Political People and their Moves

Spellings gets unanimous approval, PSI layoffs, and Voinis goes orangeMargaret Spellings, who started her education policy education as a staffer in the Texas House during 1984's House Bill 72 reforms, cleared the U.S. Senate confirmation process and will be the next United States Secretary of Education. She's replacing Rod Paige, the former Houston ISD superintendent who held the job during President George W. Bush's first term. Public Strategies Inc., the Austin-based communications and public affairs shop, is laying off 20 employees in Austin and Washington, D.C., as part of a cost-cutting effort. About half were "professional" employees; half were "administrative." The company's managing directors are taking salary cuts, which will be replaced by a profit-sharing plan that "could allow them to make more than they were making before," according to a spokesman. The cutback was accompanied with a rumor that two former politicians with the firm -- former state Sen. Kent Caperton and former U.S. Rep. Ken Bentsen -- would be leaving. Caperton says that ain't so: the two will remain with PSI. At the same firm, but unrelated to those layoffs comes news that Nick Voinis is leaving the world of politics and policy for the Toy Department. The veteran political spokesman and communications consultant will take over communications for the sports department at the University of Texas at Austin. Before going to PSI, Voinis worked for Kay Bailey Hutchison, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, and David Dewhurst, among others. He'll probably get tickets in the new gig, but he'll also have two bosses: Women's Athletics Director Chris Plonsky, and Men's Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds. ERCOT's new director of security, Chander Ahuja, resigned after two months on post, citing personal reasons. The council named an interim finance officer -- Roy Bowman -- who'll work under contract to help the agency through the aftermath of a harsh state audit. He's with Tatum CFO Partners of Houston. Gov. Rick Perry named Gilbert Herrera of Houston and W.A. "Buck" Prewitt III of Horseshoe Bay to the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct. Both are businessmen and not judges, though the commission investigates complaints against judges and disciplines the ones it catches acting badly. For instance: The commission reprimanded state district Judge Luis Aguilar of El Paso for derogatory and sexual remarks about women in and around his courtroom. The targets of that talk ranged from probation officers to other judges, including one incident involving a female prosecutor in open court. Gov. Perry named Jack Ladd of Midland to head the State Securities Board. Ladd is an attorney and the director of the John Ben Shepperd Leadership Institute at UT Permian Basin. And the Guv said he'll appoint Joe Brown Jr. to San Antonio's 57th Judicial District Court. He's with a law firm now, but used to be an assistant Bexar County district attorney. He'll replace Judge Pat Boone, who's resigning from that court...

Blogs, bumper stickers, fines, the Electoral College, and a different take on ethics rulesRep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, started a blog, or web log, on his political Internet site. He says there that that it's in place to keep his voters up to date. The address: www.aaronpena.org/blog.htm. Correct us if you know better, but he appears to be the first Texas state politician filing daily reports on the net. Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams has a blog set up and ready to go on his website -- it's at www.michaellwilliams.com -- but hasn't started filing regularly (note the extra "L" in the middle of that web address; if you leave it out, you'll go to the site for a completely different Michael Williams). • U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, along with Democrats from Washington and Massachusetts, filed legislation to end the Electoral College and elect presidents on the basis of popular votes. The two major party candidates skipped those and other states during last year's elections, opting not to spend significant money or time in states that one side or the other had in the bag. Ending the state-by-state winner take all system would make each vote count, the promoters argue. And they blame the media instead of the campaigns, saying coverage of the some states as "swings" and others as "decided" makes voters apathetic. If all votes were contested, they contend turnout would rise. A squinty-eyed reporter might point out that more people voted this year than ever before. But from an economic standpoint, a change would make a difference: The presidential campaigns spent more money on TV ads in Cleveland, Ohio, last year than in all of Texas combined. • Former Texas Rep. Ann Kitchen, D-Austin, is appealing a $10,000 fine imposed by the Texas Ethics Commission for her late reporting of $103,000 worth of in-kind contributions from the Texas Democratic Party. She amended her last pre-election report in 2002 six months later, in 2003, to show the last-minute work by the Party, which was trying to save that contest. They fell short. Todd Baxter, R-Austin won (and won again in November of this year). He was also fined for late reporting of contributions from supporters and his fine was cut to $300. Kitchens is asking the ethics folks to shrink her fine to match his. They'll meet again in March. • Contrarians in the House point to a benefit of not tying leadership positions inside to investigations and grand jury actions outside: It separates penalties from accusations. The U.S. and Texas Houses have both had arguments over whether to allow an indicted leader to remain in office. The conventional wisdom is that accused criminals shouldn't be in the high chair, where the public might take offense at the Very Idea. But if an indictment alone carried a penalty -- loss of office -- it could give prosecutors too much juice. And we found a second House contrarian going in the same direction for another reason: Separating the grand jury's action and the penalty protects prosecutors, to some extent, from charges of playing politics instead of law. • The "if" people were all over the place when the House talked about lifting its salary caps for one worker per office. The idea bombed when it came up. Some lawmakers wanted the freedom to pay at least one person enough to slow the migration to the Senate, where the pay is better. But others were afraid of bidding wars between House offices, and of the effect the new pay rule might have had on the person sitting second chair in each office. • Bill Hammond, the former state representative who now heads the Texas Association of Business, noted George W. Bush's second inauguration by mailing out bumper stickers, playing off something from Bush's speech at the GOP national convention last summer. The quote: "Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called walking." Hammond's bumper sticker: "In Texas, we call it walking."

The Texas House, at the moment, includes 86 Republicans and 63 Democrats. Elizabeth Ames Jones, R-San Antonio, would have been the 87th Republican had she taken the oath of office.But she opted out; Gov. Rick Perry is poised to name her to the Texas Railroad Commission, and the special election to replace her will be held two weeks from Saturday. The district -- HD-121 -- looks like elephant habitat on paper, but the most prominent name on the ballot belongs to former Texas Supreme Court Justice Rose Spector, a Democrat. She'll face three men whose last names all start with the same letter as her's: Paul Silber, an engineer and former state representative who listed no party affiliation with the Secretary of State; Joe Straus, a Republican who lists his occupation as insurance and investments; and Glen Starnes, a Republican financial adviser. This is a fast setup: Early voting starts on Tuesday, January 25.

Democratic donors are playing both sides.The top contributors to Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn include several big-time trial lawyers and others who typically give their money and time to candidates on the other side of the aisle: Walter Umphrey, John Eddie Williams, Ben Barnes, and former state Rep. Roman Martinez, D-Houston. She also got $197,428 from executives, employees and a political action committee associated with Ryan & Co., a tax consulting firm that represents clients with issues at the comptroller's office. Umphrey and Williams, two of the state's most successful trial lawyers, each gave $50,000, as did five other contributors: Dr. David Alameel, a Dallas dentist, George Ryan, the honcho at Ryan & Co., Dallas investor Harlan Crow, Kenneth Banks of Schulenburg (also the treasurer for Strayhorn's campaign), and Q PAC, a Fort Worth-based political action committee affiliated with investor Geoffrey Raynor, its sole contributor. She ended the cycle, as we noted a week ago, with $5.7 million cash on hand. Some notes from the other big spreadsheet: Gov. Rick Perry's biggest giver was a non-relative with the same last name. Houston homebuilder Bob Perry gave the governor's campaign $260,000 during the second six months of last year; he alone accounted for six of the governor's top ten contributions. Alice Walton of Mineral Wells gave $50,000, the Texas Association of Realtors gave $50,000, and Kirby Corp. Chairman Charles Lawrence gave $33,000. Perry got 39 separate contributions of $25,000 each. He ended up with $7.9 million on hand.