{"id":24831,"date":"2017-09-20T02:40:43","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T02:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=24831"},"modified":"2017-09-20T19:45:20","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T19:45:20","slug":"seliger-makes-it-official-hes-running-again-for-the-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=24831","title":{"rendered":"Seliger makes it official: He&#8217;s running again for the Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/image4108620_web1_seliger-trib-052617.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-24832\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/image4108620_web1_seliger-trib-052617-300x174.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"174\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/image4108620_web1_seliger-trib-052617-300x174.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/image4108620_web1_seliger-trib-052617.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I am heartened to learn that Kel Seliger is going to run for re-election to the Texas Senate.<\/p>\n<p>The Amarillo Republican has two GOP primary opponents, one of whom he defeated in 2014; the other Republican challenger comes from the heart of Seliger&#8217;s base.<\/p>\n<p>Seliger will face former Midland Mayor Mike Canon and Amarillo businessman Victor Leal.<\/p>\n<p>I watched the Seliger-Canon primary fight up close four years ago. It shouldn&#8217;t have been a contest. It turned out to be one. Canon, a lawyer by profession, is a TEA Party favorite. He speaks in platitudes and clich\u00e9s. Seliger demonstrated clearly in the 2014 primary campaign a firm grasp of the details of legislating, of state law and of how government works.<\/p>\n<p>Canon managed to split the vast District 31 Republican Party primary vote nearly in half, losing the primary by about 4 percentage points to Seliger.<\/p>\n<p>Now we have Leal entering the race. I don&#8217;t yet know what kind of campaign Leal is going to run. He&#8217;s got some good name ID, given all the radio advertising he runs promoting his restaurant. Seliger will have to deal with <em>that<\/em> in some form or fashion.<\/p>\n<p>Seliger&#8217;s platform will stress &#8220;local control.&#8221; He said in a statement that he believes that\u00a0\u201cFolks closest to a problem are usually the best at solving it.\u201d Good deal, senator. Then perhaps he&#8217;ll persuade the 2019 Texas Legislature, presuming he wins re-election, to stop monkeying around with cities&#8217; efforts to install red-light cameras as a deterrent to those who keep breaking the law by running through those stop lights.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve already stipulated that I consider Seliger to be a friend. I also am impressed by how quickly he grasped the nuts and bolts of legislating after he was elected initially in 2004.<\/p>\n<p>Seliger says he&#8217;ll run as a conservative legislator. According to some political interest groups, though, he&#8217;s not conservative <em>enough<\/em>. Empower Texas is one such group that likely will work to defeat Seliger. I believe this group is making a mistake.<\/p>\n<p>Kel Seliger knows the pulse of Senate District 31 from the Permian Basin to the top of the Panhandle. He needs to return to the Senate.<\/p>\n<p>Right there might be Sen. Seliger&#8217;s first political endorsement.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re welcome, senator.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am heartened to learn that Kel Seliger is going to run for re-election to the Texas Senate. The Amarillo Republican has two GOP primary opponents, one of whom he defeated in 2014; the other Republican challenger comes from the heart of Seliger&#8217;s base. Seliger will face former Midland Mayor Mike Canon and Amarillo businessman &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=24831\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Seliger makes it official: He&#8217;s running again for the Senate<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[2646,4622,4653,4701],"class_list":["post-24831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-political-news","tag-kel-seliger","tag-texas-gop","tag-texas-legislature","tag-texas-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24831"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24843,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24831\/revisions\/24843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}