As the filing deadline approaches the political maneuvering is increasing and it appears that there is significant maneuvering revolving around Texas State Senate District Five. State Representative Dan Gattis announced this weekend that he will not be seeking the Republican nomination for Senate District Five, and according to a report by the Bryan College-Station Eagle, Gattis will also not be running for reelection citing personal reasons. Senator Steve Ogden announced this year that he was not running for reelection, but according to Gattis, Ogden's "willingness to return to the senate" was one of the reasons he decided to step aside.
According to an article in the Eagle, Senator Ogden's office made a statement that there will be an announcement later this week about the upcoming election. Currently Ogden's campaign web site displays the Senator's statement from earlier this year in regards to not seeking reelection. Ben Bius, the only other Republican seeking the nomination for Senate District Five, made a statement in the Eagle article that the speculation about Ogden running for reelection is "completely unfounded and baseless."
Could it be a question of fundraising? According to Texas Ethics Commission records, Senator Ogden reported $737,578 cash on hand as of the July Semiannual campaign finance report, while Representative Gattis reported only $81,039 on hand as of the July Semiannual campaign finance report. However, according to the latest campaign finance report, Ben Bius has reported no campaign contributions. Even if Gattis is having a difficult time raising money before the primary it does not mean that he would have a difficult time raising money for a general election, and the likelihood that he would face a serious Democratic opponent is low.
This is the first in a series of posts examining the future of Texas Politics that I hope to write. I intend to examine ongoing demographic and political shifts in detail, and look to the future of statewide elections, Congressional and State Legislature elections, and redistricting.
Texas is the second largest state in the Union, after California.
Texas has been, for several years, a majority minority state.
Texas has 34 electoral votes, which will increase to 37 or 38 for the 2012 Presidential Election.
On the Presidential level, Texas has been one of the primary pieces (if not the primary piece) in the Republican Electoral College puzzle for years.
On the State level, Texas has not voted for a Democratic candidate for anything Statewide since 1994.
Yet if we can extrapolate from current trends, at some point in next decade Texas will become a bona fide purple swing state. Then it will become a blue state. Then it will become a linchpin of the Democratic electoral coalition, and as Texas flips, modern Conservative Republicanism as we know it will face mortal danger.
While there is currently a national debate over our future, in Texas there is a debate over our past. The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) released the first draft of proposed new social studies curriculum standards this week, and there is expected to be a debate over what and how history is taught in Texas. This comes only months after the debate about science curriculum standards in which there was a debate over teaching evolution or intelligent design (creationism). The Texas Freedom Network reported that the first draft was encouraging, and that "teachers, academics and other community members on the curriculum writing teams refused to bow to far-right pressure to inject political agendas into history, geography and other social studies classrooms."
The SBOE appointed a panel of experts to advise the SBOE on the social studies curriculum, and points of debate include the role of the Bible and Christian influence on the founding of the United States; debates on which historical figures should be included in lesson plans, textbooks, and standardized tests. The debates about curriculum in Texas have been hyper partisan; a group of fundamentalist Christian social conservatives controls a majority voting block on the SBOE. This partisan divide has far reaching effects, as the curriculum standards, specifically the language used in text books, has a national impact because the text books purchased by Texas (the second largest purchaser of text books in the country) are often used as a model for other states text books.
Even though the Texas Republican primary is still about a year away, the race for Governor is already well underway.
Last week former Vice Presidential candidate and current Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin endorsed Governor Rick Perry; this rings as strangely ironic since only a few months ago during the Presidential campaign Palin misquote former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to suggest why women should support her candidacy for Vice President.
"There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women."
Whether or not Palin's endorsement of Governor Perry will help his campaign remains to be seen, although primary voters in Texas Republican primaries tend to be dominated by the conservative base of the Republican Party.
Hutchison's only chance to win the GOP Primary-typically dominated by Christian conservatives-is to attract new voters to the primary. That means she'll be doing her best to get Democrats, liberal Republicans who don't vote in the GOP Primary, and independents into the primary. For Democrats who may cross over, Palin is poison, and it will turn both Democrats and independents away from Perry. It will, however, probably a wash for liberal Republicans who aren't typical GOP Primary voters.
Today the Representatives from the Texas House of Representatives released a press release that promotes a bill to "prevent teen and unintended pregnancies" with no hope of actually preventing teen and unintended pregnancies.
VILLARREAL AND VAN DE PUTTE TEAM UP TO PREVENT TEEN AND UNINTENDED PREGNANCIES For Immediate Release
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
(SAN ANTONIO, TX) -- Representative Mike Villarreal (San Antonio) and Senator Leticia Van de Putte (San Antonio) jointly filed legislation aimed at reducing the teen birth rate in Bexar County and across Texas. According to the Centers for Disease Control, Texas has the third highest teen birth rate in the nation, with 63 births for every 1,000 female teens ages 15-19. This is more than 50 percent higher than the national average.
The recent election and inauguration of Barack H. Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America is of great historical significance;
...As President Obama begins his term, it is fitting that the Texas Legislature send its regards congratulating him on his election.
SCR 9 was unanimously passed by voice vote.
Below:Notable Bills Filed Today in the Texas State House of Representatives
Governor Rick Perry gave the state of the state address tonight, and as the 81st Texas Legislature convenes to do the people's business Left of College Station will be watching. Over the course of the legislative session Left of College Station will be posting updates on bills as they move through the legislature, and review the impact that those bills will have statewide and locally in the Brazos Valley.
This afternoon Governor Rick Perry gave his state of the state address, and after thanking both the Lieutenant Governor and the new Speaker of the House, Governor Perry thanked former Speaker of the House (R) Tom Craddick for his "faithful service to the state." Afterwards Perry laid out what it is that he believes Texas has accomplished during his tenure, and also presented his legislative agenda for the next two years.
The Governor also used the opportunity to mention some of what he believes is Washington, D.C. failures (Perry mentioned the nation's capitol five times, included twice as failing and once as dragging its feet.); this could possibly be another snipe at Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison as the Republican primary seems as though it has already begun. Governor Perry went on to outline what he believes have been successes and would could be future successes.
The debate about teaching creationism in the classroom is set to start again in Texas after a report was released this week by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund detailing a survey conducted of what scientist in Texas think should be taught in Texas science classrooms. The survey concludes that 98% of scientists favor the unadulterated teaching of evolution in public school science classrooms.
The Discovery Institute, the conservative Christian anti-science "think tank," posted an article in which the claim is made that it is actually the TFN that wants to "water down the teaching of evolution" and "remove the strengths and weaknesses language." The article goes on to claim that the 95% of scientist in the report only want "half of evolution taught" and "are seeking to limit the free flow of information and censor science." Another claim is that there are "valid and significant scientific challenges to Darwinian evolution that students need to know about. Evidence is not contingent on a consensus."
Teaching evolution in science class is not teaching half of evolution, because intelligent design is not half of the theory of evolution. Intelligent design is not science, in fact it does not even met the basic criteria of a scientific theory. Also, there is not a significant amount of scientific challenges to evolution that students need to be taught; Lawrence Krauss reviewed 10 million scientific articles and scientific citation indexes over twelve years and found that there were 88 articles about intelligent design and only 11 were not in engineering journals and out of those 8 out of 11 were critical of intelligent design and the remaining 3 were not in peer reviewed journals.
Other notable findings in the survey included that 89.7% of scientist surveyed believed that "modern evolutionary biology is largely correct in its essentials, but still has open questions for active scientific research." While 0% of scientists (none of the 464 survey recipients) believe that "modern evolutionary biology is completely wrong" and that "life was created essentially as we see it today." When asked if there was significant difference between creationism and intelligent design 78.2% said that there was no difference and 15.5% said that there was a difference.
This evening the Texas State Board of Education is conducting a public forum on current curriculum requiring students to be taught the "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories, and according to the Houston Chronicle "89 people had signed up to testify on the proposal, which also suggests encouraging middle school students to discuss alternative explanations for evolution."
Despite the voices of hundreds of scientist from Universities across the state, including conservative Christian colleges such as Baylor University, Dallas Baptist University, and Texas Christian University, there are still voices that insist that intelligent design and creationism is actually about science and not religion. In the same article Jonathan Saenz, a lobbyist for the conservative Christian organization Texas Free Market Foundation, said, "The reality is this issue is about evolution and teaching strengths and weaknesses of evolution. It's about science and teaching science right, regardless of what religious beliefs people have."
President Elect Barack Obama has begun to choose is White House staff, and his first selection was Rahm Emanuel for White House Chief of Staff. Emanuel is a Congressman from Illinois's 5th congressional district, and was the Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2006 midterm elections. According to Politico.com the selection "was a powerful signal of Obama's determination to be effective under the existing rules of the Washington game." While John Nichols of the Nation described the selection of Emanuel as "best understood as a disappointing choice rather than a definitional selection." Jacob Weisberg of Slate described Emanuel in 1996 as "the [Clinton] administration's most diabolically effective tactician." While Noam Scheiber of the New Republic made a case for Emanuel because no one else had the "combination of policy chops, Hill knowledge, and the understanding of how to mobilize voters that he'll need to pass major initiatives like healthcare reform."
What Rahm Emanuel symbolizes is that while we can expect an Obama Administration to be bi-partisan, we can also expect to see the administration aggressively perusing Obama's agenda. The role of the Chief of Staff is to execute the President's agenda, and no one has argued that Emanuel will not be able to execute with proficiency. There have been those that have characterized Emanuel as a partisan, and there have been those that have characterized him as moderate. However, it does not matter, what matters is whether or not he will be able to execute what it is a President Obama will ask him to do. Barack Obama ran one of the most discipline campaigns that have been seen in politics, and the appointment of Emanuel symbolizes that an Obama White House will be just as disciplined.
While speaking to a small group of students on a Texas college campus last week Rob Curnock said that the reason he would be more qualified and a stronger advocate for veterans than Congressman Chet Edwards is because his father served in World War II. "My opponent has nothing on me there."
As a veteran I can say this will complete authority: when it comes to veterans issues Rob Curnock has nothing on Chet Edwards.
Congressman Edwards has a distinguished voting record on veterans' issues. In 2006 Edwards received voting rankings from the Disabled American Veterans of 100%, the Retired Enlisted Association of 86%, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave Edwards a grade of A-. In fact Edwards has received a perfect vote ranking from the Disabled American Veterans for the last three years. As the Chairman of the House Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee Edwards increased veterans' health care funding to $11.8 billion and because of his seniority in Congress is able to be a strong voice for veterans.
