Travis County DA: Maura Phelan's Summary Argument

"The righteous is delivered from trouble, And it comes to the wicked instead."
Proverbs 11:8

Excellent summation of the state and stakes of the Travis County D.A. race:



Highlights:

• Everything I have done in my professional life has prepared me for this position; my opponent is not prepared.

• Over 20 years criminal law experience.

• It needs to be someone who has done the job.

2016 Austin/Travis County November Candidate Endorsements

"When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice;
But when a wicked man rules, the people groan."
Proverbs 29:2

[Author's Note: For races where we don't offer endorsements, our longstanding rule of thumb in local elections is to take the Austin Chronicle's endorsements and  vote AGAINST whoever they endorse.]

Austin City Council:

District 6: Don Zimmerman (Far Northwest Austin)

In two years in office, despite being in the distinct minority, Don Zimmerman has successfully stopped a hostile annexation, fought multiple municipal level attacks on the first amendment, and delivered traffic congestion solutions for a fraction of what the city bureaucracy proposed.

He's also one of only two council members to have voted against the ride-sharing and short-term rental regulations that have caused so much discord; if the council majority had listened to Don Zimmerman, most of the unpleasantness of the past year could have been avoided.

Finally, Don Zimmerman gives a voice at city hall to those who have been abused by the city bureaucracy (and, let's not kid ourselves, Don Zimmerman is the only reason Marc Ott left town).

District 7: Natalie Gauldin (North Central Austin; Burnet Rd./Parmer Ln. corridors)

In a city that needs to build 150,000 units of new housing over the next decade, Natalie Gauldin is a tenacious advocate for new housing supply.  She has the slings and arrows to prove it.  Just last week, her political opponents launched an over the top smear website against her (Author's Note: Austin Transit Blog has a through rebuke of the allegations here.)

Natalie is also a vote to repeal the ridesharing and STR regulations; obviously, the incumbent voted for both.

On taxation, we've had more productive discussions with Natalie than we've ever had with the incumbent; we don't expect to agree with her on every single issue, but she's light years better than the incumbent.

Distict 10: Rob Walker (West Austin)

This is a last minute addition, and a bit of a longshot, but we met Rob Walker over the weekend and liked what we heard.

Rob is the only viable candidate in this race to oppose the Mayor's "corridor" bond and he supports repealing the ride-sharing regulations.

Rob remains a work in progress on housing issues, but there are no perfect candidates in this race and Rob Walker offers, by far, the best issue mix of any of them.

AGAINST: Prop 1 "Mobility Bond" (aka. Adler's "Corridor" Bond)

This thing costs far too much to deliver far too little.  The city transportation department simply isn't capable of pulling off this complex of a project in anything remotely resembling a competent or timely manner.  And the process by which the bond package was developed was terminally shady.

And that's before you get into the degree to which this package is, in reality, a corrupt "redevelopment" scheme.

Read our archive about this package here.

Austin ISD Trustees:

No endorsements.  They all look terrible.  See the note about the Austin Chronicle above.

Austin Community College Trustees:

Place 9: Jeremy Story

An entrepreneur and philanthropist, Jeremy Story has built successful enterprises in both the for and non-profit sectors.

We heard Jeremy outline his pro-student, pro-taxpayer agenda for ACC a couple weeks ago.  Suffice to say, an organization that currently sees only 4% of its students move on to four year colleges has considerable room for improvement.  He also supports streamlining the process by which student may obtain certifications in skilled trades.

On the pro-taxpayer side, Jeremy Story is the only candidate running for the ACC board (IN ANY PLACE) who supports a moratorium on tax hikes.  This is important because if there's a single member of the board raising heck during the budget process, that will attract the attention of the media.  Case in point: Don Zimmerman.

Other places: No endorsements, but....

We haven't done our own homework, but we've heard reasonably positive things about Douglas Gibbons in place 6 and Michael Lewis in place 4 from ACC sources.

Travis County Races:

District Attorney: Maura Phelan

Maura Phelan has over 20 years of criminal law experience, her opponent last practiced criminal law in the 1980's; Maura Phelan is the only candidate for District Attorney who has the basic qualifications for the office.

Beyond qualifications, Maura Phelan wants to reduce the backlog of mental health cases that keep vulnerable citizens in jail by default.  Currently, the Travis County DA only has one attorney overseeing 10,000 mental health cases.  This is abhorrent.

Finally, Maura Phelan will end the disgraceful criminalization of political differences which the Travis County DA's office has become notorious over the past few decades.

Sheriff: Joe Martinez

Joe Martinez is the only thing standing between us and a nightmarish outbreak of politicized identity politics in the Travis County Sheriff's office.

Similar to Maura Phelan, Martinez also wants to focus on mental health to keep these vulnerable citizens away from violent criminals.

Then, of course, there's that whole second amendment thing.





Commissioner's Court, Precinct 3: Gerald Daugherty

We supported his opponent in the primary, and some of our misgivings remain, but we have no doubt that Gerald will be light years better than whatever hack the D's are running against him.

And it doesn't hurt that he's produced the best campaign commercial of this entire election cycle.

State House of Representatives:

District 46 (East Austin/Manor/Pflugerville):  Gabriel Nila

Gabriel has been doing the Lord's work against dramatic odds in this longest of longshot districts.

He has been aided in this quest by running against a multi-decade incumbent who can't seem to stop tripping over her own corruption.  This past weekend, we learned about another sweetheart contract she had obtained for herself and her family from Austin ISD.  Now she says she wants to retire early next year which will enable her to milk the state's retirement system one last time.

The only way to halt this shenanigan (Sidenote: Besides abolishing state pensions for legislators) is to deny the incumbent another term by voting for Gabriel Nila this November.

Bottom Line: A lot of people who vote for president aren't going to vote in anything else on the ballot.  It's what political science types call 'undervoting.'  But down ballot races are where real political power is held and they are often EXTREMELY close.

For the Record: James Dickey for TCRP....(and #NEVERTRUMP)

"When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice;
But when a wicked man rules, the people groan."
Proverbs 29:2

We haven't commented upon the TCRP vacancy.  Largely, that's because we don't support the deranged cretin the Republican party nominated for president.  It's also because we're not a member of the executive committee and thus don't have a vote.

That being said, a number of people have inquired as to our thoughts, and it's probably time to say publicly what we've been saying privately for two weeks: to the extent that we care, we fully support James Dickey.

In February, when we endorsed James in the primary, we wrote: "Since James Dickey became county chairman two years ago, the Travis County Republican party helped put the first two conservatives EVER on the Austin City Council. The Travis County Republican party has a DA candidate on the ballot for the first time since we've lived here....Why mess with a good thing?!?"  To the extent that we care about the Republican party, those sentiments still apply.

Events of the ensuing months have revealed James' character and leadership skills.  While we view the Robert Morrow interregnum as delightfully good fun and the two party system's just desserts, it nevertheless produced unique and unprecedented challenges for the organization.  James' grace, humility, and wisdom during this period were obvious to anyone paying even casual attention.  If anything, the fact that Robert Morrow and Matt Mackowiak have both endorsed James tells you everything you need to know.

Here's the thing: Deranged cretin notwithstanding, there are several strong Republican candidates running in Travis county this cycle.  Maura Phelan is the only choice to introduce integrity (and basic competence) in the District Attorney's office.  Joe Martinez, running for sheriff, is a champion for the rule of law.  Gabriel Nila is doing the Lord's work in HD-46.  Deke Pierce is a credible constable candidate.  In western Travis County, while we didn't support him in the primary, a mediocre incumbent like Gerald Daugherty (Commissioner's court, precinct 3) still sucks less than whatever hack the D's are running against him.  And James helped recruit every single one of them (except Gerald).

Looking to 2018, James is the only person in this race we trust to recruit a credible candidate for Travis County Judge.

Bottom Line:  At this point, it's impossible to forecast the deranged cretin's impact.  That being said, there's a lot one can accomplish at the local level regardless of the details of how this ongoing national bi-partisan dumpster fire unfolds.  On that note, if anyone can salvage something from the Republican party, it's James Dickey.

Travis County DA attempting to revivie the "Public Integrity" Unit?!?

"If a ruler pays attention to lies,
All his servants become wicked."
Proverbs 29:12

From Thursday's Statesman discussing the race to replace Rosemary Lehmberg, we find this nugget about the Democrat nominee:

Most recently, [Democrat candidate Margaret] Moore has offered a position to a state District Judge Don Clemmer, who she describes as bipartisan, to take over the office’s special prosecutions division, which houses the Public Integrity Unit. Clemmer has worked at the Texas attorney general’s office and as deputy general counsel for the governor’s office.

Moore said the appointment will help as she tries to convince state lawmakers to add funding to the Public Integrity Unit when the legislative session begins in January. The unit has statewide jurisdiction and prosecutes state officials on ethics violations and other official misconduct.

“Judge Clemmer will be working with me toward that goal,” Moore said.

Soo...the Democrat machine in Travis County hasn't given up on the 'public integrity' unit?!?

That, by itself, is interesting.

Next up: who, pray tell, is Don Clemmer?!?

It turns out Don Clemmer is a currently serving nominally 'Republican' Travis County district judge who was appointed by Governor Abbott to fill a vacancy last fall.  Technically, Clemmer is on the ballot this fall.  The seriousness with which he's campaigning is revealed in the fact that we've literally never seen him at a Republican party event and had never even heard of him before we'd read this article.

In other words, Don Clemmer is about as Republican as Joe Straus.


Which means he would be the perfect vehicle for the business as usual crowd at the Capitol to run this play.

This sort of move would probably be DOA in the Senate, but it would be a lot better if it never got there in the first place.

Of course, the easiest way to prevent these sorts of shenanigans would be to elect the Republican candidate Maura Phelan.  Maura really is fantastic and she might be the one Republican candidate worth voting for this fall.  You can learn more about Maura Phelan here.

#ATXOnline: Plugging the other guys....

"Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor."
Romans 13:7

A couple of other local bloggers have posted must-read pieces with which we fully concur.

First, Andy from Travis Tracker raises good questions about a 'racial reconciliation' event held last night:

If you watched or attended the "ATX Together" forum hosted by KLRU-TV on Monday night, you may have noticed something wasn't quite ...together about it.

It was a noble, town hall-style event, and we stand behind any and all efforts to discuss plans for how to counter the kind of violence we've seen over the past two weeks. No problem there.

Many friends of this publication cheered it on, including Maura Phelan, Republican candidate for District Attorney, who took to Twitter to share her vision of a brighter future for the Travis County justice system. And we were grateful for any effort to seek common ground and bridge a deepening gap between the community and law enforcement.

But there were serious gaps in the patchwork of voices at the forum -- whatever the reason for the oversight may be.

There were no Republicans or notable conservative leaders seen in the audience, which isn't unusual for many Austin events given the local political climate. Yet the Travis County Democratic Party Chairman,Vincent Harding, was one of the emcees. 

.... 

There was no shortage of back-and-forth regarding "checking your privilege," but nothing much said of creating jobs to help the poor improve their economic conditions.

Next, Bill Oakey at Austin Affordability uses a personal anecdote to illustrate how CapMetro's bus service has gotten worse over the past couple years:

As it turns out, I had not ridden the North Lamar bus in the last couple of years. After several minutes went by, reality began to set in. Even before I looked up the schedule, I remembered something bad. North Lamar and Burnet Road are the two busiest routes in the Capital Metro system. In 2014, they thought they had created a wonderful solution by putting in those gigantic, double-sized buses – MetroRapid they are called. They have accordions on them to help navigate turns.

Those giant buses are exactly twice as expensive to ride as the regular ones. And they are “express buses,” which means that they will get you across town faster because they make much fewer stops. But here’s the bad news for the huge number of regular bus riders. When the giant buses went into service, Capital Metro more than doubled the waiting time for the regular buses. And besides that, there may not be a “giant bus stop” anywhere near where you happen to be when you need a bus.

That convenient, every-11-to-12-minute service up and down North Lamar to Guadalupe, past  U.T. into downtown that we enjoyed for 25 or 30 years no longer exists. It has been stretched into 26 minutes. So, if you throw in Murphy’s law, the last bus at my stop probably came about 14 seconds before I walked out of Dan’s Hamburgers. I was in for quite a long wait. Imagine trying to endure that in July, with blistering 100-degree heat and stifling humidity.

Seriously, do read the whole thing(s) here and here.

Maura Phelan updates state of the Travis County DA race

"The righteous is delivered from trouble,
And it comes to the wicked instead."
Proverbs 11:8

Maura Phelan spoke to the Central Texas Republican Assembly last night about the the DA's race:



Highlights:

• Travis county DA has civil divisions that handle mental health and child removal situations.
• "Those two divisions in our DA's office are completely underserved."
• 1 prosecutor for 10,000 cases.

• 30% of our jail population is mental health issues.
• "This is very expensive."

• "Our District Attorney's office has no standards for plea bargains."
• "This is why we have a huge disparity in sentences for people with the same offense and the same background....THAT'S GOTTA CHANGE!"

• "I'm getting a lot of support from...the East side."

• "A lot of support from formerly incarcerated persons who can vote and who want to help because they want to see this change."

• It's been 30 years since the D candidate has been in courtroom.

• "The last time she represented the state in a felony offense...was when I wan in junior high and the last last time she was a misdemeanor prosecutor when she was county attorney was when I was an undergrad."

MEET MAURA PHELAN!!!

"The righteous is delivered from trouble,
And it comes to the wicked instead."
Proverbs 11:8

Ladies and Gentlemen, your REPUBLICAN candidate for Travis County DA:



Highlights:

• Aggie (yeah, we know).

• U of H law school.

• Prosecutor for "almost 20 years" in Harris and Travis County.

• Left DA's office in 2004: "We had a discrepancy where I believe we should follow the law and they believed we should do something political."

• "I do not have any criminal convictions and I do not have any outstanding judgments."

• "There is no standards in the DA's office for what the recommendations are and that leaves everything open to influence and interpretations."

• "How can you enforce the law if you aren't abiding by the law?!?"