Blue America Endorsement: Julie Oliver (TX-25)

Late last year, Texas progressive Julie Oliver wrote a spectacular guest post for us about universal healthcare. She was in the midst of a primary battle with another worthy challenger eager to take on crooked conservative incumbent Roger Williams in the gerrymandered 25th congressional district. Julie won her primary 55,721 (70%) to 24,340 (30%) and is in the midst of a virtual campaign for the R+11 seat she made great strides towards winning in 2018, holding Williams down to a 53.5% win.

Julie trounced Williams in the district's biggest county, Travis and beat him by an even bigger margin in Bell County. This cycle, she is aiming to make bigger inroads into traditionally Republican Johnson, Hays, Burnet and Hill counties. But not by running on a GOP-lite platform. Yesterday she told us that she and her family "are in day 23 of social and physical distancing. We’re one of the very fortunate families who still have income, but like millions of Americans we’re unsure how long that will continue, or what happens next. As front-line healthcare workers who are making the absolute best they can out of an impossible situation continue to step up and serve those who need help, the lack of a coordinated federal response to the global pandemic of COVID-19 is only making matters worse." She told us that Medicare for All is taking hold among more and more Texas voters in the midst of this pandemic. If you agree Julie would make a great replacement for anti-healthcare fanatic and Trump stooge Roger Williams, please click on the Taking Back Texas thermometer below and consider contributing what you can in these challenging times.



It has driven home how badly we need those who value science, expertise, and competence to serve in positions of public trust.



But it has also underscored how broken and utterly inadequate our healthcare status quo really is-- and how wobbly our economy was for so many in this country in the first place.



I watched as our Congressman, a multi-millionaire Republican career politician from Weatherford, TX, voted to end protections for people like my son-- who we refer to as the walking pre-existing condition-- and I knew that I had to run.



I knew that not only was our healthcare status quo immoral, it was inefficient, expensive, and produced suboptimal outcomes, because I spent a 15-year-long career in healthcare finance. When folks don’t have insurance, they go to the ER for healthcare, and this in turn drives up the cost of healthcare for everyone.



I had no money, no party machine, no fancy insider connections, no list of donors waiting to write checks-- I was a total novice-- and in my naïveté, I thought if only I could explain to folks how broken the U.S. healthcare finance system was and how universal coverage could actually lower our healthcare costs and improve our healthcare outcomes, Republicans (who have historically run as “champions” of fiscal conservatism) would end their assault on healthcare in America.



We all know that’s not how things work. Congress has been utterly corroded and captured by corporate money-- from the pharmaceutical industry to the for-profit insurance industry-- with members of both political parties susceptible to its influence.



But I still believe that we can change how we do politics-- and how we deliver healthcare in this country. It is an urgent priority, made only more severe by a global pandemic that threatens to overwhelm our healthcare system.

Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, nearly five million Texans did not have health insurance, twice the national average.



In this past week another 6.6 million people nationally filed for unemployment; this doesn’t include independent contractors who lost clients during the same week.



Not everyone who loses their job will have insurance tied to that job. But for the folks who had insurance prior to getting laid off, if they cannot afford their COBRA coverage, they will join the ranks of the unemployed and uninsured.

6.6 million people lost their jobs in a single week, and that number is only going to grow over the next six to twelve weeks.



It shouldn’t take millions of people losing their jobs to show us how broken our healthcare status quo is.



We should have decoupled insurance from employment in this country long ago and caught up with the rest of the developed world-- now it is imperative that we do so.  It never made sense for us to permit for-profit insurance companies to create artificially small risk pools that allow them to drive up costs for everyone while making billions in annual profits from human suffering. It’s why I’m fighting for Medicare for All-- one comprehensive, nationwide risk pool.

My hope on the other side of the pandemic is that we do not repeat the mistakes that Democrats and Republicans made following the Great Recession of 2009. We have seen the pattern of allowing Congress to use a crisis to grant gigantic tax cuts to corporations paired with massive upward transfer of wealth, with all of the gains going to those at the top while the rest of the country struggles to get by without basic public goods like healthcare and paid sick leave.



If we want to truly rebuild our economy so that it is sustainable, let’s lift the burden of healthcare off of employers. Let employees decide where they want to work based on job satisfaction, not how much the employer will pay in health insurance. Let’s allow small businesses, who have been hit the hardest by this administration’s incompetence and lack of leadership, to compete for employed talent.



And let’s do the right thing by our fellow human beings and ensure that every single person in this country can see a doctor, afford prescriptions, and be well enough to live to their full potential.



Let’s pass Medicare for All.

Mike Siegel Is Working To Begin The Green New Deal In Texas

On September 21, at Huston-Tillotson University, an historically-black college in Austin, progressive congressional candidate Mike Siegel convenes a conference on the Green New Deal with representatives from political organizations, youth and environmental movements and labor unions to address dealing with the climate crisis. Aside from Siegel, speakers include Green New Deal researcher and AOC advisor Andrés Bernal, climate reporter Kate Aronoff, environmental professors Raj Patel and Amanda Masino, Rep Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin) Austin City councilman Greg Casar, and Ginny McDavid, Harris County Labor Assembly. Sponsors include Extinction Rebellion, Our Revolution Texas, the local DSA chapter, and pro-GND unions.

You might scratch your head and ask how a candidate running in a district that includes Houston area "oil patch" towns like Katy and Tomball could be running so prominently on the Green New Deal-- but you wouldn't have to ask if you already know Mike Siegel, the intrepid progressive Democrat who, without an ounce of encouragement, let alone a nickel in support, from the DCCC managed to hold entrenched conservative Republican Michael McCaul down to a 51.1% in a district where Obama lost by wide margins both times he ran and where Trump beat Hillary 52-43%. Mike's 144,000 votes was the third biggest total of any of Texas' 36 House candidates, significantly outpolling incumbents like Joaquin Castro, Filemon Vela, Marc Veasey and Henry Cuellar and victorious freshman Lizzie Fletcher, Sylvia Garcia and Veronica Escobar.

Mike's new cycle is off to a strong start with early endorsements from local Democratic officials and activists, Ted Lieu, the IBEW, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, Progressive Democrats of America and Blue America.

As you probably know, Blue America is supporting progressive candidates across the country, whether they're running in solid blue districts, solid red districts, or anywhere in between. And we often meet progressives in places like Texas who say they can’t always message their policies in the same way as AOC or Ro Khanna, because the conversation is starting in a much different place. But in the TX-10, Mike Siegel, a strong, openly-progressive candidate, doesn't look for any excuses and is unafraid to tell it like it is-- on guns, voter suppression and impeachment, and on Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal. Mike is out there fighting the good fight-- far more progressively than the DCCC "suggests" and has a great chance to win.

Siegel has made a big deal about a coal plant in rural Fayette County in his district– the Fayetteville Power Project-- and how it must be shut down, but also how the plan must provide a just transition for the workers and include clean-up to remedy environmental injustice. He's hoping the town hall he's organizing for September will help catalyze that movement.

"We have strong environmental community in Austin," Siegel explained. "And we have a progressive labor community that recently got the Texas AFL-CIO to pass a strong resolution in support of the environmental movement. This town hall will help unite these forces, and work towards answering the question: Why can’t Austin, and the 10th congressional district, create a national model project, to show what the Green New Deal looks like?"

I asked Mike to pen a guest post about how he's working to bring this about while campaigning for Congress and with-- once again-- no help from the DCCC, which has, in fact, been trying to recruit a more conservative candidate against him despite how he took McCaul’s advantage down from 19% to 4%. Blue America has been supporting him since the beginning, and we hope you will join us and give Mike a boost. We need his voice in Congress, fighting for a more progressive Texas. So read his guest post and if you think you'd like to help him replace Michael McCaul in Congress, consider clicking on the Taking Back Texas thermometer on the right and contributing what you can to his campaign.



Austin Can Create a National Model for the Green New Deal
-by Mike Siegel

Austin is often called “the blueberry in the tomato soup” of Texas, and many of us here are proud to display a progressive identity in a red state. But for all of the conscious, well-meaning people we have here, most don’t realize that our electricity is generated by a killer coal plant just 90 miles to the east.

The Fayette Power Project in Fayetteville, Texas, is a 40-year old coal plant that is killing people, plants and animals, poisoning the ground water, fouling the air and otherwise creating a toxic stew impacting every life form for miles around. But because of a complex mixture of Republican political might, urban-rural relations, and missing political will, the plant continues to operate with impunity, despite its disastrous repercussions.

As a progressive Democrat running for Congress in the Texas 10th, which includes parts of nine counties including north Austin, Fayetteville, and even the “oil patch” of the west Houston suburbs, I am making the closing the coal plant a major part of the campaign. To do that, we are organizing in multiple counties, pushing policy changes at the local government, and developing a legislative record that will support a broad movement for plant closure.

It may be baffling to you that Austin would be complicit in dirty energy. As a city, we own our own electric utility (Austin Energy), and have made substantial investments in renewable energy generation. The City Council recently approved a resolution in support of the Green New Deal, and last election cycle we replaced the last remaining Republican on the council dais. Austin is a city pushing the limits of progressive local governance: challenging anti-immigrant policies at the state level, pushing to reduce the incarceration of low-income and marginalized communities, protecting our local aquifers and promoting sustainable living. But at the same time, we have not yet done the work to undo a deep legacy of environmental destruction that started with the creation of the coal plant in the late 1970s.

Of course, the context is challenging. Most of our national environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, delegate to the states the job of issuing industrial permits, including those that relate to coal plant operations. So, even though the plant has caused dozens of cancer cases, corridors of early-onset Alzheimer’s, tragic asthma rates and likely lead poisoning of local children; even though plantations of pecans have withered and died, multiple creeks are carrying carcinogens to a major river, coal ash deposits overflow with every storm, and livestock and wildlife are dying at an alarming rate-- despite all of this, Texas state agencies continue to bless the continued operation of the coal plant, toxic warts and all. And under the CAA and CWA, once a state permit is issued, governmental immunity to any lawsuit must follow.

Over the years, organizing drives and lawsuits have failed, because the state agency that co-operates the plant with Austin Energy has both legal immunity and immense political power. Austin Energy owns one-third of the coal plant, but the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) owns two-thirds. The LCRA is run by state (Republican) appointees, along with appointees from affected rural (Republican) counties. And the operating agreement for the coal plant basically says that, even if Austin wants to close down its portion of the plant, LCRA can take it over and keep polluting our air and water.

Without direct political control or legal avenues for redress, our choices are basically: give up, or get in the streets. We are choosing the latter.

Next month, in concert with Austin environmental groups, Fayette landowners, and a coalition of concerned individuals, we will push the Austin City Council to fund a comprehensive study of the human and environmental impacts of the coal plant. Austin may not be able to unilaterally close the plant, but it can use its resources (and, in fact, the proceeds from this destructive facility) to create a political wedge in support of the movement.

And then, in September, my campaign has organized a town hall on the Green New Deal, featuring a panel of local and national experts to push this conversation further. We hope to engage hundreds of local residents in the work to close the coal plant and build the alternative.

The Green New Deal has three core elements-- addressing climate change, providing a just transition for workers, and remedying the legacy of environmental injustice-- and we have the opportunity to accomplish all three right here, deep in the heart of Texas. My campaign is uniquely positioned, given our network of 1000+ volunteers, support from key industrial unions including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, alliances with environmental groups such as Sierra Club and Clean Water Action, and our commitment to running a progressive campaign that not only seeks to elect a candidate, but also accomplishes good things along the way.

Stay tuned for the struggle to come. Austin has a chance to take a leading role in the national conversation, showing that a Green New Deal is not just possible, but is essential to our future health and success.

Join us! Together, we can win.

RIP- Roky Erickson (1947-2019), A Guest Post By Bill Bentley

Mike Siegel, the progressive Democrat running for a congressional seat that spans Roky Erickson's old turf from Austin to Houston, is too young to have experienced the 13th Floor Elevators in person but when Roky passed away on Friday he told me that "Roky’s departure will be felt deeply here in Austin. My wife Hindatu, a veterinarian by trade, is in a local singing group [Panoramic Voices] that had the honor of performing with Roky just a couple months ago. He continued to share his vision and creativity with us until the end, and we are forever grateful." I hadn't spoken with an old friend, Bill Bentley, in quite some time but when I heard that Roky Erickson had died I thought that I should call Bill. He beat me to it and we spent a long time on the phone talking about a singer and songwriter we both admired. Bill had just spent some time with Roky the week before. He and I used to work together at Warner Bros and Bill had put together the incredible tribute to Roky Erickson that we released in 1990, Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye, 22 songs by artists whose music has been influenced by Erickson-- from ZZ Top, Doug Sahm and REM to Primal Scream, John Wesley Harding and the Jesus and Mary Chain. It wouldn't surprise me if Bill writes a book about Roky but he wrote this piece for DWT today. First... one of my own favorite songs from Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye:






May the Circle Remain Unbroken
-by Bill Bentley

Every 15-year-old needs a hero. It's a year when the world really stars turning at a faster rate: a lot of the old toys of childhood become meaningless and a new search for meaning begins in earnest. For me, that search led to a rock & roll club in Houston called La Maison, and a band called the 13th Floor Elevators. There was some kind of glow around the band's name, like it meant more than just a moniker. In 1966 Houston was about as uptight as a city could get, with police on the lookout for minorities and long-haired reprobates to harass as often as possible. Just going to La Maison could involved a law enforcement juggernaut, but it was worth. Once inside the club, waiting for the Elevators to start, an electrical force surged through the audience. You could almost see it. A counterculture was being born, and as powerful as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were then, it wasn't enough. In Texas, we needed our own musical gurus to follow. It wasn't good enough to always be looking to Great Britain for the next surge. It was time to born our own.




When the five Elevators took the stage that night in Houston, everything changed. Before there wasn't a light strong enough to pull the ravenous youth brigade together. Things were split up, with different factions pulling in different directions. With the oncoming wave of psychedelics, though, division wasn't an option. This mind expansion pursuit was serious business, and it would take devotion and leaders. Dr. Timothy Leary was too far away, plus he was from the East Coast. We didn't need anybody from that side of the country telling us how to become enlightened. Texans are a proud crowd, and we wanted our own shamans. Roky Erickson, Tommy Hall, Stacy Sutherland, John Ike Walton and Bennie Thurman were based in Austin, which was ideal to lead us into the new age. Austin had always been the most enlightened spot in the Lone Star state. It had the University of Texas, the hill country and an always inquisitive crowd seeking to push beyond conventional boundaries. Besides, the 13th Floor Elevators were openly promising a new way to perceive life, which is exactly what we were looking for. Their small record label, International Artists, was headquartered in Houston, created by rich oil men, a lawyer or two and a Svengali of a front man named Lelan Rogers, older brother of Kenny, who had been the bass player in the Bobby Doyle Trio but was not fronting a band called the First Edition. Lelan knew his way around the record business, and had picked the Elevators as his ticket to Valhalla. The band's first single, "You're Gonna Miss Me," was already roaring up the local radio charts, a little under three minutes of contained hysteria.




To say the audience that night at La Maison was ready was about as big an understatement as the state of Texas itself. So when Roky Erickson, all of 19 years old, walked onstage it seemed like he was floating. He had a cherubic countenance crossed with an other-worldly aura. Erickson's smile was almost as big as his face, and it looked like he knew he possessed a magic potion inside the band's music that was going to change everyone's lives forever in the matter of a few minutes. He plugged in his glowing red Gibson electric guitar, and looked around at his bandmates to see if they were ready to light the fuse. On the singer's left, Stacy Sutherland created a cocoon of darkness around him, like he held certain secrets within he wasn't quite ready to share. Drummer John Ike sat atop a mountain of drums and cymbals, tall and regal and ready to pound everything he got his hands on he could reach. Bassist Bennie Thurman was a flat-out pirate, wearing a big hoop earring on his left ear in a time when men simply did not wear earrings. He also had a somewhat crazed look of a man who had just been released from a cage of some kind. The last Elevator, on Erickson's far right, was the Lonesome End of the band. He stood solitary in his own world, holding a large clay jug that he would play with a microphone held near the opening at the top. Dressed in a pitch-black Navy P-coat and sporting the transcendent smile of an enlightened scientist, it was Hall who had first formed the 13th Floor Elevators. Convinced that through the use of psychedelic drugs mankind could find a way to evolve into higher beings, he decided a rock & roll band would be the perfect project to share his findings. So he formed the Elevators, wrote the lyrics to most of their songs and began the march to infamy and influence. The orders had been given, and the quintet began their mission.

Once the music started, it was Roky Erickson that split the atom and took the audience on a jet-propelled ride into the future with the Elevators providing the rocket-engine propulsion behind him. I've never seen anything like it, before or since. Songs would begin with a small sonic boom, and then gain in firepower exponentially with each verse. By the chorus, everyone in the audience was hanging on each syllable and chord, having entrusted their psyches to this brand new musical phenomenon called psychedelic rock. Outside the club was a booming city in the chaos of being on the edge of massive changes, but inside La Maison was the spiritual beginning of how music could build a world of its own, devoid of the eggshell existence of normal life. No other band had ever crossed that bridge, but tonight the Elevators were reaching out their hands through songs like "Reverberbation," "Fire Engine," "Rollercoaster" and "The Kingdom of Heaven (Is Within You)" and giving us all an invitation to go there with them. We would look at each other in the audience and seal the deal that this would be our lives, this would be the thing that let us live inside eternity and find salvation once and for all. Since its birth rock & roll had promised that it would save the day, and now--beyond Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, beyond them all--the prophets had arrived to deliver that momentous gift.

By the end of the evening in 1966 Roky Erickson was beatific. He stood onstage and didn't move. He just looked into the crowd with eyes that promised a new beginning. And that's the way he was for the next 53 years, until he passed away May 31, 2019. I would see him share his music hundreds of nights, sometimes in the roar and sometimes in the silence. In those years Erickson had lived a thousand lifetimes, often in the confusion of mental illness, and, blessedly, even in the euphoric nirvana of total bliss. I had loyally followed him all those years, no matter where the path took us, believing that in him I had found someone who would share with me an eternal light. And it was always there, even when very few could still see it. But I am a believer, and through him learned that the outside world should not lock us in. Rather, it's the inner world where time disappears and our spirit sets the clock. When I saw him performing all those 13th Floor Elevators songs in San Francisco a few weeks ago, his eyes still carried the magic, even if his body struggled being tied to this physical world. Now he has broken that earthly bond and moved into the cosmos his mind has lived in for so long. One day we will surely follow him there, hopefully to a place where we can share this life and all the others in store for us. And that circle will remain unbroken right past infinity.

House Passes Equality Act-- Republicans Whine It Impinges On Their Right To Discriminate Against Gays

Aside from being Republicans serving in Congress, what do these 8 men and women have in common: Susan Brooks (R-IN), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Brain Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Will Hurd (R-TX), John Katko (R-NY), Tom Reed (R-NY), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Greg Walden (R-OR)? They were the Republicans to stand up for their own LGBTQ constituents by voting with every single Democrat to pass David Cicilline's Equality Act (H.R.5). It's a simple, straight forward bill that prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. Specifically, the bill defines and includes sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination or segregation. It allows the Department of Justice to intervene in equal protection actions in federal court on account of sexual orientation or gender identity. And it prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual's gender identity.

The bill passed with a big bipartisan majority-- 236-173. McConnell has already signaled that he will not permit a vote on the legislation in the Senate, ironic since he's a lifelong closet case himself who was kicked out of the military many decades ago for fondling a private's privates. Republicans don't admit that they're bigots when they try to block this kind of legislation. They claim it-- equality itself-- imposes on their freedom. Banning anti-LGBTQ discrimination is against their bizarre religion and will lead, the insist, to persecution of Christians. (No, no they really tell each other that.)

A morally "upright" Republican hate-monger like Florida crackpot Ross Spano-- who stole his election and should never have been seated-- warned that HR-5 will "allow the government to force its rigid and unyielding fist inside the church... It would deliver a crushing blow to the base of the tree of religious liberty." Could you even image having a lunatic who talks like that as a Reprsentative? Another GOP gay-hater and bigot from the Sunshine State, Greg Steube, also voted no, he says, to protect women athletes.

The Florida Republican argued that the bill will inhibit competitiveness in women's sports and women's eligibility for athletic scholarships.

"A sports team couldn't treat a transgender woman differently from a woman who is not transgender on the ground that the former is male-bodied," Steube said on the House floor. "Yet, the reality is [when] putting male and female bodied athletes together in open sport ... females lose."

"This is fear mongering about trans women playing in sports," California Rep. Katie Hil largued in opposition to the amendment. "No person is trying to game the system to participate in women's sports. That is a sad scare tactic." The Republican motion to recommit failed with only one Democrat, Rep. Dan Lipinski, voting in favor of the amendment; seven did not vote. Lipinski was also the only Democrat not to cosponsor the legislation.

Republican opponents also argued the measure would restrict individual religious freedoms and mandate "specific accommodations" in shared facilities that would put burdens on small businesses, schools, and other community places.

"Its vague and circular definition of gender identity will lead only to uncertainty, litigation, and harm to individuals and organizations that will be forced to comply with a law the authors don’t even seem to understand," Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said on the House floor Friday. "This is a classic example of passing something now and figuring out what it actually means later ... If the devil is in the details, we’re in for a lot of devilish surprises."

In response, Cicilline, the measure's sponsor, argued that the bill "does not, nor could any legislation," supersede the First Amendment's religious freedom protections.

"H.R. 5 allows the standards set by prior civil rights law to not interfere with worship and religious practices by religious organizations," Cicilline added.

It's worth reminding people who Virginia Foxx-- one of Congress' most hateful and homophobic psychics-- actually is. Do you remember the name Matthew Shepard? He was the young gay man who was crucified-- literally-- and left to die next to a lonely Wyoming highway. While his grieving mother sat in the congressional visitors' gallery, this is what North Carolina 's premiere contribution to national evil and hatred had to say.



Foxx never apologized and has voted against every equality bill that has ever come before Congress-- proudly and loudly, always making sure everyone knows she stands for hatred and intolerance. Her district is safely gerrymandered so that she is re-elected year after year without ever doing anything for anyone but herself and other selfish multimillionaires. Meanwhile, yesterday, what's left of poor old Pat Robertson was ranting and raving on evangelical TV. Clearly, God has cursed him:





Austin and Houston are what you could call WOKE cities. Both Travis and Harris counties-- the westernmost and easternmost components of a gerrymandered shitshow (TX-10) by Tom Delay-- are open and welcoming parts of Texas where people expect everyone to be treated fairly and equally. By cutting Austin up like a pie, Texas Republicans succeeded in disenfranchising voters there-- putting them into 4 bizarrely-drawn congressional districts, 3 of which are predominately Republican. One of the conservative anti-LGBTQ congressmen that gerrymander had forced on Austin is multimillionaire-- he married well-- crackpot and Trump bootlick Michael McCaul. Progressive Democrat Mike Siegel held him down to a 51.1% win last year and Siegel has every intention of finishing the job next year, In fact, please consider contribution to his campaign by clicking on the Lone Star State ActBlue thermometer on the right. After the vote on the bipartisan H.R.5 yesterday, Mike told us he would have gladly joined the vast majority of congressmembers who voted for it. "The Equality Act is about making sure everyone can access work and housing and education and other public services, without fear of discrimination. Unfortunately, here in the Texas 10th, in a district that includes strong LGBT communities in the Austin and Houston areas, our 'representative' voted to legalize hatred. To legitimize oppression and bigotry. To endanger his very constituents, who he is sworn to protect. This is only the latest example of Michael McCaul failing to stand up for Texans. We are working hard to ensure this is the beginning of his end."

Kathi Thomas, progressive Texan: "The Difference Between Running To Be Elected And Running To Serve"

TX-25 is another one of those gerrymandered Texas districts created as part of Tom DeLay's plan to disenfranchise Democratic voters. It twists and turns and winds its way from East Austin and the UT campus west and and south to Dripping Springs and north through Lake Travis and Gatesville all the way up to Burleson in the Fort Worth suburbs. There are 13 counties in the district, most of the voters living in Travis, Johnson, Hayes, Burnet and Coryell counties. McCain beat Obama there 56-43% and Romney did even better-- 60-38%. Trump underperformed both McCain and Romney, but he still beat Hillary 55.1% to 40.2%. The PVI went from an R+12 to an R+11. Still very tough ground for a Democrat-- though not nearly as tough as the Oklahoma state senate district where progressive Democrat Allison Ikley-Freeman beat Republican Brian O'Hara last week. Trump beat Hillary in that district by nearly 40 points! Races Beltway prognosticators said were "impossible"-- like TX-02 (Poe), TX-06 (Barton), TX-07 (Culberson), TX-10 (McCaul), TX-14 (Weber), TX-21 (open), TX-22 (Olson), TX-24 (Marchant) TX-25 (Roger Williams), TX-27 (Farenthold), TX-31 (Carter), TX-32 (sessions) and even TX-36 (Babin) are all, at least theoretically, in play. The DCCC is so not taking any of these seats seriously, that the imbecile chairman, Ben Ray Lujan, hasn't even used the several months since Jared Polis resigned as regional vice chair to find a replacement. Texas doesn't have one at all. Brilliant.

Anyway, back to TX-25. Progressive activist Kathi Thomas is the leading candidate, although Chetan Panda, Chris Perri and Julie Oliver are also in the race. In 2016 Williams spent $1,189,561 to Kathi Thomas' $50,015 and beat her 180,988 (58.3%) to 117,073 (37.7%). Williams is a far right crooked used car salesman, a multimillionaire scam artist who has been under various ethics investigations since he wormed his way into Congress by self-funding to the tune of $330,000. I asked Kathi to introduce herself to DWT readers, using a story she told me on the phone about her motivations for running. This is worth reading:

My Texas roots go back to before Texas was a state, but my daughter is an immigrant, born in Guatemala. We adopted her as a baby. She became a U.S. Citizen when, holding her in my arms, my feet touched American soil. She’s 16 now, and will have her driver’s license soon. Obviously Latina, she carries a copy of her Certificate of Citizenship everywhere in case she is stopped and asked for “her papers.” We’ve had that difficult discussion about what she says if she’s pulled over. She’s to say, “I’m an American citizen, I was born in Guatemala and adopted as a baby, but I’m American.” At a recent candidates’ forum, a Latino man told me that it seemed like all the candidates were saying the right things about what’s going on with Latinos and the xenophobia, but I had “real empathy,” because it was my family.

I've been a strong advocate for equality, public schools and social justice for many years, through my church and as an individual. I've been a school band director, worked in the corporate world for a floral wire service, and I know firsthand how difficult it is to grow a small business from scratch. I started mine 27 years ago. I'm a parent and a wife; the product of a hard-working middle-class family, public schools, and state university. I think this broad background makes me a stronger candidate, because I can relate to many different people through my experiences.

I am well-known in the District, particularly in the three most populous counties: Travis, Johnson, and Hays. I was the CD-25 Democratic nominee in 2016. That provides unmatched name recognition. I've worked on behalf of progressive issues for years, and with my 16-year-old daughter facing an uncertain future, I'm not about to quit now. We must leave this Earth a better place for our children.

Although the primary will likely be won by the sheer number of Travis County Dem voters, for the general election, the more rural areas have most of votes to cast. I grew up in a small town in the Piney Woods area of southeast Texas, and easily connect with folks living in small towns across the District. We speak the same language and share the same Texas values. My faith is important to me. I'm comfortable talking about progressive Democratic values as supportive to my faith. In short, like my faith teaches, I care for people. That pulls the rug out from under far right-wingers who claim they're people of faith, like Roger Williams.

Williams says "faith, family and country matter the most" to him, but then he takes positions that don't align with any faith with which I'm familiar. I don't know what kind of country he wants, but it sure as heck isn't the kind that most of us want for our kids. It seems like the only family that matters to him is his own. All his stances on the issues support the richest of the rich, and while CD-25 is slightly above average in income for Texas, Williams does not support the typical constituent. He’s even right of his own party on gun control. When other Texas Republicans were saying we need to reconsider bump-stocks, he said it was a left-wing knee-jerk reaction.

How do I beat him? He's voted to cut Medicaid time and again-the vital federal program that keeps most rural and country hospitals open. It isn't just healthcare for people that’s affected, but also jobs where rural hospitals are often the first- or second-largest employer in the county. He also supports school vouchers. That just does not align with rural Texas where public schools are the heart and soul of the town. Vouchers divert precious resources from those institutions and will cause irreparable harm. You’ve seen it across Texas--there was even a TV show devoted to this slice of Texas culture. Friday nights in the fall find just about everyone in small towns at the football games.

I'm not kidding myself, it won't be easy, but my opponent has come out of the closet as a right-wing ideologue who refuses even to meet with his constituents in open forums.

We are implementing a strategic plan of attack. We're block-walking in neighborhoods that lend themselves to it. A personal letter-writing campaign from supporters helps get the word out in more rural areas. And we have been visiting every county in CD-25.

Another big plus, unlike Williams, I live in the District and have for two decades. When I tell folks that Roger doesn't live in it, they're shocked, and many times, angry. If we get someone who doesn't have the deep roots I've got in the District, we lose true representation of the voters.

I know it is easy to say you're progressive, but it is a different thing to be able to show results. I introduced forward thinking resolutions years ago at our County Democratic Conventions. Two examples: support to decriminalize cannabis and to endorse marriage equality. I'm a longtime advocate of prison reform, healthcare for all (universal, not just Medicare for All.) I've been active in our local community in our schools with many support groups including PTA. I testified many times for public education at the Texas State Capitol.

A friend of mine told me, “There’s a difference between running to be elected and running to serve. You’re running to serve.” That sums it up quite nicely. I do want to serve the people of Congressional District 25.

To do that, our campaign needs support. We're running a lean, grassroots campaign but even efficiency needs donations and volunteers. I will appreciate whatever you can do to help me serve the people of TX CD-25.

The DCCC Is Still Recruiting "Ex"-Republicans

Every cycle I write this damn story. Maybe when Pelosi isn't Democratic Leader appointing her horrible losing DCCC chairs anymore, I'll be able to finally retire it-- maybe. For as far back as I can remember the self-loathing Democrats at the DCCC give potential congressional candidates extra points for serveral things-- being wealthy first and foremost, but being an "ex"-Republican a close second. In 2006. Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer were just ga-ga over third-rate Republican rich person Tim Mahoney from the Palm Beach area. He was a life-long conservative Republican who made a fortune after lucking out when a computer parts company he worked for in New Jersey was sold. He used the money to start a shady venture capital firm in Boca Raton. Rahm recognized a kindred spirit and-- knowing that in a matter of months Republican Congressman Mark Foley was going to be exposed as a child predator-- persuaded Mahoney to switch parties and waltz into election. In Congress, Mahoney was a right-wing Blue Dog who voted consistently with his ideological brethren, the Republicans and was shown the door by the voters in the 2008 election.

Mahoney is one of dozens of "ex"-Republicans the DCCC is always trying to recruit-- almost always with disastrous consequences. Today, two of the worst Democrats in Congress-- Charlie Crist (FL) and Tom O'Halleran (AZ)-- were both Republican elected officials who switched parties for the sake of opportunism and careerism. Both generally vote a stridently anti-progressive line and both have "F" ratings from ProgressivePunch. Meanwhile, the DCCC has been trolling the political trash heaps of America looking for Republicans to run as make-believe Democrats in 2018.

You would think the Democrats' record of abject failure with recruiting Republicans and trying to pass them off as real Democrats-- as they did last year with failed candidates in Iowa (Monica Vernon),New York (Mike Derrick) and Florida (Randy Perkins)-- would be something they would have learned not to do. But you'd be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The DCCC believes down deep in their Emanuel-created DNA it's how to win seats and they continue doing it-- in the face of years of evidence to the contrary-- compliments of brain-deficient conservative shitheads on the DCCC recruitment committee like Blue Dog Cheri Bustos (IL) and New Dem Denny Heck (WA).

We can't blame "ex"-Republican rich person Robert Lee Ahn on the DCCC but I got a call from an establishment Dem the other day who was all giddy over a new candidate in TX-21, a gerrymandered Republican district that zigs and zags through mostly suburbs around Austin, San Antonio, San Marcos, New Braunfels and the Hill Country. This is GOP crackpot Lamar Smith's seat and a number of conservative Democrats have voiced interest in marching in and "building" on Berniecrat Tom Wakely's grassroots efforts from 2016. The DCCC seems particularly interested in one of them: very rich Republican-- yes, he already switched his registration, contributed a pile of cash to Hillary and to the DNC-- named Joseph Kopser, a self-admitted Reagan-worshipper. As you probably know, Blue America endorsed Tom Wakely in 2016. He defeated a conservative Democrat in the primary and went on to do better than any other Democrat ever had against Smith. We endorsed him again this cycle and you can contribute to his campaign here.

So what are "ex"-Republicans in Austin like? They're like most "ex"-Republicans anywhere. Regular non-millionaire people in Austin seem to know who Kopser is because of a local battle over Uber-- Prop 1-- that found Kopser on the wrong side of the issue.

Austin voters on Saturday decisively rejected Uber and Lyft’s $8.6 million bid to overturn the city’s rules for ride-hailing apps, bringing a stunning conclusion to the most expensive campaign in city history.

The failure of Proposition 1 brought new threats that the ride-hailing giants would retreat from Austin as the neighborhood and labor groups that defeated them on a shoestring budget celebrated.

“Uber, I think, decided they were going to make Austin an example to the nation,” said longtime political consultant David Butts, who led the massively outspent anti-Prop 1 campaign, Our City, Our Safety, Our Choice. “And Austin made Uber an example to the nation.”

With all precincts in, Prop 1 lost by 12 points as nearly 56 percent of voters rejected the measure, figures from the Travis County Clerk show. Turnout was 17 percent.

The results keep in place the ordinance that the City Council approved in December, which requires drivers with ride-hailing apps to undergo fingerprint-based background checks by Feb. 1, 2017. The city’s ordinance also prohibits drivers from stopping in traffic lanes for passenger dropoffs and pickups, requires “trade dress” to identify vehicles for hire, and imposes a variety of data reporting requirements on the ride-hailing companies.

Kopser, who had a substantial personal financial stake in the fight-- because of his own company, Ridescout-- came down against Austin progressives and campaigned for Prop 1, marking himself a "Republican-type" who activists now know not to trust. But totally perfect for the DCCC, of course.

If the DCCC is a joke, Lamar Smith isn't. Perhaps because of his bizarre religious beliefs, he's working full time to destroy the planet in a way few other Republicans can match-- making sure Trump has all the congressional support he needs to set climate science back by decades and threatening us all in the process. "With a pronounced climate change skeptic in the White House in President Donald Trump," wrote James Osborne at the Houston Chronicle Sunday, "Smith, the powerful Republican chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, has ramped up his campaign to pick at the foundations of climate science, battling against emissions policies that threaten fossil fuel industries and questioning the government's relationship with science itself."

For the better part of two years, Smith has staged regular hearings in which he has accused established scientists of manipulating data and bullying those with contrarian points of view. The campaign follows the 2015 climate accord in Paris, where nearly 200 world leaders agreed forecasts had become so dire that countries needed to work together immediately to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Smith's decision to take on that global consensus might generate cheers in the oil and gas fields, but in Washington the 69-year-old congressman is drawing heat - not only from Democrats and environmentalists but also universities and researchers. During the hearing last month, Michael Mann, a well-regarded climate scientist from Penn State University, compared the activities of the House Science Committee to that of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, whose decision to promote the theories of the fringe agronomist Trofim Lysenko contributed to chronic food shortages in that country.

...Smith represents a still powerful strain within the Republican Party for which climate change policy is a non-starter, said Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina who lost his primary after favoring policies aimed at slowing climate change. Inglis said he believes Smith has stepped up his campaign because he sees the debate and facts shifting against him.

..."People put in that position usually start to dig in," he said.

Back in Smith's home district, which covers the bucolic Hill Country region between San Antonio and Austin, such a world view borders on anathema.

There is little in the way of oil and gas wells there, but it is a rural idyll where conservative principles stand tall and many have worked in the oil fields to the west in the Permian Basin and the south in the Eagle Ford, said Ruth Pharis, chair of the Republican Party in Comal County, which lies in Smith's district. Pharis said so much is still unknown about how climate change will play out that it doesn't make sense to stop using the plentiful oil and gas that lies beneath states like Texas.

"The people that settled here, they were mostly German, hard-working, grew their own food and didn't take a dime from anyone. It's changed with time, but there's still that strain of people living here," said Pharis, 83. "Lamar's a pretty conservative guy, and he pretty much listens to his constituents. I've never been disappointed."

And the DCCC's never-ending bungling and systematic, venal incompetence and overt corruption only make matters worse-- in TX-21 and every place else in the country where they involve themselves.

UPDATE: Further Discussion

Tom Wakely's Facebook page is one of several places where this post is being discussed in TX-21 now. I'm glad they're grappling with the concept of the political opportunists who run as Democrats and, when they win, revert to conservatism, the way Patrick Murphy did for the past 2 years in Florida.

Cruz And Trump-- Not Really That Much Of A Stretch

Saturday afternoon Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith interviewed Ted Cruz in front of a lively audience in Austin, Texas' capital city, famously described as a big blue dot in a sea of red. When Cruz ran for the Senate he lost Austin-- badly. Travis County gave his opponent, Paul Sadler 224,070 votes (59%) and gave Cruz 133,354 (35%)-- around the same outcome that Obama and Romney had the same day. Austin voters believe in science and knowledge and don't believe in the hogwash that conservative ideologues like Ted Cruz peddle. To stifle it's voice and minimize it's electoral impact, Austin in divided up between 4 congressional districts. One of the congressmen-- far right Republican Lamar Smith, a Trump fanatic, was on the ballot that same day. He won his district, TX-21 61-35% but the Travis County part of the district was a nightmare for him. He lost in his part of Travis County 48,104 (61%) to 25,607 (32%) to Candace Duval, who spent $56,932 to Smith's $1,705,681. Point being: Austin might not be the best audience for Senator Cruz. So I applaud him for going to the University of Texas' Hogg Memorial Auditorium to be grilled-- and he was grilled-- about why he endorsed Trump. Evan Smith did a really good job.

Cruz admitted his decision to endorse Trump was "agonizing." Why agonizing? Check out the video at the bottom of the page. But why did he do it? One-- he gave his word that he would endorse the winner of the GOP primary process, and, two-- he asked the campaign to guarantee him that they would pick Supreme Court nominees from an expanded list (21) of far right judicial extremists-- and they did. If you believe in Ted Cruz and his hope about being a principled, freedom-loving conservative, the story ends there.

If on the other hand, you see Cruz as a crass and craven politician, who was staring at the end of his career after he tried the principled freedom-loving shtik in Cleveland, only to see it collapse catastrophically as Texas Republicans began openly debating who would be a better candidate to take him down in 2018, Rick Perry or Michael McCaul. Parenthetically, McCaul, who married into the Clear Channel fortune and is now one of the richest men in Congress, also has a chunk of Austin in his congressional district and of the 7 counties in the district only Travis County voted against him-- 51,121 (55%) for Tawana Cadien, an African-American nurse, to 37,302 (40%) for him. Cadien had spent $51,855 against McCaul's $1,075,667. On his Facebook post endorsing the same Trump he asserted "is a pathological liar" who "doesn't know the difference between truth and lies," one of his excuses for the endorsement was the time-honored conservative shibboleth-- he prayed on it. Yeah... God wants Ted Cruz to endorse the pathological liar.

Anyway, if you don't see Cruz as the prayerful idealist, you might see that he decided to take the gamble that he'll be accepted back into the Republican mainstream fold now that he's kissed and made up with The Donald. Starting with Austerity-obsessed Paul Ryan, the party establishment has normalized Trump and successfully moved to paint him-- often against his will-- into a Republican-in-good-standing. The GOP grassroots now overwhelming sees him as such. Cruz keeps saying something to the effect of that no matter what one thinks of Trump, Hillary is the greater of two evils. More and more Republicans have been doing so in the last month. Cruz just came late to the party. Oh-- and that party is presided over by Cruz's biggest life-time donor, right-wing sociopath and hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer-- who also happens to be Trump's biggest donor and who was loudly pissed off that Cruz wasn't on board.

Glenn Beck says he now wishes he had backed Rubio instead of Cruz. His idol cracked! "For the very first time I heard Ted Cruz calculate. And when that happened, the whole thing fell apart for me. And it’s my fault. It’s my fault for believing men can actually be George Washington. It’s my fault. I should have said, 'You know who can win? You know who can beat Hillary Clinton? Marco Rubio.'"

And the most recent poll of Texas voters shows, predictably enough, the state firmly in Trump's hands-- 42% to 36% among likely voters. Perhaps more concerning to Cruz, though, were the unfavorable numbers immediately before his prayers told him to endorse Trump. "Extremely unfavorable" among likely Texas voters:

• Cruz- 33%
• Senator John Cornyn- 11%
• Governor Greg Abbott- 16%
• Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick- 18%
• Attorney General Ken Paxton- 13%
• Obama- 40%

What Can Austin Texas Teach Us About How A Widely Hated Republican Party Consolidates Power

Lamar Smith and Roger Williams-- this is not Austin, Texas

In 2003, Tom DeLay did Travis County in. It was part of a masterplan that brought Texas from a state with 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans in Congress to one with 21 Republicans and 11 Democrats. Among other things, he gerrymandered up Texas' fifth most populous county-- Austin and it's suburbs-- to deprive the citizens an opportunity to elect their own congressional representative. Two actually. Nationally, the average House district has a population of 710,767 and Travis County's population is 1,151,145-- two congressmen. Both would be Democrats-- by a wide margin. Instead the DeLay-engineered gerrymander cut the county up and divided it among 5 districts, TX-10, TX-17, TX-21, TX-25, and TX-35, only one of which is Democratic, but still isn't a Travis County district.

In 2012, Travis County voted for Obama over Romney by a wide margin-- 231,540 (60%) to 139,503 (36%). There was also a U.S. Senate race that day and Travis County voters went heavily for Paul Sadler, the Democrat, over Ted Cruz. 224,070 voters went for Sadler (59%) and just 133,354 voted for Cruz (35%). You get the picture; it's a nice blue county. But here's how it worked district by gerrymandered district.

TX-10- stretched from the deep red suburbs west of Houston in Harris County across a hug swathe of rural Texas and right into northern Austin. Almost 40% of the district is in Travis County, which votes reliably Democratic but has it's voice muffled by the rest of the R+11 district. In 2012 over 88,000 votes came from Travis County and the multimillionaire right-wing Republican incumbent, Michael McCaul, only got 40% of them. But he took 74% of the 90,000 votes that came from Harris County and most of the votes in the smaller, rural counties.

TX-17 is a red hellhole (R+13) with a right-wing nut, Bill Flores, as a congressman. The district is dominated by McLennan County (Waco) which is overwhelmingly Republican. Over 60,000 of them voted in 2012 and 51,459 backed Flores (85%). Brazos County has the second biggest population of the 12 counties in the district and about 47,000 voted for Flores (83%). Travis is the 3rd biggest; over 32,000 voted but their voice was drowned out.

TX-21 is almost as red (R+12) and with an even worse congressman than Flores, Lamar Smith. We've been talking about this district a lot this cycle because we're trying to help Tom Wakely turn it blue. In 2012 Smith took 61% of the vote against a weak candidate. There are 10 counties, #1 being Bear (San Antonio) and #2 being Travis. Smith only got 32% of the Travis vote. Over 73,000 voted there, but they were drowned out by Bexar (over 101,000 voters) and Comal (about 40,000 voters).

TX-25 starts up in the suburbs south of Fort Worth and goes into the Texas Hill country southwest of Austin, grabbing a chunk of Travis County on the way. It's another R+12 district with another right-wing nut as a congressman, Roger Williams, who was just charged by the House Ethics Committee for trying to pass legislation to enrich himself. There are 13 counties and although Travis is the single biggest (109,000 people from there voted in 2012) their voices were drowned out by Republican votes from Johnson and Hays counties.

TX-35 is the one blue district that includes a piece of Travis County, not that the GOP didn't try to gerrymander Lloyd Dogged out of a seat. In the end though he wound up in this district that parallels TX-21 but tries stuffing in as many Democrats as possible so that neighboring TX-21,TX-10 and TX-31 would all remain safely red. The PVI is D+11 and includes southeast Travis county and a big chunk of Bexar (San Antonio). The district is about 65% Hispanic and 9% black. In 2012 over 72,000 votes came from an overwhelmingly Democratic part of San Antonio, while 42,000 voters from Travis County were able to join with them to elect Doggett.

None of this is news, except for the part about the Office of Congressional Ethics stating that "there is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Williams' personal financial interest in his auto dealership may be perceived as having influenced his performance of official duties." He had slipped an amendment into a transportation bill to allow car dealers (like himself) rent cars and use loaners under recall, a clear conflict of interest. (He's already one of the richest members of Congress-- with a 2014 net worth of $28 million-- but usually the richer someone is, the greedier they are as well.) Normally-- in a non-gerrymandered district-- he could be beaten. The DCCC didn't recruit a candidate and isn't supporting Kathi Thomas the district's nominee.

Tom Wakely

As of the June 30 FEC reporting deadline Williams had raised $1,382,855-- primarily by leveraging his position on the House Financial Services Committee (the banksters have given him a hefty $1,871,616 since he was first elected in 2012)-- to Kathi's $24,699. He had $978,997 cash on hand and she had $4,467. And it isn't as though the DCCC didn't know about the pending charges against Williams, which started bubbling up last November.

The only Republican-held Travis County seat we see as winnable this cycle is TX-21, where a combination of Trumpophobia in the Bexar suburbs and anger at Lamar Smith for his role in the Zika crisis and for his support for Trump. If you can spare some cash to help turn a Texas district blue, please give to Tom Wakely here.