Olivo and Craddick

In the aftermath of her close primary win, there was some speculation that State Rep. Dora Olivo, who accepted some late PAC money from Tom Craddick, would owe him a vote to be Speaker - see Paul Burka, for example. I thought this speculation was premature, and said so in a comment on Burka's blog. Well, I never managed to reach Rep. Olivo to ask her myself about this, but fortunately Clay Robison did.

Since some people apparently are still wondering, Rep. Dora Olivo, D-Rosenberg, says she will not support Craddick for another term as speaker, assuming she wins re-election over a Republican opponent in November.

Olivo squeezed out a 187-vote victory over Democratic primary challenger Ron Reynolds, raising some eyebrows in the closing days by accepting $2,500 from the Texas Builds Jobs and Opportunity PAC, a committee linked to Craddick.

"I don't intend to support Craddick," Olivo said late last week.

His policies are bad for the state, she said, and "he is so autocratic."

"When people give me money, they're not buying me," she added. "I say, 'Thank you,' and do the work I'm supposed to do."

Her $2,500 was on the low end of the giving scale for the committee. Other candidates received as much as $50,000.

That's good enough for me. One thing to keep in mind, as a friend of Olivo's told me, is that this is likely to be her last session. She was going to retire this time around, but none of the people she had in mind to run for her seat chose to do so, and she apparently didn't like Reynolds as her replacement, so she geared it up once more. Things may be a bit awkward in Austin for the first few weeks, but I doubt it'll be much more than that.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on March 11, 2008 to Election 2008