State Government

You can always find a candidate in Texas whose campaign blueprint is dependent on a rare or unprecedented event.

From the sidelines, a handful of state judges could shake up the elections for their colleagues on the field.

The ballots are more or less complete, pending court actions and dirty tricks and all the usual stuff. And the annual courtship between the vampires and the blood banks — candidates and financiers — is well underway.

A Harris County grand jury indicted Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina and his wife, Francisca Medina, on charges related to a fire at their home.

Political cannibalism is a bipartisan activity.

Leave out the presidential contest and only a handful of the 173 statewide and legislative races on the Texas ballot are without incumbents. And they’re all in the Texas House.

Add Dawnna Dukes to the list of Texas lawmakers misreporting credit card spending by their campaigns. And to the line of lawmakers going to the state to make amendments to their campaign finance reports and to try to get their fines lowered.

Weatherford Mayor Joe Tison kicked off the first day of filing, saying he’ll run in the GOP primary against Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford. And then the flood began.

Democrat Chris Bell is suing Republican Rick Perry and the Washington, D.C.-based Republican Governor’s Association over the provenance of $1 million in campaign money in last year’s gubernatorial election.

Dan Barrett and Mark Shelton — a lawyer and a doctor, a Democrat and a Republican, an opponent and a supporter of the current Speaker of the House — will face each other in a runoff in HD-97 in a few weeks. The money is big, the stakes are big, and there’s nothing else going on in state politics at the moment. It’s a Petri dish full of what’ll be happening in House races for the next 12 months.