Tag Archives: Texas Senate

political news, State news

'Farthest right' defeats the far right

Bob Deuell might be the face of the changing Texas Republican Party.

He is a soon-to-be former state senator from East Texas. Deuell got beat by someone described by Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow who is “a virtual newcomer to Texas and politics.” The man who’s about to represent the east Dallas legislative district did it be “branding Deuell a liberal,” according to Blow.

What little I know about Deuell, a family physician, he is anything but the liberal that Sen..-elect Bob Hall described in his successful campaign.

Therein might get right to the core of what’s happened to the Texas Republican Party. It has become something that mainstream, establishment conservatives — such as Bob Deuell — no longer recognize.

“To call me a liberal? It’s just ridiculous,” Deuell told Blow, who described the lawmaker as “my senator.” Blow said he had a “front-row seat on this crazy battle between the far and farthest right.”

Blow said he laughed when he received “mailers at home with freaky colorized photos of Deuell and Barack Obama pasted together. ‘Stop Bob Deuell’s liberal agenda,’ they said,” Blow writes.

How did this novice defeat a reliably conservative 12-year veteran of the Texas Senate? Blow said “Hall’s TEA party base was simply more energized and engaged.”

Bingo!

According to Blow, Hall managed to cobble together a campaign of lies about Deuell’s support for needle exchanges for drug addicts. Deuell bucked his Republican colleagues in supporting the exchanges because of “clear medical evidence” that the exchanges decrease incidents of hepatitis and HIVA. “And 20 percent of the addicts who participated got into rehab programs. To me, it’s the fiscally conservative thing to do.”

Blow rights that Deuell couldn’t get other legislators to support the exchanges out of fear they would be “sound-bited on the issue.”

“Predictably,” Blow writes, “Hall did exactly that against Deuell, characterizing it as ‘free needles for drug addicts.'”

Deuell predicts a long and arduous legislative session.

After all, the state Senate will be led by a lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who’s an expert at demagoguery and glib sound bites.

Welcome to the new Texas Republican Party.

local news, State news

Thrill will be gone soon from Texas Senate

Texas lawmakers of both political parties have told me over the years how much “fun” they had serving in the state Legislature. Both chambers comprised members who had pals on the other side.

They were chums. They shared an adult beverage after hours. They would talk about common interests. They would seek each other’s advice.

I remember meeting the late state Sen. Teel Bivins for the first time. The Republican knew I came to Amarillo from Beaumont and he shared in our first meeting his respect for a Democratic adversary from Southeast Texas, Sen. Carl Parker, who used to refer to Bivins and others of his stripe as “silk-stocking Republicans.” Bivins never took it personally and he actually admired Parker’s debating skill, which he would employ on the floor of the Senate.

My trick knee is telling me those days are about to end.

Dan Patrick will become the next lieutenant governor in January. Patrick has made it known his desire to abandon a couple of Senate traditions: one is the two-thirds rule that requires 21 Senate votes to bring any bill to a vote of the entire of body; the other is the practice of appointing senators of the other party as committee chairs.

Patrick, a Republican, said earlier this year that given Texas’s strong conservative leaning and the fact that Republicans stand like a colossus over the landscape, then — by golly — he would prefer to have an all-GOP lineup among the Senate leadership.

Crank up the steamroller, folks.

What does this mean for what’s left of the party’s more moderate element, which must include Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo, who wants to lead the Education Committee?

A friend of mine and I were talking Friday about the next Legislature. He’s been observing Texas politics for decades and he wonders how the state will function when it is run by the TEA party wing of the GOP. He mentioned former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff, a wise man and moderate Republican, and lamented that Ratliff no longer is in public life. “Who would have thought that Kel Seliger would be considered a ‘liberal’ within the Republican Party?” he asked … rhetorically.

There once was a time when serving in the Legislature could be considered “fun.” Hey, it doesn’t pay very much so you look for fun whenever and wherever you can find it.

The tone and tenor of the upper chamber is about to change. For my taste — and perhaps the taste of others around the state — it won’t be for the better.

 

 

local news, State news

Rein in university regents

Texas Senate Higher Education Committee Chairman Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, is a persistent lawmaker.

What got vetoed in 2013 is coming back in 2015 and Seliger’s hope is that a new governor will see fit to sign it into law, rather than veto it, which his predecessor did.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/12/bill-restricting-regents-authority-re-emerges/

Senate Bill 177 would limit the power of university regents, seeking to keep their noses out of university administrative affairs. It’s the kind of thing that has erupted within the University of Texas System and regents’ ongoing dispute with UT-Austin President Bill Powers.

One of the bill’s provisions is that regents cannot fire a campus president without a recommendation from the system chancellor.

Gov. Rick Perry vetoed the 2013 bill, saying it went in the “wrong direction.” Seliger is optimistic that the new governor, Greg Abbott, will have a different view.

“I can’t answer for Gov. Abbott, but I think his view of legislation is going to be entirely different,” Seliger said. “I think it’s a good piece of legislation based upon the fact that it passed and had a lot of support last time — I’m very optimistic.”

Regents should be left to set policy and allow campus presidents to administer those policies. The campus presidents are the people with eyes and ears inside their institutions, so give them some room to maneuver. That hasn’t been the case at the UT System, as regents have been squabbling among themselves with President Powers over the way he runs the flagship campus at the massive university system.

It’s been a mess. Senate Bill 177 seeks to prevent future higher education messes.

 

 

political news, State news

From 'Worst' to the top of the ladder?

Dan Patrick might be poised to become Texas’s next lieutenant governor.

If that’s the case — and the betting is that he will — then the Texas Senate, where this guy now serves, is going to become a certifiable loony bin.

Texas Monthly, which takes pride in a reasonable, studious and careful analysis of legislators’ performance, rated him among the worst of the 31 men and women who serve in the state Senate. To think, then, that Patrick now aspires to be the man running the state’s upper legislative chamber, which is what the lieutenant governor does.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/lists/worst-senator-dan-Patrick

I know what you might be thinking: Oh, yeah. Texas Monthly’s nothing more than a pandering mouthpiece for them nutty liberal Democrats.

The magazine, though, has routinely heaped plenty of praise on Republican lawmakers over the years. Former Sen. Bob Duncan of Lubbock? One of the magazine’s favorites. Former Sen. Bill Ratliff of Mount Pleasant? He, too, has received plenty of praise. Why I that? Because these are reasonable men who knew how to legislate, how to work with Democrats, who worked and studied hard on key issues of the day.

Patrick isn’t cut from that cloth, according to Texas Monthly, which wrote this about Patrick’s service in the 2013 Legislature: “There are few types of lawmakers less helpful to the legislative process than bullies and ideologues. Unfortunately, Dan Patrick too often seemed to be both in his first session as the chair of the Senate Education Committee. The Houston radio host fell into a habit of lecturing his fellow legislators, interrupting witnesses, and accusing those who disagreed with him of simply not understanding his bills. In short, he ran his committee like he runs his talk show, where the only opinion that really matters is his own..”

This is the guy who figures to ram his own ideas down the throats of the individuals who will serve in the Senate.

While chairing the Education Committee, he decided to badger Education Commissioner Michael Williams — himself no shrinking violet — about end-of-course exams that students need to take to graduate from high school. Williams sought to “respectfully disagree,” but before he could, Patrick cut him off and berated him.

It utterly amazes me (a) that this guy won the Republican Party nomination over a sitting lieutenant governor and (b) is favored to win the office over another state senator, Democrat Leticia Van de Putte, who happens, shall we say, to be more interested in legislating than showboating.

As the late lieutenant governor, Bob Bullock, might say if he were around today: God help Texas.

 

 

political news, State news

Sen. Patrick getting scarier all the time

The more I read about Texas’s next probable lieutenant governor, the more concerned I become over our state’s future.

Dan Patrick is likely to be elected to the No. 2 position among all Texas politicians on Nov. 4. He’s the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. He’s a state senator from Houston who’s running against his colleague, Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio.

Mother Jones has assembled a glossary of some of the more outrageous things Patrick has said and done during his time in the Senate.

Man Who Believes God Speaks to Us Through “Duck Dynasty” Is About to Be Texas’ Second-in-Command

OK, before we go any further, I’ll concede that Mother Jones is not friendly toward Patrick or those who agree with his world view.

But some of this stuff is utterly mind-blowing.

He talks about immigrants bringing “Third World diseases” into the United States; he walked out of a Senate invocation that was being delivered by a Muslim cleric; he once joked, in 1992, that Asian-American broadcast journalist Connie Chung’s show “Eye to Eye” should be called “Slanted Eye to Eye”; he once declared “there is no such thing as separation of church and state.”

Mother Jones lists other bizarre statements that have flown out of Patrick’s mouth over the years.

He comes from a radio background, which I suppose says plenty about how a guy with a machine-gun mouth occasionally lets the rhetorical bullets fly with abandon.

Some folks find him entertaining, I suppose. I prefer someone who is more thoughtful.

If he wins — and it’s looking as though he will — he’s going to turn the Texas Senate, over which the lieutenant governor presides, into a much-less collegial body. Patrick has all but guaranteed that by vowing to do away with the two-thirds rule — which requires at least 21 senators to support a bill before it goes to a vote; the idea is to promote bipartisan support for legislation. He’s also suggested he’ll appoint only Republicans to committee chairmanships, doing away with the custom that lieutenant governors of both parties have followed of appointing members of the minority party to lead Senate committees.

Texas’s legislative branch of government — at least one half-half of it — is likely to become a hostile work environment for those who don’t like the way it’s going to be run.

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For whom will Dewhurst vote?

My mind is wandering as I sit at my computer, so I thought I’d share this idle thought.

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is still suffering emotional wounds from his loss to state Sen. Dan Patrick in the lieutenant governor’s Republican runoff.

He knows Patrick well, having worked with him in the Texas Senate, over which Dewhurst presides as lieutenant governor.

Dewhurst also knows Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, who is running against Patrick in the general election for lieutenant governor.

My idle thought? Who will get Dewhurst’s vote this fall?

I’m really in no position to ask Dewhurst directly. Even if I did, he wouldn’t answer. He does get to vote in secret, just like the rest of us. Heck, he might even lie about who he’ll vote for. None of us ever would know the difference.

My trick knee, though, suggests that Van de Putte stands at least a decent chance of getting at least one crossover vote from a Republican.

Patrick said some pretty mean things to and about Dewhurst in the primary and then in the runoff. That’s the nature of campaigns in many cases. Patrick, though, tried to suggest in so many words that Dewhurst is a closet liberal or moderate — or something other than a staunch conservative, which is how Dewhurst sought to portray himself.

Do these harsh things just disappear when all the votes are counted? I think not.

Just wondering out loud …

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Texas Senate to lose a giant

Texas Tech University’s huge gain is the Texas Senate’s equally huge loss.

Republican Bob Duncan is leaving the Senate soon to become chancellor of the Tech System. He won’t disappear from the State Capitol, as my pal Enrique Rangel writes for the Amarillo Globe-News. He’ll be visiting the Capitol looking for funds to keep the myriad academic programs and extracurricular activities going at Texas Tech, which is what a university system chancellor is supposed to do.

But a legislative body that benefited greatly from Duncan’s expertise and decided lack of showmanship will be a lesser place once he takes up his new job in Lubbock.

Erica Greider, writing for Texas Monthly, took note of Duncan’s reputation recently. Here’s what she wrote:

Duncan has been a genuinely superlative senator. When we were working on last year’s Best List, we crunched the numbers, and found that he was the most honored legislator in the history of the project—it was his fifth time being named a “Best Legislator,” and he also had an honorable mention and a rookie of the year notice. Beyond that, Duncan is the kind of legislator who illustrates the reason that we spend so much time researching the Best List. He’s not particularly high profile, and he’s not at all a showman. If you had watched every minute of proceedings on the Senate floor last year, you probably wouldn’t even have noticed him. And yet if you started talking to legislators, staffers, lobbyists, and advocates, you would hear Duncan cited consistently, warmly, and across party lines as one of the most thoughtful, trustworthy, and effective people in the building. As a senator, he’s tackled serious but unglamorous issues, such as the solvency of state pension funds; he’s also provided critical, behind-the-scenes assists to colleagues of both parties. An example would be last year’s equal pay bill. His departure from the Senate will be a loss for that chamber, because he’s been a real credit to it — because of the laws he helped pass, and because of the example he set.

What’s next for Senate District 28? Voters will take part in a special election that Gov. Rick Perry will call. They’ll elect a Republican from the district, which is a given in one of the most GOP-centric Senate districts in Texas.

With Duncan’s departure, though, the Senate is losing one more voice of reason. I have no clue who’ll take his place. Rangel has suggested that state Rep. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, is a likely candidate to succeed Duncan. I don’t know much about Perry, other than he appears to be among the cadre of conservatives who seem intent on getting things done their way … or else.

I just hope the Texas Senate doesn’t gain a show horse who’s replacing a serious work horse.

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Senate bipartisanship may be on the ropes

Ross Ramsey has written an excellent analysis of what might lie in store for the Texas Senate if Dan Patrick is elected lieutenant governor.

It’s not pretty.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/04/25/analysis-what-patrick-proposes-didnt-work-bullock/

Patrick is locked in a tense Republican Party runoff with the current lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst. If Patrick is nominated in May and then defeats Democrat Leticia Van de Putte this fall, he might abandon the practice of putting minority party senators in charge of key committees.

According to Ramsey, Patrick should perhaps think long and hard before going through with that possibility. The last Democratic lieutenant governor, Bob Bullock, tried it and it didn’t work out too well for him with the 1991 Legislature, Ramsey writes.

Bullock failed to place any of the nine GOP senators in committee chairmanships. Republicans responded by gumming up the legislative works in the Senate. They knew how to tie the process in knots. They did exactly that, Ramsey writes.

Dewhurst has talked about possibility scrapping the Senate’s two-thirds rule if he’s returned to office; the rule requires at least 21 votes out of 31 to bring any measure to a vote on the Senate floor. With just nine Democrats serving in the Senate, the two-thirds rule builds in bipartisan support for any bill to be considered by the full Senate.

That’s as far as Dewhurst has been willing to go. Patrick might take the fight even farther if he declines to put any Democrats in charge of Senate committees. Senate Democrats aren’t without their own legislative experience, much as Senate Republicans weren’t lacking it in 1991 when they hamstrung Lt. Gov. Bullock.

As Ramsey writes: “The Democrats can be a pain in the neck, and like the Republicans of 1991, they are not helpless. Look at what idle hands can do. (Ike) Harris had been in the Senate since 1967 when Bullock handcuffed him. Experience won the day. The dean of the Senate, John Whitmire, D-Houston, has held his seat since 1983 and served for a decade in the House before that; he witnessed Harris’s rebellion and could find himself in the situation that led to it. Other Democrats in the Senate have the chops to cause problems if they have nothing else to do. Patrick has children; he ought to know that people get antsy when they don’t have anything to do.”

Ramsey also notes that Van de Putte won’t be a pushover in the fall election. She’s a savvy legislator herself and she’ll give whoever wins the GOP nomination all he can handle in the fall campaign. If Patrick is the nominee and he wins the election this fall, Van de Putte will return to the Senate ready to give the new lieutenant governor fits.

This will be fun to watch play out … don’t you think?

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Is Seliger going to endorse?

The thought occurred to me recently that the Texas lieutenant governor Republican runoff has a direct impact on every one of the 31 men and women serving in the Texas Senate.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is running against state Sen. Dan Patrick in the GOP runoff set for May 27. The winner will face state Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte this fall.

So, here’s the question: Who will Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo endorse in the Republican runoff? Maybe there’s another question: Should the Republican endorse anyone?

Here’s what I know — or think I know — about the principals involved.

Dewhurst and Seliger work well together. Dewhurst, as the presiding officer of the Senate, has given Seliger a key committee chairmanship, Higher Education. Seliger would like to chair the Education Committee when the 2015 Legislature convenes. Dewhurst would seem willing to grant Seliger his wish — if he is re-elected this fall.

Seliger and Patrick have a so-so relationship. I don’t think they’re enemies, although I believe Patrick is being pushed along and counseled by individuals and groups who aren’t particularly friendly to Seliger. Patrick would do away with the two-thirds rule in the Senate that requires two-thirds of senators to support a bill before it goes to a full vote; Seliger has told me he supports the two-thirds rule as it helps build a semblance of bipartisanship in the Senate.

The situation gets sticky, though.

Patrick is now considered a near-prohibitive favorite to win the runoff. A lot of pols and political watchers are writing Dewhurst off. He’s toast, they say. Key staffers have left his office, many of whom have returned to the private sector. It’s getting harder to remember that Dewhurst once was considered a shoo-in to be elected to the U.S. Senate seat when Kay Bailey Hutchison announced her retirement; then along came Ted Cruz to burst that bubble.

To whom should Seliger throw his support? Does he back the guy with whom he’s worked in the Senate, but who now looks like the loser in this runoff? Does he swallow hard and back the other guy with whom he’s had an OK relationship?

Or does he just remain silent until the smoke clears on May 27 and endorse whoever finishes first?

I’m thinking Seliger is going to wait this one out.

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Texas's next governor will …

Wendy Davis created quite a stir by visiting the Texas Panhandle this week.

Much of it was positive. Much of it was not. The Fort Worth state senator and Democratic nominee for governor ventured into some hostile territory just by setting foot in this heavily Republican region of a heavily Republican state.

Good for her.

Let’s look ahead to the next election. Just suppose …

Davis wins. Or just suppose Republican nominee Greg Abbott wins — as most observers think will happen.

The next Texas governor will be stripped almost immediately of the kind of power that Republican Rick Perry acquired during his umpteen years as the state’s top elected official.

It’s been said zillions of times over the years that the Texas governor is a relatively weak office. The real power rests with the lieutenant governor, as he/she presides over the state Senate. The governor’s power lies in his appointments. Given that Perry has been governor seemingly forever, he’s had ample opportunity to fill all key state boards and commissions with people friendly to his policies.

He’s also been successful at using the governor’s office as a bully pulpit. Has that always worked well for him? No. Consider his purported pro-secession language that energized the tea party faction within his party. Many of the rest of us were quite turned off by the careless talk.

The next governor will lose much of the aura that Perry acquired, for better or worse.

You can bet that Abbott will show up in the Panhandle — perhaps many times — before the election occurs. Davis’s next visit isn’t yet set.

My hope is that the gubernatorial candidates don’t fall victim to what I’ve noticed over many years watching and covering Texas politics from my perch on the top end of our vast state. It is that Republicans take us for granted, given our region’s bias in their favor, while Democrats have all but given up the fight for our votes.

Y’all come back.