Endorsement watch: Heresies

The Lone Star Times goes off the reservation not once but twice in its endorsements. First, they give thumbs up to Richard Garcia for County Treasurer. Well, it may be more accurate to say they gave a big thumbs down to Orlando Sanchez, but I'll take it anyway.

Let us be clear - we don't doubt that on a personal level Sanchez is a nice guy. And he's almost certainly no more an idiot than many, perhaps most politicians. A LOT of people holding public office are chuckle-heads who prefer politics to working in the real world.

And we'll give him this - he would have been a better mayor than Lee P. Brown. If you want to consider that an endorsement, fine.

But people, please.

Limited government conservatives - your bluff is being called. You bitch and moan on the radio every day of the year about eliminating the waste, inefficiency and expense of government. Now is the time to put up or shut-up.

Richard Garcia for Harris County Treasurer - it is a job nobody needs, and one Orlando Sanchez doesn't deserve.

Even more interesting is their endorsement of Kinky Friedman for Governor. It's a fairly nuanced approach that takes into account the downside and counterargument to voting against their default preference of a Republican incumbent. I certainly don't agree with their starting axioms, nor do I concur with their belief that inflicting a little electoral pain is the best way to get a recalcitrant party to see things your way (tell me again how salutary the effects of voting for Ralph Nader were for the Democrats in 2000), but kudos to them for laying out their thought processes as they did. It's one of the better endorsement editorials I've read, whatever I may think of their reasons behind it.

Finally, I don't have an explicit story link yet, but Fort Bend Now and View from 22 both report that the outgoing Republican District Clerk in Fort Bend, Glory Hopkins, is featured in a mailer endorsing Democrat Veronica Torres to replace her. Hopkins may have had problems getting her ballot application in properly, but as far as I know she was well respected for the job she did. There's also apparently some bad blood between Hopkins and Republican candidate Annie Elliott, who had challenged Hopkins in the primary and won by default when Hopkins was disqualified from the ballot. Still, this is a nice coup for Torres, about whom you can read more here.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on November 01, 2006 to Election 2006 | TrackBack