Among the many people who showed up to the Fort Bend get together on Friday night was Sherrie Matula, who's running for HD129 over in the Clear Lake area. Last Thursday, she organized a conference call for us bloggers, on which fellow candidates Diane Trautman, Ellen Cohen, and Chad Khan also participated. Perry and The Muse have already recapped what we talked about, so I won't cover the same ground.

What I will say is that Matula is an extremely knowledgeable candidate on all things education, because that's her background. She's been a teacher, a school board member, an education lobbyist, and more. She's really done her homework on the legislation that was passed in the recent special session and how it will impact local schools. One of the underreported aspects of the new legislation was how much more decisionmaking power was given to the State Board of Education Commissioner, which leads one to wonder what there is for local school boards to do any more.

I've got an interview with Matula high on my to-do list for the near future (and Trautman and Khan and as many of them others as I can get to; I've already interviewed Cohen), so I'll skip the details for now. Please understand that when I talk about how fired up a lot of Democrats are for this year's election, it's as much about the high quality of candidates like these four as it is about any top tier race. There's no better reason to get involved in politics than supporting a great person you really believe in. People like Sherrie Matula, Diane Trautman, Ellen Cohen, and Chad Khan make that easy to do.

UPDATE: More from Bay Area Houston.