Burnt Orange Report

To the Courts, Strayhorn and Perry Feud.

By Byron LaMasters

Rick Perry signed the new map this evening making it law. Now, to the courts where lawsuits should be filed within days to stop the plan from taking effect.

Perry also signed the government reorganization bill, HB 7, which will take powers away from the Comptroller, Carole Strayhorn. In a speech today, Strayhorn blasted Perry and hinted that she would run against Perry in 2006:

A day after the Legislature passed a bill that would strip two high-profile programs from Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's office, she racheted up her verbal attack on Gov. Rick Perry and said today she wouldn't rule out challenging him in 2006.

"I am 24-7 the Texas Comptroller and I will be 24-7 the Texas Comptroller," Strayhorn said referring to a possible gubernatorial bid after she spoke to the Greater Houston Partnership, which is composed of representatives from more than 1,900 Houston businesses. "I never say never. I want to be where I can make the most difference."

Strayhorn told the luncheon crowd at a downtown Houston hotel that she was disappointed in Perry's decision to take her stance on the state's budget shortfall and inability to balance it in June as something "personal."

"Texas taxpayers and Texas school children and the Texas Comptroller's Office are being punished for me telling the truth," she said. "I was telling the truth when I said we had a budget shortfall. I was telling the truth when I said the budget did not balance. ...

"Last Friday, behind closed doors in the Pink Granite Building, the Governor told the House Republican Caucus he wanted these programs stripped from the Comptroller's Office because 'it was personal.' ... My telling the truth is apparently what the governor takes as 'personal.'"

Strayhorn said what she sees as personal is the 160,000 school children without health insurance, the thousands of jobs that have evaporated, higher property tax rates and insurance and "the unacceptable inequality in our public education system that leaves too many children behind." She said the problems, which also include the state's transportation crisis and decreased higher education expenditures, all have come "under this governor's administration."

"What is most personal to me is the lost civility, the lost dignity, the lost honor, the lost effectiveness, and the lost spirit of bi-partisanship championed by then Governor and now President George W. Bush," said Strayhorn, whose son is Bush press secretary Scott McClellan.

I, of course would love to see a nice big internal GOP bloodbath, but we'll see. It's still three years. A lot can happen, and who knows what Kay Bailey Hutchison will do...