{"id":50151,"date":"2022-01-16T21:37:58","date_gmt":"2022-01-16T21:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=50151"},"modified":"2022-01-16T21:38:25","modified_gmt":"2022-01-16T21:38:25","slug":"peel-off-those-labels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=50151","title":{"rendered":"Peel off those labels"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Driving this morning along U.S. 380 to McKinney, Texas, I noticed the highway is festooned with campaign signs in advance of the March primary election.<\/p>\n

One sign caught my attention, not because I support the fellow whose name is on it. The sign said “Cris Trevino … Republican” for constable in Collin County.<\/p>\n

I don’t know Cris Trevino from the Man in the Moon, but what caught my interest was the term “Republican” on a sign pitching a candidacy for constable.<\/p>\n

My first thought was: Why should I care whether this guy is a Republican or a Democrat?<\/em><\/p>\n

My second thought was: What is the difference in the way a Republican or Democrat serves court papers to individuals, which is what constables generally are assigned to do?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ll stipulate up front that I detest the constable’s office in the first place. We don’t need constables, but we have ’em because the Texas Constitution says we should have ’em.<\/p>\n

I dislike the partisan election of so many of our down-ballot offices. Constables need not identify with one party or the other. The only qualification they need to demonstrate is whether they are fit to serve as a law enforcement officer. I mean, why must we turn cops into politicians?<\/p>\n

I have in the past made the argument that we can turn a whole array of down-ballot races into non-partisan choices. County clerk? County treasurer? Tax assessor-collector? District clerk? District attorney? County attorney?<\/p>\n

What the … ?<\/p>\n

Why must we identify these individuals by the political party to which they belong? I already have spoken on this blog about the partisan election of judges. No need to repeat myself on that one.<\/p>\n

If we cannot get rid of the constable’s office — which owes its existence to a powerful lobby at work in Austin — then we ought at least force the individuals running for this office to do so on their qualifications and not on the party to which they belong.<\/p>\n

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n

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Driving this morning along U.S. 380 to McKinney, Texas, I noticed the highway is festooned with campaign signs in advance of the March primary election. One sign caught my attention, not because I support the fellow whose name is on it. The sign said “Cris Trevino … Republican” for constable in Collin County. I don’t … Continue reading Peel off those labels<\/span> →<\/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],"tags":[1063,1137,3507],"class_list":["post-50151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-collin-county","tag-constables","tag-partisanship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50151","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=50151"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50154,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50151\/revisions\/50154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}