July, 2008:

The DCCC has some fun with Pete Sessions’ strip club fundraiser.

A March 2007 evening at a Las Vegas strip club is creating a great deal of controversy throughout the country, including in Minnesota. The event raised money for the leadership PAC of Republican U.S. Representative Pete Sessions of Texas. Sessions was joined by casino executives and payday lenders at Ivan Kane’s Forty Deuce nightclub, located in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

According to Sessions, the club is a harmless burlesque. Kane, the club’s owner, shared his definition of a burlesque to NPR: “The key component would be to have girls who were dancers taking their clothes off, not just girls taking their clothes off.”

Sessions’ leadership PAC, People for Enterprise, Trade and Economic Growth picked up the tab for the event. NPR noted in a report that “just days before the party at Forty Deuce, casino interests donated $5,000 to his PAC. Payday lenders threw in another $2,500.”

The PAC has contributed $5,000 to the congressional campaign of Erik Paulsen and $2,500 to Rep. Michele Bachmann’s reelection campaign.

“Michele Bachmann and Erik Paulsen have spent their entire careers pushing an extreme right-wing agenda that has been out-of-touch with the views of everyday Minnesotans. Yet at the same time as they say they are pro-family, they take money raised from Casino owners partying at a strip club,” said Carrie James, regional press secretary at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “The hypocrisy of this is astounding- a do as I say, not as I do approach to leadership.”

Boy, sex and gambling all rolled together. I’ll bet it was fun, in that “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” kind of way. And given some of the attendees, it’s almost as if he’s an extra Congressman from Nevada, as Wick Allison put it.

Chris Bell easily reached his goal of $10k raised online in considerably less than 10 days, and now he’s shooting for $20k, to offset one of Bob Perry’s donations. The boys at BOR are on strike till they raise $1000 for him – they’re almost halfway there already.

You’ve heard of John McCain’s $500 shoes? That wouldn’t even be enough to buy one of John Davis’ boots.

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 sailed through the House today. See a brief video on it here.

Diane Trautman having a volunteer appreciation breakfast on Saturday morning at 9 AM in the King’s Crossing Apartments clubhouse up in Kingwood. Click that link for a map. And don’t forget White Linen Nights in the Heights later in the day.

Finally, Rick Noriega will be hosting a live virtual town hall tomorrow at 1:30 PM. Just go to his website and submit your questions. Noriega was in College Station today for a more old-fashioned town hall. You can read some blog coverage of it here and here.

It’s stuff like this that reminds me why I love the campaign season.

We had never heard of a member of Congress holding a fundraiser at a Las Vegas burlesque nightclub… until now.

And the culprit is card-carrying conservative Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.). The same Pete Sessions who scolded Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake for forcing “their liberal values upon the rest of the country” after their infamous 2004 Super Bowl halftime striptease.

But that was then.

Now we learn that Sessions held a racy (for Washington) fundraiser for his leadership political action committee last year at Ivan Kane’s Forty Deuce nightclub in Sin City. A description of the club on its web site, which features a scantily clad dancer, reads: “A blue light silhouettes the sax man as one of the sexy, sensual dancers slowly slinks down the stairs to the stage and leans out over the crowd, holding on with only a handful of the world-famous curtain of pearls! Jaws drop and drinks are ignored as the tempo picks up and the dancer steps up, shedding boa, gown and gloves towards the electrifying finale.”

I really don’t think I can add anything to that. Link via TPM.

Meanwhile, Texas on the Potomac reports on a campaign contribution from an unexpected source.

One of President Bush’s first cousins has gone way against the grain.

In February, Alexander “Hap” Ellis III donated $4,300 to Michael Skelly’s congressional campaign, according to Federal Electoin Commission records.

Skelly is a Democrat. He is running against Republican incumbent John Culberson of Houston. The seat was once held by former President George H.W. Bush, Ellis’ uncle. And the former president still lives in the district on Houston’s west side.

As the post notes, Ellis works in renewable energy, so this isn’t that great a stretch, even if it’s his only donation to a Democrat this year. What’s even better is that Ellis isn’t the only member of the extended Bush clan to cross the aisle in 2008. Take a look at the detailed report (PDF) for Sherrie Matula, and scroll down to page ten. You’ll see that none other than Neil Bush kicked in $25 to her effort. So the next time someone asks you how bad a year this is for the Republicans, you can say “Bad enough that even Bushes are giving to Democrats”.

Elsewhere, State Rep. Ellen Cohen may have an unserious opponent, but she’s not taking anything for granted. Some campaign-related events coming up for her include a “Young Professionals Supporting State Representative Ellen Cohen” party at the Rice Lofts downtown next Tuesday evening from 5:30 to 8:00 – if you’re Facebook-enabled, you can see the details here, and a “BBQ, Birthday Bash and Yard Sign Blitz” at her campaign headquarters (4950 Bissonnet, same place as 2006) on Sunday, August 24. Contact the campaign for more info.

And finally, if you find yourself asking “What can I do to help turn Texas blue in the next 100 days”, since there’s now less than that till the election, you can find some simple yet concrete suggestions here. Surely there’s something there that will appeal to you.

One of the things I had intended to do while at Netroots Nation this year was interviews with candidates and other folks. Unfortunately, in the rush to pack and leave, I managed to leave my digital voice recorder at home. That kind of put a damper on those plans, but as I had already scheduled an interview with Diana Maldonado, I needed to figure something out. Thankfully, Eileen Smith came to my rescue by letting me borrow her little video recorder, which she used to great effect on Poll Dancing, so I was able to salvage that. And I quickly learned why folks like RG Ratcliffe, who have done a lot more video interviews than I have, invest in a tripod. It’s harder than you think to hold that camera still for ten minutes. I don’t think I shook it too much, but I’ll apologize in advance for any vertigo this causes.

Anyway. Diana Maldonado is a great candidate, representing one of the top pickup opportunities for Texas Democrats in the House. She was also the first candidate endorsed by the TexBlog PAC. Here she is, in my first and possibly last video interview:

As always, please let me know what you think.

Houtopia has an interesting report about a local campaign development.

We have been particularly interested to learn in recent days that at least a few Harris County incumbent Republican judges have been actively seeking the endorsement of the Houston Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Political Caucus — HGLBT for short.

This development is eye-opening to say the least. Perhaps more than any other group, the GLBT community has been the recipient of venom from religious conservatives. And the idea that any incumbent Republican official here would actively seek the Caucus’ endorsement, much less accept it if offered, would have seemed laughable just a few months ago. Apparently, fear of losing can be a powerful motivator.

Don’t get us wrong. We are glad to see some of these judges now acknowledge what many of us have known for a long time, that the GLBT community matters, just like everybody else, and that its votes count too, much as that may bother certain people.

So, it’s good that some of these Republican judges have decided to screen with the HGLBT Caucus and seek its endorsement. But what will the neighbors say?

Very interesting. The Caucus, which has already endorsed a slew of candidates for November – though no judicial candidates as yet – has definitely established itself as a force to be reckoned with locally. Their endorsement matters. That some incumbent Republicans now think so is a pretty amazing statement about where Harris County is these days.

Harold Cook gets into an argument with one of Rep. Mike McCaul’s flacks over McCaul’s phony madrassa story, in the enviable position of having the facts on his side. Mean Rachel joins in.

Michael Skelly has a second ad out, which you can see here; that and his prior ad can also be found here. I actually saw the first ad last night while watching “The Closer”, but since it was TiVoed, and since I’d already seen it, I zipped past it. Nonetheless, that counts as the first general election ad I’ve seen for this year.

Harris County judicial candidate Mike Engelhart has his first campaign video up, which you can see here. It’s a warm fuzzy family spot, which is always a nice way to kick things off. Figure there’ll be a ton more local videos between now and November.

And finally, Joe Jaworski received the endorsement of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club, which you can read about here. Given that his opponent is known as “Toxic Mike” Jackson, you’ve got to figure that was an easy call for them.

Chris Bell, noting that there’s now 99 days left till Election Day, has sent out a fundraising email hoping to raise $10K in 10 days on ActBlue. The link is here if you want to pitch in. I’ve been harping on fundraising for this race ever since it hit the radar screen, so the least I can do is point this out. Ten grand isn’t much for a State Senate race, but perhaps a little show of grassroots support might help convince the people who can write the bigger checks to get involved here. We know that the big guns are coming out for at least one SD17 Republican, Joan Huffman, so Bell’s going to need all the help he can get to keep pace.

Meanwhile, Michael Skelly is looking to do a similar grassroots push for contributions to counter an attack by John Culberson that Skelly is financing his own campaign. That’s an odd claim to make, given that in the last filing report, Skelly had 617 individual contributors, who totaled $1.2 million for him, while Culberson had 454 individual donors for about half that much, but whatever. They want to do a one-day burst on Friday, August 1, and are asking people to create their own fundraising page to help out.

And finally, Mean Rachel finds CD10 Rep. Mike McCaul making a very strange and apparently false claim about a couple of kids from Atlanta who spent time in a school in Pakistan. Just watch the embedded CNN video (it’s 8:31 in length) and be amazed.

The title to this post makes me think I should start out singing – “You better watch out, you better not cry”…you get the idea. In any event, Vince reports that Karl Rove is coming to Houston for a big-dollar joint fundraiser for four Republican State House candidates: Rep. John Davis (HD129, opposed by TexBlog PAC-endorsed candidate Sherrie Matula), Rep. Jim Murphy (HD133, opposed by Kristi Thibaut), Rep. Gary Elkins (HD135, opposed by Trey Fleming), and Ken Legler (HD144, opposed by Joel Redmond). He’s also coming to El Paso for a fundraiser for John Cornyn. I don’t really know why anyone would want to get assistance from Karl Rove these days, since he embodies the failures of the Bush administration as well as anyone, but maybe they can explain it to their constituents. Maybe he’ll get handed a subpoena at one of these events – that would sure liven things up.

So there’s an interesting feature of Pat Lykos’ campaign finance report (PDF), which the HCDP has pointed out in a press release. She has just under $32,000 on hand, after raising $114,000, but a total of $50,000 of the cames from the Robet Eckels Committee – see page 25 of the report for that. And $40,000 of that was originally a loan, which was forgiven and thus converted into a donation on June 30 – see page 34. Without former County Judge Eckels, in other words, her campaign would be in the red.

You can make a big deal about that or not as you see fit. Lykos did raise over $60K from other sources – Eckels is obviously a big supporter of his former employee, but we’re still a ways away from Macias/Leininger territory. But it’s almost like Eckels never left his old job as County Judge, isn’t it? He’s certainly still a player in county affairs. Only now he gets paid a lot more, and he isn’t accountable to the voters. Pretty sweet deal, actually.

Good.

Harris County’s sheriff’s deputy unions are expected today to endorse a challenger in the sheriff’s race — an unprecedented move that union leaders say reflects a long-standing dissatisfaction with incumbent Tommy Thomas.

The three unions, which together represent the majority of deputies, plan to endorse Houston Councilman Adrian Garcia over Thomas in the November election.

The announcement is the latest blow against the beleaguered Republican sheriff, whose policies have come under fire by his own deputies and whose jail is under scrutiny by federal investigators.

“It’s basically the lack of the current administration’s willingness to work with us, inconsistency in policies and fair treatment of personnel,” said Richard Newby, head of the largest of the three unions. “This is something that’s been building for a while.”

Deputies have complained about understaffing that has stretched patrols thin and required them to work overtime. They’ve said the department’s contract deputy program — which allows civic associations and municipal utility districts to subsidize deputy salaries in exchange for increased patrols — has created bare spots in patrol coverage and left dozens of unsubsidized patrol positions unfilled.

[…]

The sheriff defended his tenure, saying he was unfazed by the unions’ endorsement of his opponent.

“It appears they’re across the board endorsing Democrats in the races,” he said.

The sheriff said he did not believe the contract deputy issue influenced the unions’ decision.

“Bear in mind that the decision to endorse in these races is made by a handful of people,” he said. “It’s not made by all the members of the union.”

This is the first time the unions have come together to support a challenger for the sheriff’s post, Newby said. When polled, union members said they favored Garcia 3-to-1, he said.

How many different ways can you say “The Sheriff is out of touch”? This is a big deal, as it undercuts any claim Thomas might make about his experience versus Garcia’s. He’s lost the trust of the people who work for him, and they want to see a change at the top. What more can you say? Now if we can get Garcia’s fundraising in gear – one hopes stories like this will help it tick up a bit – then we’ll really be on our way. There’s a press conference for today on this, so look for more info later.

UPDATE: I have press releases from the Garcia campaign and from the three unions beneath the fold.

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