Labor Day weekend kicks off the seasons of Texas’ biggest full-contact sports — politics and football.

To borrow an approach from the football analysts, here’s a trio of “keys to the game” as the calendar counts down to Election Day:

• Rick Perry, the elephant in the room: The state’s longest-serving governor managed to suck the air out of the room twice this summer. The first time, he did so by positioning himself as President Obama's chief critic on the border.

The second time arose with a pair of felony indictments handed up by a Travis County grand jury. Despite the circumstances, Perry was able to come back and rally his political based, at least in the short term, by framing the issue as an attack on his gubernatorial prerogatives and right to free speech.

Each time, Perry commandeered the spotlight just as Wendy Davis, who is trying to return the Governor’s Mansion to the Democrats after 20 years, was managing to build up a head of steam on the campaign trail.

In addition to these two developments, Perry is busy with his pre-presidential campaign positioning.  He’s been to New Hampshire and South Carolina in the past week and will be among a roster of White House hopefuls at an Americans for Prosperity event this weekend in Dallas.

All of this blurs the fact that Perry will not be on a statewide ballot for the first time since 1990.

Davis, who is in an uphill struggle to defeat the GOP nominee Greg Abbott, has to hope the spotlight moves away from Perry in order to allow voters to focus on the gubernatorial campaign and on her. But will it?

• It’s all about the turnout: Polling throughout the year has shown Abbott consistently ahead of Davis. To get within hailing distance, the Davis campaign has worked to shake up the dynamic, dropping $4 million in August on ads constructed to drive up Abbott’s negatives, especially among female voters.

A recent analysis showed that one problem facing Texas Democrats is that the demographic shifts here — based on natural increases among U.S.-born minorities and immigration from outside the country — aren’t conducive to a quick political realignment. Texas stands in contrast, according to the analysis, to states like Virginia or Florida, where the populations are being augmented on a proportionately higher basis through migration from already Democratic states in the Northeast or California.

Texas Democrats respond that the analysis doesn’t take into account existing potential Democratic voters — minorities who disproportionately fail to register and turn out.

Groups like Battleground Texas have organized to identify and get these voters to the polls. How successful they are this year is also key to whether Davis does better than recent Democratic gubernatorial nominees.

• October surprises: With the current dynamic favoring an Abbott win, his team has got to be hoping for no surprises in October. But political history shows that unexpected things do happen.

There’s certainly potential for excitement around the debates for governor and lieutenant governor, although all four camps will do everything possible to leave nothing to chance at each encounter.

*****

A couple of resignations have triggered new ballots in a legislative race and a judicial race.

On the South Plains, the decision by Lubbock Republican Charles Perry to seek the state Senate seat vacated by Robert Duncan triggered a vacancy in Perry’s HD-83.

Party officials from both major parties last week chose replacements to appear on the November ballot. Republicans chose a Lubbock attorney, Dustin Burrows, while Democrats chose Max R. Tarbox, son of former state Rep. Elmer Tarbox.

And in Dallas County, Jim Moseley resigned his seat on the 5th Court of Appeals to join the commercial law firm Gray Reed & McGraw.

Rockwall County prosecutor Craig Stoddart was selected to take the Republican spot on the November ballot while the Democrats selected District Judge Ken Molberg.

Perry gave Stoddart a boost this week by giving him the intermediate appointment to the bench until the election, allowing him to run with the (I) for incumbent behind his name.

*****

Here’s the week in endorsements:

• Wayne Faircloth, the GOP candidate for the Galveston-based HD-23, won the endorsement of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

• GOP attorney general candidate Ken Paxton received endorsements from the Dallas Police Association, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas and the Texas Association of Manufacturers.

• GOP lieutenant governor candidate Dan Patrick got the endorsement of the political arm of the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants.

• Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Leticia Van de Putte received the endorsement of the political action committee for the Texas Pharmacy Association.

• The Texas Parent PAC endorsed Democratic HD-105 candidate Susan Motley.

• GOP SD-28 candidate Jodey Arrington won the endorsement of Texas Alliance for Life.

• GOP SD-28 candidate Charles Perry got nods from state Rep. James Frank, R-Wichita Falls, and from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

Texas’ other high-profile voting rights case — the challenge to the state’s voter ID law — finally gets its day in court on Tuesday.

The plaintiffs, who include Fort Worth Democratic Congressman Marc Veasey, will try to prove to a federal judge in Corpus Christi that Texas lawmakers passed a law that disproportionately hurt minorities’ ability to vote.

After several attempts in previous sessions, the Legislature in 2011 passed its voter ID law, which required those who show up in person to vote to present one of five forms of photo ID, such as a driver's license, passport or concealed handgun license. Lawmakers also passed a new set of legislative and congressional maps that year. The legal challenge to those maps has yet to be finalized.

Proponents of the voter ID law argued the intent was to combat voter fraud at the polling place. Furthermore, they argued that presenting photo ID is now commonplace in American life and, as such, did not represent a barrier to voting. Also, they pointed to polling that demonstrated broad-based support in Texas for a voter ID law.

To prove their case, the plaintiffs plan to present both statistical evidence to demonstrate the law’s discriminatory effect as well as testimony from at least a dozen registered voters who will say they were frustrated in their attempts to cast a ballot in person.

Gerald Hebert, an attorney representing some of the plaintiffs, said his side’s research found that about 750,000 Texans on the voter roll lack photo ID acceptable under the state’s voter ID law.

And, he added, the groups that tend most to lack ID are blacks and Latinos.

The reasons why registered voters don’t have photo ID vary, said Chad Dunn, another of the attorneys for the plaintiffs. Some, for instance, were not born in a hospital and don’t have a birth certificate to get identification documents.

The state, as part of the voter ID law, made available a new type of free photo ID to be used when voting in person. The state also severely discounted the fee for a copy of a birth certificate that would be needed to obtain that election ID.

The state will make the case that the plaintiffs don’t have evidence of voters who can’t obtain the needed free ID and can’t vote by mail, where photo ID would not be required.

They will also argue that since enactment of the law, the instance of voters running into problems because of the new ID requirements is “vanishing small,” according to court filings by the state.

Hebert said the 2011 version of the voter ID law contained fewer forms of ID that could be presented at the polling place. And he further argued that the plaintiffs will show that the forms of ID that made the final legislation further favored whites and disfavored minorities.

Hebert said that even a heavily discounted fee to obtain a copy of a birth certificate is a burden for some elderly voters and that a mail-in ballot is not an acceptable substitute for many voters who have cast a ballot at the same polling place for decades before implementation of the law.

The challenge to the voter ID law also became entangled with the ongoing challenges to parts of the Voting Rights Act. A three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., refused to pre-clear the voter ID law. But the subsequent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder from June 2013 removed the underpinnings of the pre-clearance provision of the VRA.

Because of that decision, Texas was allowed to implement the law while the current challenge is decided. Hebert said state leaders, such as Attorney General Greg Abbott, could have gone to the Legislature to have it rework the law to take into account the finding by the D.C. panel that the law had a discriminatory effect. Abbott instead took the Shelby County ruling as a green light to implement the law immediately, Hebert said.

The trial, because it will rely on the presentation of lots of data, is expected to take at least a couple of weeks, Hebert and Dunn said. An appeal of the ruling is almost a certainty, no matter who prevails in court.

This week in the Texas Weekly Newsreel: Despite his recent felony indictment charges, Gov. Rick Perry traveled to New Hampshire to test the presidential waters. Labor Day is the unofficial start for the November elections. And now you can search your communities' local debt with The Texas Tribune's Local Debt Explorer app.

You can view the video at: https://trib.it/1vqLouS

Gov. Rick Perry’s indictments have renewed questions about the public integrity unit of the Travis County district attorney’s office, whether the state should fund it and where, if lawmakers decided to move it, to put it.

Our insiders in politics and government started with the current operation. Asked what politicians are most likely to be prosecuted in the state’s capital city, 37 percent chose “lawbreakers” and 36 percent chose “Republicans.” Only 1 percent answered “Democrats”; about one in four said the hammer tends to fall on whoever is in office.

A slight majority — 52 percent — said the PIU should be moved out of the local DA’s office. Another 41 percent would leave it there.

The insiders’ top relocation spot would be with an appointed prosecutor, followed by the attorney general; only a handful would assign those duties to another elected prosecutor or the state auditor.

Finally, we asked whether any of the state’s local prosecutors — county and district attorneys — ought to be allowed to jump into state cases as they find them: 76 percent of the insiders don’t think that is a good idea.

We collected verbatim comments along the way and a full set of those is attached. Here’s a sampling:

What politicians do you think are most likely to be prosecuted in Travis County?

• "The Travis County DA no longer operates independently; Ronnie Earle did whether we like to admit it or not. Those in control of the Democrat Party controls the DA, and they will go after anyone they cannot beat at the ballot box or their own kin who are not 'pure' enough."

• "It appears that there is definite political element in the Travis County. Past prosecutions against some democrats, such as Jim Mattox, seem to have been motived more by politics than the law."

• "A pelt is a pelt is a pelt."

• "Ahem, *alleged* lawbreakers"

• "Or those with questionable behavior. Over the years, it has been a fairly balanced partisan pursuit."

• "Let's see the list of high profile cases brought by the PIU: Perry, Delay, Hutchison...oh, here's a case involving a D...Gib Lewis...but that was last century."

• "Whoever is in a leadership position. Flexing your political muscle when you're in charge is more likely to garner prosecutorial attention, than throwing punches from the peanut gallery."

Should the public integrity unit remain in the Travis County District Attorney’s office?

• "Vesting the PIU with the Travis County DA has been a bad idea for 30 years. It needs to be moved or dismantled."

• "Need some entity to prosecute certain crimes statewide. It should be in Austin as the seat of government. The question as to whether the current placement of that activity is unnecessarily political. Not sure that any of the options would improve that. The PI unit has to sort through 1000s of complaints that are overtly political or vengeful and (as does the Travis co attorney). Fortunately they use good judgment to not prosecute most of these just to get headlines."

• "If they are concerned about political prosecutions the last thing they want is the AG or the Ethics Commission taking over the PIU..."

• "Anywhere it goes, it will be political. If it moved to Attorney General, it would lean partisan to the party that held that office. Unless it is moved to the Texas Rangers, there are just not good alternatives."

• "Yes, because there's nowhere else that is any better. Why should politicians and government workers get treated differently from any other defendant? Hard to pass the smell test when arguing you deserve special treatment."

• "There is a reason the office is outside state government. It never works to have the fox watch the hen house."

• "Ideally, it needs to be with a separate, apolitical, stand-alone entity."

• "The role of the public integrity office of the Travis County DAs office does seem curious, but the idea that a Republican Attorney General would hold a Republican governor to account are about as high as that U.S. Attorney General Holder would hold Obama to account."

If you moved the public integrity unit, where would you put the power to prosecute state officials suspected of breaking the law?

• "We need a system where the AG undertakes the investigation and then refers it to the local DAs for indictment and prosecution."

• "If you go back the way it was you will have prosecutors all over the state trying to get headlines and if it is in the AG's office it would be a 100% selective gottcha"

• "The Ethics Commission"

• "Leave it alone"

• "Texas Rangers - handed to an independent prosecutor selected by a bi-partisan panel."

• "The Travis County option may not be ideal but none of the other options are any better. Giving it to the AG instantly makes him/her the most powerful person in state gov't, and what legislator/governor wants that? Nor do smart AGs want it--it's nothing but a headache for someone looking to run for higher office. And look at the feds--no R wants Eric Holder prosecuting them, but Congress' independent counsel law was a mistake b/c it was unaccountable and too expensive. Travis County is probably the least worst option."

• "This question illuminates the problem with having it anywhere in state government. As in the current high profile case, special prosecutors are already used in certain events."

• "No matter where it goes, politics will be in play. Sending to the AG's office or having an independent elected prosecutor are the worst ideas, because it becomes even more likely that politics play a role."

Should any local prosecutor in Texas be allowed to jump into statewide prosecutions — effectively giving them the same power Travis County has today?

• "In a perfect world this would be the ideal situation, but what local prosecutor is actually going to spend what limited finds they have to go after a much more powerful politician."

• "The local prosecutor would become the most coveted and powerful position in the state. Both parties would use it to punish their enemies."

• "Is anyone really suggesting that, for example, the DA out in Loving County should be able to prosecute statewide elected officials? Constitutional and statutory issues aside, most DAs don't have the resources, expertise, or legal acumen to do what you appear to suggest."

• "Local prosecutors could use the power to make a name for themselves and use it as a springboard to run for statewide office."

• "But Travis County doesn't have 'statewide prosecution' power except for insurance fraud, motor fuels tax, and some environmental crimes. It prosecutes politicians who have done their deeds in Travis County. Jurisdiction goes with geography. Changing that would be a mess."

• "There is some wisdom in having a centralized focus for ethics policing."

Our thanks to this week’s participants: Gene Acuna, Cathie Adams, Victor Alcorta, Brandon Alderete, Clyde Alexander, George Allen, Jay Arnold, Charles Bailey, Dave Beckwith, Andrew Biar, Allen Blakemore, Tom Blanton, Chris Britton, David Cabrales, Kerry Cammack, Marc Campos, Thure Cannon, Snapper Carr, Corbin Casteel, William Chapman, Elna Christopher, Harold Cook, Kevin Cooper, Beth Cubriel, Randy Cubriel, Denise Davis, Nora Del Bosque, Glenn Deshields, Holly DeShields, Tom Duffy, David Dunn, Richard Dyer, Jack Erskine, Wil Galloway, Norman Garza, Dominic Giarratani, Bruce Gibson, Stephanie Gibson, Eric Glenn, Kinnan Golemon, Daniel Gonzalez, John Greytok, Jack Gullahorn, Clint Hackney, Bill Hammond, John Heasley, Ken Hodges, Deborah Ingersoll, Cal Jillson, Jason Johnson, Mark Jones, Robert Jones, Robert Kepple, Richard Khouri, Tom Kleinworth, Sandy Kress, Dale Laine, Nick Lampson, Pete Laney, Luke Legate, Ruben Longoria, Vilma Luna, Matt Mackowiak, Dan McClung, Mike McKinney, Steve Minick, Bee Moorhead, Mike Moses, Nelson Nease, Pat Nugent, Sylvia Nugent, Todd Olsen, Nef Partida, Gardner Pate, Jerod Patterson, Robert Peeler, Jerry Philips, Wayne Pierce, Richard Pineda, Allen Place, Gary Polland, Jay Propes, Karen Reagan, Patrick Reinhart, David Reynolds, Chuck Rice, Carl Richie, Grant Ruckel, Jason Sabo, Luis Saenz, Barbara Schlief, Stan Schlueter, Bruce Scott, Robert Scott, Ben Sebree, Christopher Shields, Julie Shields, Nancy Sims, Jason Skaggs, Ed Small, Martha Smiley, Larry Soward, Leonard Spearman, Dennis Speight, Bob Strauser, Colin Strother, Tom Suehs, Michael Quinn Sullivan, Sherry Sylvester, Jay Thompson, Gerard Torres, Trey Trainor, Vicki Truitt, Corbin Van Arsdale, Ware Wendell, Ken Whalen, David White, Darren Whitehurst, Seth Winick, Peck Young, Angelo Zottarelli.

Friday, Aug. 29

• Defending the American Dream Summit, featuring Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Ben Carson; 555 S Lamar St., Dallas (Aug. 29-30)

Saturday, Aug. 30

• Democratic U.S. Senate candidate David Alameel unity event; 811 Collingsworth, Houston (6 p.m.)
• Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis fundraiser; 802 S. Highland Ave., Marfa (7-9 p.m.)

Monday, Sept. 1

• Labor Day

Tuesday, Sept. 2

• Voter ID trial begins; 1133 N. Shoreline Blvd., Corpus Christi (9 a.m.)

Wednesday, Sept. 3

• State Rep. Cecil Bell, R-Magnolia, fundraiser; 110 E. Ninth St., Austin (4:30-6 p.m.)

Thursday, Sept. 4

• State Rep. Trent Ashby, R-Lufkin, fundraiser; 110 E. Ninth St., Austin (4:30-6:30 p.m.)
• Foro Urgente: Understanding the Humanitarian Crisis on the Border; The Union Building, University of Texas at Austin campus (5 p.m.)
• State Rep. Paul Workman, R-Austin, fundraiser; 6550 Comanche Trail, Austin (6 p.m.)
• State Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, Night to Remember fundraiser; 600 E. Sixth St., Austin (6:30 p.m.)

State District Judge John Dietz on Thursday ruled the state's school finance system unconstitutional in a decision sure to reverberate through the November general election races. Dietz gave the Legislature until next July to find a remedy but it remains to be seen what will happen to the ruling on appeal.

Gov. Rick Perry did not let his legal travails keep him from re-introducing himself to voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina this past week. And he makes an appearance this weekend at the Americans for Prosperity's Defending the American Dream Summit in Dallas. He also made light of his indictments while on the stump, including putting T-shirts with his mug shot on sale.

Brandon Creighton was officially sworn in Tuesday as the new state Senator representing Southeast Texas' SD-4. On hand for the ceremony in the Texas House was Perry, his fellow advocate for state sovereignty.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis released on Tuesday released her full tax return for 2013, days after the campaign tried to limit its dissemination by the press. The return showed that Davis earned nearly $250,000 for the year, buoyed by a $132,000 payment for her soon-to-be-released memoir, Forgetting to be Afraid.

Saying she wants to expand Texas high schoolers’ access to technical job training programs, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis on Tuesday announced a plan to create a Career-Technical Coordinating Board. The proposal was the latest in a string of education proposals from the candidate.

The state of Texas on Tuesday announced a second lawsuit against Xerox, alleging that the former contractor failed to turn over client health records relating to its operation of the state Medicaid program.

Craig Stoddart of Rockwall was named justice of the 5th Court of Appeals by Gov. Rick Perry for a term to expire at the next general election.

David Cabrales of Dallas was named by Perry to the Texas Economic Development Corporation for a term to expire at the pleasure of the governor.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst announced his appointments to a select committee set up to make recommendations on what constitutes a healthy balance in the state's Rainy Day Fund. Those appointees are: Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, co-chair; Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville; Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury; Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler; and John Whitmire, D-Houston.

House Speaker Joe Straus announced the hire of two new senior staff members in advance of the next legislative session:

•    Heather Fleming is the new senior health and human services policy advisor. She previously served as the health and human services budget analyst at House Appropriations and before that was former state Rep. Jim McReynolds' chief of staff.

•    Erika Akpan is the new senior business and regulatory affairs policy advisor. She most recently was state Sen. John Carona's legislative director. She also handled energy and telecommunications issues for the Senate Business and Commerce Committee.

Todd Kimbriel was named Deputy Executive Director of the Texas Department of Information Resources, effective Sept. 1. In this role, he will also function as the state's Deputy Chief Information Officer.

Ruth Guerra has left U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson's shop — where she was his press secretary — to become director of Hispanic Media for the Republican National Committee.