It's coming down to the wire in the hot race for HD149.
"I'm everywhere I can be," said Republican state Rep. Talmadge Heflin, who is facing a strong challenge from his Democratic opponent, Hubert Vo. "Monday will be a long night. Tuesday will be a really long night."Like other candidates in close races across the region, Heflin and Vo are putting in 12- to 14-hour days, attending fairs, knocking on doors, manning telephone banks and making media appearances in the last hours before Election Day. Both began their campaigning Saturday at 7 a.m.
Heflin, the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee is seeking his 12th term in Austin, but must first fend off a challenge from Vo in a race that many political experts expect to be close.
Their constituency, House District 149 in western Harris County, is remarkably diverse -- 36 percent Anglo, 21 percent Hispanic, 20 percent black and 18 percent Asian.
Vo spent much of Saturday at his campaign headquarters, overseeing a group of 125 volunteers spreading over the district hanging flyers, putting up yard signs and handing out pamphlets. Vo also planned to spend a few hours on the phone, calling targeted voters and urging them to vote on Tuesday.
"We just want to make sure that we do everything to cover every corner," Vo said. "It's a very close race, and I'm very much happy with the way it's going right now."
I agree with Kos: Any article that calls Tom DeLay embattled is one that I will enjoy reading. One point of interest:
DeLay has represented his district since 1984 and is accustomed to rolling up big victories. He got 60 percent of the vote in 2000 and 63 percent two years ago.He is expected to win again this year, but not as handily as in the past.
"I think at the end of the day, Tom DeLay will win. But his margin of victory will be much smaller than usual," said St. Thomas University political scientist Jean-Philippe Faletta.
Based on some polls, there is a possibility DeLay could get less than 50 percent of the vote because the ballot also includes a strong independent candidate and a Libertarian.
University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray believes DeLay is running hard because he fears a narrow win could weaken him in Congress.
"His constituency is the Republicans in Washington," he said. "If they see him as being damaged here in Texas on top of other things -- it would not be good for the Majority Leader to just get a plurality win in his home district."
Poll: Texas Democrats feel ready for comeback
They haven't held statewide office since 1998. They lost control of the state Legislature in 2002. And last year many of them got drawn into congressional districts where it will be almost impossible for them to elect one of their own to the U.S. House of Representatives.But a Houston Chronicle poll suggests Texas Democrats aren't counting themselves out, and analysts say Republicans shouldn't either.
"They still think they can be influential in Texas politics, even though they got killed," said Rice University political scientist Bob Stein, who analyzed the poll for the Chronicle.
The Zogby International poll of 800 Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery county residents shows that about 40 percent identify themselves as Democrats, and 90 percent of those say they follow politics very closely or somewhat closely — about the same percentage of attention described by Republicans.
Even though many more of them will be represented by Republicans when the next Congress convenes in January, area Democrats remain about as confident as Republicans that they can have some influence on government.
Thirty-four percent of Democrats and 35 percent of Republicans believe they are able to influence the decisions of government a lot. A slightly higher percentage in both parties believe they have at least a little influence.
And the Democrats would like to initiate a turnaround: almost 80 percent of them say the country is heading in the wrong direction, while about that percentage of Republicans say it's heading in the right direction.
Stein says Democratic fortunes in Texas may be changing. Hispanics and blacks, historically Democratic constituencies, were almost as likely to say they intended to vote as whites, the poll showed. In the past, they have voted in lower numbers than whites, and still might. That won't be known until Tuesday's vote is counted and analyzed.
But Stein said their increased interest has helped stoke Democratic enthusiasm.
"Rank-and-file Democrats know that there is something coming; they can sense it," he said.
[...]
Stein said the Democrats' continuing belief that they can influence government suggests that rather than being demoralized, Democrats are more engaged and more likely to vote.
Gerry Birnberg, chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party, agrees with the conclusion but not necessarily the premise.
"It's not quite, in my view, that they believe they can effect change as it is that they want to send a message that they are pissed," he said. "There is a passion, anger and emotional involvement."
If the party does "well enough" in 2004, by, for example, electing a couple of Democrats to Harris County district judge positions — or at least decreasing the margins by which Republicans win — then Birnberg believes the table is set for a resurgence in 2006.
"It's not so much based on demographics as it's based on our ability to recruit candidates and raise money," he said.
One measure of this, I believe, will be how John Kerry does in the strongest Republican counties. As noted yesterday, some of those counties have had extremely strong turnout so far. If Kerry does better in the Dentons and Collins than Gore did in 2000, I believe it's because Democrats everywhere are energized, even in places where there's little reason for them to bother. I could be wrong about this, of course, but I'll be very interested to see how those numbers end up.
UPDATE: This is what I'm talking about.
As a self-described liberal living in the conservative bastion of The Woodlands, Ann Horst knows her vote is unlikely to have much influence on the presidential, congressional and legislative races in her area. But she's voting anyway, she says, because that's one sure way to make herself heard."To me, it's never a waste of time to vote," Horst said. "Voting is crucial. Whether it's going to make a difference in Texas, no. But I need to have my vote out there."
[...]
Bryan Webber of Spring is one of those voters. A 21-year-old first-time voter, Webber said he looks forward to casting his ballot for Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee. Like Horst, Webber knows that his vote is unlikely to shift Texas away from Bush, but he said he feels compelled to vote anyway.
"I don't really necessarily agree with the Electoral College because ... it does send a message that my vote doesn't really count," Webber said. "I think they should do it by the popular vote anyway. But I still feel like it's really a privilege to be able to vote. It's something that you believe in."
The sidebar on the poll, which is apparently in the dead-tree version of the Chron only, shows Bush leading Kerry in Harris County by a 51-44 margin, with 1% going to Badnarik and 4% undecided. I stand by what I said before about the margins in the big urban counties. Remember, Bush got better than 54% in Harris County in 2000 while Gore by himself got a bit more than 43%. The poll also indicated that Kerry led by wide margins among 18-24 year olds, and 25-34 year olds. That's the best thing I've read all week.
Burnt Orange, Greg Wythe, and George Strong all have some Election Day predictions. I'm not going to go there, for the simple reason that it's never a good idea to bet with your heart and not your head. Anything I wrote down here would be a reflection of what I'm hoping for, not what I really and objectively think will happen. Since you already more or less know what I want to happen, I won't bother repeating myself.
That said, there are a few things that I'll go out on a limb for:
1. The race that I think will surprise everyone is CD07. I'm not saying that John Martinez is going to win, or even come particularly close, because he won't. What I do think, though, is that he'll outperform the Democratic index of the district, which is 30% according to the Populations and Elections report for PlanC01374 (go here, click on PlanC01374, then click the Population and Elections button to see the report in PDF format). I'm basing this on the large number of Martinez signs that I see in the parts of CD07 I tend to frequent, which is to say Montrose and the Rice/Medical Center areas. For a candidate with no funds, no media coverage, and no name recognition, there are a lot of signs touting his campaign. I think the people in this part of the district, who used to be in CD18 and CD25, will vote heavily for him, and that by doing so, he'll get somewhere between 35 and 40% of the total vote. This is as much wishful thinking as anything else I could write here, since I want very much for a good result by Martinez to spur a bigger and better candidate into challenging John Culberson in 2006, but I'll go on the record with it anyway.
2. I believe at least one Harris County Democrat will win a countywide race. I'm not sure who it will be - maybe Reggie McKamie, maybe Kathy Stone, maybe Bruce Mosier - but I think at least one of them will. This will hopefully prod more Democrats to challenge Republican judicial incumbents in 2006.
3. Travis County will go for Kerry by a wide margin, something like 57-42. (In 2000, Gore+Nader was about 52%, with Bush getting just under 47%.) I believe there will be no more than a four point difference between Bush and Kerry in all three of Harris, Dallas, and Bexar Counties, and I believe Kerry will carry at least one of them by a smidgen. (This is not such a big stretch. The 2000 totals: In Bexar, Bush 52.24%, Gore+Nader 47.23%; in Dallas, Bush 52.58%, Gore+Nader 46.80%; in Harris, Bush 54.28%, Gore+Nader 45.25%.) I believe Kerry will get at least 42% of the vote statewide (2000 total: Bush 59.39%, Gore+Nader 40.13%).
Feel free to make whatever predictions you want to make here.
Thursday was the fourth straight day in Harris County that the number of people voting early exceeded the day before. Over 54,000 ballots were cast here on the penultimate day, bringing turnout to nearly 19%. We're still pikers compared to Travis County, though. According to Karl-T, who has final totals, Travis County saw over 217,000 votes cast in the twelve-day period, which represents 37% turnout, all before Election Day itself. To put that into some perspective, total turnout in Travis County for the 2002 elections, which included the Governor's race and a hotly contested Senate race, was just under 40%. Karl-T thinks that in the end, over 70% of registered voters will turn out there. Given the generally Democratic tilt of the capital county (Ron Kirk had 55% in 2002, John Sharr and Kirk Watson over 58% each; even Tony Sanchez carried Travis, if only by 200 votes), that's got to be good news for Patrick Rose, Kelly White, and Mark Strama.
UPDATE: Final totals are in. An amazing 67,000 people voted in Harris County yesterday, bringing the total vote to over 436,000 and turnout to over 22%. Even more amazingly, that 22% represented the low water mark for the Top 15 counties, where the overall turnout was 29.66%. Sixty percent turnout now would not surprise me.
Before anyone gets too giddy about that, note what Greg says.
CW is that higher turnout helps Dems. I'll buy that ... but only up to a point, and an unknown point at that. Just a formative bit of speculation here, but I think that once you see one side driven to get out to the polls, that starts to seep over to the other side. Higher turnout may help Dems given the current calculus. But hyper-higher turnout, I argue, tends to make the new voters look more and more like everyone else. We shall see soon enough, I suppose.
County Reg Voters Voters Percent
===================================================
Collin 369,412 153,566 41.57%
Williamson 200,344 77,142 38.50%
Travis 584,949 217,428 37.17%
Denton 321,700 116,632 36.25%
Galveston 185,911 64,714 34.81%
Pete and Ginger hash out this article on bad cover songs. I've never heard any of them, so I just have two comments. One, I'm not as reflexively anti-"Danny Boy" as Ginger is, so I have to agree with Pete. Johnny Cash is exactly the kind of artist you want covering that old standard, since he'll resist the urge to get all puffy and faux-emotional, which is what causes most normal people to grind their teeth when they hear it.
Secondly, this is enough to make me question the wisdom of the whole endeavor:
9. Candy Flip 'Strawberry Fields Forever'Ric Peet and Danny Spencer believed that one of the most sublime pieces of music ever made could be improved by a semi-simian scally whining over a cheap cymbal-and-snare racket.
I have to say, though, I can't believe anyone could come up with a list of worst covers and not at least mention Michael Bolton, who could generate a Ten Worst list all by himself. Someone explain this one to me, please.
Elsewhere in the Embarrassing Music files, John Nova Lomax gets a bunch of hip musicians to confess to their dark, guilty musical pleasures. Personally, it's hard for me to identify the music that I like that I ought to be ashamed of because I'm not actually ashamed of any of it. I'll freely admit that I own every Billy Joel album ever made (in one format or another), even if admitting it risks getting me delinked by Norbizness. I'm nowhere near Pete's level of expertise, but I had a fondness for hair metal back in the day - really, what self-respecting child of the 80s didn't have a soft spot for Ratt or Twisted Sister? - and I still regret that I never stole my former roommate Stephen's copy of the Chess soundtrack. And I don't feel the least bit guilty about any of it.
Now that I've admitted my fondness for Tim Rice, I'll note with some pleasure how many of Lomax's artists also share a taste for musicals.
Zamora, Julie. (Singer in the band Modulator.) Atop Zamora's list is the Xanadu soundtrack. "Olivia Newton-John and ELO make this one my favorite guilty pleasure. She must have been 'Magic,' or at least used helium to hit those high notes." Still on the ONJ tip, Grease is another of Zamora's faves. "I'm glad you asked: Why, yes, I am an Olivia Newton-John fan. 'Hopelessly Devoted to You' tells the sad story of my life, while 'Greased Lightnin'' makes me want to pimp my ride." Zamora also likes to mine ABBA's Gold ("Swedish melodrama rules!") and trip the light fantastic to The Bee Gees Greatest Hits. "I had a huge crush on Barry Gibb -- it must have been that high, effeminate voice juxtaposed with all of that facial hair. 'How Deep Is Your Love' makes me want to get into a fight just so we can make up." And finally, there's The Sound of Music. "What can I say? I was named after Julie Andrews. I absolutely love singing the title track (especially the high, lilting backing vocals) whilst twirling about in my apartment. Anytime I'm feeling down, I listen to this gem and go to that calm, happy place where everyone sings in harmony, is Austrian and is built like body builders."
There are a number of good articles in the AusChron this last week before the election. I highlighted some others in this Congress post, but there are two others you should catch. This one is about Crawforf and Leon Smith, the publishers of the Iconoclast, which has had some hard times since it endorsed John Kerry. There's also this interview with Lou Dubose, coauthor of "The Hammer", the book about Tom DeLay's rise and (one hopes, anyway) eventual fall. Check them out.
Thirty years ago this Halloween, a man living in the Houston suburb of Deer Park murdered his 8-year-old son by spiking a package of Pixy Stix with cyanide. Halloween has never been the same since.
Timothy O'Bryan's name may have faded from popular memory, but 30 years ago this Sunday his death shocked the country and earned the culprit the nickname "The Man Who Killed Halloween."The 8-year-old Deer Park boy died Oct. 31, 1974, after eating trick-or-treat candy laced with cyanide. Within days, his father, Ronald Clark O'Bryan, stood accused of staging the crime as part of a life insurance scheme.
With his wife testifying for the prosecution, O'Bryan was convicted and sentenced to death. Dubbed the "Candy Man" by fellow prisoners, he was executed by lethal injection in 1984.
[...]
The decades-old idea that depraved strangers are targeting children with tainted Halloween candy, however, is more fiction than fact, says a sociologist who has studied the phenomenon for 20 years. University of Delaware Professor Joel Best said he has yet to find a case in which a stranger deliberately poisoned trick-or-treaters.
"This is a contemporary legend that speaks to our anxiety about kids," Best said. "Most of us don't believe in ghosts and goblins anymore, but we believe in criminals."
Thirty years ago, after Timothy's death, the idea of a madman poisoning children with Halloween candy was all too real.
"We were all shocked that someone would kill their own son, their own flesh and blood, for a lousy ... $40,000 life insurance policy," said former Harris County Assistant District Attorney Mike Hinton, who prosecuted the case.
O'Bryan apparently was willing to go further, passing the poisoned Pixy Stix to at least four other children, including his 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. Miraculously, officers were able to retrieve the remaining tampered candy before any other children ingested it.
An 11-year-old boy who was given one of the tainted Pixy Stix was found asleep in bed later than night, cradling the tube of poisoned candy in his arms. He had been unable to pry out the staples O'Bryan had used to reseal the plastic container.
"He didn't have enough strength to get it open," Hinton said. "It just sends shivers down your spine."
[...]
The O'Bryan family had spent Halloween 1974 at a friend's home in Pasadena, where Ronald O'Bryan volunteered to escort the children on their candy-collecting rounds.
He later told police that someone at a darkened home, who only opened the door a crack, had handed him five Pixy Stix — oversized plastic tubes filled with candy powder — for the children in his group.
It was crucial to O'Bryan's plan, detectives said, that only his son eat the tainted treats. Back at the friend's house, investigators said, O'Bryan leaped over a coffee table to prevent his friend's 8-year-old son from eating one of the candies.
After returning to their home in Deer Park, O'Bryan told Timothy he could choose a single piece of candy before bedtime. Prosecutors said he urged his son to try the Pixy Stix.
The boy gulped down a mouthful of the powder, then went to bed after complaining that it tasted bitter. Minutes later, Timothy ran to the bathroom and began vomiting, police said. By the time he got to the hospital, he was dead.
[...]
A few days after Timothy was buried, an insurance agent had called police to report that, unknown to his wife, O'Bryan had taken out policies on his two children shortly before Halloween.
Detectives also learned that O'Bryan, deep in debt, had been boasting to co-workers at Texas State Optical that his financial health soon would undergo a remarkable recovery.
O'Bryan also quizzed one of his customers, a chemist, about poisons. He seemed particularly curious about potassium cyanide and asked where it could be purchased, the customer told police.
Investigators later scoured the family home, where they found O'Bryan's pocketknife with traces of plastic and powdered candy stuck to the blade.
The jury took about an hour to convict O'Bryan and only slightly longer to hand down the death sentence.
Despite his findings, even professor Best admits he was not immune to trick-or-treat fears, though he said he made it a point not to closely examine his own kids' candy hauls.
"I had too much pride in my research," he said. "But I think my wife checked them."
Snopes.com notes other incidents that have kept the Halloween hysteria alive. I say be careful, but have fun anyway.
Tiffany arrived at the West Grey Multipurpose Center around 9:30 to vote, but left after being told it was a 3 hour wait. Rob was already in line then; he comments here that he got there at 8:30 and it took him about an hour and 20 minutes. Tiffany wound up going to the Moody Park Rec Center on Fulton Street (map here), and reports that there was parking available and modest lines. Those of you in Montrose, Neartown, and the Heights who still haven't voted but want to today should take note.
The Christian Science Monitor sees some surprises in the works for the Congressional elections, even in Texas.
On the House side, the conventional wisdom is that a turnover is out of reach for Democrats.Still, the past couple of weeks have seen some surprises. One is the political resilience of Democrats in Texas, who had been expected to lose five seats due to redistricting by the Republican-controlled legislature. Instead, well-funded campaigns have brought Democratic Reps. Chet Edwards, Max Sandlin, and Nick Lampson within range.
Even Reps. Martin Frost and Charles Stenholm, senior Democrats viewed as hopelessly out of sync with the political landscape of their new districts, are running strong campaigns. "It will be very hard for Frost and Stenholm to win, but don't count them out," says James Thurber, a political scientist at American University in Washington.
The late-breaking ethical woes of House majority leader Tom DeLay, who engineered the Texas redistricting from Washington, is adding to the intensity of these races, and could help voter turnout for Democrats. The 10-term lawmaker was cautioned by the House ethics committee three times this month, and last week was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury looking into illegal corporate contributions in Texas.
In addition, National Democrats are trying to use DeLay's ethical troubles to bash moderate Republicans, such as Connecticut Reps. Robert Simmons and Christopher Shays, who is counting on strong ties to constituents to pull him through an unexpectedly tight race.
[...]
"Turnout is the wild card in this election. I expect it's going to be up substantially, which could be helpful to Democrats like Chet Edwards and Martin Frost in Texas," says Eric Uslaner, a political scientist at the University of Maryland in College Park.
"Still, if I were a Democrat in Texas, I'd run for cover," he adds. "Aside from a few places, I can't see increased registration enough to overturn Tom DeLay's artful handiwork."
The Washington Times (believe it or not) echoes a similar theme:
In District 1, four-term incumbent Mr. Sandlin is leading in several polls against Republican Louie Gohmert of Tyler.Mr. Sandlin is running as an independent and not as a Kerry-Edwards Democrat.
Mr. Gohmert, a former district and state appeals judge, is expected to carry Smith County (Tyler) handily, but Mr. Sandlin's support in the rural areas is formidable.
In the District 11 race, Waco Democrat Mr. Edwards, appears to be leading his Republican opponent, Arlene Wohlgemuth despite her attempts to portray him as an archliberal.
Mrs. Wohlgemuth, a state representative who worked with Mr. Bush when he was governor to pass the state's largest tax cut, has aligned herself with the president on all issues.
In Beaumont, four-term Democrat Lampson, faces a high-profile opponent in former district judge Ted Poe from Houston in the reconstructed District 2.
Mr. Lampson's strong point is Jefferson County, which includes the city of Beaumont, where voters know him from previous campaigns. But a large chunk of conservative voters in north Houston and suburban towns to the city's north and northeast are strong Poe supporters.
Mr. Poe, a prosecutor before becoming a judge in Houston, chose to enter the congressional fray despite some influential Republicans urging that he seek a higher court post.
"I think a lot here depends on whether or not Mr. Poe is swept in by a huge Bush turnout. I don't think he can win it on his own," Mr. Jillson said.
Many political observers say Mr. Doggett can't win because he is too liberal for the new district and because the constituency is 68 percent Hispanic.
Via Lasso comes this rundown from CD17.
On paper, the largely rural district looks like a Republican paradise. In the 2002 elections, GOP candidates statewide trounced Democrats in the district by an average of nearly 2-1. And some observers predict that President Bush, whose ranch near Crawford and his father's presidential library at Texas A&M are in the district, could carry up to 70 percent of the district in his own re-election bid on Tuesday.But Edwards, who spent nine years in the Texas Senate before going to Congress after the 1990 elections, is considered the Democrat most likely to survive last year's congressional redistricting effort designed to bring as many as seven new Texas Republicans to Washington.
Even though almost two-thirds of the district contains areas that were not part of Edwards' old domain, the Democrat did manage to hold on to his power base in McLennan County.
Wohlgemuth, meanwhile, is hoping to undermine that strength in the new district's northern reaches. She hopes to capitalize on her close ties to the Republican president, sporting yard signs carrying the message "Bush-Cheney-Wohlgemuth." She's an outspoken opponent of abortion and an unapologetic critic of government spending who carried last year's legislation that pared back the social service rolls by hundreds of thousands of Texans.
[...]
Thomas Myers, a political science professor at Baylor University, said most voters in the Waco area, which is the largest population center in the district, have grown accustomed to siding with Edwards even though they'll pick the Republican in races for governor, U.S. senator and president.
"Maybe it's civic pride, but they want their congressman to have Waco after his name, Republican or Democrat," Myers said.
Edwards drew about 56 percent of the McLennan County vote in 2002 against Temple businessman Ramsey Farley, but many observers say he'll need a larger margin to prevail in the new district. But Wohlgemuth may have helped him last year when she sided with area dairy farmers over a drinking-water quality issue involving Lake Waco.
Wolhgemuth and the farmers opposed tougher pollution standards, angering many McLennan County residents.
"On that issue, I guess you could say that water is thicker than blood," Myers said.
With Wohlgemuth running strong on her home turf and Edwards secure in his base, the race may come down to the Aggie vote, said Harvey Tucker, a Texas A&M political science professor.
"Chet Edwards has to get the message through that 'I am an Aggie, I am an Aggie,"' Tucker said. "Arlene just has to see how many times she can say George Bush's name in the same sentence."
Via The Stakeholder, the AusChron looks at the huge early turnout in Travis County and sees good news for Democrats, bad news for Tom DeLay. They're even a bit optimistic about the CD10, CD21, and CD31 races, which I'm sad to say is some irrational exuberance. I'd read these numbers as a much better omen for the HD48 and HD50 races, but we'll see. They also handicap the major Congressional battles, including the one in CD22.
In case you've been wondering, this is what Chris Bell will be doing in the near future. I'm more than a little giddy to see that "Powered by Movable Type" disclaimer near the bottom. Here's an AP story on his new PAC.
Mike Fjetland gets himself a little press.
Fjetland said that 40 percent of the Republicans who voted in the District 22 primary voted for Bush but not DeLay, who was unchallenged. The Daily News could not confirm that figure Monday night.“They filled in the circle for Bush, but they didn’t fill in the circle for DeLay,” said Fjetland who challenged DeLay in the 2002 Republican primary.
President/Vice-President
George W. Bush REP 12,311 92.30%
U. S. Representative District 22
Tom DeLay REP 8,352 100.00%
“A lot of people feel embarrassed by DeLay,” Fjetland said, pointing to last year’s turmoil over redistricting and the majority leader’s ongoing ethics imbroglio as reasons why. “They were just unhappy about the extremism by DeLay.”Fjetland argues, however, that many of those same Republicans could never bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. That’s where he comes in.
“The key to this district is the moderate Republicans,” he said.
[...]
Even though he is running against one of the most powerful men in the county — as well as a Democratic challenger who is making a serious bid of his own — Fjetland insists he has a chance.
“I think it’s possible for me to pull out a plurality,” he said.
One more thing, from Fjetland's email:
And don't forget to see "Candidates Straight Talk" featuring the top three contenders for District 22 - DeLay, R. Morrison and Fjetland, Sunday, October 31 at 4 p.m. on KPRC, Channel 2.
DeLay himself continues to be active. The article is mostly on the spate of negative ads DeLay has run, but we'll look at what Rice University political scientist Bob Stein has to say.
"Tom DeLay will get re-elected. I don't think there is too much of a doubt about that. The only question is how much does he win by."Stein said the 22nd District has been Republican for years but noted that growth trends and redistricting indicate it may begin to swing back to the Democratic camp.
Stein said if DeLay's ballot total falls below 60 percent the result could encourage Democrats in 2006.
He said a candidate who has held elected office before and is adept at raising money might enter the 2006 race if DeLay's election numbers fall off.
DeLay won with 63 percent of the vote two years ago and 60 percent in 2000.
Campaign finance reports show that as of Sept. 30, DeLay had spent $1.4 million compared to $417,000 for Morrison.
[Fort Bend County GOP Chair Eric] Thode said DeLay is running a bigger campaign this year because 30 percent of the district's residents have never been represented by him before.
"So they don't know him. So there is always a fear the other side is going to try and define you in a negative way," he said.
Finally, Chris notes that Bev Carter, who thoroughly excoriated Tom DeLay in her last column, has endorsed Richard Morrison in this week's column (which Chris reprinted in full as it is oddly not available online yet). Bev's a GOP precinct chair, and I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea that a party's precinct chairs should support that party's candidates - Lord knows I'd be pissed at any Fort Bend Democratic precinct chairs who endorsed Tom DeLay. I know nothing about her, so I don't know if she's more of a Betsy Lake-style Republican, someone who's worried that DeLay's unbridled sleaze will eventually bring ruin to her party, or just an attention-seeker. Maybe she's taken the old saying that "sometimes party loyalty asks too much" to heart, I don't know. I do know you should read what Bev has to say, and then go read Juanita, who (I think we can all agree) is nobody's idea of a Republican of any stripe.
This is it - it's either today or Tuesday. Expect long lines and be patient. Forty-nine thousand people voted in Harris County on Wednesday, the third straight day this week that the already-heavy turnout has increased. Tiffany will be heading out to cast her ballots soon. I'll report back on what she sees.
Has there been an upswing in rivers running uphill lately that no one has told me about? Jim Henley has endorsed John Kerry for President. OK, so it's not much more enthusiastic than the Denver Post endorsement of Bush was, but hey. He's a libertarian. It comes with the territory. And I'm sure he won't get 700 angry letters criticizing him for it.
Well, so much for taking Houston's airways by storm.
Syndicated shock jock Howard Stern's much-bally-hooed debut in the Houston market hasn't captured listeners. Ratings for Stern's show, which debuted on KIKK-AM (650) in late July, were so minuscule they didn't show up in the Arbitron rankings.Laura Morris, general manager of Infinity Radio's four Houston stations, including KIKK-AM, predicts it will take another couple of ratings periods before Stern shows up in the ratings.
"People are still discovering that Howard is even on the air in Houston," she said.
Ratings for Stern's show are hampered by the fact that KIKK is a low-wattage AM station that barely registered in the ratings under its previous business-news format.
Maybe Stern's rating will improve in the next cycle - he's been on the air three months all together - but it seems to me that Infinity blew a lot of free publicity by not boosting KIKK's signal strength. Why bother bringing Howard Stern to Houston if no one can hear him?
The prosecution and the defense have had their final say in the Enron "Nigerian Barge" trial, which actually has some former Merrill Lynch employees in the dock. A quick reminder of what's at stake:
Two former Enron employees and four former Merrill Lynch bankers are accused of conspiring to fake a sale of the barges so Enron could meet profit goals that generated bonuses for Enron executives. The defendants say there was no secret guarantee that someone would buy back the barges from Merrill within six months at a locked-in profit.The case is being watched on two fronts.
"It's important because it's the beginning of the end of the prosecutions in a way. People have been waiting a long time to see someone at Enron tried," said Philip Hilder, a Houston lawyer who represents several Enron case witnesses.
Though the Justice Department's Enron Task Force obtained a successful conviction of Enron accounting firm Arthur Andersen for obstruction of justice in 2002, this case is the first to focus on a side deal like the ones that are the basis of the bigger cases against Enron's former chief executive officer, Jeff Skilling, and its former chairman, Ken Lay.
Hilder noted this case is also significant to Wall Street because bankers are on trial and "it puts some business practices under the microscope that may have been accepted elsewhere. People will now be cautioned about stepping over the line."
If you haven't voted early yet in Harris County, prepare for a wait. It's much heavier this week than last.
People are lining up to vote early in record numbers throughout Harris County, reinforcing predictions of a high turnout by the time voting is over on Election Day.On Tuesday, with three days of early voting left, Harris County surpassed its total early vote for 2000, as the total for this year hit 240,846.
County Clerk Beverly Kaufman said she expects that 400,000 people will vote in person by the end of early voting Friday. Another 50,000 are expected to send mail-in ballots.
She predicts in-person early voting will be about a third of the total vote, as it has been in recent elections.
That would bring the total turnout out to 1.2 million of the record 1.9 million registered voters in Harris County, Kaufman projects, a turnout of more than 60 percent.
All during the week of October 18, early voting at the West Gray Multi-Service Center has been a frustrating mess for people hoping to dash in and quickly take care of their civic duty."It's been one of our busiest sites," says David Beirne, spokesman for the Harris County Clerk's Office. The pace of early voting is double that of 2000, he says.
"There were waits of 45 minutes the first two days, and you don't usually see that until the last two days," he says.
At the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center on West Gray, one of the most popular early voting sites in Houston, more than 100 voters an hour cast ballots."It's been that way every day since we've started. It hasn't ceased," said Lee Parsley, the supervisor of the polling place. "I don't think I've ever seen lines at 4:30 p.m. That's unprecedented for us at this location."
He estimates that the site has processed as many as 2,000 voters a day.
Depending on the time of day, the wait can be anywhere from 15 minutes to more than an hour. During the lunch hour Wednesday, early voters stood in line for about 45 minutes before they made it to the voting machine.
Nice article in the Press about Houston's own Matt Mullenweg, creator of blog software WordPress. Two comments: One, if you read through the whole thing, you'll note that I got mentioned in there. The reporter contacted me about this story in late August or so. She told me the article was due out on September 23. When that turned out to be the Best Of Houston issue, in which I got the Best Local Blog award, I thought maybe it had been a ruse of some kind. I guess the publication just got delayed. Whatever the case, it's a nice piece, and Matt deserves the attention.
Comment number two:
It's unlikely that WordPress will ever charge users. For one thing, since the coding is available, someone else could just distribute it for free. That's the biggest reason for the explosion of users in the past several months. Several months ago, a competing (non-open-source) software, Movable Type, suddenly announced it would be charging its most active users. The Web exploded with posts about its developers, San Francisco-based Ben and Mena Trott, "sucker-punching the Weblogging community." Around the same time, the number of WordPress users spiked by several thousand.Well-known blogger Mark Pilgrim, a big supporter of open-source software, wrote about the reasons for his switch on one of his 11 blogs: "This site now runs WordPress…I've taken the $535 that Movable Type would have cost me, and I've donated it to the WordPress developers. It's not about money; it's about freedom."
Another prominent switch was made by a woman who'd just written a book about Movable Type, Molly E. Holzschlag. With Movable Type, her blog was getting so much "comment spam" that she was spending hours a day cleaning it out. Where readers can post comments responding to her entries, spammers had come in and posted them about Viagra and penis enlargement. This is increasingly becoming a problem bloggers face. Molly switched to WordPress to elude the spammers, at least for a time. And while she attributes her Movable Type spam to her simple domain name, molly.com, and the fact that she's been blogging for years, Matt and other WordPress users say it's better at blocking spam.
Elswhere in blogging news, I see that catblogging has made the big time. Too bad they didn't mention Laurence's catcam.
Finally, congrats to Luis and Jeralyn for their new professional blogging gig. Will any Houston old media outlets grasp the concept (no, this doesn't count) and follow suit? Don't hold your breath.
This story about the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals offering support to the Innocence Network is a very pleasant surprise.
A decision by Texas' highest criminal court to support the struggling Texas Innocence Network may signal a crack in state officials' longtime resistance to innocence claims.
The growing number of exonerations in recent years persuaded the Court of Criminal Appeals to put up $10,000 from an education fund it oversees to finance a Nov. 5 conference in Austin on how to expand the fledgling Innocence Network statewide, said Judge Barbara Hervey. The network currently is based at two universities.The appeals court has been criticized for what some consider its indifference to innocence claims, most famously when it rejected DNA evidence in the case of Roy Criner.
Criner served 10 years in prison before being pardoned in 2000 after a second DNA test showed he did not commit the rape for which he was convicted.
"The court has been criticized, particularly by the defense bar, as being prosecution-oriented," said law professor Robert Dawson, who heads the Innocence Network branch at the University of Texas at Austin. "That's what makes Judge Hervey's participation so remarkable."
Hervey is the driving force behind the initiative by the appeals court, the state's court of last resort in criminal cases. "My goal is to see Texas lead the way nationwide," she said.
[...]
The effort to bolster the Texas Innocence Network has the backing of all nine judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals, six of whom will attend the Nov. 5 conference, Hervey said.
Many district attorneys are skeptical or even hostile to the idea of an innocence commission and the work of the Innocence Network because both review their work.Rob Kepple, director of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, said he will attend the conference with an open mind.
"If it's done properly and with a set of procedures, I think it's great," Kepple said. "If all it's going to do is be press conferences and bashing people in the system and a way to abolish the death penalty, I think you've got problems."
Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, whose office has been plagued by problems at the Houston police crime lab that affected hundreds of cases, was uncertain about attending the gathering. He has clashed with the founding branch of the Innocence Network at the University of Houston but says he does not oppose expanding the network.
"I have never minded people grading my papers," he said.
But he added that the UH Innocence Network has treated his office shabbily.
"I've been upset that they've wanted to handle cases in the media as opposed to the courts," Rosenthal said. "There have been times when they have resorted to ad hominem attacks on people in this office as opposed to legal attacks."
Dow, head of the UH program, said the network has good relations with other district attorneys' offices but Rosenthal's seems "unusually defensive and reluctant to admit fault."
Congratulations once again to the Red Sox, who just completed one of the hottest runs in postseason history to win the World Series. I guess once every 86 years or so I can handle the Sox being champions. I fully expect, as Lis Riba's husband Ian suggested, that the mortality rate in New England will spike, since everyone who's been hanging on to see the Sox win the Series in their lifetime can now die happy. Cub fans everywhere are surely taking heart.
You know, it must really suck to be a Chicago White Sox fan. They're totally overshadowed by the Red Sox and the now-defunct Curse of the Bambino, and the Cubs and the Billy Goat Curse. Their team hasn't been champs since 1917 (the year before the last Red Sox title), but there's no pop culture attached to it. Hell, nobody besides them even knows about it. I mean, did you know that it's been 87 years since the Southsiders won the Series and 45 years since their last pennant? How about Cleveland, which won its last World Series in 1948? And then of course, there's the Astros (sigh), who have never won a pennant. At least they got some attention for finally winning a playoff series, even if it was just the Division Series. Some teams are luckier than others in their misfortunes, I suppose.
So anyway. Congrats to the Sox. Enjoy the victory, savor it through the winter and spring. But don't get too attached to it. You know better than I how hard it can be to do it again.
UPDATE: Pete shares a few thoughts.
After complaining about how ABC was running a couple of shows I like past their expected end time, thus causing TiVo to stop recording too soon, I was pleased to see an urgent programming note on my set the other day informing me that "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives", among other shows, are now scheduled to go an extra minute and to check my season passes as needed. Hurrah for TiVo!
Mark Evanier, TiVoholic extraordinaire, proposes a more general solution. Sounds good to me.
I took another drive through my neighborhood, making sure I covered every block this time, to get an updated yard sign count. With a week to go before the election, the count stands 163 for Kerry, and 33 for Bush. That's actually a pretty substantial improvement for Bush since last time - the new signs tally as 89 Kerry, 27 Bush, taking the ratio from over 12-1 to just under 5-1. That's also still a better performance for the Democratic ticket in my highly Democratic neighborhood than in 2000, and from what I can tell there's just a heck of a lot more signs overall.
A few notes:
- I didn't see the Michael Badnarik sign this time around, but I did see one lonely sign for Green Party candidate David Cobb.
- Other candidates for whom I saw signs were Democrats Richard Morrison, John Martinez, Jim Dougherty (none of whom would represent this neighborhood, as their districts are elsewhere), Sheila Jackson Lee, Kathy Stone, Bruce Mosier, Jim Sharp, and Dale Gorczynski; Republicans Ted Poe (also not representing this area; typically, the sign in question read "Bush/Cheney/Poe", with Poe's name barely visible on the bottom), Chuck Rosenthal, Sharon McCally, and Riecke Baumann; and Libertarian Congressional candidate Brent Sullivan (running against Jackson Lee, who actually does represent this area). There were in fact quite a few signs for Jim Sharp, which is not too surprising since he lives here. Though I could probably infer support for one Presidential candidate or the other via these signs, I didn't count a house unless it had a genuine Kerry or Bush placard.
- I saw exactly one house with a sign for the city propositions (it advocated a vote for Prop 2). Two hundred plus houses with campaign signs, and one having anything to do with the election that will have the biggest impact on all of them. That's what I call confusion.
Tom DeLay, less than two weeks ago, on why he wouldn't debate Richard Morrison:
“His name ID is nothing.”
DeLay supporters have pointed to a calendar listing on the Morrison Web site as a smoking gun linking Morrison to the LaRouchians."LaRouche is a con felon and all I can tell you is that Mr. Morrison has supported and campaigned with LaRouche followers and Mr. Morrison also has taken money and is working with the Daily Kos, which is an organization that raises money for fighters against the U.S. in Iraq," said DeLay.
Morrison called DeLay out of line, accusing his connections in the capital for fighting his battles.
"Instead of addressing the real issues between us, the (National Republican Congressional Committee) decided to make a public calendar of political events in the 22nd district to make outlandish charges against me," Morrison said.
"He should come forward and address (his recent legal and ethical problems) openly instead of using his Washington friends to lodge attacks."
Go back and read that again. This is the Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives. He's one of the five or six most powerful people in the country, he's got access to zillions of dollars, he's got over a quarter-century of experience representing his district in Austin and Washington, DC, and in the waning days of a campaign against a modestly-funded, longshot first-time candidate, he's screeching about bloggers and Lyndon LaRouche. He can't campaign on who he is and what he's done any more, mostly because what he's done lately is get his ass reprimanded left and right for sleazy behavior, so this is what's left for him. Does anybody out there still cling to the belief that he isn't running scared? What a sad, pathetic little man he is.
The poor man is becoming delusional, too.
SUGAR LAND, Texas — “I did 95 doors yesterday in a little over two hours,” said Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who has traded his hard-soled dress shoes for white running sneakers since Congress recessed for the election.“I love knocking on doors,” DeLay said Sunday, after giving a pep talk to nearly 20 precinct-walking volunteers in his campaign headquarters, tucked near a golf course in the Greatwoods planned community on the outskirts of Houston.
[...]
DeLay’s reelection campaign committee has organized precinct walks in the past, but not to the extent it is now — at least, not in years. His campaign is also airing an estimated $250,000 in television advertisements, after buying virtually no TV time during the past several elections.
And, personally, DeLay is throwing himself into his reelection effort, an effort that in the past required little of his time and attention. This past weekend, the solemn business suit, the standard uniform in Washington’s corridors of power, was gone, dropped in favor of collared shirt sleeves embossed with the American flag, all the better for navigating precincts in the heat and humidity of southeast Texas, still sweltering in late October.
DeLay decided unexpectedly last week to participate in a debate against Democrat Richard Morrison and two third-party candidates organized by a local high school’s debating team. It was the first time in political observers’ memory that DeLay had exposed himself to the barbs of political pygmies in a campaign debate.
Validation time:
[Poll] numbers have prompted the conservative Club for Growth to spend tens of thousands of dollars on television ads in the district defending DeLay. David Keating, the group’s executive director, said that it wouldn’t have if DeLay had an easy race.“People wouldn’t pay attention to them and [the ads] wouldn’t be a factor in what people are thinking regarding these issues,” he said.
UPDATE: In case you want to find out more about Tom DeLay's fascinating claims about Kos' fundraising, you can contact his campaign via these addresses and phone numbers.
UPDATE: The Morrison campaign responds to DeLay:
“Tom DeLay has crossed the line many times before but this time he’s gone beyond the pale…even for Tom DeLay. In a desperate attempt to shore up his support by making outrageous claims about me he has libeled an American veteran. He claims Daily Kos is an organization that raises money for anti-American Iraqi fighters. This is a bald-faced lie. The Daily Kos is not an organization. It is a blog written by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, a veteran of the U.S. Army. Daily Kos doesn’t shy away from pointing out DeLay’s ethical and legal problems but that doesn’t make Markos a terrorist sympathizer. This is the United States of America and freedom of speech is a right that Tom DeLay can’t over ride just because he doesn’t like what you’re saying…even if he thinks he is the federal government.”
Opera singer and New York Yankees fixture Robert Merrill has died at the age of 87.
Merrill died Saturday at his home in suburban New York City, family friend Barry Tucker said Monday. Reference books gave conflicting ages for Merrill, 87 or 85.Merrill performed around the country with Tucker's father, tenor Richard Tucker, the younger man said. "My father felt that he had the greatest natural voice that America created," he said.
Merrill, once described in Time magazine as "one of the Met's best baritones," became as well-known to New York Yankees fans for his season-opening rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner -- a tradition that began in 1969.
[...]
Merrill's lifelong enthusiasm for baseball led to his long tenure at Yankee Stadium, where he sang the national anthem on opening day for three decades.
Merrill, who often appeared in a pinstriped shirt and tattered Yankees necktie, performed the same duty for the Yankees during the World Series, the playoffs and at Old-timers Day.
He took the job seriously and once said he didn't appreciate when singers tried to ad lib with "distortions."
"When you do the anthem, there's a legitimacy to it," Merrill told Newsday in 2000. "I'm bothered by these different interpretations of it."
Yankees team spokesman Howard Rubenstein called Merrill "a true inspiration for us, the ballplayers and all of our fans. ... We dearly miss him."
I'm not quite sure what to make of this Chron story about crime rates in Houston and Harris County.
Crime was down inside the Houston city limits last year, but the FBI reported Monday that many of the crimes committed in the unincorporated areas of Harris County continued to rise, furthering a trend that became apparent in 2001.[...]
Houston's crime numbers met or bested improvements seen nationally. It was an improvement from 2002, when the city recorded increases in most types of crime.
Last year, the city posted a 3.9 percent drop in violent crimes from the previous year, edging out the 3 percent decrease reported nationwide. The city also reported a 3.4 percent drop in property crimes, outpacing the nation's marginal decrease.
Homicides increased 8.6 percent last year, but Houston recorded fewer forcible rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, thefts, car thefts and arsons than the year before.
Unincorporated Harris County did not fare so well. While some numbers dropped — most significantly, homicide and auto thefts — there were increases in most types of crime, including rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries and thefts.
The FBI report notes that the county numbers "do not reflect county totals, but are the numbers reported by the sheriff's office or county police."
The Houston numbers were slightly better, marking a nearly 11 percent jump in robberies, a 5 percent rise in burglaries and a nearly 4 percent boost in larcenies and thefts.
Reported rapes during this period declined nearly 19 percent, while auto thefts dropped 11 percent and aggravated assaults dropped marginally, Houston figures show.
Regardless, the overall trend is a good one, and one that I'm sure correlates with the real estate boom in and around downtown. The Houston Heights was considered a scary place to live 20 years ago, and I can recall looking at quite a few rent houses in the Montrose area circa 1990 with burglar bars on them. Not any more.
Well, I did my civic duty this morning at the Fiesta on Kirby, which is a couple of blocks from where I work. I arrived at about 6:50, and there were already 20 people lined up ahead of me. We had to wait until the doors opened at 7, but it didn't take me long after that. Early voting ends at 7 PM on Friday, so don't wait too long.
Just over 200,000 people in the Top 15 counties voted on Monday, including 42,000 in Harris County. That was the heaviest early-voting day so far. I think Harris County will break 20% turnout by the end of the week; of course, Collin, Williamson, and Travis Counties are at 20% already, with Denton close behind. Those guys ought to break 30%, which is truly astounding.
An earlier injunction against a Republican PAC has been overturned by the Texas Supreme Court.
The Texas Supreme Court today overturned a lower court ruling that had ordered a Republican political action committee to stop raising or spending corporate money until after the Nov. 2 election.The Supreme Court ruled in favor of The Associated Republicans of Texas, which had said the money was used to finance its overhead.
The PAC has contributed money to Republican campaigns for 30 years and has raised at least $688,000 in corporate money since 2000.
A state district judge last week temporarily froze the group's corporate account after two Democrats, David Leibowitz of San Antonio and Bob Glaze of Gilmer, filed a lawsuit claiming the committee violated state law that prohibits candidates from taking corporate cash.
Leibowitz challenges Rep. Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio, and Glaze challenges Rep. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, in state House races.
[...]
The plaintiffs alleged that the corporate money, known as soft money, raised and spent by the committee freed up so-called hard money -- direct contributions from individuals -- to be contributed to the campaigns.
A judge had ordered a hearing on the issue Nov. 3, a day after the election.
The Supreme Court said the practical effect of the temporary injunction and hearing date would affect the committee's right to participate in the election and would amount to a "non-appealable determination" that it had done something illegal without a hearing on the evidence.
A spokeswoman for the committee said most of the big money cited by the plaintiffs was raised to cover legal costs in lawsuits over redistricting. The committee said it only has about $3,000 in corporate money in a separate account it uses for things such as rent and supplies.
I've been a big booster of the DCCC here, and for good reason - they can really make the difference in a close race, and they can move quickly when opportunities arise. I've gotten some feedback that it would be preferable to direct some of the support that the DCCC provides. Well, now you can. They've set up five regional tickets, designed to funnel contributions directly to the candidates in those regions. Check them all out, and please consider supporting the candidates in your area. As Kos says, the last media buys are happening now. You can help make the difference.
To say the least, that's pretty darned high turnout.
Fifty-nine percent of the registered voters in Texas are expected to cast ballots in the Nov. 2 election, Secretary of State Geoff Connor said today.Connor's voter turnout estimate comes from studying early voting trends and looking at the state's voting age population, he said. Early voting ends Friday.
Although large numbers of voters are showing up in some counties to vote early, it may be that more Texans are taking advantage of early voting, Connor said, adding that it may not translate into an overall boost in turnout for the election.
"I do hope that we have greater participation," Connor said. He said turnout could be helped by interest in the presidential race and hotly contested local and congressional races and a surge in patriotism since the 2001 terror attacks.
Over the last several elections, there hasn't been much change in the percentage of adults who turn out to vote, he said.
About 13.1 million Texans are registered to vote this year, a record number. But as a percentage of the voting-age population, it represents a decline in registration to 82 percent, down from 85 percent in 2000.
In the 2000 presidential race, when then-Gov. George W. Bush of Texas first ran for president, voter turnout for the state was 52 percent. At that time, there were 12.4 million registered voters in Texas.
TXDOT is holding public meetings tonight and Thursday night regarding I-45 and light rail expansion.
The Texas Department of Transportation is holding two public meetings this week to present results of a study that analyzed possibilities for expanding the North Freeway.TxDOT staff and consultants will describe study results and then listen to concerns and respond to questions from the public.
Meetings will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Davis High School, 1101 Quitman, and at the same time Thursday in the community room of Greenspoint Mall, 12300 North Freeway. For information, call 713-802-5000.
This study of Interstate 45 from downtown Houston to The Woodlands is part of the Metropolitan Transit Authority's examination of light rail in the corridor. Voters last year approved a transit-expansion plan that includes building light rail from downtown to Bush Intercontinental Airport. A draft environmental impact study for the first phase, University of Houston-Downtown to Northline Mall, is scheduled to be finished later this year.
This is our last Texas Tuesday of the 2004 election cycle. We wrap things up today with a look at the senior Democrat of the Texas delegation, Charlie Stenholm. He may have the toughest fight of all the redistricted incumbents, but he's up to it. Check him out, and please consider helping him, helping all the Texas Democrats, and helping the DCCC.
With their endorsement of the incumbents for Sheriff and Tax Assessor (both of which I predicted), the Chron closes out its recommendations for this election season. I did pretty well in guessing their picks, mainly stumbling in the State House races where I thought they might go for Hubert Vo but not Jim Dougherty or Charlotte Coffelt. I presume they'll run a review of all their endorsements on Sunday, which doesn't really make up for not having an easily-accessed "We Recommend" page but is the best I'm gonna get.
Elsewhere, the Letters to the Editor today were all about their Bush endorsement two days ago. By my count, seven letter writers chastised them for it, three supported them, and one simply said "so much for the argument that the Chronicle is part of the liberal media." Make of that what you will.
UPDATE: Here's how Aron Danburg cast his ballot. Note what he has to say about the Sheriff's race.
UPDATE: Here's Greg to give the alternate view of the Tax Assessor's race. I'm happy to take his word for it regarding Democratic candidate John Webb, but I do wish someone had taken a few moments to convince Webb of the need to hire a professional webpage designer.
A Zogby poll shows both Props 1 and 2 with more support than opposition, but that nearly half of voters in each case are undecided. According to the poll graphic, Prop 1 leads 31-24, with 45% not sure, and Prop 2 is up 29-24, with 47% not sure.
The poll of 500 registered Houston voters was conducted last week.Just under half the respondents remain undecided about either proposition, and more than half say they do not feel they have enough information about the propositions.
Although the poll shows [Mayor Bill] White enjoys an approval rating of 76 percent as he nears the end of his first year in office, he has been unable so far to parlay his popularity into significant support for Proposition 1, said Rice University political scientist Robert Stein, who analyzed the poll data for the Chronicle.
"The mayor's approval rating is as high as I've ever seen for a first-time incumbent," Stein said. "(Former Mayor Bob) Lanier didn't get to that level until his third term, and he was the most popular mayor Houston has had in 25 years.
"One would think that (popularity) would translate into support for the mayor's position," Stein added. "But it's as if the mayor hasn't been able to get his message out."
Thirty-three percent of poll respondents knew that the mayor supports Proposition 1 and opposes Proposition 2.But Stein said that White, who is a Democrat although city offices are officially nonpartisan, stands a good chance of prevailing in the election because the poll indicates most undecided voters are Democrats, African-Americans, Hispanics and women.
"It seems obvious that the mayor needs to get his message out to his core constituency," Stein said.
The strongest supporters of both measures are men over 50 years old with annual household incomes of more than $50,000.
Supporters of Proposition 1 are most likely to be Democrats who have lived in Houston less than 10 years, while supporters of Proposition 2 are most likely to be Republicans who have lived in the city more than 10 years.
About 17 percent support one proposition but not the other. Five percent support neither, and 10 percent support both.
Stein said White will have two advantages in the final days of the campaign: His side is likely to raise more money, and there are few other hotly contested local elections competing for voters' attention.
But support is more solid for Proposition 2, which has been pushed by tax limitation advocates for more than two years as tax bills have soared because of rising property values.
Almost twice as many Proposition 1 supporters said they were likely to change their minds as Proposition 2 supporters.
Both sides promised a blitz of radio and television ads in the campaign's closing days. Early voting continues through Friday, and Election Day is a week from today.
Stein attributed the large number of uninformed voters to the confusion caused by the two propositions.He said White took this chance when he decided to propose an alternative to Proposition 2 rather than just fight it, as former Mayor Bob Lanier successfully did in 1997 against a similar proposition.
But property tax revenues have doubled since then, and a Zogby poll in May showed voters would approve a revenue cap by 58 percent to 29 percent, but reject it by 43 percent to 39 percent if they believed it would hurt the city's credit rating.
Stein said the Astros' playoff run and the attention devoted to the presidential race also have made it difficult for backers of Propositions 1 or 2 to drive their messages home.
I'm glad to see that neither of these props has anywhere near a majority yet, though I still fully expect both to pass. As such, as I've said before, I advocate a reluctant vote for Prop 1 and a firm vote against Prop 2. Remember, if you vote a straight ticket, you still have to vote on the propositions.
I've been sent an excellent article on the CD22 race, which mostly focuses on Richard Morrison. No link for the piece, which appears in the October 25 issue of "Texas Lawyer", so I've reproduced it below.
Kos reports a rumor that Tom DeLay is gearing up to sue Democracy for America for libel over this ad. Hard to believe, given DeLay's obviously public stature, but you never know.
Here's a clip from that fabled Clear Lake candidates' forum. Looks like Morrison landed a pretty good punch there, if you ask me.
Quote of the day: “It’s time now for the American people to understand that we (the GOP) are a permanent majority.” -- Tom DeLay, speaking to the Pearland, TX Chamber of Commerce August 18, 2004. You can see him say it at that link. And if you want to prove him wrong, you know what to do.
On the Stump: Lawyer-Candidates Try To Unseat Tom DeLay
Mark Donald
Texas Lawyer
10-25-2004
"So you really think you can beat him?" says a corpulent man wearing a gimme cap.
"I'm going to stomp him into the ground," assures Democratic congressional candidate Richard Morrison, who has just arrived at a labor union barbecue in La Marque this balmy Saturday in mid-October.
"I've heard that old song before," says the man, underscoring the fact it will be no cakewalk defeating Tom DeLay, Republican Majority Leader, 10-term congressional veteran and arch-nemesis of the Democratic Party.
If not for his salt-and-pepper hair, the baby-faced Morrison would not look his 37 years. An environmental lawyer, he says there is "nothing" left of his law practice. "You can't beat the most powerful man in Congress being a part-time lawyer."
Even though this gathering is pro-Morrison, he works the crowd hard, "loving on his base," as he calls it. "This is the Galveston County portion of the 22nd Congressional District," he says. "I win this without even coming down here." But to offset DeLay's strength in fiercely Republican portions of Fort Bend County (Sugar Land), Harris County (Clear Lake) and Brazoria County (Pearland), Morrison maintains he must double the normal turnout in Galveston County. "I've got to keep them excited about me," he says.
DeLay is the ber-architect of the controversial Texas redistricting plan that sought to solidify the gains of Republicans in Texas by increasing the size of their U.S. House delegation by at least five seats in a noncensus year. So it's hard to imagine DeLay would carve himself a district that was less Republican than the district he won in his 2002 landslide when he garnered 66 percent of the vote. Although his redrawn district remains unflinchingly Republican (more than 60 percent), 30 percent of the constituents are new to DeLay, and Morrison sees that as an opportunity.
"Howdy ladies, how you doing?" says Morrison, approaching a table of women up to their wrists in barbecue ribs. "No need for you folks to clean your hands before you shake mine. I got four kids at home."
They laugh.
"Ya'll read the Galveston County Daily News this morning?" he asks.
They haven't.
The Clear Lake High School Debating Team is sponsoring a congressional debate for the candidates of District 22 the following Tuesday, but DeLay, according to the article, was refusing to show. Morrison tells the women he'll still be there. "I challenged him to this debate, but he is scared of me."
But Tom "the Hammer" DeLay stated his own reasons for not attending: "A debate would be for his benefit, not for mine," DeLay told the Daily News. He said his own polls placed his support at "56 percent" and claimed that Morrison's "name ID is nothing."
Independent candidate Michael Fjetland, however, agreed to participate in the debate. An international lawyer who has served as a "TV terrorism analyst" for Fox 26 News in Houston, Fjetland claims he is the true wildcard in the race. Fjetland has twice gone against DeLay in the Republican primary, running underfunded campaigns and winning nearly 20 percent of the vote. Yet he maintains that only he can peel away votes from DeLay.
"If someone puts a gun to their heads, these Republicans are not going to vote for a Democrat," he says. But as a protest against DeLay, "they might vote for an independent who used to be a Republican."
Lacking a political party to support him, Fjetland again has little financial support, raising only $15,000 in contributions. Undaunted, he attacks DeLay as being out of touch with his district and Morrison as being out of touch with Republicans.
But a day spent on the campaign trail with Morrison reveals he is not shy about wrestling DeLay for Republicans — something he will have to do if he has any chance of winning.
"You've got to give Morrison credit for running a very energetic campaign and not missing any opportunities," says Harvey Kronberg, the editor of the Internet political hot sheet, The Quorum Report. "Anecdotally, I know there are a lot of Republican businessmen in his district who feel DeLay hasn't delivered a lot of bacon to offset the level of discomfort they have with his national profile."
Morrison was given no hope of unseating DeLay, even by the Democratic establishment, whose natural constituencies, such as the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, turned Morrison down when he sought their support. On the stump, Morrison seems a natural campaigner, leaving no hand unshaken, no back unslapped, no baby unadmired. A political nobody, he took on this mythic David versus Goliath struggle only after no one dared to step forward.
What no one counted on was how Democratic Party antipathy for DeLay would translate into money. Employing many of the tactics used by former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, Morrison established a strong Internet presence and become the darling of those who see DeLay as a political apocalypse.
Whether it was a Travis County grand jury indicting three DeLay aides on charges of allegedly soliciting illegal campaign contributions, a Senate Indian Affairs committee investigating whether DeLay associates allegedly traded on their connections with him to obtain $66 million in contracts from six Indian tribes or the three House Ethics Committee reprimands he received for abusing his office, Morrison has been the beneficiary — at least financially — of DeLay's woes.
DeLay's campaign spokesman Jonathan Grella says DeLay vigorously denies all the allegations against him. And in response to the last two reprimands, both of which arose out of the Texas redistricting battle, DeLay issued a press release attacking his chief accuser, U.S. Rep. Chris Bell, D-Houston, for "manipulating the ethics process in pursuit of his own personal vendetta." (Bell lost his primary election in a redrawn district.)
Morrison pounces on each negative DeLay headline with press releases and Internet fund-raisers, which have parlayed his candidacy into a national campaign and helped him net more than $500,000 in contributions, he says.
Although DeLay's ethical transgressions — both alleged and substantiated — fuel the passions of partisan grass-rooters and outraged Web bloggers, just how they play in Pearland is a different matter entirely.
All Politics Are Local
Morrison has six appearances scheduled on this Saturday and would have scheduled more had he not attended a New York City fund-raiser in his honor the night before. ( "Brother, I can't tell one day from the next," he says.) It's 2 p.m., and he is late to a speaking engagement at a retired postal workers Halloween luncheon in Space City. Nonetheless, he manages to squeeze in a brief TV interview with a reporter from Houston's KHOU Channel 11 news.
Donning a gray suit coat sans tie, Morrison smiles softly into the camera as if he were examining a friendly witness. The KHOU reporter tosses him softball questions, asking him to respond to an earlier DeLay interview when the congressman claimed he had the election locked up.
"Our polling numbers show this is a horserace," he counters. "I'd been told that there were so many Republicans in Fort Bend County, there is no way we could get them to ticket-split. . . . People are telling me that while President [George W.] Bush represents their values, Tom DeLay does not." (Morrison says his latest poll shows him seven points behind DeLay, with 20 percent undecided.)
"We talked to Mr. DeLay this morning," says the reporter, "and he argues that the House [Ethics Committee] efforts are a witch-hunt and politically motivated. How much of a factor are these allegations in your campaign?"
"This is a Republican-controlled Congress in an election year that unanimously admonished Mr. DeLay. . . . It's not partisan, like he says. It was five Republicans and five Democrats. . . . It's going to be a factor."
But DeLay spokesman Grella claims he can see no voter fallout from the reprimands. "Those who know him [DeLay] the best recognize that the Democrats have been looking for his scalp for a long time now."
Even Morrison's own consultants tend to agree that the reprimands don't resonate with the voters as loudly as Morrison's supporters had hoped. Instead, they have built Morrison's message around local issues, claiming that DeLay has been so focused on grabbing power and money for himself and Republicans that he has lost touch with the people of his district.
"I will always be there for you, brother," Morrison tells a retiree at the Halloween luncheon.
If Austin-based Republican strategist Ted Delisi were advising DeLay (and he is not), he would tell his client to act as though Morrison doesn't exist. "You wouldn't debate him or give him the attention he strategically needs," he says. Sell his incumbency, his strong Republican leadership credentials, Delisi says, but don't engage the opposition.
According to DeLay's campaign, they run hard in every race, but if Saturday's debate-refusal headline is any indication, DeLay may be pursuing Delisi's strategy of non-engagement.
Yet Nathan Wilcox, co-general campaign manager for Morrison, says his candidate is slowly drawing out DeLay. For the first time in more than a decade, DeLay has opened campaign headquarters — one in Sugar Land and one in Clear Lake. He has run three different television spots and begun spending more time in the district.
"He isn't spending money on TV for the fun of it when he could give that money to knock out Martin Frost," Wilcox contends, referring to the heated U.S. House race for the 32nd District between Democratic Congressman Martin Frost and Republican Congressman Pete Sessions. "He is not showing up at a charity auction in Needville when he could be banking $300,000 at a fund-raiser in Washington. DeLay recognizes his vulnerability."
Bidding War
It's 3:30 p.m. and Morrison arrives at the Needville Harvest Festival in western Fort Bend County. He trades his gray suit, black oxfords and campaign staffer for blue jeans, cowboy boots, and his wife and four children. In full-rural mode, he now hopes to snag some "Reagan Democrats," as he calls them — those blue-collar conservatives who feel that Tom DeLay has forgotten them, says Morrison, in his drive to consolidate Republican power.
"These people don't like the way DeLay stands up for corporate interests," Morrison claims. "This is where all the ticket-splitters live."
Morrison, labeled a moderate by the Houston Chronicle, claims he is conservative on issues such as balancing the budget and gun owners' rights. He even puts a conservative bent on the reason he was attracted to environmental law. "When I grew up, I went hunting or fishing nearly every day. I wanted to preserve the environment so my children could grow up with the same kind of experiences that I had."
As Morrison stands in front of a "Morrison for Congress" booth at the festival, he collars passersby who seem more interested in peddlers who are hawking domino sets and body lotion than in talking politics. When a staffer tells him that he has just secured the Houston Chronicle endorsement, Morrison seems pleased but not surprised.
"I don't think they have endorsed DeLay since 2000," he says (ed. note - not since 1998). "And I promised them during the primary that I was going to be a serious candidate, raise a bunch of money and hire a professional staff. When I went to the editorial board meeting, I told them, "I delivered on my promises, and you all owe me this endorsement.' "
Since he decided to become a candidate in late August 2003, he says he has block-walked 125 of the 293 precincts in his district, and attended more homecoming parades, county fairs and festivals than he can remember.
Is DeLay doing this kind of community outreach?
"He has TV commercials," Morrison says. "But that's all we have seen of him."
Minutes later, Morrison's campaign coordinator, Bernetta Young, runs up to Morrison and tells him, "Tom DeLay is here! He is at the live auction bidding on some things."
If Morrison is going to be denied the chance to out-debate DeLay, he can at least out-bid him. "Well, let's go bid on some stuff, too," he says.
DeLay is sitting under a covered area, smiling among a crowd of 50 or so people and overbidding on small items, the proceeds of which will go to upgrade Needville's campgrounds. This is the first time their paths have crossed on the campaign trail, and DeLay, true to form, does not acknowledge his opponent's presence — even though Morrison sits two rows in front of him.
The fast-talking auctioneer, sensing opportunity and extra cash, begins playing politics with the crowd. "The next item is $25 worth of dry cleaning," he says. "Every politician needs a good cleaner."
Morrison outbids a justice of the peace who is running for re-election. "Sold to Richard Morrison for U.S. Congress for $45," chants the auctioneer.
Giving DeLay equal time, the auctioneer schmoozes the crowd. "Everybody here know that Tom DeLay is a Republican?" he jokes. "Well, just ask George W."
"Let's have a debate right now," yells the auctioneer's assistant.
"A debate?" questions the auctioneer.
Morrison leans forward, shouting, "He won't agree to debate me!"
"Alright then, let's sell something," says the auctioneer. DeLay bids $100 to purchase some bread pudding; DeLay bids $250 to win a Texas A&M floor mat; Morrison outbids DeLay for a burnt-orange watercooler; a DeLay supporter outbids a Morrison supporter and pays $700 for an ice chest.
"I am sure glad it's an election year," the auctioneer laughs. "If it wasn't, we wouldn't be making any money."
DeLay leaves first, followed by Morrison with a new gas cooker ($300) hoisted on his shoulder. "It's not about the bidding," he says. "It's about them saying your name."
October Surprise
It's the Tuesday morning of the debates and Morrison and Fjetland are being interviewed on an early morning radio call-in program. DeLay also was invited to appear, Morrison says, but declined. Morrison tells outraged callers that DeLay also has declined to participate in this evening's debate, repeating the Galveston County Daily News' account that DeLay claimed a debate would only benefit Morrison and not DeLay.
The debate is scheduled for 7 p.m., and more than 200 people arrive at a Clear Lake elementary school, most of them Morrison supporters. Morrison, Fjetland and a Libertarian candidate who oddly also is named Morrison get ready to share the stage with a student-moderator.
A few minutes before the debate, organizers receive a phone call: DeLay is on his way.
"He [DeLay] had plans to attend a charity event, but in the late-afternoon the congressman said he really wanted to attend the debate," spokesman Grella later said. DeLay told the media that he didn't want to disappoint the "kids" who had worked so hard to organize the debate.
Richard Morrison and Fjetland felt sucker-punched by DeLay, lulled into believing he wouldn't participate. "I didn't think he was going to be there," Fjetland told the Houston Chronicle. "If I would have known, I would have prepared better."
Although there were no pundits or pollsters to declare a winner, the Morrison camp claimed its candidate had won — as did DeLay's. "The congressman was able to share his agenda for the future and demonstrate his superior grasp of local and national issues," Grella says. "The debate crystallized the stature gap between the majority leader and the political novices he shared the stage with."
Even if Morrison didn't prove himself to be the more knowledgeable debater, he had finally flushed out DeLay. His mere presence seemed a public acknowledgment that DeLay was in a hard-fought race and perhaps Morrison was someone who needed to be reckoned with.
September was a busy month here, with about 49,000 hits, nosing it past June for the second busiest month. October looks to be even better, thanks in large part to the election, which appears to be driving everyone's traffic up. Thanks to everyone for stopping by. Top referrers are beneath the More link.
Aggregators, collections, indices, etc ====================================== 358: http://www.technorati.com/ 283: http://www.bloglines.com 268: http://blo.gs/
Weblog referrers
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2109: Daily Kos
1954: Atrios
804: TAPPED
262: Liberal Oasis
254: The Burnt Orange Report
148: Pandagon
143: Houston Press Best Blog
123: Drive Democracy
108: The Agonist
102: MyDDTop search terms
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#reqs: search term
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4340: bill burkett
869: ben barnes
717: extreme home makeovers
490: real men of genius
180: sheri dew
175: diane zamora
164: political bloggers
144: prime number algorithm
127: deal hudson
122: schlitterbahn galveston
118: american idol tryouts
85: crawford iconoclast
82: extreme makeovers home edition
70: houston it's worth it
70: women of enron
66: jack abramoff
63: perelman poincare
55: budweiser real men of genius
53: john colyandro
53: jon matthews
After the first full week, the early voting totals this year for the Top 15 counties is nearly double what it was in 2000 after a week. And it's not just the big counties, either - it's all across the state. And in other states, too.
What does that mean? Conventional wisdom is that high turnout generally benefits Democrats. I've already given my reasons for why I think a high turnout in Texas will mean a better showing for Kerry than for Gore. Since Texas' 34 electoral votes are not in doubt, the more interesting question is what effect this will have on the Congressional and State House races. Travis County's strong showing so far has got to make backers of Kelly White and Mark Strama feel good. Beyond that, I just don't know.
Early voting runs through Friday, with all sites open from 7 AM to 7 PM. After that, it's Tuesday or nothing. Don't miss out!
"Walker, Texas Ranger" runs from a political fight.
Actor Chuck Norris, who for years played a tough Texas lawman on TV, has ducked for cover in a real-life brawl — the race to become the next Dallas County sheriff.Norris stopped in the city recently to record two radio ads for Lupe Valdez, the Democratic candidate in what has shaped up to be a spirited race for sheriff.
The spots would have been a small coup for Valdez given that Norris is a convincing law-and-order type and, more importantly, a well-recognized Republican.
Thursday, though, Norris informed Valdez in a brief letter from his lawyer that he was withdrawing his support.
Susan Hays, chairwoman of the Dallas County Democratic Party, said Republicans got wind of the endorsement and leaned on Norris to withdraw it.
"I'm restraining myself from calling him a weenie," Hays said of Norris, a martial arts black-belt who never flinched as Walker, Texas Ranger.
John Hensley, a former U.S. Customs agent who was Valdez's boss when he ran the agency's Dallas regional office, was the one who asked Norris to endorse Valdez.
"I'm sure Chuck's mad at me for ever bringing this up," said Hensley, who described himself as a longtime Norris friend.
Hensley said he thought Valdez was a "good, competent and loyal agent" and approached Norris on her behalf.
Hensley said backers of GOP sheriff candidate Danny Chandler pressured Norris. "Rather than get in the middle of it he just said, 'I'm not gonna be involved,' " Hensley said.
Michael Forshey, Norris' lawyer, confirmed that Norris is officially neutral in the race.
Saw this interesting article on cellphone jamming last week and have been pondering the implications of it.
Purchased for about $2,000 each, they can be turned on by remote control and emit low-level radio frequencies that thwart cell phone signals within a 100-foot radius.Users get a "no service" or "signal not available" message on their cell phones.
Although Mexico has no law against the devices, the private use of cell phone blockers is illegal in the United States and most Western countries.
But the tide is turning.
Japan allows public places such as theaters and concert halls to install jammers, provided they obtain a government-issued license. And last week, France's industry minister approved a decision to let cinemas, concert halls and theaters install them -- as long as provisions are in place so emergency calls can still be made.
Canada had considered allowing blocking in similar situations. But Industry Canada, which regulates the country's telecommunications, decided against it, saying the devices could infringe on personal freedom and affect public safety by crippling communication with law enforcement and security agencies.
Officials at Netline, which sold its first jammer in 1998, say they are selling thousands of jammers a year and have expanded their business throughout the world.
They're far from the only manufacturers. The devices are sold the world over, with dozens of suppliers selling them on the Internet.
Anyway. I'm actually a bit surprised that there hasn't been some kind of clamor to allow jammers in the US. It'll be spirited when it happens, that's for sure.
I note with some interest this story about yard signs in Alamo Heights.
[In Alamo Heights], one of the city's more affluent enclaves that has long been considered a conservative stronghold, residents are noticing a roughly equal smattering of Bush and Kerry signs.Political experts say it's yet another indication that neither candidate has a lock on this year's vote.
"The wonderful thing about Bexar County is it's still a two-party county," said Larry Hufford, a political scientist at St. Mary's University.
Hufford had one explanation for what appears to be a split in places like Alamo Heights.
"In communities where, economically, one would think it would be overwhelmingly Republican, you find mainstream Protestants and Jewish people very concerned about the influence of the Christian right," he said.
In Bexar County, during the first six days of early voting, 107,167 people cast ballots, compared with 56,218 votes cast during the same period in 2000, said Christian Anderson of Election Support Services.The early voting period runs through Friday.
Although local early voting is strong everywhere in the county, it is mostly being driven by North Side poll sites. Typically, that indicates strong support for Republican candidates, including President Bush.
But this year, things are too up in the air to rely on that kind of assumptions.
"The thing we wonder about now is has there been an increase in percentages of support for either Republicans or Democrats, or are we just seeing a higher volume?" Anderson said. "It's hard to tell yet."
[...]
Both campaigns have stepped up outreach efforts and voters hungry to participate routinely visit campaign offices asking for bumper stickers, signs and anything else they can get to show their support for their candidate.
The Bexar County Republican Party has handed out about 10,000 Bush yard signs, officials there said.
Meanwhile, Bexar County Democratic Party officials estimate that more than 11,000 Kerry yard signs have been doled out at their six area offices.
"It's like they're playing chess with their neighbors," said Jesus Huerta, with the Democratic Leadership Council and the party's West Side office. "Their neighbor gets a sign and then they want one."
Jim Lunz, a longtime Republican activist, lives in Alamo Heights and said the three precincts that make up the community usually vote about two-thirds Republican.
He agrees there are more Kerry signs in the area than he would have expected, but doesn't think that necessarily means a stronger Democratic vote this year.
"It may just be that the 33 percent who normally vote Democratic are just expressing themselves openly this year," he said. "I would look for Bush to at least maintain the level of support he had last time."
Nielsen Media Research reported 62 million viewers watched the first presidential debate; only 51 million tuned in to the "Friends" finale earlier this year.
Links for the Congressional race fan:
Here's the Chron on Edwards versus Wohlgemuth, Lampson versus Poe, and Stenholm versus Neugebauer Notice any prominent local races missing? Yeah, me too. Here's something from the first article that is a theme in just about all of these stories.
Arlene Wohlgemuth isn't part of the Bush-Cheney ticket, but she doesn't mind if voters in the 17th Congressional District think she is.Much of her campaign to unseat Democratic incumbent Chet Edwards in the district that President Bush calls home is built around the theme that she and Bush are partners.
"In Congress, she will work with President Bush to enact their shared vision for America," promises one of her television ads.
The Express News has a fairly boilerplate story about the Anglo Texas Democrats. This is worth a chuckle:
Two of [the state's 10 Anglo Democrats in Congress] — Reps. Gene Green of Houston and Lloyd Doggett of Austin — look like solid bets for re-election.
The Morning News updates us on the money race in Frost versus Sessions and notes that both candidates have made an issue of Smoky Joe Barton. They also say that Stenholm is gaining on Neugebauer.
The Star Telegram continues its thorough coverage of all races by looking at the new CD24 and CD06. Gotta love a story that notes the nickname Smoky Joe.
The Chron has a long article on the pros and cons of the two big city propositions on the ballot this year. I've expressed my concerns about Props 1 and 2 before, and I've got a long list of them. Here's the one I'm thinking about today:
"What TABOR has meant for Colorado is a dramatic reduction in the kinds and amounts of public services the state has been able to provide for its citizens," said Carol Hedges, director of the fiscal project at the Bell Policy Center, a Colorado group that opposes TABOR.Hedges said Colorado voters sent a clear message in 2000 that TABOR wasn't working by exempting kindergarten-to-12th-grade education funding from the revenue cap. She said because of spiraling costs, TABOR didn't allow school funding to grow adequately.
Hedges said TABOR has caused Colorado to be hit much harder by the recent recession because of a ratchet-down effect: Since 2001, state revenues have fallen below the limit established by TABOR.
This means Colorado's spending is falling behind population growth and inflation, because future revenue caps are calculated on the basis of lower revenues.
According to the Bell Policy Center, TABOR has forced Colorado to eliminate state funding for public health facilities, putting the entire funding burden on local governments; to lay off 100 judicial employees including 50 probation officers; to cut park funding by 54 percent; and to cut library funding by 79 percent.
"The debate in Houston should be about what services the citizens want cut," Hedges said.
Since Colorado was brought up as an example of how this kind of cap works in practice, I'll note that Colorado Luis and the Rocky Mountain Progressive Network have many things to say about that state's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR). Check it out.
All that said, given that there's no high-profile, well-funded opposition to these propositions (other than each to the other), I must reluctantly conclude that my best bet is to vote for Prop 1 and against Prop 2. I'd prefer that neither would pass, but I strongly suspect that in reality both will, and given that, I want Prop 1 to have more votes since under that scenario only it would take effect. Do remember that if you vote a straight ticket, you still have to vote separately on the city propositions. You don't want to miss out on this.
The Statesman and the Chronicle gave President Bush a clean sweep of Texas major newspaper endorsements today. I'm not surprised by this - in fact, I predicted it. I simply never expected any of the major Texas dailies to hold Bush accountable for any of his screwups. The cognitive dissonance would be too great for them.
I understand that a lot of people in Austin are mad about the Statesman endorsement. Democracy for Texas is apparently holding an impromptu anti-Statesman rally today (see Sarah for details; the DFT email is below the fold). I say don't get mad, get even. The best revenge you can take is to do whatever you can to see to it that John Kerry carries Travis, Harris, Dallas, and Bexar counties. Make those newspapers realize that they're the ones who are out of touch. Put up a yard sign, knock on doors, drive someone to the polls, it doesn't matter. Take action and make a difference. There's no excuse.
(One point to note: The DFT mail is incorrect when it says that Bush "didn't carry Austin the last time". Bush won a plurality of Travis County votes with 45%, thanks in large part to the 10% share that Ralph Nader got - Al Gore finished with 41%. I don't care how red Texas is - your vote matters. Make the right choice.)
Finally, some kudos to Texas papers that do get it: The Waco Tribune (via Byron), the Baytown Sun (via Tom), and of course, the Lone Star Iconoclast. Let me know if I missed any.
UPDATE: Lasso has a report on the protest, along with a picture. Another picture is here, currently on the Statesman homepage.
The Austin American-Statesman will endorse George Bush on Sunday. After enduring weeks of this paper's piously endorsing Republicans because they "reflect the wishes of the people of their district," and trashing people like David Van Os and Stephen Yelenosky for being too partisan, the hometown rag has endorsed a man who didn't carry Austin the last time, and will lose it by an even bigger margin this time around.
WHAT CAN YOU DO? Be at the Congress Avenue Bridge
This is what Austin is doing for democracy this week!
Your DFT Steering Committee -
Marla Camp, Glen Maxey, Teri Sperry and Fran Vincent
I've always wanted to be a bonus assignment on someone's homework. Thanks, Ms. Jones, whoever you are.
Johnny Damon's face on a pumpkin. And more over at Sparky.
Sparky calls Damon the Unfrozen Caveman Outfielder, by the way. That's funny, but I'm still partial to HWRNMNBSOL's comment, which dubbed him The Passion of the Centerfielder.
Bringing out the base and persuading swing voters are important and all, but converting one of the other guy's supporters is the sweetest thing of all. You just have to find the right issue. Here's how Texas Law Chick did it.
Would somebody please make Tom DeLay a nice cup of warm milk and tuck him into bed? He's all upset because people are being mean to him.
"I've never had a campaign where the entire nation has tried to destroy my name," DeLay said. "They are going after me in the most personal and vindictive way. It's gutter politics."
I'm so sorry, Tom. I promise to start being nicer to you just has soon as you're home safe back in Sugar Land.
The Chron covers the heavy early voting so far, and gives us some long-awaited but still estimated numbers on Harris County and statewide registrations.
Early voting began Monday, and more than 63,000 Harris County voters cast early ballots through Wednesday, County Clerk Beverly Kaufman said.Requests for mail-in ballots are up this year as well, she said: 47,000 people have asked for Harris County ballots, compared with 34,000 in 2000.
Nearly half a million people have cast early votes statewide, Texas Secretary of State Geoffrey Connor said during a visit to Houston.
Voter registration also increased, he said. While tallies are not complete, roughly 13 million people are registered to vote in Texas, compared with 12.4 million who were registered in 2000, he said.
"We've had a surge in registration. I hope that translates into a surge in voting," Connor said. "Registering voters has always been easier than getting people to the polls."
In Harris County, a record 1.9 million are registered to vote, reported Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, the county's voter registrar.
Ah, we now seem to have voter reg totals for the top-15 counties. 1,937,072 is Harris County's number. One hundred forty-two thousand people in the Top 15 voted yesterday, which is actually a slight decline from the first three days, when the average was a tad over 148,000. Still, it's pretty consistent so far.
Harris County actually has the lowest early voting total as a percentage of total voters by far. It's still crowded at the early voting locations, accoding to KHOU. Maybe we need more of them, though there really are quite a few.
Elsewhere, Colorado Luis reports on the early voting rush in his state, while this Kos diarist experienced a strange problem a neighbor experienced with a Hart Intercivic voting machine. I've not heard of anything like that on the eSlate machines here, and we've had them for some time now. Still, check everything before you press that last button. You never know.
UPDATE: Via Sarah, a reassuring note from Austin for Change regarding what happened there. They say the same thing I do - check your ballot before you hit the last button. Printouts or not, that's a necessary step.
Via Byron, the Morning News talks about, but doesn't endorse Smoky Joe Barton.
This year, however, we find ourselves in an awkward position. On the one hand, we continue to share common beliefs with him on several important issues, and we respect the stature he has achieved as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. But increasingly we find ourselves at odds with Mr. Barton on other issues.We were disappointed, for example, that Mr. Barton led the fight earlier this year against including Ellis County in the Dallas-Fort Worth "nonattainment area" subject to heightened air quality regulation. In battling to keep Ellis County and its polluters out of the region, Mr. Barton positioned himself not just against the regional office of the Environmental Protection Agency, but also against a coalition of business, environmental and GOP elected officials. Mr. Barton ran roughshod over Dallas County Judge Margaret Keliher, Collin County Judge Ron Harris and the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce.
The battle went all the way to the White House. Ultimately, the EPA in Washington ruled against Mr. Barton and placed Ellis County in the nonattainment area.
Mr. Barton often seems to see clean air standards as negatives to be avoided rather than positives to be exploited. We see clean air as a genuine family-values issue, a public health issue and a significant economic development issue in this region. Ellis County, for example, paid a price for bad air last year when Toyota decided to build a big plant in San Antonio, not Ennis, because of the severe ozone problem. We'd like to see Mr. Barton lead the way in accelerating, rather than slowing, the state's progress toward meeting federal ozone standards.
When I interviewed Morris Meyer, I asked if he thought he might get the DMN endorsement, given Barton's refusal to be interviewed by their editorial board (if you read that non-endorsement closely, you can see that no mention is made of any recent conversations with him). He didn't get it despite his hope, and that's a shame, but I look at it this way. The Chonicle endorsed Tom DeLay in 1998, then endorsed no on in CD22 in 2000, and since then has endorsed DeLay's opponent each time. Maybe, like the Chron, the DMN is just working their way up to it. Better late than never.
For the last two weeks, "Lost" has run past the hour it's scheduled for. That was no big deal for me the first time as I was watching it live, but this time I missed the ending since the TiVo cut off at 8 like it's supposed to. And the same thing happened on "Desperate Housewives" this past Sunday. Do they need to synchronize their watches at ABC or something?
I have questions about what I missed. In accordance with the National Anti-Spoiler Act of 1997, I'm putting them beneath the More link. Thanks.
So. Can anyone tell me what (if anything) happened after Jack told Kate that his father died on "Lost"? I see from the Television Without Pity recaplet that all I missed on "Desperate Housewives" was a For Sale sign going up on Mary Alice's house; they only have the recaplet up for "Lost" as yet. I'd appreciate it.
Kash points to this story about political considerations as a factor in determining where to buy a house. It's some more empirical evidence for the Great Divide thesis that Bill Bishop has been writing about.
Of course, yard signs during campaign season aren't really necessary for this kind of self-sorting. We had some neighbors a few years back (a married couple about our age) who came to Houston to follow a job. The job was in the Woodlands, and they were set up through the employer with a real estate agent out there. They looked there, but having done some research beforehand they knew that the Woodlands was not a good match for them. So they asked the agent about Montrose and the Heights. The agent responded that in her opinion, those parts of town were crime- and drug-ridden dens of iniquity, and she refused to show them anything south of FM1960. They found their own agent, and everything worked out in the end.
Ted Barlow is a national treasure. Is it time to start making Koufax Award nominations yet?
And congratulations to the Cardinals for winning another well-fought championship series. I may be 0 for 2 this October, but I've still got my silver linings: 1) Now I don't have to feel compelled to stay up way past my bedtime to watch the games to the end; 2) I won't have to shell out $26 per ticket in "convenience" and "handling" charges for standing room or an obstructed view; 3) By avoiding a Red Sox-Astros World Series, there will be one less metaphorical crutch for hack pundits to lean on during the last week of the Presidential campaign. Bloggers everywhere rejoice.
With the end of the season comes the start of the Carlos Beltran bidding wars. Some things don't need to wait:
The mid-market Astros will have a difficult time coming up with enough money to keep Beltran
UPDATE: The Beltran BS is worse than I thought. Argh!
So I saw another one of those godawful NRCC anti-Lampson ads last night. It's my fond hope that some day, demagoging about 9/11 will be seen as a form of violating Godwin's Law.
By the way, it's awfully nice of the Chron to report on a controversial ad without ever taking a minute to examine whether or not its contents are accurate or misleading, isn't it? That would require them to pay attention to the local elections, something which they just don't seem to want to do this year. They could've even examined the DCCC's anti-Ted Poe ad if they'd taken the trouble to do some non-he said/she said reporting. You know, to be fair and balanced and all.
Meanwhile, the Dem strategy of tying Tom DeLay to his minions nationwide continues apace.
Across Connecticut's southwestern coast, Democratic congressional candidate Diane Farrell tells voters her opponent, GOP incumbent Christopher Shays, has ties to Tom DeLay's "right-wing agenda."In Nebraska, former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey criticizes GOP Rep. Lee Terry for his alliance with "ethically challenged" DeLay.
And in Texas, Democrats slapped DeLay, the U.S. House majority leader from Sugar Land, with a subpoena Thursday in an abuse-of-power redistricting lawsuit while unveiling a new television commercial that calls him arrogant.
[...]
In Washington state, the party took on Republican candidate Dave Reichert after DeLay came to the suburban Seattle district to raise money for his campaign. In Oregon, the GOP challenger to Democratic incumbent David Wu ran a television commercial distancing herself from DeLay. Candidate Goli Ameri pledged in an ad to tell DeLay when he's wrong.
The theme of DeLay and questionable tactics is echoing in Democratic legislative campaigns across Texas, but a Democratic political group's spokesman said there is no grand conspiracy.
"Coordinated, no. We're Democrats," said Kelly Fero of Take Back Texas. "But shared interests and shared enthusiasms, yes."
[...]
On another front, Campaign Money Watch of Washington, D.C., announced it is starting a television advertising campaign today against DeLay in the Houston area. Director David Donnelly said the ads are scheduled to run during broadcast news programs and that he hopes to have $100,000 to air the ads until Nov. 2.
Finally, a Republican PAC has been slapped with a TRO for this election.
State District Judge Paul Davis issued the temporary order Wednesday against Associated Republicans of Texas, ordering the political fund-raising group to stop soliciting, accepting and spending corporate money until a temporary injunction hearing Nov. 3.[...]
Two candidates, Bob Glaze of Gilmer and David Leibowitz of San Antonio, alleged that the PAC was violating a Texas law prohibiting corporations and unions from funding political candidates.
"Every illegal corporate dollar we can chase out of the political system will make the democratic process that much stronger and help put ordinary Texans back in charge of their state government," said Leibowitz, who is running against Republican Rep. Ken Mercer of San Antonio. Glaze is running against Rep. Brian Hughes, R-Mineola.
But ART lawyer Hector DeLeon said the $150,000 in corporate money raised by ART this year was spent on permissible overhead expenses and to pay for lawyers for the group's involvement in 2001 legislative redistricting lawsuits.
Corporate donors include $50,000 from Altria Corporate Services, which owns Phillip Morris and Kraft foods; $10,500 from SBC; and $7,500 from AT&T.
The PAC has donated $144,500 this year to 15 Republican House candidates, including $12,000 to Ann Witt, who is running against District 137 incumbent Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston.
Reginald McKamie is the Democratic candidate for District Attorney in Houston. He's running against incumbent Chuck Rosenthal, whose tenure has been rocky, to say the least. This is an important race in Harris County. It's the highest-profile race of any competitiveness that any of us here will vote in, it will complement the efforts of Scott Hochberg, Charlotte Coffelt, Jim Dougherty, and Hubert Vo as well as all of the countywide judicial candidates, it will help give a measure of where the Harris County Democratic Party stands today, and most importantly, it has a chance to rid us of someone who just isn't doing a good job.
I've met McKamie a couple of times, and I'm impressed with him. He's a serious and thoughtful person, and I feel very confident that he'd make a fine District Attorney. Recently, I had the opportunity to ask him a few questions. Click on the More link to see the answers.
CK: You have a broad legal background, with areas of practice in personal injury law, business law, admiralty law, and criminal defense. How well-suited do these areas make you for running the District Attorney's office?
RM: To be an effective advocate for the state of Texas I think it is important to have a well rounded academic, social and professional career. A prosecutor with a diverse life experience will be more able to be objective and I believe will more likely seek out justice rather than pursue a very narrowly focused agenda that will not benefit the county. I have had a very diverse academic, social and professional career and I believe that will assist me in the administration of justice in Harris County.
CK: In the Chronicle's endorsement of your candidacy, they cited your support of a public defender's office in Houston. Why is this important? Why is it an issue in the District Attorney's race?
RM: A public defenders office is important because we must make sure that we are not just seeking convictions, but truly seeking justice in Harris County. Presently, court appointed attorneys must curry to the Judges that appoint them. If the court appointed attorney does not move the docket along, he/she will lose favor with a Judge who seeks to keep their case docket at a minimum and that will adversely impact their future appointments in that court and therefore affect their future income. It is important that citizens have independent attorneys who represent their clients zealously so that all citizens will know that whatever the outcome of their case, it will be a just and fair outcome. The only way to obtain an attorney who will be independent is to have the money to hire your own attorney or have a cadre of attorneys who are not beholden to anyone in the courtroom for their check for those that are unable to afford a lawyer.
Your readers should know that studies show that the majority of Americans unfortunately cannot afford attorneys so people should not look at a public defender's office as something only for those living under a bridge, but as a safety net for middle income Americans. It should be an issue in the DA's race because the DA's mandate is to seek justice and if the system is broken the DA needs to point that out and address it head on.
CK: Let's talk a little about the Houston Crime Lab. What must be done to restore the public's faith in the lab? What would you do as DA to help restore that faith? Do you believe an independent investigation is needed?
RM: To restore faith in the lab we must have an independent properly certified lab. In order to restore faith in the lab we must own up to the problems of the past and address them and correct them as best we can. While we can never give people back the years of their lives they have lost, we can certainly recognize and acknowledge that people have been wrongfully convicted and do what we can within the bounds of the law to remedy those wrongs. An independent investigation is absolutely required in order to restore some credibility to the criminal justice system in Harris County.
CK: You support a moratorium on the death penalty until the Crime Lab issues have been cleared up. What approach will you take to the other cases that have been affected by the Lab's problems? Do you believe each case needs to be reviewed by the DA's office?
RM: I do believe there should be a moratorium on the death penalty for those cases that rely upon analysis of evidence by the crime lab in Harris County until the crime lab problems are corrected. I think each case should be reviewed by independent laboratories and if independent analysis of the evidence does not support the evidence offered at the trial of the case, the state should either move to have all charges dismissed against the person or have the case retried if there is sufficient credible evidence for the state to make its case against the defendant. I do not believe the DA's office should be reviewing the cases. I believe an independent body should be established to review the cases.
CK: Why is it so difficult to reverse wrongful convictions? Why do people like George Rodriguez and Josiah Sutton remain in jail long after DNA evidence appears to clear them? What should the District Attorney do when confronted with a case like that?
RM: Unfortunately, the wheels of justice move slowly. However, the District Attorney should do everything in his power to make sure the wheels of justice do not move slowly when he recognizes someone has been wrongfully convicted. To expedite the process for the two cases you cited, I would think they are important enough to assign an attorney from the DA's office to make sure any roadblocks or hurdles that these two men may face are dealt with immediately so that they can be exonerated as soon as possible.
CK: The Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas, which overthrew the state's sodomy law, started as a criminal complaint in Harris County. Both DA Chuck Rosenthal and his predecessor Johnny Holmes believed that it was not their place to second-guess the Legislature on controversial laws like that, and that their duty is to uphold the law as written even if they didn't necessarily agree with it. Do you agree with that approach? Would you have handled that case any differently?
RM: The power of the District Attorney's office is that he has prosecutorial discretion. While the DA must follow the laws of the state of Texas, the DA can decline to prosecute, not seek indictments, and do other things within the bounds of the law to ensure that justice is done and that the community is kept safe. I do not agree with the approach of Johnny Holmes and Chuck Rosenthal as you have described it. I would have handled the case differently.
CK: DA Rosenthal came under some fire for taking former Police Chief C.O. Bradford to trial on a perjury charge (see here and here). In a letter to the editor of the Chronicle defending his judgment in bringing this case to trial, Rosenthal wrote "Once the indictment was returned, the people had the right to learn the facts giving rise to the charge. Trials do that." Do you agree with this statement? What role, if any, does the DA's judgment about the merits of a case play?
RM: First, I do not think that the charge should have ever been brought to a Grand Jury for indictment. I think Chief Bradford would have been an excellent opponent for Chuck Rosenthal had he decided to run prior to the indictment. I think the indictment ruined any chance Chief Bradford had of running for political office in 2004. The DA's judgment about the merits of a case plays a significant role in the criminal justice system because it is the DA who decides whether a case should be presented to a Grand Jury or not. It is the DA who decides whether the state will seek the death penalty. It is the DA who decides to accept or to even encourage a plea bargain or to go to trial or not. In short, the DA's judgment about the merits of a case are of incredible importance.
CK: DA Rosenthal's TV ads have a strong "tough on crime" theme to them. What does being "tough on crime" mean to you?
RM: Being tough on crime means protecting citizens from predators and violent criminals and making sure there is space in the prisons for those that commit violent crimes and who the public need to be protected from. I do not consider it being tough on crime to send a mother to jail for welfare fraud who worked during the Christmas holidays to provide Christmas gifts for her children.
CK: What is your overall campaign strategy? Do you believe you will get a boost from the Presidential election?
RM: My overall campaign strategy is to utilize e-mail and people power to get the word out that my campaign represents an alternative to what's happening in Harris County criminal courts and if they want a change they need to vote and make a difference. I believe and have always believed I will get a boost from the 2000 presidential election. I believe the voters remember what happened in 2000 and those that are conscious have decided it will never happen again and that they will get out and vote. I believe the early vote numbers are proving that to be the case and that we will have one of the highest voter turnouts in recent history. I call it the "tide" principle. When the tide comes in there is nothing you can do to stop it, and when the tide goes out there is nothing you can do to stop it. I believe the political tide wants change and that the tide of change is coming in and there is nothing anyone can do about it and no matter how much money Rosenthal spends on "I'm tough on crime" ads, it will not change the tide.
CK: When voters go to the polls, how do you want them to view the DA race?
RM: I want voters to view the DA's race as the most important local election on the ballot. Voters may go to the polls to vote for Kerry or Bush, but they are not likely to meet Kerry or Bush or to tell them they were mugged on Richmond or that they were accused of a crime that they did not commit, but I want them to remember that they or a loved one has a very good chance of unfortuantely being involved in the criminal justice system of Harris County as a witness, a victim or as an accused and they need to vote like their life depends on it, because it might. I want voters to vote for change.
I stuck this link at the end of my previous post, but it's something you need to read. Money quote:
I've asked many local officials what DeLay has done for us here in Fort Bend County, an area he has represented for 20 years. I've been told that he caused a tower to be built at Sugar Land airport. Yeah, that's going to really help me.
I'm as happy as anyone to see Tom DeLay get subpoenaed, but let's keep a few things in perspective. First, this is a civil lawsuit, not a part of the grand jury investigations, though it is connected to his recent admonishments.
The subpoena was delivered Wednesday to the Texas Republican's attorneys in Houston after a failed attempt to serve him personally, said Lon Burnam, the Democratic state lawmaker from Fort Worth who filed the lawsuit.The subpoena calls for DeLay to give a deposition Monday.
[...]
Burnam said there is a "litany of questions with regard to misuse of public funds" to pursue Democratic members of the Texas House who fled to Ardmore, Okla., and DeLay's role in searching for them.
[...]
Texas state troopers were dispatched to find the Democrats and return them to Austin. The House ethics committee on Oct. 6 admonished DeLay for asking the Federal Aviation Administration to locate a plane owned by one of the fleeing lawmakers.
Burnam's suit alleges that the Texas Department of Public Safety destroyed documents detailing their efforts to apprehend legislators and that its troopers had no lawful authority to arrest the Democrats.
Finally, State Rep. Lon Burnam, whose lawsuit originally was to stop DPS from destroying anything else, has some credibility issues of his own. If it were someone else, I'd have more faith. Burnam has some penance to do before I'll get worked up over this.
Sorry. Wish I could join the excitement, but not based on what I've read so far.
I can report one bit of good news, though. Jerome has another poll from CD22 which shows DeLay leading Richard Morrison by a skinny 42-35 margin; the same poll shows George Bush pulling 61% of the vote. This isn't that far off from the 47-33 lead DeLay had in another poll, and given the likely sample sizes it could just be noise. Still, every poll we've had shows DeLay under 50%. It's no wonder the Club for Growth is propping him up. And with comments like these (thanks, Chris!) he needs all the help he can get.
There's a whole lot of early voting going on.
A total of 144,598 people voted in the state's 15 most populous counties Monday, the first day of early in-person voting for the Nov. 2 election, according to the Texas Secretary of State's Office. That easily surpassed the first-day total for those counties in the presidential elections of 1996 and 2000.It's too early to say how the first-day turnout will compare to previous election cycles when calculated as a percentage of registered voters, said Bill Kenyon, spokesman for Secretary of State Geoff Connor. Still, a number of counties are experiencing high early voting turnout, Kenyon said.
"Anecdotally, the early evidence suggests that it may be local races driving some of that," he said.
Early voting numbers are here. After two days, Harris County has triple the early voters it had in 2000. I'm not willing to ascribe all of that to a renewed sense of purpose in this election, but that's a significant increase no matter how you look at it. Karl-T is keeping watch on the vote totals as we go.
You just never know what can happen in an election. Jim Bunning melts down in Kentucky, Tom Coburn goes crazy for teenage lesbians in Oklahoma, Alan Keyes...well, you know. And now we have an incumbent Republican State Rep in West Texas who's been busy driving drunk, exposing himself, and arguing with DPS officers. Read all about it at Texas Tuesdays.
Rachel was another attendee at the Clear Lake Candidate Forum. She wasn't too impressed with Tom DeLay.
Rob, from whom I found the above link, notes that you can hear a debate between Richard Morrison and Michael Fjetland here on KPFT.
Speaking of Fjetland, he sent out his view of the debate via email. Click the More link to read it.
And Richard Morrison collected another newspaper endorsement, from the Brazoria Facts. That has nothing to do with the Clear Lake forum, but what the heck.
After telling the Galveston Daily News that he would not attend the Clear
Lake High School debate team candidate forum, co-sponsored by the (Military)
Reserve Officers Association, to his credit Mr. DeLay did appear Tuesday night.
It was last minute -- so I made a last minute call to the TV media, who
came.
It was a packed house. They had me next to Mr. DeLay (who was on the far
right) and the two Morrison's on my left and far left. Symbolic?
The kids did a great job putting it together. The form was similar to the
Presidential debates. No candidate knew the questions until they were asked.
Several audience members also had questions that were read.
I said that as a former GOP primary candidate, I represent the 40%
Republicans who refused to vote for Mr. DeLay in Ft Bend in March 2004, plus the 35%
of the population who consider themselves independent thinkers. (Yesterday at
the polls, I was running into Republicans who were voting only for Mr. Bush
and no one else, or voting for all Republicans except DeLay).
One question was on education. I said that Congress should not have
penalized teachers' pensions. Then it gave itself a pay raise! Mr. DeLay said
Congress should not get involved in education. I said that we need to restore
teachers' pension rights - we lost many good ones as a result of that unfair law.
Mr. DeLay fired primarily at the Democrat and myself - at one point DeLay
said to me: "appearing on TV does not make you a terrorism expert." My
response was that I was warning about terrorism coming to the U.S. --on TV-- during
the first Gulf War (long before 9-11). I first went to the Middle East when
the Democrat candidate was about 10-years old. If that doesn't make me an
expert, what does?
I asked Mr. DeLay why he let Congress cut off NASA's X-38 funding when it
was 99% complete and ready to go. How does this help NASA? I also asked why the
richest nation in the world is sending up astronauts in 25-year old Shuttles
while giving $136 billion in tax cuts to foreign gamblers and importers of
Chinese ceiling fans --when Congress should have updated the shuttles a decade
ago.
I said that we have to stop giving companies tax benefits for outsourcing
jobs. We can't outsource our future.
The issue of health care came up. I said that we needed to drop health care
costs by legalizing the import of prescription drugs. Even the Bush
administration has changed its mind and has decided that Canadian medications are
safe. They are now trying to get flu vaccines from Canada. Right now members
of Congress have guaranteed access to flu shots while the public does not. If
I were in Congress I'd reject the shot and have the entire stock sent to the
nearest hospital and given to the very young and very old. We don't need
special privileges for Congress, especially in times of shortages. For that
reason I have not attempted to get a flu shot this year.
Early voting is now going on. I ask for your support (including last-minute
donations) and your vote - to give Congress its third independent and first
Congressman with the global skills and local focus -- who will work with both
sides of the aisle to find American solutions.
More details can be found at my website. Or call me direct at 713-213-5080
as some already have. I will answer your questions personally - you won't be
dealing with a staffer.
Michael Fjetland
P.S.
Don't forget that KPRC, Local Channel 2, will be airing 3-minute candidate
presentations this Saturday, October 23, between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. It's a
public service act on their part and they deserve recognition for it. If you miss
it, it will run again October 31 from 4 - 5 p.m.
What can I say? The Sox played a great series and deserved to win. Congratulations to them. At least now if the Astros win as well, I won't have to worry about getting strung up by my coworkers for disloyalty. Silver linings - gotta love 'em.
What Ezra said. I like what I'm doing just fine, I feel I'm making a difference with what I do here and at Texas Tuesdays, and if you look real close, you'll see I've got no ads. Frankly, I don't care what Reynolds, Billmon, or anyone thinks about "blogging". Enjoy your mid-life crises, fellas. I'll be over here looking for stuff to talk about.
Poor Kenny Boy. This is not what he had in mind when he asked to have his trial separated from Skilling and Causey.
Ex-Enron Chairman Ken Lay will face two separate criminal trials — one with ex-Chief Executive Jeff Skilling and former top accountant Rick Causey and another by himself.U.S. District Judge Sim Lake on Tuesday refused to separate Lay, Skilling and Causey into three trials as they had requested.
But Lake did decide that Lay's four criminal charges relating to his personal banking activities should be tried separately from the Enron-related charges against the three former executives.
"This is Ken Lay's worst nightmare. The government gets two bites at the apple," said Jacob Frenkel, a Washington-based former federal prosecutor who has been following the case.
"First, it's much easier to point fingers at people who aren't sitting next to you in the courtroom, and second, if he's convicted in one case and then faces the second, it becomes harder still for Lay," Frenkel said.
[...]
David Berg, a Houston lawyer who has followed the case, said that "on balance, it's bad news for Lay."
Lay will now be contaminated by his co-defendants when he has far fewer Enron charges than they do, Berg said.
But he said the bank charges, similar to many he tried in the 1990s savings and loan cases, "can be very dangerous and easy to prove," so Lay should be happy they are pulled out.
Berg said he suspects the judge will save the Lay banking charges for after the Enron case and they will never be tried. He said if Lay is acquitted, the government will likely not bother with the banking charges. And if Lay is convicted, the government will likely pursue a plea bargain.
[House Republicans support Tom DeLay] because he supports them financially and electorally
Via Atrios.
Last month I noted this article about an FBI investigation into the infamous Tulia drug bust. That investigation concluded there was no racial aspect to what disgraced former undercover agent Tom Coleman did. I had my doubts about the story, but didn't delve into in in any detail.
There's now a comment in that post which points to this Plainview Daily Herald piece which responds to that FBI report. It's pretty persuasive. I'm reprinting it beneath the More link for posterity. Thanks to Scott for bringing it to my attention.
My Turn: Tulian offers different view on TV report, article
DR. ALAN BEAN
Richard Orr´s article in last Sunday´s Herald (“Not so innocent after all” regarding the controversial 1999 drug sting in Tulia) summarized the findings of Todd Bensman, an investigative reporter with the CBS affiliate in Dallas.
Bensman reports that, according to an FBI report mysteriously obtained from an undisclosed source, eight Tulia defendants admitted that they sold drugs to Tom Coleman. The implication is that Governor Perry, had he only known, would never have pardoned the Tulia defendants nor would attorneys for the City of Amarillo have sanctioned a $6 million settlement.
Curiously, no one is asking why eight alleged drug dealers would be willing to damn themselves when it would have been so easy to lie?
The true child of God, King David tells us, “sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.” (Psalm 15:1)
Tom Coleman was paid with Byrne Grant money distributed through the federal Department of Justice. Asking the feds to investigate Tulia was like hiring the fox to check into a disturbance down at the henhouse. By the autumn of 2000, the Department of Justice had already ignored two civil rights complaints filed in connection with the Tulia sting. Only when the story hit The New York Times did the feds agree, albeit grudgingly, to launch an investigation.
According to the CBS report, Alberta Williams “boasted” to the FBI officers that she sold Tom Coleman “more drugs than she was prosecuted for.” Ms. Williams was not boasting; she was looking for answers. If Coleman failed to turn in evidence, he was in violation of the law.
A legitimate narcotics agent once told me that getting a crack addict to sell you drugs is “like shooting fish in a barrel.” The desperate desire for drug money eventually converts users into dealers if the narcotics agent keeps begging long enough. Police officers call it, “making a crook”; the technical term is “entrapment.” Either way it´s illegal.
Many weekend users had become full-blown crack-heads by the time Tom Coleman´s money-machine shut down in July of 1999. Coleman spent 18 months and thousands of your tax dollars funding the addictions of indigent Tulia residents. Nice work, if you can get it!
Poor drug dealers smoke tiny “rocks” of crack cocaine that can be purchased on the street for between $5 and $20. Powder cocaine is known as a “rich man´s drug” because it costs well over a hundred dollars to buy a little baggie of powder the size of your thumb. Poor users turn to crack because they can´t afford to buy powder cocaine. You can´t sell what you can´t afford to buy.
Tulia defendants told the FBI that Tom Coleman bought little rocks of crack cocaine then filed powder cases in Amarillo. If they were right, Coleman was tampering with evidence. Defendants swore to their own hurt because it was the only way to implicate Coleman. Admissions of innocence wouldn´t have done the trick.
Economic reality suggests that indigent crack addicts were falsely accused of selling Tom Coleman powder cocaine. But that´s just the beginning.
Tanya Michelle White proved she was in Oklahoma City when Coleman said she was selling him drugs in Tulia.
An aging hog farmer named Joe Moore identified Coleman as “the law” the minute the pony-tailed white man hit the streets. On more than one occasion, Joe ran Coleman off his front porch in front of witnesses.
Defendants like Freddie Brookins Jr., Michelle Williams and Vincent McCray never met Coleman until the day they were arrested.
The sloppy undercover man, by his own admission, misidentified a long list of defendants.
Tulia defendants swore to their own hurt because they knew Tom Coleman had fingered innocent people.
In March of 2003, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals requested that evidentiary hearings be held in Tulia. Tom Coleman´s credibility collapsed under a heap of strange and conflicting testimony. A long series of credible witnesses testified that Coleman was dishonest, incompetent, corrupt, irrational and racist.
After a week of this testimony, the State of Texas threw in the towel. A month later a Swisher County grand jury filed three counts of aggravated perjury against the Texas Lawman of the Year.
The remarkable honesty of selfless citizens lent integrity and credibility to a long, mystifying struggle. Viewed in the full light of day, the admissions of eight men and women demonstrate that Judge Ron Chapman, attorneys representing the State of Texas, Governor Rick Perry, and the City of Amarillo called it right.
Some would call those who swear to their own hurt foolish or naive. King David calls them children of God. My better angels are inclined to agree.
(An ordained minister, Dr. Alan Bean serves as executive director of Friends of Justice, a Tulia-based criminal justice reform organization.)
The Chron got back on board the Incumbent Express yesterday by endorsing Victor Carillo in the lone non-judicial statewide race, for Railroad Commissioner. They stayed there today by endorsing incumbent Justice Evelyn Keyes for the First Court of Appeals. I expected that in each case, so this is just to confirm my suspicions and to note that Keyes' challenger is a neighbor of mine, Jim Sharp. He's a good guy, and I recall promising to put up a yard sign for him at one point. I've seen a few other signs for him nearby, so I need to follow up. Anyway, check him out.
(UPDATE: I'm putting this at the top of the post as penance for having missed it in the first place. Jack, whose stepson shamed DeLay for his original I-won't-debate stance, was there at the Clear Lake candidates' forum yesterday and gives a great report on it. Check it out.)
Yes, children, Tom DeLay did confound everyone by actually showing up at the Clear Lake High School candidates' forum last night.
Tom DeLay made a surprise appearance Tuesday night at a Clear Lake candidates forum.There was so much speculation about whether the House majority leader would show up that even the sponsor, the Clear Lake High School Debate Club, said it wasn't expecting him.
But about 30 minutes before the forum began, the students got a call that the Sugar Land Republican was on his way.
The candidates, including independent Michael Fjetland, Democrat Richard Morrison and Libertarian Tom Morrison (no relation), discussed local issues such as the San Jacinto Rail line and mobility, and national concerns including the war on terror and homeland security.
While the candidates debated the issues, much of the focus was on DeLay's unexpected appearance.
"I didn't think he was going to be here," Fjetland said. "If I had known, I would have prepared better, but I winged it. If he didn't show up, he realized he was going to look bad."
DeLay said he didn't know why people were surprised to see him, although he admitted he decided to attend at the last minute. He had earlier planned to attend a leukemia fund-raiser in Rosenberg.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on Friday said that he would not debate Democratic challenger Richard Morrison before the Nov. 2 election.[...]
“A debate would be for his benefit, not for mine,” DeLay said of Morrison.
He also said that a debate with Morrison would go largely unnoticed. “Unfortunately, debates in this area have never had an impact because media doesn’t cover them,” DeLay said. “Television never covers them. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and you show up to a forum where there are more candidates at the forum than constituents. I’d much rather be out with constituents, meeting them and going to events.”
This Kos post has stuff about the debate and some new poll numbers. Be sure to read this comment about the other candidate named Morrison. Commenter Robert in this post attended the Clear Lake forum last night and shares his thoughts about it.
Back to the Chron story for a second:
DeLay said he is committed to bringing the parties together and finding a solution.
Elsewhere, Rep. Chet Edwards debated Arlene Wohlgemuth, which you can read about here. Strangely enough, there was never any doubt that Edwards was going to show up, or surprise that he did.
More good endorsement news: The Morning News goes for Martin Frost, after having endorsed Edwards. The Statesman endorsed both Kelly White and Mark Strama in their State House races (via BOR). And Charlotte Coffelt picked up a pretty nice endorsement, too. Here's the scoop from a campaign email she sent:
In the current issue of the Observer newspapers, you will see a letter of endorsement from Lauren Kasprzak in a paid campaign advertisement (for me), in which she describes overhearing Rep. [Joe] Crabb (while she worked for the Texas House of Representatives Redistricting Committee) in a conversation with another man who described the League of Women Voters as the "plague of women voters". Now a senior at the University of Texas in Austin, Lauren learned a great deal about how the democratic process should not work by working with Rep. Crabb and became determined to help make it better--hence her support and endorsement of my candidacy.
UPDATE: Max Sandlin picks up the endorsement from the Lufkin Daily News. Via The Stakeholder.
The city of Houston is buying land for a new downtown park.
The city has begun acquiring property for a 13-acre urban park that is likely to trigger substantial new development on the east side of downtown, Mayor Bill White said today.White said the city signed a contract today with Crescent Real Estate Equities Inc. to purchase 5.29 acres just west of the George R. Brown Convention Center. The city will acquire the remaining, adjacent property by the end of the year, design the park next year and start construction in 2006, White said.
The park should be open by 2007, he said.
"You will see an explosion of growth around the periphery of this park," White told the annual meeting of Central Houston Inc., adding that the new development would strengthen the city's tax base and enhance the continuing revitalization of downtown.
White said private contributions would pay for at least 80 percent of the park's estimated $80 million cost. The city's contributions would come from hotel and entertainment tax revenues rather than property taxes, White said.
The new park, which would be the largest downtown and one of the largest in the central part of Houston, would attract convention visitors as well as local families, White said.
The park would complement the vision for downtown development over the next 20 years unveiled this week by Central Houston and other downtown organizations. The "framework for downtown development" calls for increasing downtown's residential population from 3,000 to 20,000, and downtown leaders said parks were an important amenity to attract families to live downtown.
White said all great cities have preserved land in their centers for major parks. He said this may have been Houston's last opportunity to acquire park property downtown before rising real estate values made it impossible.
"This will be a unique urban green space that will last for centuries in this community," White said.
Kevin has some concerns about the costs of maintenance of this future park, especially in light of the city's current cash crunch. That's a valid point, regardless of whether you think the city's current cash problems will be ameliorated by 2007 or not. Nonetheless, I believe this is a worthwhile investment. It's also the sort of thing that I believe cities should make a priority. That this park apparently is a priority is a point in Mayor White's favor for me.
It turns out that Tom DeLay showed up at that Clear Lake candidates' forum after all. I'm hoping to get a report on it later. I guess maybe this excellent letter from Jack's stepson Adam to Tom DeLay helped him see the error of his ways (well, at least as far as his craven avoidance of the forum goes).
I find your blatant attempt to blame your decision on the voters (“I’ve been doing this for 20 years and you show up to a forum where there are more candidates at the forum than constituents.” Galveston Daily News, 10/16/04) abhorrent and slimy. In addition, it contradicts the next sentence in your sound byte (“I’d much rather be out with constituents, meeting them and going to events.” Galveston Daily News, 10/16/04). If you would rather be out meeting with constituents and going to events, why not this event? Why not these constituents? Do you have some scheduling conflict? Will you be at some other event during this time block? Do you plan to invite your Clear Lake constituents to your house for tea and crumpets?
Tonight on TV I saw an amazingly warm and fuzzy ad run by the DeLay campaign - we're talking soft focus, all smiles (none of these looks), women and children - and not one but two pro-DeLay ads run by the Club for Growth. With all of the competitive races out there, with the battleground and the polls largely favoring the Democrats, is anyone going to seriously suggest that someone isn't a little worried about DeLay's re-election chances? It's not like there aren't plenty of other places where the CLub for Growth could spend its money.
Did you know that DeLay is responsible for redirecting funds to connect rural Americans to the Internet to wealthy suburbs?
Nearly $23 million meant to bring the worldwide web to rural America instead will underwrite fast Internet service to affluent Texas suburbs represented by House Republican Leader Tom DeLay, a situation Democrats and rural critics called outrageous on Thursday.The loan, from the rural development wing of the U.S. Agriculture Department, includes work in communities outside Houston, in DeLay's district.
Farm and telephone groups questioned the wisdom of the $22.7 million loan to ETS Telephone & Subsidiaries, a Houston firm that advertises itself as providing telecommunications for "quality master-planned communities."
[...]
Congress created the loan program in 2002 to help rural areas, including communities of less than 20,000 people, to gain Internet access. The ETS project qualified, a USDA official said, because it was in a traditionally agricultural area and met the population limits.
[...]
Some of the seven communities affected by the loan have golf courses and houses selling for $125,000 to $1 million, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper.
[...]
Parts of Fort Bend and Harris counties, on the western edge of the Houston area, were a 45-minute or 60-minute drive from downtown Houston, a USDA official said, calling Internet access "a real boon" if it allows population growth in rural areas.
Farm and ranch groups questioned whether the Texas loan reflected the intent of the broadband loan program, which was part of the 2002 Farm Bill and designed to spur economic development."The need is out in true rural areas where the costs per mile are too high for many commercial companies. Not in Katy," said Gene Hall, a spokesman for the Waco-based Texas Farm Bureau, a major agriculture organization.
"We support bringing infrastructure like broadband to rural areas because farmers and ranchers are the last in line to get those services -- all the way back to rural electrification," Hall said.
Hilda Legg, the Agriculture Department official overseeing the program, defended the loan as conforming to requirements even though nearby farms or ranches would not get broadband access.
According to the department, a rural community is one with 20,000 or fewer residents, a definition met by the white-collar housing developments built in unincorporated areas about 30 miles from Houston.
Legg confirmed that farmers living next to one of the planned communities would be ineligible for service because any additional connection outlays could heighten financial risk for the taxpayer-subsidized loan. A request to revise the agreement would be needed, she said.
However, ETS said such a change would be rare.
[...]
Luke Scanlon, 31, of David Weekley Homes said Long Meadow Farms is attracting interest from middle- to upper-middle-class professionals. Amenities include a six-lane adult pool, a children's pool with slides, two tennis courts, a nature path, several small lakes, a creek, a recreation building with a gym and an outdoor amphitheater.
Located near Katy in the district of Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, the House majority leader, Long Meadow's 3,000 homes are priced from $130,000 to $500,000, Scanlon said. A tollway expected to open next summer will cut commuting time to Houston to under 45 minutes, he said.
[...]
"It bothers me," Shane Sklar, executive director of the Lockhart-based Independent Cattlemen's Association of Texas, said of the loan to ETS.
"We know Fort Bend and Harris are far from rural counties," Sklar said. "I imagine politicians voted for rural development thinking the money would go to places like Hopkins County or Jack County, real rural counties -- not some planned community outside Houston."
There's a new DeLay watchdog blog in town: The Daily DeLay. They'll be providing a new example of Tom DeLay's pay-to-play politics, ethics violations, strong arm tactics, and all-around anti-democractic and pro-special interests fervor from now until Election Day. Check it out.
What an incredibly sad story this is. It's about former Major League first baseman Cecil Fielder, father of hot prospect Prince Fielder, and how an addiction to gambling has ruined his life and his family's life. It's so bad, a process server gave papers to Prince Fielder as he was walking off the diamond after a game in Beloit, WI, because Cecil was impossible to find but was reported to be living with his son.
Something to think about:
On a February day in 1999, Cecil Fielder walked into the Trump Plaza casino in Atlantic City just before noon, and filled out an application for credit.Under “Income/Assets,” he included: “Salary — $5 million.”
Under “Other Casinos,” he listed a $100,000 line of credit at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas.
Trump extended Fielder a $25,000 line of credit. That money, plus whatever cash he had started with, lasted a day and a half.
Fielder requested, and was given, another $25,000 line of credit.
That was gone in two hours and 40 minutes.
The casino lent him $27,500 more.
That lasted less than 20 minutes.
The casino extended Fielder’s credit by another $50,000.
The minute-by-minute records stop there, but the file contains a total. By the time the binge was over, Fielder owed the Trump casino $580,000.
[...]
Trump officials, including Ford Palmer, vice president of casino operations, and Fred Cunningham, vice president for legal affairs, said they could not discuss the case — or a casino’s obligation, if any, when a patron may be out of control.
(Link via Eric McErlain.)
Kevin T. Keith has an interesting story of door-knocking for Kerry in Pennsylvania. It's worth a read, especially if you plan on volunteering or organizing volunteers this year.
One thing I'd like to comment on:
Since we were working off Kerry-centric voter lists, it didn't surprise me that a large majority of the people we spoke to said they were for Kerry. What surprised me is that almost all of them said they were very strongly committed in their positions - both the Kerry supporters and the few Bush supporters. Over the whole afternoon, only a few people said they were uncommitted or even lukewarm.This caused me to question the effectiveness of what we were doing. I've already noted that nobody wanted to talk about issues. It also seemed that nobody even needed any encouragement to make up their minds. About all we were really accomplishing was letting people know that the campaign cared about their votes. Even the potential absentee voters had all, uniformly, already sent in their absentee ballot applications. Since I have never done this before, I don't know if this represents a higher-than-normal level of voter involvement. At any rate, it did mean that, this year at least, the voters seem to need little encouragement to make their voices heard. Even the few young, first-time voters we spoke to - a group notoriously uninvolved in elections - were all well on top of things and seemed energized.
Arlene Wohlgemuth has a problem. She authored HB2292 last year, which was the bill designed to reduce the number of CHIP recipients, in part by making them pay more for the insurance. This new law has been roundly denounced as harmful to children, especially poor children, and Wohlgemuth has been paying the price for it in her quest to unseat Rep. Chet Edwards in CD17. (Edwards has been racking up the endorsements, too, in no small part because of Wohlgemuth's hostility to families.)
Arlene Wohgemuth also has friends in high places. They're doing their best to help her with this by not enforcing the law she wrote.
Senate budget writers demanded to know Monday on what authority state health officials suspended collection of monthly premiums in the Children's Health Insurance Program.The monthly premiums, required by House Bill 2292, were ordered temporarily suspended by Gov. Rick Perry after consulting with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Speaker Tom Craddick, said Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins.
The law's author, Republican Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth of Burleson, also recommended last August that Hawkins temporarily suspend the premium requirement, which ranges from $15 to $25 a month based on income.
Prior to September 2003, there was only a small annual fee.
Wohlgemuth is running for U.S. Congress in District 17 against Democrat Chet Edwards of Waco, who has made an issue of Texas children falling out of the CHIP program.
Legislative changes affecting eligibility in HB 2292 have resulted in 159,000 children losing CHIP coverage. Wohlgemuth was unavailable for comment Monday, but Republican budget writers expressed annoyance.
"This issue troubles me. Do the means justify the ends? If we pass a statute, is everyone, say, free to ignore it if it's uncomfortable?" asked Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden.
[...]
Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, complained that as the Senate sponsor of HB 2292, she was not consulted on the matter.
"I am extremely frustrated with this situation," said Nelson, who chairs the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. "I would not have tried to pass a bill out of the Senate that I didn't think had a fair and equitable cost-sharing plan in it."
Nelson also asked whether Hawkins considered it fair to those CHIP families that did pay the premiums.
"It is not fair," Hawkins agreed. "We do have to find a way to ensure equity."
...is like a day without scandal.
Lou Dubose gives an overview of the various DeLay admonishments, indictments, and cronies-in-trouble for the LA Weekly. Via Tom Kirkendall.
Carlos Guerra notes the Bacardi-FEC settlement of the rum maker's unreported donation to DeLay's ARMPAC, and notes its propitious timing.
The state's probe started after the GOP took the Texas House speakership, the Democrats' last bastion in state government, and an official of the Texas Association of Business bragged about using corporate money to do so. The investigation — which continues — was widened to include the Americans for a Republican Majority political action committee (ARMPAC) and Texans for a Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC), both closely tied to DeLay.One day before the indictments were returned, the political action committee of Bacardi USA Inc., one of the corporations facing criminal charges in Texas, quietly settled with the Federal Elections Commission, agreeing to pay a $750 fine for making secret contributions to, among others, ARMPAC, which got $2,500.
"It was resolved by alternate dispute resolution," said FEC spokesman Ian Stirton, confirming the settlement, which, until we asked, had not been made public. "When the parties want to hurry the process on, they can come to an agreement instead of going through the enforcement process."
"It vindicates everything we said," said Marjorie Sloan, executive director of Committee for Responsibility and Ethics in Government, which filed the FEC complaint against Bacardi. "They were doing something wrong and the FEC found that they were doing something wrong."
(ed. note: He means Melanie Sloan, and her organization is called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.)
"These cases have no link, they are two completely separate issues," Bacardi USA spokeswoman Pat Neal said of the FEC case and Bacardi's indictment in Texas. "At the FEC, there was an administrative filing error. We had been in touch with the FEC all along and the issue has been resolved."
But Sloan, who also has filed complaints with the FEC and IRS against at least one of the other corporations under investigation in Texas, doesn't buy Bacardi's explanation.
"I think their excuses are BS," she laughed. "They say they didn't know they were supposed to be filing? These are sophisticated players; this is not believable.
"The settlement is not significant enough, it's a slap on the wrist," Sloan said, "but one can hope that they will be convicted of a crime in Texas."
And we have some more evidence of voters turning against DeLay.
"I think he ought to quit," said Amin Abdulla, 45, who owns an ice cream shop and who has voted for DeLay in the past. "I was in denial for the last year. But the reality is I'm disappointed to see how much he's abused power. He takes it for granted."I would recall him in a heartbeat," Abdulla said.
[...]
DeLay's Democrat opponent, Richard Morrison, tells voters he's a person they can trust, but in his stump speeches he steers clear of deliberately skewering DeLay for the ethics reprimands.
"I don't take delight in another man's pain," said Morrison, an attorney. "That's not what I'm about."
Morrison can't escape the issue though. He usually gets asked about the investigations during campaign appearances.
"I can just tell you if I'm your congressman and the House ethics committee gives me even one rebuke against any action I did for official conduct, I will resign immediately," Morrison told an audience earlier this month.
"Voters must be represented with dignity, honesty and fairness, and I would not subject y'all to that embarrassment if that occurred," he said.
That kind of attitude gets Morrison the vote of David Brown, a NASA contractor who used to be a registered Republican. "Against DeLay, certainly," Brown said.
There's little doubt where Lynn Watkins' vote is going. Outside her house a mile or so from DeLay's district office is a Bush-Cheney campaign sign and a sign proclaiming support for Bush and U.S. troops. But instead of a DeLay sign, there's one for independent congressional candidate Michael Fjetland.
"I just feel Tom DeLay has been in office too long," Watkins said. "When our forefathers set up elections they were for people like you and me for one or two terms and not for a lifetime commitment."
Finally, if you're sad that you won't get to see DeLay debate his opponents today in Clear Lake, you can see him in all his magisterial glory at the METRO Advanced Transportation Technology Forum next week. Assuming, of course, that he doesn't chicken out again at the last minute. Thanks to Drew for the tip.
If I never see that DirectTV ad with Carmen Electra having the body of the high school gym teacher again, it'll be too soon. Please, in the name of all that's decent, make it stop!
Now hear this: If Drayton McLane wants Carlos Beltran to be an Astro next year, he'll find the money for him. Beltran may want to go elsewhere, and surely a team like the Yankees could offer him more money than it would make sense to give him, but I'm going to beat the rush and start calling BS right now on any cries of small-market poverty from McLane. That is all.
I loved how the Fox announcers clucked their tongues at Tony Womack's first-pitch hacking against Brad Lidge, who was surely a bit tired after back-to-back two-inning outings. Guys, that's the hallmark of Tony Womack's career. His .349 OBP this year is his best ever by over 20 points, and with 36 walks in 553 ABs, it's all driven by his batting average. He's a hackmeister of the first order, and if you're surprised by what he did then you haven't been paying attention.
For awhile there, I thought the Astros-Cards game was going to end before the Yankees-Red Sox game did. Another announcer (I can't remember which one is which - maybe Joe Buck does need a catchphrase) noted that the Fenway concessionaires had to be making a fortune with those three super-sized games. I just wonder how any of the fans make it in to work the next day.
Football, schmootball. This is where the action is.
UPDATE: Rafe beat me to the punch about McLane and Beltran.
For our penultimate Texas Tuesday of this cycle, we bring you an update on the campaign of Rep. Max Sandlin, running a strong race for reelection in CD01. This promises to be a tight race, and though Sandlin continues to lead in cash on hand, his opponent raised more money than he did last quarter. There's two weeks left, so don't pass up an opportunity to help make a difference by supporting Max, supporting all Texas Tuesdays candidates, and supporting the DCCC. The wind is at our back nationally. Let's make sure some of that breeze blows in Texas.
A 501(c) group called Campaign Money Watch is raising money to run an anti-Tom DeLay ad in CD22. You can view the ad here, and if you like it, you can help them put it on the air. Obviously, there's not much time here, so check it out.
For those of you in the Seabrook area, Jack notes that there will be a protest against DeLay today:
For those not working the polls, there will be a protest of Tom DeLay from 4:30-5:30 at the Marker 1 Marina 3101 Nasa Rd 1, Seabrook TX. This is close to 146 and Nasa Rd 1.The Bay Area Houston Transportation Partnership will be hosting DeLay and discussing homeland security and video cameras installed on roads throughout the district. The Bay Area Houston Transportation Partnership has become increasingly right wing and this issue should be watched carefully.
We intend to go inside of the event (without signs) and hear what is going on. We will have signs. Bring your friends.
The Supreme Court handed Democrats a victory Monday, ordering a lower court to reconsider a Texas redistricting plan that could give Republicans six more seats and a firmer hold on their majority in the House.The decision won't affect next month's elections, though any GOP gains on Nov. 2 could be wiped out later if the plan ultimately is deemed unconstitutional.
[...]
In a brief order, justices threw out a victory for Texas Republican legislators, and ordered a three-judge federal panel in Texas to reconsider the issue.
``I see this as the Supreme Court punting right before the national election,'' said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School. ``It buys the Supreme Court another term before it has to rethink the issue. Maybe by then we'll have a new justice or two.''
The Supreme Court has been divided on how much politics should be allowed in redistricting. In a 5-4 ruling last spring, justices left a narrow opening for challenges claiming party politics overly influenced election maps.
The court said Monday that the Texas map should be viewed again, in light of that decision.
[...]
The three-judge panel that upheld the map in January said that Congress -- not courts -- has the power to bar states from redrawing districts over and over. That panel will reconsider its decision.
The cases are Jackson v. Perry, 03-1391; American GI Forum of Texas v. Perry, 03-1396; Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee v. Perry, 03-1399; Travis County v. Perry, 03-1400; and Henderson v. Perry, 03-9644.
The Chron gets it right in endorsing Reggie McKamie for District Attorney as I hoped they would. This race is a big deal in Harris County. If you're like me, living in uncompetitive Congressional and State House districts, it's the highest profile race where your vote can make a difference. Winning that race, and winning a couple of the district court races will be a clear indicator that the Democratic Party is alive again in Harris County. I still hope to have an interview with McKamie in the next week or so (won't be very relevant if it's farther out than that!), so stay tuned.
Michael Fjetland is running as an independent in the CD22 race against Tom DeLay. He's run against DeLay twice before, both times in Republican primaries, garnering 16% of the vote in 2000 and 20% in 2002. I don't think there's any question about where my sympathies lie in this election, but I had the opportunity to ask Fjetland a few questions about his campaign, and I thought he gave some pretty interesting answers. Click on the More link to read the interview.
CK: You ran against Tom DeLay twice in Republican primaries. Why did you choose to run against him as an independent in the general election?
MF: Because winning the GOP primary was not possible, and in a 63% GOP district designed by DeLay for a Republican, it would not be possible to win as a Democrat because Republicans I know wouldn't cross over. But the Republicans don't feel negative towards an independent - and an independent group asked me to run, so I decided to try it to appeal to the moderates who dislike DeLay and needed someone to vote for.
CK: Would you call yourself a former Republican now? If so, do you think you're an anomaly in Fort Bend, or do you see yourself as being at the forefront of a trend?
MF: I call myself a moderate Republican running as an independent. DeLay has kicked all the moderates (who call themselves conservative) into the corner. I had so many come up to me when I ran in the primary and encouraged me because they hated DeLay and were glad someone had the guts to challenge him. I just didn't have the money to get the word out, and spent most of 2002 fighting to get back on the ballot after DeLay had me kicked off, so I didn't have time to campaign. I'm not sure the independent is a trend but it has impacted this election. The reason DeLay is under 50% is because I'm pulling votes from those moderate Republicans - otherwise he'd be at 60%. But what I see is that having more time to build a base may allow me to go back in '06 with enough votes to beat DeLay in the primary since a tiny number of people vote in the primary. In 2002 we had only 28,000 voters, so I would need only another 15,000 votes to beat him in the primary versus a lot more than that in a general.
CK: If you win, would you caucus with either party? For whom would you vote as Speaker - Nancy Pelosi, Dennis Hastert, or someone else?
MF: I will vote for Diane Sawyer or Jon Stewart. We could use either a pretty speaker or a witty one. Whoops, they aren't in Congress, Ok, I would attempt to be the go-between and attempt bipartisan solutions. With DeLay gone we might be able to get back to some kind of civilized behavior in Congress. For speaker I would favor the person who is the least partisan, but if the GOP controls then their won't be much choice - I'll have to vote for Daffy Duck in that case.
CK: What are your top legislative priorities? Where do you differ from DeLay and Richard Morrison?
MF: Getting the budget back in balance is No. 1. Stopping tax breaks for companies outsourcing jobs is also a top priority. Unlike either DeLay or Morrison, I have extensive international and terrorism expertise and would push for more effective action - TSA is a big failure so far. I've heard reports that terrorists have been making 'dry runs' on airliners. Another 9-11 is possible. But we can't blame all Arab Americans. I also differ from the other two in that we must be an honest broker and get an Israel-Palestinian solution in order to end the source of terrorism (and get our focus back on the global killer Osama bin laden).
CK: In touting your candidacy, you have said "Fjetland pulled in 20%+ of the GOP vote against DeLay without a mailing or TV ad, and claims the 40% Republicans who skipped DeLay's name (but not Bush's) on the March 9 GOP primary in Ft. Bend - his home. But they won't vote for a Democrat." What is your strategy for reaching those apparently disaffected Republicans? Does the recent KHOU story about Sugar Land yards with Bush and Morrison signs affect that strategy?
MF: Good question. I saw the KHOU story. I think Richard found the only Republican in the district who would also have a Democratic yard sign. I haven't met anyone like that - I have met a number of Republicans who would consider me, but only because I ran in two GOP primaries. Otherwise they probably wouldn't give me the time of day as an independent. With the partisan distrust in a red district, no way in hell they are voting for a Democrat. I thought in 2000 I could win the GOP primary if Dems crossed over - no way in hell they would do it. For the same reason Reps won't cross over and vote for a Democrat, not even with a gun to their head. Nice story but not real - I've been doing this for 4 years and know how they think. Even getting the Chronicle endorsement won't help - Reps think it is a "liberal" paper, so they discount it.
That 40% is the key - my problem has been getting the money to reach them and let them know I'm running. If it doesn't happen, DeLay will win. Dems have been dumb not to help me get funding (you don't think the GOP will fund me, do you? They didn't even when I ran as a Republican!). Without $$$ those moderates will vote for DeLay or leave it blank and DeLay will win with a plurality. I could pull them off DeLay if I could advertise. That probably helps the Dem more than me - if I only pull DeLay down another 10%, Morrison would take it. But if I could pull DeLay down the full 40% then either Morrison or I could win. But as it stands, DeLay is "safe" because I am running on fumes and the moderate Republicans don't know I'm in the game. I've been an entrepreneur for 20 years and have to think outside the box. I'm amazed the Dems haven't "got" it and tried a new strategy. The same old play will get the same old result.
CK: Do you believe DeLay's ethical troubles will cause him to lose support in this election? If so, how are you taking advantage of that?
MF: Most Republicans think it's all politics, so they discount it. The ones who don't like him won't vote for a Democrat - so I'm still trying to let them know they have a choice. When I can, I tell them DeLay had my signs stolen in 2000 and me kicked off the ballot in 2002 - so I've seen his "ethics" in action. He sets a poor example of democracy for Iraq, etc. But again, without funding, it's hard getting the word out - when Reps see a former Republican candidate calling DeLay's conduct questionable, then it means something.
CK: You have a number of issues regarding "fair elections" on your webpage. Do you consider them all to be federal in nature? Which of these issues do you think is the most urgent to be taken up by Congress?
MF: Another good question. Our democracy is under attack. Electronic voting without paper backup is a recipe for gross cheating. Ironic that we are supposedly fighting a war for democracy in Iraq while losing it in the U.S. I am not a fan of Nader because I don't think someone with 1% or 2% of the vote deserves to be on the debates, etc. But I can see that it's tough for an independent to get any time on TV, etc. The Chronicle ignored my global and terrorism experience and endorsed someone who has zero knowledge of the world - how does that help us if he doesn't know Lebanese from Lemons? I heard Richard say during his kick off speech (I was invited) that if the next President said we needed to invade Country X "Hell, I wouldn't know; they've got a thousand times more knowledge about that than I do." Yep, that's why we got into Iraq despite my writing before that it was a mistake and Iraq was not the threat the President said it was. Two thirds of Congress don't have passports. Being a good bug killer doesn't make a great Congressman in a global economy and worldwide terrorism.
CK: You support scrapping the current tax system. Tell us how you would replace it.
MF: Stop all the special interest tax breaks. It's gotten out of hand. Breaks for importers of Chinese ceiling fans, etc. - makes no sense. Writing off Hummers makes no sense. I have to agree with Kerry that it's not right to give the top 1% tax bracket all the breaks. Trickle down doesn't work. Anything would be better than the present system - as long as its fair and gives the middle and lower class a break.
CK: If you wake up on November 3 and find that your level of support was less than the difference between DeLay and Morrison, will you regret running?
MF: No, because if I wasn't in this DeLay would be laughing and grabbing a solid majority. I know this district. I take votes from DeLay and that's the key. My only regret will be if DeLay gets re-elected because the Dems were goofy and didn't help me pull more GOP votes from him. DeLay has wreaked havoc and abused power and hurt this district and I have worked for 4 years to get rid of him for that reason. He's had his revenge on me but I had to do something to try to stop him. My only regret will be if the bastard gets back in. I did my best but I have had to do it alone.
P.S. If for some reason Richard gets in (it will be because I pulled DeLay down, not because of his funding) I can guarantee he'll be defeated in 2 years by the next Republican who wins the primary in '06.
This is still a 63% GOP district, so it will be a short run. If by some miracle I win, I'll have to switch back to the GOP (as a non-crazy moderate) to stay in -- and even I could lose it in '06. A ton of folks will jump into the primary - whoever wins that will win the general.
But the main thing is that if people give me some help now, we have our last best shot to defeat DeLay (because I'm not running again as an independent for sure) and that will make it all worthwhile. Any replacement won't be as bad as that power drunk moron.
As of 7 AM this morning, the election has officially begun in Harris County and elsewhere. Early voting begins today and runs through next Friday, October 29. You can find all of the early voting locations here, you can verify your registration information here, and you can see who'll be on your ballot here - choose your city and county, then fill in your address information. Note that it doesn't include write-ins, so if you're in CD10 please remember that there's another choice available to you. I love early voting. It's convenient, the lines are usually short, and you can pick your polling place. I'm still hoping to see some survey data regarding the city propositions before I vote, but I'll cope if not. This is what we've been waiting for, folks. Let's do it.
I know every right-thinking person is enraptured by the baseball playoffs at this time, but I want to note that I've enjoyed the Chron's coverage of the Houston Rockets' trip to China for two exhibition games against the Kings. This piece on "Big Xu", the leading broadcaster of basketball in China, and this piece on the future of Chinese basketball were both good reads. Check them out.
The Statesman gives us a CD31 overview.
When Jon Porter introduces himself on the campaign trail for the District 31 seat in the U.S. Congress, he laments, it's not his name that's important."A lot of people go, 'OK, great, you're Jon Porter. Are you a Democrat or a Republican?' " he said.
When they hear "Democrat," he said, the response is often, "OK, I'll vote against you."
"That's frustrating," he said. "You're labeled already."
The scenario illustrates the tough road that Porter has hewn since he decided to run for Congress in a heavily conservative district dominated by incumbent John Carter. The newly reconfigured district includes all of Williamson County, part of Robertson County and six other counties to the north. It includes Fort Hood in Killeen.
[...]
Democrat Porter refuses to believe that resistance is futile. He entered the race after no one else from the party stepped forward.
"I knew it was going to be difficult," he said. "I don't know any rich people. I'm not politically connected. I have no name recognition — no one knows who I am. Finally, I came to the conclusion that no one was going to run; (the Democrats) were going to give up the seat."
But the campaign, which Porter runs himself, soon took over his life.
"Unfortunately, I don't have the psychological makeup that I like to lose," he said. "My first priority is to win. You don't do this to lose."
Porter said that he has driven so many miles through the district, which stretches more than 150 miles north to south, that his car, a 1994 Saturn SL, "died on me." He has since taken over his wife's car for the cause.
Porter said he takes great pains to assure voters that he's not a "liberal-pinko-commie," but a "traditional Texas Democrat": fiscally conservative and socially moderate.
He believes the war in Iraq was wrong but said American troops need to stay until that country is stabilized. He's concerned about how insurance regulations "handcuff" doctors, not surprising for a lawyer who represents health care workers in cases against the government. And he said he wants to simplify the tax system by reducing the number of credits and exemptions, which he said allow the rich who can afford to hire tax lawyers to benefit.
One subject of Porter's continuing dismay is Carter's refusal so far to debate him in public. "My theory is, he doesn't want to give me legitimacy," Porter said.
Carter said that he has simply been too busy to engage in any debates. However, the two are scheduled to debate at 6 p.m. Oct. 27 at Round Rock City Hall.
According to federal campaign filings, Porter's campaign has garnered about $16,000 between January 1, 2003, and June 30, and his mother and father are his largest contributors.
By contrast, Carter has raised about $865,000 in that same time period. Updated financial filings are to be released today. Adams has not filed any statements with the Federal Election Commission because, she said, she has not raised any money.
The Chron does have a story today about the race in CD01 between Max Sandlin and Louie Gohmert. Don't know why they took a few weeks off from profiling races, and I have no idea at all why they haven't written squat about the races in CD07, CD08, CD09, CD10, or CD18, all of which were contests in which they made endorsements today. I've learned to take what I can.
The Statesman gives an update on some campaign finances.
The five targeted Democrats collected a total of $12 million, compared with $10.2 million for Republicans, a figure that shows the power of incumbency but also displays confidence in their prospects despite having to run in heavily Republican districts.Among the five races:
•Sessions, a Republican with nearly $2.3 million in the bank, is ideally set for a last-month push in the expensive Dallas-Fort Worth media market.
While his Democratic opponent has outraised Sessions by almost $350,000, he has spent most of his nearly $4.2 million haul, leaving the Frost campaign with $576,872 available as of Sept. 30 — about one-fifth of Sessions' bankroll.
"That creates a situation where we can get our message out there without a response from him, " said Chris Homan, Sessions' campaign manager.
The figures, however, hide a $1 million media buy, closed just before Frost filed his fund-raising documents, for TV and radio commercials through Election Day, spokesman Justin Kitsch said.
•The other battle of incumbent representatives, Democrat Charlie Stenholm and Republican Randy Neugebauer, is a $4 million race that has already flooded voters with hundreds of TV commercials in the relatively cheap Lubbock and Abilene markets.
Stenholm's $2.1 million is the most he's raised in 14 campaigns, though Neugebauer had a slight edge in available cash.
•Challenger Arlene Wohlgemuth had less than $163,000 remaining on Sept. 30, the smallest amount among the five races. That could be a looming factor in a contest in which her opponent, Waco Democratic Rep. Chet Edwards, had almost $668,000 in the bank.
The discrepancy becomes even greater if a Democratic poll proves accurate in its findings: a 50 percent to 40 percent lead for Edwards.
•Poe, criticized by Republicans for anemic fund-raising, added luster to his campaign by collecting almost $459,000 in the third quarter. Still, Democrat Lampson collected $100,000 more, pushing him beyond the $2 million mark, almost double Poe's total.
•In the Piney Woods of Northeast Texas, GOP challenger Louie Gohmert outraised Rep. Max Sandlin, D-Marshall, by more than $100,000. Sandlin, however, continued to hold an advantage in available cash, up more than $150,000 on Sept. 30.
Finally, a site called Vote Kids has a big spread on CD17 and Arlene Wohlgemuth. Here's a great quote:
When asked how the hundreds of thousands of children and 17,000 pregnant women would get treatment, Wohlgemuth said "just out of the goodness of the American soul." (San Antonio Express News, 4/1/03)
No debate, says DeLay.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on Friday said that he would not debate Democratic challenger Richard Morrison before the Nov. 2 election.[...]
As a challenger with no experience in electoral politics, Morrison, an environmental lawyer, is trying to raise his profile.
On Friday, DeLay said that his latest poll put his support at 56 percent, while Morrison’s was much lower. “His name ID is nothing,” DeLay said.
Morrison says he has raised $500,000 — more than all of DeLay’s past challengers put together. In a bid to introduce himself to voters, Morrison has been running television spots portraying himself as a regular guy.
A debate with DeLay also would raise Morrison’s profile. There is also the fact that some voters might like to see the candidates go head to head before deciding whom to vote for.
“I want to know why he’s ducking me,” Morrison said last week in a visit to The Daily News. “What’s he scared of?”
At least so far, DeLay, the No. 2 man in the House, has calculated that Morrison has more to gain from a debate than DeLay has to lose by avoiding one. “A debate would be for his benefit, not for mine,” DeLay said of Morrison.
He also said that a debate with Morrison would go largely unnoticed. “Unfortunately, debates in this area have never had an impact because media doesn’t cover them,” DeLay said. “Television never covers them. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and you show up to a forum where there are more candidates at the forum than constituents. I’d much rather be out with constituents, meeting them and going to events.”
Oh, and though the story doesn't specify, I wonder if this means DeLay is ducking out of the candidate forum in Clear Lake on Tuesday? I'll try to find out.
Thanks to reader Burt for the tip.
This one I called correctly: The Chron goes for Richard Morrison, Al Green, Mike McCaul, and all of the other incumbents. Here's what they say about Morrison:
District 22, Richard Morrison — A Democrat who promises to place the district's interests above grasping for partisan power in Washington, Morrison seeks to unseat the long-serving Republican incumbent, U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay. Morrison, an environmental lawyer and Sugar Land resident, vows to do a better job in securing federal funds for Houston-area transportation and homeland security. Morrison says he would work to close corporate tax loopholes and invest more in education and health care. He is personally opposed to abortion.DeLay is the powerful House majority leader, perhaps more influential than the House speaker. The District 22 election thus has national implications that bear heavily on the race.
DeLay has been reprimanded several times by the House ethics committee for an indifference to the rules that reflects poorly on the House and on Texas. Most recently, the committee's bipartisan membership admonished DeLay for offering a favor in exchange for a colleague's vote; giving the appearance of wrongdoing by exchanging access on the golf course for campaign contributions from energy executives; and improperly trying to use federal aviation officials to locate Democratic legislators who had fled Texas.
DeLay's misplaced priorities were most evident in his previous ban on federal rail transit funds for Houston, causing the funds to go to other cities. DeLay was behind the redistricting effort in Texas that displaced badly needed property tax relief and school finance reform as the Austin leadership's top priorities.
Morrison faces an uphill battle in this race. The Houston region and the entire country will be better off if he succeeds.
And we get our first surprises in the Chron endorsements for State House. Two challengers are supported, but not one I thought might get the nod.
District 127, Charlotte Coffelt — The Democratic candidate, Coffelt is a retired teacher and principal and former Spring ISD school board member. She promises to work for increased school funding through a broad-based, fair tax, and to grant tax relief to property owners. She also favors improving access to affordable health care. Coffelt has the credentials and the compassion that will be needed in the coming Legislature.[...]
District 134, Jim Dougherty — The Democratic candidate, Dougherty is a lawyer and former federal prosecutor. He seeks election to the Legislature in order to work to restore funding to the Children's Health Insurance Program and reverse cutbacks in mental health care. He favors the establishment of a sentence of life in prison without parole, and recommends alternative programs for minor drug offenders. Dougherty wants to coordinate highway and environmental programs with flood control. The incumbent, Rep. Martha Wong, supported the cuts in children's health insurance and continues to defend them.
Pretty interesting debate on BlogCritics between Kos Dozen member Jeff Seeman and blogger John Hawkins. I've seen online debates before in other contexts, and I think it works well as a forum. You don't get any kind of cues from body language or tone of voice, of course, which has its pros and cons. If debating online would increase the likelihood of opposing candidates engaging each other - and interested observers - then I'd say it's a win all around. Don't ask me to predict when the first such debate will occur, however.
We have our first endorsement of a non-incumbent today, as the Chron supports Bruce Mosier for the 189th District (Civil) Court. Mosier was the closest challenger to win in the Bar Poll, and as expected, the Chron followed those recommendations to the letter otherwise. Which means that Kathy Stone joined Mosier as the only other Democrat to get endorsed. If you're a Harris County Democratvoter, remember those names. They're definitely worth your vote.
UPDATE: More from Greg, who laments that Zone Nguyen didn't get a nod. I'll second that, and note that I've met all of the Democratic judicial candidates in Harris County, and would recommend all of them.
You Austinites who don't mind missing a little football have a GOTV opportunity this Sunday. Click the More link for more.
Thanks to your efforts, there are thousands of new registered voters in Travis County. Now we have to get them to the polls. Democracy for Texas is invading South Austin!
On Sunday, we're taking on an area with a lot of new registered voters (east of I-35 between Ben White and 290). Many of these new voters don't know where to vote or how to operate the voting machines, and early voting starts Monday. So we're going to leaflet neighborhoods to give new folks just that kind of information, and also target people with a Democratic voting history. And in case anyone needs a reminder, we're also going to tell them why they need to vote.
Where: Meet in the parking lot at 512 East Riverside (Glen Maxey's office)
When: Sunday, October 17, 1:00 p.m.
How: We'll head out in teams. If you're by yourself, we'll match you up with someone. No talking to voters, just leaving a leaflet at addresses on a list.
Please RSVP to Fran@democracyfortexas.org so we know how many packets to prepare.
Time commitment: We'd like to have 2-3 hours of your time, but if you can't do it that long, come anyway. And if you can't do it Sunday, but can do it another time, email Nick@democracyfortexas.org.
There are plenty of things you could do on Sunday afternoon. Are any of them really more important than restoring democracy to Texas?
(Just in case you're not sure, the Cowboys' game doesn't start until 3:15.)
www.democracyfortexas.org
They just get recycled in more dishonest forms.
For a politician to accuse an opponent of "voting against our troops" during a time of war is the campaign equivalent of dropping a bomb.That's what challenger Ann Witt does in a glossy full-color mailout attacking Democratic state Rep. Scott Hochberg.
[...]
In copy pasted over photos of soldiers in tanks and of a soldier saluting the American flag, Witt accuses Hochberg of voting "to make it more difficult for" troops stationed away from home to vote in state and local elections.
The brochure quotes Lt. Col. Jerry Patterson, the Republican Texas Land Commissioner, as saying, "A politician who votes to deny overseas military personnel the right to vote in local elections, is a politician who doesn't deserve your vote in any election!"
But to characterize the vote in question as indicating Hochberg is anti-military is a huge leap.
In 1997, Hochberg joined 71 other members of the Texas House, mostly Democrats, in voting for an Election Code amendment sponsored by then-Rep. Hugo Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi.
The vote took place in the wake of an election controversy in Val Verde County, home of the city of Del Rio and of Laughlin Air Force Base, a 3,300-person training facility for undergraduate pilots.
In the 1996 elections, two Republican candidates, one for sheriff and one for county commissioner, won by margins so close that they appeared to be affected by the votes of military personnel stationed elsewhere.
Democrats filed a lawsuit under the belief that a significant number of the 800 military voters had questionable connections to Val Verde County. The suit claimed allowing their vote violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the vote of Hispanic residents of the county.
Affidavits from some of the voters did raise interesting issues.
More than 200 of the voters had left blank a space for residency in the federal application to vote they filled out.
One said he did intend to return to Texas someday, but to Austin or San Antonio. Another owned and lived in a Florida home that he listed as his homestead for tax purposes.
Yet another hadn't even been stationed at Laughlin. He had visited Del Rio 26 years earlier to visit his grandmother on his honeymoon.
The suit eventually failed, but it was in the context of this controversy that Berlanga offered his amendment.
How did the Astros blow it last night? Let me count the ways:
- Biggio hacks at a 1-0 pitch after Matt Morris walked the pitcher to load the bases. Would it have killed you to take a strike, Craig?
- Bagwell and Beltran get confused over the steal sign, turning Jeff Kent's 3-2 strikeout into an easy double play.
- Speaking of double plays, Ensberg and Kent fail to turn one in the fifth, which would have gotten Pete Munro out of the inning. Instead, Larry Walker homers, then so does Scott Rolen. Bye bye, 3-0 lead.
- Eric Bruntlett's botched sacrifice after (mirabile dictu!) Vizcaino and Ausmus both single to lead off the sixth.
It was like watching a football team roll up 500 yards of offense but turn the ball over six times. How else do you explain eighteen baserunners and only four runs? Argh.
Via Greg, I see that Chet Edwards has picked up a couple of nice endorsements, one from the Star Telegram, the other from a self-identified Republican columnist for Texas A&M's The Battalion. I'll echo Greg's comments about why the latter makes a better case for Edwards, and I'd like to highlight this little bit:
Arlene Wohlgemuth is Edwards' latest contender. Although she served five terms as a Texas state legislator, her only real claim to fame is preventing tax increases by cutting funding to health care programs like the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides health insurance to children in low-income families. While Wohlgemuth totes that she saved taxpayers more than $1 billion, it actually caused a $500 million loss. According to the Houston Chronicle, "As a result of the CHIP cuts, Texas is turning away $500 million in federal matching funds."Unfortunately, Wohlgemuth has nothing else to run on except for being a member of the Republican Party. Her yard signs bear the message "Bush, Cheney, Wohlgemuth." Clinging to the reputations of more popular politicians seems to be her best election strategy.
And according to this poll just released by the Edwards campaign, Wohlgemuth may be on the way to the same kind of defeat.
Congressman Chet Edwards leads Arlene Wohlgemuth by a commanding 10-point margin in the race for Texas Congressional District 17, according to a poll of 450 likely voters conducted October 11-13 by the respected Washington, DC polling firm of Bennett, Petts and Blumenthal. The poll shows Edwards leading Wohlgenuth 50% - 40% and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9%.“With less than three weeks to go until the election, Congressman Edwards is well-positioned to win re-election,” said Edwards pollster Anna Bennett. “Our polling over the last several months has seen a steady increase in Edwards’ support, while Arlene Wohlgemuth has actually lost ground.”
Bennett noted that voters are responding favorably to Edwards’ message of independence and putting his district above party politics. Edwards’ strong support for the military and national leadership on homeland security have helped cement his lead in the race, she said. At the same time, Wohlgemuth’s attacks on Edwards do not appear to be working, Bennett said.
Today, Edwards was endorsed by three Johnson County mayors, including the mayors of Cleburne and Burleson, Wohlgemuth’s hometown.
Unfortunately, as the title indicates, the news isn't all good. Charlie Stenholm appears to be in deep trouble.
According to the new poll by students at Texas Tech, 53.5 percent of respondents favor Neugebauer and 23.3 percent favor Stenholm. The poll, which the university released late Monday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points.Neugebauer's campaign isn't claiming victory just yet, however.
"We're very encouraged by the numbers, and our own polls show Neugebauer ahead," said spokesman Matt Schaefer. "But having said that, we know that we have to keep working and campaigning until Nov. 2."
A spokeswoman for Stenholm questioned the poll's accuracy.
"This may be fine as a training exercise, but it does not meet the standards of professional research," Jodi Zweifler said.
The numbers, however, closely mirror earlier findings by the Scripps Research Center showing Neugebauer with support from 52 percent of voters, and Stenholm with support from 29 percent.
Apparently all those doom-and-gloom predictions about the state of the telemarketing industry post-National No Call were based on faulty intelligence.
In the months before the national do-not-call list went into effect, Stuart Discount laid off more than 150 of his workers at his telemarketing company. Now, however, the company is back to full strength."We've done a good job of rehiring," said Discount, president of Tele-Response Center, which employs more than 500 people at its Philadelphia headquarters and two call centers in West Virginia.
The telemarketing industry appears to have similarly weathered the creation of the list, which more than 63 million Americans have signed up for. A year after it went into effect, fears of massive layoffs and failures among telemarketing companies haven't been borne out.
[...]
Discount said his company has adjusted to the do-not-call list by shifting toward fund-raising for nonprofit groups and business-to-business sales pitches. Tele-Response has found enough new work since its 2003 layoffs that it is back to its former staffing levels, he said.
The exploding of one myth regarding no-call laws hasn't prevented the creation of new ones, however:
Some companies have fared better than others, said Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., one of eight representatives who voted against the legislation in 2003.In first opposing the legislation, Terry said, he worried about the big players and massive job cuts, considering that Omaha is home to about 40 telemarketing businesses that employ some 39,000 people. In the months since the legislation, Terry said he has heard from people who worked in smaller businesses who have been laid off because of do-not-call.
Terry said he could not remember a company that has been directly hurt. But the legislation applies even to pizza shops and other neighborhood businesses that may simply want to announce their presence with the help of a few calls, he said.
"What you're doing is destroying the small-business section of the industry," he said.
As predicted, the Chron stumps for Scott Brister in the State Supreme Court race against David Van Os. Who will be the first scrappy challenger to get the nod over an entrenched incumbent? I await with bated breath.
One must always take care when reading a Robert Novak column, but he says something here which I think is substantially correct. He's speaking about the DeLay admonishments, and comparing the situation to those of Jim Wright in 1989 and Newt Gingrich in 1998.
"With DeLay's wings clipped, he will fall to Earth," a Republican power broker told me. But that is not the prevailing view inside the House Republican conference, whose members are grateful for his leadership, his cash contributions and his Texas coup that guarantees two more years of a Republican House majority. DeLay, lacking Gingrich's egotistical exuberance, is willing to stay off television and work outside the spotlight. That makes him a harder target to hit than Gingrich, and in the end a more dangerous enemy for Democrats.Just before Wright and Gingrich fell, prominent supporters of each told me they had lost confidence. No such winds are blowing against DeLay, only outrage against Pelosi and the normally less partisan Democratic whip, Steny Hoyer. More House wars await in 2005.
The only way to crack this support, at least until such time as DeLay himself is indicted along with his cronies, will be to change the perception that a close association with DeLay is beneficial for the GOP rank and file. The only way that's going to happen is for the Democrats to hold at least two or three of the redistricted Texas seats and to achieve or come close to achieving a majority in the House. Knocking off a few of the faux GOP "moderates" who vote with DeLay 90+% of the time would help.
Of course, it goes without saying that unelecting DeLay would also take care of things. I for one am willing to risk a little chaos in the House for that.
If you really want to see DeLay gone, your path is clear: Donate to Richard Morrison, donate to the endangered Texans, and donate to the DCCC. It's as simple as that.
UPDATE: And here are more ways to support Richard Morrison.
UPDATE: Jesse takes apart the rest of Novak's column.
I suppose it's unfair to crime the Chron for its lame-o Election Central section, which has a now-empty primaries section but no index of endorsements or other useful goodies, without comparing it to the other papers. So I took a look, with a particular eye on those items. The good news is that the Chron really isn't all that bad, all things considered. The bad news is that's damning them with faint praise.
The Morning News was the only one I found with an endorsement index. Maybe the other papers have been as laggard at making recommendations as the Chron has so far, I don't know. Their Election Index page keeps stories around for a few days, and is fairly well organized. They've got a Swing State feature that's okay. Overall, a solid if not terribly exciting effort.
The Statesman has a decent Elections index, with a few interesting links. I didn't realize they had a page of blogs and news links, though I have to say, their blog selection is kinda limp. They have a section for "Regional Political Blogs", but none of them are from Texas. Heck, they don't even link to their own Lasso from there. Oh, and they have an old URL (and a misspelled name) for Big Media Matt.
The Express News is fairly pedestrian. They tend to file state and regional political stories in their Texas section, though there's also a separate Politics section with national and some state/regional stories. Not much to see here, so let's move along.
The Star Telegram also has a pretty decent Elections index, with links to blogs you're probably not familiar with. They've also done a good job of covering the races on interest, including the Geren-Popp State House race and the Granger-Alavarado Congressional race. Neither of these is a high profile race, and neither of the stories is particularly meaty, but just the fact that they've mentioned them puts them ahead of the Chron and its missing local race coverage.
So, I'd say the Morning News is the best, the Chron and the Express News are the worst, and the other two are in between. I think the overall picture is sadly underwhelming, and a creative editor would have lots of room for improvement. Maybe in 2006.
Light rail ridership continues to increase.
Average weekday boardings on the Main Street line, which opened Jan. 1, were 32,292 last month, according to Metropolitan Transit Authority data. That's the first time the average count has topped 30,000. Daily ridership has steadily climbed since the 12,102 recorded in January, thanks mostly to changes made to connect bus routes with the trains.Total ridership for September was 817,020, also a record high, Metro reported.
The light rail carried its second-highest passenger load Sept. 2, when the Houston Texans played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a preseason game at Reliant Stadium.
That day's count of 42,488 boardings was excluded from the average daily tabulations because the special event could skew the numbers, according to Metro.
While we're on the subject of new transportation options, I wondered how ridership on the rail line compares to that of the new Westpark toll road. Turns out that information is hard to find. I posted a question asking what the ridership numbers were and how they compared to projections on the Katy Corridor Coalition Yahoo group, and got this response from Polly Ledvina:
HCTRA is really difficult to pry information from. I made a phone call to their general information number (832-601-7800) and asked about the ridership on Westpark. I was transferred to "Public Information" where I was told that there have been 641,307 "transactions" for the period of Sep 18 - Oct 3rd (this apparently covers the period since it was extended to highway 6). I asked how this number of transactions compares to projected numbers. The HCTRA representative did not know the answer to that question or where I could find out. I was also told that there are no sites on the internet that you can link to for ridership information.
Breaking that transactions number down, I'm told (having never driven on this road) that it's common to have multiple transactions per trip. So 640,000 transactions over 16 days is 40,000 per day, which may represent 20,000 or 30,000 actual cars per day. That number should of course also be readily available to us, since each EZTag is uniquely identifiable, but it's not.
There's still the question of how the road is doing versus how people thought it would do. This Houston Press article from 1998 sheds a little bit of light.
By now, if businessman Jim Murphy's dream had come true, more than 81,000 cars a day would be using a toll road stretching nearly 13 miles from Shepherd and U.S. 59 out to the Sam Houston Tollway. Those 81,000 cars would be bypassing the clogged surface roads on a high-tech tollway where no one would have to stop to hand money over to a booth attendant and where the prices charged would vary according to the number of riders per car and the time of day.[...]
[Metro board chairman Robert] Miller isn't sure the proposed toll road will work. Much of the $350 million or so needed for construction would come from revenue bonds; the number of bonds that could be sold depends on traffic projections done by an independent financial firm.
That study is not yet complete. "I haven't seen it," Miller says, "but my understanding is that it does not show a high degree of ridership."
Kevin and Anne have been asking questions about the Chron's policy regarding bylines on submitted op-ed pieces, a subject I've ranted about in the past. What I think the op-ed page editor of the Chron - or any newspaper - owes us is what Anne did: a quick Google search on the author's name to see if he or she is being disingenuous about self-identification. What they do from there is something we can argue about, but anything that cuts down on the number of misleading bylines - asking for an edit from the author, amending the byline as they see fit, adding an editor's note with additional information - would be an improvement in my opinion. I think we have a right to know when an op-ed writer is more than just a disinterested observer, and I think they have an obligation to tell us. And that goes for letters to the editor, too.
For a long time, my friend Margo has sent out emails describing her adventures as a Russian teacher, amateur chef, martial arts student, and wandering gadfly. Some months back, I replied to one of her missives and suggested that she start a blog, as that would be a much better way to archive her writings. Yesterday she wrote back to tell me that she'd finally taken my advice. She's now producing a "collection of silly essays often involving food", and as a special bonus for you tractor fans, her first post includes a visit to the Red Power Roundup in Iowa this summer. So drop by and check it out, and tell her I said Hi.
Since I brought up the Chron's extremely lackadaisical endorsement pace in the previous post, I may as well check in and see who they've supported so far. On Monday, in an editorial I can no longer find online (grrr), the Chron supported all the incumbents in the Court of Criminal Appeals races. Yesterday, they endorsed all the incumbents in the Justice of the Peace and Constable elections, plus Dean Dozen candidate May Walker in the open Constable Precinct 7 race. I didn't prognosticate any of these races, but I continue to feel confident about the overall nature of the Chron's selections.
In case you're curious, a running tally of newspaper Presidential endorsements is here. Kerry currently leads in total nods as well as total circulation of the endorsing papers, but many major papers, including all of the big Texas dailies, have not gone on the record yet. Also, Kerry has picked up the support of four papers that touted Bush in 2000, while so for no former Gore backers have switched sides.
UPDATE Kevin supplies the Monday Chron endorsement editorial and gives me a good reason to finally accept that Gmail invitation that's sitting in my inbox. Thanks, Kevin!
Apparently, a lot of Dallasites don't know what Congressional district they're in.
Thanks to Texas congressional redistricting, Williamson Road in East Dallas' Lakewood is the superhighway to confusion.From Mockingbird Lane, you can drive a mile down Williamson and cross congressional district lines three times – from the newly redrawn 32nd District into the 5th District, then back into the 32nd, then into the 5th again. "It's insane," said Kevin Petters, a Williamson Road resident who today lives in the 5th District but will vote Nov. 2 in the new 32nd District – for U.S. Rep. Martin Frost, D-Dallas. "We live on a weird, weird street. I thought it was all one district. I had no idea."
Neither do many of his neighbors, some of whom believe they'll be voting in one of the nation's most contentious and expensive congressional races: the 32nd District match-up between Mr. Frost and four-term U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas.
In reality, they'll be voting in the 5th District race between U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, who faces the relatively unknown Democrat Bill Bernstein.
[...]
"Until about a week ago, I thought I was going to get to choose between Martin Frost and Pete Sessions. But apparently not," said Kate Wagner, a resident of Springside Lane, which falls within the 5th District – about a block away from the 32nd District line.
"I had to go back through all the issues, revisit Web sites, learn about two new candidates," Ms. Wagner said. "It's frustrating a little bit; it's pretty confusing. And it seems a lot of my neighbors feel the same way, too."
Another half-dozen Williamson, Springside and Yosemite residents who didn't want their names published acknowledged that they didn't know the names of the candidates for either district. Four correctly named their current congressman.
The line dividing the two new districts is anything but straight.
At some points, the districts dramatically snake in and out of each other, making it possible for a golfer to tee up a ball in the 32nd District and whack it with a 4-iron back into the 32nd – clear over a sliver of the 5th.
Frost and Sessions lawn signs are planted in lawns that fall outside their district, and to a lesser degree, Hensarling signs pop up outside of his district. Mr. Hensarling and Mr. Sessions, incidentally, live in Lakewood, only a couple of blocks away from each other's district.
Also turns out that quite a few of those Dallas folks are also unhappy with the new Congressional borders and many of them blame Tom DeLay for it. Who'd have ever guessed that?
And to complete a Dallas trifecta, here's a good story on how the Martin Frost campaign is going.
"I didn't think Martin would simply quit, but he's running really hard," said state Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell, who is running for Mr. Frost's current congressional seat, the 24th District. "Martin is one of the best campaigners around, a very skillful campaigner. Now I can't get anyone to talk to me about my race because everyone wants to talk about the Frost-Sessions race.""Pete has run a strong campaign and should win," said state Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, a key player in Texas' 2003 congressional redistricting process that left Mr. Frost without a Democrat-friendly district in which to run. He officially challenged Mr. Sessions in January.
"But yeah, we're seeing an awful lot of Frost signs around," Mr. Branch said. "Our worry is that he's going to bring out a lot of Democratic support that didn't come out in 2002."
Byron notes this Statesman article about the state of the race between Chet Edwards and Arlene Wohlgemuth.
U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, one of five House Democrats from Texas marked for political death by redistricting, jogs along this town's founders day parade, clasping hands with so many voters wearing "Chet" buttons that you can see why his party hopes for an election-day surprise.Conventional wisdom in Washington has also smiled upon Edwards, giving the Waco Democrat the best odds of spoiling the Republicans' redistricting party.
The charismatic Edwards has more money, experience and cross-party support than his opponent. He has an energized campaign and a challenger with exploitable weaknesses.
But before Democrats celebrate, they better consider that challenger. Arlene Wohlgemuth is a no-nonsense conservative running in a new district that votes 2-to-1 Republican. She has support from President Bush and the Club for Growth, an anti-tax powerhouse that has sent her about $390,000 in contributions from supporters, and that doesn't count extensive TV ad buys.
Questions about Lake Waco's water quality have been a campaign issue. The problem stems from dairy farms not far away from the lake. The operations have helped the local economy, but dairy cows produce lots of you know what. And some of it has ended up washing into tributaries that feed into the lake, which Waco-area residents use for water.The problem got so bad several years ago that the Legislature intervened. Waco officials, the dairy operators and state lawmakers agreed on a pact in 2001 to deal with the problem.
As a member of the Legislature, Ms. Wohlgemuth participated in those negotiations. But some Waco folks thought she was too soft on the dairy farmers. The critics included her Republican opponent in this year's primary, Dot Snyder. She ran ads with a cow bellowing Ms. Wohlgemuth's name. (Don't you love politics?)
Democrat Edwards has pressed the issue, too. It's not the campaign's central point, but it matters. When former Waco Mayor Linda Ethridge endorsed Mr. Edwards, she cited Ms. Wohlgemuth's opposition to Waco's work to clean up its lake. For her part, Rep. Wohlgemuth says she was only trying to strike a balance between competing interests.
Back to Dallas, or to the Morning News in any case, for a bit of coverage of the DeLay-Richard Morrison race.
"He is very strong out here," said Ralph Hennie, a high school teacher. "There are a lot of Republicans just like him – very powerful, very in-charge guys."[...]
"Our area has prospered under DeLay," said Mr. Hennie, 58.
Mr. DeLay's Democratic challenger, Richard Morrison, disagrees. Mr. Morrison, a lawyer, argued that Mr. DeLay's recent troubles are proof that the majority leader is a relentlessly partisan and unethical lawmaker.
[...]
As that news has spread, Mr. Morrison said, his daily fund-raising totals have doubled.
"So far, it's been really good," Mr. Morrison said. "Two days is certainly not a trend. But if it continues, that's awesome."
[...]
Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace said Mr. DeLay remains a popular figure, owing to his commitment to the district and his community service.
"Politics is playing a great role in these issues [in Washington and Austin]," Mr. Wallace said. "That is the general feeling you have talking to the constituents."
At the Baker Street Pub and Grill, a new restaurant close to City Hall, several GOP voters said they were paying attention to the controversies but still supported Mr. DeLay.
"He's done good for the county," said Roger Gulick, a 61-year-old engineer. "I don't think he'd let himself hang out like that."
Even those who said they dislike the majority leader's aggressive style say they will probably vote for him in November.
Mr. Hennie, the high school teacher, said he once dealt with Mr. DeLay and left with the impression that Mr. DeLay was "very dictatorial."
Nevertheless, Mr. Hennie and his wife, Linda, said they would vote for Mr. DeLay.
"You are in stronghold Republican territory," Mr. Hennie said. "I'm sure he'll win."
You may notice that there's not a single link to a Chron story in this post. That's because their coverage of anything outside the Presidential election as of late has sucked, to put it mildly. I find a lot of Chron-bashing to be tiresome, especially given how agenda-driven much of it is, but this is ridiculous. Never mind the utter lack of coverage and analysis of local races, we're 20 days out from the election and the only endorsements they've given have been in a handful of not-seriously-challenged judicial and JP races. Even worse, they don't as yet have a "We Recommend" page with a listing of all their endorsements like they usually do (not that there'd be much there as yet). It's mid-October, guys. Get on the freaking stick already.
Would you like to hear about some more bad electoral news for Tom DeLay? Yes, I think you would.
Richard Morrison may live in Sugar Land like Tom DeLay, but they're not in the same neighborhood politically.In the neighborhood of the 22nd District, sometimes what is side-by-side can seem to be a political contradiction.
In Ft. Bend County, there are signs of unprecedented political interest.
At Republican Headquarters, the big demand is for Bush-Cheney signs. This is longtime Tom DeLay turf and by their count, 600 DeLay signs have headed out.
People here will argue that if Washington's most powerful politician is having to exert a little more power at home this time, it's because 30 percent of DeLay's district is new.
They discount DeLay's string of personal and ethical controversies.
"I think the more people hear of the accusations that have been brought around and uh, some of the unkind things that have been said about him, the more determined they are to get in here and support him," says Linda Hancock of Ft. Bend Victory 2004.
Political analysts continue to give DeLay an edge in the race. His campaign staff says DeLay himself will be in the district this weekend to campaign.
He may come across a scattering of other political signs of the times such as Bush-Cheney signs coexisting with Richard Morrison signs. Democrat Morrison has worked what is often considered the heartland of Republican voters, and some Bush voters say they will cross over.
"It's a fresh start and I think he can add a lot of new blood. He believes in bi-partisan working together. It's kind of an answer as to why there's two different representations in the signs," says voter Tom Suter.
For those with such signs, what seems like a contradiction is the beauty of the American system at work.
Want to see Richard Morrison take on Tom DeLay in person? Check out this upcoming candidate forum in Clear Lake.
The Clear Lake High School Debate Club will be hosting a Candidates Forum for the Congressional Race in District 22, with participation from all the candidates, Congressman Tom DeLay (R), Richard Morrison (D), Mike Fjetland (I), and Thomas Morrison (L).The forum, which is open to the public, will provide an opportunity for voters to visit with each candidate, ask questions, and obtain literature from their campaigns. Topics important to Clear Lake region, such as the San Jacinto Rail, education funding, Bayport, and the NASA Space Program, will be discussed with an emphasis on questions submitted by the audience.
”Although the members of the Debate Club are not eligible to vote, we believe this Congressional race will be very important to our parents as well as to our future. That is why we are hosting this event", says Vikas Lonakadi, Treasurer of the Clear Lake Debate Club.
Tuesday, October 19th -- 7:00-8:30 pm
North Pointe Elementary, 3200 Almond Creek, Houston (Clear Lake), TX 77059
There will be a social time from 6:30-7:00 pm for voters to meet the candidates. Candidates will have tables with signs and campaign literature.
UPDATE: You lucky duckies in CD07 can see John Martinez debate John Culberson tonight:
John Martinez, Democratic candidate for District 7, will be on stage with incumbent, John Culberson, at the Candidates' Forum at Fondren Middle School, 6333 S. Braeswood, TONIGHT, Tues Oct 12 at 7 pm. It is not clear whether the Independent candidate, Paul Staton, will also be there.
Congress has passed the sales tax deduction bill, which should be signed into law shortly.
Texans will be allowed to deduct state and local sales tax payments from their federal income taxes for the next two years under legislation approved Monday and sent to President Bush.The tax break — which is likely to affect about one-fourth of Texans — is part of a corporate tax bill the Senate approved before adjourning until after the Nov. 2 elections.
Also cleared by the Senate was a bill providing $14.5 billion in disaster relief for Florida, a vote-rich state hit by four hurricanes this year, and several farm states being wooed by presidential and congressional candidates.
The two bills were approved last week by the House, which adjourned Friday so members could go home for the final three weeks of the campaigns. Lawmakers are expected to return in November to work on unfinished spending bills for the 2005 budget year, which began Oct. 1.
The tax bill cleared the Senate 69-17, with 13 senators not voting and one voting present. It gives American businesses about $136 billion in tax breaks over the next decade. It is the fifth major tax bill of the Bush administration.
Pushed by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Rep. Kevin Brady and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, all Texas Republicans, the provision would save Texas families an average of $310 a year if they itemize deductions on their federal tax returns."This is going to be welcome news for people who have had this inequity since 1986," Hutchison said.
The deduction will be good for sales taxes on purchases only during 2004 and 2005. Unless Congress intervenes, the deduction will expire Jan. 1, 2006.
Taxpayers wanting to take advantage of the deduction will have to keep receipts of sales tax payments or rely on a federal tax chart of allowable deductions based partly on income and number of dependents. Only taxpayers who itemize expenses can claim the deduction.
"Most Texas families gain nothing from this change," said Dick Lavine, a senior fiscal analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin.
Federal tax data indicate that of the 9.2 million returns filed by Texans in 2001, the most recent available, less than 2.1 million itemized deductions, and most of those are in the income brackets over $75,000 a year.
Among Texans with incomes under $30,000 — or about half the state's tax filers — about 5 percent itemize their deductions.
Lavine said that to benefit from the new deduction, a family would have to accumulate mortgage interest, property taxes or other deductible expenses totaling more than $9,700, which is the standard deduction for couples filing jointly.
"Most Texas families don't do that now and wouldn't even with the new deduction," he said.
Today's Texas Tuesday feature is Rep. Nick Lampson, running to keep his seat in the new CD02. I've said this before and I'll say it again: Lampson is the first candidate I ever gave money to, back in 1996 when he ousted the nutjob Steve Stockman. I've had a couple of chances to talk to him over the years, and he's always been very generous with his time. I want to see all of our candidates win, but I really really want to see Lampson win. As with Martin Frost, you can help in the usual ways: give to Lampson, give to all Texas Tuesday candidates, or give to the DCCC's Million for a Majority campaign. Lampson had the money edge as of the last quarterly reporting period, but the NRCC has been going hard after him. Let's not let them drown us out.
I wouldn't call this poll from CD32 good news for Martin Frost, but it's not all bad.
[Rep. Pete Sessions] leads his Democratic rival, U.S. Rep. Martin Frost, 50 percent to 44 percent in their quest to represent Texas' 32nd Congressional District, according to a Dallas Morning News poll.Both campaigns declared the results encouraging, though the poll's director gives Mr. Sessions the edge – for now. The survey indicates that Mr. Sessions enjoys a solid base of support in a district where voters traditionally back Republicans.
Among voters who say they could still be persuaded to choose another candidate, Mr. Frost and Mr. Sessions are virtually even, which doesn't bode well for Mr. Frost, pollster Ann Selzer said. Election Day is Nov. 2.
But in this district designed by Republicans in the Texas Legislature to end Mr. Frost's 26-year congressional career, Mr. Frost is appealing more to women, minorities and independents than Mr. Sessions does, according to the survey of about 800 likely voters in the district.
Mr. Frost's strength among independent poll respondents – 56 percent favored him, compared with 37 percent for Mr. Sessions – and an unusually high Hispanic voter turnout are Mr. Frost's best hopes for victory, Dr. Selzer said.
"Frost will really have to make some serious inroads, and quickly," she said.
When Hispanic voter turnout exceeds expectations, Mr. Sessions will understand how many inroads he has made, Mr. Frost argued.
And because only 4 percent of the poll's respondents are Hispanics – they represent 36 percent of the district's total population, including nonvoters – Mr. Frost said he thinks a higher Hispanic turnout will close the poll's 6-percentage-point margin.
Eighty-two percent of respondents identified themselves as white, while 7 percent said they are black.
Although the poll's racial and ethnic breakdown doesn't match the overall district makeup, Dr. Selzer said, the poll accurately represents the political will of the district at one moment in time. In selecting respondents, the pollsters randomly selected 32nd District households with published telephone numbers.
One other mixed message from the story:
Neither candidate has released complete details of internal polls they've conducted.
You know what you can do to help: Give to Martin Frost, give to all Texas Tuesday candidates, or help the DCCC by giving to their Million for a Majority campaign. There's only three weeks to go.
Hey, how about those Astros? Well done all around. And how sweet it is for Biggio and Bagwell to come up big in the decisive 7th inning. Nothing quite like a little redemption, is there?
The championship series ought to be a lot of fun, with bitter division rivals facing off in each league. And let me now just agree with Rafe about how Fox has promoted the Yankee-Red Sox matchup. Somebody buy Jeannie Zelasko a box of Depends - she might just wet herself at the first measure of chin music.
Anyway. Go Astros, go Yankees. Damn, I love the playoffs.
There are times when I do feel sorry for headline writers who struggle to avoid reaching into the Big Bag of Cliches to title certain types of news stories. This is one of those times.
Police arrested a couple they said were having sex at the Alamo on Sunday afternoon.Kristine Nissel, 18, and Matthew Hotard, 19, were both naked from the waist down when an Alamo security officer caught them having sexual intercourse near a public viewing area, a police report said.
Several tourists saw the couple and were upset, the report said.
Both are active-duty members of the 232nd Medical Battalion and stationed at Fort Sam Houston.
Police arrested the two just before 5:30 p.m. Each was charged with public lewdness. Bond for each was set at $800.
The Annals of Improbable Research (formerly the Journal of Irreproducible Results) has a blog. And they now have a contender for next year's Ig Nobel awards.
Via the overjoyed Julia.
Today, DeLay associates Jim Ellis and Warren RoBold have their first day in court.
Jim Ellis, a key Washington aide who coordinated several efforts in the Texas Legislature promoted by DeLay, and former fund-raiser Warren RoBold are scheduled to appear before 331st District Court Judge Bob Perkins to enter pleas and have their bond set.They are expected to plead not guilty.
Ellis and John Colyandro were leaders of Texans for a Republican Majority, known by its initials, TRMPAC, which DeLay founded to get more Republicans elected to the Texas Legislature in 2002.
Colyandro, of Austin, already has had his court appearance. He was briefly jailed before entering a not-guilty plea. He was released on a personal recognizance bond.
Ellis and RoBold will be arrested, fingerprinted and likely freed under similar bond, a court source said Friday.
The Allentown Morning Call says DeLay is "incapable of upholding the high standards necessary for House leadership".
The Virginian Pilot notes DeLay's "repeated ethical lapses" and suggests that "by continuing to support his leadership, Republicans such as Rep. Randy Forbes of Chesapeake invite questions about how much they value public integrity."
The Cheboygan Daily Tribune says DeLay should step down from his leadership position and notes that he has "dragged a few Michigan lawmakers into the muck with him".
The Wilmington Daily Star says "If [DeLay] had any ethics, he would step down. If his colleagues had any ethics, they would dump him."
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel calls DeLay a "national embarrassment".
Drip, drip, drip. Will it all make a difference? I don't know, and Republicans don't seem to be too worried. DeLay has generally kept a lower profile than Gingrich ever did, and maybe that ultimately will save him this time around. But even if DeLay survives this year, and even if the House conforms to conventional wisdom by remaining in GOP hands, I don't think the story will be over. I believe that DeLay's likely to be ongoing troubles will make him the canary in the coal mine for the GOP. It's just a question of when.
The Fastows, according to the lawsuit filed in 212th District Court, owe [Galveston] county $17,471 on their 3216 Musket Lane home in the posh Pirates’ Cove subdivision. That amount includes penalties, interest and attorney fees.But earlier this year, the couple agreed to surrender the vacation home, among other properties, to the federal government as part of restitution in Enron-related criminal proceedings.
The Fastows, who already have had a rough year on the legal front, owe taxes for 2003 on a property appraised at $524,200.
On Friday, David Gerger, a Houston attorney representing Andrew Fastow in a criminal case involving Enron, declined to comment about the lawsuit against his famous client.
[...]
When he pleaded guilty, he agreed to surrender nearly $24 million in cash and property, including the island vacation home, as restitution.
It was unclear on Friday how that agreement will affect the county’s efforts to collect taxes on the island home.
[...]
The county will have to notify Lea Fastow of the lawsuit at her residence at 1200 Texas Ave. in Houston, a federal detention center where she’ll live for the next year.
Former Astro Ken Caminiti, 41, dead of a heart attack.
Rick Licht, Caminiti's agent and close friend, said Caminiti died at New York's Lincoln Memorial Hospital in the Bronx. Licht, who last spoke to Caminiti last week, declined to comment about the former All-Star's sudden death."The whole situation is devastating certainly for myself and his family — he has three children," he said. "I spoke to him so many times recently, and he sounded fantastic. He was very clear and focused and looking forward to spending time with his little girls and getting back into baseball."
UPDATE: Lair reminds me of John Matuszak.
Boy, those editorialists sure do enjoy bashing Tom DeLay, don't they? I've hoped all along that the Democrats could nationalize the Congressional elections by tying various DeLay rubber stamps to him and his sleaze. It's happening now, so we'll see if it has any effect.
Big Sunday stories which show the disingenuousness of DeLay's self-distancing from TRMPAC probably don't help him much, either. (Via The Stakeholder.)
This maneuver by Nancy Pelosi reminds me of this attempt to adjourn one of the redistricting special sessions. that one didn't work, but it surely elevated a few heart rates. Pelosi appears to have been more successful. Via Atrios.
I made it through The Hammer on the plane ride to Newark. Dubose and Reid think that it'll be the Scanlon/Abramoff/Reed Indian gambling scandal that ultimately sinks DeLay. For sure, if you read their account, you'll see how close Scanlon and Abramoff were to DeLay. It's not hard to imagine that they'll have something to say (assuming they ever do say something) which might lead back to their old boss and good buddy.
So I was in New York this weekend for my 20-year high school reunion. A fun time was had by all, and I've got two blog posts to give you about it. One is sober and reflective, the other is silly. This is the silly one.
I had the pleasure of staying with Ginger and Michael in their lovely third-floor walkup (realtor-speak for "You needed a daily stairclimbing workout, didn't you?") in Jersey City. Who knew getting to Manhattan from another state would be so much quicker and easier than getting there from Staten Island? Such a sheltered life I led in the City's outermost borough.
We had dinner in Little Italy on Friday night with our mutual friend and their fellow expat Texan Amy, then met Frances, a friend of Amy's, for dessert at one of the many amazing Italian bakeries nearby. (Suddenly, that regular three-flight climb makes more sense to me.) I was low on cash, so I paid the bill on my credit card and collected from the others. When I told Frances what she owed, she said "Do you want that in cash, or would you prefer a BJ?"
It's not easy to get me to blush, but she succeeded. You can be sure I'm plotting my revenge for the next time.
We spent the next day galavanting around lower Manhattan with Julia, her husband (whose appearance she described as "Santa Claus' younger, hipper brother"), and HM, whom I can corroborate as the cutest eight-year-old ever. At one point, as we were walking up Broadway coming from Battery Park, Julia pointed out her favorite exceedingly narrow cross street, which two people can easily cover by linking hands. This led to someone - it may have been Michael - saying "Grease up the Hummer, honey, we're going in!" We agreed that was the best line of the evening.
The reunion itself will be the subject of the more serious post. For now, if you're offered the chance to hang out in Manhattan with these characters, I recommend you accept.
Sam Rosenfeld asks a very good question: How exactly does the GOP's removal of tax credits for movie studios in response to the RIAA's hiring of Democrat Dan Glickman differ from 1998, when the House Ethics Committee chastised Tom DeLay for holding up a copyright bill after the Electronics Industry Alliance hired Democrat Dave McCurdy?
I can think of one difference right off: In 1998, the Ethics Committee took action against DeLay on its own initiative. No way in hell that happens this time around. So now that the bogus "ethics truce" has been broken, will someone file a complaint about this?
The AusChron talks about the troubles at Schlotzsky's. Personally, I've always felt that of the major sandwich chains, Schlotzsky's offered the least amount of sandwich for the money without being sufficiently good enough to justify it. They're good, but for the same price I can get as good a sandwich elsewhere that doesn't make me feel hungry again two hours before dinner. Quizno's is my current favorite, though I've gone through Subway and Blimpie phases in my life. Schlotzsky's does have good chips, though. I'll give them that. It'll take more than that to save them, unfortunately.
The Statesman has sued Tom Craddick to get his phone records during the runup to the 2003 Speaker election.
In its lawsuit, the Statesman alleges that Craddick has refused to release information in his phone records that should be available under state law and that he has too broadly interpreted state law to keep the information secret.Under that law, as interpreted by Abbott, the Midland Republican could opt to make the records public.
Records pertaining to Craddick's race for the speaker's post have been subpoenaed by a Travis County grand jury that is looking into whether outside groups might have improperly assisted his election as speaker in 2002. Craddick has denied any wrongdoing.
"The Speaker's Office . . . is not entitled to withhold its records of its communications with corporations, associations, and other organizations and had a duty under law to provide unredacted telephone records of all communications with such entities and persons representing them or acting on behalf of them," the suit states.
Craddick also went too far in redacting other information from the records, including the city and state to which calls were placed, according to the suit.
The Statesman seeks a declaratory judgment requiring the release of information about phone calls to and from Craddick's offices between Sept. 1, 2001, and Jan. 31.
It names Abbott because he issued a letter opinion in June that allowed Craddick to decide what records to make public, instead of issuing a determination of what is public and what is not.
This has caused no small amount of heartburn at the Kuffner house, since infants are vulnerable to the flu but those younger than six months old cannot be vaccinated themselves, so Olivia has to wait until December 6. Tiffany has found a nearby Walgreen's that's giving people the shots, and she'll be going there today (I'll be doing it next week).
Both the companies we work for have drastically scaled back their vaccination programs because of the shortage, and county health services are scrambling. I just hope this turns out to be not such a bad year for the flu virus, but I'm not too optimistic.
The Chron takes a closer look at the energy industry fundraiser that drew one of Tom DeLay's admonishments.
The fund-raiser was organized by former DeLay energy aide Drew Maloney, in coordination with ARMPAC staff. Energy executives were told they could play golf with DeLay for corporate contributions of $25,000 to $50,000 to either ARMPAC or TRMPAC.At the time, Westar was trying to get legislation passed to remove the company from regulation under the Public Utility Holding Company Act.
A company lobbyist, Richard Bornemann, had written executives a memo explaining how campaign contributions could help the firm gain influence with House leaders, including DeLay.
But at first, Maloney did not want Westar participating in the golf excursion because the company was not a traditional electric-producing energy company. Bornemann told company executives in a memo they still might get into the event if they were willing to make a corporate donation to a DeLay committee.
"We think we can get by with that if we beg," Bornemann wrote.
A May 8, 2002, memo from Maloney to DeLay's daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro, who organizes fund-raisers for her father, said energy companies that had confirmed attendance at the golf event were Reliant Energy of Houston with $50,000; and Williams Energy of Oklahoma, Mirant Corp. of Georgia and Westar, with $25,000 each.
Executives of those companies were the only ones to attend the golf event. But other companies donated, for a total of $152,500 raised at the two-day event, according to a memo from Maloney to an ARMPAC employee, Chris Perkins.
In a separate memo to Perkins before the event, Maloney detailed what the companies attending the golf tournament needed from federal legislation.
"Reliant's primary goal for the conference is to make sure the progress that has been made to deregulate the wholesale electricity markets are not rolled back," Maloney wrote.
As for Westar, "the company has a unique problem that was addressed in the House bill."
[...]
The ethics committee noted that when attendees got to the golf event, two members of DeLay's leadership staff were there: Jack Victory, who handled energy issues, and office counsel Carl Thorsen.
Attorneys for Lawrence and another Westar executive who attended the event said DeLay spoke to the group on June 2, 2002, and asked them "to advise him of any interest we had in federal energy legislation."
Lawrence said he spoke with DeLay that night about Westar's needs in the legislation. After golfing with DeLay the next day, Lawrence said, he again talked to DeLay about the bill.
DeLay told the ethics committee his staff members were at the event on their own time. He said he had no specific memory of what he said there, but he questioned the Westar characterization of his remarks at the opening meeting.
"It would not be typical for me at such events to have 'asked the group to advise' me of 'any interest' the attendees had in 'federal energy legislation,' " DeLay said. "That is not at all consistent with the manner in which I normally would interact with attendees at such an event."
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, who had DeLay's proxy, cast a vote for the Westar legislation on the conference committee.
But Barton withdrew the legislation after the chairman of the Kansas Corporation Commission notified the committee that Westar was facing investigations by a grand jury and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and said it would be a mistake to remove the company from federal regulation.
Westar's then-CEO David Wittig met with DeLay in September to see if there was a chance of reviving the legislation. DeLay told him there was not, according to the ethics committee report.
Several days later, Lawrence sent an e-mail to company executives stating: "Things are grim in DC. The DeLay staff has asked us to release people from their commitment to support our provision."
DeLay told the ethics committee he was "not aware" of any commitments he or his staff had made to Westar.
Congressional Democrats are continuing to push for DeLay to step down as Majority Leader. I doubt that will have much effect beyond keeping the story in the news cycle, but editorials like this one and this one might have some impact.
Finally, it's not new news, but Kristin Mack gives us an update on DeLay's campaign activities.
As he seeks his 11th term, DeLay is relying more on face-to-face politics than he has in recent re-election campaigns in his strongly Republican district.While he historically depended on mailers, phone banks, and newspaper and radio ads, this year he has bought television advertising. He's been block walking and knocking on doors — rare, retail politics for a powerful two-decade veteran — and he's opened an office in Clear Lake.
His stepped-up efforts are a way to reintroduce himself to the district and get acquainted with people who know him as "The Hammer" for his aggressive fund raising and tight control over House Republicans.
His competitors, Democrat Richard Morrison and independent Michael Fjetland, said they've noticed DeLay's increased presence as well. But Fjetland, who has run against DeLay before, said DeLay is trying to soften his edges.
UPDATE: Oops, missed this NYT story.
While Republicans vigorously defended Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, in the wake of a series of ethics rebukes, members of both parties said on Thursday that Mr. DeLay, a tough-talking Texan who holds a tight rein over the House, could have difficulty retaining his leadership job if his party loses seats in next month's elections.[...]
Mr. DeLay has been an extremely effective Republican leader, and though he is not personally close with President Bush, the White House relies on him to push its agenda through Congress. So Mr. Bush is not likely to distance himself from Mr. DeLay, as he did with Senator Trent Lott, the former Republican leader, when Mr. Lott faced political trouble over racially charged remarks.
"Without Tom DeLay it would be complete and total chaos," said one Republican strategist with close ties to the White House. "The House would descend into 'Lord of the Flies.' "
Looks like a compromise has been reached in the effort to ban smoking in restaurants.
Mayor Bill White announced Wednesday that he is drafting an ordinance that would ban smoking in restaurants, but not in bars."I have been listening to people who want a ban everywhere and the people who don't want to lose their market," White said. "I'm trying to find the middle ground."
White said his proposal would be phased in over two years to try to minimize any negative impact on restaurants.
Under Houston's current ordinance, restaurants and other public buildings are allowed to have smoking areas if they are properly ventilated. Smoking is banned within 25 feet of entrances to public buildings.
White said that under his proposal, any restaurants with bars in their establishments would be allowed to maintain smoking areas in the bars, as long as there is "real separation" from the dining areas.
The mayor said he didn't have details of his proposal because his legal department is looking into the matter. He said he hopes to have a proposed ordinance prepared in time for City Council to vote on it before the end of the year.
Councilwoman Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, a physician who has been working with anti-smoking groups to push for a total ban on smoking in public buildings, said she appreciates White's proposal.
"I feel like it's a step in the right direction," Sekula-Gibbs said.
[...]
Juli Salvagio, executive director of the Greater Houston Restaurant Association, said the organization supports White's proposal because it would not prevent smoking in bars or bar areas within restaurants. She said the organization expressed its concerns about a total ban to Sekula-Gibbs and a representative from the mayor's office during a Sept. 8 meeting convened by the councilwoman.
"It sounds like we were heard," Salvagio said.
Salvagio said the association would support a total ban in restaurants only if it is enacted statewide. She said the total ban in Dallas has hurt restaurants there because customers are flocking to surrounding communities that do not have bans.
Lance Fegen, owner of Trevisio restaurant in the Texas Medical Center and Zula restaurant downtown, said he supports White's proposal.
"I think that as we've gotten a little bit older we've gotten a bit wiser," Fegen said. "The perception that a smoking section in a restaurant doesn't offend anybody is really ridiculous."
Fegen said many upscale restaurants in Houston such as his already ban smoking from dining areas because "a majority of the people don't want smoking to be part of the experience, especially with expensive foods and wines."
Just a sample of what some other folks have said. I'm certain I'll miss a few, so let me apologize in advance.
The Stakeholder is all over this. See here, here, here, and here.
Julia brings the snark (I know, what are the odds of that?), NTodd recalls one of DeLay's greatest hits, and Sean overviews things.
Taking on Tom DeLay rounds up some other news coverage and also notes the Chron's first-time-for-everything quote of Richard Morrison.
Kos has some stuff from Roll Call.
And finally, a few words from The Poor Man, who likens the Ethics Committee to Cheez Whiz. It makes sense, I swear.
UPDATE: One of the benefits of an early work schedule is that I can make it home in time to catch Lou Dobbs, which featured a nice segment on the "Ethically Challenged" (their words) Tom DeLay, plus a brief interview with Rep. Chris Bell. I'll check for a transcript later, but for now, just one thing: The grand jury investigating DeLay is in Austin, not Houston. Lou got it wrong three times.
TAPPED asks Bell to elaborate on his statement that the Ethics Committee's action is the "strongest indication yet that Mr. DeLay himself is the target" of that grand jury. Here's what he said:
The committee states in its memorandum that it has been following the investigation in Austin quite closely. Mr. DeLay has claimed that he’s not a target of the investigation, but if he’s not a target then there would be no reason for the Ethics Committee to defer action. They apparently seem to believe after following the case that there’s a strong possibility that he is a target and that an indictment will be forthcoming, and that’s a thought that I share. I think that Mr. Earle has made it quite clear that this is an ongoing investigation and that he has in no way, shape or form tried to lead anyone to believe that Mr. DeLay is off the hook. So I think by deferring action on that particular account, the ethics committee seems to believe that Mr. DeLay could very well be a target.
And of course, there's more and more from The Stakeholder.
UPDATE: Check out Jesse's domino theory.
The title of this post is a play on the NRCC ads that have been hammering Nick Lampson lately. They're your standard-issue attack ads: grainy images of the target, vague and voluminous accusation of one moral failing or another, an iconic image to remember (in this case, "failing" grades for Lampson from such non-partisan third parties as the Texas Association of Business and the National Taxpayers Union), and of course, the only-one-way-t0-answer-that question "Does Nick Lampson Share Our Values?"
Anyway, today's Chron reports on a crime victim who is quite unhappy about how then-Judge Ted Poe handled the sentencing in her case.
Texans for True Sentencing members Barbara Davis and Carolyn Hardin said they think Poe let convicted killers off the hook without fulfilling the terms of their probation."Judge Poe is not the guy he says he is, he doesn't follow through on what he says," Davis said. "He used me for his own personal gain. He destroyed my life all over again. If someone would lie to a victim, what would he tell his constituents?"
In 1996, Davis' car was hit by a teenage drunken driver, killing her husband and housekeeper and critically injuring her. Poe's sentencing included conditions such as a six-month jail sentence, shock probation and a requirement that the defendant carry pictures of the victims in his wallet. He also prohibited him from having a driver's license for 10 years.
Three years later, Davis found out the defendant got his driver's license back. When she tried to reach Poe, her calls went unreturned, she said.
In 1998, Hardin's son, Steven, a wrecker driver for a towing company, was sent to tow an illegally parked car. The car's owner shot and killed him.
Poe imposed creative sentencing, including requiring the man to place a cross at the site of the shooting. After serving only six months in jail, the man was set free. Poe refused to explain why he wouldn't demand compliance with the remaining sentencing conditions, Hardin said.
Davis recommended some creative sentencing of her own, suggesting that Poe should be required to walk with a sign that reads "Shame on Me, I Lied to Victims."
In January 2000, Hubacek asked Poe to amend his probation. He wanted permission to drive to work. (According to court records, he was working at his dad's business, just two miles from his home.) He also wanted to drive to community college and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.Poe never even contacted Davis.
He just said yes.
Three years after that, Hubacek asked Poe to let him remove the interlock device that prevented him from driving after drinking. He also asked to be allowed to travel outside Texas. If that was too much freedom, Hubacek suggested an alternative: permission to visit in-laws in Mississippi for one week.
Again, Poe never contacted Davis. And he didn't go for the more restrictive alternative. So long as Hubacek checked with his probation officer, Poe ruled, he could leave the state whenever he wanted. Davis learned of that new freedom only when contacted by the Houston Press last week. The Department of Public Safety says Hubacek now has no restrictions on his license, though Poe says he's kept the locking device.
Last January, Hubacek made his boldest request. He asked to be taken off probation entirely.
Finally, the judge said no. But it wasn't Poe who turned him down. By then, Poe had left the bench to run for Congress; the denial came from his successor, Judge Marc Carter.
By the way, Lampson has some new ads of his own out, which I saw last night. They feature John Walsh, host of "America's Most Wanted" and a self-proclaimed Republican, who lauds Lampson for his leadership on missing and exploited children. It's a positive and I think pretty effective spot, and contrasts nicely with the NRCC attack ad.
Ralph Nader's bid to get on the Texas ballot has been rejected by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The state ballot without Nader has already been certified and sent to all 254 Texas counties.Nader tried to get on the ballot by collecting voter signatures, but his campaign submitted them two weeks after the May deadline. His attorneys argued the state had no legitimate reason to have different requirements for independent and third-party candidates.
Nader was required to collect at least 64,076 signatures by May 10 from registered voters who did not vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries. That equals 1 percent of all votes cast for president in the most recent election in Texas.
Third-party candidates needed to collect 45,540 signatures by May 24, the day Nader's campaign turned in its signatures. State officials argue the signature and time requirements were not unreasonable and could have been met with a better effort by Nader's group.
Of the 80,000 signatures Nader's campaign filed in May, a random sample by the state showed that between 56,215 and 63,374 were valid. Those numbers would have qualified Nader under the third-party access rules but not as an independent candidate.
So now we know that Tom DeLay has been officially admonished again by the House Ethics Committee.
The lawmaker from Sugar Land was cited for apparently linking political donations to legislation and for recruiting federal aviation officials to help search for Texas House members who fled Austin last year.Action on a third allegation involving DeLay's political fund-raising practices was deferred until a criminal investigation under way in Austin runs its course.
The ethics committee's findings — prompted by complaints from Rep. Chris Bell, D-Houston — were outlined in a 44-page report recommending no further action against DeLay. The panel's top Republican and Democrat had examined the charges for three months.
The admonishment spares DeLay a more lengthy investigation by the committee less than four weeks before he faces re-election in his Fort Bend County district.
[...]
"Admonishment doesn't even exist in the House rules," DeLay said shortly after a late-night, closed-door meeting with a dozen GOP House leaders, including Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., outside the House chamber.
Bell said that while he was "pleased" by the committee's action, the panel should have named an independent investigator to examine the charges against DeLay. "I think people find it somewhat extraordinary that the ethics committee has had to admonish the majority leader twice in one week," he said.
[...]
Democrat Richard Morrison, a Sugar Land lawyer who is challenging DeLay's re-election in District 22, said, "Every American knows it's three strikes and you're out of the game. That's the way it works in baseball, and that's the way it should work for Tom DeLay."
[...]
In its report Wednesday, the ethics panel found that DeLay "created an appearance" of favoritism when he attended a Virginia golf outing in 2003 with executives from Westar Energy just days after they gave $25,000 to one of his political committees.
The committee also expressed "serious concerns" about DeLay's effort to get the Federal Aviation Administration to help locate Texas Democratic lawmakers who had fled the state in an effort to thwart Republican legislators from passing a DeLay-engineered redistricting plan.
The whole memo is here. Several points to highlight. First, regarding the concept of "letter of admonishment":
Resolution of a complaint by means of a letter to the respondent is appropriate where, according to the information before the Committee, the respondent’s conduct either violates or raises concerns under House Rules or standards of conduct, but the circumstances – including the completeness of the information before the Committee, and the nature of the violation – indicate that a formal investigation is not warranted.[2] While the Committee does not hesitate to launch a formal investigation where there is any unresolved issue of material fact, or the conduct involved indicates that a formal sanction may be in order, the Committee has resolved a number of complaints by such a letter.[3] In the past such letters have not been formally termed as “letters of admonition,”[4] but this term accurately describes the substance of these letters.
1. The charge that DeLay solicited contributions from Westar and acted on them was dismissed. DeLay was admonished for his appearance at an energy industry fundraiser in 2002:
As a general matter, fundraisers directed to a particular industry or to others sharing a particular federal interest are permissible, and at such events Members are free to talk about their record and positions on issues of interest to the attendees. In addition, of course, a Member has no control over what the donors at a fundraising event spontaneously say to or ask of the Member with regard to their legislative interests. Nevertheless, there are a number of considerations regarding this particular fundraiser that raise serious concerns under the standards of conduct discussed above.In particular, there was the timing of the fundraiser, i.e., it took place just as the House-Senate conference on major energy legislation, H.R. 4, was about to get underway. Indeed, one of the communications between organizers of the fundraiser – an e-mail of May 30, 2002 from Mr. Maloney to Mr. Perkins that notes the legislative interests of each of the attendees – includes a specific reference to the conference. (That e-mail is included in Attachment M.) In addition, there was the fact that Representative DeLay was in a position to significantly influence the conference, both as a member of the House leadership and, by action taken about a week and a half after the fundraiser, his appointment as one of the conferees.
In view of these considerations, other aspects of the fundraiser that would have been unobjectionable otherwise had the effect, in these specific circumstances, of furthering the appearance that the contributors were receiving impermissible special treatment or access. One of these aspects was the presence at the fundraiser of two key staff members from Representative DeLay’s leadership office: Jack Victory, who handled energy issues, and the office counsel, Carl Thorsen.[37] In addition, there were the limited number of attendees, and the fact that the fundraiser included several events at a resort over a two-day period, both of which facilitated direct contact with Representative DeLay and his congressional staff members.
[...]
In view of the circumstances of the June 2002 energy company fundraiser, as detailed in this memorandum, Representative DeLay’s facilitation of and participation in that event were contrary to those standards. Those circumstances included not only the nature of the event, but also its timing, in that it took place just as the House-Senate conference on the energy legislation – legislation of vital importance to the contributors at the fundraiser – was about to commence. Moreover, Representative DeLay was in a strong position to influence the conference, both because of his leadership position and the fact that about a week and a half after the fundraiser, he was named a conferee. At a minimum, his actions created the appearance that donors were being provided with special access to him with regard to the pending energy legislation.
2. The complaint about TRPMAC was deferred pending the still-ongoing Travis County grand jury investigation.
3. Count 3 had to do with DeLay's contacts with the Department of Justice and the FAA in the immediate aftermath of the State House Democrats' walkout in May of 2003 over redistricting. The contact DeLay had with the DOJ was ruled proper, but the contact he had with the FAA was not:
In contrast, our conclusion regarding the contacts with the FAA seeking flight information is that, at a minimum, they raise serious concerns under the House standards of conduct summarized above. Briefly stated, according to the information we have obtained, those contacts were made solely at the request the Texas House Speaker; the request was made in connection with a partisan conflict in which he was engaged at the time with Democratic members of the Texas House; and the information that Representative DeLay’s office obtained from the FAA was relayed solely to the Texas House Speaker.
The memo also discusses three countercharges that DeLay made against Chris Bell. Two of them - that the complaint was not properly filed, and that Bell solicited outside help in drafting it - were dismissed. The third, that Bell's complaint included "innuendo, speculative assertions and conclusory statements in violation of Committee Rule 15(a)(4)" was deferred with the intent "to bring it before the Committee in the near future." Nothing further was said about it. Bell might be vulnerable here based on the language used in dismissing much of Complaint 1. I have no clue when or if the committee will pursue this further.
Finally, the memo discusses and dismisses the suggestion that an outside counsel should have been appointed. I thought this was the weakest part of the whole thing. On the other hand, perhaps the clamor to outsource the job spurred the Committee into actually taking action on it themselves.
So there you have it. And just in case you think you're about to go into DeLay Sleaze Withdrawal, the Chron reports on evidence which "indicates DeLay was more than a passive participant in TRMPAC fund-raising events." There'll always be more where that came from when DeLay is involved.
The House Ethics Committee is supposed to have met at 2 PM EDT to (finally) decide what to do on the Chris Bell ethics complaint against Tom DeLay. Let's hope they take this group's advice and appoint an outside counsel.
I note with some amusement that Judicial Watch is calling on DeLay to step down as Majority Leader. They don't even address the Bell complaint here (though they do call on the ranking Democrat on the Ethics Committee to recuse himself for discussing the case with Nancy Pelosi) - their beef is over the admonishment DeLay got for the Medicare vote wrongdoing. Judicial Watch is and has always been a bunch of cranks, but every once in awhile they're cranks who advocate something I agree with.
Richard Morrison notes DeLay's continuing ethical struggles. Click the More link for his take on the Judicial Watch action and other related items.
UPDATE: I've heard the same rumor as Andrew D. We should know Real Soon Now. There's more from the Christian Science Monitor (via ToTD) and The Hill (via Byron). Check this out from the Hill article:
Something else that will determine what effect the admonishments and controversies will have on DeLay’s future is how Republicans fare in the upcoming election.“I think it could add up eventually, but I don’t think it’s a problem for him right now,” said Rep. Ray LaHood, a fifth-term Republican from Illinois who is close to Hastert. LaHood then referred to the Texas legal proceedings: “I think people will be watching the grand jury investigation and the election.”
“If we pick up four or five seats [in Texas], that’ll help the conference,” LaHood added. “I think there would be a lot of appreciation for [DeLay] because he got it done.”
UPDATE: MSNBC reports a second rebuke for DeLay.
The House ethics committee Wednesday criticized House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for conduct that appeared to link political donations to legislation and for improperly contacting U.S. aviation authorities for political purposes, House sources said Wednesday.The committee’s findings were an extraordinary second rebuke of the Texas Republican’s ethical conduct in just six days.
The committee of five Democrats and five Republicans deferred to Texas authorities’ allegations that DeLay violated state campaign finance rules.
The committee’s findings — a letter admonishing his conduct — nonetheless spared him a lengthy investigation by the ethics panel.
[...]
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the report had not yet been released.
DELAY’S DOWNWARD SPIRAL
Conservative Group Calls for DeLay to Step Down
GOP Reps Say DeLay’s Ethics a Problem
(Houston- October 6, 2004) –Today Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest group, called on Tom DeLay to step down as Majority Leader. The group called DeLay’s coercion of another Member surrounding the Medicare prescription drug bill “inappropriate and unacceptable.” Judicial Watch is best known for their repeated attacks on former President Clinton.
Several Republican House members have also acknowledged that DeLay’s ethics problems are threatening his position. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said DeLay’s future “depends on the outcome” of the ethics investigation. Another Republican member said, “Until some of these issues are cleared, the Leader has a problem.”
“DeLay tries to hide behind his political lieutenants and when that doesn’t work he resorts to blaming his ethics problems on Democrats, “ said Morrison. “But he can’t blame the Democrats any longer because conservatives and members of his own party are calling for his resignation. Tom DeLay is finally being exposed for the corrupt politician that he is.”
Republicans are at the head of two of the three recent ethics investigations. The House Ethics committee admonished DeLay after Republican Rep. Nick Smith (MI) claimed DeLay attempted to bribe him with political favors in exchange for his ‘yes’ vote on the controversial Medicare bill. DeLay tries to blame Democrats for the two other corruption investigations he’s closely tied to. The TRMPAC indictments and ongoing investigations are the result of Travis County DA Ronnie Earle, a Democrat. However, DeLay conveniently omits the fact that most of the elected officials Earle has indicted are Democrats. And the most recent corruption case involving former DeLay spokesman, Mike Scanlon and close advisor, Jack Abramoff is led by two prominent Republicans – Senator John McCain of Arizona and Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado.
”DeLay is on a downward spiral,” said Morrison. “He can try and spin his way out of this one, but he still has to face the voters on Election Day.”
DeLay has been reprimanded three times by the House Ethics committee and is currently facing another ethics complaint for money laundering and abuse of power.
The Chronicle finally realizes there's less than four week to Election Day, and so they better get cracking on endorsements. (The Dallas Morning News has already made seventeen endorsements.) They get started by endorsing City Prop 1 while opposing City Prop 2. I could have seen them go either way on Prop 1, and I fully expected their opposition to Prop 2, so no surprises there.
Though they do occasionally surprise me, I feel like I can usually predict how the Chron will dole out its endorsements. With that, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and prognosticate it. Here's who I think the Chron will endorse:
For President: George W. Bush. The President would have to bite the head off of a live bat and urinate on the Alamo during the next debate for the Chron to have a chance of overcoming their inherent Bushophilia. I just don't see any other possibility here.
For Congress: Mike McCaul over Lorenzo Sadun, Al Green over Arlette Molina, and Richard Morrison over Tom DeLay. All incumbents otherwise, including Nick Lampson over Ted Poe.
Normally, the Chron is loath to go against powerful incumbents (more on this soon). The main exceptions to this are where they consider the incumbent to be tainted by scandal and corruption, and where they feel the incumbent puts his or her own interests above those of their constituents. DeLay, whom they last endorsed in 1998, fits on both counts. The Chron took a pass on CD22 in 2000 and gave the nod to Tim Riley in 2002. I'll be shocked if they reverse themselves here.
State House: I've been trying to convince myself that they'll give the nod to Hubert Vo over Talmadge Heflin, but as noted above, I just don't see the Chron advocating the defeat of a senior committee chair. Given that, and given that there's no Democratic opposition for Moldy Joe Nixon or Debbie "Pit of Hell" Riddle, I'm calling this a straight sweep for the incumbents. There's a chance they could go with Vo, and outside chance they could pick Jim Daugherty over one-termer Martha "No Thong" Wong (whom they did not endorse in 2002), and a tiny chance they could do something oddball in some other race I'm not considering, but I say the smart money is on those with "Re-Elect" on their campaign signs.
Countywide races: It's not a slamdunk, but I feel pretty confident that the Chron will support Reggie McKamie for District Attorney over Chuck Rosenthal. They've justifiably pounded Rosenthal in the editorials for his handling of the Crime Lab debacle, so this pick stands out even if I have a little niggling doubt in the back of my mind. For sure, they'll go with the incumbents elsewhere - Paul Bettencourt for Tax Assessor, and Tommy Thomas for Sheriff.
As for the countywide judicial races, I think they'll essentially follow the HBA poll, which means all incumbents plus Kathy Stone and Devon Anderson. I could see them maybe picking Bruce Mosier over Bill Burke, and they might have another curveball in there just for the heck of it, but again, the odds say they'll stick with who they know.
I offer no opinion on the JP, constable, or non-countywide judicial races. There's one contested State Supreme Court race, and (surprise!) I expect them to go with incumbent Scott Brister over Democratic challenger David Van Os.
That's how I see it. Feel free to make your own predictions known in the comments. I'll try to keep a running score of how well I guessed.
A former assistant treasurer at Enron pleaded guilty Tuesday to a charge of conspiracy to commit securities fraud for lying to credit rating agencies.
Timothy Despain, 39, faces up to five years in prison. But he has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, and the government is granting him immunity from prosecution for any other possible criminal activity in connection with his work at Enron or his subsequent employer, Halliburton.In the plea agreement, Despain, assistant treasurer at Enron from January 1999 to May 2002, admitted to lying regularly to credit-rating agencies to falsely bolster Enron's ratings.
Prosecutor Sean Berkowitz told the judge that Despain participated in schemes to falsely claim cash flow of at least $5 billion.
Tuesday afternoon, Despain explained his crimes to U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein and said others who participated with him include ex-Enron treasurers Ben Glisan Jr. and Jeff McMahon.
He acknowledged that, at the behest of the treasurers of Enron, he and others frequently misrepresented cash flow to hide the nature of the transactions and benefit from the pumped-up credit rating.
"I and others intentionally withheld relevant information from the rating agencies about the true financial performance of Enron and way in which Enron achieved its cash flow numbers," Despain said in his plea agreement.
He said the company set cash flow targets arbitrarily, based on what it thought the agencies wanted, and "Enron consistently struggled to achieve the cash flow targets it had set for itself."
After Enron's collapse, Despain went to work for Halliburton but is no longer employed there. His last job there was as a director of performance management in a budgeting section of finance, according to Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall.
"This has nothing to do with Halliburton whatsoever, and reporting it as if it does is false and misleading," she said.
[...]
Dan Hedges, former U.S. attorney for Houston and now a defense attorney, said Despain's plea agreement "is a good indication that he's discussed his activities at Halliburton with prosecutors.
"Now, whether any of it constitutes criminal activity is another question."
A former Merrill Lynch executive wrote in e-mail that Enron's former chief financial officer promised to "pay us back no matter what" for an investment in power barges in Nigeria, according to evidence introduced during trial Tuesday.
In a March 2, 2000, message to a colleague discussing difficulties with a Continental Airlines construction-finance project, James Brown suggested getting some sort of oral assurance from the airline, just as it had done with Enron on a past deal."We had a similar precedent with Enron last year and we had Fastow get on the phone with Bayly and lawyers and promise to pay us back no matter what," Brown said in the e-mail message, referring to Enron CFO Andrew Fastow and former Merrill executive Daniel Bayly, who like Brown is on trial. "Deal was approved and all went well."
Joyce Jillson, famed astrologer, dead at 58. Do I really have to make the joke here, people?
Vice President Cheney, last night: "Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer.... The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."
Except for the 2001 National Prayer Breakfast.
"Thank you. Thank you very much. Congressman Watts, Senator Edwards, friends from across America and distinguished visitors to our country from all over the world, Lynne and I honored to be with you all this morning."
The first link also notes that as per Senate tradition, Sen. John Edwards escorted Liddy Dole onto the floor for her swearing in, which was performed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
I'm sure Mr. Cheney will clarify his remarks any day now.
UPDATE: And another picture, with John Edwards standing behind Sen. Dole as she gets sworn in ("in", not "at") by Cheney. According to Kos, Tim Russert is now saying that Cheney and Edwards met and shook hands backstage before his show. But hey, what's three little meetings?
UPDATE: Ooooh, this is even better: Mary Beth notes that for much of 2004, Vice President Cheney was delinquent in his Constitutional duty to preside over the Senate. Maybe that's why he didn't remember meeting John Edwards before - it'd been too long since Cheney had had the opportunity to do so.
UPDATE: SoonerGrunt notes that John Edwards has presided over the Senate as many times as Dick Cheney has since 2001. And the story of Cheney's "we've never met" fib is now on the wires.
I probably should have already blogged about the Governor's refusal to halt executions while the godawful Houston Crime Lab mess gets cleaned up, but if you've been waiting for me to do so I hope you've already seen what Ginger and Norbizness and Steve Bates have had to say. I'm a reluctant supporter of the death penalty, but I can't say it'd be any great loss if we executed about 90% fewer criminals than we do now. I'm glad to see that today's scheduled killing is temporarily on hold. All I want to ask Governor Perry is "What's the rush?" These guys aren't going anywhere. Given how badly the crime lab here screwed the pooch, I think we owe it to everyone involved to make sure that the evidence still says what we once thought it said for all of the potentially tainted cases before we start up the lethal injection carousel again. Like I said, these guys aren't going anywhere.
UPDATE: Turns out last night's execution went ahead as planned anyway.
Inspired by this Kevin Drum post, I took a little informal yard-sign survey of my neighborhood this past weekend. Now, I expected Kerry/Edwards supporters to greatly outnumber Bush/Cheney fans. I live in a Democratic enclave, I had only seen K/E signs so far walking around, and to the best of my recollection there were more Gore/Lieberman signs than Bush/Cheney by about a 3-1 ratio in 2000. (There were also a handful of Nader/LaDukes, and one lonely personal billboard for Harry Browne, the Libertarian candidate.) So I drove around and I counted how many houses had K/E signs, and how many had B/Cs.
The tally: 74 for Kerry/Edwards, six for Bush/Cheney. Oh, and one for Michael Badnarik; it was in front of the same house that had supported Harry Browne, as best I could tell.
Seventy-four to six. I expected a big difference, but a 12-1 ratio was more than I thought. Maybe, just maybe, Kerry's supporters are more enthusiastic than you might think. As for Bush/Cheney, I feel pretty certain there were more than six signs in their favor last time, but at the time I didn't realize I'd someday have an audience for that kind of rumination, so I can't say for sure what their level of support was. I can say for sure that K/E is kicking G/L's behind.
I'll check again the weekend before the election and see what the final tally is. How does it look where you are?
Not quite at the thirteen million mark yet for Texas, though the data in this story is about two weeks old.
Texas — one of 16 states with the deadline — expects the final figures will reveal a record number of voter registrations.The latest figures available show 12,916,390 Texans registered to vote by late September, according to the Texas secretary of state's office.
That's 80.4 percent of the voting age population of 16,071,153.
For the 2000 election, when then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush was making his first run for president, registration was 85.3 percent of the voting age population of 12,365,235.
The final tally from the HCDP Sharpstown headquarters was over 2500. And Sarah reports an amazing 12,464 registrations in Travis County on deadline day. Wow!
Another victory for free speech in Lubbock.
In a major decision affecting the way public universities allow public speech, U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings knocked down a Texas Tech policy that establishes free-speech zones.Cummings ruled Thursday partially in favor of Tech School of Law graduate Jason W. Roberts, who contended that the university violated his First Amendment rights by requiring him to move a speech he planned into a free-speech zone.
The ruling declared that a public institution designating free speech exclusively to such zones is unconstitutional.
The impact of the judgment remains in question. Cummings' direct dialogue as outlined in the decision will definitely affect campuses with designated free-speech zones, although he stopped short of ruling that Tech violated Roberts' rights."The bottom line remains that the university never ultimately denied him permission to engage in constitutionally protected speech on campus," Cummings said in a lengthy decision.
Indeed, although victory solidified in the hands of free-speech advocates, Tech remained absolved.
The plaintiffs expected it that way.
In May 2003, Roberts applied for a permit to make a speech on Tech's grounds through the Center for Campus Life. He planned to express his views against homosexuality, according to his lawsuit. When that application was rejected, Tech officials actually told Roberts he could carry his speech just 20 feet away in the free-speech zone.
"The use of university grounds, as stated in the university policy, is encouraged for activities, which are intended to serve or benefit the entire university community," said Mary Donahue, assistant director of the Center for Campus Life, in a May 29, 2003, e-mail to Roberts rejecting his specific request. "It is the view of the committee that your request is the expression of a personal belief and thus, is something more appropriate for the free-speech area."
That did not sit well with Roberts. He filed a complaint against Donald R. Haragan, then Tech's president, and the school's board of regents. Although both sides worked to come to a consensus — which resulted in Tech developing an interim policy on the free-speech zone — the new decision places an injunction against practicing the policy. Tech officials did not return calls or were unavailable for comment all day Friday.
Secondly, it looks like this ruling is stronger than the UH one. In that case, the complainants had been restricted to a less-heavily trafficked area of the campus. Here, the "zone" was 20 feet away from where the plaintiff wanted to be. Without knowing the exact layout of the area, I don't think it would be too hard to make a case that 20 feet doesn't impose an unreasonable barrier. Given that the judge saw otherwise, that seems to me a pretty clear message that universities (and hopefully other public institutions) need to rethink their policies.
Lastly, I obviously don't agree at all with what Mr. Roberts had to say. But you can't win a battle of ideas by suppression. Let him have his say so we can all see it for what it is. Ultimately, I think that's for the best.
I believe I have identified another sign of the impending apocalypse: Caffeinated beer.
Budweiser's new brew, Be, pronounced "B-to-the-e," is a cross between an energy drink and a beer."You'll be able to wake up and dull the senses at the same time," said Eric Shepard, executive editor of Beer Marketer's Insights, a trade publication.
In addition to its caffeine content, about as much as in a can of Mountain Dew, the beer will include ginseng and guarana, a Brazilian berry.It will be the first time a major brewer has infused beer with these unusual ingredients, said Pat McGauley, senior director of new products and high-end brands for Anheuser-Busch.
"In the ongoing evolution of the alcohol industry, we're delivering what the consumer is asking for," McGauley said Monday during a conference call with reporters.
And here we are again for another exciting Texas Tuesday, with our special guest star Chet Edwards. Get the latest scoop and a Q&A here and here. We're officially in the home stretch now, with four weeks to go, and every dollar is donated is huge. You kow what comes next - Give to Chet Edwards, give to all the deserving Democrats, and/or give to the DCCC. I thank you, they thank you, and your country thanks you.
How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb?
None. "There's nothing wrong with that light bulb. It has served us honorably. When you say it's burned out, you're giving encouragement to the forces of darkness. Once we install a light bulb, we never, ever change it. Real men don't need artificial light."
UPDATE: The normally-more-respectable-than-that Nick Confessore jumps in.
Katy Hubener will be in Austin tonight for a fundraiser. I'm just going to crib from Byron here:
Help take back the Texas House! Do your part to meet a rising star in the Texas Democratic party:KATY HUBENER, Candidate for Texas House of Representatives, District 106 (Grand Prairie and Irving in the DFW area).
Katy Hubener is one of the best state house Democratic pick-up opportunities. She has been featured as by Howard Dean as a Dean dozen candidate, and has been featured by Texas Tuesdays and has received strong backing from Annie's List (the Texas version of EMILY's list supporting pro-choice female Democratic candidates).
TODAY, MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2004
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
HOSTED BY NANCY HOFFMAN AND LINDA LEFF
6311 MESA DRIVE - AUSTIN, TEXAS 78731
For more info, Email: NHOFFMAN1@AUSTIN.RR.COM or CALL 512-346-1826 or check out her webpage.
What can you say about the Astros? They won 36 of their last 46 games, which is just outrageous. They also owe some thanks to the Cubs. Check the standings in today's paper. Over the last 10 games, the Stros, who finished 3 games ahead of the Cubs, went 9-1. Dusty Baker's crew went 3-7, meaning they went from 3 up to 3 down in ten games. Ouch.
(The question needs to be asked, now that the Phillies have finally fired Larry Bowa: When will the Cubs realize that Dusty Baker needs to be fired? The Baseball Prospectus guys found evidence to suggest that he got more than expected out of his teams in San Francisco, but he's done the opposite at Wrigley. Cub fans really ought to be incensed at how this season ended.)
Tom notes how the Stros have done under their last three managers. I didn't think much of Phil Garner coming in, but give credit where it's due. Until further notice, he's more than earned the job.
Can they finally win a playoff series? A coworker of mine just asked me if I was going to root for the Braves, since cheering for the Stros in the postseason never works. A little reverse psychology never hurts, I guess.
Of course, all I really care about is the Yankees. Anyone who placed a bet at the beginning of the season on Jon Lieber being their Game 2 starter, please forward me all of your lottery number selections for the next decade. What more can I say?
So Kerry appears to have won the post-debate spin as well as the debate, and it's showing in the polls. Of course, as Steve Casburn reminds us, Walter Mondale did pretty well in the first debate of 1984, too, so this is no time to relax. With Johnny Sunshine going against Dick Effing Cheney tomorrow and Bush-Kerry II - Electric Boogaloo later on, I expect to exhale again sometime around Saturday.
You want to know why exactly Kerry kicked Bush's tuchus in the first debate? Check out this DCCC video and see.
This is hilarious: Tom DeLay was scheduled to be in Austin at 11 AM today for a fundraiser for his own campaign. Democrats were going to greet him with a protest outside the venue. Apparently, the thought of that so spooked him that he rescheduled the event for 8 AM instead, and snuck in and out unprotested. I've reproduced an email from Capitol Inside with the details beneath the More link, along with a statement from State Democratic Party Chair Charles Soechting, but I've got to hand it to the guy. You'd think it'd be impossible for him to go anywhere unnoticed with all of the thunderclouds, swarms of bats, and "Toccata and Fugue" music following him around, but he managed to pull it off. That's pretty impressive skulduggery in my book.
(Thanks to Matt and to HellieMae for forwarding the Capitol Inside email, and to Kelly for the Soechting email.)
UPDATE: The Express-News picks up the story.
Capitol Inside
October 4, 2004
DeLay Stays One Step Ahead of Critics with Last-Minute Scheduling Switch
BY Mike Hailey
Now you see him, now you don't.
U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay outfoxed local Democrats who'd been
planning to protest his appearance at a Monday fundraiser in downtown
Austin. The powerful Texan slipped into town four hours earlier than
originally scheduled, started raising cash for his re-election campaign
and hoped to hit the road before any angry protestors arrived on the scene.
Going into Monday, Democrats had hoped to have several hundred people
packing the street outside the Austin Club during the fundraising event to
draw attention to DeLay's ties to the political action committee at the
center of more than two dozen indictments that were returned two weeks ago
by a Travis County grand jury investigating corporate influence in the
2002 state House elections. Three fundraising consultants for the Texans
for a Republican Majority and several corporations face criminal charges
in the ongoing probe.
But DeLay pulled a fast one on the Democrats with a last-minute change of
plans. He had sponsors move the fundraiser from the noon hour up to to 8
a.m. Lobbyists and others who'd indicated plans to attend the event were
alerted Sunday night to the scheduling revisions. According to planners,
the time of the event was changed so DeLay could get back to Washington in
time for a key vote on the floor of the U.S. House. DeLay's supporters
dismissed suggestions that he was trying to elude protestors with the
sudden scheduling shift.
DeLay arrived at the Austin Club about 7:50 a.m. in a black Cadillac
Escalade sports utility vehicle, which followed another car into an alley
off 9th Street between Congress Avenue and Brazos Street. The congressman,
who was accompanied by a small security detail, entered the building
througha sid e door on the alley. There wasn't a single protestor in sight
at the time.
The Austin fundraiser was designed to help DeLay raise cash for his
general election race against Democrat Richard Morrison, a Sugar Land
lawyer who's attempting to overcome long odds in challenging the second
most powerful Republican in the U.S. House. Democrats became incensed when
they heard last week that DeLay planned to raise money for his re-election
in Austin just a few blocks from the county courthouse where District
Attorney Ronnie Earle has been leading the grand jury inquiry since early
2003.
But even though TRMPAC was modeled and named after a national leadership
PAC run by DeLay, the former legislator from the Houston area has insisted
that he had nothing to do with the state committee's activities in the
legislative contests two years ago. Two of the consultants who were
indicted, however, are based in Washington and have close ties to DeLay.
TRMPAC helped the GOP seize its first majority in the Texas House since
Reconstruction - and that led to the election of Speaker Tom Craddick at
the start of the regular session last year. Craddick has also been a
target of the probe for activities believed to be related to his race in
2002 for the House's top job. With a Republican majority and speaker in
place, DeLay was able to persuade the the Legislature into redrawing
congressional districts so the GOP could finally claim a majority in the
U.S. House delegation from Texas as well.
Soechting Calls on Texas Politicians Who Took DeLayąs Money to Donate it to Children's Health Care; Blasts DeLay for Running Away
(Austin, TX) -- Texas Democratic Party Chairman Charles Soechting today called on all Texas politicians who have taken money from embattled U.S. Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Sugar Land) to donate it to local children's health care programs.
"Tom DeLay has become the most insidious threat to the democratic process since Joseph McCarthy," Soechting said. "Any politician here in Texas who has pocketed his campaign cash then voted to strip children of their health care coverage should take a small step to fix their mistake by giving that money to a local hospital or medical clinic."
DeLay, early this morning, snuck into Austin several hours ahead of a scheduled fundraiser to raise money for his campaign. The fundraiser was scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Late last night, DeLay changed it to 8:00 a.m. to avoid the possibility of street protests and a media stakeout.
"He snuck in a back door in a back alley, with a security detail protecting him from the backlash of public scrutiny," Soechting said. "With his top fundraising aides under felony indictment and facing criminal charges of bribery, extortion, fraud, money laundering and abuse of power himself, DeLay has been reduced to skulking around like a fugitive."
Soechting scoffed at DeLay's stated excuse for the last-minute scheduling change: an "important" floor vote this afternoon in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"This is a weak excuse from the man who schedules all floor votes in the first place or holds them open for hours at a time to make sure he can twist arms and extort support for his radical agenda," Soechting said.
Soechting said that the earliest anything resembling an "important" floor vote could happen is 6:30 p.m. -- and even that possible vote was unlikely for today.
Last week, organizers of a fundraiser for a Louisiana congressional candidate abruptly canceled plans for a visit from DeLay. Today's sparsely attended stealth fundraiser in Austin provided further evidence that even DeLay's fellow ideologues are distancing themselves from the stench of corruption following him around.
The bad news: Today is the deadline to register to vote for the 2004 election in the state of Texas. If you are still unregistered, you pretty much need to haul ass to a County Clerk or Tax Assessor office, or hope to run into a Voter Reg drive somewhere (such as the HCDP Sharpstown Mall office, which will continue running full steam through the last hour today), or else you'll be left out.
The good news: Today is the last day you'll hear me nag you about registering to vote.
The other bad news: After today, I'll start nagging you about early voting and getting out the vote.
The other good news: Only 29 days left of that nagging.
As a mass-transit-loving, short-commute-driving liberal, I can certainly get behind proposals like this. I just have a hard time believing they'll ever see the light of day around here.
Texas is among a group of states researching how to replace the fuel tax with a fee based on the number of miles traveled — making every road a virtual tollway. Transportation officials from across the world discussed the concept here at last month's annual meetings of the trade groups representing the highway and tollway industries.Fees for miles traveled would be measured by Global Positioning System receivers embedded in vehicles. The system would track which roads a motorist uses so the virtual tolls could be distributed to the appropriate agency.
Each jurisdiction could set its own per-mile fee. Data would be downloaded from vehicles monthly for billing, or could be transmitted at service stations in lieu of the gas tax.
Researchers love the idea that driving taxes could be adjusted to promote or discourage certain actions. The system could charge more per mile during peak hours, for instance, or add a surcharge for heavy trucks and sport utility vehicles.Those promoting a mileage-based approach to highway taxes contend driving should be metered and billed according to use.
"Why shouldn't transportation be seen as a utility like electricity, water, etc.?" Hal Worrall, a consultant for Transportation Innovations Inc., asked during a panel at the International Bridge, Tunnel and Toll Road Association conference. "It's perceived as free in America and thus produces a large demand."
David Forkenbrock, director of the University of Iowa Public Policy Center, has been working on a model for four years. His research is funded by 15 states, including Texas, and the Federal Highway Administration.
As more hybrid and alternative-power vehicles are built, Forkenbrock said, gas-tax collections will suffer.
"A tax at the point of purchase is inferior to user charges at the exact point of travel," he said, explaining the growth of toll roads in recent years.
UPDATE: Lots of good comments here, and also by Atrios. The privacy concerns are certainly valid (and I figure they're a dealbreaker even before we get to questions of efficacy), as are concerns that any such technology could be defeated. I'm surprised that no one has brought up the example of London, where drivers are charged differing amounts depending on when and where they drive. They've managed to do that without forcing a new device into cars there as well.
It's not clear to me that this is a loser from a conservation perspective. It seems to me that one intended effect of a miles-driven tax would be to encourage people to live closer to where they work and play. I've got coworkers who have 100-mile round trip commutes. I don't care what car they drive, they're using a lot of gasoline. If a mileage tax could be graded in the way that (say) home electricity usage is, so that you pay a higher amount the more you travel per day, this would be an improvement from a revenue-collection and public-policy perspective over a gas tax.
The devil's in the details. That's why I think it's great to talk about stuff like this.
UPDATE: blogHouston notes that many of us already have GPS tracking devices in our cars - they're called EZPass tags.
UPDATE: Sorry, London's system does involve adding RFID tags to existing cars (thanks to Charles E in the comments). Still, it's a useful real-world example.
I've mentioned MetroBlogging before, so I'm pleased to note that the site now covers Houston. Looks like it ought to be a pretty good resource for the arts and entertainment scene, so if that excites you, you know where to look.
Kevin has announced the release of blogHouston, which is a more news-oriented blog focusing on, well, Houston. As their About page notes, they took inspiration for the site from the now-defunct LAExaminer site, so if you were a fan of that, you'll surely be a fan of them. I'm adding both to my Bloglines subscriptions and expect to check them regularly. Check 'em out.
The state of Texas has a lot more registered voters this year than in 2000.
Nearly 700,000 Texans have registered to vote since early March, a surge driven by interest in the presidential race and hotly contested congressional races, officials said Friday.By Election Day, Nov. 2, more than 13 million Texans are expected to be registered to vote, said Luis Saenz, Texas' assistant secretary of state.
In the 2002 elections, when Republicans trounced Democrats for the state's top elected offices, registered voters totaled about 12.5 million.
Registration this year has been particularly heavy in Dallas and Travis counties. And in Harris County, election officials were conducting a "voter-thon" Friday in hope of getting more people to register.
In Tarrant County, more than 40,000 new voters have registered since the March 9 Republican and Democratic primaries, Elections Administrator Robert Parten said Friday.
He said he expects 50,000 more voters to register by the Monday deadline, bringing the number of registered voters in Tarrant County to more than 900,000.
The rate of increase is about the same as in the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections, Parten said, noting that no heavily contested races countywide are on this year's ballot.
The registration rate might have dropped from previous presidential elections if not for interest in an Arlington initiative in which voters are being asked to invest tax money in a new $650 million Dallas Cowboys stadium, he said.
That debate, and the race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, may draw as many as 65 percent of Tarrant County's registered voters to the polls, Parten predicted.
In Dallas County, where more than 1 million people are registered to vote, officials say they have seen a larger increase in voter registration than in 2000.
Since July 1, more than 49,000 additional voters had signed up, said Danny Clayton, Dallas County's supervisor for voter registration. During the same period in 2000, voter rolls grew by only 33,000 people, he said.
Clayton said the increased interest in the elections is attributable partly to the high-profile race between U.S. Reps. Martin Frost, a Democrat, and Pete Sessions, a Republican, for a congressional district entirely within Dallas County.
Election officials in Parker and Johnson counties say population growth has increased their voter participation. An added incentive in Johnson County is the tight congressional race between U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, a Democrat, and Republican state Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth.
And the HCDP Sharpstown location hit its goal of 2000 new registrations last night. Someone get Greg a fruity rum drink and a cold cloth for his forehead.
UPDATE: Here's some anecdotal evidence from Dallas. Thanks to Crispin for the link.
Some years ago, I created a series of Get To Know Your Neighbor questionnaires for a mailing list I was on. One of the questions was "What are the five categories you'd most like to see in Double Jeopardy? What are the five you'd least like to see?" That generated a lot of good responses, most of which amusing but highly unlikely to ever be seen as actual categories on the show.
Up until today, I'd have considered "Blogs" to be a category highly unlikely ever to be seen on Jeopardy. Apparently, the writers for Jeopardy thought otherwise. Now there's a new standard for how you know you've truly made it as a blogger. Via Kevin Drum.
(For the record, my Five Best Categories (as best I recall) were something like Baseball, Bridge, Classic Rock, Math, and Reasons Why The Network Is Down Today, while my Five Worst were Russian Poetry, Top 40 Music, Broccoli, Foreign Film, and Understanding Women. Most of those would still work today.)
Rep. Max Sandlin picked up the endorsement of the Texas Farm Bureau, who had previously endorsed Rep. Chet Edwards but for whatever the reason declined to endorse Rep. Charlie Stenholm. Maybe they wanted to appear bipartisan, or maybe Stenholm's opponent was the only one of the three with actual ag cred. Not as much as Stenholm, of course, but surely more than Edwards and Sandlin's opposites.
Speaking of Edwards, you'll no doubt be shocked to hear that his opponent is running misleading ads about him. I'll give you a moment to recover from that.
Lorenzo Sadun picked up a Best Of award from the Austin Chronicle.
I saw another campaign ad last night, on TBS during the A&M-KState football game. This was an anti-Nick Lampson ad produced by the NRCC. They claimed Lampson was "bad for small businesses", citing that famously disinterested third party the Texas Association of Business. I had a hard time not laughing.
On a more serious note, Lampson is being attacked for his support of gay rights. I'm sure we'll be hearing more of this sort of thing before it's all over. (Aside: Somebody needs to tell the Houston Voice who Lampson's opponent is. I mean, Steve Stockman??)
Did I mention that Richard Morrison reached his fundraising goal of $250,000 for the quarter? Yes, I believe I did.
Michael Scanlon, the DeLay who along with Jack Abramoff is under investigation for swindling an Indian tribe over lobbying fees for their casino, is holed up in his house so he can't get served with a subpoena.
Michael Scanlon, a public-relations consultant and former aide to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) now under investigation for his business dealings with Indian tribes, failed to show up to testify before a Senate panel yesterday after federal marshals were unable to serve him with the committee’s subpoena.“The U.S. marshals tell us Mr. Scanlon is hiding out in his house with the blinds drawn,” said Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, after the hearing. “But we’re going to [subpoena] him again. He will be before the committee one way or another. … I want to ask him questions. He is going to have to duck and dodge.”
Scanlon was scheduled to testify before the committee yesterday in a hearing about allegations that he and lobbyist Jack Abramoff had misused up to $66 million in fees paid to them by six Indian tribes made wealthy by gaming revenue.
Scanlon’s lawyer, Stephen Braga, did not return a call for comment. Abramoff appeared at the hearing but invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to respond to questions.
There's quite a bit more about the testimony so far, so read the whole thing. Via Alan.
There is now a magazine devoted to cheerleaders in Texas. No, not that kind of magazine.
Denise Martin, owner of Chants & Cheers, a Cedar Park cheerleading studio, two weeks ago kicked off the quarterly magazine Texas Cheerleader.The magazine is a timely endeavor -- one out of every four of the nation's competitive school spirit squads is from Texas, according to a 2002-03 survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations in Indianapolis. Competitive cheerleading also has become one of the fastest-growing high school sports for girls, the same study shows. Locally, the Capital City Cheer & Dance Championship, for example, will be held Oct. 31 at the Austin Convention Center.
The 36-year-old Martin, who was a Spurs Silver Dancer in 1995-96, said a statewide magazine is needed because cheerleaders care about trends, rivalries and competition in their area.
Karen Halterman, executive director for the National Cheerleaders Association, agrees. "There's definitely more room for something localized for the Texas cheerleader."
Texas Cheerleader is targeted to school-age cheerleaders and dance troupes. It will feature articles on injury prevention and cheer fashion, profiles of professional cheerleaders and dates of area competitions. The current edition spotlights two San Antonio Spurs Silver Dancers. Martin even tried -- unsuccessfully -- to get an interview with Gov. Rick Perry, a former yell leader for Texas A&M University.
I won't make any cheap jokes about this endeavor. Frankly, I'm shocked there wasn't already such a publication. Apparently, it's the first of its kind anywhere, but imitators in other states may soon follow.
With the admonishment of the Ethics Committee in the case of the Nick Smith arm-twisting and with the Bell complaint still pending, Democrats are putting the pressure on Tom DeLay.
House Democrats, emboldened by the ethics committee's public rebuke of GOP leader Tom DeLay, went on a blistering offensive Friday, demanding a full investigation into the "stench of corruption" surrounding the Texas Republican.While Republicans rallied around their leader and political observers weighed the rebuke's impact, Democrats pounced as they sensed a turn of momentum against DeLay.
"The ethical cloud surrounding Tom DeLay has quickly grown into a thunderstorm," said U.S. Rep. Chris Bell, a Houston Democrat whose separate ethics complaint against DeLay has been pending since mid-June. "The stench of corruption emanating from Mr. DeLay and his associates has become too pungent to ignore any longer -- even in Washington."
Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, once steadfast in her refusal to address complaints against DeLay, found her voice after the ethics committee admonished DeLay late Thursday for offering a political favor in return for a representative's vote on the Medicare prescription drug bill.
"The rebuke of Tom DeLay by the ethics committee is yet another ethical cloud hanging over the Capitol," said Pelosi, D-Calif. "Mr. DeLay's offer to trade political support for a vote for the shameful Medicare prescription drug bill is completely inappropriate."
[...]
Thursday's rebuke gives Democrats a "beachhead" for criticism of DeLay that, coupled with the Travis County grand jury investigation and Bell's complaint, could become a growing distraction, said Ross K. Baker, political science professor at Rutgers University.
"I think (the noose) is tightening. I don't think it's cutting off his oxygen supply yet, but I think it has the potential to do that," said Baker, author of "House and Senate," used in college government courses.
"This is how it starts. This is how it started with Jim Wright; this is how it started with Newt Gingrich," he said. "Once a couple of solid blows are landed, the temptation for the majority leader's adversaries is to really start raining on the punches."
[...]
Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar for the nonpartisan American Enterprise Institute, said he believed the relatively mild rebuke fit the infraction. Still, he said, the action could have a greater consequence -- forcing the ethics committee to act on Bell's 3 1/2-month-old complaint.
"If the ethics committee says, after all of this, that we are not going to investigate -- or worse deadlocks on a partisan vote -- then I think that reaches a level of embarrassment that even the ethics committee can't tolerate," Ornstein said.
"A lot of members on Capitol Hill believe in the concept of 'three strikes, you're out,' " said Fred Wertheimer, a longtime advocate of public ethics and president of Democracy 21. "And Mr. DeLay has two strikes and a third case pending."Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, who often writes about congressional ethics, said, "I think the drip, drip, drip may create a problem for him now."
[...]
The liberal Campaign for America's Future called on Republicans to oust DeLay from this leadership post, and several groups — including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington — demanded that the ethics committee aggressively pursue the pending complaint, filed in June by Rep. Chris Bell (D-Tex.).
Some Democrats say DeLay's ethics battles already are making him less potent on the campaign trail. A recent New Orleans Times-Picayune article on GOP House candidate Billy Tauzin III was headlined "DeLay's stumping for Tauzin is scaled back after scandal." DeLay staffers denied the suggestion and said he is campaigning for Republican House nominees this year at least as much as he did in 2002.
Nonetheless, said George Washington University public affairs professor Stephen Hess, the accumulation of accusations should trouble DeLay's friends because "the history of these things is that eventually it does wear down" a politician's support. DeLay has survived past storms, Hess said, partly because he "has been a shrewd enough leader to have many if not most of his legislative constituents beholden to him."
It was just that strategy that led to this week's admonishment.
The big news is that Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, admitted that he offered to endorse Smith's son Brad, who was running for Congress at the time, in exchange for Smith's "yea" vote on the Medicare bill. According to the Ethics Committee—more precisely, its investigative subcommittee—this is a violation of House rules and warrants "public admonishment." But it may warrant a good deal more.The Ethics Committee wasn't able to find anyone who would admit having mentioned to Smith that his vote was worth $100,000, and Smith (for reasons that are getting clearer) now contradicts his earlier statements and says no bribe—and certainly no $100,000—was ever offered. But DeLay's statement alone is grounds for indictment. United States Code, Title 18, Section 201, "Bribery of public officials and witnesses," states that a bribe can be "anything of value." There's an exception for horse-trading confined wholly to government business—you vote for my bill and I'll vote for yours—because that's constitutionally protected. But endorsing a candidate for office is not government business. There are no House committees that vote on DeLay's endorsements, or Cabinet secretaries who issue them as regulations. DeLay doesn't even have to clear them with the House speaker (who at any rate seems to take orders from DeLay, not the other way around). When DeLay endorses someone, he's speaking for himself and his party.
Would an endorsement by DeLay have been "of value" to Smith? You bet, and not simply because DeLay is a nationally recognized figure in the Republican Party. DeLay is well known to have access to enormous quantities of corporate cash (not all of it necessarily obtained legally). In the current election cycle, his PAC, Americans for a Republican Majority, has given out $775, 278. None of the other so-called "leadership PACs" controlled by members of Congress come close to spending this kind of money. A DeLay endorsement means big bucks. Smith acknowledged to the Ethics Committee this inescapable logical connection (thereby edging toward recanting his recantation) by admitting "he would have associated the offer of an endorsement with willingness to provide financial assistance in the form of contributions to his son's campaign." Well, duh.
The independent Congress candidate Michael Fjetland, running against DeLay, says, "These indictments show that Rep. DeLay has close associates involved in activities that appear to be directed by DeLay himself. If so, it would require he step down as majority leader and Congressional representative of District."
"Unfortunately, the flaw with a political system controlled by one-party, is that Democrats don't prosecute Democrats and Republicans don't prosecute Republicans who step over the legal line. Our founding fathers believed in checks and balances. If it was OK for a Republican DeLay to pursue impeachment of a Democrat President for improper conduct, then it should be OK for a Democrat District Attorney to pursue DeLay and his associates for the same conduct-especially for clear violations of State law."
By the way, the Morrison campaign notes that it reached its $250,000 fundraising goal for the quarter. That's excellent news, and maybe it means we'll finally see that Morrison TV commercial on the air.
UPDATE: Jeralyn has more.
UPDATE: And still more, from War and Piece and a twofer from Taking on Tom DeLay. Via Byron.
The Houston Bar Association poll this year heavily favors incumbent judges.
Harris County lawyers overwhelmingly supported sitting judges over their challengers and tilted decisively toward Republicans in a poll released Friday by the Houston Bar Association.In one of only two contested judicial races on the Harris County ballot where no incumbent is running, however, poll respondents favored Democratic former Judge Kathy Stone over Republican Sharon McCally for the 334th District Court, a civil bench.
In the other such race, Republican Devon Anderson outpolled Democrat Leslie Ribnik for the 177th District Court, which hears felony criminal cases.
McCally defeated the incumbent in the 334th, Reece Rondon, in the March Republican primary.
Stone was the last Democratic Harris County state district judge to be defeated by a Republican when Sherry Radack beat her in 1998. Since then, the GOP has swept countywide offices.
What will determine these elections is not the HBA poll but partisan turnout. The GOP systematically took over the Harris County judiciary by becoming the majority party. When and if the Democrats regain the edge in voter registrations, they'll do the same. The key is straight ticket voting, which does more to determine the outcome of the down-ballot judicial races than polls, qualifications, or anything else. It's a dumb way to pick judges, but all methods of doing so have their flaws.
As for individual candidates, Kathy Stone, whom I've met and whom I wholeheartedly endorse, may have a small advantage in running against a non-incumbent and winning the HBA poll, though the article I've linked shows the kind of hill she has to climb. Les Ribnik, who is also running against a non-incumbent but who lost the HBA poll, and Bruce Mosier, who came closest to outpolling an incumbent judge, also bear watching. The most interesting candidate the Democrats have running is Zone Nguyen, who is recently back from a stint in the Army JAG Corps (he's a lieutenant in the Reserve), where he helped set up the judicial proceedings at Guantanamo. He gave a talk about that at a lunch I attended a few weeks ago, and it was fascinating.
Just finished watching the last half of the Lost pilot, and I'm totally hooked. The characters are interesting, the premise is gripping, the way we're getting backstories in dribs and drabs is a great device - did I mention that I relly liked this? Yeah, I know, it could all fall apart in an instant, much like (I'm sad to say) The 4400 did at the end (though I'm still rooting for it to be brought back), but for now it's a great ride. If you missed it, both parts of the pilot are being rerun tomorrow (Saturday) night at 8 Eastern, so check it out.
Greg speculated about some of the mysteries after the first half of the pilot. I think we were a bit off in the discussion there. I've put my current hypothesis beneath the More link, so you won't be spoiled if you haven't seen it yet. I'm going to have to start reading Television Without Pity's recaps to make sure I don't miss anything, since there's so much going on.
Anyway. "Lost" rocks. We'll see if Desperate Housewives can make it two-for-two this fall.
After Sawyer shoots the polar bear, and after hearing the 16-year distress message, my current theory is that this is an Island of Dr. Moreau kind of deal. If so, I think we'll find out as a season-ending cliffhanger.
My one concern with this show, as with "Star Trek: Voyager" is that you can only take a gimmick like being stranded so far. In some sense, I want this to be a one-year only show, where some number of the survivors get rescued at the end, and there's an epilogue where we get some clue how they adjust to being home. On the other hand, "M*A*S*H" lasted four times as long as the actual Korean War, and it was a good show for most of it, so who knows? Today I think that one season, two tops, would be optimal, but I could be proven wrong.
Everybody knows that Ichiro! is about to pass George Sisler for the all-time single-season hits record, but to me a more interesting record was broken yesterday: Adam Dunn struck out for the 190th and 191st times, passing Bobby Bonds and his 189 whiffs from 1970 for the single season mark.
Dunn wasn't upset at all by setting the record, actually joking with reporters at first."It's great. I'm the only person that actually has claim to that record. Now I'm just going to try to add on to it before the year is over," he said.
He did admit the record is a rather dubious one.
"Actually it does matter. But, you know, I'm not going to sit and lose sleep over it," he said.
I've never quite understood the stigma attached to strikeouts. Mickey Mantle was the all-time career leader in Ks for years before Reggie Jackson passed him. Last I checked, they were both good guys to have in the lineup. In 2002, when Jose Hernandez sat out the last three games of the season after reaching 188 whiffs, he was the best bat on the Brewers at 288/356/478, all while playing shortstop. Guys who fan a lot get the chance to do so because they hit the ball hard when they hit it. Maybe now that Dunn has reminded us all of that, we can get over it.
Of course, it is a bit odd that strikeouts by batters are not such a big deal, but strikeouts by pitchers are one of the best predictors of success. I've not seen a good sabermetric explanation of this - Rob Neyer was asked the question awhile ago and more or less waved his hands at it.
Getting back to Ichiro! - It's almost a cliche to call a player unique, but there really are no other ballplayers today who are as well-suited to the task of hitting singles. Of his 256 hits so far, 219 of them are one-baggers. He's got an isolated slugging percentage of .084, meaning that if he were a mere .300 hitter, he'd have a little less pop than Omar Vizquel. Go back and look at Sisler's line for 1920. Ichiro! has 37 extra-base hits. Sisler had 37 in just triples and homers - he also had 49 doubles, and slugged .632 (isolated slugging .225) with 399 total bases. What Ichiro! has done is special, but what Sisler did was more impressive.
This weekend is your last chance to register to vote in the State of Texas for the 2004 election. I just got back from the HCDP Sharpstown location where we signed up about 20 people in the two hours I was there. Not too bad, but I'm a total piker compared to this person.
Katie O'Harra was prepared to get arrested in order to get people registered to vote."I had encouragement from people like my mother," she said of her plan to invade retail centers that don't allow solicitation of any kind on their premises.
No one interfered, though, as she distributed 15,000 voter registration cards during the past month at retail locations, as well as post offices and community centers. She even set up a stand outside the Verizon Wireless Theatre during concerts.
This weekend is her last big push.
Because if you aren't registered to vote by Monday, your voice won't be heard in the Nov. 2 election.
Some states permit voter registration on Election Day, but Texas law requires voters to be registered 30 days prior to the election in which they wish to vote.
O'Harra estimates that she personally has registered 350 voters.
How are things overall in Harris County?
Voter registration is up throughout the area, with the highest concentration of new voters in areas that have seen new residential development, including downtown and the Beltway, said Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt. His duties include voter registration.But only 200 more people registered in Houston during the month of September this year than during the same month in 2000, the last presidential election.
"We have what I call moderate interest in voter registration," Bettencourt said. "The super excitement that is occurring in battleground states is not occurring here."
President Bush is expected to defeat Democratic nominee John Kerry easily in Texas this year, so both candidates are focusing their quest for electoral votes in states where the race is closer.
But Bettencourt still believes Harris County will set a record this year with registration of 1.9 million.
Nearly 80 percent of Harris County residents are registered, Bettencourt said, but that is no guarantee that they will vote on Election Day or during the early voting period Oct. 18-29.
Char Miller, editor of Fifty Years of the Texas Observer, gets profiled in the San Antonio Current this week.
Miller has become so ubiquitous (he recently referred to himself with characteristic self-deprecation as a "media whore") and so universally respected, that it's easy to forget he's a bona fide progressive. Or perhaps it's just that we think of him as our progressive. But Miller is in favor of spending more money on education ("I think San Antonians, rich and poor, have been undereducated"), he's suspicious of developers (the business community likes a weak council, he says, "because they can influence policy making through staff and they don't have to deal with council"), and he's ambivalent about cars (" ... in postmillennial San Antonio, which is utterly dependent on the automobile ... we daily flee the very human set of interactions that once made this community so livable"). Now he has his own printing press in the Trinity University Press, which this fall is coming out with a collection of his essays, Deep in the Heart of San Antonio: Land and Life in South Texas. As students of history can tell you -Miller is a professor of economic, social, and environmental history at Trinity where he recently chaired the History and Urban Studies programs - Gutenberg's invention set in motion a cultural revolution that is still underway, taking knowledge and information out of the exclusive control of the elites and putting it in the hands of the common people.Miller is interested in doing much the same thing with his writing, moving it out of the academic journals and into the hands of citizens. "What I wanted to do was write a book that spoke to my very deep needs and interests about this community, but which I hoped could talk to neighborhood associations, could talk to the City Council, could speak to power brokers of one kind or another, and not necessarily convince them, but raise issues." It's no coincidence, it seems, that Miller chaired the search committee that hired Trinity University Press Director Barbara Ras. "Part of the press' mission is to find really high quality books that speak directly to the experiences of people in this region," Miller says, "and in that process generate and sustain a kind of intellectual life that hasn't been happening." Or has been happening in small pockets. The press' first run of titles also includes Fifty Years of the Texas Observer, a collection of articles from the state's journal of progressive and radical politics, edited by Miller.
The House Ethics Committee has finally taken action against Tom DeLay, but not for the Chris Bell complaint. They admonished DeLay and two other members for actions during the Medicare bill last year.
In a lengthy report, the panel said it had determined in its investigation of allegations first raised by the lawmaker, Representative Nick Smith, a Republican, that Mr. DeLay offered to endorse Mr. Smith's son in a Congressional primary if he would support a measure then teetering on the edge of defeat.The special four-person subcommittee that conducted the inquiry said it had "deliberated extensively" over the actions of Mr. DeLay, who is one of the most powerful members of Congress, and weighed his actions against the leadership's traditional role of trying to round up votes. The report concluded that Mr. DeLay went too far in trying to secure a victory.
"The promise of political support for a relative of a member goes beyond the boundaries of maintaining party discipline, and should not be used as the basis of a bargain for members to achieve their respective goals," the committee said, saying there was evidence to find Mr. DeLay in violation of House rules.
The panel recommended no further action against Mr. DeLay or two others it also admonished - Mr. Smith and another Michigan Republican, Candice S. Miller. The committee is considering a separate complaint against Mr. DeLay on a series of allegations made by a Texas Democrat, but it made no disclosure of its intentions on those accusations.
In a statement, Mr. DeLay said that he had not meant to violate House rules and that the panel had never ruled on this type of activity before.
"In this report the committee has provided guidance regarding a novel and very specific subject matter,'' he said. "I accept their guidance."
UPDATE: Sarah thinks this may be a sign DeLay's power in the House is slipping.
UPDATE: More from the Stakeholder. Also, click the More link for statements from Chris Bell and Richard Morrison.
Washington D.C. The following is a statement from Congressman Chris Bell regarding the Ethics Complaint against Tom DeLay still pending before the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
"The ethical cloud surrounding Tom DeLay has quickly grown into a thunderstorm. The stench of corruption emanating from Mr. DeLay and his associates has become too pungent to ignore any longer- even in Washington.'
"Given the House Ethics Committee's own reprimand of DeLay for what amounted to bribery during the Medicare debate; the 32 felony indictments issued against DeLay aides in Texas for Delay's illegal fundraising schemes; investigations underway in the United States Senate into the unethical lobbying practices of a former Delay aide and a close Delay associate; and the overwhelming evidence of unethical and illegal behavior by Mr. Delay contained in the ethics complaint still pending; the Ethics Committee must move forward now on the pending complaint or risk losing all credibility.'
"Anything less than a full investigation into all of these matters by the Ethics Committee would signal a total failure by the committee to meet its responsibility and that the ethics process must be overhauled."
DeLay Demonstrating a Clear Pattern of Corruption and Contempt for the Law
WASHINGTON, D.C. - In response to last night's public wrist slap of Majority Leader Tom DeLay for his role in coercing the vote of Rep. Nick Smith on the floor of the House during the Medicare debate, Congressman Bell released the following statement:
"After the Ethics Committee publicly reprimanded DeLay for offering favors to a Member of Congress on the House floor in exchange for his vote, a very serious pattern of corruption by the Majority Leader has become glaringly evident.
Mr. DeLay's response that he "would never knowingly violate the rules of the House," is simply unbelievable. The notion that the Majority Leader and a twenty-year incumbent in the House of Representatives didn't know he couldn't bribe a Member of Congress is ridiculous and an embarrassment to this body.
Through his actions and his statement, Mr. DeLay demonstrates the contempt and indifference he holds for the integrity of this venerable institution. As the Majority Leader of the House, that is simply unacceptable.
DeLay owes his colleagues in Congress and the American people a better explanation for his corrupt, unethical actions."
Richard Morrison, Democratic candidate for District 22 released the following statement.
“The House Ethics committee is exposing the real Tom DeLay. The committee
has for the third time found Tom DeLay guilty of unethical behavior. That’s
right; the man who claims he is “the Federal government” has found he is not
above the law. In the last seven years alone, DeLay has been publicly
reprimanded three times for bribery, illegal fundraising, and threatening
behavior. And the Committee hasn’t even ruled on the most recent DeLay
ethics complaint into money laundering, abuse of office, and selling
legislative favors.
“Yesterday, the Ethics committee publicly admonished him for trying to bribe
a fellow Member of Congress for a “yes” vote on the controversial Medicare
bill. In a classic DeLay quid pro quo move, DeLay threatened to endorse
Rep. Nick Smith’s son’s opponent if he didn’t vote “yes” on the bill. DeLay
knew the bill was bad for seniors, and bribery and threats were the only way
he could get it to pass. The time before, DeLay was reprimanded for
threatening trade associations with retaliation if they hired Democrats.
And, in 1997, he was admonished for illegal fundraising on government
property.
“There is a pattern of corruption here, and despite the reprimands, DeLay
keeps on hammering. He tries to hide behind his lieutenants, the fake
charities and associations he creates. He thinks he’s above the law, but
it’s clear that it’s catching up with him. The real Tom DeLay is being
exposed. The real Tom DeLay doesn’t deserve to represent the people of
District 22.”
