During public testimony in the Election Committee, Republican Representative Betty Brown said something very interesting.
"Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese - I understand it's a rather difficult language - do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?"
Now the background.
Rep. Brown, a Republican, made it clear that nothing is sacred that gets in the way of Texas Republicans' extreme partisan agenda, asking a witness testifying on the problems the Republican Voter ID bill would create for Chinese-American Texans. That's when she said the above mention line.
According to the Texas Democratic Party, Rep. Brown then went on to put the onus on those who would be prevented from voting by the Republican Voter ID bill to figure out their own solution, saying to the aforementioned witness, "I see a need here for young people like you, who are obviously very bright, to come up with something that would work for you and then let us see if we can't make it work for us." While Rep. Brown later tried to back out of her statements, the damage was done.
The Texas Democratic Party is now asking for Rep. Brown to apologize.
"It's already shameful enough that the Republican Elections Committee members are trying to suppress the votes of countless Texans with their partisan Voter ID bill, and now Rep. Brown is adding insult to injury with her disrespectful comments," said Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie. "We are calling on Rep. Betty Brown to apologize for her offensive and out-of-touch remarks."
The Asian American community is one of the fastest growing populations in Texas. If a law is going to disenfranchise a group of people, the solution cannot and should not be for a person to sacrifice their culture in order to have the right to vote.
As the Asian American Action Fund pointed clarified, "Texas has a rather substantial APA voting population, including a fair number of Republicans. Not to mention, current and previous elected officials including ex-Rep. Martha Wong and sitting Rep. Angie Chen Button."
AJ Durrani, President of the Asian American Democrats of Texas added to Chairman Richie's appeal. Durrani e-mailed the members of AADT saying:
Members of AADT,
On Wednesday April 8, during the Texas House of Representatives testimony on the Voter ID Bill, State Representative Betty Brown, R-Terrell, made shockingly intolerant and insensitive remarks about Asian Americans. An article from the Houston Chronicle.Com is provided below for details, as is a statement from Texas Democratic Party Chairman, Boyd Ritchie.
State Representative Betty Brown's racially insensitive remarks have no place in America, and she should immediately and unconditionally apologize for her remarks. Please contact State Representative Betty Brown about her unacceptable remarks and ask her to apologize immediately in a public forum.
Her email address is: [mailto:betty.brown@house.state.tx.us betty.brown@house.state.tx.us]
Her postal mail and fax addresses, and phone numbers are as follows:
Capitol Address
Room E1.404, Capitol Extension
Austin, TX 78701
(512) 463-0458
(512) 463-2040 Fax
District Address
108 S. Pinkerton, Suite 105
Athens, TX 75751
(903) 675-9500
(903) 677-6773 Fax
This is the Republican solution to the many problems with Voter Suppression legislation. If you are negatively effected by this ill conceived and unnecessary law, you should make sacrifices. If you are unwilling to sacrifice your job, your culture, your marriage, or anything else that may prevent you from voting, then you didn't want to vote bad enough.
Maybe that is why former Texas Republican Party Political Director Royal Masset estimated that a photo ID requirement would reduce Democratic turnout in Texas by 3%.
Mexican American Legislative Caucus chairman, and recent blog newcomer, Trey Martinez-Fischer has found a way to bring some levity to the situation. Once you get done asking for Rep. Brown to apologize, you can at least find out what your new name can be here. Let me introduce you to Elise Hughes KVUE's new political reporter. She may look familiar. Sort of like Jennifer Kim.
Update: Thanks to a friend on facebook, we now have the entire question and answer period between Ramey Ko and Rep. Betty Brown. There a couple really great points and our friend Ramey does a great job testifying.
Ed. note: This is a first in a series done by BOR examining how Democrats made significant gains in the Texas House this election cycle.
Ellen Cohen's victory on Tuesday was a sweet one for the GLBT community in Houston. For those of you who don't know Houston, Montrose is a progressive, urban neighborhood in Houston with a large GLBT community. Gentrification has changed the neighborhood somewhat over the past decade, but it's still the part of Houston that "looks like Austin", with bustling smoke filled cafes, funky thrift shops, and home of people with purple hair and leather boots. In 2003, re-districting split the neighborhood into two districts to dilute its voting power, with the eastern half going to Rep. Garnet Coleman and the western half going to Rep. Debra Danburg, who was defeated by Martha Wong, in part because she postured herself as a social moderate in 2002. But in the lege Wong voted against protecting GLBT youth in public schools, against same-sex marriage in committee and abstaining on the floor of the Texas House.
Houston's GLBT community was ready for change, and Ellen Cohen's race was an unprecedented campaign for the Houston GLBT Political Caucus (HGLBTPC). In no other race in Texas has the GLBT community ever involved itself as deeply in a campaign as it did in this race. Our field campaign included:
Starting blockwalking at the beginning of August, twice a week, every week, up until the election. Targeting the five precincts that make up West Montrose, we knocked over 4,300 doors for Ellen Cohen. The HGLBTPC is an all-volunteer organization, and yet our blockwalking made up one-fifth of Cohen's field campaign.
Distributing over 2,500 voter registration cards in Montrose, dropping 1,200 voter registration cards at the homes of unregistered voters and mailing 1,300 voter registraion cards to progressive and GLBT people we had identified at gay bars and the Pride Parade who weren't registered to vote.
Raising over $15,000 for the Cohen campaign ($7,000 from Houston's GLBT community, $3,000 from Equality Texas, and $5,000 from Human Rights Campaign).
Sending three pieces of direct mail (our endorsement card twice and this piece on Wong) to the 9,100 GLBT and progressive voters we had identified in HD-134. That last part was the outcome of over three years of work in HD-134. During last year's campaign against Texas' marriage amendment, we were thinking long-term about our work in a fight we knew we would likely lose. The Houston GLBT Political Caucus vigorously blockwalked in Montrose identifying voters who were opposed to the marriage amendment.
Staffing the five precincts in Montrose with volunteers for the twelve hours the polls were open.
What's the signifigance of this election for the GLBT community?
The Houston Chronicle has an editorial today about negative advertising, including Rick Perry's beer commercial parodies and Martha Wong's "Blame Canada!" TV ad.
Coming out of Texas, though, the ads from Gov. Rick Perry and state Rep. Martha Wong say a little too much about the values to which they're pandering. It's not enough that they look silly themselves. They also manage to make Texans look like ignorant xenophobes.
Wong's offering is a TV cartoon sequence purporting to depict Democratic rival Ellen Cohen. It features a male voiceover with a faux Canadian accent intoning, "Hello. I'm Ellen Cohen, the tax-increase lady. And I moved here from Canada, the land of big government and big taxes."
As Chronicle columnist Rick Casey notes, Cohen, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, did in fact move here from Canada — about 30 years ago. But then, many Houstonians, including Wong's family, came from elsewhere. So it's a little odd to attribute the Ellen Cohen of the mid-1960s with responsibility for Canada's tax code and system of government.
It goes on to say that Wong's ad (among others) "reflect the familiar contempt of politicians and their campaign managers for the voters' intelligence and powers of discernment." You sure know how to end a campaign, Martha!
Rep. Martha Wong's campaign has officially gone desperate:
Is this not the worst ad possible for this district? HD 134 makes up (by and large) an educated, affluent section of Houston; two-thirds of people in the district have a bachelor's degree or higher. Why on earth would anyone think this ad would be effective? Can you imagine if this ad ran in HD 48 here in Austin -- how much people would laugh?
I think the Martha Wong campaign just lost. Go help Ellen Cohen make it certain...and enjoy the laugh this afternoon.
Mother Jones has a great profile of the race between Ellen Cohen and Martha Wong going on in Houston right now. It's a good article and you should read the whole thing, but this graf pretty much says it all about Martha Wong:
As Wong climbed the rungs of power at the state Capitol, however, she seemed to cast aside many groups that define her district. For example, environmentalists have been drawing attention to extraordinarily high ozone levels in the part of Houston that Wong represents, yet Wong voted against five separate clean air measures. Schools are a big issue in the highly educated district, yet Wong, a former elementary school principal, opposed a bipartisan proposal to raise teacher salaries. Wong acknowledges that voters in her district are independent-minded yet in an interview couldn’t cite a single instance in which she’d voted against her party.
No amount of red tape is going to cover up Martha Wong's record.
Martha Wong has been a good deal of coverage in Houston local television for some misleading direct mail she's been sending to voters in her district. As Kuff has already reported, Wong got into some trouble last week after sending out a piece of mail that erroneously implied she had been endorsed by Houston ISD superintendent Abe Saavedra. From KTRK:
More recently, Wong sent out a mailer listing a number of bills regarding crime. Trouble is, she didn't sponsor or author any of the bills; also, not a single House member voted against the bills for which Wong is taking credit. From KPRC:
Wong has been claiming in TV ads that she has worked to improve CHIP, despite her votes to cut CHIP in previous legislative sessions. Taken all together, these stories look like signs of a campaign getting desperate.
It's an election year, and something we're never short of in an election year is a stock of campaign policy stunts. One of Martha Wong's new "policy ideas" is to raise the maximum age at which children can remain on their parents' health insurance plan, from twenty-four to thirty-five. So while thousands of low-income families are struggling to wade through red tape to get their kids health care (something Martha figuratively and literally knows about), slackers sitting on their parents' couches watching "Dr. Who" re-runs can stay in a state of arrested development a little longer.
At a debate last month, it was pretty clear that the "Slacker Law" is a campaign year stunt, as the audience burst into laughter when Wong proposed it:
Martha Wong voted to cut the Children's Health Insurance Program, and Ellen Cohen supports fully funding it. Let's make sure Ellen can work to make that a reality in 2007.
As we've reported recently, Martha Wong has gotten into a bit of trouble lately covering up the word "Republican" on her yard signs with a piece of red tape. Wong had this to say last week when asked why she was taping up her signs:
"We use one campaign sign when we're running in the primary, and we use another sign when we're running in the general," said Wong. "It's that simple."
The following photo was taken last Thursday of Martha Wong's campaign headquarters:
I can't think of any primaries Martha Wong is running for right now, can you?
Earlier this week she sent a letter to Perry asking him to implement a "unified command" in the district to deal with "the increase in gangs on the street, murders in parks, apartment complexes, car washes ... and a shortage of Houston police."
Even though it is an obvious publicity stunt, she has clearly tapped into residents' growing fear of crime in the district.
And now she insinuates (after the primary, she says) she isn't a right-wing Republican?
Martha's in for a tough fight over the next six weeks. Her district is urban, narrowly divided, and well-educated; two-thirds of district residents have a bachelor's degree or better. It's the kind of district that's too smart to fall for fear mongering about abortion or thinly veiled contempt for our environment. Martha knows that; that's why she's running away from her party ID and the policies she's promoted the past four years.
Gary Polland and Peter Roussel both essentially say in the interview that if Martha comes across as a right-wing Republican, she will lose. At this point, Martha's record and values are pretty clear, and no amount of red tape can cover them up.
