Category Archives: State news

local news, State news

Texting ban needs to occur

So, I ran into state Rep. Four Price’s mother-in-law this week.

She told me Price, R-Amarillo, is in Austin “prefiling legislation” in advance of the next Texas Legislature, which convenes in January.

“I hope he files that ban on texting while driving,” I said, adding that the state needs to get tough with those who put others in danger on our public roadways. “I agree,” she said, chiming in with a comment supporting laws that ban smoking indoors.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/opinions/editorials/article/EDITORIAL-Texas-needs-ban-on-texting-while-5889014.php

My hunch is that we’re going to find out — quickly, I hope — what kind of governor Greg Abbott is going to be if he gets a texting ban bill on his desk.

He should sign the bill the moment it plops on his desk.

As my former newspaper, the Beaumont Enterprise, noted in an editorial, Texas wouldn’t be the first to ban texting while driving. Indeed, it would be one of the last states to do what it should have done already.  Forty-five states have such laws on the books.

Texas could have joined them, but Gov. Rick Perry vetoed a law in 2011, declaring that it “micromanaged” people’s lives.

Nuts!

The 2013 Legislature didn’t even pass a bill, knowing Perry would veto it again.

Now we get a new governor. It is my fervent hope he resists the pressure from the right wing of his Republican Party — which well could be led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — and approves a bill that Rep. Price and others throughout the Legislature say they support.

Do the right thing, ladies and gentlemen of the Texas Legislature.

 

 

political news, State news

Davis's campaign in shambles?

Now we know what happened to Wendy Davis’s campaign for Texas governor.

She veered too far to the left, as if there’s really a “middle ground” among Texas voters.

The Texas Tribune is reporting that some internal memos within the Democratic nominee’s campaign for governor reveal a campaign in disarray. It was disorganized, not unified on the message it intended for the candidate to give. In general, it was doomed almost from the get-go.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/12/internal-memos-detail-davis-campaign-dysfunction/

This is news?

Gov.-elect Greg Abbott was the prohibitive favorite the moment he won the Republican primary in March.

Davis actually needed for Abbott to either drool on his shirt during a televised debate or launch into an f-bomb tirade against something his opponent said.

Well, none of that happened.

Davis’s campaign had the misfortune of running under the Democratic banner in a strong Republican year across the nation, let alone in GOP-heavy Texas. As the Tribune’s Jay Root reports: “Given the national wave that swamped Democrats around the country, including in governor races that Republicans won in traditionally blue states such as Maryland and Massachusetts, it’s highly unlikely that any political strategy would have ushered Davis into the Texas Governor’s Mansion.”

Still, the memos reveal some serious dysfunction among the Davis campaign’s brass. As Root reports: “The warnings are contained in two internal communications obtained by The Texas Tribune and written at the beginning of the year by longtime Democratic operatives Peter Cari and Maura Dougherty.

“’The campaign is in disarray and is in danger of being embarrassed,’ Cari and Dougherty wrote in a lengthy memorandum on Jan. 6. ‘The level of dysfunction was understandable in July and August, when we had no infrastructure in place — but it doesn’t seem to be getting better.’”

Meanwhile, the Abbott-Republican “ground game” kicked into high gear.

The lesson for future Democratic candidates? Try like the dickens to stake out some middle ground, plant yourself firmly on it and stick with a structured plan of attack.

 

legal news, local news, State news

Democrats backing embattled GOP Gov. Perry

A most interesting turn of events has occurred in the case involving whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry abused the powers of his office when he bullied a Travis County prosecutor who got arrested for drunken driving.

Several prominent Democratic lawyers and politicians have signed an amicus brief asking that the indictments against the Republican governor be tossed. They contend the indictments don’t hold up under the state’s separation of powers doctrine spelled out in the state constitution.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/10/bipartisan-group-lawyers-want-perry-case-dismissed/

The Texas Tribune reported the brief today and lays out the issue as presented by this high-powered team of legal eagles.

The Democrats include former Texas Supreme Court Justice Raul Gonzalez, former state Sen. (and former Texas Tech Chancellor) John Montford and the founder of the Innocence Project, one Jeff Blackburn of Amarillo.

The big hitters also include a couple of well-known former U.S. solicitors general, Ted Olson and Kenneth Starr, who served Republican presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush.

My own take is that the second indictment, the lesser felony, is the one that holds up.

At issue are the twin indictments by the Travis County grand jury. They allege that the governor abused his power by threatening to veto money appropriated for the Public Integrity Unit run by the Travis County district attorney’s office. The DA, Rosemary Lehmberg, pleaded guilty to DUI, served her jail time, but didn’t quit her office, as Perry had demanded. Thus, the veto threat. Lehmberg, a Democrat, is still in office.

Perry vetoed the money.

The second indictment accuses the governor of coercion, which by my reckoning is the stronger count. He bullied the DA, using his influence to seek her resignation. She was elected by the voters of Travis County and one has to wonder why the governor took such an interest in this particular DUI case.

Well, the answer is pure politics; Lehmberg is a Democrat, Perry is a Republican.

The governor can take heart in the bipartisan support he’s acquired in fighting this case.

I look forward to seeing how the court rules on this amicus brief.

Stay tuned. The fur is going to fly.

national news, political news, State news

Lame-duck status might produce some courage

There’s something to be said for being a lame-duck officeholder.

No more elections to face means no more pressure from political action groups. Thus, officeholders are free to do what their gut tells them to do.

President Obama’s gut has been rumbling over this immigration reform matter. Does he or does he not invoke executive action to initiate changes in federal immigration policy which politicians in both major parties say needs repair?

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/07/after-election-texas-waits-executive-action/

The Texas Tribune reports that an executive order or three is bound to help the Texas economy. Hey, wouldn’t that be an ironic touch, with a president who is opposed by so many Texans actually doing something to aid this state’s economy?

The Tribune reports: “’For the Texas economy, executive action could be a boon,’ said Ali Noorani, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-based policy research group. ‘The agricultural and construction industries disproportionately depend on undocumented workers. And I think there are a lot of growers and builders out there who would rest a lot easier if their work force was stable and legal.’”

Imagine that.

House Speaker John Boehner has warned Obama not to do anything by himself, saying it would “poison the well.” Senate Majority Leader-in-waiting Mitch McConnell echoes the speaker, preferring to let the next Congress take up the matter.

The president spoke about working with Congress in the wake of the mid-term election that saw the Senate flip from Democratic to Republican control.

Then again, he is a lame duck. His presidency ends in a little more than two years. No more elections need to be run.

Congress has dilly-dallied over this immigration matter. The president wants something done and should he have any trust that the next Congress is going help bring some of these illegal immigrants out of the shadows? I’m betting he doesn’t.

According to the Tribune: “The president is expected to expand and modify his 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative. That initiative provides certain younger undocumented immigrants a two-year reprieve from deportation proceedings and gives them renewable work permits. Applicants must have been in the United States continuously since June 2007, must have arrived in the country before they were 16 and must have been 30 or younger in June 2012.”

Being a lame duck has its advantages.

political news, State news

GOP 'ground game' catches Democrats

Give credit where it most certainly is due.

The Texas Republican Party has developed what’s called a “ground game” that in this state more than rivals the Democratic efforts at getting voters to turn out.

The ground game has been credited with giving Greg Abbott an astounding victory in his campaign for governor over Wendy Davis.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/07/abbott-had-sophisticated-turnout-machine/

Are you understanding all of this, Texas Democrats?

As the Texas Tribune reports: “The Abbott campaign’s stealthy ground game started with a huge paid field operation, spread out across Texas and costing $5 million to $6 million. The team, aimed largely at identifying and motivating voters who infrequently participate in state elections, was almost 10 times larger than the one Gov. Rick Perry put together in his 2010 re-election campaign.”

That’s what all the money Abbott raised was able to buy him. He managed to put a lot of players on the field all across the state and worked them hard to turn out the vote in places where Democrats used to stand tall.

The Tribune piece attached to this post lays out it quite clearly. Texas Republicans have gotten the message delivered by national Democrats, particularly those who helped elect Barack Obama president twice. The president’s ground game, and his campaign’s masterful use of social media to put his message forward has paid huge dividends.

My sense now is that the 2016 campaign — which now is more or less officially under way — is going to be a lot more competitive than some of us figured it might have been.

National Republican campaign strategists can look to Texas to see how this game is played and how it is won.

It matters a lot, because as the saying goes: Texas is “like a whole other country.”

local news, State news

Self-proclaimed scribe passes from the scene

A friend from my former stomping grounds on the Texas Gulf Coast has given me some sad news.

Dr. Gary C. Baine has just died. OK, I’m sad mostly because of the loss his family has suffered. One of his in-laws is a friend of mine and I pray she finds comfort.

Gary Baine helped me hone my understanding of what one can refer to as “editor’s prerogative.” Baine was a fairly regular writer of letters to the editor of the paper where I worked for nearly 11 years. I edited the editorial page of the Beaumont Enterprise and part of my job was to manage the flow of letters that would appear on the pages of that paper.

And yes, Baine was one of our contributors.

He wasn’t just was any old, garden-variety, run-of-the-mill letter writer. Baine, a dentist in Beaumont, was very, very proud of the submissions he would send in.

How proud was he? I’ll tell you.

He was so proud that he would take me to task for having the utter gall to actually edit his letters. He thought his text was sacrosanct, not to be touched by another human’s hands. Why, how dare I actually do the job that my title implied — as an editor — and seek to sharpen his submissions, to correct them for grammar and occasionally for clarity?

That’s what I did for, oh, more than three decades. And by the time my path crossed with Baine’s, I’d been at it for a decade-plus. I thought I was pretty good at it making people’s letters read better than the original submissions. So I edited Baine’s submissions, using precisely the same techniques I would use on other letter writers’ manuscripts.

That didn’t suit Baine in the slightest. We would argue. I would seek to tell him about how the greatest writers in the nation are subject to editing by their editors. I tried to tell him that when reporters turn their stories over to editors, they in effect surrender ownership of their copy; it becomes the editor’s “property.”

The same policy holds true for those who submit unsolicited text to the newspaper. You turn it in, the editorial assumes responsibility for it and then can edit it — or not edit it. It’s the editor’s call exclusively.

None of those explanations ever quite passed Baine’s view of how the world should be run.

We had our differences, but we remained cordial — which I suppose might suggest that deep down he didn’t take himself as seriously as his reaction to my editing style indicated.

Dr. Baine did sharpen my understanding of my craft. For that, I am grateful beyond measure.

May he now rest in peace.

local news, political news, State news

Ban straight-ticket voting

I never have liked straight-ticket voting.

It’s an unintelligent way to vote, in my humble view. Yet, while working Election Day as an exit pollster at a polling station, I heard from a number of voters Tuesday that, by golly, that’s what they did. They just punched the old “Republican” or “Democratic” spot on the ballot, walked away and went about doing the rest of their day’s business.

Texas allows this way of voting, I suppose, to make it easier for folks to vote.

Here in this part of Texas, where the GOP rules even more supreme than it does in most of the rest of the state, it seems so many votes like to vote for the “party rather than the individual.” It’s true in remaining Democratic bastions around the state, such as in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Texas, where I worked for 11 years before traveling way up north.

I didn’t like it then. I don’t like it now.

It’s understandable that voters prefer candidates of one party over the other. If so, then why not force them to look down each race on the ballot and give them the chance to ponder their selection before actually making it?

As for me — and I know for a lot of other Texans — there’s plenty of ticket-splitting going on at the ballot box. Which brings me to another aspect of the Texas voting law. If you punch the straight-ticket slot on the ballot, then vote for a candidate of the other party down the line, the other-party vote still counts.

So, what’s the point of giving voters the straight-ticket option?

Let’s just dump the whole idea.

political news, State news

Texas Democrats take it on the chin

2 Comments

The Texas Democratic Party has just been knocked out … cold.

All that brave talk about upsets in the making, about how the state was on the verge of returning to its Democratic roots, of Texas becoming a “battleground” upon which Democrats would wage combat with Republicans … well, you can toss it into the trash can.

Greg Abbott is going to be the next governor and, worse still, Dan Patrick is going to become the next lieutenant governor.

If I were Abbott, I’d start plotting my renomination strategy — let alone my re-election plans — right now.

The fight is going to commence probably quite soon for the seat Abbott is about to assume. It well could be between the new governor and the new guy who’ll be lieutenant governor.

Abbott vs. Patrick. Sounds appealing, doesn’t it?

As for the Democratic Party, well, back to the drawing boards, folks.

Battleground Texas, the phony political action group that crowed about pumping juice into the Democratic Party, has been shown to be bogus. It didn’t do nearly the job it claimed to have done in registering voters.

See you around, hucksters.

Meanwhile, the GOP stranglehold on every statewide office continues.

As for the Texas Senate, let’s just say it’s going to be a good bit crazier than it’s been. Patrick is likely to toss aside all the bipartisan niceties shown by predecessors of both parties. He isn’t likely to appoint any Democratic Senate chairmen or women, which David Dewhurst and Rick Perry did when they held the office. Indeed, the late Democrat Bob Bullock selected Republican allies to chair committees when he ran the Senate prior to Perry taking over in 1999.

I’ll say this, though. Watching the Texas Senate will provide plenty of grist for folks like me.

As for the rest of the state’s political lineup, they’re all likely to march to the cadence that Dan Patrick is going to call once he takes office.

Get ready, Texas.

 

 

political news, State news

Battleground Texas left for dead

Battleground Texas is phony.

You might remember this pseudo-organization. It came into being around 2012 intending to turn Texas from Republican Red to Democratic Blue.

Turns out it failed. In so doing, it bruised the credibility of what used to be a great political party.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/losing-battleground

As Texas Monthly blogger/editor Paul Burka notes, Battleground Texas put out phony numbers on the voters it supposedly was registering. The organization proclaimed great success where none existed. It was, as Burka notes, a “mirage.”

So what happens now? Immediately, we’re going to see Texas Republicans tighten their grip on the levers of government after the Tuesday election.

How does the once-great Texas Democratic Party get back into the game? Well, it might start by fielding candidates up and down the ballot who’ve got more than a prayer of winning.

There are some good candidates on the ballot. Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte head the state ballot for the party. They’re both solid public servants. They’re both going to lose Tuesday — maybe by big margins.

As for Battleground Texas, my guess is that the organization needs to disband, pack it in and let someone else do some actual work to make Texas a legitimate two-party state.

 

political news, State news

Will Patrick be the tail that wags the dog?

Let’s go just a bit out on a limb and presume that Republicans Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick will be elected Texas governor and lieutenant governor, respectively, on Tuesday.

This sets up an interesting and provocative relationship for the next four years.

Abbott has campaigned to the far right in his bid to succeed Rick Perry as governor. He’s out there on the fringe with Patrick, who’s made no effort to disguise his brand of “conservatism.”

As some Austin commentators have noted, Abbott has raised a mountain of money and has a lot of it left over from the campaign that’s about to conclude. The theory is that Abbott is preparing for a possible challenge from within his party in 2018 — from none other than Dan Patrick.

Here’s where it get provocative.

Abbott has a chance to govern more from the center-right than from the far right. Will he do so? Or will he be concerned about that potential challenge from Patrick that he’ll govern from the far right, which likely is how Patrick likely will do his own job as presiding officer of the Texas Senate?

I’ll be brutally candid. I don’t want either man to win the office they are seeking. I support strongly Democrats Wendy Davis for governor and Leticia Van de Putte for lieutenant governor. But this is Texas, one of the most Republican Red states in the U.S. of A.

Abbott has done nothing to defeat himself. Patrick’s shrill rhetoric endears him to the GOP majority that runs everything in Texas.

My hope is that for Texas’s sake that Abbott veers more toward the center and works constructively with the relatively few Democrats who remain in the Legislature. If he does that, then he’s likely to anger the lieutenant governor enough to challenge him in four years.

So we’ll find out just how much of his own man a Gov. Abbott turns out to be.