Paint It Red

Texas Republicans won four of the five expensively contested congressional seats on Election Day, grabbing hold of the last cul-de-sac they didn’t fully control in the neighborhoods of federal and state government. With the results now in hand, the Texas elephant herd’s dominion now includes the White House, both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats, the Texas congressional delegation, every statewide elected position in the executive and judicial branches, the state Senate and the state House. Twenty years ago, that landscape was populated mostly by donkeys.

It’s a strange thing to be surrounded by an election that has the whole country in a lather while at home, there’s no doubt about the outcome at the top of the ticket and — with exceptions for a handful of congressional races — a ballot dominated by personality clashes, professional feuds and local races.

An Austin judge ordered the Associated Republicans of Texas PAC to stop taking, spending, or soliciting any corporate money until after the November 2 election. If the ruling holds — ART is appealing it — it’ll mean money from corporations and unions can’t be used for any purpose by political action committees that aren’t affiliated with them, either directly or through a trade group. And the ruling could have implications in ongoing grand jury investigations of campaign finance in the 2002 elections that put the first Republican majority in the Texas House since Reconstruction.

After the 2002 elections, it was obvious to every political wonk with a spreadsheet and a lick of sense that Reps. John Mabry, D-Waco, and Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio, were in trouble. They appeared to be downright pre-cooked: Mabry won in Republican territory when his opponent imploded; Mercer won in Democratic territory when his opponent was indicted. The conventional wisdom was (and this is not over yet) that the two politicos would soon be giving up their spots to the rightful owners from the opposing parties. But they’re both alive and each has a chance at winning a sophomore legislative term. Their opponents have run sloppy campaigns, they’ve run good ones, and in Mabry’s case, the environment is under the influence of a hotly disputed congressional race.

An old saying: One’s an accident, two is a coincidence, and three is a trend. The biggest of the missiles aimed at U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, missed when a congressional panel decided to admonish him in a letter instead of doing something more severe. But they didn’t dismiss serious campaign finance charges, choosing instead to put those on hold while prosecutors and grand jurors in Travis County, Texas are still working.

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison told a gaggle of reporters this summer that she’d be announcing her political plans early next summer, and aides say nothing has changed since then. The question, of course, is whether she’ll run for reelection, run for governor, or give up show biz. None of that is new, and it’s no longer news that political people without much to watch in state elections this year are obsessing on that question. But that obsessing, along with worries over the financing of schools and the financing of political campaigns, is producing some weird and interesting ideas about politics in Texas over the next 18 months, through a legislative session and into the 2006 primaries. To wit:

After 21 months of investigation by Travis County prosecutors, deliberations by three different grand juries and skirmishes along the way that went all the way up the appellate food chain, 32 indictments of three individuals and eight corporations might seem like a small string of fish. These aren’t even public officials, though they worked with top officials in the Texas and U.S. Houses.

With Labor Day behind us and the finish line on the horizon, at least a dozen Texas House races should be handicapped as serious contests. Mark another nine or so as contests that could turn if conditions change significantly or if an incumbent slips or underestimates the problem.