This post is an attempt at analysis, explanation, and an appeal for help. The complexion of the country's leadership may well depend on the elections in Texas. I ask your indulgence to follow my perhaps incomplete research, my not-all-filled-out logic and the conlusions I draw from them. Perhaps I can make the case to help head off a real disaster. We here in Texas may understand this, but this is as much for visitors from elsewhere.
The thesis
Texas elections for US congress seats, and for State House and Senate seats, matter not just to Texans, but the whole country, perhaps for a decade or more. One of the major actors, Rick Perry, and his larger aspirations, are of concern. It's his power base, donors, and where he wants to take us that we need to pay attention to.
Some corollaries The Texas Governor's race sets the tone in our state for an off-year election, and voters are tuned in to this race. Folks are generally not paying as much attention to the state House and Senate races, nor to the US Congressional races. But the governor's race may greatly influence the down-ballot races. Turnout of loyal supporters is the key.
After the 2010 Census, Texas will add 3 US Congressional seats, possibly 4, depending on how the math comes out. The outcomes of these state races will matter because of redistricting which will be done by the Texas Legislature in the 2011-2012 session.
Let me share some thoughts, and see if you agree, or challenge my point of view.
Let us take Texas back from these GOP "leaders" who will take us to ruin, perhaps even more than W did, if given the chance. Let's not give them the chance.
Over the past ten weeks, the Texas Democratic Party promoted an unprecedented "Meet the Statewides" campaign on our website. Each week, we promoted content for our statewide candidates on our website, Facebook, and Twitter pages. We asked candidates to submit a video, write an original op-ed, and provide biographical information. We at the TDP also penned an issue piece, sent out all material to our e-mail list, and created duplicative Spanish-language pages for each candidate.
Yesterday, we began looking back at our series by looking at our statewide judicial candidates. Read our post from yesterday ("Our "Meet the Statewides" Series: Texas Supreme Court & Court of Criminal Appeals Candidates") to read about Texas Supreme Court Candidates Jim Sharp, Blake Bailey, and Bill Moody, as well as Court of Criminal Appeals candidate Keith Hampton.
Today, we wanted to focus on our next batch of statewide candidates:
Practicing law on both sides of the docket, Barbara Ann Radnofsky is a mother, wife, teacher, and mediator. Texas educated, she’s a magna cum laude graduate from the University of Houston and an honors graduate from University of Texas Law School. In 2006, after 27 years of law practice, Barbara Ann left Vinson & Elkins as Head of the Alternate Dispute Resolution Section to become the first woman in history to serve as the Texas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee. She was the first woman at Vinson & Elkins to have children as an associate and attain partnership.
The Texas Attorney General picks his battles. It was a Texas Attorney General opinion which enabled Tom DeLay’s mid decade redistricting. To the great credit of the Texas Rangers in 2006, an election year, it was a Ranger who brought concrete evidence of sexual and physical abuse at the Texas Youth Commission to the Texas Attorney General. The Attorney General turned his back. Instead, he used Attorney General resources to target elderly and minority Democrats assisting the homebound to cast their mail in ballots. Attorney General Abbott squandered seven figures of discretionary funds, finding no organized widespread fraud or voter impersonation. Reports of investigators spying on an elderly woman in her bathroom and knocking on her door amid selective prosecutions of Democratic activists convey a political purpose: voter intimidation.
In the wake of the recent British Petroleum (BP) Gulf oil spill, Abbott didn’t even attempt to act like the state’s chief law enforcement officer. Despite BP’s horrific safety record, Abbott made excuses for the oil company rather than insisting that its plans and actions be scrutinized. Instead, Abbott said on May 3rd: “we’re seeing BP take all the right actions and make all the right comments.” (Source: KXAN-TV).
Back in 2005, Attorney General Greg Abbott announced with a flourish a rash of arrests in South Texas on various counts of voter fraud. These arrests, some of which were announced while the Lege was debating a voter ID bill, were cited as evidence by Abbott of an “epidemic”, for which voter ID was naturally the solution. Many of these cases ultimately wound up being dismissed, with the last batch in Hidalgo County getting dropped last week.
Despite the fanfare, nearly all the charges have been dismissed five years later.
What was once trumpeted across the state as one of the premier examples of the “epidemic of voter fraud” plaguing Texas polls evaporated even as debate over the divisive reform measures it helped spawn continues.
See here, here, and here for some background. One thing that’s been true in all of the cases Abbott has pushed is that they involved mail in ballots, which as I’ve observed would be unaffected by any legislation that required photo ID to vote in person. Abbott and his allies, of course, never drew that distinction, since the purpose of the voter ID legislation that keeps getting pushed in the Lege isn’t about stopping the kind of voter fraud that actually happens, it’s about making it harder for certain people to vote. In the end, even the fraud cases that Abbott claimed to have found turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. It’s no surprise to me.
Thankfully, Texans have a much better choice than Abbot on the ballot. Barbara Ann Radnofsky is challenging Abbott for the AG spot this November. Last week was her turn in the Texas Democratic Party's "Meet the Statewides" campaign -- a great series that highlights every statewide candidate with a video, op-ed, issue piece, biography and more. Here's the latest from Radnofsky and the TDP:
Republicans continue to fall all over themselves defending BP. All are likely up to their eyeballs in donations from the oil and gas industry.
God forbid should BP be expected to pay every claim proposed by those whose loved ones have been killed and those whose businesses and careers have been destroyed by BP's reckless, irresponsible and apparently unstoppable oil volcano and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile here in Texas our Attorney General is doing the same thing. According to a press release issued by Democratic candidate Barbara Radnofsky today Abbott seriously underestimated the devastating long term impact of the Gulf oil leak.
Forget ObamaCare. Barbara Ann Radnofsky says we should talk about AbbottCare.
The main point, says Radnofsky, "AbbottCare is inconsistent with Mr. Abbott's lawsuit against the federal health care bill. I call on Mr. Abbott to withdraw the lawsuit."
From the Radnofsky Campaign's press release, regarding legislation that Attorney General Abbott had proposed:
The Attorney General's proposal, deemed AbbottCare by Democratic nominee for Texas Attorney General Barbara Ann Radnofsky, was the source of a 2009 law, which mandated the Office of the Attorney General to "develop and implement a statewide program to address the health care needs of children in Title IV-D cases for whom health insurance is not available to either parent at reasonable cost."
The Bill analysis reflects the goal of the 2009 Texas law: "to ensure that children in the child support system are covered by health insurance. Federal law requires parents in the child support system to provide health coverage for their children."
Why would the Texas Attorney General embrace federal mandates to require individuals to purchase health insurance? Money. Federal money. The Office of Attorney General explained "the imperative" to produce more orders for medical support in the Request for Proposal for services for the Texas Child Support Enforcement System. Buried at page 151 under section 4.4.8.8 of T2 TXCSES is the following language:"...beginning FFY 2009, the establishment of medical support will be one of the performance metrics by which the Office of Attorney General will be measured to garner incentive funds. Therefore, it will be imperative to increase the percentage of cases with a medical support order."<?blockquote>
Democratic candidate for Texas Attorney General Barbara Radnofsky blasts Republican AG Abbott for challenging a law that does not exist. In her New Year's Eve press release Radnofsky wrote:
The Texas Attorney General is wrong on the law of his challenge of the senate version of the health care bill. He is wasting taxpayer resources on a loser challenge.
Attorney General Abbott challenges the constitutionality of a law that does not exist, promising to use the office of the Texas Attorney General to "explore all legal options" to dismantle federal legislation. Ironically, Texas would receive subsidies and benefits of greater magnitude than most of the nation, in the $7.5 to 10 billion range.
There they go again. Not only are Republicans willing to burn precious taxpayer resources on a frivolous lawsuit that has no legal basis, but they are also hell bent on thumbing their noses at extraordinary financial subsidies and benefits for Texans. Texas, as we well know, has the highest number of uninsured. Folks don't have health care insurance because they can't afford it or they have pre-existing conditions that no insurance company will cover. The federal health care reform bill would make health insurance more affordable and it would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. It would also put a stop to insurance companies that cut patients loose when their health care needs become too costly.
These benefits and consumer protections are what Abbott wants to kill. Abbott, like all Texas Republicans is more concerned about the interests of insurance companies than he is the people of Texas. It should also be noted that the Party that rails 24/7/365 against trial lawyers and frivilous lawsuits has no problem with either when Republican lawmakers are the ones doing the suing.
Barbara Ann Radnofsky wraps up a widely successful five-city announcement tour today culminating in a final appearance tonight at the Mid-Cities Democrats Birthday Bash in Euless. Radnofsky, and her supporters, should be quite pleased with the large amount of earned media garnered from an entire week of hard campaigning.
You may have read this week that Barbara Radnofsky made news by declaring the 22-word clause (Subsection B) within the 2005 constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman-essentially banning unions between same-sex couples, may in fact null all marriages in Texas due to sloppy language.
Subsection B reads:
"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."
The language is certainly murky at best, and could be widely interpreted as to anull any form of marriage in Texas, but it was a constitutional amendment widely supported by the Texas legislature and overwhelmingly approved by Texas voters.
However, that doesn't dismiss the fact that Republicans who authored the amendment, in their fit to curry political points by treating the LGBT community as their personal political piñata, may in fact have screwed up something that realistically should have been a political slam dunk.
For her work this week in raising awareness of this error that might require yet another constitutional amendment to fix, Radnofsky made Keith Olbermann's "World's Best Persons List" on MSNBC's Countdown. You can view the video here.
State Rep. Dan Branch (R-Dallas) will announce tomorrow that he will seek re-election, the Austin American-Statesman reports. Branch had been considering running for Attorney General, a position that will be open if Greg Abbott runs for higher office as expected.
“I’m running for re-election because I want to continue my work to make Texas the higher learning and research powerhouse our future economy will demand,” Dan Branch, the chairman of the Higher Education Committee, said in a statement that will go out to reporters Thursday. “Our campaign will offer thoughtful solutions that build on a record of results and reflect my vision for an effective and limited state government.”
Even had Branch decided to run, former solicitor general Ted Cruz may been the favorite to win the Republican nomination for Attorney General. Now with Branch out of the race, Cruz, who announced early and has already posted impressive fundraising numbers, will almost certainly be the Republican nominee.
Former U.S. Senate nominee Barbara Ann Radnofsky, who launched her website earlier this week, is the only Democrat to have entered the race so far.
Barbara Radnofsky, the only declared Democratic candidate for Attorney General, launched a new and interactive website this week that is sure to take her campaign to unseat Republican Greg Abbott to a whole new level. As part of her new launch, BAR has also injected a humorous, yet incredibly factual video about the litany of issues facing Texas voters in the upcoming election cycle:
A former candidate for U.S. Senate, Barbara Ann brings to the table name identification, statewide campaign experience, an impeccable resume with extensive law experience, tremendous energy and passion--and a base of support to boot. For Texas Democrats short so far on statewide candidates in 2010, Radnofsky is a refreshing re-addition to statewide campaigning that perhaps Democrats are taking for granted.
For a statewide Party rightfully focused on taking back the Texas House in 2010, the importance of winning the Attorney General's position should not be overlooked. One of the many important roles of the Texas AG, who is one of the most powerful elected officials in the Lone Star State, is to sit on the Legislative Redistricting Board. If we are to undo the Tom Delay-Greg Abbott gerrymandered redistricting mess we need an Attorney General who will look out for everyday Texans--particularly a growing majority minority community.
Among the many issues Radnofsky continues to tackle, and demonstrate her wealth of knowledge and experience on, are the escalating and crippling costs of utility rates that have many Texans falling deeper and deeper into debt:
"On average, residential electricity rates have increased by greater percentages in deregulated states than they have in regulated states. And, among deregulated states, nowhere has it increased by a greater percentage than it has in Texas. A review of federal data shows that since 1999, electricity prices for residential users have increased by more than 64% in Texas."
Barbara Ann is a familiar yet refreshing presence on the statewide campaign trail. Those of you who came to know her in 2006 found a thoughtful, intelligent, caring, and incredibly hardworking advocate for mainstream Texans. Democrats pawing for excitement in our statewide races should be very excited that Barbara Radnofsky has stepped forward once more to represent our Party on the ballot.
I attended Jim Mattox's funeral services yesterday at First Baptist Church in Austin.
After leaving the funeral, I was told that Congressman Michael McCaul attended. I cannot confirm this because I did not see him there, but the church was completely filled, with probably 1,000+ people with standing room only, so it was very difficult to see individual faces in the large crowd.
I left a message for his Washington office, asking if he was in attendance. If so, I want to thank him for attending.
But even more interesting are the rumors I've been hearing that Congressman McCaul is considering a run for TX Attorney General.
In my message to McCaul's office I also asked if their office can comment on this.
Has anyone else heard this? Any thoughts on this??
He would likely be a good choice by the Republican party, based on his bio. Which means we need to start campaigning for the Democrat (Patrick Rose? or Barbara Ann?) asap.
Here's a paragraph from his bio:
Prior to coming to Congress, Michael McCaul served as Chief of Counter Terrorism and National Security in the U.S. Attorney's office in Texas, and led the Joint Terrorism Task Force charged with detecting, deterring and preventing terrorist activity. Congressman McCaul also served as Texas Deputy Attorney General under current U.S. Senator John Cornyn, and served as a federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section in Washington, D.C.
David Mauro wrote in his Nov. 17th, 08' post, http://www.burntorangereport.c... that Barbara Ann Radnofsky was looking at this run. Barbara Ann told me directly "yes, I'm looking at it" a long while back at a People for the American Way event, so sounds like it's coming together...but we'll need to get this campaign in gear asap.
In David Mauro's above blog post, he mentioned speculation of Michael Williams, RR Commissioner, or Rep. Will Hartnet(R-Dallas) as potential Repub candidates.
Let me know if anyone has heard about McCaul's potential running. Again, I have not heard back from McCaul's office yet, therefore this is only speculation by a few unofficial sources that have shared this info with me.
