12.14.09
Two on Texas politics
Kinky drops run for Governor, will run for Agriculture Commissioner….as a Democrat. Hank Gilbert welcomes him to the race:
Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Candidate Hank Gilbert (D-Whitehouse) on Monday welcomed Kinky Friedman as a late entry into the race for Texas Agriculture Commissioner.
“Here we have a candidate who is running for office-any office-solely because he wants to promote his books and personal appearances,” Gilbert said. “Kinky is no Democrat. If he was, he never would have stayed in the 2006 race running as an independent and denied our party’s nominee a real chance at the governor’s office,” Gilbert continued.
The good news is when Hank beats Kinky we won’t have Kinky to kick around anymore.
Ross Ramsey’s take on who will draw the maps in Texas in 2011, Mapmaker, Mapmaker.
The Democrats are stirring, but haven’t surfaced a well-financed team that’s focused on the prize in a mapping year: The seats on the Legislative Redistricting Board. If the Legislature locks up and can’t agree on maps, that board gets to decide what should happen. And at the moment, everyone on the five-member panel is a Republican: Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, House Speaker Joe Straus, Attorney General Greg Abbott, Comptroller Susan Combs, and Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson.
It’s a strong group, politically. Dewhurst is the wealthiest guy in state politics; he’ll always have enough money to fend off challengers — he won’t get beat for financial reasons. Abbott is both well financed and ambitious; Houston Democrat Barbara Ann Radnofsky, who lost to Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2006, is challenging him. That’s an uphill race, both financially and politically. To win the speaker seat, you have to win a majority in the House, and that’s where the Farabee-Hopson changes undermine the effort. The House might turn out to be Democratic when the election year is over, but that’s not the way to bet.
That leaves Patterson and Combs. Some Democrats are circling, but so far, nobody has popped up with the combination of money and charisma (or fame) to make it work. If they can’t get the LRB, their last hope will be the courts and the Obama Administration’s Justice Department, which has to sign off on the maps under the terms of the Voting Rights Act. Democrats are putting a lot of faith there; redistricting has never been done with a Democratic administration in power (working backwards: George W. Bush in 2001, George H. W. Bush in 1991; Ronald Reagan in 1981; Richard Nixon in 1971).
It ultimately goes to court (and the congressional maps could be drawn from scratch there). There’s no rule that requires it, but the courts have a tendency to adjust the maps that come to them rather than starting over. If the Republicans control both legislative chambers and all of the LRB seats (and many of the federal courts, if you look), they’ll have the tools to preserve their majorities in Austin for the next decade.
The most likely bodies to draw the state’s maps? The LRB and the federal courts.
There’s an incentive for Texas Republicans to keep the Congressional lines fair, to keep them out of the courts. But without three Democrats on the LRB there’s no incentive for Republicans to draw fair lines in the legislature.