The latest Barack Obama news from The Texas Tribune.
Say it ain't O: A hypothetical 2012 matchup between Barack Obama and Rick Perry finds the two men tied in Texas — even though the president was soundly defeated here when he ran in 2008, at the height of his popularity, and even though the governor was handily reelected to a third full term in November. Full Story
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Rick Perry might be the state official most publicly doing battle with the the federal government, but Greg Abbott is quietly leading the charge on behalf of Texas. The Attorney General, who was just sworn into his third term in office, talked recently with Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune. Full Story
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For the first time, President Barack Obama granted a slew of pardons today. He pardoned nine people convicted primarily of rather minor offenses. Full Story
On last night's edition of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, sparred with the host about whether Barack Obama has a U.S. birth certificate — and whether Texas law should be changed to require that any candidate for president who wants ballot access produce one. Full Story
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On April 15, 2009, Rick Perry positioned himself for the first time as the defender of Texas against Washington oppression — and the 2010 race for governor was decided. Full Story
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When a party wins everything, as the GOP has in Texas this year, it gets almost everything its way. It also has everything to lose. Full Story
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View county-by-county thematic maps visualizing the partisan breakdown and turnout in the 2010 governor's race. Full Story
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For the 15th event in our TribLive series, I interviewed the former George W. Bush and John McCain media strategist and Rick Perry's pollster about what happened Tuesday night: how the Republicans took back the majority in the U.S. House and upped their number of seats in the Texas House by 30 percent, what that portends for the next two years in Austin and Washington, D.C., and whether the governor is really running for president. Full Story
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No campaign postmortem will be complete without noting the huge role played by Barack Obama in the 2010 governor's race. 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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On Friday, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White sat down with me for an interview co-presented by the Tribune and Austin's public broadcasting stations, KUT and KLRU. We talked about whether the big bucks he's raised from appointees qualifies as "government for sale," how he'd cut the shortfall, how he feels about Barack Obama, the health care reform he'd prefer, those lawsuits against the feds and more. Full Story
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The battle in the 2010 governor's race is about the battleground itself: Rick Perry wants to bind himself to voters in opposition to an intrusive and profligate Washington D.C. — meddling liberal Yankees, in other words. Bill White wants to motivate voters in opposition to what he portrays as the sorry condition of the state under Perry, the self-serving "career politician." For White, Washington is Perry's bogeyman to divert attention from his failures at home. For Perry, Washington is the root of the evils the state confronts — foremost, issues he says White ignores. Full Story
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Highlights from Bill White's hourlong talk with the Tribune's Evan Smith. Full Story
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For some incumbent Republican House members who might otherwise be struggling to stay above water — Harper-Brown, Bohac, Driver, Kleinschmidt, Anderson, Hartnett, Legler — President Barack Obama may be just the flotation device they need. Full Story
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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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In the two years since Barack Obama was elected president, many Texas gun owners — afraid of losing their Second Amendment rights — have stocked up on weapons and ammo. Texans have also sought a record number of concealed handgun licenses. Coincidence? Full Story
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Rick Perry's campaign has released a new ad on the topic of border security that pivots off of the letter the governor hand-delivered to Barack Obama during their brief tarmac meeting in Austin. Full Story
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For the 13th event in our TribLive series, I interviewed the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor on running for office for the first time in a tough year, how she'd deal with the budget shortfall, whether she'd mess with the Senate's two-thirds rule and what's wrong with the Texas Enterprise Fund. Full Story
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Linda Chavez-Thompson, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, told a TribLive audience this morning that she's not afraid of being associated with President Barack Obama; quite the opposite. Full Story
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Ramsey on the fourth University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll (with insights into the statewide races, issues, the budget, and Texans' view of the national scene), Hamilton and Thevenot in Galveston on the anniversary of Hurricane Ike, Ramshaw on secret hearings that separate children from their guardians, Hu on what former state Rep. Bill Zedler did for doctor-donors who were under investigation, Aguilar on the troubles around Mexico's bicentennial, Galbraith talks coal and wind with the head of the Sierra Club, E. Smith interviews state Rep. Debbie Riddle about tourism babies and godless liberals, Grissom on why complaints about city jails go unaddressed, Philpott on the debate that will apparently never happen and Stiles continues to put the major-party gubernatorial candidates on the map: The best of our best from September 13 to 17, 2010. Full Story
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