Ruling Opens The Floodgates For Pro-Craddick Dollars

If you thought things might actually be winding down in state legislative races heading into March 4, think again. Thanks to a judge’s ruling yesterday, you can expect bucket, train, truck, and plane loads of cold, hard, cash to start flowing into the coffers of a few pro-Craddick House Members who might be in danger come March 4:

Citing the importance of free speech in the political process, a federal judge has opened the gates to allow outside political groups to spend money and lobby Texas House members on whom to support in the election for speaker of the House.

And, more:

With one week to go before the Texas primaries, the groups can also use the issue of speaker votes in ads for or against candidates. The issue is likely to play heavily in House races where last year’s fight to remove Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick is a major issue.

Advocacy groups ranging from the conservative Texas Eagle Forum to the American Civil Liberties Union at the other end of the political spectrum cheered the ruling, calling the speaker vote at the beginning of each legislative session “the most important legislative event” of the cycle.

Now, it can be addressed in campaigns just like a candidate’s vote on issues such as abortion or vouchers or gay marriage would be – a major departure from the practice of the previous 30 years.

Candidates, of course, have already been using speaker votes against each other, as challenger Brian Thompson has effectively done in his ads in HD 46 against State Rep. Dawnna Dukes (D-Austin). However, now that third-party groups can…..oh, MAN! Open the floodgates.

Here is our prediction: In about a dozen key primary races across the state, third party groups on each side will rush to spend several million dollars statewide, if not far more, on mailers, TV ads, and the like solely attacking this. In R districts, it’ll be pro-Craddick-ers. In D districts, it’ll be progressive groups going against the Craddick D’s and it’ll be pro-Craddick groups just running in money on a variety of things now that they can do so more openly and for a specific reason than just to pour the money in.

Two caveats, however: (1) Craddick is poison. I doubt, except in the most red of districts, that anybody will use a vote against Craddick as something damning to anyone now that Craddick has become the most polarizing figure in Texas politics; and (2) this is damned hard to frame for the “new generation” of Craddick D’s like Marisa Marquez and Tia Rios Ybarra, and it is doubtful that they want anyone to come into their districts and actually put it on TV that a vote for them will be a vote for Craddick and treat that as a positive. Of course, that is unless they want to encourage Republicans to crossover.

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