The Texas Observer

Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, in light of an email-erasing scandal, professions of devotion to an executive secretary, a well-known Houston defense lawyer filing against him, and vocal antipathy from Harris County GOP leaders, will not seek re-election after all.

Rosenthal has seen a tumultuous couple of weeks, as we reported yesterday. His letter of withdrawal was stamped as received by the Harris GOP offices as of 5:57 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 2.

Harris County Republican Party Chair Jared Woodfill read the one-line statement from Rosenthal: “This is my written notice to you to withdraw my nomination from the office of Harris County District Attorney.”

Defense lawyer Jim Leitner filed for the GOP nomination Wednesday, announcing also, according to the Houston Chronicle, that he would step aside should the right candidate file. It appears that Rosenthal’s last-minute withdrawal triggers a 48-hour extension of the filing period.

With Rosenthal out, the way has been cleared for a new Harris County District Attorney to clean up Houston’s image and reputation — from the crime lab to the death penalty.

A blog note: in a comment on my initial blog about Rosenthal and Houston’s leadership in terms of the death penalty, Ward Larkin is right. Houston has actually only been responsible for roughly 10 percent of U.S. executions — not a quarter. Larkin rightly pointed out what I meant to say, which is that Houston is responsible for fully a quarter of all Texas executions since 1976. Thanks for the correction, Ward.

Harris County District Attorney Charles A Rosenthal, Jr. has hit a rough patch. Even Houston Republicans want him to quit.

Just after Christmas, the country’s newspaper of record singled out Rosenthal as a lonely voice in a sea of change: Harris County is responsible for fully one-quarter of the executions in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976. And Texas is leaving the rest of the country behind in terms of the numbers of those put to death. Rosenthal has been Harris DA since 2001, and he has presided over a significant portion of Texas’ Death Boom. But that’s not why the local GOP wants to oust him.

Around the same time a federal court inadvertently released emails in which ‘Chuck’ alternately woos and declares his heart for his executive secretary (whom he has apparently been involved with before) — while his campaign site proudly touts his second marriage to a “former FBI Special Agent.” Death penalty, okay. Adultery, off with his head, ur, job!

In a front page piece on Dec. 26, the New York Times quoted Rosenthal’s defense of Texas’ outsized number of executions:

Charles A. Rosenthal, Jr., the district attorney of Harris County, Tex., which includes Houston and has accounted for 100 executions since 1976, said the Texas capital justice system was working properly. The pace of executions in Texas, he said, “has to do with how many people are in the pipeline when certain rulings come down.”

A separate article two days later most clearly described Rosenthal’s situation regarding the emails to his secretary:

The e-mail messages were attachments to a brief filed by Mr. Rosenthal’s lawyers seeking to keep the exchanges under seal. When Judge Kenneth Hoyt of Federal District Court in Houston ruled on a motion by KHOU-TV that Mr. Rosenthal’s pleading itself could be made public, the e-mail attachments were inadvertently unsealed briefly.

The filings grew out a civil lawsuit by two brothers, Erik Adam Ibarra and Sean Carlos Ibarra, who claimed that on Jan. 4, 2002, they were beaten after taking pictures of sheriff’s deputies abusing a family during execution of a search warrant. A lawyer for the brothers later claimed that Mr. Rosenthal and the sheriff’s office were looking out for each other, the filings said, as in ‘I’ll watch your back if you watch mine.’

In that brief filed on Dec. 19, the Ibarra brothers’ lawyer, Lloyd E. Kelley, claimed that Mr. Rosenthal had deleted at least 2,500 e-mail messages after they should have been turned over to the court in the process of legal discovery after Nov. 16.

In his court papers, Mr. Rosenthal has claimed that his e-mail messages came under ‘zones of privacy’ involving personal conduct recognized by the United States Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 case in which the court overturned the state’s anti-sodomy law.

The irony here is that Rosenthal argued for Texas in Lawrence v. Texas, urging the Supreme Court not to recognize the very privacy he now claims. (For more on Lawrence v. Texas, see here.)

So it’s perhaps not a shock that the Harris County GOP has voted to ask him to step aside, and reports suggest, if he does decide to run again, Rosenthal will see a challenge from within his own party. If so, that means this mystery candidate must file today, because candidate filing closes at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 2.

In any case, Rosenthal or his GOP replacement will face former Houston Police Chief C.O. ‘Brad’ Bradford in the general election. Bradford is an eloquent speaker and he is just one example of a surge of Houston Democrats that will take the reins of city and county offices as demographics change in Harris County.

Bradford said in his announcement speech:

This community… need not fear crime as long as there is a strong, but fair, justice system… Fairness is something the district attorney’s office sorely needs…

Bradford also called for “a truly independent crime lab” — independent, that is, of both the police department and the district attorney’s office.

Rosenthal has won and kept his office, arguably, by being pro-death penalty. It’s just an extension of the issue that keeps on giving in Texas: being tough on crime. Harvey Kronberg, back in 1999, printed the following about Rosenthal after he was the first to announce for Johnny Holmes’ job:

He has served his entire 22 year professional career in the D.A.’s office. He currently serves as Chief of Felony Division B supervising prosecutors in six district courts. He has tried more than 200 jury trials and sent fourteen offenders to death row.

Rosenthal says on his campaign site, “Without safety, other rights and freedoms are meaningless.”

Come on… Meaningless? And can he point to any evidence that the death penalty increases safety?

I don’t think Ronald Taylor’s rights were meaningless, although they seemed as much in the pursuit of ‘justice’ when he was condemned to serve 14 years for a rape he didn’t commit (while the statute of limitations ran out on a suspect later identified by DNA). That’s just one instance where Houston’s notoriously faulty crime lab served up lab results that imprisoned the wrong person.

However, election results show that scandal or no scandal, a substantial majority of Harris County voters have backed Rosenthal again and again. In his initial primary run in 2000, he beat four GOP candidates, garnering 45.27 percent of the vote. The runoff thereafter was his last contested GOP fight. And, with George W. Bush at the top of the ticket in both general elections, Rosenthal beat his Democratic opponent handily — in 2000 by 54-46, and in 2004, by 55-45.

Even if Chuck Rosenthal is “damaged goods,” as the Harris County GOP County Judge Ed Emmett called him, he ought not to be counted out until he is down for the count. We’ll keep our eye on this one. That’s for sure.

Quite a conversation is going on over at the Burnt Orange Report about Dawnna Dukes, Las Vegas, and the fact that the East Austin Democrat will face challenger Brian Thompson in the March 4 primary.

Thompson, a 27-year-old Austin lawyer, says he will file Tuesday for Texas House District 46. Dukes is the incumbent. She is a ‘Craddick D’ — which as you know means she is one of the dozen or so Democrats that helped Speaker Tom Craddick (R-Midland) overcome multiple attempts on his chair in the last regular session.

BOR Editor Matt Glazer and Dukes Campaign spokesman Colin Strother spent most of last Wednesday trading arguments and accusations after Glazer posted on BOR that Dukes had missed a Medicaid Reform and Legislative Oversight Committee meeting so she could play slots in Vegas (and the post came complete with a camera-phone image of Dukes at a slot machine). Strother and Glazer have posted the majority of the 37 comments to the original article, and the Austinist this weekend picked up the thread, using the gotcha tease, “State Rep. Dawnna Dukes caught playing hooky in Vegas.

It turns out the “gotcha” wasn’t exactly true. Dukes missed the committee meeting because of a prior engagement — attending a National Conference of State Legislatures convention in La Jolla, California. According to Strother, Dukes stopped over in Vegas on her way back, on her own dime. She was in La Jolla when the meeting was held on Thursday, and she was in Vegas on Saturday. An NCSL representative confirmed she was at the conference.

Glazer admits in the thread that he took the picture on Saturday, but he insisted that the incident indicates “a pattern” when taken with Dukes’ unbelievably poorly timed vacation to France in 2005 (which allowed once and current Speaker candidate Jim Pitts (R-Waxahachie) to cast the deciding vote for Rick Perry (and John Sharp’s) property tax cut/school finance plan). Hmmm. This is definitely truthiness at work. Interesting standard for an information source…

Here are a couple of excerpts from Glazer and Strother’s unhappy dialogue:

Strother: I know you don’t like Dukes or approve of her vote for Speaker, but I’m shocked that you would use incorrect information, supposition, and baseless conjecture to say “I don’t like Dawnna”. Maybe it is because you… have an interest in her opponent. I don’t know. I would tell you that you are well respected as a blogger, but not for garbage like this.

Glazer: Why don’t you talk about why she voted for Speaker Craddick. As the chief spokes person for Turner, Pena, Flores, Dukes, and other Craddick D’s what is the reason all of them voted for the ultra-conservative Craddick? Was it because nobody in their district knows who Craddick is or because they don’t care what their constituents think? Our readers would like to know.

BOR contributor ‘Pedro’ makes a decent plea in the midst of the back-and-forth between Glazer and Strother:

You guys gotta grow up a little too. Legislators miss committee meetings all the time. You can ding someone for it. But you can’t act like it’s the most vile betrayal an elected official has ever perpetrated on his or her constituency.

Strother says Glazer recruited Thompson to run against Dukes, and he notes the facts that HD 46 is a majority African-American district and Dukes is literally the only African American representative from Travis County, while Thompson is Anglo.

“We can’t control who gets conned into filing against her,” Strother told me last week. He called Thompson “a young, impressionable guy” and said Thompson had been “sold a bill of goods.”

Glazer says Dukes’ support for Craddick along with missteps like the vacation to France are examples of her poorly serving the district. Thompson told me last week that he believes Dukes’ support for Craddick was ample reason for the voters in HD 46 to turn her out of office.

“I believe every minority group deserves representation, with one exception — Craddick Democrats. I believe being a Democrat and supporting Tom Craddick are mutually exclusive,” Thompson said.

Strother, a former campaign manager and staffer for U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo), has something of a reputation for being rough and tumble with his quotes — but he also has been associated with winning — which generates its own kind of respect in political circles. There is even a list of memorable Strother quotes.

Look for more fireworks from HD 46 between now and March.

Well, Rudy Giuliani is officially a candidate for president on the Texas ballot — or at least he should be — after Gov. Rick Perry turned in Giuliani’s filing paperwork this afternoon at a staged media event.

There wasn’t much suspense. Perry had already endorsed the former New York City mayor in October. Much of the Austin press corps squished into a small room at the Texas Republican Party headquarters to watch Perry hand over a stack of papers to party officials and listen to the governor’s explanations of why Giuliani should be president.

They do make an odd couple: the twanging Texas governor, a self-described social conservative who once used a suburban Fort Worth mega-church as a backdrop to sign the state’s constitutional ban on gay marriage — even though it didn’t require his signature. Then there’s the quick-talking, crazed-giggling, New Yorker, who’s pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights, and occasionally chooses politically curious ways to, um, dress himself.

But on a deeper level, Perry’s support of Giuliani makes sense. Perry this afternoon listed three reasons he’s backing Giuliani. The first two, while questionable, aren’t surprising: “experienced leadership” (read: 9-11) and his electability. Lastly, Perry said, “He’s a genuine fiscal conservative. He cut taxes 23 times….He understands you can’t tax yourself to prosperity.”

In New York, Giuliani was also a furious privatizer of every government service that wasn’t nailed down, which has made him a favorite among the right wing, small-government think-tank set. Giuliani personifies three of the main characteristics of Republican rule in Texas during Perry’s governorship: an authoritarian view of government power, a love of tax cuts for the wealthy, and an insistence on privatizing services. This is a man with whom they can do business.

That may explain why Perry didn’t support a social conservative such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. “I think the world of Mike Huckabee,” Perry said today when asked about the fast-rising GOP contender. “He’s a great friend.” But he added that Giuliani was the most qualified to be president, and the most likely to win.

Some in the chattering class have speculated Perry is simply fishing for the vice presidential nomination. Asked about that today, Perry again said he’s not interested. “This is the best job.”

Given the recent polling that shows Giuliani’s support is dropping, the issue may turn out to be moot.

If you’ve ever heard U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) deliver a speech, it’s no mystery why he’s not the state’s most popular pol. In fact, most recent polls show more Texans disapprove of Cornyn than approve of him. Given those numbers, a Democrat’s chance against Cornyn in 2008 ought to be better than in any recent statewide contest. Of course, that’s not saying much.

But before they can even think about Cornyn, the Dems need to sort out the merrygoround of their own primary.

Rep. Rick Noriega (D-Houston) looked for a moment like he might have the race all to himself after Corpus Christi attorney Mikal Watts abruptly dropped out in late October. Now, however, Noriega is likely to face a primary challenge from Corpus Christi, schoolteacher Ray McMurrey, who jumped into the race in late November.

Noriega is a state representative who has seen plenty of legislative sessions, but he’s not a Texas state senator or statewide officeholder. Watts ran with no previous political experience, but did have a personal fortune worth millions to draw on. Now, along comes McMurrey, who has neither political experience nor money.

McMurrey, a teacher for 17 years, says public service is manifested in differing forms.

“I have to be accountable to the public every single day,” he says. McMurrey says his experience as a teacher says something about his willingness to serve. He teaches for CCISD in a program at Del Mar College that attempts to “bridge the gap” between high school and college. The program is funded by a research grant from the Gates Foundation.

McMurrey will be in Austin today (Thursday) to meet with representatives of the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers, of which McMurrey is a member.

“I’m the grassroots candidate,” McMurrey says. He criticizes Noriega’s alleged ties to Centerpoint and Reliant Energy — two of Texas’ big players in the energy market. Noriega’s day job is as a manager of economic development for Centerpoint.

McMurrey says that brands Noriega a “corporate” Democrat. “He is another Democrat that is going to fold like a book” when it comes to fighting for the people’s interest, he says.

McMurrey’s entrance into the race does benefit Noreiga in an least one aspect. With a primary opponent, he can legally raise money for both the primary and the general election.

I asked McMurrey why he chose the senate race rather than a lesser office. He said he was running for national office because his message is “a national message.”

“It’s a myth that we say that only a professional politician” can run for the U.S. Senate, he says.

McMurrey says he was “kind of born in Democratic circles.” Both his parents were active in protests in the 1960’s. He campaigned for Sissy Farenthold, and he notes proudly, his parents were active in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He went to college in Austin at St. Edward’s.

McMurrey says he supports repealing the Bush tax cuts and he wants elections to be publicly funded. Echoing the Democratic line, he says he favors a fairly wide-open immigration policy, but also wants the border to be better protected.

With Watts out of the race, McMurrey says he is the anti-corporate, pro-union candidate.

Democrat Dan Barrett says he feels confident he will win the December 18 runoff for Texas House District 97.

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to win it,” Barrett told me. He argues that much of the combined GOP vote was generated by groups dedicated to individual candidates — votes less likely to show up in the runoff. “A lot of that vote was a personal vote. I don’t think that’s going to be repeated.”

Here are the final vote totals from the special election according to the Texas secretary of state:

(D) Dan Barrett 5,575
(R) Mark M. Shelton 4,049
(R) Bob Leonard 3,294
(R) Craig Goldman 2,947
(R) Jeff Humber 925
(R) Chris Hatch 515
(R) James Dean Schull 375
Total Votes: 17,680

Barrett came in on top of a whole passel of Republicans in the Nov. 6 special election called for Anna Mowery’s old district — which is carved out of southwestern Tarrant County and southwest-central Fort Worth. HD 97 was considered a safe Republican seat.

The conventional wisdom says whatever Republican lands in second place is going to pick up the votes from all those other GOP candidates — and then he/she/it will handily beat Barrett in the general election.

But, Barrett warned, now that Democrats think they can win, they will turn out — offsetting the GOP advantage in numbers. Barrett has picked up the endorsement of the Texas Parent PAC and he is getting a lot of attention especially from Texas blogs.

The lucky Republican in the runoff is Dr. Mark Shelton. His victory over the other GOP contenders has been tainted somewhat by accusations about a late-in-the-game robo-call message — as well as the fact that his campaign hired Jason Johnson, an associate of Dr. James Leininger.

As I’m sure you know, Leininger is Texas’ one-man brass band trumpeting the golden oldies of school voucherism, eliminating a woman’s right to choose, and tort reform.

According to Harvey Kronberg’s Quorum Report, Shelton has voiced support for Craddick and at one point supported vouchers that would help Texas students attend private schools — on the public dime. Kronberg also “connects the dots” and suggests the robo-calls in question were made on behalf of Shelton’s campaign.

QR: As the dust settles, here is how the HD97 special election looks. The semi-official Craddick candidate was Craig Goldman. When it became evident that he would not make it to the runoff, chess pieces were moved and Shelton became the anointed candidate. Shelton’s campaign consultant shows no consulting fees on either of the two campaign finance reports but his largest lobby client is a PAC funded exclusively by James Leininger. Shelton’s support of both Craddick and vouchers apparently firmed up by the early October candidate forum. Potentially illegal phone calls were made on behalf of candidate-Shelton on election day.

–It must be noted, however, that QR has subsequently posted a denial from Leininger that he was involved in any way:

QR: (Leininger spokesman Ken) Hoagland also said that Dr. Leininger knew nothing about the controversial robo-calls attacking Bob Leonard and Craig Goldman until the issue was brought to his attention.

Dan Barrett says something similar about the robo-calls.

“That robo-call — I didn’t learn about that until a couple of days after the election,” Barrett said. “I don’t have a clue who did it.”

I asked Barrett point-blank if he had engineered the dastardly campaign trick to throw his six Republican opponents into disarray. He stuck to his story and said no.

I do think the ugliness wrought by the affair will change what Barrett calls “the dynamics in the district” — and I think Dan Barrett has a good shot to beat Dr. Mark Shelton, especially if Democrats and independents in the district, fed up with business-as-usual in Austin, take a break from their Christmas shopping to go and vote on Dec. 18.

I was looking for something else in the Observer archive and I stumbled on a Molly Ivin’s column called Use It or Lose It from February 2006. Molly wrote that she wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton for president. She found her too inauthentic for the historical moment.

“It’s about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership,” Molly wrote. “There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.”

It makes an interesting counterpoint to today’s Wall Street Journal cover story of Hillary. “Sen. Clinton actually is running two campaigns at once — courting left-leaning Democrats to get the nomination, but mindful even now of maintaining a sufficiently centrist course to withstand Republican attacks and win election next November.”