Welcome to the Texas edition of CrashingTheStates--featuring John Courage and the bloggers from the Burnt Orange Report!
Previous entries: NC-08 (Larry Kissell); VA-Sen (Jim Webb); DC interviews; PA-07 and PA-08 (Joe Sestak and Patrick Murphy); NJ-07 (Linda Stender); NYS-41: 1 and 2 (Brian Keeler); CT-Sen (Ned Lamont); NH-02 (Paul Hodes); NY-29 (Eric Massa); IN-06 (Barry Welsh); IL-10 and IL-14 (Dan Seals and John Laesch).
Today's entry comes to you live from Helena, MT--where we have just come by way of Casper, Wyoming after a visit at Gary Trauner's headquarters. We're in town for the next two days to visit with the Jon Tester campaign.
So follow below the fold--the adventure continues in Texas!
John Courage is challenging multi-term incumbent Lamar Smith in Texas' 21st district--one of the districts that was caught up in Tom Delay's redistricting efforts and whose most recent redistricting was declared unconstitutional because of its adverse effect on minority voting rights. The district in its current form encompasses six counties in between Austin and San Antonio, including portions of both cities:
Because the court-ordered "re-redistricting" invalidated the primary results, this is actually a special election--and if no candidate gets over 50%, we'll have a December runoff!
BUT FIRST:
Now, the last time I blogged about our trip, I blogged about our stay in Chicago. So it's a little unseemly to immediately start talking about Austin and San Antonio without doing a little bit of discussion about how exactly we got down there, and what we saw along the way! So let's start there.
We overnighted on Tuesday night in Southern Illinois before making the drive south to Memphis, where we met up with Jim Derych, author of the DailyKos favorite Confessions of a Former Dittohead.
Jim gave us a whirlwind tour of the city of Memphis--starting with the Civil Rights Museum, which perfectly preserves the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated:
And when I say perfectly preserved, that's exactly what I mean--right down to the fact that they have cars in the parking lot that were actually parked there on April 4, 1968. Standing there felt strange to me. The night before his murder, in a startling act of prescience, Dr. King had said:
I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we as a people will get to the promised land.
It made me wonder what Dr. King might say if he were in a position to observe today's political situation. If he had been here to see an ever-increasing percentage of minorities fall below the poverty line. If he had been here to watch what happened to New Orleans. It made me realize that it takes more than legislation to create equality. It takes an actual desire to create equal opportunity on the part of those who lead government. And it made me question how far we've really come since then.
Jim also took us around to a host of other landmarks in Memphis such as Beale Street, one of the birthplaces of blues. And he treated us to dinner at the Rendezvous, one of Memphis' finest barbecue restaurants--but not before getting each of us a pair of souvenir Elvis sunglasses.
Our next stop after Memphis was Texarkana, which lies on the state line between Texas and Arkansas. In fact, "Texarkana" is really two cities--Texarkana, AR, and Texarkana, TX--and they meet at State Line Avenue. In fact, the turn lane of State Line Avenue is the state line between Texas and Arkansas.
Texarkana has a unique building: the only courthouse built in two cities, two counties and two states. The official address of the building is Texarkana, USA.
I knew that I was entering interesting territory when I started seeing monuments to Confederate soldiers. I half expected to see George Allen show up any minute. But despite these "cultural differences," Texarkana, does have its advantages--after all, how often do you get to blog in two states at once?
AND NOW FOR TX-21!
Now, I'm from L.A.--and I thought our traffic was bad. But Texas apparently takes things up to a whole different level--chiefly because there is freeway construction EVERYWHERE. I don't know how anyone ever gets around in between Austin and San Antonio. I really don't. We were in a traffic jam that put anything L.A. has to offer to shame.
Somehow, we made it to Austin, picked up our local cinematographer Adam, and got up early the next morning to take the trek down to San Antonio to meet John.
Now, like I touched on earlier, the race in TX-21 is unlike any other race in the nation right now. The election in November is not the general election--it is instead a special election, an open primary, which is being held because the court-ordered re-redistricting of TX-21 invalidated the results of the primary (as well as made it more difficult for Courage, because it eliminated some Democratic areas from the district). Now, the latest polls from the race show John down 45.5 to 30.5--and that's a good sign. The reason is that if no candidate gets over 50% in this open primary, we'll head to a December runoff, which will be one of only a handful of races scattered throughout the country occurring then, and might well become the focus of the entire blogosphere and the DCCC should John be able to force a runoff in this district. We might well see a repeat of Paul Hackett in OH-02's special election--and if we do, I'm planning on a return trip to Austin!
John's agenda on Friday consisted of a media tour of the "Hill Country"--a more rural area toward the Southwest of his district. His first stop was with a right-wing radio talk show host in Kerrville. Now, just to let you know what we're dealing with there, the radio host had in front of him two things: a copy of the bible and a copy of the Constitution. Each very well worn.
I was actually pleasantly surprised--it didn't go like I expected, and the host actually showed remarkable respect for John and gave him adequate time and space to give his answers without interruption. John's responses on tax cuts, the economy and gay marriage were all, in my opinion, spot on. The only issue about which the radio host started pontificating was the issue of making a voting ID mandatory--the host started railing against the Democrats that voted against the measure, saying that the only reason to vote against it was that Democrats wanted to allow dogs and dead people to vote. John did a very nice job explaining the concept of why this was in essence a poll tax, but I sincerely doubt that the argument reached its way to the top, given the audience.
Now, one of the things I learned very quickly in Texas is that there are apparently only two food groups down here. The first is barbecue:
The second is Dairy Queen:
John Courage took us to both during our first day in his district, but not without incident: after his radio interview in Kerrville, we went to a nearby barbecue place, which just happened to have burned down a couple of hours previously! So make a note--always get your barbecue pits under control.
Now, for those who think that all barbecue is the same, I should point out that there's a large difference between Memphis barbecue and Texas barbecue--and it appears that both camps disparage the other camp as "not real barbecue." Memphis barbecue is dry barbecue: meat--usually pork--that is barbecued with certain herbs and spices and is designed to be eaten without sauce. Texas barbecue, on the other hand, is much more beef-heavy, and is all about the sauce that you put on it. (I'm really sorry to be going into this, OrangeClouds--but when in Rome...)
John had a couple of other media events that day, including an interview with a local newspaper in Bandera, as well as a TV spot recording on the banks of the Guadalupe river outside Kerrville:
After John's media tour in the Hill Country, our crew headed back up to Austin for the 22nd birthday party of KT, the founder of the Texas Soapblox blog, the Burnt Orange Report--who also blogs on DailyKos as KTinTX (in the orange shirt and white cap). The party took place at the True Blue Travis coordinated campaign headquarters in Austin, and included many luminaries in Texas politics, both netroots and grassroots--including the much-beloved Hank Gilbert (the guy in the burgundy shirt and cowboy hat), who is running for Ag commissioner.
It will be essentially useless for me to try to identify and remember every single person who was there, so please--identify yourselves in the comments! I simply don't have the memory to keep up with...uh...y'all :-)
Now, if you're not familiar with Texas politics, Austin is the exception to the typical stereotypes about the Texas political scene in that it has a large progressive base--something aided by the fact that the University of Texas (where KT is a student) just happens to be located in the city. And the True Blue Travis coordinated campaign office (Travis is the county in which Austin is located) seems unique, at least by my experience visiting field offices. It is, from what I understand, a central headquarters where the local branches of all campaigns relevant to the area--both local and statewide--are run. And from what the people on the ground told me while I was there, it is extremely effective--though I should probably let the locals explain exactly what it does. Suffice it so say that after we wrapped up at the birthday party, a bunch of us from the office went out for--you guessed it--MORE BARBECUE!
Now, if you're going to be eating this much barbecue, it's important to choose your meats wisely and vary them up, because you can only eat so much brisket in one day. Or at least, that's what my stomach intimated to me during the course of the day.
Austin itself seems to have an interesting scene to it--and perhaps I'll get the chance to explore it some more should I return in December for a runoff election. But my favorite part of the city was the State Capitol building, which definitely ranks among the most beautiful I've seen anywhere. It's a majestic building whose base is made of a particular pinkish granite native to Texas:
But as grandiose as the building was, and as beautiful as it was, I couldn't help but feel that it was tainted by the dirty politics that started in Texas and came from there to Washington, DC. Not only George Bush (though he came from the Governor's mansion), but in particular TRMPAC and Tom Delay. It was here that the smashmouth politics of corrupt redistricting and dirty lobbyist money was perfected--and then they took what they did right there, in that building, and brought it to the entire nation. And we're all paying the price.
But enough of my angry musings on the Texas Capitol :-)
We got up early the next morning to make the drive back down to San Antonio, where John's campaign was organizing a large canvassing operation. John himself walked some precincts, and we followed him around with our cameras:
Later on in the day, there was a candidate forum with some small town whose name I in fact no longer remember--but what was memorable is that in addition to John Courage, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Chris Bell, spoke at the assembly. Chris Bell also gave us a brief interview after the event, despite his hectic schedule.
Now, for those of you who don't know Chris Bell--he's the Democratic candidate for Governor of Texas, and he's challenging Rick Perry in this weird election that's also featuring the independent candidates Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman. Chris Bell is a former Congressman who, owing to Delay's redistricting antics, was forced into a primary with another Democratic Congressman when his city of residence was merged into another Democratic district. He ended up losing that primary to the other Democratic incumbent, and ended up breaking the "ethics truce" by filing three ethics complaints against Tom Delay--two of which resulted in reprimands, and began the downward spiral of Delay's political career.
We attended one last event with John--a union picnic at a private ranch--before beginning our drive to Colorado Springs. Stay tuned for my write-ups on CO-05 and CO-06--to be cross-posted on SquareState.net!