The race to replace the late Sen. Mario Gallegos, D-Houston, is coming to an end this weekend after a hard-fought primary runoff between Rep. Carol Alvarado and former Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia. Saturday is Election Day. If Alvarado wins, it will set up another special election to fill her seat in the House.
Political folk in Texas and elsewhere are waiting now to see what the U.S. Supreme Court will do with the latest challenge to the Voting Rights Act. Texas filed friendly briefs in an Alabama case challenging the provision that requires states with histories of discrimination to get federal permission before changing voting laws, redistricting maps or anything having to do with elections. Those states say the law doesn’t apply to all the states and so should not apply to them. Their opponents — including many from Texas —say the state was found to be intentionally discriminating when drawing maps in 2011 and still needs federal oversight.
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, a Republican, wants Gov. Rick Perry to change his mind and expand the state’s Medicaid program to take care of uninsured Texans with initially generous federal funding. Perry isn’t having any of that, and a couple of key state lawmakers took his side of that debate this week. Eight Republican governors have jumped in, and it is difficult to tell at this stage whether this is the end of a conversation or the start of one.
A national effort to raise the Democratic Party flag in Texas, Battleground Texas, rolled out this week with high aspirations. The group wants to increase voter registration and more to the point, voter participation. Fewer than 600,000 people voted in last year’s statewide Democratic primaries, out of 13.1 million registered voters. That was less than half the size of the turnout in the Republican primary which, at about 8 percent of the voting age population, was nothing to crow about, either. Jeremy Bird and Jenn Brown from the president’s last campaign will head the effort, with a Texan, Christina Gomez, coming from the Democratic National Committee as digital director.
Democratic financier and one-time candidate Mikal Watts is under investigation by the Secret Service, according to the San Antonio Express-News, in a case apparently sparked by questions about some of his clients in the BP oil spill, and whether they had hired Watts, as claimed, or not. No charges have been filed, and Watts’ lawyer told the paper his client has played by the rules throughout the case.
State Rep. Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City, was accused of barratry — in English, that’s illegal solicitation of legal clients — but the Harris County District Attorney has decided not to pursue any charges. The case was built on testimony from a former DA’s investigator who is now accused of selling comic books collected as evidence in another case, according to a spokeswoman for the DA.