What Ails the Texas Democrats?

While the delegates to the state convention in Houston were busy in caucuses and buying buttons and listening to speeches, a small group of Democratic legislators, aides, consultants, and political hacks met privately with the University of Houston’s Richard Murray, who talked them through an 11-page memo on what’s wrong with the Party and what he thinks they should do about it.

Texas Democrats are having their moment in the political desert. Hope is thin. Provisions are slight. The opposition is strong. Heroes have not appeared.

Throw Rick Perry, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Carole Keeton Strayhorn into one three-day convention, and it doesn’t matter how heavy you lay on the religion and an uncomfortably detailed platform: The main subject of conversation is the next Republican primary for governor in 2006.

Texas Republicans are in a pleasant sort of mess. They control state government. Candidates who want to run for statewide office — or for office in about two-thirds of the congressional and legislative districts in Texas — have little chance of success unless they’re running as Republicans.

The Texas Legislature handles tax bills like a finicky relative working the line at Luby’s. First they have to look at everything. Then they have to talk about all the things they’re allergic to. Then they go on about the things they like and don’t like and repeat all the stories about the good times and bad times with food. Then they go indecisive on you. Sometimes their hungers overcome their anxieties and they fill up their tray and move out. Sometimes they don’t eat.

Let’s do this backwards, to see where things are and to see what’s been proposed in the last week on the theory that no proposals are dead while lawmakers are still working. Particularly when education and taxes are the subjects of the day.

A week into the special session on school finance, the House countered Gov. Rick Perry’s revenue proposals with a combination of state property taxes, new and higher sales taxes, a new tax on payrolls and a $1 dollar surcharge on tickets for movies, sporting events, concerts and other amusements. In return, school property taxes that now average about $1.47 would be capped at $1, and the increasingly unworkable business franchise tax would be eliminated altogether. They raised the estimate of what they think they could raise from new gambling, even as support for slot machines — video lottery terminals, if you prefer — came under fire.