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Primary deals tea party a setback in Texas

What’s the big takeaway from the Texas primary election?

It well might be that the tea party, which claims all kinds of strength in Texas, had its head handed to it by voters all across the state.

Good deal.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn brushed aside what had been thought to be a stern test in his Republican primary victory. U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, the Gulf Coast goofball who challenged Cornyn, was trampled by the incumbent.

Other veteran members of Congress survived challenges, including Rep. Mac Thornberry of Clarendon, who was renominated in a three-person race in the GOP primary here at home.

The Texas Legislature primary also saw some setbacks dealt the tea party wing of the GOP. The District 31 primary out here in West Texas produced a win by the incumbent, Republican Kel Seliger of Amarillo — although his margin was far closer than I ever imagined it would be.

A win is a win, however.

Some races still need to be decided. The lieutenant governor’s race is heading to a runoff with state Sen. Dan Patrick in the catbird seat against the incumbent, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Dewhurst has been stung once already, the Senate primary in 2012 that saw him upset by tea party upstart Ted Cruz. He’s been leaning farther and farther to the right ever since. To be honest, he doesn’t seem comfortable in this new role as a newfound ultraconservative and he’s now in danger of losing his party’s nomination to what once was considered the most powerful office in Texas.

The attorney general’s GOP primary featured three guys cut from the same far-right-wing cloth.

The tea party wing of the GOP had hoped for a much bigger night than it got. Instead, it has seen its influence diluted.

All this Republican in-fighting is going to lead the party somewhere, but the destination remains unknown.

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Election provides a couple of stunners

Two big surprises highlighted my watching of the Republican primary elections Tuesday night.

One of them is quite good; the other is potentially troubling.

First, the good.

Nancy Tanner’s victory in the GOP primary for Potter County judge caught me off-guard, but it does demonstrate that competence and experience can win an argument over name identification and relative sizzle.

Tanner is going to take over the county judge’s duties at the first of the year. The GOP voters of the county showed that they appreciate her two decades serving as administrative assistant to Arthur Ware, the current judge who’s stepping down.

Ware had fired Tanner from her job in 2013 for reasons that haven’t been explained fully. Tanner had just made known her intention to run for Ware’s seat after he had announced his impending retirement from public life. Ware had been slowed considerably by a devastating stroke he suffered in 2010, leaving Tanner and other county officials to perform many of the duties attached to the county judge’s office.

It was her experience and intimate knowledge of the nuts and bolts of county government that made Tanner the most qualified of the five candidates running for the office.

Which brings me to the surprise. I was quite sure no one was going to win this primary outright. I figured it would be two of three top-tier candidates — Tanner, former Amarillo Mayor Debra McCartt and Bill Bandy — competing in a runoff.

Silly me. I underestimated the wisdom of the voters.

***

State Sen. Kel Seliger’s hair-raising win over former Midland Mayor Mike Canon provided the other surprise.

Seliger, R-Amarillo, by all rights should have won that race in a walk. He’s smart, articulate, knowledgeable, calm, reasonable, effective, collegial, detail-oriented, friendly … what am I missing? Whatever. He deserved to be re-elected to the Senate District 31 seat he’s filled since 2004.

Then came Canon, who began accusing Seliger of being a closet liberal, which is fightin’ words in this part of the political world. The word among some observers is that Canon was recruited by Michael Quinn Sullivan, a tea party political operative who over the years has developed a nasty relationship with Seliger.

Even given the Texas political climate, I didn’t believe Canon would come as close as he did to defeating Seliger.

There is a potential for concern here. Seliger’s re-election — with no Democrat on the ballot — should not signal a sharp turn to the right for the already-conservative lawmaker. Other elected public officials have reacted badly at times to these challenges from their left or the right by tacking too far in either direction.

My hope is that Seliger is comfortable enough in his own skin to stay the course and keep up the good work he’s already done — such as water planning and funding for public education — on behalf of his constituents.

All in all, where these two races are concerned, the election turned out just fine.

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Charlie ‘did it,’ all right

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=715472731818192&set=a.162532927112178.34097.105810232784448&type=1&theater

My brother-in-law posted this picture from the Texas State Cemetery.

It speaks to the courage of someone I used to know fairly well, but in a mostly professional way. The late Charles Wilson was an East Texas congressman whose district was part of the region our newspaper circulated back in the old days.

He was a tiger, a fierce defender of freedom against tyranny. He had his flaws, such as his partying ways — but he never apologized publicly for the lifestyle he led.

When he wasn’t carousing — which occupied little of his time — he served his Second Congressional District constituents honorably. He also was a friend of the Afghan freedom fighters known back in those days as the mujahedeen. They were the ferocious partisans who fought the Red Army that had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Charlie saw it as his mission to arm the mujahedeen with modern weapons, Stinger missiles the fighters could use to shoot down Soviet helicopters.

Wilson persuaded his colleagues in the House of Representatives to pony up the money to pay for the weapons.

The weaponry worked. The Soviets were driven out of Afghanistan. Two years after their defeat, the Soviet Union vanished from the face of the planet.

Charlie Wilson was one of those Texas Democrats who managed to work across the aisle with his Republican colleagues. In this polarized era today, it’s not likely Wilson could get nominated by his own party any more than a moderate Republican can get elected from within his or her own party.

But guys like Charlie knew how to legislate. They knew how government worked.

Charlie Wilson died in 2010. The more I see the dysfunction that passes for government today in Washington, the more I miss him.

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Robo-calls flood my inbox

We arrived home Monday afternoon after spending a wonderful weekend with our granddaughter and her parents, celebrating little Emma’s first birthday.

After walking into the house we heard the beep of our answering machine. Five messages had come in while we were away.

We started playing them back.

All five of ’em were political robo-calls, those automated messages designed to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate or political cause.

In our case, they are an instant signal to delete the message without ever listening to them.

My favorite robo-call came from Sen. John Cornyn, in which he introduced himself by saying: “Hello, Kathleen, this is John Cornyn …”

We deleted that right after hearing “Cornyn.” My wife, who never uses the name on her birth certificate, declared that Sen. Cornyn’s greeting would never get her to listen to anything he had to say over a recorded message. “He obviously doesn’t know me,” she said, laughing.

Robo-calls are intended to reach as many people as possible with the fewest man-hours spent as possible. I get why candidates use them. However, I’ve ever met anyone who’s heard a robo-call, listened to it and then decided how they were going to vote on a race based on the automated phone call they had just heard.

The robo-call season is about to end — for now — once the primary election ballots are counted. The calls will rev up again for the May 27 runoff that’s expected in several of the statewide Republican races; I’m thinking of the lieutenant governor’s contest for starters.

Be forewarned. The calls that come to our phone won’t be heeded.

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Same-sex couples jumping through hoops

Let’s see if we can sort this story out a bit.

The Amarillo Globe-News reported Sunday about a same-sex couple seeking a “family membership” at the Amarillo Town Club. The club has denied the couple such a membership, citing the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.

The couple, two women, were asked to provide a marriage license. They aren’t yet married, but plan to wed soon presumably in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage. The club informed the women that the marriage license had to be issued in Texas to make their marriage legal. Well, the state doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, so that’s out.

The couple is petitioning the Town Club to grant them a family membership and to allow them to proceed with their weight-loss plan.

Here’s where it gets a bit sticky for the couple: The Amarillo Town Club is owned by Baptist Community Services, a faith-based organization. It’s not a public institution, funded by taxpayer money. Its members pay the freight with membership dues. Thus, the Town Club is within its rights to set admission policy any way it so chooses, as long as it doesn’t discriminate.

You want it to get even stickier?

Here goes.

My wife and I joined the Amarillo Town Club more than a decade ago. We, too, have a family membership. We signed up as husband and wife.

No one at the Amarillo Town Club — either at the main facility at 45th and Cornell or the one at Hillside — ever asked us to produce a marriage license. I cannot recall precisely, but perhaps they asked us to show them driver’s licenses to prove we were who we said we were.

A marriage license? The issue never came up. Were we even legally married? No one ever asked that question.

For the record, my wife and I were married — legally — on Sept. 4, 1971 in a little Presbyterian Church in southeast Portland, Ore. That’s in case anyone is interested.

All of this leads me to conclude that it appears some discrimination involving the two young women at the center of this story may have taken place.

Yes, indeed. This story is going to get quite complicated.

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Hoping for a Seliger blowout

Of all the local races that have piqued my interest, one stands out.

The Texas Senate District 31 contest between incumbent Kel Seliger of Amarillo and former Midland Mayor Mike Canon had the earmarks of a true test of ideas.

It’s turned into an onslaught of half-truths and talking points from one of them, Canon.

Seliger is the Amarillo Republican who’s represented the sprawling Senate district since 2004. He turned into a quick study, learning rapidly the art of legislating, the language of the Senate — and he has shown an affinity for working with Democrats as well as Republicans, a trait that has gone missing among many members of both legislative houses in recent years.

Canon, meanwhile, has conducted a campaign that refers to Seliger as some kind of closet liberal, implying that he is misrepresenting the people of District 31.

I had the pleasure of taking part in a candidate forum sponsored by Panhandle PBS. I asked the men whether they supported term limits for legislators and to explain why or why not.

Canon offered the true-blue talking point that we need fresh ideas and a brisk turnover in the Senate. He owed to serve just two terms before bowing out.

Seliger, meanwhile, offered the nuanced answer I’ve come to expect from him. He said elections have a way of determining whether a legislator is doing his or her job properly and he wouldn’t commit to setting a term limit for himself.

Seliger gave the more honest and courageous answer given the tenor of much of the debate these days.

I just returned from the Dallas Metroplex, where I saw lawn signs scattered all over creation touting the virtues of “conservative Republican” candidates. What in the world differentiates Texas Republicans these days?

Canon is running as a “conservative Republican” candidate for the state Senate. Seliger is running as an accomplished incumbent who knows how the political system works.

My hope Tuesday is that Seliger scores a blowout win.

He’s done the job his constituents have sent him to do.

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Yes, cell phones do have their purpose

Most members of my family and even some of my friends know that I have a love-hate relationship with cell phones.

It’s mostly a hate relationship, I must confess, particularly when I hear people flapping their yaps on them in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear them talking about nothing of importance.

However …

I have discovered that cell phones have at least one redeeming quality. I discovered it today on the road back from Allen, where my wife and I had just helped our granddaughter Emma — perhaps you’ve heard me mention her on occasion — celebrate her first birthday.

We were driving home on U.S. 287, blazing through Quanah when a warning message flashed on the dashboard of our 2010 Toyota Prius. It said, “Oil Maintenance Required.”

My wife was at the wheel. Given that we’ve owned the vehicle only a few months and we haven’t acquainted ourselves fully with all the bells and whistles that it contains, we were uncertain about what we were supposed to do. Do we keep going? Do we stop and check the oil level?

We decided to stop in Childress, but before we did my wife said, “Why don’t you call the Toyota dealership and ask them what it means?” Why not, indeed? I work part-time at the dealership where we bought the car; I know the phone number.

We pulled into the parking lot, popped the hood on the car and I called the service department using my handy-dandy cell phone. “Hey, what do I do when the message flashes that tells me ‘oil maintenance’ must be done on the car?” I asked the service technician who answered the phone.

“It just means you’re due for an oil change or a tire rotation,” he told me, assuring me the car wasn’t going to croak in, say, Estelline, Memphis or Hedley on the way home.

There you have it, the perfect reason to own a cell phone.

You won’t catch me blabbing about nonsense in a crowded restaurant. I like using the device when I need to talk to a family member about an urgent matter — or when I need an answer about the vehicle that’s carrying my wife and me home.

I got it. I’m grateful for it.

I still don’t like the thing.

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Defense cuts don’t ‘gut’ our military

Lindsey Graham can be excused for hyperventilating over plans to cut defense spending.

He’s facing a stiff challenge from his right in South Carolina as he seeks re-election to the U.S. Senate. Given that challenge, he’s got to sound extra-tough in criticizing the Barack Obama administration’s plans for the Defense Department.

http://thehill.com/video/in-the-news/199673-graham-says-obama-budget-guts-our-defense

He said over the weekend that proposals to cut the standing Army to 440,000 troops will “gut” our ground capability.

I don’t get this. The United States possesses the strongest military in the history of the planet. It’s stronger than Russia and China. We possess a nuclear arsenal that is second to none. Our anti-terrorism efforts are killing bad guys almost daily. Our Navy is combat-ready. Our Air Force is second to none.

Is the Pentagon brass, starting with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, really and truly seeking to disarm this nation, to make it a “third world power” militarily, as Graham and others are suggesting?

Give me a break.

Graham wondered this past weekend whether we could defend South Korea if North Korea decided to invade its neighbor. He said the Army could not respond. Hagel’s assertion? He assures us that the United States can fight a war in any single theater of operations using all the assets it will retain.

If the government is going to cut spending — as many Americans believe must happen — no single element must be spared. The Defense Department’s budget will continue to out spend Russia, China and Great Britain combined.

We aren’t disarming ourselves.

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No instant replay in baseball … please

The National Pastime is about to undergo a change that few baseball purists will like.

Guaranteed.

I’m one of them. What will we dislike? It will be the introduction of instant replay cameras.

OK, I know what you’re saying. Football has it. So what? I hate it in football too. It slows down the game. It tries to replace the human element with machines that help humans decide whether they’ve made the right call.

Now it well might be baseball’s turn.

Baloney.

I’ll now stipulate some important points about the game I used to love. I detest the designated hitter rule; I hate watching baseball played indoors … on carpets; I cannot stand watching batters suit up with body armor as if they’re taking part in a medieval joust; I’m not even that crazy about pine tar or batting gloves.

I’m old-fashioned when it comes to baseball.

Now we have the prospect of one of the game’s great traditions — the rhubarb — giving way to technology. The rhubarb occurs when the manager storms out of the dugout to get in the ump’s face; he’ll turn his ball cap backward so he can get right up to the ump’s face to be sure he get sprayed with spittle while yelling things like, “Bleep you, you bleeping blanket-blank!” When he says the “magic word,” which of course is “you,” that gets the manager tossed from the game.

Now we well might see close calls decided by someone sitting way up yonder in a control room. They’ll play back the event and someone in that control room will determine if the ump made the call.

I’ve long wanted technology to give way to the human element. Of all the calls umps — and refs in football — make during the course of a game, they get 99-plus percent of them right.

Let ’em make the call. And if they get it wrong, let the manager storm out of the dugout and kick a little dirt on the umpire’s shoes.

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Ukraine is our concern … because?

A good night’s sleep has a way of making one’s perspective change a bit the next day.

It happened to me overnight. I went to sleep wondering why Russian officials are talking about yanking their ambassador to the United States because of our demands that Russia stay out of Ukraine’s internal affairs.

I awoke this morning wondering: Why are we involved in this dispute?

This is a classic United Nations matter that needs to be resolved around the Security Council table of nations — and that certainly includes the United States.

Of all the permanent Security Council members, I’m going to presume that all of them — except Russia, of course — believe fervently in Ukraine’s sovereignty. Therefore, one can presume that the Security Council should be drafting resolutions calling for Russia to back off, get out and leave this Ukrainian matter up to the Ukrainians.

One big problem, of course, with that Russia is one of those nations that can veto anything the Security Council proposes. That makes the matter virtually moot, given the U.N. governing structure.

Still, the United States’s involvement — the demands from the White House and the declarations of “costs” that Russia could pay if it doesn’t butt out — is creating an equally untenable position for this country.

What, precisely, can we do to Russia? We aren’t going to hit them militarily. We aren’t going to sever diplomatic relations; heck, we even had an embassy in Moscow during the depths of the Cold War.

The most we can do is as President Obama has declared: “Stand with the international community” in backing Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Geopolitics remains a highly complicated matter.

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