Tag Archives: Texas Legislature

State news

Did you oppose it, governor?

How about this? A Texas legislator says Gov. Greg Abbott opposed that idiotic Bathroom Bill and didn’t want it to show up on his desk.

So says the chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, Byron Cook, a Corsicana Republican. Cook’s panel managed to block the Bathroom Bill from clearing the House of Representatives during this past summer’s special legislative session.

You will recall that the Bathroom Bill would have restricted the use of public restrooms by transgender individuals; it would have required them to use restrooms in accordance to the gender assigned to them on their birth certificate. So, if you’re a man who was born a woman you would have had to use the women’s restroom … and vice versa.

Republican legislators determined the Bathroom Bill was “bad for business,” according to the Texas Tribune. That’s only part of the problem with this hideous piece of legislation. It was discriminatory on its face.

Yet the Texas Senate insisted that the state should enforce a public restroom use provision. Sheesh!

Most of me is glad the Legislature threw this bill — and please pardon the intended pun — into the proverbial crapper. A smaller part of me, though, wishes it had gotten to Abbott’s desk if only just to see if the governor opposed the bill enough to veto it.

I want to believe Chairman Cook is right, that Gov. Abbott disliked the Bathroom Bill. However, I still wonder …

Here’s an idea. Maybe the governor could set the record straight and tell us himself whether he would have signed it or canned.

local news, State news

Speaker candidates are lining up

Tan Parker has become the third Texas House of Representatives member to file for the race to become the next speaker of the state House.

He hails from Flower Mound; the other two are Phil King of Weatheford and John Zerwas of Richmond. They’re all Republicans.

OK. That’s all fine.

I’m wondering if we’re going to hear an announcement from another up-and-comer in the Texas House. He hails from Amarillo. He’s also a Republican, who also delivered a serious pounding to a candidate favored by Empower Texans, a far right wing political organization that sought to topple this fellow in the GOP primary this week.

Rep. Four Price? Are you listening?

Here’s what I have to say to this young man, who happens to be a friend of mine and who also has done a stellar job representing House District 87 since 2011.

Becoming speaker of the House essentially turns the office into a full-time endeavor. Price will have to come to grips with the idea that he no longer would be a part-time “citizen legislator.” He also has been a strong ally of the current speaker, Joe Straus of San Antonio, who isn’t running for re-election to the House.

Straus distinguished himself mightily by ensuring the death of the infamous Bathroom Bill that passed the Texas Senate in 2017. The Bathroom Bill would have required transgender individuals to use public restrooms in accordance to the gender assigned on their birth certificate.

It is discriminatory on its face. It had no business becoming Texas law. Straus saw it for what it was.

So, would a Speaker Four Price follow that lead? I would hope so.

I also believe that Rep. Price would make an excellent speaker candidate, giving the Texas Panhandle a strong voice in legislative matters, as it did when Democrat Pete Laney of Hale Center ran the House of Representatives.

Hey, I’m just a single voice here in the wilderness.

Still, my desire is to see my friend go for it.

local news, State news

Empower Texans had its head handed to it

Empower Texans had a bad week.

The result of the rest of us is that Texas voters — primarily Republican primary voters — had a good week. That means Texas had a good week.

Empower Texans is a right-wing advocacy group that lowered its sights on a number of incumbents around the state. State Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo was one of them. Seliger managed to fend off a GOP primary challenge and skate to virtual re-election to another term; he does face a Libertarian challenger in the fall, but don’t bet the mortgage on Seliger losing that one.

Empower Texans — led by Michael Quinn Sullivan (pictured) — believes Republicans and other conservatives need to toe a strictly drawn line. It is based downstate, yet it poured lots of money into the far reaches of the vast state. The Panhandle got its taste of Empower Texans’ penchant for distortion and outright lies.

Seliger survived. So did state Rep. Four Price, another Amarillo Republican, who thumped challenger Drew Brassfield by about a thousand percentage points in the race for House District 87, which Price has represented well since 2011.

The Texas Tribune reports: “The forces of extremism, like Empower Texans … overplayed their hand, turned voters off and experienced significant losses in the March primaries,” said GOP consultant Eric Bearse, who helped (state Rep. Sarah) Davis and three other candidates win amid an onslaught from Empower and other critics. “It started to become clear in some of these races that it really was a choice between our local representative and someone who is wholly owned by outside groups and outside money.”

I love the irony of that assessment.

Conservatives are supposed relish local control over the interests of others. Isn’t that what they say?

Yet we have Empower Texans tossing that dogma out the window with its strong-arming of political discussion with money and power that derives from some centrally located source.

Seliger and Price — along with a host of other Texas incumbents — were able to persuade sufficient numbers of Texans to see through this sham.

It’s bad for Empower Texans. Good for the rest of us.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2018/02/empower-texans-hitting-fan/

local news

Sen. Seliger beats back demagoguery

I had hoped to call it last night. I had to wait until this morning to find out that Texas state Sen. Kel Seliger is returning to the Texas Legislature.

His victory in the Texas Republican primary is a win against demagoguery. Seliger had faced a stern challenge from two far-right opponents: former Midland Mayor Mike Canon and Amarillo restauranteur Victor Leal.

Canon ran against Seliger in 2014. Leal decided to run as well this year. My first thought was that Leal might peel off some Texas Panhandle votes from Seliger, tossing the contest into a runoff. Hey, guess what happened! Seliger piled up a significant majority in this three-way race, guaranteeing his re-election, given the absence of any Democratic candidates.

This is important for Senate District 31 voters for a couple of important reasons. One is that Seliger has established a stellar reputation among voters at both ends of the sprawling district; he is as fluent in Permian Basin-speak as he is in Panhandle-speak, and tailors his remarks according to the audience that hears them. The other is that he is a mainstream Republican conservative who is not prone to talking only in cliches and platitudes.

He knows the legislative process. Seliger has risen to a position of leadership among the 31 senators in the Legislature’s upper chamber.

All of that hasn’t been good enough for Empower Texans, a political action group that opposed his re-election. Seliger, for his part, has no good will to fling at Michael Quinn Sullivan, the fellow most associated with Empower Texans. Sullivan’s favorite legislator is Lt. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate. Seliger and Patrick aren’t exactly best buds, either, even though Seliger has been able to hold on to his chairmanship of the Senate Higher Education Committee. Given the presence of West Texas A&M University and several community colleges throughout District 31, it is critical that we have one of our own handling the gavel on this committee.

I am delighted to awaken this morning to news that my pal Sen. Seliger will get to continue to serving West Texas.

He has done a good job since 2004. However,  the job of legislating is never finished.

local news

Price cruising to re-election … good deal!

Take that, Empower Texans!

The far-right political action hack, er, group has decided that state Rep. Four Price, R-Amarillo, wasn’t their kind of legislator. So it backed a fellow named Drew Brassfield, the Fritch city manager, to challenge the up-and-coming lawmaker.

Price appears headed for a smashing victory against Brassfield, dashing the hopes of Empower Texans, which has been stalking a number of incumbents — many of them Republicans — throughout the state.

This victory means that GOP voters in Texas House District 87 don’t like being dictated to by political interests who (a) are based far away from the Texas Panhandle and (b) have no interest and/or knowledge of the issues that are unique to this region.

Instead, Empower Texans had funded a campaign that distorted and lied about Price’s voting record in the House.

My hope was that Rep. Price would squash Brassfield’s bid. With a healthy chunk of precincts reporting, Price is leading by about 50 percentage points.

I consider that to be a serious squashing.

local news, political news

Hoping for an outright GOP primary victory

I want to restate my desire for state Sen. Kel Seliger to win the upcoming Republican Party primary outright in his bid to return to the Legislature representing Senate District 31.

He’s got two GOP foes in this primary. Four years ago, he had just one, who has returned for a second go-round against the former Amarillo mayor.

However, here is what I do not know at this moment: It is whether Seliger has consulted with another Republican officeholder who four years ago won her party primary without a runoff while facing four opponents.

Potter County Judge Nancy Tanner (right, in photo) faced the daunting task of winning the GOP primary for the seat she now occupies. Of the four foes she faced, one of them also was a recent Amarillo mayor, Debra McCartt, who made quite a name for herself setting governing policy for a city of nearly 200,000 residents.

When the votes were counted in 2014, Tanner won in a relative breeze. Tanner was able to parlay her experience as a longtime administrative assistant to former County Judge Arthur Ware into an easy primary victory; with no Democrat on the ballot four years, the primary was tantamount to election.

Indeed, I called her “Judge Tanner” years before she actually became the county judge.

My strong hope is that Seliger or his campaign team has consulted with Tanner about what she did to fend off those four challengers. I know that Seliger is working with a young political consultant who has been assigned to work exclusively with the senator in his re-election effort.

What I don’t know is if he has sought out a local politician with plenty of knowledge of how to win a crowded primary race outright.

local news, State news

Price vs. Brassfield: test of GOP sanity

I have drawn a conclusion about the state of the Texas Republican Party, which is that if state Rep. Four Price of Amarillo is taken to anything approaching a close finish in his primary contest against a challenger from Fritch, then I believe the Texas GOP has gone around the bend.

What does the rising Republican legislative star need to do to vanquish Drew Brassfield? I’m thinking he needs to win the GOP primary by something like 25 to 30 percentage points.

Brassfield, the Fritch city manager, is challenging Price for reasons I don’t quite grasp. He is campaigning as some sort of “conservative option” to the lawmaker who has represented House District 87 since 2011.

As if Price isn’t a conservative. Is that what Brassfield — and his Empower Texans benefactors — are suggesting? I guess they believe he isn’t conservative enough.

Actually, the Amarillo lawyer who’s done a bang-up job representing his legislative district, is tailor-made for this political post. He has been re-elected every two years with token opposition since he first won election to the seat held by David Swinford of Dumas from 1991 until 2010.

The Texas Republican Party’s internal strife mirrors much of what is going on around the country, with mainstream GOP officeholders being “primaried” by challengers from the far-right fringe of the party. So it is with Price, who under normal circumstances would breeze to re-election.

My hope is that he does so again this year, even with a well-funded challenge from a young man who is getting a lot of campaign money from political activists based way downstate.

If Price is forced to sweat his re-election out a couple of days from now, if Brassfield makes this a contest, then I fear the Texas GOP has flipped its wig.

local news, State news

Seliger stays on high road in this fight

Texas state Sen. Kel Seliger wants to be re-elected so badly that he’s staying totally positive in his campaign.

That is how the Amarillo Republican is casting his campaign. You know what? I am all for his approach.

Now he’ll get to find out whether the strategy works or whether Texas Senate District 31 Republican primary voters are drawn instead to mud-slinging and innuendo.

Seliger’s recent TV ad push highlights how he has stayed positive. All he says about his foes is that they have gone intensely negative with “false” accusations about his voting record, which Seliger insists is a conservative one.

Indeed, Seliger — who has served in the Senate since 2004 — has followed what I would call a “traditional conservative” track in the Texas Senate. He doesn’t align with the TEA party wing of his party and some of the principal elected officials elected on TEA party platforms; I think of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as one example.

He has drawn the wrath of Patrick’s major political benefactor, PAC boss Michael Quinn Sullivan, whose latest incarnation is something called Empower Texans, which has been savaging Seliger with baseless attacks.

Meanwhile, Seliger campaigns on his conservative record; he touts his record standing up for rural interests against urban power centers; he talks about his strong pro-life stance and his endorsement by gun-rights advocates.

Seliger also has earned standing among his state Senate colleagues and has chaired the Senate Higher Education Committee through two legislative sessions.

I, too, want him to be re-elected. I detest the campaign that has been launched against him.

My hope for Sen. Seliger is that his high-road track plays better with West Texas Republican primary voters than the low road his foes have taken against him.

The primary is just a few days off. We’ll know quite soon a lot about the character of the Texas GOP primary voter.

national news

Now, let’s target ‘distracted walking’

It is generally accepted that “texting while driving” is dangerous and is an inherently stupid activity. The reasons are obvious and no explanation is needed from me.

I’ve loathed the sight of drivers conversing on their cell phones, let alone operating texting devices while driving a 4,000-pound missile in heavy traffic.

There. We’ve re-established that, yes?

How about texting while walking?

You’ve seen it, too, I’m sure. People walking through shopping malls while distracted. Their eyes are fixed on that device in their hand. They are sending messages via those devices. They run into other mall shoppers. They slam into doors. They knock displays over at kiosks.

Oh, they just giggle and pick up after themselves. It’s all good.

Actually, it isn’t.

Some communities now are levying fines for those who are caught “texting while walking” across the street. The fines aren’t steep, but they are punishing those who commit these idiotic acts.

I know that “texting while walking” isn’t as egregious as when the activity involves driving a motor vehicle. The only person endangered is the person who refuses to look where he or she is going.

I am not going to hold my breath waiting for Texas communities to follow the lead of other American cities and towns. It took several sessions of the Texas Legislature to enact a statewide ban on texting while driving; the 2017 Legislature finally acted and Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law. Good for lawmakers and good for the governor.

However, if tragedy should strike and someone is seriously hurt — or worse — because he or she is texting while walking through traffic … then we’re talking about a potential game-changer.

local news, State news

‘Double-dipping’ not allowed in Texas

I likely shouldn’t even concern myself with this matter, but given the amount of money being poured into some Texas Panhandle legislative races, I think I’ll weigh in on a potential complication facing a candidate for the Texas Legislature.

Drew Brassfield is challenging state Rep. Four Price of Amarillo in the Republican primary for the House District 87 seat that Price has filled since 2011.

But … as they might say: Austin, we’ve got a problem.

Brassfield is the Fritch city manager. The Texas Constitution has some provisions in it that appear to make him ineligible to serve in the Legislature if he decides to keep his day job in Hutchinson County.

There’s more to this as well. Brassfield, who has been endorsed by the far-right group Empower Texans, isn’t divulging what his plans are until after election — presuming he wins the GOP primary, which remains the longest of long shots against a rising star in Rep. Price. He won’t tell voters if he intends to quit his city manager’s job and go to work as a legislator for $600 per month, plus a per diem expense total while the Legislature is in session.

Three clauses in the Constitution prohibit legislators from also drawing a salary from another public entity. One clause is quite specific, banning double-dipping if one of his jobs allows him to handle public money; as city manager, Brassfield certainly handles public funds.

Yet another clause says clearly that a legislator cannot hold another public office at the same time. Period. End of discussion.

These quite obvious conflict of interests are precisely why I said early on that Brassfield’s candidacy just didn’t pass the smell test.

It’s not that he is ineligible to run for the Legislature. It’s just that he would have to surrender his primary job — which also involves a public trust — if he gets elected to the Legislature.

The young man, furthermore, should tell voters up front before the primary election what he plans to do if hell freezes over and he defeats Price in the GOP primary.

What is fundamentally disgusting about Brassfield’s candidacy is that he is being used as a tool by a powerful political interest group that is misrepresenting Price’s voting records on issues such as elder care and abortion. Brassfield is not disavowing any of it.

So, young man, why not come clean before primary election day and tell House District 87 Republican voters what you intend to do if you manage to win this contest?