Wendy Davis Triumphs Over Thinly-Veiled Nonsense
Thu, 01/24/2008 - 1:18pm
The bogus claims of ineligibility against state senate candidate Wendy Davis were refuted by an appeals court yesterday. Kim Brimer's attempt to avoid a real race has failed, for now.
This is one of those incredibly transparent political maneuvers that borders on the totally ludicrous, and the hearing in the Second Court Of Appeals reflected that:
In a 50-minute hearing in downtown Fort Worth Wednesday morning, Justice John Cayce questioned whether citizens have legal grounds to challenge a political candidates' eligibility.
Craig Deats, a lawyer with the Texas Fire Fighters Association who represented the local firefighters, was forced to spend nearly half his time before the judges defending his clients' right to pursue the suit.
There is absolutely no reason for a legal challenge like this other than a desire by Brimer and his supporters to avoid a campaign. And they wouldn't want to avoid a campaign unless they thought they were in real danger of getting trounced. I wouldn't expect this silly legal challenge to be the last one we see.
For other good reporting on this, see the Lone Star Project and Todd Hill over at Burnt Orange.
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Procedural Challenges
By Patrick M McLeod
Thu, 01/24/2008 - 2:27pm
From what I've heard and read, there have been a whole lot of procedural challenges by Texas Republicans against Texas Democrats in this cycle. Maybe I think there have been a lot because I've not tried to keep up with them in prior cycles.
My hunch is that this is because they're A) seeing more Democratic challengers and B) are more concerned about their Democratic challengers.
This makes sense when you consider the Republican fascinating with disenfranchisement masquerading as concerns over voter fraud. They want to challenge anyone and everyone who isn't going to vote for them at every possible step to discourage competition and discourage voting.
We'd better be ready come November, because I expect they're going to be trying to kneecap democracy even more so in 2008 than they did in 2004.