Tag Archives: Texas Republicans

Texas Politics

BYE: Congressman Blake Farenthold To Not Seek Reelection

Leave a comment

First elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, Congressman Blake Farenthold has been an interesting character to watch in Texas politics, and a rather confusing presence for the good people of the state’s 27th Congressional District.  The winner of a razor-thin contest that year, the district was then gerrymandered (or as some prefer to say, gerrymangled) so much that it now leans heavily Republican.  This has perpetuated a series of easy victories for the Congressman, even when he says and does things that may conflict with the needs and values of his constituents.  His views on issues like immigration, for example, have been the source of much controversy.  But with such a safe district now in his favor, Texans have wondered if there would ever be a way to challenge the legislator.

Well, as it turns out, the greatest challenger to Blake Farenthold happens to be his own behavior.  As Abby Livingston of the Texas Tribune reports, the powerful Congressman’s time in Washington is now coming to an end…

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi, will retire from Congress after finishing his current term, a source close to the congressman told The Tribune Thursday morning. Farenthold soon confirmed the decision in an emotional video posted on Facebook.

The decision came after a difficult December for the four-term congressman. Farenthold, one of the quieter members of the Texas delegation, found himself embroiled in a charged atmosphere of sexual harassment allegations in Washington, D.C.

The final blow came in the form of a CNN report on Wednesday night highlighting new sexual harassment allegations that included former employees describing the congressman as verbally abusive and sexually demeaning.

[…]

While he “expected a tough primary campaign” and “was looking forward to it,” Farenthold said he would retire instead.

“I would be forced to engage in a month-long campaign for personal vindication,” he said. “That’s not why I came to Congress. Quite simply, my constituents deserve better.”

And on that last point, we have to agree.  the constituents of his district definitely deserve better, and have deserved better for a long time.  Just like US taxpayers deserved better than to have to pay $84,000 in taxpayer money for to settle a previous sexual harassment claim against him.  Only when knowledge of the settlement became public did Farenthold, a millionaire, pledge to reimburse the funds with his own money.

With its present boundaries, Texas 27th will still be a tough race for any Democratic hopeful looking to flip the District.  But at least now, they don’t have to worry about the incumbent.

Or to coin the phrase of another famous Texan…

 

 

 

Houston, Texas

2016 Texas Leftist Candidate Questionnaire

Leave a comment

As Early Voting is literally days away for the Lone Star State, Texas Leftist has once again seeking to grow the information available to voters by asking candidates directly.  For the 2016 Texas Leftist Candidate Questionnaire (TLCQ), candidates across the region  have already been sent information, and each response will be published as it is received.  Texas Leftist will also issue endorsements for select races.  This year, a common set of questions has been sent to candidates, regardless of the office being sought.

================================================

  1. What is your name, as it will appear on the ballot?

 

  1. Are you a current or former elected official? If so what office(s)?

 

  1. As a political candidate, you clearly care about what happens in certain levels of government. In your own words, why is government important?

 

  1. If elected, what is your top priority in office for the upcoming term? Describe how you plan to accomplish it.

 

  1. Recent years in American Politics have yielded an environment of hyper-partisanship, the results of which have often led to government inefficiency, and sometimes total government gridlock. Describe how you plan to break through this partisan gridlock for the good of your constituents, and work with those from differing political ideologies. 

 

 

  1. What makes you the best candidate for this office?

 

  1. When not on the campaign trail, how do you like to spend your free time?

==================================================

Though much attention this cycle has been focused on the Presidential race, it is very important to highlight the races of down ballot candidates.  If elected, they are the ones who will have the most immediate impact on the lives of Greater Houston residents, and all of Texas.  Check here for the responses, and endorsements coming soon.

tlcq-2016

Texas Politics

Big Government Texas Part 2: ‘Open Scary’ Spooks Texas Lege

2 Comments

All year we’ve heard from various Texas lawmakers about their rights the 2nd amendment… even Governor-Elect Greg Abbott himself has pledged to sign the first Open Carry Bill that comes across his desk.  If enacted open-carry legislation would allow gun owners to take their lethal weapons to virtually any public venue.

But apparently what legislators seem to keep forgetting??  The state capitol is also a public venue, and these guns ain’t just for show. From the Houston Chronicle, here’s a rundown about how legislators got a big dose of reality…

AUSTIN – The Texas House on Wednesday approved new rules that will allow legislators to eject hostile members of the public from their offices and recoup the cost of installing panic buttons to summon Department of Public Safety officers following confrontations between a handful of lawmakers and pro-gun activists on the opening day of the session.

The move, which was approved 137-5 in the Republican-dominated House, has some open-carry advocates worried the bad impression left by a small number of activists could endanger their legislative agenda.

“The chances of passing what they call ‘constitutional carry’ got more remote with yesterday’s shenanigans,” said former Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who supports efforts to legalize the unlicensed open carrying of handguns in Texas. “That set the stage. That’s the topic of discussion now.”

On Tuesday, roughly 15 to 20 members of the group Open Carry Tarrant County visited several lawmakers’ offices urging them to support House Bill 195, which seeks to undo Texas’ 125-year ban on carrying handguns openly. Several House members, including Democrats Poncho Nevarez of Eagle Pass and Celia Israel of Austin, said the group hassled them or staff members.

In a video posted Tuesday online by Kory Watkins, the Tarrant County group’s leader, open-carry activists can be heard calling Nevarez “a tyrant to the Constitution” and telling him he “won’t be here very long, bro.” Nevarez, who repeatedly asked the group to leave, later said he was concerned for the safety of his staff, family and constituents and complained one activist “reeked of marijuana.”

Catch the video in question right here…

Yep that’s right… even TEACONs in the Texas legislature felt threatened enough by the vigilante group from Tarrant County that they quickly wanted to protect themselves with beefed up security and panic buttons.  Which begs the rest of us to ask one question…

Where is our panic button??

If a couple of gun-toting guys can spook grown adults at the Texas state capitol, why on earth are Republicans in the lege pushing for any and every person in the state to be able to take their guns wherever they choose?  No where in the bill does it say that the state of Texas will pay for all 27 million of us to carry around panic buttons and a security guard.  I suppose the protection of lawmakers far outweighs protecting the rest of us?

Here’s the simple answer to this conundrum.  Guns have a place, but that place is not in the public arena.  The best way to keep Texans safe is to have fewer deadly weapons around, not more.  Even without the threat of some mysterious criminal looking to do harm, guns, by their very nature, are dangerous.  Children in the United States are 17 times more likely to die from accidental gun deaths than children in any other developed nation.  This is not a talking point… it is fact.  Why?  Because the United States has more guns in public use than other developed nations.  A parent could be the most responsible person on the planet, but when they have a young child, they should know that children pick things up.  They touch hot stoves and irons.  And if they see a gun, there’s a huge chance they will try to play with it.  No matter how many people in Open Carry Tarrant County or other groups threaten, they are still a clear minority and do not represent the views of most Texans, as evidenced by swift actions from the Texas House.

As this legislature gets rolling, let’s hope that they remember one thing about guns.  If you pass an Open Carry law for Texas, you pass it for everyone.  All the panic buttons in the world won’t change that.  It’s time for Texans to unite for common-sense policies, and say no to a Big Government legislature that would force all of us to be less safe.

Equality, Texas Politics

Greg Abbott: LGBT Texans Aren’t Stable Enough For Marriage

Leave a comment

Marriage in most families is a momentous occasion, and for those that choose to walk down the aisle, it marks the beginning of a new life for the wedded couple.  Marriages form a backbone of not only family history, but American history as well.  But for LGBT Texans that treasured history is being not only prevented, but destroyed by the state’s Big Government Attorney General.  As revealed this week, Greg Abbott has decided to be a roadblock to equality yet again, filing an appeal to the recent ruling that struck down the state’s marriage ban.  Here’s the information directly from the full text of the Attorney General’s filing…

Texas’s marriage laws are rooted in a basic reality of human life: procreation requires a male and a female.  Two people of the same sex cannot, by themselves procreate.  All the Equal Protection Clause requires is that Texas’s marriage be rationally related to a legitimate state interest.  Texas’s marriage laws easily satisfy that standard.  The state’s recognition and encouragement of opposite sex marriages increases the likelihood that naturally procreative couples will produce children, and that they will do so in the context of stable, long-lasting relationships.  By encouraging the formation of opposite sex marriages, the State seeks not only to encourage procreation but also to minimize the societal costs of procreation outside of stable, lasting marriages.

Curious how the Attorney General, and Republican candidate for Governor keeps bringing up this point about stability.  Clearly Abbott doesn’t think that LGBT Texans are “stable enough” to handle meaningful relationships.  Of course, as the Houston Chronicle points out, these are the very same flawed arguments that have been rejected several times in other Appeals courts…

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) and pro-gay marriage activists were surprised Abbott led with the “responsible procreation” argument since it has been rejected in the 10th and 4th Circuit Courts.

“It hasn’t succeeded very often because it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and it doesn’t really comport with what most of us think about marriage,” said Rebecca Robertson, legal and policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “(State law) doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be reasonable.”

Any outcome in the 5th Circuit would be a win for the gay marriage movement, said Steve Rudner of Equality Texas.

If the court upholds Judge Garcia’s ruling overturning the ban, it will bolster LGBT activists’ case. If it becomes the first appeals court to toss out such a ruling, creating a circuit court split, it could put the Texas case on a fast-track to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Whether or not this ridiculous appeal is part of some meticulously orchestrated plot to entice the Supreme Court, or if it’s just the Attorney General’s blunt ignorance on display, only time will tell.  But one thing we can be sure of:  Greg Abbott is no friend of the LGBT community, or of any kind of equality for the state of Texas.  He has shown time after time that he doesn’t support women’s rights, property rights, or even the rights to obtain vital information.  This latest infringement on the rights of Texans should not be ignored.  If you care about personal freedom for anyone in any capacity, please do NOT vote for Greg  “Big Government” Abbott this November.

(image credit:  Texas Democratic Party)

Politics, Texas Politics

‘Obama’s Katrina’? No, But…

Leave a comment

A true crisis just the same.

If you’ve watched any American news outlet in the last 48 hours, you are probably aware that President Obama will be in the Lone Star State today for a very brief trip… appearing at two separate Democratic fundraisers.  The timing simply couldn’t be worse for the Commander-In-Chief, as things on the Texas Border seem to be anything but in command.  The Right-wing media has been hugely successful in exploiting the tough situation, as evidence on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News program…

QUESTION: You say there’s an urgent humanitarian situation. Are you not at all concerned about the optics that the president can fly to Texas to raise political money, but he can’t go see this urgent humanitarian situation?

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We’re not worried about those optics, George, and that’s simply because the president is very aware of the situation that exists on the Southwest border.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Very aware, so he doesn’t need to see the border for himself.

That isn’t exactly flying with Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar from the fine state of Texas. He says the president is one step behind on this mess.

The congressman now joins me on the phone.

So, Congressman, by that, I take it you — you mean he should be seeing the border?

REP. HENRY CUELLAR, D-TEXAS: Well, I hope this doesn’t become President Obama’s Katrina moment.

I’m sure that President Bush thought the same thing, that he could just look at everything from up in the sky, and then he owned it after — for a long time. So, I hope this doesn’t become the Katrina moment for President Obama, saying that he doesn’t need to come to border.

He should come down. Not only Governor Perry has asked him to come down, but I know my colleagues Filemon Vela and Ruben Hinojosa invited him to come down. And I certainly would ask him to come in, even though I still think he is still one step behind.

But he should come down to the border to see exactly what is happening.

Will the current border crisis become Obama’s ‘Katrina moment’??  The simple answer is no.  These children aren’t being cared for in a way that is acceptable, but at least they are alive, and someone from our country is looking after them.  Millions of people starved, and thousands died during Hurricane Katrina due to poor planning of the Federal Disaster apparatus.

Even if it won’t be a Katrina moment as Congressman Cuellar so irresponsibly suggests, it’s still a crisis… one of the longest-running humanitarian crises in U.S. history.  We should not downplay how serious these issues are, nor should we try and use them to score political points that way Rick Perry and Congressional Republicans are doing.  Instead of securing the border with faux militias that are nothing more than trigger-happy domestic terrorists, we should be ‘securing the border’ by making it a refuge for children and families in dire need.  The legality of why they are here can be sorted out later, but the first thing we do as a country is to provide safety, in every case.  Each one of these families has an entirely different situation, and the only way to do justice here is to talk to them all and find out why there are here, then take the appropriate legal action.

Does it ‘look bad’ for the President to be coming to Texas for fundraisers, and not taking time to personally view the situation in South Texas?  On that point I have to agree with Republicans… yes it does.  A better outcome would be for Obama to change his schedule and see what’s going on first hand.  But unlike the GOP, Obama is at least willing to DO something about the crisis and about immigration reform.  They are the ones that have blocked legislation at every turn.  They are the ones that are protesting children in buses and crying for no amnesty.  If not for Republican obstruction, Comprehensive Immigration Reform would already be law in the United States.  All of these people that are demanding the optics of seeing the President on the border, when are you going to help him actually DO something on the border?  The White House has already asked Congress for $3.7 billion dollars of aid for the region.  If Congress agrees that we should send the money, then they need to pass a law.  If they disagree and think there is a better solution, then they need to speak up and put that solution on the table.

 

Houston Politics

Operation Think Swing Texas: More Red in 2012?

Leave a comment

So the 2012 contest has come and gone. On this blog I predicted that Texas is a state that is in the midst of rapid changes, many of which were to be revealed in the 2012 elections. I, like many others, expected the state of Texas to become “more blue” in 2012.

So today, it’s time to admit that I was wrong. Texas did not become more blue in 2012… it became more red. Even as states across the country saw noticeable gains for Democrats, the Lone Star State lived up to its name and swung further to the Right. As an admittedly Left-leaning blog, it’s important to present facts as they bear out, and those are the facts of 2012. On the surface, it appears that Texas’ likelihood of becoming a Swing State, well, became less likely.

Texas Tribune columnist Ryan Murphy put together this interesting compilation map comparing the 2008 and 2012 elections. The map doesn’t show which side ultimately won a particular county, but only compares if the county voted more Democratic or more Republican than it did in 2008. If you’ll recall from my earlier post on the subject, the counties to watch are just a small group within the greater state area. So how did they fair?

Tier 1- the “reliably Democratic” counties: Three of them went more red in 2012- Dallas, Travis and El Paso. Three of them (all in the Rio Grande Valley) went more Blue in 2012- Webb, Hidalgo and Cameron. An important reminder here… Obama still won all of these counties, but Mitt Romney gained on John McCain’s 2008 vote total. The county where Republicans got the greatest gains? Travis county, which garnered 24,999 more GOP votes than in 2008.

Tier 2- the “Swing” counties: Six out of seven counties went more red in 2012- Harris, Bexar, Jefferson, Hays, Williamson and Fort Bend. The lone, and surprising standout was Nueces County (Corpus Christi) which, though still won by Mitt Romney, went more Democratic by 1,366 votes.

So these are our cold, hard facts. According to the voters that made their voices heard, the Texas of 2012 is more red than the Texas of 2008.

Now here’s the silver lining for Democrats and Liberals… the missing ingredient that Mr. Murphy fails to address? VOTER TURNOUT. 82,511 fewer Texans voted in 2012 than did in 2008. Now for a state the size of Texas, that’s not a huge number. But when you consider how rapidly the state is growing, it suggests that a whole lot of people sat out during the 2012 election.

Take the Liberal island of Travis county for example. The GOP got 24,999 votes in 2012 over 2008, but that was a larger share of a smaller pie (forgive me… tomorrow is Thanksgiving after all) as there were 11,124 fewer votes cast in Travis County. Yet there were 26,070 more registered voters than over 2008. Now is it fair to assume that all of those voters that sat out would have went for Obama? Of course not, but it would bear realism on the theory of an enthusiasm gap among Democrats, while many in the GOP were very anxious to vote.

Now in Harris county, we know this to be the case. Republicans were clearly more enthusisastic to vote than Democrats. Here’s how you can tell…

2008 was the first time Harris County has voted majority Democratic since 1964. Though it was by a slim margin of just 19,099 votes, the move was still a seismic shift for the county, whose population is almost equally split between the city of Houston and it’s close-in suburbs. Democrats made this happen through a huge two-fold push of registration and early voting. That’s what allowed them (well us) to best the well-funded Harris County GOP.

Unlike the immense bumbling we saw from Reince Priebus and the national GOP, Harris County Republicans watched and learned from the Democrats. In 2012, they vowed not to make the same mistake twice. Seeing great confusion from a state attempt at voter suppression, and already waning Democratic enthusiasm, the local GOP ceased the moment in 2012. They drove out their base to the polls, and made sure that they voted early. Early voting records set in 2008 were shattered in 2012, mostly thanks to a huge effort by Republicans, who cleared almost 100,000 more early votes on November 6th, and overtook the Democrat early voting machine by 11,651 votes.

So they spent huge sums of money, and organized more than ever before. And it STILL wasn’t enough to catch the Democrats in Harris County. Official totals show that President Obama bested Mitt Romney by 971 votes. Democrats may have slumped in early voting, but they turned out on Election Day.

The final kicker… overall turnout for Harris County was down from 2008… just under 1 percentage point, and 3,938 fewer Democrats voted. Meanwhile the gap between registered voters and those who showed up to the polls also increased by 34,474 which means in 2012, there were still 738,399 registered voters that didn’t vote. Some people forget that at 4.2 million people, Harris is actually larger than 3 battleground states! But the battle is definitely happening here.

To sum up… Texas Democrats may look at these numbers, see how “red” they’ve become, and get discouraged. But the battle is FAR from over in the Lone Star State. The key to swing state status is now as it has always been. Texas Democrats will win if overall voter participation increases. What we just saw in Harris County will be the new rules for the nation in 2014 and 2016. The GOP will re-group (as they should), and they will start appealing to a broader base. So for the Left, the key is to make every vote count. Keep up registration drives and continue to stress early voting. The very second we sit back and let the machine go idle, that’s when the GOP will make their move. Congrats on all the hard work Texas Democrats. Now let’s saddle up, and keep riding toward that blue sunset.