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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.
This week's look at the most competitive races on the Texas congressional and legislative ballots sees two drop from Red to Orange, largely because the incumbents outdid their opponents in the latest campaign finance reports. For similar reasons, three incumbents move into hotter water; they face challengers whose combined general election spending and cash on hand outdistanced theirs. Full Story
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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
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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Rick Perry leads Bill White by 11 percentage points in the governor's race, according to the latest poll from Rasmussen Reports. Full Story
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With a month to go before Election Day, challengers in fifteen House races outraised incumbents during the most recent reporting period, according to the most recent filings with the Texas Ethics Commission. In eight of those races, the challengers led in combined spending and saving, a rough measure of each campaign's financial strength. Full Story
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If the state needs money to balance its budget, it should look first to sin taxes on gambling, alcohol and marijuana. Full Story
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This week's look at the most competitive races on the Texas congressional and legislative ballots sees an addition to the list (HD-57), because of indications that conservatives have a prominent Democrat in their target zone, and three upgrades, with a race (HD-113) going from Orange to Red and two (HD-1 and HD-56) moving from Yellow to Orange. Full Story
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A new poll — this one done for the state's five biggest papers — put the major-party contestants in the governor's race 7 percentage points apart. That number, along with the 6-point spreads in the University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll and the latest Rasmussen Poll, has Democrats spinning this as a close contest and Republicans spinning it as a race that's not as close as it appears to be, with Republican voters eager to turn out and Democratic voters demoralized. With a month left, there's plenty of time for either theory to blossom into fact. Full Story
Thevenot on the fastest-growing charter school chain in Texas, Hu on the continuing legal fights between tort reformers and trial lawyers over the state's windstorm insurance pool, Hamilton on the push for accountability in Texas colleges, Philpott on legislative skirmishing over federal education funds, Grissom on misdemeanor convicts choosing jail time instead of probation that's more expensive for them but cheaper for the state, M. Smith on Bill Flores' challenge in what's billed as the hottest congressional race in the country, Ramshaw looks at scandals that have put some otherwise safe statehouse incumbents in deep electoral trouble, yours truly on the closest and ugliest race on the statewide ballot and Galbraith and Titus on pollution from idling vehicles and why it's so hard to control: The best of our best from September 27 to October 1, 2010. Full Story
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In a year that appears to be custom-made for GOP statewide candidates, the last thing Todd Staples wanted was for Hank Gilbert to make the race for agriculture commissioner interesting, let alone turn it into a minor spectacle. "I have an opponent who is a pathological political liar," says Staples, the Republican incumbent, citing a list of transgressions. "This guy is likely the most unfit person to run for office in recent Texas history." Gilbert says things are going just the way he'd hoped. "I like where we are," the Democratic challenger says. "I like that we've gotten under his skin a little bit." Full Story
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