House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has decided against naming either Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, or Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), the panel's No. 2 Democrat, to chair the pivotal committee next year. [. . .]
Instead of picking Harman or Hastings, Pelosi will look for a compromise candidate, probably Rep. Silvestre Reyes (Tex.), but possibly Rep. Norman D. Dicks (Wash.), a hawkish member of the Appropriations defense subcommittee, or Rep. Sanford Bishop (Ga.), a conservative African American with experience on the intelligence committee.
As Kuff has pointed out, having Reyes as committee chair would help Texas crawl a little bit out of the seniority hole that Tom DeLay dug for us during redistricting.
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?
As of 2:40 a.m., with eight precincts yet to report, Juan Garcia was down by 250 votes in his race to unseat incumbent Rep. Gene Seaman in Corpus Christi and surrounding counties. However, reports are that the one remaining precinct is heavily Democrat, and that without about 1/3 of those ballots counted, Garcia is leading (and expected to hold). Though not official yet, Democrats might have picked up a net of five seats.
Every incumbent House Democrat won, as well. Reps. Hopson and Cook held onto their rural seats, as did Reps. McReynolds, Homer, and Farabee. Rep. Vo held off Talmadge Heflin in Houston -- a tremendous protection for Democrats. And in our two open seats, Joe Heflin held onto Speaker Laney's seat in a race many prognosticators had written off as a loss for Democrats. Heflin held on to defeat Landtroop, and Farias held Rep. Uresti's seat in San Antonio.
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!
As Kuff reported earlier today, Carole Strayhorn's office recently released an audit of Accenture, the company the newly elected GOP-majority in 2003 tasked to manage enrollments for the Children's Health Insurance Program. The way the contract is set up, Accenture gets to profit from making mistakes on applications. From the comptroller's report:
Accenture is paid when applications are completed and ready for the state’s final determination. Accenture also is paid, however, when applications “time out” because clients have not submitted sufficient information for processing. These applications are sent to the state for denial, and Accenture is paid the same rate as for completed applications. This payment structure does not provide Accenture with any incentive to seek necessary information from clients before their applications time out.
"They're being paid for their mistakes, and our children are the ones footing the bill," Rep. Coleman said. "It's disgusting. It's outrageous. It's unacceptable."
Accenture's mistakes do verge on downright criminal, but it's important to note, as Kuff points out, Accenture isn't the cause of CHIP enrollment bungling since 2003; it's the effect of policies the governor and legislature passed. And the first step towards fixing the screw-ups of 2003 is to make sure we have a legislature and governor next year for whom children's health insurance is a priority.
It's important everyone understands the facts: Governor Perry and Republicans made enrolling children in CHIP more difficult, the HHSC reported that the main reason children are dropping off the CHIP rolls is because of the difficulty of the enrollment process, and Accenture profits from every re-submittal of CHIP applications.
CHIP is a major issue this election cycle. In North Texas, this television ad from the SEIU puts a face on the CHIP crisis:
A Spanish-language version of the video can be viewed below.
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.
This is one of the most creative ads I've seen this cycle: no talking and no images, just text on a screen against sound effects and a piano score. It's also one of the best ads I've seen this cycle, and judging by how the past week has treated Martha Wong, she can't be too happy about getting called on her record.
