish his bonafides for another Presidential run. What an embarrassment!

Exodus chapter 22 verse 20 reads: "You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." It’s shameless that so many politicians, our own governor
being just one prime example, will, when the chips are down, let politics trump their so-called religious beliefs. But Hair’s certainly not going to let religious beliefs stand in the way in his quest for power.

Now the good news is that he doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance of even winning the Republican presidential nomination which means that after the 2016 primaries he should fade back into the dusty scrubble of Paint Creek, hopefully never to be heard from again.

Jon Stewart: Gay Watch Texas Edition

On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart "discussed" the move by the Texas Republican Party to include a plank in its platform endorsing reparative therapy to cure homosexuality. This is must-viewing, especially if you're a Texan with an IQ above 40 (which may, the way it appears, eliminate the overwhelming majority of Texas Republicans).

Texas GOP escalates its war on women

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the first major piece of legislation Barack Obama signed into law when he became President, not does guarantee equal pay for women. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 does that. But, like state and municipal speed limit laws, employers violate that section of the Civil Rights Act with a regularity that borders on the criminal. This is especially true in Texas where the average annual median pay for men is approximately $10,000 higher than it is for women ($44,000 to $34,000, est.). The national gap is even wider.

If a woman discovers she is being paid less for doing exactly that same work as a man in the same job, her best recourse is to file a federal lawsuit, alleging violations of the 1964 law. However, before the Lilly Ledbetter Act, the woman in question must have filed that suit within 180 days of the decision by her employer to pay her less than the man in the same job. In other words, if she works on the job for six months before she discovers she is being discriminated against, she was simply out of luck.

Under Lilly Ledbetter, that statute of limitations resets each time the woman being discriminated against receives a paycheck affected by the discriminatory action.

For some reason, Texas Republicans (following the lead, in many cases, of Republicans in other red states) have declared that women — their health and their welfare — don’t matter. Their first salvo involved passing laws that effectively closed medical facilities throughout the state that provided women with cancer screenings and other forms of health and wellness programs.

Now GOP gubernatorial candidate and, I am ashamed to admit, the likely next governor of Texas Greg Abbott, Texas’ attorney general, announced today he would not sign a Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay bill that was passed by the Texas Legislature but vetoed by Gov. Rick Perry, another of the Republicans’ leading warriors against women. It is interesting to note that the Lily Ledbetter legislation was introduced in the Texas Senate by Wendy Davis, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee who made a name for herself for her filibuster against the bills designed to deny women the health care they need.

It is also interesting to note that news also broke this morning that women attorneys in Abbott’s office are being paid approximately $6,000 less a year than male attorneys. Let’s face it, the man is a pig.

Texas escalates its war on women

Not content to simply deny women the health care they need, Texas Republicans are now doing their best to disenfranchise women.

It’s interesting that at a time when a Democratic woman candidate is mounting a serious campaign for the governor of the state, that Republicans are doing their best to prevent as many women from voting as they possibly can.

As I wrote earlier, the only way for Republicans to have any chance of winning contested elections is to prevent Democrats from voting and so far Texas has been successful in making sure blacks, Hispanics and college students don’t vote (although those successes are being challenged by the U.S. Department of Justice).

But now there is a new threat to Republican supremacy. Support for state senator Wendy Davis skyrocketed after her electrifying filibuster earlier this year. Women, tired of seeing Republicans control their reproductive rights, are gravitating to the Democratic Party in increasingly larger numbers (the 2012 Presidential election revealed the largest gender gap between the candidates in history) and Davis’ candidacy is attracting even more women to the Democrats.

So what’s a Republican to do? They gotta pass laws to prevent as many women from voting as possible.

Beginning Nov. 5, voters must present a photo identification to vote. It is estimated that 25 percent of African Americans and 16 percent of Hispanics do not possess an ID that would satisfy the Texas requirements. Eighteen percent of individuals over 65 carry no photo ID at all. Student ID cards issued by colleges and universities are not acceptable. These are the groups that tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic and women are joining their ranks.

Here’s how the law disenfranchises a little more than a third of all women voters in Texas. The photo ID women show must contain their up-to-date legal name. That means if a woman is married, but her ID still lists her single name, she can’t vote. By the same token, if a woman is divorced, but her license still has her married name on it, sorry.

Now I have not poured through every law book in the state of Texas, but as far as I can tell right now, there is no law that requires a married woman to take her husband’s surname as her legal name. But you must take that name and put it on your license if you want to vote in Texas.

The estimated 34 percent of women disenfranchised by this law can obtain a state-issued ID that will allow them to vote but in order to obtain this ID they must provide an original birth certificate AND an original marriage license or divorce decree. Photocopies will not be accepted.

It costs about $20 to obtain original copies of those documents so forcing women to pay that money, plus the costs of mailing and handling, amounts to a poll tax, something expressly prohibited by the 24^th Amendment. But Texas’s racist, misogynist Republicans have never let some piddling trifle such as the U.S. Constitution stop them before, so why should they start now?

The eyes of the world are upon Texas

First of all, I am convinced the women of Texas are perfectly capable of making their own health care decisions and don't need a right-wingnut governor, like the one who called the people in this video "terrorists," making those decisions for them.

Also thinking how much better we'd all be if either Wendy Davis or Cecile Richards were governor of Texas.

Here's Davis's reaction to Gov. Hair calling another special legislative session:

"Misplaced priorities of legislative leaders squandered a tremendous opportunity to make much needed improvements in our transportation infrastructure and help create good jobs and bring businesses to Texas. Despite urging by responsible members of the Senate to bring up the matter of transportation, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst derailed as much as much as $1 billion per year in transportation funding by stubbornly pushing divisive, failed legislation attacking women's health care options.

If leaders are serious about using this second called special session to improve the lives of Texans by repairing and expanding our transportation networks, they will find no greater ally than me. If they intend to keep pushing their extreme personal political agenda ahead of the interests of Texas families, I will not back off of my duty to fight on their behalf. "

Hair, the misogynist that he is, criticized Davis for standing up for women's freedoms by saying, in effect. "She should know better. She was a teenage mother herself." Here's Davis's reaction to that:

"Rick Perry's statement is without dignity and tarnishes the high office he holds. They are small words that reflect a dark and negative point of view.

Our governor should reflect our Texas values. Sadly, Gov. Perry fails that test."

Texas produces Senate cowards

270.

That’s about how many Americans Texas senators Coward Cronyn and Coward Cruz murdered today. The blood is dripping from their cowardly fingers.

According to every legitimate public opinion poll, the overwhelming majority of Americans favor stricter background checks before a person can purchase a weapon designed to do only one thing: kill. A majority favors the banning of magazines that hold more than 10 bullets and semi automatic attack war weapons in private hands. Even a majority of NRA members favor these regulations.

This is either Cronyn or Cruz; I can't tell them apart.

But, as we’ve all learned, money trumps democracy every single time, especially when dealing with a body of legislators as cowardly as Cronyn, Cruz and their ilk. The gun dealers and the gun manufacturers have the money; the American people don’t. Cowards Cronyn and Cruz simply lack the courage to stand up to special interests. Instead, they see it as their mission to make sure that America’s mass murderers are the most well armed mass murderers the world has ever known.

270.

That’s how many Americans are shot and killed every day of the year. But, according to Cowards Cruz and Cronyn, their deaths are not worth preventing. According to Cowards Cronyn and Cruz, the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School should be forgotten. Their brief lives and their tragic deaths are not anything to be concerned about, according to the two cowards we sent to the Senate.

Instead of looking at the overwhelming need for safety and sanity in the United States, Cowards Cronyn and Cruz blindly and unthinkingly catered to the whims of the gun lobby.

Between 20 and 40 percent of all guns sold in the United States today were sold without the seller performing any kind of a background check. According to a New York Times story on Wednesday, it is easy for criminals to purchase weapons over the Internet, weapons that will later be used to kill innocent Americans during the commission of criminal activities.

Because Cowards Cronyn and Cruz could not come up with logical explanations to explain their cowardly stance, they resorted to what they do best: lying. They claimed requiring stricter background checks would result in a national gun registry, even though the bill contained specific language to prohibit that. One of their fellow murderers, Senator Coward Coburn of Oklahoma argued the bill would raise taxes. Another, Senator Coward Flake of Arizona said the bill would require a background check on a gun sold via an office bulletin board. (Actually, I wish the bill did require that, but it didn’t. Another lie.)

The people of Texas are too wishy-washy to do anything about this, but I’m sincerely hoping that voters in other states will be angered enough by the actions of this cowardly minority in the Senate (a majority, in fact, did vote for sensible gun legislation, but the cowards made sure a majority didn’t win this time) to replace them with representatives who put the will of the people ahead of loyalty to a lobby.

As President Obama said last night: "Sooner or later, we are going to get this right. The memories of these children demand it, and so do the American people."

Bad pollsters or lying voters?

Typical Texas pollster?

The one and only time when Dallas’ current system of electing city council members, known as the 14-1 system (14 single member districts with the mayor elected at large), was placed before voters for approval, it was narrowly defeated, even though polls taken before the election indicated it would win handily.

Here’s what happened. After making sure African Americans were disenfranchised for decades, a number of black leaders, led by the late Al Lipscomb, filed suit saying Dallas’ system of electing candidates was unfair. Federal courts, led by U.S. District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer agreed.

So the city’s white establishment came up with a plan called 10-4-1, in which 10 council members would be elected from single member districts, four council members would be elected from larger, "super," districts and the mayor would be elected at large. The city’s white voters recognized the plan for what it was — only giving minorities token representation — and approved it. The U.S. Justice Department, however, also recognized it for what is was and said the plan could not pass muster under the Voting Rights Act.

So, reluctantly, the city was forced to submit the 14-1 system to voters. At the time, in the early 1990s, I was working for a company hired to see that the 14-1 ordinance was passed. We conducted extensive polling and all the numbers indicated it would be approved easily. However, on election day, the vote was 45,624 against to 45,255 for.

Mike Lindley

It was the acute political strategist Mike Lindley (whose birthday is today, quite coincidentally) who realized why our polling numbers were so inaccurate. According to the Great Lindley, a voter saying he would vote against the measure identified that voter as a racist, someone in favor of denying Dallas blacks a political voice. And very few of those polled wanted to publicly admit, "Yeah, sure, I’m a racist." However, in the privacy of the voting booth, they were free to express their true feelings and motivations.

I was reminded of Lindley’s analysis in the wake of yesterday’s Dewhurst-Cruz runoff for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. The morning of the election, all the political pundits were calling the election "a tossup." The results were quite another matter. Cruz crushed Dewhurst. When I was working for a news wire service the rule in a two-person election was that anyone receiving more than 55 percent of the vote was considered a "landslide" victor. Cruz got 56 percent.

So why was everyone calling it "a tossup"? I’m going to attribute it to Lindley’s Rule.

Cruz is directly tied to the racist Tea Party. The Tea Party came about, quite simply, because black man was elected to the White House. And all the policies it advocates are either overtly racist (voter IDs, strict immigration laws) or covertly racist (gutting programs designed to help the poor, killing public education, maintaining tax cuts for the most wealthy Americans). And there are still those who don’t want the world (or their co-workers) to know they belong to this lunatic fringe. But, again, get them inside the privacy of a voting booth and they are free to let all their prejudices run rampant.

The only other explanation is that pollsters in the state of Texas have no idea how to conduct an accurate poll. And you know what? There may be some truth in that as well.

Leppert’s ulterior motive

Tom Leppert

I have never been an admirer of former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, but I do know the man is smart. I know that when he decided to enter the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchinson, he knew he had absolutely no chance of winning — especially not with a candidate as formidable as Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the race.

Besides, Leppert is simply not the senatorial type. He would have chafed at being one small voice among 100, with no seniority, no power to control the outcome of anything. He displayed his lack of legislative skills almost immediately upon being inaugurated mayor in 2007 by isolating council member Angela Hunt. Sure, she opposed some of Leppert’s pet projects (the Trinity River Tollroad, the Convention Center Hotel, the Love Field concession mess), but his handling of her was ruthless and unwarranted and, in the long run, not in the best interests of the city. (Compare it to the way current Mayor Mike Rawlings has treated Hunt.)

Leppert is the CEO type, not a legislator. He’s got to be the head honcho. It began nearly 40 years ago when Leppert was elected student body president at California’s Claremont McKenna College. Not a member of the student senate, but the student body president. Of course, as just about everyone knows, he really made his mark as CEO of Turner Construction Company, the largest commercial builder in the United States. Leppert’s personality requires him to be the man in charge.

So why did he run for the U.S. Senate? Leppert is a consummate politician who, before the Republican primary, was little known outside the Dallas area. The race for the Senate got his name, his face and his platform out there all across the state of Texas, and, although it did not garner him enough support to even come close to a runoff, he did position himself well with his party’s hierarchy.

The position Leppert really covets is that of governor of Texas. This Senate race, in which he introduced himself favorably to the state’s Republican faithful without alienating any of them, places him in an excellent position to challenge incumbent Rick Perry, should the latter be foolish enough to run for another term, and to be the immediate frontrunner should Gov. Hair wisely decide he’s had enough. This same party hierarchy that Leppert cultivated believes Perry has (1) overstayed his welcome and (2) embarrassed the state with his botched presidential bid.

With two years to put together a campaign and devise a winning strategy, don’t be surprised to see the former mayor of Dallas in the governor’s mansion by 2015, which is where he has wanted to be all along, especially now that he is already well known and well liked by Republicans throughout the state because of his Senate run.

I remember when being a “moderate” was considered a good thing

(The wrong) Garcia for Congress

So Domingo Garcia is running for Congress and, by the looks of things, has a great shot at winning. But is there anyone else out there who wishes she was running instead?

Texas presidential primary becomes meaningless (of course, it really always has been)

Normally it works like this: Citizens vote in their respective party primary and if they are really gung-ho about this whole political thing (and they usually are during a presidential election year), they return to their polling place that evening for the precinct conventions that decide how the delegates will be allotted for each presidential candidate.

That’s not how it’s going to be done this year. Since the likely date of this year’s primary is May 29 and the state party conventions are scheduled for the second weekend in June, both the Democrats and the Republicans are talking about eliminating precinct conventions completely. The first round of conventions will be the Senate district get-togethers and they will be held before the primary.

Which makes the entire voting process for the presidential candidate of your choice completely meaningless because the delegates for each candidate will have been chosen before the primary. But then the voting in the Texas presidential primary has always been superfluous, since the conventions, not the voting, decide the final results. Say 57 percent of the voters in a Republican precinct vote for Mitt Romney, 23 percent vote for Rick Santorum, 17 percent vote for Ron Paul and the last 3 percent for Newt Gingrich. However, if Ron Paul supporters attend the precinct convention en masse and comprise 60 percent of the folks attending and Romney voters stay home to watch CSI, then Paul wins the precinct. Follow that?

A shocker: Romney outpolls Hair in Texas

According to at least one polling outfit, if a Republican presidential primary burst out in Texas today, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney would come out ahead with 24 percent of the vote. Not only that, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich would come in second with 23 percent, outdistancing the two Texans in the race, neither of which are even "formers." Guv Hair comes in third with 18 percent, Rick Santorum is fourth with 15 percent and Texas congressman Ron Paul collects 12 percent.

Now I call that a shocker because back last September this same poll gave Hair a 49-10 percent advantage over Romney.

But, wait! There’s even more bad news for the guv. If the race was just between Romney and Hair, the New Englander wins 46-45 percent. Well, you say, that’s really too close to call. But consider this: Last September that same two candidate poll had Hair in front 72-18. That’s a seismic shift away from the guv.

The poll also took the temperature in the U.S. Senate primary and discovered, to no one’s surprise, that David Dewhurst has a double digit lead over his nearest competitor, but not enough support to avoid a runoff. The poll measures Dewhurst support at 36 percent (down 5 percentage points from the last poll). Ted "Tea Party" Cruz is second with 18 percent, Tom "Da Mayor" Leppert is third with 7 percent, poor Craig James can only muster 4 percent and then there are the complete unknowns bringing up the rear.

Nelson to Guv: “Get Back, Loretta”

Colleen McCain Nelson

I apologize for not mentioning this earlier when the item in question would have been easier to track down, but nevertheless here it is: The great Colleen McCain Nelson had a superb op-ed piece in Thursday’s Dallas Morning News pleading with Gov. Hair to quit his quixotic presidential quest and get back to Texas to do the job voters here elected him to do. Why should he worry about ruining the other 49 states in the union when he hasn’t even finished ruining his own?

"Call a halt to this clumsy campaign," Nelson wrote. "Cancel the ego trip to South Carolina. Use the money left in the bank to repay Texas taxpayers for their trouble. Get back to the business of governing this state."

That comment about repaying Texas taxpayers was a real eye-opener to me. It seems Hair’s quest is costing Texas taxpayers $400,000 a month. If the guv had a shred of decency left in his body — and, admittedly, I don’t think he has — he would direct that money to help fund our dying public school system instead of throwing it away on a vanity trip.

I would try to link to Nelson’s column, but because the News has erected a paywall, it would cost you to read it and I don’t want to direct any more funds into that paper’s coffers, the front page of which has shamed itself by being the chief cheerleader for Hair’s dismal campaign.

Might just as well cancel next year’s legislative, congressional elections

The right-wing U.S. Supreme Court, which through its rulings on campaign financing has already turned over control of our electoral process to rich fat-cat Republicans, has now ruled that those same rich fat cats living in Texas are really the only ones who should have a representative voice in Austin and Washington. The court said Democrats, the poor, the middle class and minorities should just forget about having any say in how our government operates when it issued a stay Friday night on the resdistricting plan prepared by federal judges in San Antonio.

Problem is, however, the redistricting maps prepared by the racist, classist legislature can’t be used either because they still haven’t been cleared by the Justice Department.

Hey, folks, we got absolutely no maps. What’s a crooked politician to do? Stay tuned. It's not fair, but it just might turn out to be fun.

Kudos to Leubsdorf



Carl Leubsdorf

Excellent column in today’s Dallas Morning News by the paper’s former Washington bureau chief Carl Leubsdorf in which he correctly exposes the right wing-nuts’ charges of "judicial activism" when the court makes landmark decisions involving the political process. (I would try to post a link to the column, but, under the Morning News’s paywall system, readers would probably be charged, so I’m not going down that path. But if you can get a copy of today’s paper, you can find the column on Page 15A).

"After all," Leubsdorf writes, "‘judicial activism,’ like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For decades, conservatives such as (Texas Attorney General Greg) Abbott have used those words to criticize federal court decisions they dislike."

He points out, correctly, that no one heard a peep from the right wing-nuts when the U.S. Supreme Court, which has been dominated by Republican appointees for the last 40+ years, tossed a presidential election to an undeserving candidate or award most elections to those with the most money.

The reason for Leubsdorf’s latest rant is Abbott’s attempt to derail the redistricting map created by Republican-dominated federal court in San Antonio and reinstate the patently unfair map prepared by the Texas Legislature. For those not following the debate, Texas was granted four additional seats in the House of Representatives, based on the last census, largely because of the dramatic increase in the state’s Hispanic population. But instead of creating districts that could be won by Hispanics (who consistently vote Democratic), the Republican-controlled Legislature created four rural districts safe for Republican candidates.

"Attacking ‘activist judges’ has been a GOP battle cry for many years, and it plays well with the party faithful," Leubsdorf writes. "But in this case, those allegedly ‘activist judges’ are correcting the action of an overly activist Legislature."

Well said, Mr. Leubsdorf.