The Texas Observer

Hillary Clinton won’t be stopping in the capital city on her swing back through Texas this weekend—she’ll hold rallies in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio in the final, frantic days before Tuesday’s primary.

So Wednesday night, she sent her best celebrity weapon to rally her supporters in the capitol city, someone with more name recognition than anyone else in this race: Bill Clinton.

Students and supporters packed the South Mall at the foot of the University of Texas tower, waiting for him to arrive. Warm-up act after warm-up act passed the mic: State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez (D-Austin), city councilwoman Jennifer Kim, a guy who yelled and threw T-shirts into the crowd. And then came the big moment, and as the cries of “We want Bill!” faded, onto the stage strolled none other than… actor Sean Astin. Remember him from “Rudy”?

Of course, Astin was followed by former President Bill Clinton, at around 7 p.m. Walking down the long path to a platform in the middle of the crowd, he was joined by his old Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and former mayor of San Antonio, Henry Cisneros.

Clinton began by promising a change of direction, and a better life in America if his wife is elected. Then he spent the bulk of his speech on the delicate business of selling his wife’s credentials to a crowd most excited to see the former president. He recalled her contributions to school reform as first lady of Arkansas, and her push for health care reform from the White House. As a testament to Hillary’s own star power on the global stage, he told stories about leaders in Northern Ireland who asked to consult with Hillary, above anyone else, in their peace talks; women in China, he said, slogged through nasty weather to hear Hillary speak at Beijing’s 1995 World Conference on Women.

Clinton drew applause with a promise that his wife had no plans for permanent bases in Iraq, then drew a much quieter response when he qualified it by saying a prolonged U.S. presence in northern Iraq would protect us in case Al Qaeda ramped up its attacks.

Austin loves a rock star, and in a town where Barack Obama repeatedly draws starry eyed crowds of ten thousand and up, Bill was the Clinton campaign’s best messenger of hope (Chuck Norris still isn’t available). Descending to shake hands and pose for pictures after his speech, Bill proved he could still fire up a crowd with the best of them. But the former president also mucked around with underdog language in his speech, deriding “the pundits” who say his wife’s campaign is on the ropes.

One UT student organizer introduced Clinton as “our first rock star president,” but even Bill couldn’t draw a crowd like Obama. Hours before Friday’s Obama rally, a line of thousands snaked around buildings downtown, waiting for tickets into a gated area near the stage. Wednesday night, about an hour before Clinton arrived one newscaster debated with a cameraman whether to describe the audience as “hundreds” or “thousands” of supporters. Clinton’s message of solidarity with the forgotten corners of our economy may hold more sway in South Texas and other parts of the state—but the showings at each candidate’s rallies this week suggest Austin would rather see a second “rock star president.”

Barack Obama bid farewell to Texas Friday night with another of his conspicuously large outdoor Austin rallies that have become a kind of tradition here.

Before an audience of thousands tightly packed along Congress and 11th at the foot of the Capitol, Obama began his stump speech by recalling his rally a year ago at Auditorium Shores, which drew upwards of 20,000 people just after Obama announced his candidacy.

“Something about me and Austin, I don’t know. We just get along,” he told the crowd Friday. Official counts so far waver all the way from 8,000 to 15,000, according to the Dallas Morning News.

As close as the Obama-Clinton match-up has been, and as well as Clinton fared in the debate Thursday night (pointed references to office machinery notwithstanding), there’s no doubt about who puts on the bigger show. Two days after a South Texas Clinton rally failed to fill a 6,800-seat arena in Hidalgo, Clinton drew just 1,000 to her Friday rally in Dallas. The death of a Dallas Police officer, Victor Lozada, who crashed his motorcycle while accompanying Clinton’s motorcade, cast a far greater pall over Clinton’s last day in the state. She canceled a rally in Fort Worth after hearing the news.

Here in Austin, Obama began his speech with a moment of silence for Lozada as he did at other stops during the day. From there, he covered familiar ground—the country is still in crisis, the planet still in peril—but seemd to loosen up with the crowd a little past the halfway point in his speech. What’s striking about Obama’s stump is that he doesn’t just ask listeners for their vote, he asks them to join a movement. As Clinton has learned it’s very hard to run against a movement. It also may be shocking to the pundit class but it turns out that  people actually want to be active actors in their own future, not just consumers or passive recipients of received wisdom.

In the shadow of the Capitol that incubated George W. Bush until 2000, he had a teasing tone in his voice as he mentioned where the president will be this time next year. “He’s coming back to Texas. Yes he is, he’s coming back to Texas.”

He finished his hour-long with a list of counter-arguments to the usual criticisms he hears. To the notion that he lacks substance, he extended an uninspiring invitation for audience members to put themselves to sleep reading the ten-point plans on his website. On charges that he can’t take the heat he’d face as president, “Listen,” he said, “I am a black guy named Barack Obama, running for president. You can’t tell me I’m not tough.”

Obama and Clinton head to Ohio next, leaving the state simmering with a big jump in early voting and a week and a half until the primary.

Lest we get too carried away in, you know, substantive political discourse, it’s worth noting that after tonight’s debate, the candidates each made a strong showing where it really counts. Public health care? That would be great. But senators, this isn’t Ohio. What about tacos? What about beer? And if you’re going to run in Texas, decorum would tend to recommend a fiddle in the band.

While Obama and Clinton finished duking it out on campus, they also hosted gatherings around town, to watch the debate and rally certain local supporters.

Hillary’s hundreds filled the tables at Güero’s on South Congress, booing Obama’s mild disagreements and cheering like mad at Clinton’s grand finale. There was music, food and signage, and later in the night Clinton herself grabbed the mic to thank the crowd.

Meanwhile, the Obama faithful—their faith duly tested by a $250 ticket price—were treated to performances at the Austin Music Hall by Joe Ely and Asleep At The Wheel before the candidate stopped by. His brief appearance at the party was worth the price of admission; he gave the audience his usual song-and-dance routine on hope and change, then actually sang and danced with the band.

Obama had the clear edge in bands, with his local favorites Asleep At The Wheel. Hillary’s tunes came courtesy of the more psychedelic Vinyl Dharma, a band originally from Brownsville, where Clinton is happy to tell Texans she’s spent a good deal of time. Hillary’s party gets the nod for food, with her free Güero’s a clear favorite over Obama’s no-food bar.

Little extra space remained at either the tables at Güero’s or the Austin Music Hall’s floor and balcony. We’ve seen Obama draw big crowds in Austin, but the price of entry tonight kept the crowd to a manageable size; Texans for Hillary signed up new members at a table outside, and welcomed them inside for the party.

As demographics go, both parties leaned toward the white yuppie set, but the crowds were diverse, in a way that roughly matched opinion polls. Most at Güero’s were either Hispanic, middle-aged women, or both. The scene downtown was business-casual, not campaign-shirts-and-buttons, with more people who were either African-American, under 30, or Austin mayor Will Wynn. Here is a great slide show someone put together of Obama’s Texas support.

The weirdest moment of my evening came shortly after I arrived at Güero’s, when a man who identified himself as working for the campaign spotted the camera on my shoulder and pegged me as a member of the press. Grabbing my arm, he looked around and then leaned in, and with a conspiratorial whisper told me there was a “black Hollywood actress waiting in the back, and she loves to talk to the media.” Either this was a big secret, or he didn’t think her name was particularly worth mentioning. My heart raced at the thought of Halle Berry cleverly disguised as one of the cooks, waiting for the right moment to stun the crowd and herald Clinton’s arrival. Returning the low whisper, I asked about the actress’ name, but this brought a quick end to the conspiracy. Her name was Erika Alexander, he said, then trailed off after mentioning her work on “The Cosby Show.”

With crowds that either volunteered for Clinton’s campaign or had just donated a couple C-notes to Obama’s, there probably wasn’t much to learn about how things will shake out on March 4. At both parties, politics often came down to personality.

“I’m a convert. I was leaning toward McCain until this afternoon,” said Robert Rogers, a law student at U.T. who’d initially been roped into the Obama fundraiser by a friend. Rogers was one of many downtown only recently turned into Barack-backers, and he said tonight’s events—the debate and Obama’s encore performance—solidified his choice.

Across the river at the taco bar, Lea Markovic said she went to last year’s Obama rally, read one of the senator’s books, and gradually came around to Hillary anyway. “I believe in her experience, and the fact that she’s been tested,” Markovic said. Like Rogers, her number-two choice wasn’t in Austin tonight. If Clinton doesn’t win the party nomination, she said, she’ll be pulling for John McCain.

While Austin revels in its Democratic parties this evening, a mobile home blaring zydeco music off its back end will try to bring a more somber message to the city.

The KatrinaRitaVille Express may sound like the latest funky South Austin happy hour hangout—and most of those are on wheels, too—but this old FEMA trailer from Mississippi isn’t here for the party. Derrick Evans has been touring his trailer around the country to raise awareness for the slew of problems facing victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the stagnation that’s taken hold in recovery efforts.

He’s here tonight with more than 40 people affected by the storms. They came by bus to draw attention to the storm recovery. So far candidates have said little about Hurricane Katrina in debates, and Evans says neither Clinton nor Obama have inspired much hope for his cause. “I wouldn’t say that any of them have sufficiently demonstrated a grasp of the depth of this regional crisis,” Evans says.

“We want to start at the top and end the neglect,” he says, comparing post-Katrina devastation to Southern Reconstruction or post-World War II Europe. “Rebuilding was characterized by bold, intelligent leadership from the highest levels,” he says. Evans, who lives outside Gulfport, Miss., says the neglect people feel along the gulf began with poor federal oversight of the money earmarked for recovery efforts.

The FEMA trailer, then, is a good symbol for his traveling cause. Evans bought his trailer on eBay, after a handful of serious health risks created a buyer’s market for the emergency homes.

Evans is working with a handful of organizations to address political, environmental and economic concerns that combined to make Hurricanes Katrina and Rita so disastrous, and which he says still haven’t been addressed years after the storms. With much of Austin rallying tonight around hope and policy changes, Evans and the storm victims hope their cause can be swept up by the wave.

House Elections Committee Chairman Leo Berman struck an upbeat, philosophical note in his closing words last night: “Some people are hell-bent on seeing voter ID passed, and some are hell-bent on not seeing it passed. Perhaps there’s middle ground somewhere.”

Speaker Tom Craddick had charged the committee with sleuthing out the scope of Texas’ problems with voter fraud, and considering what, oh what, might ever be done about it — photo ID, anyone?

It took nine hours and thirty minutes, and how did the committee fare?

Of course, there was plenty of time for the old favorite lines about voter ID: You need a photo ID to rent a movie, but not to vote? asks one side. Why not ask for a blood sample while we’re at it? asks the other. At one point, committee chairman Leo Berman held up a voter’s license card bearing both a photo and a thumbprint on the back. Perhaps sensing Democrats’ sympathies for all things south-of-the-border, he asked if anyone knew where the card came from. “Mexico!” he said, “You can’t vote in Mexico without a photo ID.”

Berman was surprisingly receptive not only toward the Mexican electoral system, but also toward a proposal for a photo ID law that would let voters without a driver’s license sign their name as proof of identity, instead.

The plan would avoid adding extra paperwork or expense to voting, while adding an extra level of security to the process. After the hearing, Dallas Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchia — the committee’s most outspoken opponent of past voter ID bills — called it an interesting proposal, and wondered at why the Republican leadership seemed so receptive. Past legislation had given voters the chance to vote a provisional ballot without a photo ID, but Anchia and other critics have repeatedly pointed out that most provisional ballots are never counted. This time, though, Berman was talking about dropping the provisional requirement.

For months last year, folks from groups representing Mexican-Americans, women, the elderly and disabled testified about the risk of disenfranchising voters by requiring a photo ID at the polls, to which Republican leaders would smile, sometimes politely, and disagree. Tonight, those same groups’ representatives were guardedly receptive to signature-verification as a backup measure in a photo ID bill.

It’s not clear whether Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst or Republican Party of Texas Chairman Tina Benkiser would go for such a plan, which sets looser requirements than other voter ID bills pushed nationally by the GOP. Maybe it’s just a camel’s nose under the tent kind of thing.

Anchia worried about creating a double-standard for people who vote by mail-in ballot and about passing a voter ID bill in the House with a special exception for people without photo ID’s. The way these things play out, the exception could simply be stripped once the bill hits the Senate floor. “We’d need assurances from the Senate to ensure it’d come back without voter-suppression amendments,” he says.

According to testimony from the Secretary of State’s office, there are 100,000 people in Texas who registered to vote without a driver’s license or a social security number, and the U.S. Supreme Court seems willing to let states decide how readily those without photo ID’s should be allowed to vote.

Today’s testimony painted a dreary picture of the effectiveness of Texas’ elections system, from the troubled statewide voter database to documented cases of voter fraud — through mail-in ballots and vote harvesting. If the 81st Legislature is going to tackle the state’s elections infrastructure, there’s plenty of room for improvement. How about a verifiable paper ballot, anyone? But the stakes are high if the Legislature’s solution does more harm than the system we’ve already got.

Today’s special meeting of the House Elections Committee has been a real walk down memory lane for this old Lege intern, from the rehashed debates about rampant voter fraud, to the slippery steps at the Capitol in the rain. But one line this afternoon took me right back to a few magical days in May 2007, when anything seemed possible if you had a gavel in your hand. The hush in the room was familiar too, when Chairman Leo Berman cut off a colleague to say, “Representative, I’m not going to recognize you. You argued with the chair… you’re not recognized.”

Rep. Marc Veasey, who isn’t on the Elections Committee, was the target of Berman’s best Tom Craddick routine. Veasey had permission to sit in on the meeting as a matter of courtesy, but when the questions for Republican Party of Texas Chairman Tina Benkiser got too tough, Berman’s generosity was spent.

While Veasey got the hint and left, Democratic Rep. Lon Burnam took the opportunity to complain about how Berman has run the Elections Committee, before grilling Benkiser some more for her efforts to drum up voters’ fears about election fraud. “Don’t answer that question, Ms. Benkiser,” Berman said at one point. “Ms. Benkiser is not on trial here.”

“I experienced your controlled information flow all through the last session,” Burnam jumped in. “It’s one thing for you to deny a colleague [the right] to ask a question. It’s another thing for you to instruct a witness not to answer.”

The hot tempers from the end of the last legislative session were just below the surface through most of today’s hearing, and it only took eight hours to draw them out. Benkiser finished her testimony with an emotional plea: “At the end of the day, whether you want to believe it or not, there is rampant voter fraud. I do get passionate about this issue, and I should, and every voter should.”

A few emotional exchanges have sprung up today as committee members try to keep witnesses from scoring too many points for the other side. As the meeting winds down now, the argument has cooled back off. Plenty of voter fraud cases have been aired most apparently having little to do with a photo ID requirement. The argument is more of the same, and even Rep. Rafael Anchia has grown tired of asking witnesses to see their photo ID or birth certificate.

Rep. Leo Berman has warmed to the suggestion of a voter ID bill with an option for signature verification instead of a photo ID, but otherwise it looks like next session, voter ID will be more of the same — only the outcome remains the big question.

Mary Finch from the League of Women Voters just made an emotional appeal to match Benkiser’s, saying what she’s ashamed of is Texas’ low voter turnout. “Every day we get a little smarter about this, but we still have not seen enough evidence that it’s such a serious problem that we need to restrict the franchise.”

To which Berman quoted a Washington Times poll saying two-thirds of people support a photo ID at the polls, driving home his point by saying, “And they’re not a bastion of conservatism, I can tell you.”

The House Elections Committee is in the middle of an all-day hearing right now, in a sneak preview of what promises to be one of the next legislative session’s major party-line battles, again: voter ID. They’re meeting today at the behest of House Speaker Tom Craddick, who charged the committee with studying voter fraud in Texas.

GOP-backed bills requiring photo ID at the polls were an issue back in 2005, and turned into one of the 80th Legislature’s most compelling dramas last year, only narrowly defeated in a string of dramatic close calls. As the session wound down, ailing Sen. Mario Gallegos’ continued presence in Austin, against the advice of his doctors, was all that stood in the way of the bill’s passing.

Like the horror movie villain you were sure they finished off in the first film, voter ID looks like it’ll come back bigger, stronger, and fraud-ier in 2009.

Voter ID-backers (Elections Committee Chairman Leo Berman among them) are organizing their efforts to prove that impersonation at the polls is a serious problem requiring a serious change in our voting law. Reps. Rafael Anchia and Lon Burnam, who sit on the committee, are waging an information war to point out just how damaging photo ID requirements can be to voter’s rights, and how unnecessary photo ID laws are. Voter fraud may be a problem, they argue, but most of it happens through the mail or in schemes that don’t depend on pretending to be somebody else at the poll.

Last session the Elections Committee and the House floor saw hours of debate that was heavy on bluster — security of the voter rolls (Republicans), the rights of the people (Democrats) and the sanctity of the vote (both) — and light on fact. A year later, the argument has matured a little bit, with national experts testifying, case studies from other states, and specific voter fraud horror stories dug up from around the state. There are new facts coming out in today’s testimony, yet there’s a real sense that we’ve seen this movie before.

A few developments have changed with the voter ID debate since last May, including speculation about an upcoming Supreme Court decision on an Indiana voter ID law, and a State Auditor’s report highlighting problems with Texas’ voter database.

It’s unlikely anyone in the room is changing their mind, and that’s because of the elephant that’s in here with us. Always politely ignored in public debate is the nation-wide GOP push for the voter ID laws, and the sense that the marching orders are coming from up the party food chain. After a skeptical reception for the voting rights experts from New York, Chairman Berman warmed considerably to Republican Committee Chairman Tina Benkiser just moments ago, thanking her for what he called “the most profound statement of the day.”

Other national experts on voting rights and election fraud are slated to speak, and county clerks from around Texas are testifying about newly documented cases voter fraud. The witness list is long, and after seven hours straight, it’s still long. After the day’s first witness, Berman quipped that, “At this rate, we’ll be here ’til midnight,” but his estimate is looking, appropriately, a little conservative.

For all the theatrics, it turns out the voter ID fight is already a movie — a short documentary focused on Gallegos’ difficult days at the end of the legislative session, produced by the Lone Star Project and available here on Google Video.