The Class of '85/69th Legislature - THE turning point in Tx. politics.

[Dover]

The Class of 1985

The Texas House of Representatives, 69th Legislature, cast a long shadow

BY LUCIUS LOMAX

If you want to know who runs the state of Texas you can consult the constitution, enroll in a course on state government, or even check at the Ethics Commission to see who's giving money and who's taking it. But an easier way to quickly get the big picture is to go to the third floor gallery of the Capitol, to the House chamber. There, on the east wall, you'll find a composite photograph of everyone who served in the 1985 group of state representatives, the Honorable Members of the Texas House.

Many of the people who are now writing budgets and busting balls at a statewide level were in the House then. Not all, of course, because the majority party at that time was Democratic, and many of those members have moved on, willingly or unwillingly – or have long since changed party. Some, like Irma Rangel from Kingsville in the Rio Grande Valley and Erwin Barton of suburban Houston, have passed away. Dan Morales, who during that legislative session represented San Antonio and eventually rose to attorney general, recently boarded a bus with his ankles shackled, headed for a four-year membership in Club Fed. But others are still around and have assumed power – and first and foremost among them is Tom Craddick of Midland, the new speaker.

..snip..

If you look at most of the people who have run the state in recent years, they have one thing in common. Bush, Craddick, Perry, Laney, Bill Clayton – they're all West Texans. People from other parts of the state tend to ascribe the inordinate power of the lightly populated area west of I-35 to a "vision thing," i.e., the self-reliance and independence that characterizes those who call West Texas home. But it's also attributable to a commonality of interests.
Because the West is so sparsely populated, the House members from there, regardless of party, have tended to stick together and vote as a block. Terral Smith tells a funny story about arriving in the House in 1981 as a Republican representing Austin, a decidedly urban district. "When Clayton heard that I was born in Shallowater" – a bend in the road north of Lubbock –"he put me on the fast track to committee chairmanship, because he knew I'd vote for West Texas." Look at a map of the state, says former Speaker Laney, who is from a district near Plainview (which makes Lubbock look like Los Angeles). Take everything west of I-35, but exclude the urban area of El Paso and maybe even discount some of Midland, because there's oil money there, and the rest of the inhabitants of the region all have the same priorities: water, agriculture, rural roads, and Texas Tech University.

The West Texas House delegation has always hung together, Laney says, because they've always known that otherwise they'd hang separately: Without unity, West Texas' rural/small-town needs would be pushed aside by the unquenchable urban demands of Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston. That West Texan unity has always been there, in recent memory. Or, Laney says, "until the present speaker got elected."

..cont'd >

http://www.austinchronicle.com/news

[Dover]

1. The Real Sins of Gov. Perry

The Real Sins of Gov. Perry

BY MICHAEL KING


On Tuesday morning, a small group of protesters (almost outnumbered by reporters and photographers) gathered at the Governor's Mansion for what was disingenuously billed as a "support rally" for Gov. Rick Perry, under the theme, "It's OK to Be Gay." As any Austinite with access to e-mail or a cell phone knows by now, for a couple of months rumors concerning the governor's personal life have been flying furiously around the Capitol, the capital city, the state, and indeed most of the Western Hemisphere. The variations are multiple and quite inventive – we won't recount them here – but at their core is the tale that the governor's marriage is in trouble, that his wife Anita has/will/may decide to divorce him, and that the issue is Rick's alleged infidelity, with one or another member of his administration of undetermined gender. (Rumors of this sort, about multitudinous politicians, circulate all the time, but the current Perry rumors are indeed extraordinary in their baroque detail and remarkable persistence.)

Hence the dubious demonstration – which just happened to coincide with President George W. Bush's declaration of war against same-sex marriage, which poses a threat to "the sanctity of marriage" so terrible it requires a constitutional ban. Last spring, readers will recall, Perry endorsed and signed the odious "Defense of Marriage Act," the Lege's latest gratuitous demonstration that it believes gay and lesbian Texans deserve fewer rights than other citizens.

For the record, Naked City looked into the Perry rumors when they first surfaced some weeks ago – inevitably accompanied by the warning, "The divorce papers are being filed today!" – and found no evidence of any truth to any of them, whatsoever. Amid much finger-pointing about who was the original source (and which political party he or she belongs to), nobody will go on the record. The governor's office (perhaps understandably) refuses any and all comment beyond a one-sentence statement from Perry spokesperson Kathy Walt: "These are false, malicious, and hurtful rumors, and the Chronicle's own investigation acknowledges that fact."

We also know that numerous other reporters, from here to New York, have looked into the rumors, with, as far as we know, an identical lack of results. Nor do we expect anything we say here to have any effect on the rumors, which have become entirely self-replicating as they echo through the blogosphere.

Meanwhile, Gov. Perry and his wife spent Presidents Day weekend in the Bahamas, accompanied by major political sponsors James and Cecelia Leininger and John and Bobbi Nau, who together have donated more than $175,000 to the governor's campaigns. Also on the trip to the Abaco Islands were Perry's political adviser Dave Carney; Chief of Staff Mike Toomey; Deputy Chief of Staff Deirdre Delisi and her husband, GOP political consultant Ted Delisi; Perry's budget director, Mike Morrissey; Texas Public Policy Foundation President Brooke Rollins and her husband, Mark; and GOP anti-tax fanatic Grover Norquist.

...cont'd

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-02-27/pols_naked4.html

[JaySherman]

2. When will people get off this "Bush is Texan" crap???

The guy is from Connecticut. CONNECTICUT. HELLO! That fake Texan accent sounds so coached it would almost be funny if the imperial corporate press didn't buy into this b.s. like every other sham that comes out of this sham-of-a-human being's mouth. George W. Bush is about as Texan as I am Japanese.

:grr:

/rant