Skip to main content

Democrats for Free Ballot Access in Texas? Not really

As the story about the Texas GOP being so scared that Libertarian candidates shaving off 5% here or 3% there might cost it control of the House is picked up by media outlets all over the Lone Star State, finally we hear from the Texas Dems.

From the Houston Chronicle:

The Texas Democratic Party and the Texas House Democratic leadership just weighed in with harsh words for Speaker Tom Craddick and Republican efforts to get Libertarians to drop out of legislative races this year.

Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie said it was inappropriate for Craddick's chief of staff to host a meeting in a state office to discuss the political landscape.

Speaker Craddick has resorted to using his official taxpayer funded staff in order to strong-arm Libertarian challengers into dropping out of races. It clear Republicans see the writing on the wall and are terrified they will lose seats once again this November.

"Using taxpayer funded state employees to manipulate an election is unethical and a betrayal of the public trust," said Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie. "While Speaker Craddick's antics are unfortunate and seriously undermine our electoral process, shady dealings like these are simply what Texans have come to expect from Republican politicians."


Democratic caucus Chairman Jim Dunnam said Craddick "has truly sunk to a new low, using state employees to try and buy people directly off the ballot." Dunnam said Craddick is desperate to hold onto power.

"This latest stunt is another sad attempt by Tom Craddick to cling to his 'absolute' power. His attempts to urge qualified candidates off the ballot are just plain wrong. While there is little doubt that he is desperate to save his own political hide, this saga raises further questions about Tom Craddick's misuse of state resources and his taxpayer-funded staff to pursue his personal political agenda," Dunnam concluded.


This would be a positive move, if it weren't equally as self-serving as the GOP effort to remove Libertarians from the ballot. The Texas Democrats have no interest in opening up the political process to third parties in the name of stronger representative democracy, and you can bet that if the Libertarians were threatening Dem incumbents, many shoes would be worn on other feet.

You can listen to LPT Executive Director interviewed about this issue by the Chronicle here. Wes makes the point that it is pretty transparently hypocritical for Texas GOPers to ask Libertarians to step down in order to help the GOP save smaller government, when for the last decade the Republicans haven't been the party of small government. Definitely worth a listen.

But Benedict's interview only skirts by the bigger issue (even though he does discuss growing the party), which is that political parties capable of garnering 4-5% are a whole different category of creature than those stuck at 1-2%. In today's world, 4-5% as often as not represents the decisive difference between the Demopublican candidates, and a huge chunk of the Independent vote that both covet. In Parliamentary systems, a party managing 4-5% would have seats in the legislature and a junior partnership in a multi-party coalition.

It becomes critical for the two major parties (starting with the one most immediately affected) to prune back a third party consistently showing 4-5%, because the next step is 7-8%. At a 7-8% average, you will occasionally get a candidate capable of grabbing a plurality against weak Demopublicans or in strange circumstances. At a consistent 7-8%, the Libertarian Party would be in position to actually win a Congressional seat somewhere in the next decade.

This is scary stuff--this year especially to Republicans, whose brand has been seriously damaged by eight years of Constitution-shredding and adventurous foreign wars under Dubya.

Keep your eye on Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?