Category Archives: State news

local news, State news

Fruitcake fringe loses an AG candidate

Well, now. It looks as though Louie Gohmert is going to have the fruitcake fringe of the Republican Party electorate to himself as he challenges Ken Paxton in next year’s GOP primary for Texas attorney general.

Why is that? Another GOP fruitcake, Freedom Caucus member state Rep. Matt Krause of Fort Worth is going to run instead for Tarrant County district attorney. He had sought to run in the 2022 primary for Texas AG, but switched races.

Gohmert is still in. He joins Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman as challengers to the felony indicted Paxton, who is awaiting trial in state court on a charge of securities fraud.

Bush and Guzman are campaigning specifically against the corruption that Paxton brought with him to the AG’s office in 2015. I don’t know what U.S. Rep. Gohmert’s platform will be; he might want to push Paxton even farther to the right than he already stands.

There might be more entries, given the trouble that keeps swirling around Paxton. The FBI is conducting an independent investigation into allegations of corruption with his office; several top legal assistants quit earlier this year while citing allegations of improper behavior by the attorney general. Imagine that, will ya?

The waters are still roiling.

It’s gonna be fun to watch this race play out.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Waiting for ‘the beef’

The latest round of public opinion polling on the 2022 Texas governor’s race sent a glaring message to me.

It goes like this: Matthew McConaughey polls stronger against Gov. Greg Abbott than Beto O’Rourke. Why? Because Texans don’t know a damn thing about McConaughey other than he won a best actor Oscar not many years ago for his role in “Dallas Buyers Club.”

O’Rourke has been on the national political stage since 2018 when he nearly defeated Sen. Ted Cruz in the race for Cruz’s U.S. Senate seat. Abbott, too, is now a well-known and highly chronicled political figure.

McConaughey? I don’t even know if he’s going to run for governor as a Democrat or Republican. He has been playing coy about the party under which he would run.

Indeed, the actor — a native of Texas who lives in the Austin area — has been coy about his views on an array of issues: immigration, public school curriculum, abortion, voting rights, gun violence and gun owners’ rights, climate change, energy production … stop me before I go bananas, OK?

I strongly suspect that when — or if — McConaughey starts laying out some specifics we are going to see some movement in those polls as it regards whether he stands a chance of becoming the state’s next governor.

For now, Texans seem to consider McConaughey a bit of a mystery man, albeit a dashing mystery man.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news, State news

Texas’s newest residents get stiffed

Texas is going to get two more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Why? Because our state grew significantly during the past 10 years.

The population boom was fueled by more African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians flocking to the state. The word is that these folks generally vote Democratic. So, it was believed that the state’s changing demography was going to make the state more, um, divided politically.

Well, the Legislature took care of that by gerrymandering the new congressional and legislative districts to ensure that the Republican Party maintains its chokehold on power.

The Legislature takes command of the redistricting effort every decade. The 2020 census shows the state achieving additional power in Congress with those two new seats. However, Republicans are big winners, given the way the Legislature reconfigured all those boundaries.

Collin County, where I now reside, was turned into an even heavier GOP-friendly place; Collin County voted narrowly for Donald Trump in 2020, but would have voted significantly more for the ex-POTUS had the new borders been in effect.

I am scratching my noodle on this one. Is this the way “representative democracy” is supposed to work?

I think not.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

Despise the separation between the parties

One of the many things I detest about the state of the contemporary political climate in Texas is the absence of a sense of statewide camaraderie among the state’s congressional delegation.

There once was a time, back when Fort Worth’s Jim Wright was speaker of the U.S. House, when the entire Texas delegation would meet for breakfast each week. Democrats and Republicans would gather to discuss issues common to everyone within the delegation. They sought a meeting of their collective minds on ways to solve Texas problems.

My own congressman at the time, the late Democrat Jack Brooks, spoke fondly — if that’s a word I could use to describe anything that came from that cantankerous politician’s mouth — of the fellowship the delegation would enjoy.

I remember a story I read in Congressional Quarterly about those meetings and how they contrasted with the bitterness that existed between Democrats and Republicans in the California delegation. The Texans sought common ground. Californians drifted apart, firing rhetorical sniper shots at each other.

The Texas delegation no longer meets regularly, as I understand it. Democrats and Republicans are at each other’s throats most of the time. It’s a common affliction most if not all state delegations in Congress. I’m trying to imagine ultraconservative Louie Gohmert sitting next to ultraliberal Lloyd Doggett hashing out a legislative solution to anything.

I hear that my own House member, Republican Van Taylor of Plano, works well with Democrats. He has sponsored bipartisan legislation and actually counts Democrats among his friends in Washington. That, I dare say, is a commendable thing to have happen. I attribute that to his combat experience in the Middle East while serving in the Marine Corps. Everyone becomes your best friend when you’re receiving enemy fire and you depend on the guy next to you … who likewise is depending on you to have his back.

There needs to be much more of that and much less of the sniping, backbiting, name-calling and actual threats of violence about which we hear these days.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Texas Democrats take another gut punch

Ryan Guillen no longer is a Democrat, having switched party affiliation to Republican.

That’s a big deal? You betcha. Especially  when the party-switcher is a longtime Democratic legislator from South Texas who told his former party leaders that the Democratic Party has abandoned him; so he is becoming a Republican.

This is grim news for Texas Democratic Party officials who keep telling the world about how the tide in Texas is turning from Republican Red to Democratic Blue. But … is it?

RealClearPolitics reports: While Guillen is a state lawmaker whose switch won’t impact which party holds power in Washington, there’s one sign that this may not be an isolated example: At least nine congressional House Democrats have  announced they are not seeking reelection next year. More are expected to follow.

As for the impact on the state’s political fortunes, Guillen’s switcheroo seems to portend something ominous for a party that contends the changing Texas demography suggests that Democrats are on the rise and Republicans are sinking.

I am not so sure about that. Just yet anyway.

Guillen is a Texas Latino who believes the Democratic Party has taken him for granted along with those who share his ethnicity.

Texas Party Switcher Is Latest Ominous Sign for Democrats | RealClearPolitics

I used to call the Golden Triangle home. The Triangle is in deep Southeast Texas, where Democrats until the early 1990s continued to occupy virtually every county elected office in sight. That began changing about the time I moved from Beaumont to the other corner of the state, in Republican-heavy Amarillo.

Republicans now occupy every statewide office in Texas and a heavy majority of the local offices as well. Dallas County, next door to us in our new home in Collin County, remains a heavily Democratic bastion.

So, if Democrats intend to regain any semblance of influence in Texas, they need to heed the admonition of one of its veteran former legislative representatives: stop taking your core constituency for granted.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

Littering needs strict punishment

LAKE TAWAKONI STATE PARK, Texas — We trudged along a trail beside a true Texas treasure and found a single piece of litter.

It was a beer bottle.

My wife picked it up and we tossed in a nearby Dumpster … which brings me to the point of this brief blog post.

The Dumpster was within easy walking distance of where the dipsh** had walked. Moreover, the bottle was about, oh, 10 or 12 feet off the trail, which tells me the idiot who left it there flung it where I would presume he thought no one would see it.

My wife and I are huge fans of the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department and the state parks it administers for us. We enjoy our state parks system, which we consider to be one of the high points of a state government that quite often gets battered with criticism over bonehead policies.

We have no qualms about the state parks and in infuriates to the maximum degree when we see evidence of others abusing the parks in the manner we discovered when we picked up the beer bottle left behind by the nimrod who walked along the trail.

I think an appropriate sentence for anyone littering in that fashion ought to be a four-figure fine and a life sentence of community service … preferably working on a cleanup crew at our state parks.

Yeah, that’s harsh. It’s just how I feel.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Beto vs. Abbott shaping up

Oh, my … forgive me for referring to former West Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke by just his first name in this headline, which in reality is a nickname. It just sounds cool.

Still, he and the man he hopes to defeat in 2022 are serious men. My hope is that O’Rourke and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott don’t tack too far to the left or right as they seek to curry favor with most Texas voters.

I have declared myself to be a “good government progressive,” which I intend to mean that I am not opposed to compromise if it produces sound legislation and law.

Abbott has veered to the far right since the start of the 2021 Legislature. I dislike his right-wing views. O’Rourke has appealed to the far left since losing a U.S. Senate race by just a little in 2018 and then flamed out in a 2020 bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. To be candid, I am not comfortable with the progressives’ agenda.

I am not sure that most Texans are comfortable with far left or far right politics. There is out here, in the words of the late Colin Powell, a “vast middle ground.” I hope O’Rourke and Abbott find themselves arguing for that middle-of-the-road avenue.

As the Dallas Morning News noted in its editorial today, the state will be better off for it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Curious juxtaposition on guns

A headline in the Texas Tribune had me scratchin’ my noggin.

It asked: Beto O’Rourke went after assault rifles in his run for president. Will that hurt him with gun-loving Texans?

Well, that poses a quandary, don’t you think? Of course it does! But here’s the deal as I see it. I consider myself to be a “gun-loving Texan.” I own a couple of rifles, both of which are keepsakes given to me when I was a boy by my father. One of them is a single-shot .22-caliber rifle; the other is a 30.06 that carries a five-round magazine.

Neither of them is an assault weapon. I love my guns, even though I rarely shoot them.

Back to the Tribune’s question: I fear that O’Rourke’s statement about assault weapons is going to hurt him among many Texans who profess to love their guns, but who in reality love owning — or love the prospect of owning — weapons designed to kill human beings in rapid fashion on a battlefield.

The question came to O’Rourke during a 2020 Democratic primary presidential debate. He had said “hell yes!” he wanted to take people’s assault rifles. I did not in that moment believe he intended to send agents to my home and confiscate my two cherished rifles.

The crazy crowd among us no doubt is going to interpret O’Rourke’s statement in 2020 as a clarion call to disarm us all. You can bet your last bandolier that Gov. Greg Abbott is going to play on that fear as he seeks to paint O’Rourke as a commie sympathizer intent on destroying the Second Amendment to our Constitution.

Will Beto O’Rourke’s stance on guns hurt him in 2022’s Texas governor race? | The Texas Tribune

Let’s get ready for a rough campaign.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

O’Rourke faces red tide

Photo by Richard W. Rodriguez/AP/REX/Shutterstock

I have to agree with the assessment being kicked around that Beto O’Rourke’s decision to run for Texas governor in 2022 carries far greater risk than his near-victory in 2018 in a race for the U.S. Senate.

Why is that? Because the incumbent Republican he is challenging this time, Greg Abbott, is far more likable and is in a politically stronger place than the GOP incumbent he faced in 2018, Ted Cruz.

O’Rourke came within 3% of grounding the Cruz Missile. Polls show him trailing Abbott narrowly this time (so far). However, his 2020 Democratic Party primary presidential bid ended badly and he said some things about guns that are going to haunt him when he hits the trail in Texas.

He said that “hell yes” he would take people’s assault rifles. Abbott has morphed that statement into “Beto will take your guns.” That won’t hurt him in gun-happy Texas? Yeah. It will.

I wish O’Rourke well as he campaigns for governor. I want him to win bigly. I want Abbott to be shown the door and for Abbott to disappear from the political stage.

I wonder about whether Beto O’Rourke’s time has arrived — yet again! — for him to stage the kind of political upset that many of us desire to see happen.

Beto O’Rourke enters 2022 a weaker candidate with a harder race | The Texas Tribune

Abbott has said “bring it!” when talking about O’Rourke’s candidacy. Fine, but O’Rourke also will have plenty with which to work.

Abbott’s miserable pandemic response, his support of an overly harsh ban on abortion, his support of efforts to suppress voters in Texas all can become the stuff of snappy campaign ads. Indeed, Abbott must be made to answer for all of it and I hope O’Rourke — presuming he wins the Democratic Party primary next spring — will make the governor answer.

Let’s be clear on one point. Beto O’Rourke faces a steep climb.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

AG Paxton in dire peril

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel this rumbling in my gut that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is in some deep doo-doo … politically speaking.

Think about something for a brief moment.

When has any Texas Republican statewide officeholder faced the kind of intraparty challenge that Paxton is facing as the next primary campaign approaches. He has three Republican challengers already and a fourth one might be ready to jump into the race.

Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush has announced his intention to run; so has former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman, along with state Rep. Matt Krause. Waiting in the wings might be U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert.

Here’s the fascinating dynamic shaping up. Bush and Guzman appear to be running as “establishment Republicans” who are fed up with Paxton’s legal troubles, starting with his pending state court trial on an allegation of investment securities fraud. Then we have Krause, a member of the ultraconservative Texas Freedom Caucus, who would tack farther to the right. Oh, and then we might get Gohmert, the unofficial leader of the Texas GOP Nut Job Caucus in Congress.

What does this mean for Paxton? It means — to my way of thinking — that he’s managed to pi** off disparate elements within his own party. One side considers him an embarrassment, the other side is pulling him in the opposite direction.

Ken Paxton is now one of four GOP candidates running for AG. I hope the number jumps to five … or even more.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com