Every election is a new thing. The numbers that flow out of political consultants' laptop computers share a problem with the stuff flowing out of an investment advisor's box: Past results do not guarantee future results. Full Story
If he didn't have his hands full already, state Rep. Tommy Merritt, R-Longview, got hit with an ad campaign from a conservative third-party group called Americans for Job Security, blasting a proposal he made that would have broadened sales taxes in Texas (while cutting local school property taxes around the state). The ads don't mention the property tax cut, but say the higher sales taxes would "mean fewer jobs around here." Full Story
The judges who approved the Legislature's new congressional map acted like health inspectors who don't like the food in a particular restaurant but still find the kitchen clear of cockroaches and other violations of the health code. The results are a matter of taste; the restaurant's legal. Full Story
In the last presidential election, George W. Bush easily beat the field, at least in Texas. He got 3,799,639 votes while Al Gore was pulling in 2,433,746 votes here. That's a difference of 1,365,893 – quite a safety buffer when it came to tallying the state's 32 electoral votes (the state will have two more electoral votes in 2004, because of the two congressional seats added after the last census; state's get a vote for each person they elect to Congress). Full Story
Picture a room with no windows, with three judges and courtroom staff assembled in one corner, 30 attorneys (yes, really) seated and passing notes around a couple of large tables, a couple of dozen reporters squirming on hard wooden pews on one side in the back, and an assembly of officeholders, political hacks and all manner of aides seated on the other side in the back. At the door, a bailiff has been stationed to make sure nobody comes in unless one of the seats is emptied. Full Story
Federal judges apparently like theme weeks as much as network television executives do. Full Story
Robby Cook III, one of several conservative Democrats living in GOP-targeted statehouse districts, was on the verge of a party switch when he decided late last week not to run for reelection. The Eagle Lake farmer, who's been a House member since 1997, is clearly conflicted about his partisan affiliations at the moment. He says he's out of sync with his own party's liberals, but also didn't like what the GOP's congressional redistricting maps do to rural Texas. Full Story
Bill Ratliff, a Republican engineer who upset a Democratic incumbent 15 years ago and then became a moderate voice as his party took over the Legislature, is leaving the Senate in the middle of his term to return to Mount Pleasant, his family, and political retirement. Full Story
Some of the state's school finance mechanics are looking — again — at splitting the property tax rolls to put business property taxes into a state fund for all schools while leaving residential property tax revenues in control of local school districts. Full Story
At the end of March, the state's prepaid tuition plan was $226 million in the hole, primarily because the money invested by parents was doing the same thing everybody's 401k has been doing. And with the Legislature's decision this year to deregulate tuition, it'll be that much harder for the fund's investments to keep up with the cost of higher education in Texas. Full Story
The prospect of a special legislative session in an election year is making some Texas lawmakers nervous, especially because the subject — school finance — is a hazardous political substance. On the surface, special committees and other experts are studying complete revisions of the state's current school finance mechanism, involving everything from studies on how much it takes to educate an average student to a particular level, to a diagnosis of what's wrong with the current tax system, to whatever else can be attached to the school finance question. A full remodeling would require some new state taxes to replace the local property taxes causing much of the outcry. And a growing number of school districts are signing onto the latest legal challenge to the Texas school system, which could go to court next summer if lawmakers haven't applied enough patches by then. Full Story
The political trunk sale that follows every round of redistricting is underway in earnest, with candidates checking out the new goods and signing up for the stuff they want. Full Story
With Gov. Rick Perry out of the state and U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on the scene to bridge the gap between lawmakers on either end of the Texas Capitol, Republicans finally ended their 10-month quest for a congressional redistricting map that's kinder to their candidates. Full Story
Legislative negotiations are usually scripted like madcap romance movies: Boy meets Girl, Girl ditches Boy, Boy and Girl smooch and ride off into the future. Before the closing lip-lock, there's always a big fight that looks like viewers will go home unhappy with popcorn stuck in their molars. If it's from Hollywood, though, you always get your kiss. Full Story
News accounts a couple of years ago detailed the death of a man who hooked a rocket engine to a motorbike in an attempt to jump it over a canyon. The takeoff went as planned, but the rocket-powered bike aimed too low and smashed in to the opposite wall of the canyon. If he'd made it across the canyon, he'd have been a star. Instead, the rider got a posthumous "Darwin Award," given to people involved in accidents that defy common sense. Full Story
Before the inevitable court battles over redistricting, the Republicans in the Legislature have to draw maps, get them passed and get the governor's signature. And the game for the next week is relatively simple to explain. The House passed the same plan it passed in the first and second special sessions. It creates a new seat dominated by Midland County, home of House Speaker Tom Craddick, and pairs (among others) U.S. Reps. Charles Stenholm, D-Abilene, and Randy Neugebauer, R-Lubbock. Some of the political folk in Lubbock don't like that plan, because it would cost them either a Republican congressman or the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House's agriculture panel. Both are important. Full Story
The third special session this year — in fact, the third special session in more than a decade — starts at midmonth, and nobody has a clear idea what will happen. The Democrats are back in Texas, but say they have new tricks in their bag. The Republicans have the legislative quorum they seek, but have no agreement on a congressional redistricting plan. And the courts aren't done with the wreckage of what was, just a year ago, still a bipartisan government. Full Story
Sen. John Whitmire, who's been in the Senate longer than anyone else and in the Legislature longer than all but four others, returned to Houston after 37 days in the Land of Enchantment, providing relief to Republicans and anguish to Democrats. Full Story
Statewide offices are full of ambitious people, and governors of Texas have been historically besieged by people who want their jobs, or their power. Bob Bullock, first as comptroller and then as lieutenant governor, was a special pain in the necks of Gov. Mark White and then Gov. Ann Richards. For Gov. Bill Clements, the bad news regularly arrived from the offices of then-Attorney General Jim Mattox. And for Rick Perry, it would appear that the thorn bush is rooted at the Lyndon B. Johnson State Office Building, headquarters of Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Carole Keeton Strayhorn. Full Story
This special session of the Legislature never officially convened on the East end of the Capitol, and if the Democrats came back this minute, there wouldn't be time to pass a congressional redistricting plan. The Senate never got a quorum, and could never send bills to committee, much less hear them, amend them, pass them, and all that jazz. Full Story