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News For October, 2010

  • Money, Honey

    By Ross Ramsey

    The campaign finance reports due 30 days before an election spur at least two varieties of anxiety. There's the obvious thing: Candidate A has more money than Candidate B. And there's the less-obvious thing, often a product of experience: Who started handing out checks, and to whom, the day after the reporting cutoff? This year, the deadline date was September 23, and the next reports — covering the final week of September and all but the last week of October, won't be here for a few weeks. Rumors of last-minute money are swirling. Full Story 

  • 2010: Beaumont, Corpus Papers Endorse White

    By Evan Smith

    The Beaumont Enterprise and the Corpus Christi Caller-Times today threw their support behind Bill White's bid to unseat Gov. Rick Perry, bringing to four the number of newspapers that have endorsed the Democratic challenger over the Republican incumbent. Full Story 

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    Credit: Caleb Bryant Miller

  • TribWeek: In Case You Missed It

    By Evan Smith

    Ramsey on whether Bill White at the top of the ballot helps Houston-area candidates, Aaronson and Stiles present a treemap of Texas political ads, Stiles and Ramsey on the latest campaign finance filings, Aguilar on the Laredo mayor's race, Hamilton on anonymous tweeters who make mischief, Ramshaw interviews a disability rights activist with a thing for iPads and bibles, Hu on the accidental release of Rick Perry's "secret" schedule, M. Smith on the bitter back-and-forth over a voter registration effort in Harris County, Philpott's micro-debate on education between two House candidates, Grissom on this week's twist in the Cameron Todd Willingham investigation and, in our latest collaboration with a big-city Texas newspaper, Stiles, Grissom and John Tedesco of the San-Antonio Express News on what kind of Texans, exactly, are applying to carry concealed handguns: The best of our best from Oct. 4 to 9, 2010. Full Story 

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  • T-Squared: One-Hour Interviews With White and Perry

    By Evan Smith

    I'm pleased to report that next Friday, Oct. 15, the Trib — in partnership with Austin public radio station KUT and Austin public televison station KLRU — will present separate hour-long interviews with Democrat Bill White and Republican Rick Perry. The interviews will take place at KLRU's Austin City Limits studio before a live audience. Full Story 

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  • The Great White Hope

    By Ross Ramsey

    Bill White, the Democratic nominee for governor, was a popular mayor of Houston who was twice returned to office by wide margins. So having him at the top of the ballot this November should help Houston-area Democrats win their races, right? "I can't think that it would do anything but help," says Democratic state Rep. Kristi Thibaut, who's in a tough contest for re-election against former Republican lawmaker Jim Murphy. But Harris County GOP Judge Ed Emmett insists White will have little impact on his own bid for re-election — and won't matter in legislative races either. Full Story 

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    Credit: Illustration by Todd Wiseman/Bob Daemmrich

  • The Hunted

    By Reeve Hamilton

    Republicans looking to grow their majority in the Texas House have set their sights on rural districts held by "WD-40s" — white Democrats over the age of 40, who hope their personal reputations will trump political considerations in what's shaping up to be a GOP year. Full Story 

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    Credit: Illustration by Todd Wiseman

  • Driving While Impaired?

    By Matt Largey, KUT News

    Some law enforcement officials — including Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo — are pushing to criminalize driving with a blood alcohol level lower than 0.08. Matt Largey of KUT News reports that state lawmakers could consider making "Driving While Ability Impaired" a crime to help local police departments get a handle on drunk driving in Texas. Full Story 

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  • 2010: Perry Provided "Political Schedule" By Mistake

    By Elise Hu

    Texans weren't supposed to see Gov. Rick Perry's Sept. 15 schedule after all. The governor's office says it mistakenly released the governor's "political schedule" — as opposed to his schedule of official state business — to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White's campaign. Full Story 

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    Credit: Bob Daemmrich

  • On the Records: What's In the Words

    By Becca Aaronson

    Since you probably don’t have time to look through 70-some campaign ad transcripts, we converted them into word clouds to help visualize the rhetoric of each political party. The word clouds compare the 100 most-used words by Republicans to the 100 most-used words by Democrats. The font size of each word is relative to its frequency of use. Full Story 

    Word cloud of Republican ads from Ads Infinitum blog.
    Credit: Wordle.net

  • Not-So-Spare Schedule

    By Elise Hu

    Gov. Rick Perry apparently keeps a more detailed schedule than what his office has previously released to the public. In what might have been a mistake, a more detailed version came out in response to an open records request from Democrat Bill White’s campaign. Full Story 

  • Interactive: Ads Infinitum

    By Becca Aaronson and Matt Stiles

    Since The Texas Tribune launched in November 2009, the Ads Infinitum blog has collected and posted political advertisements — more than 70 in all — from candidates in both parties running for various offices during the primary and general election campaigns. We recently went back and collected data on all the ads we've posted and created a treemap data visualization so readers could sort them across categories. Transcripts of the ads and the videos themselves are also available via an interactive table. View the treemap and a video tutorial on how to use it. Full Story 

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    Credit: Illustration by Todd Wiseman