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April 18, 2014 3:39 PM
But, Selby's outfit does note Patrick changed his name in case he ever ran for public office
Gardner Selby over at PolitiFact Texas alerts us at Buzz
Central to his fact-check of a claim made in a new ad being run by Lt.
Gov. David Dewhurst all over Texas.
In the 30 second TV spot, it is
asserted that Sen. Dan Patrick,
R-Houston, changed his last name from Goeb to Patrick
because he wanted to "hide from the debts." The Dewhurst campaign did
not provide Selby with any evidence to back up that claim, the article says.
The article does note that one of the reasons Patrick
gave for changing his name at the time he did it was because he wanted to be
able to “present himself as Dan Patrick in any possible bid for elected office.
The entire fact-check
is here.
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Copyright April 18, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 18, 2014 3:08 PM
Back at it on Monday
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Copyright April 18, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 18, 2014 2:47 PM
Democratic issues show strength but candidates remain weak
Public
Policy Polling
turned its attention to Texas this week with two eye-opening reports.
The
first half of the poll reported Wednesday knocked the wind out of Wendy Davis supporters suggesting that her
numbers had dropped and, even worse, she was losing ground with women. Ironically, the second half of the poll (released
Thursday) reported that near to substantial majorities of Texans agree with
Democratic positions on Medicaid expansion (49%), increasing the minimum wage
(55%) and paycheck fairness (93%).
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Harvey Kronberg
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Copyright April 18, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 18, 2014 10:52 AM
Editorial board is quite unimpressed with Toth, Creighton, and Galloway
The
other candidates in the race have legislative careers that are "not impressive"
and the Houston Chronicle says "Almost by default," their
endorsement goes to businessman and Woodlands Township Board member Gordy Bunch. Read the
editorial here.
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Copyright April 18, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 18, 2014 8:50 AM
Subject to hacking, extremely volatile valuations
After the Abbott Campaign announced it would accept Bitcoin contributions, Buzz Central did a little research on the product. A recent Marketwatch story shed light on some of the potential hazards of the "asset".
They wrote:
"What’s not great? The bitcoin exchanges are vulnerable to hacking. Just look at Mt. Gox, which collapsed after it managed to lose some 650,000 bitcoins, or Vircurex, which halted withdrawals after a run on the bank, so to speak. And if something like that happens, good luck getting your money back: This isn’t like an FDIC-insured bank account. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, issued a warning recently that digital currencies are “more than a bit risky.”
"...It’s also volatile as heck, which, come to think of it, seems like a given when you’ve got a currency that isn’t controlled by any central bank. Bitcoin was recently trading around $448, according to the bitcoin price index by CoinDesk. A few months ago, it was more than $1,000. A year ago, it was barely pushing $100. Two years ago, it was about $5.
By Harvey Kronberg
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Copyright April 18, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 17, 2014 5:34 PM
Before a mainly Latino crowd, Dewhurst ripped Patrick in Spanish and English
Our sources in Houston tell Buzz Central on this
Thursday afternoon that Lt. Gov. David
Dewhurst ripped into his challenger Dan
Patrick in some of the harshest rhetoric the incumbent has used yet about
the Houston senator.
Speaking to the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
Luncheon – an event that drew about 2,000 people – Dewhurst spoke about Patrick
in Spanish and English. "Mi oponente
es anti-inmigrante,
anti-Hispano, anti-mujer y yo
no soy ningún de esas cosas,” he said, which means “My opponent is
anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic, anti-woman and I'm not any of those
things."
We’re told Dewhurst followed that with a variation on
what is already a central attack on Patrick contained in television ads that
started airing this week.
“I am the only statewide elected official among all 29
with business experience, and you can tell from my record that I am a
successful businessman, unlike my opponent who isn’t and filed for bankruptcy,”
Dewhurst said.
Patrick’s chief strategist Allen Blakemore has said Dewhurst’s campaign is “spewing raw
sewage, and personally attacking Dan Patrick.”
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright April 17, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 17, 2014 5:33 PM
Dean of the Senate is “shocked by the decisions” of the Office of Violent Sexual Offender Management
Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, is asking the Travis County Public Integrity
Unit, the State Auditor's office and the Office of the Attorney General to
look into what has been reported as a "secret plan" to build a center
for violent sex offenders east of Houston.
The plan, as uncovered
by the Houston Chronicle, was part of an agreement between the Office
of Violent Sexual Offender Management and a company in Houston that’s
owned, in part, by a Houston police officer who was implicated in the theft of
funds from the police union. The center has been planned for a site in Liberty
County.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
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Copyright April 17, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 17, 2014 1:10 PM
Although associated with secret transactions, campaign says full disclosures will be required of contributors
The
Greg
Abbott Campaign today announced that they would accept campaign
contributions using Bitcoin, a digital currency.
Although the electronic currency is most frequently associated with
confidential transactions because it sidesteps financial institutions, the Abbott
team says it will require that campaign contributors using Bitcoin divulge
information including name, address, employer and occupation – items required
for Texas
Ethics Commission campaign finance reports.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
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Copyright April 17, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 17, 2014 1:07 PM
Full report in the Texas Energy Report
By Polly Ross Hughes
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Copyright April 17, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 16, 2014 5:20 PM
Momentum for Blanco in race against Chavez; “Boats ‘N Hoes PAC” is created
Following the revelation that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has decided to get aggressive in his campaign against
challenger Sen. Dan Patrick during Holy
Week, a couple other items of note crossed the Buzz Central desk on
Wednesday afternoon.
First, QR has learned that
the entire El Paso delegation, with the exception of Rep. Joe Pickett, will endorse Cesar
Blanco over former Rep. Norma Chavez
in the race for House District 76.
Sen. Jose
Rodriguez and Reps. Marisa Marquez,
Joe Moody and Mary Gonzalez, who are all Democrats, will gather for an event in El
Paso tomorrow to make their endorsement official. What we're told is that none
of them want to say anything negative about Chavez, but instead they feel
Blanco, a former congressional aide to Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, will do a better
job in the lower chamber.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
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Copyright April 16, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 16, 2014 5:19 PM
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Copyright April 16, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 16, 2014 3:52 PM
Former Perry Asst General Counsel Mike Schofield leads Ann Hodge decisively says Baselice poll.
The TLR PAC press release can be found here.
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Copyright April 16, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 16, 2014 11:06 AM
Lite Guv also keys on Julian Castro’s statement that Patrick is the D’s “meal ticket”; Patrick's camp says Dewhurst has gone "straight for the gutter"
Lt. Gov. David
Dewhurst on Wednesday released a scathing TV ad about his GOP challenger
Sen. Dan Patrick in which the Tea
Party-style candidate is criticized for his business practices as well as his
name change. You can see the ad below. Per
the Express
News, Dewhurst has spent at least $445,000 on the broadcast buy and
the number is expected to rise.
Meantime, in a fundraising email this morning, Dewhurst
said it was “funny” that during last night’s immigration debate, San Antonio
Mayor Julian Castro called Patrick “the most anti-immigration Republican
running for state-wide office.” That is humorous, Dewhurst said, “because when Patrick was racking up hundreds of thousands of
dollars in unpaid taxes, he was also employing illegal immigrants.”
Dewhurst also pointed out that Castro said Patrick is the
kind of Republican who represents the Democrats’ “meal ticket” for a win by the
minority part in November.
The incumbent’s campaign also posted this
fact-check about Patrick’s history on their anti-Patrick blog called “Real
Dan Patrick.”
Allen Blakemore,
chief strategist for Patrick, said Dewhurst has gone “right for the gutter”
with attack ad. “"Over the next seven days, he is spending over $1,000,000
polluting the airwaves, spewing raw sewage, and personally attacking Dan
Patrick. Mr. Dewhurst’s ad offers no
excuse for his own record of failure to secure the border, failure to address
property taxes that are driving people from their homes, and a failure to
deliver a fiscally responsible budget," Blakemore said.
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Copyright April 16, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 15, 2014 9:23 PM
Patrick: "I'm the only candidate the Democrats fear." Castro: "Actually you're our meal ticket back in."
In an hour-long exchange that shed nearly zero light on policy but did give
both sides plenty of heat to try to exploit with various constituencies, Sen. Dan Patrick and San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro talked past each other in
perhaps the oddest debate we've seen since Patrick debated another elected
official he wasn't running against. But, the two did earn plenty of applause
from a small audience in Univision’s studios in the Alamo
City.
QR readers will remember that Sen. Patrick
similarly debated State Board of Education Vice Chairman Thomas Ratliff in Tyler about an issue that, like immigration, had inflamed
some on the right: The CSCOPE lesson plans that had
been criticized as “un-American” by some but that educators have said are a
necessary tool. That, of course, is a fringe issue compared to immigration and border security, which will shape the state's economy and political reality for decades to come.
In
Tuesday night’s debate in San Antonio, Sen. Patrick started off by saying he is
compassionate and added that it should concern Democrats like Castro to see
women being raped by those engaged in human smuggling and to likewise see communities
savaged by those in the drug trade.
"You
can get emotional about this and political about this, but your job is to
protect the safety of the city," Patrick said. The frontrunner for the GOP
Lite Guv nomination faulted members of both parties in Washington for not
acting on immigration reform. He said that if legal immigration was expanded
and the border was secured, “illegal immigration would stop.”
"Texas
is not being invaded by Mexico," Castro said and pointed out that the US
Senate has already passed a bipartisan bill to address both border
security as well as create a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants
who earn it.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright April 15, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 15, 2014 5:52 PM
The link to watch live right at 6pm via the Houston Chronicle is
here.
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Copyright April 15, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 15, 2014 5:32 PM
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Copyright April 15, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 15, 2014 1:19 PM
Patrick leads Van de Putte by 16
The summary for Public Policy Polling can be found here.
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Copyright April 15, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 14, 2014 5:21 PM
Battleground says they knocked over 55,000 doors; RPT chair says it’s not possible and irrelevant
The head of Battleground Texas and the chairman
of the Republican Party of Texas each had harsh words for the other
about their respective voter outreach efforts on Monday.
There has, of course, been a lot of chatter about how
much difference it will make in the governor’s race between Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis and Republican AG Greg Abbott to have Battleground here working
to create Democratic political infrastructure, which has been on par with water and transportation infrastructure in Afghanistan. For now, they seem to be
making some inroads.
In an email to supporters, Battleground’s executive
director Jenn Brown said the RPT
had promised to knock on 60,000 doors in March, but ended up doing 10,000
instead. "They fell 50,000 doors short," Brown said. "While
enthusiasm is waning for Republicans, it's never been higher for us. That same
week, we set a goal of 100,000 phone calls for Wendy -- and made 145,287."
Brown said "the GOP is no longer the only game in
Texas. We're proving every day that our grassroots volunteers are a force to be
reckoned with." Battleground volunteers set out with the goal of knocking
on 48,000 doors this past weekend and ended up with a total of over 55,000,
Brown said.
The head of the majority party dismissed Brown’s claim
out of hand.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright April 14, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 14, 2014 4:40 PM
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Copyright April 14, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 14, 2014 4:25 PM
In Texas Energy Report: House Energy Resources chair says candidate holding onto energy interests ‘opens up this whole can of worms’
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Copyright April 14, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 14, 2014 3:23 PM
Some have called Bunch the "dark horse" candidate in the race to succeed former Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands
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Copyright April 14, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 14, 2014 3:05 PM
On another track, Coalition notes possible impeachable offenses, calls for Hall to resign
The report
reviewing the conduct of UT Regent Wallace Hall prepared by attorney Rusty Hardin for the Select
Committee on Transparency in State Agency Operations has been formally
referred to Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg and County Attorney David
Escamilla, QR has learned.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Harvey Kronberg
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Copyright April 14, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 14, 2014 1:50 PM
Finding a governing coalition after previous budget maneuvers could be tough
Whether
true or not, the endorsement of Dan
Patrick by both incumbent Senator Bob
Deuell and Texans for Lawsuit Reform have been
taken by many in the capitol community as
the last word on the viability of a Dewhurst
re-election. Given the even longer-shot
nature of the Democrats’ winning the Lt. Governor’s race, war-gaming for next
session has already begun
The
only thing the Legislature must do is pass a budget. Call it armchair speculation, but even more
than a year away, it is not unreasonable to speculate that it will take multiple
special sessions to hammer out a budget.
Senator Patrick’s performance on state budgets has been erratic and
while Tea Party interests may dominate a mid-term primary election runoff, they
are minor players in the state’s trillion dollar economy and twenty-five
million residents.
The
state’s budget is perhaps the most daunting task facing any Legislature. It requires good faith negotiation and buy-in
from myriad constituencies. The appropriators have to negotiate competing interests
– those both on camera and off.
In
his freshman session, Patrick angered his colleagues by handing out several
pages of proposed cuts he claimed the Finance Committee could have made…as the
bill was coming to the floor. The anger
was generated not because it threatened passage of a session’s worth of work
but because it was seen as an effort to capture the narrative. Civilians outside the Capitol would see the
proposed cuts and remain clueless that they were introduced too late to be
considered or had already been rejected.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Harvey Kronberg
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Copyright April 14, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 14, 2014 12:49 PM
Despite deep cuts in standardized testing, senators still worry about standards and the amount of testing
A
greater percentage of Texas high school students are on track to graduate under
the STAAR testing system than had
been under the TAKS, members of the Senate
Education Committee were told on Monday. But lawmakers on the panel –
about a third of whom are seeking statewide office this year – are still concerned
that teachers are teaching to a test and that standards for passing it are low
enough that they leave kids ill-equipped for college or a career.
For
about an hour, senators grilled the Texas Education Agency’s Associate
Commissioner of Assessment & Accountability Criss Cloudt. She told the panel that 76 percent of students in the
class of 2015 have successfully completed 4 of the 5 tests they’ll need to
graduate. It is the first class that has to pass the 5 assessments required
under reforms to standardized testing.
Under
questioning by senators, Cloudt said that when the state used the Texas
Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, 28 percent were not on track to
graduate because of their test scores. That number has fallen to 24 percent
under the end-of-course exams called the State of Texas Assessments of Academic
Readiness, or STAAR. However, it is not
really an apples-to-apples comparison, Cloudt said, mainly because these are
very different tests.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright April 14, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 11, 2014 5:19 PM
"We have to able to negotiate in some areas and compromise on some things.”
TYLER
– The longtime educator who defeated two-term incumbent Rep. George Lavender, R-Texarkana, said this
week he’s going to bring the ability to compromise with those he might not necessarily
agree with in order to get things done in the Texas House. Gary VanDeaver is the Superintendent of the New Boston Independent School
District and said that he’s going to take a reasoned approach to
governing in Austin. He won 54 to 46.
When
Quorum
Report caught up with VanDeaver at an education conference at the University
of Texas at Tyler this week, he was visiting with other superintendents
and school board members about the challenges ahead for public schools in the
2015 session. "We have to able to negotiate in some areas and compromise
on some things," he said. "Maybe we don't get everything we want but
maybe we get some of what we need."
His
experience working on a school district’s budget will help guide him in how he
thinks about school finance after the courts weigh in, VanDeaver said. He and
other observers expect The Legislature to be under court
order to address how schools are financed. "The suit is going to dictate
where we go as far as finance," he said.
VanDeaver
also expects there to be much scrutiny of House Bill 5 when it comes to both
the amount of standardized testing required by law and the multiple pathways
that were created for a high school diploma. “That was a huge piece of
legislation and as we implement it we're going to see some things that are
going to need some attention," he said.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright April 11, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 11, 2014 5:18 PM
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Copyright April 11, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 11, 2014 4:31 PM
Times calls decision inexplicable; says they had an understanding with Emmis Communications
Texas Monthly editor Jake Silverstein was hired to become editor of the New York Times Sunday Magazine.. The New York Times post about the lawsuit can be found here.
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Copyright April 11, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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April 11, 2014 11:06 AM
Longtime lobbyist and lawyer argues the new rule is constitutional, will not affect pending litigation, and the TEC has the authority to adopt it.
The
man behind the sworn complaints against Michael
Quinn Sullivan and Empower Texans says the Ethics
Commission should make a move on a proposed rule for "dark
money" in Texas and further argues he can see no reason why they should
not. It's an issue that, as you know, was acted on by The Legislature last year
but the bill to address it was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Perry.
In
written comments to the TEC this week, lobbyist Steve Bresnen argues that the rule he's
proposed is constitutional, the agency has the authority to adopt it, and it
would not affect any pending litigation. That last one has been a concern of a couple commissioners.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
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Copyright April 11, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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