GOP CCA Primary Heating Up

Check out this story from the Austin American Statesman. Attention Deficit Disorder? Really….

HD 119: Puente To Resign February 1

State Rep. Robert Puente (D-San Antonio) has announced he will resign from the Texas House effective February 1.

Puente, who was facing a tough challenge from San Antonio City Councilman Roland Gutierrez before announcing he wouldn’t seek another term late last year, has now set in motion the likelihood of a special election for his district.

While it is likely Gutierrez will win the special election, it does give pro-Craddick forces the opportunity to find another candidate to run in this district.

Why Is Linda Yanez Throwing Bloggers Under The Bus?

I don’t know about you, but it makes me sick when Democratic candidates in Texas and elsewhere throw bloggers and the netroots under the proverbial bus.

Who is throwing bloggers under the bus now? It’s none other than 13th Court of Appeals Justice Linda Yanez, who is running for Place 8 on the Texas Supreme Court in the March 4 Democratic Primary.

A recording has surface of of Yanez at the October 27, 2007 Tejano Democrats luncheon in Corpus Christi. Yanez had this to say about blogs and bloggers:

…I was reading an article that came out in one of these, I know you and I have talked…you have talked about the blogosphere, and the fact that out there in that blogosphere, people can say anything they want whether it is true or not and they can be anonymous and that is a whole nother layer of running for office these days.

But anyway, someone had sent me an article that had come out in one of the local political…things. And it was about my opponent. And it had a big picture of her and it was an article about farm workers and taking them out of slavery. And I though, well, that is an interesting story.

And I looked at it and it was really about my opponent’s dad and how he had voted for some farm worker legislation in the 80s. And I mention that because I though, how ironic that my opponent is taking credit for something she has nothing to do with and her father had voted on. And the reason it was important to me is because in 1983, Governor Mark White appointed me to the legislative committee that went around the state and took testimony that led to that legislation.

So I called the author, and then he admitted that it was–he got paid to write the story. And I said that I didn’t see anything that said it was paid, you know, political announcement. So that was very, very frustrating for me.

Oh, really.

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No Volunteers For Dawnna Dukes Forces Her To Turn To CraigsList

[Hat Tip to Will from An Examination Of Free Will for alerting us to this story.--VL]

Evidently Dawnna Dukes is having a very hard time finding volunteers for her canvassing efforts in HD 46, as she is having to resort to an ad on Craig’s List to find them:

Work on the reelection campaign of an exceptional East Austin state representative and get paid for the valuable experience and great resume booster.
Your job will be to talk to constituents and ask them about their political concerns. This is totally hands-on, grass-roots, out in the field work. You will NOT be sitting at a desk folding letters or answering phones (that is, unless you want extra hours).

Hours are Monday-Thursday 3-6 and Saturday 10-4. You do not have to work all 5 days; we can work around your schedule a bit. If you are a student, this is a great job that will be easy to fit into your schedule.

Screenshot here. Needless to say, this is quite an interesting development. Why not help throw another nail in the Dukes coffin by contributing to her opponent and the rest of the Texas Progressive Alliance’s TexRoots 08 slate today!

As Supreme Court Backlog Reaches Record Levels, One Justice Takes Off On Speaking Engagements

This should come as no surprise, via the San Antonio Express News:

At a time when the Texas Supreme Court’s case backlog has reached record levels, Justice Paul Green was spending Friday driving to Corpus Christi to speak to a group of appeals lawyers.

“It’s 40 (degrees) and raining and I’m driving four hours to Corpus Christi,” Green said from his cell phone. “Yes, I’ve got stuff to do at the office, but some of us like to do this.”

Green, who wrote the fewest opinions — four — of the high court’s nine justices during the 2007 fiscal year, said he thinks it’s important to get out of the office and talk about the court’s work.

“If all of a sudden I said I’ll just stay in my chambers and work on opinions, I don’t think people would like that,” Green said, adding that he has a “bunch of cases” that are ready to be issued.

What I think the people would really like is a Supreme Court Justice who gets some work done. Justices like Green simply use their office as an excuse to travel the state and decide if they are popular enough to run for higher office.

Still more:

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Texas Progressive Alliance Blog Round Up: January 28, 2008

It’s Monday, and that means it is time for another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance’s weekly blog Round-Up. This week’s edition is compiled by Vince from Capitol Annex.

Off the Kuff looks at the woes of the Harris County GOP and what it may mean in November.

North Texas will have one less class II commercial injection well pumping toxic soup underground. Reported by TXsharon on Bluedaze.

TXDOT has dug itself into quite a hole by using your money to lobby for the TTC and to pay for an advertising campaign to sell the wildly unpopular TTC to the citizens of Texas. McBlogger at McBlogger has the details and a great video.

Hal at Half Empty got his TI-83 out and ran the numbers on the Presidential Primaries. Conclusion? Texas has a chance to crown a king (or queen).

WhosPlayin? looks at the case of a teen brought up on charges for “huffing” hand sanitizer and is frustrated at the lack of discretion caused by “zero-tolerance” policies.

The action plan for Monday’s FISA-with-telecom-immunity legislation is contained in PDid’s post at Brains and Eggs. Don’t strain your dialing finger, and don’t forget to
call Senators Corndog and Hutch. It’s a waste of time, yes, but they still need to hear from us.

NYTexan at BlueBloggin explains who Voters, Pledged Delegates and Super Delegates are and how they influence the democratic party nomination at the convention.

Are you a MOTO? If not, you will be after reading State Sen. Kirk Watson’s guest blog this week at Capitol Annex.

Texas Observer Looks At Travis DA Race

If you haven’t grasped the fact that the single most important countywide primary race in the state of Texas this election cycle is the race to replace Ronnie Earle in Travis County, the little fact that the Texas Observer is paying such close attention to the race should help you grab a clue.

Setting the scene, the Observer notes:

The Texas Legislature is infamous for its pay-to-play culture. Most of the time, we suspect, corruption operates just below the surface, silently poisoning the democratic process. There is but one check on this process. State law gives a single prosecutor, the Travis County district attorney, the power to criminally investigate state officials–the lone quality-control person at the end of the line. Now, for the first time in decades, a contested election will determine Texas’ most important prosecutor.
Ronnie Earle has held the office for 31 years. Earle often remarked that while prosecuting drug dealers and burglars was necessary, his most important work was protecting the democratic process from malignant special interests. As the role of corporate money has grown in recent years, Earle has become more visible, the Eliot Ness of Texas politics. Unlike other oversight bodies in Texas–particularly the diffident Texas Ethics Commission–Earle and his stable of attorneys have shown an appetite for enforcement. His office includes a division–known as the Public Integrity Unit–devoted to rooting out political corruption. It has caught national attention lately after securing the indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom Delay, along with various associates, for campaign-finance violations.

Then, they discuss each candidate individually. And, here you can clearly note that one of the four candidates isn’t like the others:

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KIRK WATSON: Are You A MOTO? If Not, You Should Be

[Note: State Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) was kind enough to write a guest blog for the Texas Progressive Alliance as we continue to push our TexRoots 2008 Slate of Candidates. Texas Progressive Alliance Blogs are publishing this guest blog today. It appears below.]

A few months back, a certain progressive blogger took note of a piece I had published. This writer responded with an entry that was mostly complementary – I’d guess we agree about 90 percent of the time. But then, after hitting a point I thought was pretty inarguable, the writer called me a “MOTO.”

Most of you who read Texas’ great progressive blogs probably know what a “MOTO” is. I, on the other hand, had to turn to my 18-year-old son (and pop culture crutch) Preston, who steered me to something called urbandictionary.com. There, I finally learned the truth:

I am, it seems, a “Master Of The Obvious”.

It was kind of a frustrating revelation, partly because it’s true. But if I’ve learned anything at all in my year as a State Senator, it’s that what’s so obvious to me (and to acronym-wielding bloggers) seems downright foreign to so many others – particularly the Republican leadership in the Texas Capitol.

Here are just a few MOTO moments from the past few months:

•It’s wrong for a governor to use a 39 percent mandate to rig state agencies in ways that benefit corporate contributors, privatize public roads, and ignore the real health and educational needs of this state.

•It’s wrong for a lieutenant governor to wage a partisan campaign to ram through a voter screening bill that targets Hispanics and the elderly. It’s worse to force a very ill senator set up a sick bed outside the Senate Chamber simply to block such a terrible, discriminatory proposal.

•It’s wrong for a speaker of the House to stand before a body of democratically elected officials who gave him his office, and then declare he has absolute power to ignore them.

•It’s wrong for Supreme Court justices to stretch campaign finance laws, or to ignore law and precedent in rulings that protect political contributors, or to take advantage of a politicized criminal justice process.

•And it’s very wrong for a high court judge to slam shut the doors of justice as early as possible, even when it means sending a man to his death.

All pretty obvious, right? Well, not to the people who’ve run this state for all these years. And that’s where we all have work to do.

We are right. We are anxious to do great things for Texas, to restore opportunity, and to create reasons to hope for a better future.

But we can’t just know that. We can’t just talk to ourselves.

We can’t assume it’s obvious.

We must make it apparent to anyone who cares about this state and where it’s headed, and we must remind them of the most obvious statement of all: Texans cannot trust the Republican leadership.

I’m talking about the political bosses, bullies, ideologues and figure heads that control the agenda, bury the opposition, and block any bill that runs counter to their dogma.

I’m talking about the folks who are more interested in taking irresponsible pledges than in solving Texas’ challenges, who will deny the most verifiable fact if it doesn’t conform to their ideology, and who will embrace every budget trick before they level with Texans about what people are worth to them.

I’m talking about the select group that’s denied children health care at any cost, that’s allowed our colleges and universities to become overcrowded, underfunded and inadequate, that’s watched our highways deteriorate while forcing Texans to choose between crushing traffic and private toll roads, and that’s denied and deferred environmental problems, leaving our children to fix them.

Here’s what’s most obvious: only the Democratic Party will bring about the positive changes that Texans need and demand.

That means we have to do all we can this year — we must make it obvious — that the people of Texas must challenge the so-called absolute power of the Republican leadership. Once we make MOTOs out of everyone, Texas will elect strong Democrats in 2008.

Right Of Texas Gets A New Look

In spite of our political differences, we at Capitol Annex are always glad to see our colleagues at Right of Texas moving up in the world. They’ve got a snazzy new domain name and a shiny, new look. Congrats, ROT. Change your bookmarks: new link.

The Hits Keep On Coming For Supreme Court Justices

Now, Justice Paul Green is under fire for improperly using campaign funds to reimburse mileage expenses:

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