About

Capitol Annex is a weblog dedicated to Texas News & Politics. As of March 31, 2006, the site averages 1,200 visits per day. It’s most popular feature, the daily “From The Blogs,” is read by hundreds of readers per day via Capitol Annex’s From The Blogs Yahoo! Group and via its regular submission to the USDemocratic Network’s Texas Yahoo! Mailing List.

About The Author

Capitol Annex is authored by Vince Leibowitz, a frequent contributor to Burnt Orange Report and the Political State Report. Vince also contributes occasionaly to The Red State, another Texas political weblog.

Vince is the founder of the now-defunct Free State Standard, a popular political weblog during the 2004 campaign cycle.

An award-winning former journalist and newspaper editor, in 2002, Vince was awarded the innaugural 2002 Nancy Monson Award from the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and the Texas Press Association for his reporting on open government issues while editor of the Van Zandt News and Canton Herald. (RIGHT: Vince is shown monitoring election results on General Election night in 2002 at his Canton newspaper office.)

Vince’s photography has also won numerous awards. In 2001, the Texas Press Association selected Vince’s photograph, “A New Angle On The Capitol Dome,” to grace the cover of its Texas Newspaper Directory for 2002.

As a journalist, Vince has covered Texas politics since 2000, and has interviewed dozens of candidates for state and local office on both sides of the aisle. (LEFT: Vince and 2006 Democratic AG Nominee David Van Os in Wills Point in January, 2005.)

Vince left the journalism profession to work full-time in the political arena in 2003. Through his company, Free State Communications, Vince consulted for county, city and district-level Democratic candidates across East Texas and around the state.

Following the 2004 election cycle, Vince put his investigative and research skills to work as an investigator for an East Texas criminal defense attorney, work he still continues.

Vince is a longtime Democratic activist and the former County Chairman of the Democratic Party of Van Zandt County. While County Chairman, Vince served on the board of the Texas Democratic County Chairs’ Association, first as a board member from Senate District 2, and later as Third Vice President. (RIGHT: Vince is shown with his sister, Sylvia, shortly after being sworn in as County Chairman.)

As a Delegation Chairman of Van Zandt County’s Delegation to the Texas Democratic Party Convention in 2004, Vince was elected by the Senate District 2 Caucus to represent the district on the TDP’s Credentials Committee at the convention. (LEFT: Vince is show (far left in the photo) with fellow political bloggers and Congressional Candidate Richard Morrison at the 2004 “Blogger’s Caucus” at the TDP. Photo Courtesy of Charles Kuffner.)

In addition, Vince was the organizing force behind the January 2005 SD2 Summit for political leaders in Senate District 2. (RIGHT: Vince and 2006 Democratic Gubernatorial nominee Chris Bell in early 2005 in Canton).

During the 2004 Election Cycle, Vince served as Communications Director for the Bob Glaze for State Representative Campaign in Texas House District 5.

Vince holds a bachelor of science degree in history with a minor in English from Texas A&M University Commerce. He is a graduate of Mineola High School in Wood County.

A longtime community activist, Vince has served on the board of the Council of Van Zandt County Communities from 2001 until 2005, first as Secretary and later as Vice President. He was instrumental in organizing the CVZCC’s Nuisance Abatement Ordinance Campaign, and the group’s Vision 2005 and Vision 2007 “Van Zandt County Days” at the Texas Capitol in Austin in 2003 and 2005. Vince also served on the board of the Heart of Canton/Main Street, as July Fourth Parade and Holiday Lighting Ceremony Coordinator from 2001 until 2004.

Vince first began blogging in early 2003, at a now-offline personal BlogSpot blog, The View From…Here, where he chronicled his adventures as a newspaper writer. He founded Free State Standard later that year, and it quickly became one of the state’s most widely-read political weblogs.

When he took FSStandard offline following the 2004 elections to take a hiatus from politics, its departure from the Texas political blogsphere noted mention on the front page of the Dallas Morning News in an article on political weblogs.

He and his dog, Ellie, shown at right, make their home in Grand Saline. Prior to residing in Grand Saline, Vince lived in Canton for nearly six years. Ellie was adopted from a local municipal animal shelter a few days before Christmas, 2001, when Vince visited the animal shelter with the intention of doing a story on giving pets as Christmas gifts for the newspapers he worked for. Instead, he ended up taking Ellie, who followed him throughout the shelter as he attempted to do an interview and take photographs.

Thanks to a gift from one of his communications clients, Ellie was joined by a female yellow labrador retriever, Lyndon—named after the former Texas senator and President Lyndon Johnson—in November of 2004. Unfortunatly, Lyndon dissappeared from the backyard in the Summer of 2005.

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