The latest Democratic Party filing information shows Daniel Boone no longer running for U.S. Senator, but rather running in the U.S. 21st Congressional District against the SOPA-loving incumbent Republican Lamar Smith. I’m not sure this is a good move for Boone, since I think he was at least as likely as Paul Sadler to win the nomination. Republican Charles Holcomb has also dropped out.
Conversely, a Grady Yarbrough now appears on the list of Democratic candidates. He appears to be a personal counselor [update: apparently not the same Grady Yarbrough; see comments] and his named is spelled differently than the late Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, who helped transform the Texas Democratic Party from a majority conservative party to a minority liberal one.
There’s some talk of Kucinich moving to Washington State and running for congress there, but one wonders why Democrats there would feel inclined to elect a carpetbagger. He could try a Senate run, but after this year, the next Senate race in Ohio will be 2016. Barring another gadfly run for President, Kucinich’s national political career is most likely done.
On the plus side, that will give him more time to spend with his wife…
Today was going to be the day Texans went to the polls, but the redistricting lawsuit put the kibosh on that plan. Now we get six more weeks of winter twelve more weeks of campaigning.
David Dewhurst denies that the meeting he attending in Washington, DC at Democrat Tony Podesta’s house was a fundraiser, and he says the people attending were Republicans who worked for the Podesta Group, not Democrats. I would link directly to Dewhurst’s denial, but the recent reorganization of the Andrew Breitbart empire (evidently already planned before his untimely death) has broken the links.
David Dewhurst also hits Cruz for (in their words) “Ted Cruz’s close ties to the Obama Administration.” How close? Big donations to Democrats from…partners at the Morgan, Lewis and Bockius law where Cruz is also partner. Given that there are some 1,300 lawyers employed by Morgan, Lewis and Bockius, of which some 469 are partners, and the firm isn’t named Morgan, Lewis, Bockius and Cruz, this is pretty weak sauce. (Weaker even than the working for Red China slam, which at least had the virtue of involving Cruz directly.)
Cruz won three more straw polls: the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club, Brazos County GOP and New Braunfels GOP Women. However, do note that the Cruz campaign’s claim that Cruz “has now beaten all the major candidates in 20 straw polls by wide margins” is carefully phrased to omit the fact that Glenn Addison won two straw polls in that timeframe…
The “insiders” polled by the Texas Tribune were somewhat split, but 62% think the Republican Senate race will end up in a runoff. They also think Greg Abbott can take Rick Perry in the 2014 Governor’s race, should Perry run again. Also this from one respondent to the “biggest surprise” question: “Doggett switches to U.S. Senate race.” I’ve had similar thoughts myself. With his $3 million war chest and name recognition, Doggett could easily win the Democratic primary…only to be creamed by Cruz or Dewhurst in the general election. Hmmm, lose a Senate race in the general election, or potentially lose your congressional seat in the Democratic primary? Decisions, decisions. (It’s not to be, as Doggett, as expected, filed for the District 35 race today.)
In related news, here’s a piece from last year in the liberal Texas Observer talking about Republican outreach to Hispanics. That seems to be working out a lot better than the “inevitable Democratic majority” theory people like Ruy Teixeira have been pushing for the last decade.
Iowahawk on Andrew Breitbart: “How did this socially liberal Jewish RINO from Brentwood become the Emmanuel Goldstein of the left’s unhinged 2-Minutes Hate? A big, lovable, random, generous, fearless, patriotic grinning goofball.”
Down With Wind: “If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now. The people of Britain see this quite clearly, though politicians are often wilfully deaf. The good news though is that if you look closely, you can see David Cameron’s government coming to its senses about the whole fiasco. ” (Hat tip: Powerline.)
UT to student media director: Balance your department budget. Student media director: OK, how about we sell these TV and radio licenses? UT: Not that balanced. You’re fired. (Hat tip: Mike Godwin’s Facebook page.)
I just read that professor James Q. Wilson has died. Wilson studied a wide range of issues, but I was most familiar with his work Bureaucracy, which I reviewed for The Freeman back in 1991. One of the books central insights was that, unlike private enterprise, a government bureaucracy is not driven by incentives, but by constraints. He was also one of the first (if not the first) proponents of the theory that crime was dropping because more criminals were being put into prison, as well as one of the first proponents of the “broken windows” theory of policing, which would later underlie much of the remarkable reduction in New York City’s crime rate achieved by the Giuliani Administration.
He was an important writer and thinker, and he will be missed.
Now if you or I were to escape from prison, we would most likely take great pains not to be recaptured, maybe even hightail it out of the state. But back in December of 2000, Rivas’ gang of super-geniuses thought it was a much smarter idea to go on a crime spree, robbing a Radio Shack (really?) and then a sporting goods store, ambushing and killing Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins, 29, who had just finished eating Christmas Eve dinner with his family when he responded to the call.
Rivas will be the second of the crew executed and the third to die, a serial rapist having committed suicide as the police closed in. Joseph Garcia, Randy Halprin and Patrick Murphy all await execution on death row. Donald Newbury was scheduled for execution on February 1, but received a U.S. Supreme Court stay.
Lessons:
Criminals are morons.
It’s best to commit your crime sprees in other states. This is Texas: kill a cop here, and we will execute your ass.
(Hat tip: Urban Grounds, who hasn’t added me to his blogroll yet. (Hey, it worked when I mentioned it for Blue Dot Blues.))
Now that redistricting is (mostly) settled (for this year), reverberations are still being felt around the state in various races. First a correction: Candidates have until March 9 to file, not the March 6 date I reported yesterday.
Other tidbits:
Republicans have a list of newly filed candidates, including former winery owner John Yoggerst running against Lloyd Doggett in District 35.
The Democrats don’t have a separate page, but you can sort by date on the main candidate page. So far there are only a couple of new Sheriff filings.
Following yesterday’s roundup, Democrat Pete Gallego is warning fellow Democrat Ciro Rodriguez not to jump into the District 23 congressional race against Republican incumbent Francisco “Quico” Canseco (who unseated Rodriguez in 2010). Rodriguez is currently running against Lloyd Doggett in District 35.
For the second election in a row, Solomon Ortiz has been booted. Ortiz Sr. was defeated by Blake Farenthold in 2010, and now Solomon Ortiz, Jr. is calling it quits from the Texas House because “District 33 has been eliminated.” I was going to make fun of him for exaggerating, but dang, he has a point: District 33 has gone from Corpus to NE of the Metroplex.