Once Again, Perry Picks A Bad Election Date To Help His Party Retain A Legislative Seat

Once again, Texas Governor Perry has shown little regard for reality when selecting December special election runoff dates:

Gov. Rick Perry chose Dec. 18 for a runoff election for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives, rejecting a request by Tarrant County election officials.

Seriously, a team of monkeys with darts could have selected a better election date.

This is like a sequel to last year’s bad runoff election date set by Perry. In 2006, he set the Bonilla/Rodriguez runoff in Congressional District 23 for the festival of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This year, he’s picked a date that’s way too close to Christmas. Oh, and he decided to disregard other election dates, and the wishes of county officials in setting a date that will no doubt result in the most depressed voter turnout in special election history in this state:

The Fort Worth City Council set Dec. 11 as the date for its District 9 runoff more than a month ago. County election officials had asked Perry to schedule a runoff for the House District 97 race on the same day to save taxpayer money and simplify matters for voters, some of whom live in both districts.

That makes sense. Of course, not to Perry, who must have left most of his common sense in Iowa or some damned place as he’s been pimpin’ all over the world for Rudolph Giuliani.

Naturally, though, simply being absented minded or failing to locate and read a calender doesn’t come in to play here. Perry’s motivation for selecting this date is purely political:

“We worked closely with the city and the county to determine a permissible election day to allow adequate time for the campaigns to rev back up and educate voters on the candidates who were running,” said Krista Moody, a spokeswoman for Perry.

“Adequate time for the campaigns to rev back up?” When has the Governor’s office ever taken that into consideration? The reason Perry has taken it into consideration this time is because it appears that he could actually be in danger of losing another House seat before the 2008 cycle begins. He recognizes that there is a lack of statewide GOP attention on House District 97 right now because his party’s establishment is taking for granted that the seat is a “gimmie” and because time is needed to make sure Bob Perry, James Leininger and other high-dollar GOP contributors can dust off their Mont Blanc’s and write fat-ass checks–appropriately sheltered and washed through whatever PAC is handy at the moment.

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