I’m not at all surprised that Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman qualified for the ballot. Given the number of signatures they collected, the only question was how many of those sigs would be validated. What is a surprise is this:
In other races, former congressman Steve Stockman failed to qualify as an independent candidate for the 22nd Congressional District seat vacated by former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay of Sugar Land. Stockman turned in about 600 signatures but fewer than the 500 valid signatures that he needed, Haywood said.
I always knew Steve Stockman was an idiot, but good grief. Has he never heard the rule of thumb that you need twice as many sigs as the minimum to be reasonably sure of getting enough valid ones? And how hard is it to get five hundred signatures in five weeks? What a maroon.
So. Governor’s race, complicated. CD22, simple. That’s about it.
Say what you will about Kinky, but his team certainly did a great job of gathering signatures. Something like 80% validated? That’s impressive.
I just wish Texas law required a runoff (preferably instant with transferrable votes) if no one polls a majority. When candidates can win with a plurality, it only encourages “lesser of two evils” voting.
The Houston Chronicle continues to demonstrate its political bias in Kristen Mack’s article. Last time she wrote about the District 22 race, she neglected to mention that a lawsuit had been filed by Democrats to stop the Republican Party from naming a new candidate. Today, she does in fact mention “the lawsuit” but neglects to inform readers who filed it or why. Piss poor journalism, if you ask me.
Bookslut has a great comment about it: here
Not knowing Stockman nor his situation, I suspect he collected more valid signatures than he turned in and therefore interpret the results as a way of intentionally pulling out of the race.
“What a maroon?”
Is that an anti-Aggie comment?
Charles H – I guess Stockman could be that deviously clever, but I’ve never seen any evidence to suggest it. He sounded pretty sincere about making a real run for the office in earlier interviews.
Christof – No, I just watched too much Bugs Bunny as a kid. 🙂
“I guess Stockman could be that deviously clever, but I’ve never seen any evidence to suggest it.”
It’s possible that Stockman didn’t make that call: only followed instructions. This ability usually comes at an early age, no?
CD22 simple? Well, I guess. It’s so simple we only have one major candidate on the ballot at this point. Other than that, I’d say “chaotic” is the better term. We have a hearing in federal court on Monday, we have no Republican candidate at this point (but about a dozen wannabes), a redistricting ruling might be handed down next week reverting us back to our old boundries (and where would Lampson run?), and, let’s see, am I missing anything?
CD22 Simple? Your going a bit far there. We still have many GOP candidates, and its more than 3 months after the primary!
The Bookslut discussion and Kinky interview don’t reach any harder hitting issues than Kinky’s favorite Texas book. On the other hand, the Ruminator interview (here) addresses where Kinky confirms he voted for Bush/Cheney on 2004 and that Kinky agrees with Bush’s “political positions overseas, his foreign policy,” including Kinky’s belief that what Bush has “been doing in the Near East and in the Middle East, he’s handling that well, I think.”
Frankly, I think “Stop Kinky” is using a lot of political and campaign capital that could go to much better use.
I guess they figure that the fewer ways they can split the anti-Perry vote, the better, but if Kinky is as unviable as some of this blog’s entries claim, it seems a waste of time to “stop” him.
The question isn’t Kinky’s viabilty. Election analysts from the left (e.g., The Lone Star Project and Chuck McDonald) and the right (e.g., Mike Baselice) agree that if Kinky gets 15%, then Perry wins, but if Kinky gets only 5%, the election is anyone’s game. This is because Kinky takes votes from Strayhorn and Bell at a much greater rate than he takes votes from Perry and because the anti-Perry vote just cannot be split into three roughly equal parts without overdiluting the anti-Perry vote.
Whether Kinky intends it or not, the net effect of his candidacy is to serve as a Trojan horse for Perry’s re-election unless his support dries up. The first step in drying up Kinky’s support is publicizing his ill-conceived views on most issues. Whose political capital does it cost to publicize the truth about Kinky’s poorly thought out agenda?
well, at least strayhorn doesn’t have any competition anymore for the “one tough grandma” campaign.
R.I.P. Ann Richards