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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28160 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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Texas Politics Lurches Right

Yesterday, for those of you who don't know, was super Tuesday(goodbye Nikki Hailey). Trump's victory in all of the states except one was obviously foreseeable and, while the NYT claimed a Trump-Biden rematch was inevitable in their morning brief, with all due respect to the paper of record, that's kind of been obvious for a while.

More interestingly, Texas's elected republicans in both federal and state politics are assured to be much farther right on average than they were this time last year. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/06/texas-primaries-gop-incumbents-defeated/ I apologize for using a snarl-words filled source, but it's both reasonably comprehensive and not-paywalled.

Texas voters on Tuesday handed more power to the insurgent wing of the Republican Party in an expensive and vengeful primary election, punishing GOP lawmakers, judges and a House speaker who defied hard-right state leaders and their supporters in recent years.

The shockwaves rippled up and down the ballot. Most notably, Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, was forced into a runoff with a well-funded challenger, David Covey, after being targeted by ultra-conservative donors and activists, who faulted the second-term speaker for declining to stop the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton last May.

Paxton backed Covey in the primary, along with many other conservative challengers targeting House members who voted for his impeachment. Joining him in a fight against House incumbents was Gov. Greg Abbott, who targeted those opponents of his signature school voucher program.

They're leaving out that Trump made a set of endorsements of his own, mostly aligning with Ken Paxton's.

Six Texas House Republicans who fought Abbott’s attempt to create a school voucher program in Texas lost their primaries to pro-voucher candidates, while another four were forced into runoffs to defend their rural districts.

Voters also ejected three Republican judges from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, including Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, who garnered less than 40% of the vote. Paxton sought to oust the three judges after they ruled in 2021 that his office didn’t have the power to unilaterally prosecute voter fraud.

"Tonight, Texans have spoken loud and clear,” Paxton said in a statement after judges he campaigned against lost their primaries.

Three Republican members of the Texas State Board of Education were struggling late Tuesday as well, with incumbents Tom Maynard and Pam Little being forced into runoffs and Pat Hardy poised to lose her seat altogether.

Those appeals court candidates benefited majorly from Trump endorsements, and so did several of Greg Abbott's challengers. Now, Ken Paxton has a 5-4 minority of the appeals court supporting his authority to prosecute voter fraud directly, instead of an 8-1 minority. It's... I wouldn't say probable, but certainly within the realm of possibility, for Paxton to get another judge to switch giving him 5-4 the authority to prosecute voter fraud without the cooperation of a district attorney. But it's worth noting that Greg Abbott's endorsements far outperformed Paxton's(https://twitter.com/bradj_TX/status/1765263680210342343) where they conflicted. Turns out getting into a confrontation with the federal government and looking like a winner pays off, to the point of getting majority support from young voters(https://www.newsweek.com/greg-abbott-won-over-gen-z-millennials-1871679).

The other big primary news is that the grassroots conservatives in the Texas house now have at least 10 votes(https://twitter.com/bradj_TX/status/1765400527993540690) in their anti-establishment block. That's not just an arbitrary milestone; 10 challengers to a ruling of the speaker subjects that ruling to a floor vote, which gives Shelley Luther- yes, the one that got arrested for operating a salon during lockdown- the power to potentially force concessions. This group could expand significantly with runoffs. Either way, the Texas state government will assuredly have a much more conservative direction in 2025.

Federally, the democrats decided that Collin Allred, currently the US representative for a nice part of Dallas, will have the honor of losing to Ted Cruz in November. I'm mildly curious as to the odds; will he spend more or less than $100 million to lose? For US house primaries,

That will be evident in the U.S. Capitol, too. In another blow to the bipartisan middle, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, was sent into a runoff with Brandon Herrera to defend his seat after the Republican Party of Texas censured him last year over his support of gun safety legislation and gay marriage, and his willingness to work with Democrats.

A decisive nod to the far right also came in the race to replace veteran U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, a staunch social conservative known for his pragmatism and willingness to compromise with Democrats.

Brandon Herrera is a firearms influencer on social media as a day job.

"Lurches"? That's newspaper headline speak, and I dislike it because I routinely see it being used in "Vatican slams!" or "Conservatives demand!" where, of course, the reasonable nice people are all liberal and get moderate language describing them, the opponents are presented as yelling table-pounding demanding ignoramuses.

Did it "lurch" or did it "move towards"? Would you describe a leftward shift in another state as "Californian politics lurches left"? "Lurching" has negative connotations (clumsy, random, abrupt, uncontrolled) which is why it's used by media to describe the unapproved side.

Lurches might not be the right word but it's definitely something more than drifts or moves towards. I've lived in Texas for more than 20 years, and this past year is the first time that state politics has really impacted my life in a meaningful way. Abbot's fight for vouchers has had the side effect of starving urban school districts, who are unable to raise funding because the state takes the majority of their property tax revenue through the "robin hood" program (and no longer even uses it for education -- now it just goes into the state general fund. It's purely kleptocratic now in a way that I don't believe it always was). My school district is getting rid of librarians and counselors as they can no longer afford them, cutting gifted and talented programs (very much done to piss off the rich -- it's not saving much money but it generates lots of ire), and generally laying off teachers and increasing class sizes. It feels like a game of chicken between the governor and the school district, and right now Abbot is winning (at least from my standpoint as angry parent).

The irony is that school vouchers are not popular in rural districts, where public school tend to be the largest employer. I'm curious how this plays out but I'd really like them to get on with it already, declare a victor in this round of fights and go back to governing.

Also on the lurch -- the republican platforms first plank is completely abolishing property taxes (this was discussed a few months back). There are a number of similarly ludicrous ideas on there -- again -- if it's not a lurch it's definitely something out of the ordinary.

Abbot's fight for vouchers has had the side effect of starving urban school districts, who are unable to raise funding because the state takes the majority of their property tax revenue through the "robin hood" program (and no longer even uses it for education -- now it just goes into the state general fund. It's purely kleptocratic now in a way that I don't believe it always was). My school district is getting rid of librarians and counselors as they can no longer afford them, cutting gifted and talented programs (very much done to piss off the rich -- it's not saving much money but it generates lots of ire), and generally laying off teachers and increasing class sizes.

That sounds awesome. Cutting government funds to religious schools is something I support wholesale.

He hasn’t cut government schools, and the revenue restrictions are unrelated to the voucher fight.

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