With Mechler of Amarillo as candidate, GOP chairman race is down to the wire

The stage is set. As Texas Republicans hold their biennial convention a week from today, this time in Dallas, it looks like a nasty fight for party chairman will go down to the wire.

This means that Amarillo businessman Tom Mechler, who like Steve Munisteri of Houston, is challenging interim chairwoman Cathie Adams of Dallas, has as good a chance as his two rivals. Party leaders chose Adams in October when Chairwoman Tina Benkister of Houston resigned to join the re-election campaign of Gov. Rick Perry.

Mechler says the Grand Old Party of Texas needs a fresh start because under Adams and Benkister the party is drowning in debt. The Texas Tribune recently reported that the party’s debt has ballooned from about $70,000 in 2003 to $624,000 last year.

So, like Munisteri, Mechler is making the party’s debt a big campaign issue. In addition, since he launched his campaign a year ago, Mechler has complained that the party needs a new start because in recent years Texas Democrats have gained on Republicans, especially in the Texas House of Representatives where the party now holds a slim 77-73 majority compared to 88-62 in 2004.

The three-candidate race is considered a toss up because more than half of the expected delegates are first-timers, which mean that they owe no allegiance to Adams or anyone else in the leadership.

The GOP chairman race is expected to get lots of attention on June 12 because the party needs to get its own house in order before taking on the Democrats in November. The fall election is critical to both major political parties because control of the Texas Legislature is at stake, just like it was in 2008.

How bad will the state budget deficit be? Too soon to tell

By now is all over the news. State officials are projecting that the shortfall the Texas Legislature is expecting for the next biennium could be as high as $18 billion.

Could it be higher? Well, you’d be the judge. Back in September when Texas House Speaker Joe Straus first mentioned the likelihood of a deficit, the estimated amount was $12 billion. Then, two months ago, at a House Appropriations Committee hearing, the figure went up to $15 billion.

This is in spite of Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Straus recommending to all state agencies in January to cut their budgets by 5 percent.

But on the bright side, the state’s Rainy Day Fund, now estimated at $7.6 billion, is expected to grow to $8.2 billion by the end of the year. In addition, sales tax collections had a modest increase in April compared to the same month last year. Moreover, the unemployment rate has remained steady at 8.2 percent for several months, a sign that at least the state is not losing as many jobs as last year when the recession reportedly hit bottom.

So, with eight months to go before the 82nd Legislature convenes anything goes. Bur regardless of the final revenue projection State Comptroller Susan Combs makes on Jan. 10, the day before the legislative session starts, there is no doubt that the Legislature will face a shortfall.

Moreover, as Straus suggested to the Appropriations Committee this morning, no matter how much the shortfall is, don’t raise taxes.

In all, the big question mark for now is whether the projected shortfall will hurt less, as much, or, worse than the $10 billion deficit the lawmakers faced in 2003 when all kinds of services and programs were drastically cut to offset the loss of revenue.

Only time will tell.

Primary runoffs are over but political activity to continue

The primary season is over but that doesn’t necessarily mean that, at least for the Panhandle and the South Plains, the political activity will take a break till the fall election.

Pretty soon you are likely to hear noise, particularly from the Republican Party, because Amarillo businessman Tom Mechler says he is just as committed to run for chairman of the state party as he was a year ago when then-Chairwoman Tina Benkiser was in charge.

“The problems that existed when I entered the race (last June) still exist today,” Mechler said this afternoon. In October Benkiser resigned to join the re-election campaign of Gov. Rick Perry and she was succeeded by Cathie Adams.

Mechler was ineligible to succeed Benkiser because state law stipulates that when a state chairman or vice chairman of a political party steps down he or she must be replaced by someone of the same gender.

But at party conventions, when the membership elects new officers, anyone in good standing is eligible to run for a leadership post. The state Republican convention, which is held every two years, is scheduled for June 11-12 in Dallas this year.

Mechler and other Republicans have long complained that in the past several years the Democrats have gained on Republicans, particularly in the Texas Legislature where the party now has narrow majority compared to 2003 when it had an 81-69 majority in the House and 19-12 in the Senate.

To no one's surprise, the Shami gubernatorial campaign is in disarray

You know a political campaign is going nowhere when top aides resign after early voting has started. In this instance, it is the troubled gubernatorial campaign of Democratic hopeful Farouk Shami, the hair-products millionaire from Houston.

The Austin American-Statesman reported early this afternoon that several of Shami’s aides resigned after a chaotic day triggered by a bizarre e-mail exchange Capitol and political reporters received. The e-mail that started the whole thing accused former Houston Mayor Bill White of being an early supporter of a racial profiling plan, a claim the Shami campaign is now disavowing.

White is the leading gubernatorial candidate in the crowded field of Democrats and he is by far the best known despite the millions of dollars Shami is spending to become well-known among Texas Democrats.

The disarray in the Shami campaign is not surprising because since a Feb. 8 televised debate with White, he has stumbled almost daily. For instance, in the hour-long debate Shami said that “a day without Mexicans is like a day without sunshine." Then, in an interview with a Dallas TV station when he was asked to elaborate on that comment Shami said that Hispanics are essential to the Texas workforce because whites don’t like to work in factories.

And in a subsequent interview with a Houston TV station Shami left open the possibility that the Bush administration might have been involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, just like his Republican counterpart Debra Medina did in a radio interview with conservative commentator Glenn Beck the day before.

Based on letters to the editor in various newspapers and on readers’ comments posted on the online stories newspapers post, one has to wonder how much effort – and money – Shami will continue putting into his campaign. After all, there are less than two weeks left before the March 2 primary and recent polls indicate that his run for governor is going nowhere.

Gubernatorial hopeful Shami invited to a debate. But is he a serious candidate?

This just came in. Dallas TV station KERA, a PBS affiliate, has just announced that it will sponsor a Feb. 8 debate between Democratic hopefuls Bill White, the former Mayor of Houston, and Houston hair-care magnate Farouk Shami.

One question that comes to mind is what criteria the station used to invite the two candidates considering there are seven Democrats running in the March 2 primary and with the exception of White they are virtually unknown. The only thing Shami has going for him is his money.

Shami, who was born in what was once Palestine but is now a U.S. citizen, has vowed to spend at least $10 million of his own to run for governor. But other than that, it is hard to see how he qualifies as a serious candidate worthy of an invitation to a televised debate.

For instance, the Austin American-Statesman just reported on its Website that in a meeting with the newspaper’s editorial board Shami could not name state officials like the attorney general and the state comptroller. Nor did he know who represents him in the Texas Legislature. And certainly he didn’t know the size of the state budget.

Millions of Texans probably don’t know their state representative or senator either much less the comptroller or the attorney general. But then again, most people don’t run for governor either. However, they expect their candidates not only to be well-informed but –most important – be qualified for the public office they seek.

So far Shami has come across as unprepared which is why it is hard to take him seriously as a candidate for governor.

Medina is now getting the attention she wanted. But not all of it is favorable

Former Wharton County Republican Party chairwoman Debra Medina, who is seeking her party’s nomination for governor, is finally getting the attention her campaign wanted.

Medina, who is not as well-known as incumbent Rick Perry and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry’s main rival in the March 2 Republican primary, will participate in the televised debate that Dallas-based Belo Corp. will be broadcasting on its TV stations and on Texas Cable News tomorrow night.

Medina, you may recall, also participated in the Jan. 14 debate that the PBS network carried statewide.

Although things are looking good Medina – her latest poll approvals are 12 percent compared to no more than 7 percent in previous surveys – she is also getting a taste of what is like being in the spotlight. And not everything has been pleasant.

For instance, the Dallas Morning News reported earlier this week that she spent campaign money on clothing and Medina had to explain why, However, the newspaper’s report didn’t create political storm like the one former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin created when it was reported that the Republican Party spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on her wardrobe when she running for vice president.

All things considered, even if Medina does well again in tomorrow night’s debate the best political analysts expect from her is to be the spoiler in the Republican race for governor, forcing Perry and Hutchison into an April runoff.

And this is not only because of her lack of name recognition. Medina just doesn’t have the funds to run a major statewide campaign because the money she has raised is pocket change compared to the millions Perry and Hutchison have raised in more than a year.

But in this year of political discontent anything can happen and few candidates have articulated the discontent with Washington and with politicians in general as well as Medina who describes herself in her latest TV commercial as one of us.

Land Commission candidates trying to make the race humorous

Here is pop quiz for you. Who were the candidates for Texas Land Commissioner in the 2006 election and who won?

If you can’t answer it, don’t feel bad. Most Texans probably don’t even know what the office is about.

But the way Republican incumbent Jerry Patterson and his Democratic challenger Hector Uribe are going, the Land Commissioner’s race could be the most entertaining this year.

First Patterson, a Second Amendment type of guy who as a state senator in the 1990s authored the bill that allows Texans who qualify get a concealed gun permit, quipped that he should have shot Uribe when he had a chance. The two men reportedly had roles in the movie the Alamo where Uribe played the role of a member of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s army.

Now the political newsletter Quorum reports that Uribe is already up on statewide TV, prompting Patterson to respond “Go ahead Hector…I know what you’re thinkin’..,make my day,” a line borrowed from Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.

Who said that politicians don’t have a sense of humor? Oh, and by the way, the answer to the pop quiz is Patterson, Democrat VaLinda Hathcox andLibertarian Michael French. And, of course, Patterson won - with 55 percent of the vote.