Well, things have gotten interesting here in House District 11.
Kenneth Durrett, former Mayor of Jacksonville, former state representative candidate and son and staffer of current state representative candidate Larry Durrett was arrested late Saturday night in Jacksonville on Driving While Intoxicated charges.
Kenneth Durrett has been paid at least $8,000 by the Larry Durrett campaign since July for "consultant" services. Basically, Kenneth is getting paid $2,000 a month to put up signs.
The DWI arrest comes at a very inopportune time for a campaign that was trying to make a late push against incumbent Chuck Hopson.
I was personally in Jacksonville on Saturay with block walkers and phone bankers trying to lend a hand. The Hopson staff, like most advisors in close races were busy taking care of last minute GOTV efforts. They are working 18 hour days and putting up signs and checking trends at all hours of the night.
Kenneth Durrett, on the other hand, is apparently as worried about winning the election as he is about putting people's lives in danger.
Chuck Hopson is and will continue to be the candidate that best represents traditional East Texas values.
Larry "the Tax Guy" Durrett's record as mayor of Jacksonville is pretty dismal. While serving as Mayor, he voted 10 times to raise the City of Jacksonville's taxes.
While Chuck Hopson is against a tax on small business, Larry Durrett has come out in support of taxing District 11's small businesses. All the while, Larry "the Tax Guy" feels that there should be exceptions for the new taxes on businesses like his own. That's right, while he feels that local District 11 businesses should have to pay, he doesn't want to pay it himself.
Sounds familar, huh?
Chuck Hopson has established a record of independence during his time in the Texas Legislature. He votes his district better than any member of the legislature.
Begs the question: Will CEO Larry "the Tax Guy" Durrett vote for the interest of millionaires or for the regular folks in District 11?
Kevin Brannon is a political consultant with a lot of baggage. No problem, though, for Larry Durrett. As of the October 10, 2006 Ethics Filing, Brannon had earned over $20,000 to consult on Durrett’s campaign for House District 11. What’s the issue with this particular consultant? Well, he is probably the consultant with the dirtiest hands from Tom Delay's Texas for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC) days that isn’t BEHIND BARS.
Kevin Brannon, Durrett’s top advisor, was hired by John Colyandro in 2002 to screen candidates for TRMPAC. His screening services were paid for, at $5,000 a month, by the dirty corporate money that helped bring about the John Colyandro and Tom Delay indictments. After screening the candidates that were to run in the ’02 race after State House redistricting, he was then hired on as the advisor for many of those candidates.
Brannon’s hand written notes show that he helped coordinate illegal last minute attack ads for Ken Mercer’s campaign through the Texas Association of Business and corporate cash. These notes showing the connection between the campaign, TRMPAC and TAB helped bring about the troubles that all of them eventually faced.
Unfortunately for the Durrett campaign, Brannon’s connections don’t just stop there. During the 2002 election where Brannon broke rules to help sweep Republicans into power in the Texas House of Representatives, Tom Craddick and he spoke 32 times between September 20th and November 5, according to TRMPAC’s records.
With Brannon helping advise and orchestrate the 2002 election on a statewide level, Craddick needed Brannon to help get to the newly elected candidates. Only two days after the election, Craddick announced that he had over 100 pledges from newly elected House members. Tom Craddick can thank Kevin Brannon, as much as anyone, for making him the Speaker of the House.
This raises a ton of new questions for the Larry Durrett campaign.
With your top advisor being the gatekeeper to corporate cash, how do we know he’s staying clean? Little things like ethics law hasn’t stopped him in the past.
Will your campaign make a pledge not to dump a last minute illegal attack ad going after Rep. Hopson? In 2002 alone, your top advisor helped spend over $600,000 in corporate cash in the final weeks headed up to election day.
Are you just another TRMPAC-sponsored Craddick loyalist, or would you be allowed to be the independent voice folks in District 11 have come to expect? Your advisor’s record of candidates doesn’t speak well for independence.
Chuck Hopson challenger Larry Durrett has committed over $320,000 of his own money to the race for House District 11. That is a high price to pay for a district that isn’t in a major media market.
But rumors are swirling around the district that if Durrett can manage to achieve a victory at the polls that he’ll get reimbursed for his expenses. Millionaire right winger James Leininger, of attacking moderate Republican fame, has recently shown some interest in this race. So the question is raised: Is Leininger planning on taking care of Larry Durrett’s campaign expenses if he can win? Or, has James Leininger actually already chipped in since the last filing period?
Accepting Leininger's money would be a major development in a district that while it may lean conservative, is overwhelmingly against vouchers.
Give Larry Durrett a call to see if he plans on accepting James Leininger’s money. The campaign can be reached at (903)586-9796.
State Representative Chuck Hopson, yesterday, called for a Pledge of Allegiance to “to improve performance and accountability in East Texas public schools by keeping children safe on campus, increasing investments in technology for rural schools, eliminating the high-stakes nature of TAKS testing, restoring health and retirement benefits to teachers, and returning local control to parents and school boards.”
Hopson has fought tirelessly as an advocate of rural schools, especially as a tool for building economic development in areas like Jacksonville, Henderson, Crockett, Rusk and Carthage. “Great public schools are the best tool to guarantee good health, economic development, and equal opportunity — and that means heading off schemes to divert tax dollars out of public schools to pay for private-school vouchers."
The Pledge focuses on high standards, measurable outcomes, and common sense steps to meet the challenge of leaving a better public education system to our children and grandchildren. Hopson’s five point pledge of allegiance includes:
· Keep Students safe on Campus
· Increase investment in technology for Rural Schools
· Eliminate high-stakes nature of TAKS testing
· Restore teacher health and retirement benefits
· Return local control to parents and school boards
Hopson continues to show the leadership and ideas that Larry Durrett seems to be lacking. While Chuck Hopson is rolling out new initiatives and developing solutions for East Texas, Durrett is attacking Hopson for being unpatriotic and for illegal immigrants, while loaning himself another $150,000 to keep it all up. Larry Durrett certainly has money, he’s just bankrupt on new ideas.
Water rights are a huge issue in East Texas. Dallas likes to find ways to propose new reservoirs out here, pay for it, and then ship the vast majority of the water back to Dallas.
As you can imagine, it's not very popular amongst the locals. Especially considering that not only does it amount to stealing our resources, but also stealing our land.
Almost all politicians in East Texas have rejected out right the many proposals for new lakes in East Texas for Dallas water. But not Larry Durrett. At a rally recently in Henderson, Durrett brought our precious resources back to the mighty dollar. "If Dallas wants our water, it must come at a price."
I think Durrett might be missing the boat on this one. Guess he's happy to sell out East Texas resources to highest bidder, as long as there is some money to be had.
Do you really think we need another politician in Austin that has a price tag?
This time, the Houston Chronicle got it right. An article from today's "Outdoors" Section titled "Park underfunding becomes cause":
Over the past week or so, the four major candidates for governor have spoken or issued statements decrying the financial strangulation of Texas' state parks and the resulting deterioration of those public lands and the recreational opportunities they provide.
And Chris Bell, Democrat candidate for governor, has scheduled news conferences Saturday at a couple of state parks in East Texas to specifically speak on the issue of park funding.
