Running Scared

Apparently the projected Republican landslide is affecting the campaign strategies of several Democratic incumbents from around the greater Austin area.  Some of these strategies are pretty much par for the course for some of these incumbents, but for others, they're quite new.

An example of the same-old-same-old strategies in use is District 47 incumbent Valinda Bolton, who has gone negative on Paul Workman, as she does to every challenger.  Her latest ad isn't up on YouTube yet (and it came out most likely too late to get the PolitiFact treatment it so richly deserves), but it appears to say that Paul Workman wants to impose a massive sales tax on everyone.  Haven't we heard this scare story before?

Oh, but Ms. Bolton's story takes the FairTax idea (which no one is actually proposing but some people like) to a new level:  Mr. Workman wants large corporations to escape paying property taxes!  Yeah, that is how a FairTax works.  And guess who else would no longer be paying thousands a year in property taxes:  you, Ms. Homeowner, and you, Mr. Renter.  (Again, see here if you believe renters aren't affected by property taxes.)

At this point, this author expects little else from Valinda Bolton, so let's move on.

Here's something no one would have expected to see two years ago:  Lloyd Doggett has a serious opponent in TX-25!  How serious is this race for Mr. Doggett?  Well, in over ten years in Austin, I have never seen a Doggett television commercial until this year.

The first Doggett commercial seemed a bit like Patrick Rose's first ad as well in that it presents Mr. Doggett as a friend of business:



(Incidentally, this video is unlisted for some reason...I wonder why.)

A couple of things jumped out for me:  first, "I said no to these big bank bailouts."  Well, yes, Mr. Doggett did vote against TARP.  That, at least, was good.  What wasn't so great were his votes later for things like the Porkulus bill and lots of other giveaways of our money.

And this leads to the second thing that I noticed:  "I can actually run a small business. I can create jobs because of Lloyd Doggett."  This was a statement by Michael Kuhn of ImagineSolar, which describes itself as "a world-class solar intelligence company and provider of solar training".  Well, that sounds good, right?

Well, things are not exactly as they appear.  Someone named Facetwitch, who sometimes blogs at RedState, did the digging on this one, and look at this press release they found:

AUSTIN – Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis today announced nearly $100 million in green jobs training grants, as authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). The Austin Electrical Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee (AEJATC), in partnership with Workforce Solutions–Capital Area and ImagineSolar, received $4,842,424 as one of 25 projects selected nationally – and one of only three in the State of Texas.

For those who've forgotten, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was the original stimulus, or Porkulus, which Mr. Doggett voted to support.  That does rather answer why Mr. Kuhn was so eager to appear in a commercial for Mr. Doggett.  (As Facetwitch points out, there is nothing illegal about any of this, but disclosure would have been nice.)


But apparently things are still not going as well as Mr. Doggett would like in this campaign, and so, again for the first time that I can remember, he has gone negative on his opponent, Dr. Donna Campbell.  See for yourself:



Now I think I understand why his campaign ads are unlisted:  to make them difficult to find for bloggers who want to embed them on their sites.

This ad completely misrepresents the opinion of Dr. Campbell about education funding.  Yeah, let's cut those darned schools off entirely!  Come on.  There is a world of difference between cutting the federal government out of the middle of school funding (thus eliminating a lot of bureaucracy) and not funding schools at all, but Mr. Doggett hopes that you don't notice it.

And while we're discussing silly attack tactics, how about Patrick Rose lookalike Mark Strama in District 50?  Of all the things to say about his opponent, Patrick McGuinness, Mr. Strama says he blogs under "a fake name" (as if this is a very shady thing to do...insert your favorite insinuation about me here).  From there, Mr. Strama pulls items from his blog (The Travis Monitor) way out of context in an attempt to paint him as wild-eyed and hyperpartisan.  Mr. McGuiness, of course, had a very easy response, which I like to call "context":

My opponents [sic] is painting a false picture of where I stand on the basis of a few snippets, but the internet has the best memory and you can be the judge of where I really stand and what I really said. I have put links below of the items he went to.

It's worth a full read.

This season has seen lots of Democrats wondering if their seats are still safe and turning out lots of attack ads, lots of scare tactics...basically, a lot of junk.  Is it any wonder that I am ready for Christmas commercials after a season full of stuff like this?

Update:  Thanks for the link, Dr. Donna!

HD-47: Commercials in Review

Valinda Bolton and Donna Keel have released their first television ads of the season, and as a public service, both are presented right here for your convenience.

Valinda Bolton (D, incumbent):



Donna Keel (R):



A constant among Rep. Bolton's ads appears to be the placing of blame for everything on Republicans. This time, she blames the Republicans for cutting CHIP. Let's see...CHIP's funding wasn't cut in the last legislature, it was increased to allow 127,000 more children to be enrolled. Would someone please remind me which party was in control of both the Legislature and the Governor's Office? Ah, yes, the evil Republicans. How dare they do this to...oh, wait, this was good for CHIP. Never mind...

Both candidates mention education. Good so far. Telling, though, is the manner in which they mention it. Ms. Keel wants more education funding to go directly to the classrooms, whereas Ms. Bolton just wants more education funding, period. Given that there are some districts in Central Texas which spend less than 45% of their revenue in the classroom, I would venture that something more than the amount of funding for education needs to change to improve schools.

One more thing: Ms. Bolton discussed acting like a grown-up. Unfortunately, she wasn't thinking that way when she assisted in delaying the consideration of all bills during the last legislative session (out of an apparent desire to embarrass Tom Craddick), thus destroying any semblance of efficiency and causing a time crunch at the end of the session. (To be sure, Mr. Craddick didn't help things either, but a vote seemingly designed entirely to embarrass someone is rather childish.)

My call on the two commercials: Both mention general policy desires. But Valinda Bolton's continued playing of the blame game makes for an inferior ad, in my opinion. Winner: Donna Keel.

HD-47: Candidate Q&A

Once again, the best election information for my local area has been found in the Community Impact Newspaper (SW Austin edition), which offers what appeared to me to be a non-partisan Q&A with the two candidates for HD-47, Donna Keel and Valinda Bolton. (It's this kind of thing that could possibly help right the sinking ship known as the Statesman...) I will fault the paper for promising extended interviews at their website; the interviews appeared to be exactly the same as the print edition.

I was impressed with Ms. Keel's answers; she clearly expressed the concepts she would address as representative (specifically, introducing a foreign concept known as "efficiency" into the state's budget and voter rolls, making health care costs more transparent, reducing state insurance mandates, etc.).

Ms. Bolton seemed to dance her way around several of the questions (particularly the toll road one, for which she spent ten sentences saying absolutely nothing), and I don't know what she was thinking when she said, regarding CHIP, "we have the highest percentage of uninsured children in the country in Texas because we have such a large population of children" [emphasis mine]. The logical leap in that sentence astounds me...we have more children; therefore, a higher percentage are uninsured? A higher number, probably, but in saying a higher percentage, Ms. Bolton is demonstrating a misunderstanding of 6th grade math. Yikes.

And, of course, she had to mention that she was named Freshman of the Year by the Legislative Study Group. Per the Travis Monitor, this is an overwhelmingly Democratic group of legislators, and this is basically an award for wasting taxpayers' money. The Travis Monitor was not aware of any accomplishments of Ms. Bolton other than that, but I seem to recall that she did manage to help bring a lot of inefficiency to the 80th Legislature.

So there you have it: apparently the race boils down to inefficiency versus efficiency. Ms. Bolton said in 2006, "we can do better". At this point, we can't do much worse.

Update: As promised in the comments, the extended interviews are now on the Community Impact website.

Valinda Bolton: Apparently, we can't do better

HD-47 Representative Valinda Bolton's first campaign ad (still, for some reason, available on YouTube) spoke about the real issue of education, as mentioned here. So, one would think the first mention of her in the 80th Legislative session would be regarding that, right?

Of course not. After all, she placed the blame for the condition of education in Texas solely on one party, which, coincidentally, isn't hers. No, the first mention of her is because she cast a vote seemingly only meant to embarrass Speaker Tom Craddick. And it worked: now, House committees can't even consider bills for another week, and the full House can't take up bills turned out by the committees until March 9. Given that the Legislature adjourns on May 28, that doesn't give the House much time to get anything done.

If one happens to see Ms. Bolton, please ask her how this vote reflects the desire of HD-47 for some meaningful action to be taken, since its main result is to prolong inaction.

I'm with the Statesman on this one: someone ought to be embarrassed by this vote, but it ought not be Mr. Craddick.

HD-47: why isn't Welch's idea getting attention?

Two of the three candidates for Texas State House District 47, Valinda Bolton and Bill Welch, were recently at the Oak Hill Cruise and Blues festival. (Yvonne Schick, the Libertarian candidate, was not there, pretty much as I expected.)

I spoke with Ms. Bolton at last year's festival, and she is definitely concerned about education. But this year, I met Mr. Welch, and his idea is one I had not heard before. Mr. Welch's proposal is to fund the state's education priorities and expenditures first, before the rest of the state's spending. That could be a really good thing, if it is done well. The education budget should be funded before the rest of the budget is considered. This would present a marked difference from how other "education first" proposals have worked, particularly in Nevada, where with its law, everything can still be considered all at once, just so long as the education spending is done first. My understanding of Mr. Welch's proposal is more like how it should be; I seem to recall his saying that the education needs would be apportioned before the Legislature even touches anything. If so, why isn't this being touted? As far as I can tell, the less the Legislature can mess something up, the better it is for Texas.

(It should also be noted that Mr. Welch's tent was much more festive, with free ice cream sundaes and water bottles, while Ms. Bolton's booth seemed rather subdued when I stopped by, and not really giving out anything except stickers. I wonder if the moods I saw reflect how the respective campaigns are going.)

I never thought I'd miss Christmas commercials...

But I'd rather have Christmas ads instead of the onslaught of political junk now polluting my television. (During the morning news, it seems to get worse as a half-hour is neared, as if the candidates think people will leave on the half-hours. Strange...)

Here are the highlights and lowlights I've seen around Austin:

1. Far and away the worst: Mina Brees. Her ad is lame, with or without her son in it. That is, the son who told his mother to remove his image from her ad. (See the report for yourself, courtesy the Statesman.) Wow, your family's in sports! Big deal. It still doesn't mean you're a good choice for a judicial role.

(By the way, her son's doing pretty well this year.)

And yes, I know, the State Bar voted Ms. Brees more qualified than David Puryear. The question is, how much credence should one give to a bunch of trial lawyers?

2. Kinky Friedman: I finally saw an ad for Mr. Friedman this morning. Was he holding them back until now, or is this a last-ditch effort to get out of fourth?

3. Valinda Bolton and Bill Welch: Both have now gone negative in at least one ad. But Mr. Welch's ad rings much truer than Ms. Bolton's. First of all, Ms. Bolton's first ad places the blame for education in Texas solely on the Republicans. Let's see...who ran this state for 150 years? And by the way, where were the Democrats during some of these sessions of the Legislature to which she refers? Oh, yes: in another state. Nice try.

Anyway, Mr. Welch pointed out that Ms. Bolton moved into this district solely to run for the Legislature. Ms. Bolton just released an ad trying to tie Bill Welch to, among other things, Rick Perry's toll road advocates and Tom Delay. It's 30-seconds full of half-truths and false implications. For example, Mr. Welch is on record strongly opposing the tolling of already-paid-for roads. Nice try.

One more thing, before I forget again: Ms. Bolton claimed in her first ad that nothing had been done about education. The other day, this ad ran on either KEYE or KVUE immediately before Mark Strama (HD-50) came on and talked about what he helped accomplish for...get ready...education! Get your talking points straight, people.

4. And why does everyone have to use black-and-white, slow-motion videos of their opponents when they want to make them look bad? It's a massive turnoff, at least for me. (Then again, at this point all the ads are annoying me.)

Bring on Santa already!