The Old Eighteen

TexBlog PAC Endorses Chris Turner for State Representative

TexBlog PAC has announced its second endorsement of the 2008 election cycle, selecting Chris Turner, who is running for State Representative in District 96 against Republican incumbent Bill Zedler.  Along with the endorsement, Chris Turner also gets a nice, fat check for $5,000, which will help him in what looks to be a hotly contested race.

Turner's district covers most of southern Arlington and Ft. Worth, along with Crowley, Kennedale, Rendon, and parts of Mansfield and Burleson.  I used to live in Arlington while attending UT-Arlington many years ago, so I have something of a sentimental interest in this race.  And since my Republican state rep is running unopposed (ugh), I guess I'll have to live vicariously through the Democratic voters of the fighting 96th.  Democrats in the district had a strong showing during the March primary, outvoting Republicans by greater than 2 to 1.  The 96th had more Democratic primary voters than any other House district in Tarrant County, and outperformed the statewide Democrat-to-Republican ratio on election day.  And Chris Turner himself got more than twice the votes that Zedler did in their respective primaries.

Chris Turner is a native Texan who was born in Sherman and grew up in Dallas, attending Skyline High School.  He has served as the District Director for Congressman Chet Edwards and managed his last four successful congressional campaigns, a remarkable feat in a red state.  His opponent, Bill Zedler, is a weak incumbent who scraped by with 52.5% of the vote in 2006 and also performed poorly in his primary earlier this year, with more than a quarter of Republicans in his district voting against him.  He's been sued over questions regarding his legal residence in District 96, and was also subjected to a grand jury investigation when it was discovered that thousands of dollars of his legal bills were paid for with corporate funds that were raised by Texans for a Republican Majority, a group founded by disgraced former US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Zedler has been a lousy state representative and a useful idiot for the religious right: among other things, he's proposed so-called "covenant marriages," which would make it harder for women in abusive relationships to divorce their husbands; opposed provisions in the state's Health and Safety Code that allow for late-term abortions to save the life of the mother; and joined with fellow GOP legislators to stifle debate on a controversial “religious expression” bill.  He's also proposed legislation to facilitate efforts to suppress minority voters and to muzzle teacher's groups.  He's spoken out against the pernicious threat to public decency posed by Hooters restaurants.  And he's displayed what I will only describe as an unhealthy obsession with pubic hair.

Tarrant County voters deserve much better representation than they've gotten from Bill Zedler.  If you'd like to help Chris Turner defeat Zedler this fall, you can give him a helping hand by clicking here to donate to his campaign, or clicking here to find out about becoming a volunteer.

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(via Burnt Orange Report)

Todd Hunter, today's worst person in the world

Okay, I know I'm shamelessly stealing Keith Olbermann's gimmick here.  But we have a worthy candidate for douchebag of the week in Republican Todd Hunter, who is challenging Democratic incumbent Juan Garcia for the district 32 seat in the Texas House.  First, Hunter got his party to put out a campaign flyer that falsely accused Garcia of keeping campaign contributions from an indicted law firm operator - in fact, the funds were not kept by Garcia, but were donated to The Center for the Intrepid, one of the nation's top rehab facilities for seriously injured, burned and maimed service personnel.  After Nueces County Republicans were left with egg on their faces, county GOP chair Mike Bertuzzi made things even worse by actually criticizing Garcia for donating the money to a nonprofit outside of his district - nevermind that the money was going to help wounded veterans.

Then, during their first head-to-head debate, both Garcia and Hunter were asked if they would release their tax returns for the last 10 years.  Garcia immediatey agreed to do so, for both himself and his wife.  Hunter, on the other hand, refused to release his wife's tax returns at all, and then had the gall to say that he wouldn't release his own tax returns unless Garcia agreed to release his military records, in a glaringly obvious attempt to falsely insinuate that Garcia has something to hide about his military record.  The Republicans did something like this to John Kerry too, but I think Garcia did a better job of handling it: he said that he'd be happy to release his military records, then asked if Hunter had any miitary records of his own to release.  Todd Hunter is a chickenhawk, and of course he's never served in the military so he doesn't have any military records to release.  Via Texas Kaos, here's some video from the debate:

On top of that, Todd Hunter lied through his teeth during the debate about his record as a lobbyist, claiming that he represented the city of Corpus Christi for free.  In fact, state ethics filings (1, 2, 3) show that Hunter was paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars for his representation of the city.

Todd Hunter and the rest of the GOP hit-and-miss squad are going to pull out every dirty trick in the book to try and take down Juan Garcia.  But I have a feeling that their attacks are going to fail.  Garcia is a military veteran with a distinguished record of service, and a leading voice for much-needed ethics reform in the Texas Legislature.  You can find out more about Juan Garcia here at his web site, or you can sign up here to volunteer and/or make donations to his campaign here.

Rick Perry considering pre-election special session

Vince Leibowitz at Capitol Annex reports that Governor Rick Perry is thinking about calling a special session of the Texas Legislature prior to the election in November, in order to use his Republican majority to curtail the power of Sub-Regional Planning Commissions.  It seems that these planning commissions have been a check on the power of the Texas Department of Transportation and thus on Governor Goodhair's plans to push the Trans-Texas Corridor.  So, being a Republican, he wants to changes the rules to suit his policy goals, and a special session would give him the opportunity to do so before a general election where his party stands to lose seats in the Legislature and might even lose control of one of its chambers.  Leibowitz speculates that Perry might also use the opportunity of a special session to push voter ID legislation, as a means of undercutting Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, who has been a vocal proponent of such legislation lately and might be a potential opponent in the Republican nomination battle for the 2010 governor's race.

Note to Goodhair: special sessions are intended to be used to deal with issues that urgently need a solution and can't wait until the next regular session of the Legislature.  Your desire to game the system so it favors your policy priorities doesn't rise to the level of justifying a special session, nor does your desire to score political points against a potential primary challenger, nor does your desire to use voter ID laws to suppress the votes of minorities and the elderly.  And no, the fact that your party might lose seats in the Legislature in November and make it harder for you to push your agenda through doesn't count as an urgent need.

Annie's List matching donations to Diana Maldonado

Since I don't have a Democrat running for state representative in my district (groan), I've decided to do the next best thing and support strong Democratic candidates in other districts.  One of the candidates I've chosen to support is Diana Maldonado, who is running against beatable Republican incumbent Mike Krusee for the 52nd district seat.  Yesterday, Annie's List, an organization dedicated to supporting Democratic women candidates in Texas, announced that for the next two weeks through June 2, they will be matching contributions to Diana Maldonado dollar-for-dollar.  If you'd like to give Diana your support, please click here to contribute to her campaign.

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(via Al Stanley at Burnt Orange Report)

Tom Craddick, freeloading hypocrite

Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick has been expelling a lot of hot air lately going after three of his opponents for compensating some of their part-time employees with health care coverage, making the false claim that they are using tax dollars to compensate employees who perform "little or no work."  And, of course, he's a Republican.  So it should come as no surprise that Craddick, the same guy who bent over backwards to deny health care coverage to hundreds of thousands of Texas children, pushed through special legislation keeping his 37-year-old daughter on the State of Texas Employee health care plan - despite the fact that he's a multi-millionaire, that his daughter isn't a state employee, and that she has earned over $664,000 in the last 5 years working for her daddy's campaign and operating her own company.  Now that's what I call chutzpah.

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(via whosplayin at Texas Kaos)

Winning on the issues in November

Phillip Martin at the Burnt Orange Report posted an excellent article today about the fight to retake the Texas House.  He thinks that Texas Dems are spending too much time and energy in the fight over House Speaker Tom Craddick, and that they should be talking more about the issues, and I couldn't agree more.  My guess is that a sizeable number of Texas voters, particularly younger voters, probably don't even know or care who Tom Craddick is, much less have an opinion about whether or not he should be speaker of the Texas House.  Getting bogged down in an inside-baseball argument about Craddick isn't going to resonate with the voters that we need to win in November.  But these voters can be reached if we start talking more about our solutions for the nuts-and-bolts issues that affect them in their daily lives, like health care, or the size of their utility bills, or the cost of sending their kids (or themselves) to college.

Martin addressed several key areas where he thinks we should be hitting the Republicans:

Our purpose is to pass better health care laws. Our purpose is to make higher education more accessible to graduating teenagers. Our purpose is to figure out a way to lower electricity costs, improve our environment, and increase support for teachers and children in the classroom.

Lest we forget what's happened recently, here's a quick reminder:

• Public Education - House Democrats fought tooth-and-nail for an across-the-board teacher pay raise last session. Republicans continued to fight for a merit-based approach --- an approach that failed in Houston, when only 58% of teachers received a pay raise averaging $1,800, while the HISD Superintendent got a $67,000 bonus. Republicans ended up only allowing a $425 a year pay increase for teachers (approximately $6 per week), that -- thanks to Governor Perry's TEA -- will be swept into existing salary schedule step increments, and thus amount to absolutely nothing.

• Higher Education - The average cost of tuition, statewide, has increased by 44% since Republicans took over in 2003. That includes a 55% increase at Texas A&M, a 61% increase at UT-Dallas, and a 70% increase at the University of Houston. Meanwhile, the Texas Tomorrow Fund could be $3 billion short in its funds, and fewer students are receiving Texas GRANTs today than five years ago.

• Health Care - There are still over 125,000 fewer children enrolled in CHIP today than 5 years ago. There is still too much red tape for children's Medicaid and CHIP enrollment. And Texas still has the highest percentage of uninsured citizens in the country, no thanks to the continued efforts by Republicans to privatize health care and force Texans to miss regular doctor visits and make emergency room visits that are more dangerous to the health of Texans and more costly to local taxpayers.

• Environment - Texas emits more carbon dioxide gases than any other state in the country -- more than CA and PA (2nd and 3rd) combined. We are home to 5 of the dirtiest coal plants in the country, including two in the top ten, and emissions from the already existing coal plants cause up to 1,160 deaths per year. Republicans solution? Build more coal plants.

• Utility Rates - In 2007, the average TX consumer that bought power from deregulated markets paid $200 more than the average TX consumer buying power municipalities with regulated markets. (Source).

These are all areas where we can gain traction with voters, but I think that addressing soaring college tuition rates can be a particularly big winner for us in November.  Overall, statewide tuition is up by 44% since 2003, and the problem is even more acute at schools in the UT System, where tuition has increased by 68% in the same time period.  This is an issue that will obviously resonate with parents, but it's also a big issue with college students themselves, many of whom have to pay their own way with student loans that they'll be repaying for years after they graduate.  Higher tuition costs mean that these students either have to borrow more money, or work harder to cover what their student aid doesn't.  Young voters are more energized this election cycle and will be a significant component of any winning strategy for Democrats this fall - addressing their concerns will ensure that these voters care more about the down-ballot races and have a better understanding of what the stakes are in these contests.

TexBlog PAC fundraiser a success

Good news from Matt Glazer at TexBlog PAC, who reports that the organization has shattered its 5-day goal of 50 new donors and $1,500, with 56 donors and $2,110 raised.  TexBlog has now raised over $3,700 and is already making plans for what to do with it:

With your generosity, TexBlog PAC will now be able to make its first endorsement before Summer and begin raising the funds we need to endorse 4 more challengers.  Our endorsement will come with $5,000, an e-mail to over 40,000 people throughout the state, and constant fundraising from now until November.  This early support will be the difference between winning and losing.  It will be the difference between a Democratic House or one controlled by out of touch ultra-conservative Republicans like Tom Craddick, Warren Chisum, Frank Corte, and many many others.

TexBlog PAC fundraiser nears goal

Good news from Matt Glazer at TexBlog PAC, who is reporting that they have nearly reached their 5-day goal of 50 new donors and $1,500, with a total so far of 31 donors and $1,470.01.  If you haven't already done so, you can help push them over the top by making a donation today.

Help TexBlog PAC "make Tom Craddick an April Fool"

The battle is on to turn Texas into a battleground state during the 2008 election cycle.  With that in mind, TexBlog PAC was created with the aim of raising enough money to donate at least $5,000 to 5 or more Democratic challengers, as part of a wider effort to retake the Texas House of Representatives.  They've raised $8,500 so far, but they still have a ways to go.  Today they launched a fundraiser with a 5-day goal of achieving 50 new donors and $1,500 of donations.  Please take a few moments to show your support for TexBlog PAC and Texas Democrats by making a donation, however big or small.