State Government

Maybe it’s a failure of imagination, but we don’t see an overarching narrative line in the results of this week’s primaries. It’s like sitting with a palm reader who, after five minutes of scrutiny looks up and says, “Well, this is interesting.”

Back in the middle 1980s, a Dallas savings and loan tycoon who gave a lot to Texas Democrats said it was usually better to be the second- or third-biggest political giver in any given election cycle, since the guy giving the most took the shots in the papers. But sometimes, the guy you think is giving the most money is actually in second place.

It’s an odd election season, with little of real interest at the top of the ballots and blossoming competition in Republican primaries. State leaders don’t seem to know what to do with themselves.

Austin Republican Ben Bentzin started his latest attempt to win a seat in the statehouse with every advantage: Help from high state officials; a district drawn for a Republican; a special election called by a Republican governor for a date that was presumably to the advantage of his own party; a successful effort at keeping other Republicans out of the race; two Democrats splitting votes on their side and supposedly bettering his chances in a special election; and a huge financial advantage over everyone else in the field.

Never shoot a bear unless you’re sure to kill it. If it lives, it might eat you. Dr. James Leininger and a political action committee he’s funding (very, very generously) are on the hunt for five of the Republicans who broke ranks to vote against publicly funded vouchers for private schools. If they win, they’ll scare the liquids out of legislators who defy them. If they lose, though, the lesson will be that it’s safe to oppose them. Plus, there’ll be all those bears walking around.

Some things in government, as at the pharmacy, are contraindicated. For instance, you can say INCOME or PAYROLL or GROSS RECEIPTS, but you can’t use any of those terms in close proximity to the word TAX. Just look at what happened to John Sharp, head of the governor’s tax reform panel, who had to back out of too close an encounter between TAX and GROSS RECEIPTS in his comments after a speech to a trade group.

Sherry Boyles, a former statewide candidate and co-founder of a Democratic PAC that supports female candidates, left that group earlier this month to pursue other opportunities. She’s leaving an organization that spent 81 percent of the money it raised in 2005, even though that was a political off year with only one election.

Felix Alvarado’s filing check bounced back to the Texas Democratic Party, and he’s apparently off the March ballot for governor.

Hardly anyone who’s not employed by Carole Keeton Strayhorn thinks she would win a Republican primary in nine weeks against Gov. Rick Perry. It’s more his audience than hers. He can match her dollar for dollar and then some, and she’s based her campaign all along on the idea that she needs swing voters in addition to moderate Republicans to wrest the Mansion away from the current occupant.

Saying that you’re a Republican, and that you’re a candidate for governor, or even that you’re a Republican candidate for governor, is not the same as saying you’ll seek the GOP’s nomination for that office in 2006. And that’s why the state’s scribbling scrum of political reporters won’t close the door on speculation that Carole Keeton Strayhorn will run as an independent next year.