Texas Politics Digest

This is mid term election year. Politics in the Southwest gets "hairy." Notorious Tom DeLay and OCP (our current president) both hail from there. Vice-President Dick Cheney hunts there. New Orleans residents by the thousands dispersed to Texas. Now they are trying to figure out how they can vote long-distance in the New Orleans mayor's race.
Red State - Texas is a so-called "red" state, party dominance having turned from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican over recent decades. But Democrats haven't given up on Texas. And they make very liberal (no pun intended) use of the web to do their work.

DFA - Since Howard Dean became Chairman of the Democratic party, state ofter state has been working very hard to reorganize and re-energize at the grassroots level. Jim Dean, Howard's brother, heads the DFA PAC. For more information, Democracy for Texas is the state equivalent of DFA national (blog) website.



Daily Kos - I am a regular dKos reader/writer and have gotten a sneaking suspicion that there are a lot of Texans who like that community also. A search of the word "Texas" for the last six months yielded 85 "hits." I chose three Kos posts that speak to voting rights in that often politically pivotal state.

• 31 of 32 in Texas
  by kos
  Wed Jan 04, 2006 at 01:28:24 PM CST
  "Congratulations to Texas Democrats who fielded candidates in 31 of 32 House districts. It would've been nice to have all 32, but this is a nice improvement over 2004 when in a presidential year four districts had no Democrats on the ballot. Meanwhile, Republicans seem to have left a surprising seven Democrats unchallenged."

Supreme Court to review texas redistricting
by kos
Mon Dec 12, 2005 at 10:57:22 AM CST"Tom DeLay's redistricting plan will get a look by the Supreme Court. The U.S.
Supreme Court said on Monday that it would decide a challenge by Democrats and minority groups to the controversial 2003 Republican-supported congressional redistricting plan in Texas. The justices agreed to review a ruling by a federal three-judge panel that upheld the bitterly contested map, which had been strongly supported by U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas. . . But don't hold your breath. Remember who sits on the current Supreme Court."

Thanks to DKos' mcjoan for this news digest from Yahoo! News.
Justice Dept. to Defend Redistricting Map It Found Illegal
by mcjoan Fri Feb 17, 2006 at 05:14:54 PM CST
Remember this story?

"The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Bush administration's request to join Texas in defending a Republican-friendly congressional map engineered by Rep.
Tom DeLay. The administration will share time with Texas lawyers on March 1, when the court holds a special afternoon session to consider four appeals that stem from the bitter dispute over Texas congressional district boundaries.
Justices are considering whether the Republican-controlled Legislature acted purely for partisan gain in 2003 when it threw out district boundaries that had been used in the 2002 elections, and whether the new map violated a federal voting rights law.
The Justice Department approved the plan although staff lawyers concluded that it diluted minority voting rights.
The Bush administration asked the high court last week for permission to participate in the case, supporting Texas."

It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court rules on Texas Redistricting. That sory will soon be in the news. Tom Delay has not yet stood trial and he is still trying to throw his weight around. And OCP is certainly still throwing his weight around. But Texans on both sides of the aisle can be an ornery lot. We will watch to see what Texas Dems do with the opportunities 2006 presents to them.
Tags: Democrats DailyKos blog politics Texas 2006 election
My "creative post" today at Southwest Blogger is about My "South by Southwest" blogging experience. How's that for circularity?