Catching up on a few Chron endorsements, starting with their recommendation of Shaun Finnie in CD02.
Shaun Finnie
In another timeline, we’d yet again be endorsing Rep. Dan Crenshaw for reelection, touting his ability to deliver for his district, which now stretches from Montgomery County through the northern reaches of Harris County, including Kingwood and Spring.
In another timeline, Democratic candidate Shaun Finnie might be a traditional business Republican.
“‘So let me get this straight, you’re a guy from Wall Street, who works in oil and gas?’”
That’s what Finnie said the general reaction to his candidacy has been in this heavily Republican district.
“‘Oh my God, you are exactly what we’ve been waiting for.’”
We feel the same way, and heartily endorse this first-time candidate. He’s an aggressive moderate who had a successful career as an investment banker with an expertise in the energy industry — the sort of guy who seems right at home in the Woodlands.
[…]
Toth, 65, didn’t meet with the editorial board. He not only espouses bizarre policies like preventing people from even looking up the word “abortion” online, but he has also voted against commonsense bills, including bills aimed at flood mitigation. Despite representing part of Montgomery County in the Texas House since 2013, his legislative record is thin, but that didn’t stop him from winning over Republican primary voters who thought Crenshaw wasn’t MAGA enough.
“Ronald Reagan couldn’t win the Republican primary in this district,” Finnie told the editorial board. And Finnie is closer to Reagan than Toth.
You can listen to my interview with Shaun Finnie here. Honestly, the biggest surprise here is that the Chron rated Toth as two and a half stars. They gave Bo French zero stars, and I have a hard time believing that a wacko like Toth has that much separation. I suppose by their own guidance, Toth is probably a two-star candidate, though I personally would knock him down a half star from there. It’s important to have standards.
Over in HD126, the endorsement editorial was mostly about the man with the mustache Stan Stanart, but the Chron sensibly endorsed Stefanie Bord, citing some out-of-touch positions that Stanart holds, such as on artificial intelligence.
Stefanie Bord
To be fair, Stanart did not say he would rely on Grok alone. Instead, he said he thinks any AI agents should be tested against each other, but it was troubling to hear that he felt Grok was the most truthful out of all them, even if he said that younger grades probably shouldn’t be using AI at all in school. It all felt disconnected from the realities of families on the ground trying to navigate these issues.
His challenger, Stefanie Bord, is a former science teacher who was pretty skeptical of the entire exchange. She was in favor of more guardrails around the use of AI in schools, even in middle and high school where Bord, 42, said students should be pushed to do critical and creative thinking that AI can stunt.
Her platform tapped into the anger many parents are feeling at the moment watching public school districts pass deficit budgets, cutting libraries and bus routes, and even closing schools. She wants higher teacher salaries and more per student funding. It’s that current crunch on local school districts that also makes her skeptical of the proposed property tax relief plans.
Bord leaned more on her lived experience, as a teacher and now homeschooling mother.
“When I look at the data for our district,” Bord told the editorial board, “I am a median person in our district.” Roughly median household income, roughly around the median age, even her house is the median age of houses in her district.
It’s an everyman pitch that felt more in touch than Stanart who continued to dance around culture war issues that should be put to bed.
He was breezily dismissive about concerns around Bo French, the railroad commissioner candidate who Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick confidently called antisemitic not too long ago.
“People say things and lie about it. It happened to me,” Stanart scoffed.
Or the Republican talking points around Sharia law:
“People are really concerned about the Islamics that are coming here and when they’re saying that they want to take over our country and they want their own government,” he told us.
We pressed him: Had he seen any of this happening in real life?
“A lot of these imams are out there,” he insisted, though he couldn’t name any when asked, and instead generally referenced videos he saw on the internet.
How big is the threat really?
“We stopped it. We need to stop it,” he said, saying legislation had already been passed banning it but that more could be done.
It’s not just silly to indulge in this sort of conspiratorial fearmongering. It’s disqualifying. For all of his experience at the local level, Stanart talks more like he lives in an online partisan silo than on the ground in Harris County.
I will have an interview with Bord on Wednesday. Stan Stanart, man. How are we still here? We can do better.
And finally, in HD149, they make another clear choice for Darlene Breaux.
Dr. Darlene Breaux
At a strip mall in Chinatown, Darlene Breaux’s charm bracelet chatters as she lines up her blue and white tiles into a tidy row. She’s got her reading glasses on. She looks like she knows what she’s doing. But the Alief ISD school board president and director of the Texas Education Policy Institute is a little out of her element.
“Mahjong, mahjong,” she says when she takes the microphone to address the crowd of players that night, “I know I’m not saying it right. Help me, y’all.”
It’s a funny, human moment of politics in one of the most diverse districts in the Houston area.
Breaux is running for state representative for House District 149, which includes immigrant-rich Alief, west Houston and even an area north of I-10 in the broader Katy area. That covers a big chunk of Houston’s Asian communities — the district is 20% Asian — and it has been represented by Hubert Vo since 2005. But Vo didn’t get much done during his last few terms in the Legislature, and Breaux won this year’s Democratic primary. Now, she’s trying to convince voters of all backgrounds that she’s the best candidate for the job at a mahjong and dim sum event with Staci Childs, a fellow House candidate and former State Board of Education member.
When Breaux, 59, addresses the crowd, she does best talking education. That’s her background. From the classroom to the principal’s office, she’s done it all. But she saw too many systemic issues that she wanted to address higher up. So she ran for school board. In her third four-year term, however, she set her sights even higher, or farther west, really: Austin.
“I remember driving to Austin the day that they were going to hear the vouchers bill,” she told the editorial board. “Sat through that marathon of a hearing until the next day at one-something in the morning,” and heard, “story after story of what it would do to public education.”
Almost everyone who spoke was against vouchers. And yet.
“I remember driving back just incredibly frustrated, but understanding that the power is at the dais.”
I will have an interview with Breaux on Thursday. I will note that the Chron decided that her opponent, who did not meet with them and was “running on a traditional Republican platform”, was also a two-and-a-half star candidate, as was Stan Stanart. I don’t see how you can equate Steve Toth with that.