Tag Archives: Texas Elections

Today in Texas History – November 17

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From the Annals of Houston –  In 1981, Kathryn Whitmire was elected as the first female mayor of Houston.  Whitmire was first elected as City Controller for two terms and then to five consecutive terms as mayor. She also served as the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Texas Municipal League. As mayor she appointed Lee P. Brown as the first African American to serve as police chief. Brown later would become mayor.  Whitmire was defeated in 1991 by political power-broker Bob Lanier in an election that turned largely on Lanier’s opposition to Whitmire’s plan to bring mono-rail to Houston.  Whitmire moved to Hawaii in 2001.

How Would a Real “Tea Party” Fare in Texas

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The divide in the GOP is playing itself out on the national stage as the Tea Party wing (represented by Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, etc.) fights it out with the Establishment wing (represented by Jeb!!!!$$$$?, Marco Rubio, John Kasick, Chris Christie, etc.) while the Insanity wing (Donald Trump and Ben Carson) leads the way.  Meanwhile, Red wonders how his many Republican friends can continue to stand with a party in which 43% of its members think Pres. Obama is a Muslim, which believes we can deport 11 million people back to wherever they came from without any problems, still believes that supply-side economics works, and wants to return to the gold standard.

Simply put, the Republican Party needs to break up.  We will have your Grandfather’s Country Club GOP which believes that responsible governance is a good thing, that not all government is inherently evil, understands that many aspects of modern commerce require reasonable regulation, recognizes that compromise is an essential part of life, and which has more or less sane fiscal policies.  Then you will have a Tea Party which will be ideologically pure and stand for kicking out every last undocumented alien, huge tax cuts for the very wealthiest, bring back the gold standard, making gay marriage illegal, destroying any right to choose, instituting religious tests for office, allowing guns everywhere, repealing the 17th Amendment, instituting property ownership requirements for voting and any other policy that will insure that the upstanding good, white people of  America remain in control.

The Texas Tribune has the breakdown on just what might happen if the GOP were to fracture.

Candidate filing is underway and guess what, Captain Obvious? Almost everything that’s competitive in Texas races will come to a head in the March primary and not in the November general election.

That said, recent polling shows that not only are there strong factional differences between Tea Party and non-Tea Party Republicans, but also that the anti-establishment types are a sizable part of the Texas GOP.

The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll asked Texans which primary they’d be voting in; 50 percent said Republican and 35 percent said Democrat. It also asked how they would vote in a congressional race if there were candidates from the Republican, Democratic and Tea Parties. Once again, 35 percent chose the Democrats. The Republican number dropped to 22 percent, and the Tea Party got 17 percent. The percentage of “don’t know” responses rose, too.

One of the poll’s co-directors, Daron Shaw of the University of Texas at Austin, reads that to say that 43 percent to 44 percent of the GOP primary voters are Tea Party voters. That faction is relatively small in the Legislature, especially in the Texas House. But they’re bucking for a promotion, talking about entering enough candidates in the 2016 elections to seriously challenge the conservatives now in power.

The races will firm up over the next month; the filing period that opened on Saturday continues through Dec. 14.

It’s Election Day – Go Out and Vote

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Red urges all Texans to vote in today’s election.  Even if you don’t have a local election, the constitutional amendments are on the ballot and all but one of them should be voted down.

So exercise your franchise and participate in the democratic experiment that is the United States of America or quit your damn complaining.

Chris Bell for Mayor

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Red is endorsing Chris Bell for Mayor of Houston.  As this is Red’s first ever public endorsement, he does not make it lightly.  Chris has dedicated a good portion of his career to improving the lives of Texas citizens as a Houston City Council Member, a U.S. Congressman and an excellent attorney.  When elected, Chris will work for a more efficient and responsive government, equal rights for all, a cleaner environment, reductions in waste, increasing parks and greenspace, better public transportation and reducing congestion.  But above all, Chris is just a really bright, funny and engaging person who will be a tremendous representative for Houston throughout Texas, the U.S. and the World.  Please consider voting for Chris Bell for Mayor.

The Constitutional Amendments

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As loyal readers know, Red is fairly passionate about exercising the right to vote and strongly believes that democracy is the best of the many bad options for selecting leaders.  But then we come to the Texas Constitution, which for vague and somewhat mysterious reasons has to be amended every year to deal with matters that seem – well, somehow less than worthy of constitutional consideration.  To make matters worse, these matters are put to the public based on ballot language that is frequently misleading and certainly uninformative at best.  The ballot language is typically written in such an innocuous manner that voters would authorize a constitutional amendment legalizing the white slave trade.  Red was going to walk you through the mess that are the 7 constitutional amendments up for vote this year, but his good friend Joe Kulhavy at the Texas Election Law Blog has beat him to the punch and done a much better job of it than Red could have managed.  Only Joe could make reading about these matters at least somewhat entertaining, so all Red will do is give you his up or down.

  • Prop. 1 – Throttles back property tax revenue for school districts by adding another $10,000 to the homestead exemption.
    • Red votes No.  Red would use the extra $200 or so to restock the liquor cabinet, but the schools need it more
  • Prop. 2 – Exempts a handful of surviving spouses of disabled vets from homestead taxes
    • Red votes Yes.  No real harm here as this effects a handful of folks.
  • Prop. 3 – Releases statewide elected officials from their historical requirement to reside in Austin, despite the fact that their jobs happen to be located in the capitol.
    • Red votes Yes.  Most of them don’t deserve to live in Austin anyway.
  • Prop. 4 – Would authorize professional sports team charitable foundations to conduct charitable raffles.
    • Red votes No. This just authorizes another way for largely bogus charities to fleece us.
  • Prop. 5 – Would adjust the population cap that prohibits all but the tiniest of counties from using county road crews to build and maintain private roads, so as to ensure that slightly-less tiny counties will be able to use county road crews to build and maintain private roads.
    • Red votes No. Red always thought a private road meant just that – it’s private.  Red can’t imagine a reason to expend  more public funds in this way.
  • Prop. 6 – Would specify that Texans have a fundamental constitutional right to hunt, kill and harvest wildlife and fish, including by “traditional means.”
    • Red votes No.  Totally unnecessary and likely to only result in absurd litigation.
  • Prop. 7 – Would redirect roughly 10% or more of the state’s annual tax revenue exclusively to transportation projects.
    • Red is torn up about this one.  Texas roads are falling apart, but the idea of requiring money to be spent on any particular area troubles him.  Red votes No.

Vote!

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Red encourages everyone to exercise their constitutional right to vote. You would think politicians of all stripes would prefer that more rather than fewer of our citizens participate in our democratic elections.  Sadly, that is not the case in our great state.  The now Tea Party dominated GOP in Texas has done everything it can for decades to attempt to suppress the vote by imposing more and more requirements, by using voter intimidation tactics such as posting signs about voter fraud only in minority dominating polling places, and mostly by gerrymandering as many districts as possible to make your vote increasingly meaningless.  All we have on the ballot right now are local elections and Constitutional amendments, but still  – DON’T LET THE BASTARDS WIN – get out and vote.  Early voting has already started.  There is no excuse.

Today in Texas History – October 19

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From the Annals of Democracy –  In 1919, the League of Women Voters of Texas, a nonpartisan political organization, was formed at San Antonio.  The LWV-Texas was created by the members of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association which was made irrelevant by the passage of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote.  The LWV-Texas selected Jessie Daniel Ames of Georgetown as its first president.  The group focused its early efforts on educating the newly enfranchised women voters of the state.   The LWV-Texas now works to encourage active participation in government, increase understanding of major public policy issues, influence public policy through education and advocacy, and inform citizens about the voting process and positions of the candidates.

Photo from lwvhouston.org

Today in Texas History – September 16

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From the Annals of the Democratic Party – In 1922, the “Independent Democrats” met in Dallas to select Houston attorney George Peddy as a candidate for the United States Senate. The Independent Democrats were a splinter group from in opposition to the effective takeover of the party by the Ku Klux Klan.  The Democratic Party had nominated KKK candidate Earle Bradford Mayfield for senator in the primary.  Even worse, at the state Democratic convention in San Antonio it appeared to many that the Ku Klux Klan had gained control of the party.  This caused the anti-Klan Democrats to seek a candidate to oppose Mayfield in the general election. Peddy had campaigned for James E. Ferguson as the anti-Klan candidate in the primaries.  Unfortunately, Mayfield and the Klan forces succeeded in keeping Peddy’s name off the ballot.  Peddy ran a write-in campaign and captured one third of the vote.  Challenges to Mayfield’s qualifications to serve led to a Senate investigation and delayed his ascension to the Senate.  He was, however, seated in the Senate in December of 1923.

Photo of George Petty from the Legislative Reference Library.

Fifth Circuit Rules Texas Voter ID Law Violates Voting Rights Act

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The Dallas Morning News reports that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that Texas’ voter ID act violates section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.  The ruling, however, is narrow and neither a complete win nor loss for either side.  Red would support such a law if there was one iota of evidence that in-person voter fraud is a real problem.  Everyone who knows anything about elections in Texas knows the real hanky-panky occurs with the mail-in ballots and the current law does absolutely nothing  to prevent massive abuse in that regard.

The hard part of the ruling to swallow is the Fifth Circuit’s finding that the intent of the law was not to discriminate against minority voters.  Red understands that is tough fish to land, but come on . . . really?  Even in Texas, the GOP is scared because the angry old white men that are dying off are being replaced by young brown ones.  Gerrymandering will work for a while, but demographic destiny takes over at some point, and with the legacy that Patrick and Abbott are leaving, recruiting Hispanics and Blacks to the Grand Ol’ Party is going to be a tough sell. If they can cut minority voting by even a percent or two, then they might just hang on for a couple of more election cycles past their expiration date.

In an unanimous decision, a three-judge panel ruled that the controversial and Republican-backed measure violated Section 2 of the landmark civil rights law. The law has been part of a complicated legal battle for years.

But the victory was narrow win for opponents of the law. The judges also rejected a previous judge’s ruling that the law was passed with the intent to discriminate. The Fifth Circuit sent that portion of the lawsuit back to a U.S. district court.

The court wrote that, if the lower court finds in its review of the case that the voter ID Law only violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, it should find a solution that can still reduce the risk of in-person voter fraud and satisfy the legislative intent of the voter ID law.

“Simply reverting to the system in place before SB 14’s passage would not fully respect these policy choices — it would allow voters to cast ballots after presenting less secure forms of identification like utility bills, bank statements, or paychecks,” the court wrote in a 49-page opinion.

Texas could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, or the state also could ask the full 5th Circuit to review the case. But now, a fight over what exactly the complicated ruling means is more imminent.

Texas Voters No Longer to do the Two Step

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For nearly 40 years, the Texas Democratic Party has conducted a two tiered method for selecting delegates to the National Convention.  Some delegates (75%) would be apportioned on the basis of the primary vote, but others (25%) would be selected in caucuses held after the polls closed on election day. But the “Texas Two-Step” tradition is officially over. The Democratic National Committee asked the state party to pick between a caucus and a primary and the primary system won out.  Texas Democrats tried to keep that system, but the DNC forced them to pick one, so they went with a primary.  Thus ends the “Texas Two-Step.”   Let the Texas Rhumba begin.