Rick Perry vs World

22 October 2006

So, for the past month or so, I've been mostly out of the news cycle. I try to do this every now and then, to remind myself how the rest of America decides to vote. I don't usually do it so close to the election, but I've just been really busy. Still, it's worth noting what has trickled down into my conscience: Mark Foley had a sex scandal (only, um, without the sex) that has the Beltway press corps all aflutter, the daily toll of America's finest in Iraq, and Republicans calling Democrats weak on national security. I haven't heard a single thing about the growing strength of the economy.

Doing so this close to the election cycle makes me very nervous about making predictions. It's tough to feel confident in your predictions when you don't feel like you've fully absorbed and processed all available information.

My gut tells me Republicans are likely to keep very slim majorities in both chambers, but I think that that is pretty up in the air right now. Plenty of people haven't decided how or whether to vote. The tone has been set, but the next couple weeks are pretty crucial. The pendulum could definitely swing either way.

Posted by Evan @ 10/22/06 11:57 PM | Comments (0)

16 October 2006

Why do people insist that Kinky Friedman is going to win?

Whenever I leave Texas and people find out that I follow politics, these non-Texans -- of all political stripes -- want to tell me how Kinky Friedman is going to win. If I've already opined that Friedman has no chance, then they want to tell me why I'm wrong.

I've considered adopting ostentatious yawning as a response, unfortunately I'm too polite. I blame my parents.

The national media produced lots of stories over the summer about how Friedman had a chance to win, despite evidence to the contrary. Plus, Friedman has been fawned over on MSNBC and FoxNews, so I suppose some of that has filtered down.

Still, I am amusedly annoyed when this happens. Politics is one of those fields where expertise is not respected: everyone thinks they are a political expert. [UPDATE: And sometimes people's dumb opinions are right.]

It's also entertaining to me to hear people talk about Kinky Friedman's positions on the issues [I always think to myself: Kinky Friedman has positions on issues? He's probably been through ten non-iterative immigration positions]. It seems like Kinky Friedman is the gubernatorial Rorschach test, as long as they haven't paid that close attention. Conservatives think he's conservative, liberals think he's liberal. They see whatever they want to see. If he'd have kept his mouth shut about some things, he might've had a chance to win. But Friedman's campaign is all about keeping his mouth open, not staying quiet. Heh.

Posted by Evan @ 10/16/06 12:40 PM | Comments (9)

11 October 2006

Traffic up, I'm not posting, maybe I will be soon

Traffic is way up, largely because lots of people are finding this blog searching for Rick Perry. Also, people like to search for abortion and one of the candidates, or polls.

It's very disappointing to me that I don't have time to write in the heat of an election I've been chronicling for the last two years. Trust me, if I could, I would. But a confluence of events has served to leave my free time at zero. The only real free time I've had in the past couple weeks I spent representing Rice at a minority college fair...and I was totally on my game. I'm a great advocate when I get psyched for it, and this was something I believe in. Thanks to my former Rice roommate for coming with me and spurring me on. He's definitely one of the reasons that Rice was a fantastic place to go to school.

So, I spent two minutes writing this post, and it's two minutes I don't have. I need to sleep, but I'll post-date this post for the morning. I'll probably have some free time starting Friday or Saturday, and I hope that I'll be able to pick up blogging again. All I can say is that I wish I wrote for a living, but I don't. And living is pretty important.

Posted by Evan @ 10/11/06 06:57 AM | Comments (0)

06 October 2006

Gubernatorial debate

I caught the last 35 minutes or so of tonight's gubernatorial debate. I can sum up the debate in a few words:

Rick Perry looked like a governor. The others didn't.

Couple comments:
1. I've always thought one of Chris Bell's strengths is that he looks like a governor, but he didn't tonight. The new hairstyle was off, and it looked on my TV like he didn't shave over his top lip. It was distracting. He might've had a chance at seeming gubernatorial otherwise, but the look was just not completely right. Otherwise, Bell's performance wasn't bad. He came off better than Friedman or Strayhorn, but he occasionally looked a little too smug, which he has a tendency to sometimes seem like in public. For example, he sounded awfully condescending when he told the female journalist (don't know her name) that she "just hadn't been paying attention." That ruined some other politically very good responses.

2. Ugh. What was with the asking the candidates "gotcha" questions? That seemed like a low point in Texas journalism. Just terrible. I have no idea who thought that up, but they should be ashamed of themselves. Texans deserve better than journalists trying to make politicians look dumb. How about asking serious questions instead of shallow "gotcha" questions? I mean, Strayhorn has run a campaign that has made many unsympathetic towards her, and yet they managed to make her look sympathetic to viewers by asking her who was recently elected president in Mexico. She didn't know. That's pretty unimpressive. But so what? I'm not going to vote for her because she keeps changing her convictions on high-profile issues, not because she can't think of the name Felipe Calderon on what might be the most stressful moment of her life. I mean, it took Chris Bell 5 seconds to remember that the Alamo was fought in 1836. It's hard to think on a completely different angle under that kind of pressure.

3. Chris Bell had to go after Strayhorn more than Perry. Not too surprising.

4. Friedman looks short between Perry and Bell. He must've skipped the debate prep, because he looked extremely awkward on camera. He shifted, he fidgeted. He made me nervous. He had some absolutely great responses that resonated. He also thoroughly bombed a few. I guess that's what you'd expect from him though. He has no chance of winning with performances like that...and that's how he's campaigned.

5. Way to bomb the tuition dereg question, Chris. The journalists chose a softball lob question to pitch to you, and you just whiffed it because you wanted to go back and talk about the Trans Texas Corridor. I have no idea how you could miss scoring points on that one, but you did.

Posted by Evan @ 10/06/06 08:04 PM | Comments (8)

27 September 2006

Term limits for Texas governors (and Rick Perry)

A commenter writes:

Rick Perry cannot run again - he's term limited

In one year - most of Dan's supporters are going to know alot more about Mr, Patrick and be able to make a full and decisive choice about even reelecting him.

The first is factually incorrect. Texas governors are not term-limited. Rick Perry will be able to run again in '10.

The second...well, what evidence do we have for this? Several well-funded opponents completely failed to convince Republican primary voters in SD7 not to vote for Dan Patrick. You might be right, but so far the evidence seems to weigh against you.

Posted by Evan @ 09/27/06 12:21 PM | Comments (8)

News or opinion? You tell me.

Clay Robison is the head of the Houston Chronicle's Austin bureau. That means his job description is to do hard state political news without a slanted viewpoint. He also writes a weekly opinion column, where he gives his own viewpoint, and I can't recall that his viewpoint has ever been favorable to a Republican or a center-right viewpoint.

Can you read this article and tell me whether Robison is supposed to be writing an opinion column or hard news? It's not labeled, so I honestly don't know. I assume it's opinion, but the whole dilemma serves to illustrate the difficulty that occurs when your chief state politics reporter also writes a weekly liberal viewpoint column.

I'm going to offer up some comments on Robison's article, some of which will probably defend Perry, even though I don't agree with the governor's position on immigration.

Developing a better immigration policy is the federal government's responsibility, but the governors — and would-be governors — of border states, such as Texas, can help or hinder the process.

Ok. Robison is implying that Rick Perry has hindered the process of federal immigration policy, but honestly, I'm not really sure how Perry has done so. Methinks Robison has given Perry far to much credit for being powerful in Washington DC. If you can support Robison's statement, I'd love to hear it, because I can't think of any credible support.

In this election year, the operative word for Gov. Rick Perry and most of his opponents is hinder, and the rhetoric will get worse between now and Nov. 7.

Well, that's a viewpoint, and one I might largely agree with. It is clearly opinion though.

With statements and a TV commercial fanning the hopes of illegal-immigration bashers who would seal the border with a wall 20 feet high, Perry has even defied some of his own top political donors.

If Perry had agreed with his big-money donors, why do I feel like the story would be that Perry is in the pocket of donors? Either way, the story would have a negative tone towards the governor. Is it just me, or is that unfair?

Those donors — some of Texas' most prominent Republican business people — want a new guest-worker program or a path to citizenship for foreign workers because they think the state's economy and, in some cases, their own labor-intensive industries depend upon immigrant help.

But by giving big bucks to Perry, they, ironically, have helped the governor foster a political climate of xenophobia that is killing their cause. In an effort orchestrated or encouraged by the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based free market think tank, 36 Texas business leaders recently co-signed an op-ed article praising immigrant workers and urging reform of immigration laws.

Whoa. Robison is basically calling the governor a xenophobe, but couching it in language that lets him say that he wasn't exactly calling Perry a xenophobe. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sure seems that way.

That's a pretty serious charge, but again, I don't see much support for his statement. Although Perry has certainly talked about securing the border, I think it's largely been in as uninflammatory a manner as possible. And the proof, I think, will come on election day, when an impressive 35-40% of Hispanics vote for Rick Perry.

Moreover, if I did see support for Robison's statement, I would never even dream of considering a vote for Rick Perry.

Posted by Evan @ 09/27/06 08:46 AM | Comments (2)

Money money money

Chron:

An analysis by the Houston Chronicle of the $25 million raised by the four major candidates between last year and the first six months of this year found key donors with interests ranging from energy and tort laws to food processing and home building.

Their contributions ranged from $50,000 to $850,000.

Texas is one of seven states with no limits on the size of campaign contributions. Critics say the absence of limits has created super-donors who wield a disproportionate amount of political power.

As opposed to federal campaign laws, where super-money raisers and bundlers wield a disproportionate amount of political power...but we often don't get full disclosure of who those people are. Plus, the federal laws encourage non-disclosure by shunting money off to shadowy third-party groups.

Democracies are very messy things. Politicians and officeholders will owe somebody when they get elected; that's the nature of a democracy. We absolutely need the media to report on things like this, but I wish there wasn't always a cynical, sardonic tone. Note: this article is more cynical than sardonic...and this article isn't even that bad.

This bit made me laugh:

Bell is picking up support from traditional Democratic funders in the wake of some recent polls showing Strayhorn lagging, Guntert said.

"Chris Bell is very, very proud to be a Democrat," he said. "There's no downside to being a Democrat and getting the support of big Democratic donors."

No downside to getting the support of big Democratic donors? I know Ms. Guntert is a spinmeister for Chris Bell, but everyone knows big Democratic donors in the state of Texas means trial lawyers. Relatively recent history suggests that there is potentially a very large downside to getting the support of big Democratic trial lawyer donors.

Posted by Evan @ 09/27/06 08:26 AM | Comments (0)

Shorts, turned into a pro-nano rant

1. Michael Dell -- the wealthiest Texan -- and Governor Perry held a news conference to announce that Dell would be bringing 500 new jobs jobs to the area. Dell credited the economic climate of Texas.

2. Perry is giving the headline speech to NanoTX '06 on Wednesday morning.

Though there are many such conferences around the world, nanoTX'06 arrives in Dallas as Texas tries to compete with other states for business investment and research dollars, said Kelly Kordzik, president of the Texas Nanotechnology Initiative, a statewide advocacy group.

"We need to return to having a conference in Texas so that we can center the world's attention back on this state," he said.

Texas has long been a hotbed for the field. The state was home to pioneers like the late Richard Smalley, a Nobel Laureate and Rice University professor who in 1985 helped discover buckyballs, a new, soccer ball-shaped form of carbon. He died from cancer last year at the age of 62.

According to the Nanotechnology Foundation of Texas, a privately funded research organization, there are about 30 nanotech businesses operating in Texas.

I may (but probably won't) be involved in another one. I'm trying to be!

More relevantly, the libertarian in me believes that government is ill-equipped to make efficient/correct decisions, because legislative processes are unlikely to predict hot research areas as optimally as markets. [You can make an argument about market failure, and I think market failures were more likely to be true in the past.] But in a world of second bests, government is going to fund research, so we should do our best to make sure government makes as intelligent as possible research decisions.

Therefore, our legislature (and our Congressman and US Senators) should be appropriating as much money as possible for nano in Texas, and particularly in Houston. This is particularly true for those on Appropriations -- Kay Bailey Hutchison (on health and education subcommittee), Chet Edwards (representing A&M), John Culberson (representing Rice, St. Thomas, and the world's largest Medical Center), Henry Bonilla, Kay Granger (TCU, also serves on Education and Health subcommittees), and John Carter (Southwestern, Tarleton State, formerly had A&M). [Of course, it'd be nice if we still had Tom DeLay on Approps and as Majority Leader, but the Houston Chronicle and Ronnie Earle ran him off. Ceteris paribus, that was a pretty dumb decision for Texas and Houston, since nano research could potentially make Houston the next Silicon Valley. We owe Tom DeLay for having so many Texans on Appropriations, where we're vastly over-represented in large part because of Tom DeLay and Dick Armey.] The number one metro area for nano research right now is probably Houston, so it'd be nice for our elected representatives to do their best to make sure we capitalize on this opportunity. While hotbutton social issues often define campaigns, it is often issues like these that most influence Texas' tomorrow.

Kudos to John Culberson for getting it on nano research. It's also good to see Perry talking to the conference.

3. The Statesman scorecards Perry on his 02 promises. (You like scorecards as a verb, don't you?)

Posted by Evan @ 09/27/06 07:20 AM | Comments (0)

26 September 2006

Ventura campaigning for Friedman

Former Minnesota indie guv Jesse Ventura was in Texas to campaign for Kinky Friedman:

Kinky Friedman began a three-day college tour Monday with former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, whose surprise victory in 1998 is serving as the template for Friedman's independent populist run for Texas governor.

"You can throw a monkey wrench into the machine,"Ventura said, urging students at the University of Texas at San Antonio to vote."You elect an independent and you send a message."

Ventura, wearing his long beard in a single braid, said the GOP and Democrats prefer the odds of a small voter turnout like the 29 percent of eligible voters who showed up to elect Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who is running for re-election.

My recollection of Ventura's campaign is that he was serious about issues. He didn't boast about what he didn't know. Friedman does, and because it makes good copy, the media reports it. That sort of thing filters down to voters, and is why Friedman can't pass 15%.

Posted by Evan @ 09/26/06 09:07 AM | Comments (1)

Leahy-Cornyn open govt act passes committee

A bill co-authored by Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy and Texas Republican John Cornyn has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee:

"This bill advances one of the most fundamental rights of Americans, the public's right to know what its government is doing," said Leahy, who has been a longtime champion of FOIA in Congress. Leahy sponsored the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments, which updated FOIA for the Internet age, and in 1996 he was installed in the Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame.

Leahy said the bill "is more than just pro-openness, pro-accountability, and pro-accessibility -- it's also pro-Internet." It includes a hotline enabling citizens to track their requests, including Internet tracking, and extends the waiver of FOIA search fees for the media to bloggers and writers for Internet outlets, providing the same status as traditional media.

Leahy is a long-time FOIA proponent. Good for Cornyn for joining him, which Leahy pointedly thanked in floor statements. This is one of those unnoticed bills that is important, if Leahy's description is even close to true.

Plus, I'd get free FOIA requests if this bill is enacted. That's good, because it provides lots more people with an opportunity to do investigative reporting.

Posted by Evan @ 09/26/06 08:18 AM | Comments (0)

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