Maybe someday Texas will get it right...

How nice...thanks to the third redistricting process in Texas since 2000, I now longer find myself in TX-21, but in TX-25, in which my new Congressman is the same as my old one before I moved, Lloyd Doggett. Not a great development...Mr. Doggett has not shown himself, in my experience, to be as responsive as Lamar Smith was with regard to inquiries from constituents. (Not that I won't continue to try...) As shown here by the Club for Growth, Mr. Doggett scored a whopping 7 out of 100 for being pro-growth. But then again, this is Austin, the home during the 80s and 90s of the "if we don't build it, maybe they won't come" mindset regarding infrastructure, or lack thereof. (Drive I-35 or Mopac at 5:15 any weekday afternoon and tell me that's not true.)

Mr. Doggett's opponent, before the redistricting, was to be Grant Rostig, who was running as a Libertarian. Since the redistricting, it was decreed that there would be an open election, with a possible runoff in December. In the meantime, Mr. Rostig's name has mysteriously disappeared from the Libertarian Party's list of candidates. (However, I did notice a FairTax-supporting Libertarian in TX-21...check out his website.) Mr. Rostig's site now lists him as a Republican (though the state GOP site doesn't list him there either). In any case, Mr. Rostig is a FairTax supporter who is in favor of limited government, so at this point, if in fact he is still running, I know who is getting my vote.

My assumption is that the candidates for the redrawn districts will fall into place pretty quickly, so that we can get on with the usual three months of annoying advertisements (followed by the two months during which signs remain up on Mopac). But we'll see.