Scenes from an Election: Three-Point Shots, Vol. 1, No. 29

What did we learn this week? We learned that the American people are a persnickety, self-contradicting lot. And it’s not even 2024 yet.

         Welcome to another edition of Three-Point Shots, a part of my Life Its Ownself Substack page. If you enjoy reading it, please 1) hit the Like button, 2) subscribe to the Life Its Ownself, and 3) share it with others in the link below. Comments are welcome and encouraged.

         But first, your moment of Zen … Today is Veterans’ Day. On this day, we remember and give thanks for all the veterans who have served in our armed forces, defending the freedoms we so often take for granted. In particular, I give thanks for my father and mother, both members of the Greatest Generation, and my brother-in-law Curtis Fowler. All of them served in the U.S. Army.

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Saturday, November 11, 2023, 1:00 p.m.

1.    The Legislature Slouches Towards Bethlehem

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

“The Second Coming,” W.B. Yeats

         Imagine you are a Texas legislator, staffer, or one of the hundreds of people who keep the policymaking machine in Austin running. Now imagine if you had not been able to take a shower since January. Imagine the stench, the funk, the Howard Hughes fingernails, the physical inability to tolerate the proximity of another person, the built-up tension threatening to explode any second.

         Psychically, that is the Capitol today. No legislator has been able to focus on her or his paying job (legislators get only $600 a month for their service). No staffer has had a serious vacation, or even just a few days catching up on projects around the house. Subject matter experts at the Legislative Council, the Senate Office of Enrolling and Engrossing, and the Legislative Budget Board are on constant standby.

         Staffers accept the idea that they are going to work 50- and 60-hour weeks during the 140-day session, with no days off or overtime pay. The implicit trade-off is that they will have some downtime after that. When I worked in the Senate, I had colleagues that took monthslong trips to Europe or wandered off backpacking the national parks for a few weeks during the summers after a session.

         Now the Lege has begun its fourth special session — the first time in its history that it’s had a regular and four special sessions in the same calendar year. As you might imagine, exhaustion combines with dark energy to crate an almost palpable surliness in the Capitol.

         Official Texas Wise Man and Sage Harvey Kronberg wrote this week:

In the halls of the Capitol, the policy issue of vouchers appears secondary to the Patrick-Dunn-Wilks engineered Speaker war.

Meanwhile, Greg Abbott has the confidence of absolutely no one in the Legislature. We have spent too many words on these pages chronicling his now routine breaking of promises to Republicans, childishly vetoing the legislative budget and trying to browbeat House Republicans into submission which, of course, only stiffens their resolve. In his third term as Governor, he has proven to be incapable of leading the Legislature anywhere except to photo ops at the border.

         Like indentured mariners, the Lege continues to chase Greg Abbott’s Great White Voucher Whale. This time, House leaders have started with a proposal that allows vouchers but imposes some state accountability standards on the private schools that receive them. (See Section 29.371 on page 116 of the House version.) This has been a deal-killer in the past – the private ed industry (a wealthy one) hungers for that taxpayer money but doesn’t want to have to show results. Yesterday, a House committee voted out the bill, the first House bill containing vouchers in 20 years.

         Abbott has also put border security on the call, by which he means another $1.54 billion for his mostly performative Operation Lone Star. The bill includes the deeply controversial provision permitting law enforcement to arrest people they suspect illegally entered the country from Mexico and, at a judge’s discretion, deport them back across the border. (More on this in a future Life Its Ownself.)

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2.    This was a good week for Democrats, right? Right?

         As I mentioned earlier this week, there were some interesting results around the country on Tuesday.

Voters in Ohio overwhelmingly (57%-43%) approved Issue 1, enshrining a woman’s right to choose in the state constitution.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, was re-elected in the deep-red state.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves survived a surprisingly-strong challenge from Democrat (and Elvis cousin) Brandon Presley, beating him 53%-47% as Mississippians proudly chanted, “We’re Number 50! We’re Number 50!” The fact the race was even close is amazing.

In Virginia, Republican governor and sweater-vest model Glenn Youngkin woke up Wednesday morning to the deafening silence of anybody interested in his putative presidential candidacy after he spent $19 million and campaigned throughout the state to encourage a GOP takeover of the state Senate. Not only did that fail, but he lost the House of Delegates to a bunch of … Democrats. It apparently did not help that he ran on passing a 15-week abortion ban. See Ohio Issue 1, above.

Speaking of abortion, Dan McCaffery was elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court after a race in which abortion rights and election integrity were the main issues. See Ohio Issue 1, above.

         You’d expect Democrats to be jubilant after Tuesday, and they were, briefly. For one thing, Tuesday’s results were a welcome counterpoint to the depressing New York Times/Siena College pollshowing Trump leading Biden in five of six swing states. (The cross-tabs are even more depressing.)

         On Thursday, Democrats were brought back to earth by Senator Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) announcement that he would not run for re-election next year. Manchin’s decision is a double whammy, as Chris Cillizza points out. TL;DR: not only will that seat almost certainly go to the Republicans next fall, but Manchin is making noises about a third-party presidential run, maybe on the No Labels Unity Ticket brand.

         My take: It looks like, absent some act of gods or goddesses, we’re headed for a Biden-Trump rematch. (The cross-tabs do suggest that an actual conviction could measurably dampen Trump enthusiasm.) It’s crazy, but in the words of Childish Gambino, “this is America.”

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3.      Texas constitutional amendments and Bryan Slaton

         Thirteen of fourteen constitutional amendments passed. The most significant was Prop 4, which raised the homestead exemption to $100,000 and pushed billions more to local school districts, which are primarily funded by local property taxes.

         The only constitutional amendment to fail was Prop 13. Texans seem to agree with national voter sentiment thinking Joe Biden is too old to re-elect, voting down a constitutional amendment that would have allowed judges to serve long into their 70s.

         In addition to the above, there was one legislative election held Tuesday, to replace the eminently replaceable Bryan Slaton, who you recall from his amorous escapades with one of his interns last spring. Not surprisingly, replacing him has boiled down to the intramural battle in the Texas GOP. (In the special election, the sole Democratic candidate received only 11% of the vote and was eliminated.) In this corner, Brent Money, who garnered 33.24% of the vote. On the other side, Jill Dutton, who earned 22.9% of the vote. The Texas Tribune sketches out the battle lines:

Money had the backing of Defend Texas Liberty PAC, the far-right group that has been under fire after its then-president hosted white supremacist Nick Fuentes at his office for more than six hours last month. Dutton is supported by allies of House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who has been working hard to marginalize Defend Texas Liberty in the fallout from the Fuentes meeting.

Beside Defend Texas Liberty, Money’s biggest endorsements included Paxton and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, while Dutton was backed by former Gov. Rick Perry and leadership-aligned groups like Texans for Lawsuit Reform and the Associated Republicans of Texas.

By the end, their biggest backers were all in — on a campaign finance report covering Sept. 29 through Oct. 28, about 90% of Dutton's money came from Texans for Lawsuit Reform and the Associated Republicans of Texas, while roughly 60% of Money's funds came from Defend Texas Liberty.

         My take: I make it a practice to vote against at least one constitutional amendment every time. Lately, I’ve taken to voting against as many of them as I can justify. After all, it is your Legislature that comes up with these things and, having seen the inside of the sausage factory, I’m preternaturally skeptical.

         In the HD-2 race, Speaker politics overshadows all: a Money victory will be seen as a victory for Patrick/Tim Dunn/Farris Wilks, whereas a Dutton victory will be a nice feather in Phelan’s cap. Over the next year, everything is going to be about Speaker politics.

         While the Legislature lives out its nightmarish version of “Groundhog Day,” plotting is underway for the 2024 elections. The filing period for the 2024 GOP and Democratic primaries begins today. Part of Abbott’s goal in this special is to pressure voucher-averse Republicans to come around, lest they be primaried next spring. Or, if they are insufficiently craven to bend to his will, to make sure they have well-funded opponents.  

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         Your weekend reading:

         … on this Veterans Day, read the story of Felix Longoria, killed in action in World War II but denied a funeral service in his racist South Texas hometown. He’s been honored during the opening of a new exhibit hall at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.

         … and Sgt. Turner Yearwood Johnston, who saved three lives when his bomber crashed, finally comes home;

         … Pope Francis fires the bishop of Tyler, a fierce critic of His Holiness;

         … have you ever gone spelunking, or caving? I personally cannot imagine being enclosed underground. But Texas Monthly’s Katy Vine has a terrific article about Texas caver culture, “Deep – Very, Very, Very Deep – in the Heart of Texas.”