Tag Archives: Texas Democrats

Uncategorized

Let the Abbott v. Davis polling commence

The polling has begun and it shows a competitive race for Texas governor next year.

You know what they say, though, about politics: A week, or month, let alone a year, can be a lifetime or two … or three.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/10/02/abbott-leads-davis-eight-points-poll/

A Texas Lyceum poll shows Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott leading Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth by 8 percent in a theoretical matchup. Davis is expected Thursday to announce her candidacy for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, infusing enthusiasm into a state Democratic Party that has been in a virtual coma for two decades.

Abbott is the prohibitive favorite to be nominated by the Republicans next spring, although I’m not yet willing to count out my old pal Tom Pauken, a Dallas lawyer and commercial real estate developer (with interests in Amarillo), who’s also running for the GOP governor’s nomination.

Abbott has lots of money, lots of support among mainstream Republicans and lots of name identification.

Davis is no slouch in name ID or support among mainstream Democrats. Her problem, though, is that Republicans outnumber Democrats in Texas by a large margin. Therein lies the obstacle she faces.

The Lyceum poll says Davis does much better among women; she’s in a statistical tie with Abbott. She does better among minorities. Abbott, though, does better among independents.

I’ve noted before that the governor’s race needs some excitement. Wendy Davis is going to provide it.

Whether excitement translates to votes, though, will be the operative question going forward.

Uncategorized

Sen. Davis almost comes clean on ’14 plans

Evan Smith gave it the old college try as he tried to wheedle a statement from state Sen. Wendy Davis about whether she is running for Texas governor.

The Fort Worth Democrat didn’t take the bait at the TribFest, saying only that she plans to make her announcement on Thursday.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/09/29/tribune-fest-wendy-davis-on-running-for-governor/

Still, it is interesting to see the interest beginning to swirl about Davis’s plans.

She took the state — and the nation — by storm when she filibustered an anti-abortion bill into temporary oblivion during the first special session of the Texas Legislature earlier this summer. She gabbed for 13 hours until the clock ran out. Gov. Rick Perry called legislators back into another special session and Republicans managed to get the bill approved.

Davis’s star, though, still shines brightly. National Democrats have collected lots of money for her campaign. She’s actually beginning to energize a moribund state Democratic Party, which has been pounded senseless for the past two decades. Democrats won their latest statewide race in Texas in 1994. It’s been slim pickings ever since.

I’m not sure Davis is going to break the Democrat’s losing streak.

She certainly is going to brighten the political landscape Thursday when she announces her race for Texas governor.

Uncategorized

Sen. Davis good to go … for governor?

I’m wrong about these things more often than I’m right, but it’s looking to me as though Wendy Davis is going to run for Texas governor next year.

The Fort Worth Democratic state senator will make her plans known on Oct. 3.

What’s interesting to me is the suspense she is building into the announcement. See the link here:

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2013/09/wendy-davis-to-announce-plans-on-oct-3/

If she were to announce that she is going to seek re-election to her Senate seat, my hunch is that she’d just say so: “I’ve decided, after careful consideration and prayer, that I will not be a candidate for governor and will seek re-election to Senate District 10 and will seek to continue to serve my Fort Worth constituents.”

There. That would be it. Over and done.

But she’s asking her supporters to spread the word to others who they think would like to be the “first to know” her plans.

That feels to me as though a run for governor is in the wind.

All the excitement in this contest so far has been on the Republican side. Attorney General Greg Abbott is the odds-on favorite to be nominated by the GOP over former state Republican Party chairman Tom Pauken of Dallas. (Full disclosure: I’ve known Pauken personally for more than 25 years and I am pulling for him to at least make a contest of his party’s primary fight.)

It could be that the excitement quotient is going to shift dramatically toward the Democratic primary if Wendy Davis answers the bell. Davis burst onto the national scene with her dramatic filibuster of an anti-abortion bill in the waning hours of the Legislature’s first special session.

Will she win next fall?

That remains the multimillion-dollar question, given that’s how much it’s going to cost the next person who will become governor to succeed Rick Perry.

Texas remains a deeply ruby-red state, in the vise grip of Republican officeholders. Texans have shown a propensity in recent election cycles to elect Republicans over more qualified Democrats just because of their party affiliation. But, hey, Texans did the same thing in reverse back when Democrats were the top dog.

Sen. Davis would surely energize a moribund political party that’s been whipped so often it’s lost much of its will to win.

Please, though, don’t hold me to any of this. We’ll just wait for Wendy to give us the word.

Uncategorized

Waiting on Texas Democrats

As I watch the 2014 Texas political campaign take shape, I keep waiting for some news — any news — about Democrats.

So far, I’m hearing none.

There likely will be a change in one race, the one for governor, if state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, jumps into that contest.

But to date, all the interest, excitement and anticipation are on the Republican side of the ballot.

This tells me at least two things:

The Texas Democratic Party is as near-dead as ever before and the Texas Republican Party is feeling its oats while the opposition continues to flounder.

I wish the Democrats could somehow spring to life, if only to challenge the Republicans and to hold them accountable for the policies they keep enacting into law.

The Republican side is so exciting, actually, that there’s some talk simmering about whether some “mainstream” GOP officeholders will be challenged by tea party candidates. U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, a Republican member of Congress, is facing such a challenge. There’s been talk of the tea party zealots challenging U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. Good luck with that one.

Democrats? They’re virtually nowhere to be found.

The Dems keep talking bravely about staging a comeback. Hollow talk, though, won’t get the job done.

As for the Republicans, they might have their hands full trying to maintain some semblance of control within their own ranks. Hold on. It’s likely to be a bumpy ride through GOP Land.

Uncategorized

No ‘hails’ to this new chief justice, please

Nathan Hecht is going to become the next chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court.

I’m not surprised Gov. Rick Perry would pick Hecht to succeed Wallace Jefferson, who is resigning to return to private practice. Perry — who’s served as Texas governor longer than anyone in history — seems to like longevity, and Hecht is the longest-serving member of the state’s highest civil appeals court. He’s also among the court’s most conservative members, which of course fits Perry’s litmus test perfectly.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-on-the-potomac/2013/09/rick-perry-appoints-new-texas-supreme-court-chief-justice/

Hecht, though, isn’t a good pick for a couple of reasons. First of all, he’s had some run-ins with Texas’s ethics rules relating to alleged misuse of campaign funds and his reported acceptance of more than $150,000 in discounted legal fees. Still, Perry found it OK to praise Hecht’s integrity … blah, blah, blah.

Maybe more important, in my view, is that Hecht represents the courts’ radical shift to the right, which has occurred over many years.

There once was a time when the Supreme Court was seen as a plaintiff’s paradise, where folks could sue big corporations and then appeal it to the highest civil appellate court and get, say, a verdict overturned or modified in their favor. The pendulum has swung dramatically in the other direction, so much so now that the court is viewed as overly friendly to those big corporations who get sued on occasion.

Hecht represents the court’s radical change in attitude.

To be sure, conservatives in Texas and elsewhere love to criticize liberal judges for being “activist.” They ignore the absolute fact that conservative judges and courts can be every bit as activist as their more liberal colleagues.

The Texas Supreme Court’s radical shift from one level of activism to the other extreme doesn’t make it more fair or balanced or unbiased. It just shifts the unfairness, imbalance and bias to the other side.

That shift is what Nathan Hecht brings to his new job.

Uncategorized

Davis a go for Texas governor?

The Texas political media are full of smart folks who know the ins and outs of the state’s raucous political world.

One of the smarter guys, Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News, thinks state Sen. Wendy Davis is likely to run for Texas governor in 2014.

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2013/08/wendy-davis-all-signals-point-to-a-go-for-governor-of-texas.html/

I hope he’s right, if only because the Republicans Party establishment needs a serious challenge from the “other” major party.

Davis, the Fort Worth Democrat, who made such a splash with her spectacular legislative special session filibuster against an anti-abortion bill — which eventually became law during the second special session — is trying to decide whether to run for the state’s top job next year. The winds are hitting her square in the face, as Texas remains a heavily Republican state.

But man, she is charismatic and would enliven the contest like no other Democrat.

Republicans have their own gubernatorial fight brewing between state Attorney General Greg Abbott and Dallas lawyer/businessman and former state GOP chairman Tom Pauken. Abbott has to be considered the odds-on favorite in that primary — and in next fall’s general election.

Davis, though, would be an attention-getter were she to be nominated by Texas Democrats (duh!).

The state needs a white-hot campaign at the top of its political ballot. Wendy Davis would ignite it, no matter who she would face.