Rick Perry vs World

12 August 2005

Texans for Lawsuit Reform endorses Rick Perry

I haven't yet noted that Texans for Lawsuit Reform endorsed Rick Perry the other day.

It's not too much of a surprise. Perry has been favorable to their issues and is running for re-election. Carole Strayhorn has taken a signifcant amount of money from trial lawyers, and the PAC of Texans for Lawsuit Reform has endorsed candidates before who were virtually similar on the issues, but one took money from trial lawyers.

Perry campaigned for Prop 12, which granted the Texas legislature the power to limit non-economic damages in tort law suits in the Texas Constitution. It's a good endorsement to have, but not much of a surprise.

Posted by Evan @ 08/12/05 03:44 AM | Comments (0)

10 August 2005

Kinky Friedman suggests Hutchison might be on his side?

mywesttexas.com has a two part interview with Kinky Friedman. Here's a link to the 2nd part, where Kinky says:

MyWestTexas.com: You have received an endorsement from Willie Nelson, correct?
Kinky: Well, it's kind of hard to get an endorsement from someone when you're not officially on the ballot, but Wilie is supporting me, and we're hoping to be meeting with (former governor) Mark White, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Lamar Smith, Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson, a whole host of people who have been friendly to the campaign.

That's quite a claim of Friedman to make. Hutchison obviously doesn't like Rick Perry too much, that's no secret.

But Friedman appears to intimate that Hutchison is already or he thinks might become a Friedman supporter.

I don't see it. Hutchison will cruise to re-election (national political analyst Chuck Todd has Hutchison 31st out of 33rd on a list of possible vulnerable Senate seats), but it would make no sense for her to endorse or otherwise help Kinky Friedman in any way.

Most prominent politicians don't get there by doing stupid things. Helping Kinky would upset quite a bit of KBH's base. I highly doubt KBH will offer support to Kinky.

So, the question is, why is Kinky mentioning a meeting with KBH?

Posted by Evan @ 08/10/05 10:39 PM | Comments (2)

Rich Connelly isn't a fan of Chris Bell

A friend sent me a link to this blurb by Rich Connelly about the only declared Democrat for governor, Chris Bell:

The Texas political world is eagerly awaiting Chris Bell's official announcement August 14 that he will run for governor. Well, at least that part of the Texas political world that wants to see if Bell can pull off an impressive triple play -- losing elections at the local, federal and state level.

To be fair, he's won along the way -- two City Council races and a single congressional race. But still, after losing a mayoral run in 2001, after being beaten for his redistricted congressional seat in 2004, does Bell think the way to reverse the losing streak is by running for governor as a Democrat in Texas?

Yes, apparently.

"It's a difficult way to learn lessons," he says, "but you always learn more from the races you lose than the ones you win…You win and you think you did everything right, and you lose and you go back and figure out everything you did wrong."

Armed with such knowledge, Bell will be, it appears, Houston's lone representative in the gubernatorial race.

"This is a big step, and I'm swinging for the fence," he says. "But that's the way political careers are made. Sometimes the ball clears, and sometimes you…have to sit on the bench. I'm on the bench right now."

Bell -- who says he'll be a "fresh face" for the rest of the state -- will no doubt once again struggle to overcome an image of stolid earnestness.

Like when he announced August 3 that he'd be formally announcing August 14. "Not to get too terribly deep," he told an Austin crowd, "but something I've been telling folks for months is that I wasn't interested in running for governor because I lost my seat in Congress but because we've all lost our seat -- at the table."

Hey -- no worries about that "too terribly deep" thing, dude.

The Houston Press is normally very left-leaning. So, as my friend writes, "what in the world did he ever do to Rich Connelly?"

Good question.

Posted by Evan @ 08/10/05 10:14 PM | Comments (0)

Chuck Todd's rankings

The Hotline editor Chuck Todd publishes regular rankings of vulnerability of both senators and governors. Today, his new rankings of governors came out. Todd's definition of vulnerability is whether partisan control of the governor's office will switch.

Out of the 38 races, Todd lists Perry at 27, moving him upward from 23. Here's what Todd has to say about races in those categories:

The last 12 races in our rankings don't appear to have any chance of the "out" party losing, though we wouldn't be surprised if the incumbents were held to under 60 percent. Also, the GOP primaries in both Texas and Nebraska promise to be interesting and competitive. Still, no matter how damaging the primaries are to the eventual winner, it's hard to see a scenario where the incumbent party actually loses the governor seat.

Seems about right.

Posted by Evan @ 08/10/05 03:01 PM | Comments (0)

Millions of Texas schoolchildren upset...

Perry signed HB1, allowing state funding for schools, so Texas schools will indeed start on time.

I suppose this just proves another maxim of politics: the young don't vote.

Posted by Evan @ 08/10/05 08:26 AM | Comments (0)

Chris Bell

Chris Bell's transformation from pseudo-Republican mayoral candidate to partisan Democrat amuses me.

Before Orlando Sanchez was rumored to be entering the race for mayor in 2001, Bell was set to be the de facto Republican candidate. He was criticizing Lee Brown, meeting with Republicans, attending more Republican meetings than I was, and generally downplaying his partisanship to every degree possible.

Owen sums up why his similar thoughts on Bell:

I particularly recall how, during his failed mayoral campaign, he tried to fool the voting public into believing that he was a conservative Republican. His campaign people were even signing up for awards from Republican websites who were oblivious to the fact that he’s a liberal Democrat.

Of course, Bell ran for mayor as a pseudo-Republican out of convenience. White liberals and African-Americans were mostly voting for Lee Brown. In order to have a chance at making a runoff, Bell had to appeal to Republicans.

Still, it's been amusing to watch as he's transitioned from pseudo-Republican to very partisan Democrat and a favorite of the folks over at DailyKos.

Posted by Evan @ 08/10/05 07:37 AM | Comments (2)

09 August 2005

Dems Party Chairman wants Kinky

Texas Democratic Party Chairman Charles Soechting wants Kinky Friedman to abandon his independent gubernatorial bid and instead run for governor as a Democrat.

Declared Democratic candidate Chris Bell can't be happy. It usually stings a little when you get slapped in the face...by your own party's chairman. It's an implicit admission by Chair Charles Soechting that the one-term congressman would be a weak candidate in a general election.

A Houston lawyer said he recently told Soechting that he was supporting Friedman and that Soechting replied: "He ought to run as a Democrat."

The lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, who backed Democratic gubernatorial choice Tony Sanchez in 2002, said Soechting seemed serious about considering Friedman.

"Politics has gotten to be such a mess," DeGuerin said. "It's gotten so polarized that someone needs to shake up the status quo. The Democrats have been in disarray. They've let the Republicans run all over them."

Soechting confirmed DeGuerin's recollection, saying he'd like to visit Friedman to gauge his Democratic Party values.

"No question he's a real smart guy; people like him," Soechting said. "A lot of people would like to see a candidate for governor appear to have a little wild man like Kinky in him. There's something to be said about being a little wild, a little unpredictable. I've been accused of that myself."

Friedman, who has previously indicated no yen for running as a Democrat, said: "I'm flattered at the possibility of being the Democratic pallbearer, I mean standard-bearer. . . . I'm open to talking to them. I don't think it's going to happen."

It's got to be attractive to Kinky: if he was the Democrat's nominee, he wouldn't have to gather 45,000 signatures of non-voters in the primaries to get on the ballot. Still, I doubt it will happen. Kinky has spent too much time touting the benefits of being independent.

More importantly, Kinky's campaign manager, former Senator from Minnesota Dean Berkeley (appointed by indepedent governor Jesse Ventura as a caretaker for several months after the death of Senator Paul Wellstone), is very committed to independent and third party candidates. It's hard to imagine that he and the other consultants he brought on board would be willing to run on a major party line.

Meanwhile, Kinky confirms that he didn't vote between 1992 and 2004. Maybe that's a plus since he's asking people not to vote in the primary!

Posted by Evan @ 08/09/05 08:26 PM | Comments (0)

08 August 2005

Strayhorn on Perry

Strayhorn at a press conference on the sales tax holiday:

"I am here today to talk sales tax holiday. I'm not here today to talk about the lack of leadership from this governor and the failure of this governor's leadership where he has proposed the largest tax increase in history without a penny for education in his proposal, and he has not given any property tax relief to the people of this state. But that is not my topic today."

I'm guessing that this is the refrain we will hear for the next 7 months.

Do you ever get the feeling that she and Rick Perry just don't get along?

As someone famous might say: heh.

Posted by Evan @ 08/08/05 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

Kinky may face a fine

Remember the travel expense advances?

Gardner Selby reports that Kinky Friedman may face a fine for failing to report where the travel expense money went.

Independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman risked a state fine because his campaign reported giving him $15,700 in cash advances for travel without specifying who ultimately got the cash. The information was included (or not included) in his contributions and expenditures report filed last month.

State law requires candidates to report the final recipient of funds. For instance, if a candidate purchases pens, the pen vendor should be listed.

Natalia Ashley, general counsel of the Texas Ethics Commission, said the commission could act on a failure to give such details if it fielded a complaint. Violations are subject to a fine of $5,000 or triple the amount in dispute.

Posted by Evan @ 08/08/05 01:55 PM | Comments (0)

07 August 2005

Bell and money

Gardner Selby of the AAS:

Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Chris Bell had only $10,741 in campaign cash on hand through June — but that doesn't mean he wasn't raising money.

Bell collected nearly $150,000 the first half of the year.

He spent nearly $94,000 of that on three consultants, including close to $50,000 on a professional fundraiser from Houston.

Discouraging?

Bell spokesman Jason Stanford said he doesn't think so.

"We don't spend five seconds worrying about how much we're spending. The problem is we're raising too little; we're going to do what we have to do to raise a lot of money."

Bell's campaign sends $100 a month to the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign, which describes itself as the nation's largest gay and lesbian organization. Bell started the expenditures to honor a friend who asked him to contribute to the rights campaign as he battled AIDS, Stanford said.

I can't imagine very many people would want to contribute to a campaign that doesn't worry about what it is spending. Campaigns that aren't worrying about costs usually have one of two qualities: they're self-funded by the candidate or they lose.

Maybe it's just me, but the fact that Bell sends CAMPAIGN money rather than personal money to honor a friend seems like a poor attitude on behalf of the campaign towards the money it raises.

Posted by Evan @ 08/07/05 11:55 PM | Comments (2)

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