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Ross Ramsey co-founded The Texas Tribune in 2009 and served as its executive editor until his retirement in 2022. He wrote regular columns on politics, government and public policy. Before joining the Tribune, he was editor and co-owner of Texas Weekly. He did a 28-month stint in government with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Before that, he reported for the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Times Herald, as a Dallas-based freelancer for regional and national magazines and newspapers, and for radio stations in Denton and Dallas.
Not every Democrat we know is twitchy or nervous or jumpy or scared — maybe they're not in the Halloween frame of mind. But candidates and consultants who ordinarily aren't worried at all are uncertain, and in a negative way — not the state you want to be in during the closing days of a campaign. Full Story
Yes, yes, the governor’s race: It’s tended to suck all the air out of the room this election cycle, hasn’t it? But there’s an undercard as well, and even if it’s received scant attention by comparison, don’t think it doesn’t matter. To the contrary, the outcome of races other than the one at the top of the ballot has serious implications for a great many matters of politics and policy that will affect and should interest every single Texan in the near term. Full Story
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Stiles on the other important Perry in Texas politics, E. Smith interviews Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, Aguilar on the illegal cash moving between the U.S. and Mexico, yours truly on the horse race and other results from the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, Philpott on this year's efforts to turn out Hispanic votes, M. Smith's talks on camera with Judge Sharon Keller about her ongoing tangle with the death penalty, Grissom on a sex offender who's angry about his return to ankle bracelet monitoring, Hu on the Texans in line for hot committee assignments if the Republicans win a congressional majority, Galbraith on a courthouse restoration program that's on the budget chopping block and Hamilton's interview with the co-founder of one of the nation's most successful charter school programs: The best of our best from Oct. 25 to 29, 2010. Full Story
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The state's political economy hummed with $43.5 million in contributions to and between candidates and political action committees between Sept. 24 and Oct. 23, according to the most recent reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission. The biggest contribution: $3 million to Rick Perry's re-election campaign from the Republican Governors Association. Full Story
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A Democratic PAC closes the HD-3 race with heavy advertising accusing a Republican challenger of dealing illegal drugs when he was younger. Full Story
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The economy, unemployment and jobs are the most important issues facing the country, according to the new UT/Texas Tribune poll, while immigration and border security top the list of the biggest problems facing the state. Full Story
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Republican Gov. Rick Perry's newest ad features the widow of a slain Houston police officer who implies that then-Mayor Bill White's policies led to her husband's death. Full Story
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This week's look at the most competitive races on the Texas congressional and legislative ballots sees HD-105 (Harper-Brown) downgraded from Red to Orange, HD-45 (Rose) upgraded from Yellow to Orange and two new ones, HD-106 (England) and HD-149 (Vo), added to the Yellow zone. Full Story
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Republican Gov. Rick Perry leads his Democratic challenger, Bill White by 10 points — 50 percent to 40 percent — in the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. Libertarian Kathie Glass has the support of 8 percent of respondents; Deb Shafto of the Green Party gets 2 percent. In the last UT/TT poll, conducted in early September, Perry led by 6 points, 39 percent to 33 percent. In a red state in a red year, GOP incumbents in other statewide races are beating their Democratic opponents by between 13 points and 20 points, the new poll found. Full Story
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Twice as many people showed up for the first three days of early voting in the state's top 15 counties as came out four years ago, according to the Texas Secretary of State. Through the end of the day Wednesday (there's a lag in the reporting and those were the latest numbers as we published), 435,007 people had voted, compared with 219,436 four years ago. As a percentage of registered voters, that's 5.22 percent this year as opposed to 2.7 percent four years ago. Early voting continues for another week. During the 2006 gubernatorial election, 13.2 percent of the registered voters in those top 15 counties voted early. Full Story