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When Kinky Friedman finally arrived close to 10 p.m. on Feb. 5 at the “Barn Bash” celebrating the 25th anniversary of Galveston’s revived Mardi Gras and parade (for which the Kinkster would serve the next day as grand marshal), he didn’t, and frankly couldn’t, make much of an impression on the 1,100 revelers. Many in the shoulder-to-shoulder crush had been partying hard since the barn doors opened at 7 p.m. (For $20, unlimited beer and wine.)  And they had other matters on their minds than the March 2 Democratic primary in which Kinky is running for agriculture commissioner against rival Democrat Hank Gilbert.

Almost everyone expressed some admiration for Kinky, but most had missed the news in mid-December that Friedman was abandoning his second run for governor in favor of the more obscure post of agriculture commissioner. (Four years ago, running for governor as an independent, Friedman attracted more national-media coverage than the rest of the candidates combined. He received 12 percent of the vote.) “Agriculture commissioner? Get outta town,” said Christine Haas, a 45-year-old Galveston hairdresser. Aircraft mechanic James J. (Speedy) Dodranich, 58, describes himself as “one of those Tea Party idiots who believes this country needs to be run by the people and not the politicians.” He said of Friedman: “I wish he’d stuck with running for governor, but Kinky’s gotta do what Kinky has to do. I’d vote for him for President if he’d run.”

Minutes after Friedman’s arrival, the blaring band at the back of the barn surrendered the stage, and the candidate spoke—or tried to. The din from the crowd drowned out his words for all but maybe the 50 people closest to the stage: “Hi, I’m Kinky Friedman,” he said. “Vote for me for agriculture commissioner: No cow left behind! My platform is simple: Protect the land. Take care of the animals. Listen to the people.”

With that, Friedman and his entourage stepped out the barn’s back door and into the adjacent parking lot of the Artillery Club, Galveston’s most exclusive dining venue. The club’s manager spotted Friedman and invited him and his campaign manager in for a complimentary meal (rack of lamb, baked oysters, crab cakes). They sat in a private dining room, doubtlessly because Friedman was puffing away on his iconic Cuban cigar (“I’m not supporting their economy, I’m burning their fields”) in blatant violation of Galveston’s tough new anti-smoking ordinance. But those fumes didn’t stop a procession of what Friedman calculated were “more than 100” of Galveston’s elite from coming in while he held court.

Kinky’s routine may not have changed much since 2006, but his run for ag commissioner isn’t generating the same interest. During Saturday’s parade in Galveston, Friedman rode in a car with his campaign signs stuck to both rear doors. But parade organizers had discreetly placed blue masking tape over the phrase “for Agriculture Commissioner,” so the sign on the grand marshal’s ride read only “Kinky Friedman.”  

—Tom Curtis

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Campaign Trail

 

Sandra Rodriguez’s Second Take

In 2008, Sandra Rodriguez came within 1,000 votes of winning the state representative race in western Hidalgo County. Her campaign against Democratic incumbent state Rep. Ismael “Kino” Flores was expensive and grueling. Flores had kept an iron-fisted hold on the border communities in District 36 for 13 years. At a low point in the campaign, the two candidates had to be separated by sheriff’s deputies during a heated argument outside a county precinct office.

Rodriguez, 50, a former probation officer and high school teacher, had little appetite for a rematch with Flores. In late July 2009, she decided to sit out the next election cycle. That decision didn’t last long. Flores was indicted in July for allegedly hiding more than $847,000 in income and assets from state regulators. Flores also had lost his political pull at the Capitol with the ouster of former House Speaker Tom Craddick. In August, Flores announced he wouldn’t run again, and Rodriguez jumped back in.

Though Flores has left the race, Rodriguez hasn’t broken free of her old rival. She will face Flores’ anointed successor—Sergio Muñoz Jr.—in the March Democratic primary. Muñoz, a 27-year-old lawyer, announced his candidacy the day after Flores called it quits. Political insiders in Hidalgo County think that Flores is supporting Muñoz’s candidacy.

The race has been the most costly and talked-about in Hidalgo County this election year. The candidates have spent a combined $296,000. Rodriguez raised $156,000. Muñoz brought in $77,000 and received a $125,000 loan from his father.

Rodriguez has allies with deep political roots in the district. She is the wife of a former state district judge. Billy Leo, former mayor of La Joya, a political kingmaker in western Hidalgo County, and a Flores foe, supports her. Leo’s daughter, Lita, is Rodriguez’s campaign manager. Muñoz, meanwhile, has endorsements from the mayors of Mission and Pharr, two traditional allies of Flores.

Sometimes you just can’t shake an old foe.

—Melissa del Bosque

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Hopson’s Choice

 

A GOP Convert Stirs Up the Tea Party

When state Rep. Chuck Hopson, a conservative Democrat from rural East Texas, switched to the Republican Party in November, some Democrats saw it as more than a political setback.

“I feel betrayed by his lack of conviction,” Phillip Martin, a former Hopson legislative aide, wrote on the liberal Burnt Orange Report blog.

Distaste at Hopson’s party-hopping wasn’t confined to former allies. Six hours after his announcement he had a serious opponent in the Republican primary. Michael Banks, a 62-year-old Jacksonville dentist, is challenging Hopson from the tea-party right with a grassroots campaign.

Banks describes his opponent as a liberal who switched parties because “his polls showed him that he couldn’t win in 2010 as a Democrat.”

In 2008, Hopson defeated his Republican opponent by 114 votes in a region that tilts Republican. McCain walloped Obama with 71 percent of the vote in a district that includes Jacksonville, Rusk and Crockett.

Sen. John Cornyn, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Gov. Rick Perry have endorsed Hopson. At the end of 2009, Hopson reported raising $176,000; Banks had collected $5,700 and loaned his campaign nearly $80,000.

Nonetheless, Banks says Hopson is “shaking in his boots.” Banks—a hunter, fisherman, and kayaker—has led a high-profile fight to preserve 25,000 acres of rare hardwood forest along the Neches River where powerful water interests in Dallas want to build a reservoir.

It’s not the most orthodox selling point for a conservative politician, but Banks contends that it has put him in touch with thousands of voters. He takes partial credit for forcing Hopson to take a stronger stand against the reservoir.

Could his advocacy open him up to charges of being a tree-hugger?

“They tried to briefly, but the people in East Texas and the district know better,” Banks says.

The Republican nominee will face Democrat Richard Hackney, CEO of a pharmaceutical consulting company and Cherokee County native, in November.

—Forrest Wilder

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Tyrant’s Foes

 

Ted and Betty Dotts

Lubbock is not gay-friendly. A few years ago, when some straight high school kids tried to support some gay kids by forming a Gay-Straight Alliance, the Lubbock  Independent School District banned it. A school board member explained, “If I let something in like y’all, I’d have to let in the Ku Klux Klan.”

The district’s decision violated federal law. However, in Caudillo v. LISD, the judge ruled that “the local school officials and parents are in the best position to determine what subject matter is reasonable.”

“It was terrible. We felt very cut down,” says Betty Dotts, who had called in a lawyer from Lambda Legal in Dallas. Betty and husband Ted, a retired Methodist clergyman, have been fighting for gay rights since 1975, a continuation of their civil rights activism that began in the 1950s. Betty and Ted are also advocates for comprehensive sex education in a school district that teaches “abstinence only.” Faced with high sexually transmitted disease and teen pregnancy rates, Betty and Ted teach sex-ed in church.

In 1993, a friend asked Betty and Ted to start the first group for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in Lubbock. Betty said she “felt like a huge wave of water was coming over me and I was drowning,(because) I know the people here.” Nevertheless, she scheduled the first meeting.

Betty kept the lights low, and security stood at the door on the church’s second floor. When 50 people showed up and weren’t protesters, she was relieved. But many in the congregation were angry.

“We got some very harsh letters—some from our own Methodist ministers,” Betty says.

The couple also received menacing phone calls. Betty remembers wondering how far the critics would go. But Mary Vines, one of Ted’s former parishioners, says Ted has a way of diffusing resistance. “He would be at home with the Greek philosophers,” she says.

Ted and Betty have now made their home a haven for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered youth. Ted meets with a transgendered support group twice weekly. The Dotts show the kids unconditional acceptance; a rare thing in Lubbock. 

—Laura Burke

They emerged from the back of the arena, the handsome beaming couple, air-handshaking their way along barricades erected to allow easy passage for the dignitaries. “Realtors for Perry” signs bobbed joyfully in front of the stage. Other audience members whooped and stomped and waved signs, made to look “homemade” and scattered around the arena by Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign: “Texas is Succeeding,” “Texas Values/Proven Leadership,” “Woman for Perry,” “Homescholers for Perry” (yes, the second “o” was missing).

Perry was brimming with vigor, flashing back to those yell-leader days at A&M, looking like he might commence a “P-A-L-I-N” cheer at any time. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, fresh off her palm-reading episode at the national Tea Party Convention, was smirkingly aloof and resplendent in a lush black-velvet coat, reddish suede boots and a bodacious turquoise necklace from which dangled a cross.

Ladies and gentlemen, here are your populists!

Sigh. I still can’t help thinking, when I hear that good old “populist” word, that it still ought to mean what it once did in Texas and the rest of the South. The sort of thing that Lawrence Goodwyn quotes in his classic book, The Populist Moment, when a member of Texas’ seminal populist uprising, the Farmers’ Alliance of the 1880s, says this: “we have an overproduction of poverty, barefooted women, political thieves and many liars. There is no difference between legalized robbery and highway robbery. … If you listen to other classes, you will have only three rights … to work, to starve, and to die.”

Now, that sounds like populism to me. But there are two sides to what passes for populism in Texas today, and neither one bears the slightest resemblance to the anti-corporate, progressive, biracial roots of that word. So much so, in fact, that even a corporate shill like Rick Perry or a one-person corporation like Sarah Palin gets to claim the populist mantle.

You’ll recall how Perry lit out for the Tax Day tea parties last April and proceeded to wind back the clock to 1963 with his cries for states’ rights and his tantalizing hints about secession. But since then, the governor’s tea-party credentials have suffered, as he’s been avoiding rallies, dodging questions about nullification and secession, defending his corporate giveaways and his Trans-Texas Corridor “land grab.” He’s mostly dropped his 2009 talk about state sovereignty, too, replacing it with a Reaganesque message: “Washington is awful, and Texas is dandy!”

“Who thinks the answer is less Washington and more Texas?” Perry asked the crowd at Cypress’ Berry Center, going about as deep as he was willing to go.

Whoooo! They answered, on cue.

Palin, with a nod to her own most famously dishonest claim, said of Perry: “When Washington came calling, he told ‘em thanks but no thanks.” It was a reference to the federal stimulus money that Perry protested but, for the most part, accepted and used to balance the state budget. It had about as much “truthiness” to it as Palin’s claim about her opposition to Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere.”

The latest outburst of populist fervor in Texas was on display the Saturday before the Palin-Perry show in a car lot in Cleburne. Folks there supporting Debra Medina’s insurgent campaign have rejected Perry and Palin’s populist posturing. (See my profile of Medina, “The People’s Republican”) Unfortunately, Medina’s platform revolves around eliminating the property tax and replacing it with a sales tax—a fundamentally regressive idea that surely has the original populists tossing in their graves.

“Debra, I believe she wins the people’s hearts because she is nearest to the people,” Antoinette Walker, a native of Spain and right-wing blogger. “She is honest, she is bold, and she says what she needs to say, and that’s what people want to hear. Because we are tired of listening to—to—”

Her friend, Deborah Teselle of the Fort Worth 912 group, jumped in: “—to the normal rhetoric. They think they can get away with—”

Walker: “—it’s the slickness. They think they can say one thing and mean something else. You want to tell us we are doing bad and we have to work hard to make things good, just tell us. We are looking for honesty. Don’t tell us everything is roses. If somebody says it’s all nice, and this is the best state, and this and that—it’s a lie. It’s a lie.”

Big conservation news today…

Lake Fastrill is dead and the Neches River wildlife refuge is finally a reality.

Today the Supreme Court declined to hear a lawsuit brought by the city of Dallas and the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) over the proposed Neches River National Wildlife Refuge.

For years, Dallas water interests and East Texas conservationists have been squabbling over the fate of a stretch of the upper Neches River near Jacksonville. Dallas wanted to eventually dam the river there and create a new water-supply reservoir called Lake Fastrill.

Conservationists and most locals were fiercely opposed to the idea, accusing Dallas of destroying a sizable portion of East Texas in order to continue profligate water habits.

Indeed, this portion of the upper Neches contains one of the last relatively pristine, contiguous bottomland hardwood forests left in Texas.

The conflict came to a head in 2006 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created a 1-acre wildlife refuge in 2006 to block the designation of Lake Fastrill. A lawsuit by Dallas and TWDB against the feds followed quickly.

With the Supremes’ declining to hear the suit, the 25,000-acre wildiife refuge is all but a done deal.

Refuge proponents are jubilant. Here’s part of a statement from the Texas Conservation Alliance.

“We heartily endorse the Court’s decision — the Neches River Refuge will be great for East Texas!” said Dr. Michael Banks, Co-Chair of Friends of the Neches River.  “It’ll provide recreation, draw tourists, protect vital habitat for wildlife and waterfowl, and protect the landowners along the river from condemnation.”

[Note: Banks is running against state Rep. Chuck Hopson (R-Jacksonville) in the Republican primary.]

“There is enough water in existing reservoirs for Dallas to have all the water it needs for future growth,” added Janice Bezanson, Executive Director of Texas Conservation Alliance.  “Dallas could tap Lake Texoma, Wright Patman Reservoir, or Toledo Bend Reservoir for its future supplies.”

Dallas’ plans were to draw only about 3% of the City’s future demand from the proposed Fastrill Reservoir.

“The proposed Fastrill Reservoir was not a particularly good source of water for Dallas,” continued Bezanson.  “Dallas and other cities in the Metroplex can get a lot more water for similar or less cost from existing reservoirs.  Using water from already-developed reservoirs avoids condemning people’s land and harming the timber-agribusiness economy of East Texas.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identified the site of the Neches River National Wildlife Refuge decades ago as a priority site for conserving habitat for wildlife, songbirds, and migratory waterfowl.  Plans are in place for the Neches River Refuge to acquire more than 6,000 acres once the case brought by Dallas and TWDB is finalized.  In the long term, up to 25,000 acres may be added to the refuge.

“This decision is a win for East Texas and in the long run also a win for Dallas,” concluded Banks.  “The Refuge will benefit everyone – local residents and folks from Dallas and other urban areas in need of a place to get outdoors.”

In Texas, if you want to build a coal-fired power plant right outside a smog-choked metro area, there’s really no need to prove that the plant won’t further foul the air. In fact, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality will decide, with scant evidence and despite emissions of thousands of tons of ozone-forming gases that your plant is “ozone neutral.”

Absurd, I know, but that’s exactly the case with the White Stallion coal plant, a 1,320-megawatt facility 19 miles from the edge of the Houston-Galveston ozone “non-attainment” zone.

However, pressure is growing on the White Stallion developers and TCEQ. In a Feb. 10 letter to the state agency, the EPA wrote that it was “extremely concerned” about TCEQ’s belief that White Stallion is “ozone neutral.”

And: “appropriate air quality modeling must be conducted” to prove that the coal plant’s emissions won’t cause Houston’s smog problem to worsen.

It’s not clear, though, if the feds are asking or ordering. In April 2009, EPA wrote a similar letter to TCEQ about White Stallion. TCEQ responded by complaining that photochemical modeling was too expensive and would take too long.

Regardless, the EPA letters should come in handy for the environmental attorneys trying to block White Stallion’s permit in state administrative hearings currently underway.

Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle reported today

[S]tate Reps. Jessica Farrar, Ana Hernandez and Kristi Thibaut, all Democrats, asked the EPA last week to block the coal plant’s permits until the TCEQ studies emissions that would drift toward Houston and requires stricter pollution controls than proposed.

Oh, and kudos to the Houston Chronicle for (sort of) calling out the White Stallion developers on their bogus claim that the facility is the cleanest in Texas:

Not the cleanest

If built, the White Stallion plant would be capable of generating 1,320 megawatts, enough to power about 650,000 homes.

The company proposing it, which didn’t respond to requests for comment, says on its Web site the plant’s circulating fluidized bed technology enables it to burn coal and petroleum coke cleanly, meeting rigid environmental standards. The technology burns coal at lower temperatures and uses limestone to capture many emissions that older plants don’t.

Other proposed coal plants in Texas, however, would emit smog-forming pollution at a lower rate than the White Stallion facility, which would pump more than 4,000 tons of nitrogen oxides into the air each year — as much as 4.8 million cars — and increase Houston’s ozone level by 2 parts per billion, according to environmental groups.

Although the subhead pretty much comes out and says it – White Stallion is “Not the cleanest” new coal plant – the author never quite gets to it elsewhere. For your reference, here’s a chart of the emissions of the 11 new coal-fired power plants.

As you can see, White Stallion is middling at best.

A troubled chain of charter schools is in hot water again. The Rylie Faith Family charter schools run by Karen and Don Belknap of Dallas are threatening to give their charter school in El Paso back to the state.

Judging from their history of questionable accounting practices and nepotism they should also return millions in taxpayer money to the state while they’re at it.

If the El Paso School of Excellence closes more than 400 pre-K through fifth grade students will have to enroll in other schools and 45 employees will be out of work. This will be tough on families, especially if the school closes in the middle of the school year.

Back in 2005 and 2007, the Dallas Morning-News wrote about the couple’s history of hiring relatives and misspending state funds.

The DMN found that the Belknaps and their children “collected $420,000 in pay and reimbursements from the schools between September 2000 and August 2002.”

That’s some significant cash. The story goes on to explain the Belknap’s philosophy about hiring “kin.”
“The Belknaps hired friends and family, they said, because they couldn’t get anybody else to work for them.

We hired the most educated people we could find, and that was family,” Mr. Belknap said. “Why would we fire them just because they’re kin?”

More than three dozen family members and parishioners of the Belknaps’ church were on the payroll in 2002, including a cousin who was in charge of special education. Her previous work was as a cashier at Kmart and McDonald’s, records show.”

The Texas Education Agency has been monitoring the Belknaps’ charter schools for a decade issuing corrective actions and even installed Jack Ammons a retired school superintendent to manage the schools.

Ammons told the Dallas Morning-News “They were basically running a $5 million … [business] with just a checkbook,” he said. “And they were spending [taxpayer] money like it was their own.”

This was back in 2005. It’s 2010 and Ammons is still trying to correct the shoddy business practices going on at these schools. The Belknaps other charter school in El Paso – a middle school – was recently closed due to low attendance. There were 35 students enrolled at the school.  

The middle school was run by Karen Belknap’s brother, a Pentecostal minister.

Another interesting item from the 2005 DMN story is that the state requires that the Belknap’s pay Ammons for his oversight.

“Adding to the tension was the fact that the state ordered the Belknaps to pay Dr. Ammons for his counsel – $400 a day plus expenses. Dr. Ammons estimated that his work with the Belknap charters have cost the schools – and taxpayers – about $80,000.”

This was five years ago! The Belknaps who also run charter schools in Dallas receive millions in state taxpayer money every year.  In 2007, they’d received $38 million in the past eight years, according to the Dallas Morning News. These millions apparently are also being spent on Ammon’s oversight of their schools for the past decade.

I’m not knocking Ammon’s expertise. But when does the Texas Education Agency say enough is enough?

How long do taxpayers support poorly run charter schools? El Paso families shouldn’t be left scrambling to find another school in the middle of the school year for their children. And taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for schools that don’t make the grade.