This undated letter from former state party chairman George Strake Jr. was forwarded to me by a Perry loyalist.

Dear Friend,

As someone who helped build our Republican Majority in Texas since the days Democrats dominated every statewide office and both houses of the legislature, and as someone who has supported Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s four campaigns for the U.S. Senate, I write to you today with great concern about the damage that is about to be done when our Republican Governor and Republican U.S. Senator collide in what will be a bloody primary, AND the blood will be all Republican.

As of today we have 39 Republican U.S. Senate seats. We need 40 in order to sustain a filibuster. When Senator Hutchison vacates her Senate seat we could well lose this Texas Senate seat to the Democrats, thus dropping our number to 38. Also important to note is the fact that if Senator Hutchison vacates her seat, Senator Olympia Snowe, a liberal from Maine, will be in line to become Ranking Member of the powerful Commerce Committee in the US Senate. She will not be an advocate for Texas businesses – which could be detrimental when the Senate takes up carbon cap and trade legislation that harms Texas the most.

We took a terrible beating in the 2008 national elections but we have a chance of picking up gains across the board in 2010 if we do not destroy ourselves in bloody and expensive primaries. By Senator Hutchison vacating her U.S. Senate seat and running in the gubernatorial primary, she jeopardizes the Republican Majority, taking needed funds from local races in an election year that will determine who writes congressional and legislative district lines. This election year is critical to us as Texas Republicans. Now is the time for patriotism and unity. The future of our nation is at risk. We need to come together as Republicans and deliver a clear message to our fellow Texans that we are a united party, united in opposition to the radical liberalism of Obama, Pelosi and the Democratic Party.

If we do not destroy ourselves, we can take advantage of Obama’s falling approval numbers brought about by massive debt, record deficits and boondoggle bailouts. You can serve your country by making a strong plea to Senator Hutchison to remain in her Senate seat and pulling together as a team of quality Republican candidates. I support Governor Rick Perry for re-election and would ask, for the sake of the party, that you do the same.

* * * *

Maybe George Strake did this on his own, but I suspect that it will not be the only such letter that is sent out, and that the Perry campaign is about to put on a full-court press for “strong pleas” to Senator Hutchison to get out of the race. Perry has said before that he wasn’t convinced that he would have an opponent. This is a smart time to make this move, with the filing period coming up in a couple of weeks and with Hutchison lagging in the polls. Depending upon how many letters the Perry campaign can gin up, it could work.

What do you think the odds are that Hutchison will run? I’d make it 65-35.

Tagged: george strake, kay bailey hutchison, republican primary, rick perry.

I don’t think that it is too hard to figure out. They put their ideological agenda ahead of the national agenda. It was foolish to run with cap and trade as the first piece of legislation. Then, when they addressed health care, which is on both the Democrats’ ideological agenda and the national agenda, they became ensnarled in the ideological issue of a government health care plan. The liberals who dominate the party drew a line in the dirt, and they are paying the political price for it. The first priority should have been “it’s the economy, stupid,” but, oh, no, the Democrats had an it’s-our-turn-now attitude, and they are quickly finding out that their safe majorities in Congress may not be safe and that their turn may not last very long.

Who are the independents? I don’t know if there are a lot of true independents, that is, people who have no political allegiances. Most are fickle voters who embraced the flavor of the month and then become disillusioned. The Republicans are still arguing about whether they lost adherents because they were too wrapped up in the social issues, or because they strayed from fiscal conservatism. The answer is both. Will they learn anything from what the Democrats are going through? I doubt it. Did the Democrats learn anything from what the Republicans went through? Apparently not.

There must be a greed gene among politicians. No sooner had the Democrats won in ‘08 than they were talking about a Rooseveltian-style transformation of American politics that would last for a generation. Hello? Does anyone remember Karl Rove and his plan for a permanent Republican majority? How did that work out?

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The source is an e-mail from Carl Whitmarsh, who is unknown to me but has been described by commenters as a very active e-mailer (and other less charitable characterizations). Whitmarsh’s e-mail about the poll said nothing about who conducted it. Interestingly, among the recipients of his e-mail were Democratic organizations in Dallas, Bexar, and Travis counties.

I checked Charles Kuffner’s blog, offthekuff.com, to see if he had mentioned who conducted the poll. He did: Lake Research Partners. I looked up the firm and here is what it had to say about itself:

No Really, We’re Different

Lake Research Partners is a national public opinion and political strategy research firm founded by Celinda Lake in 1995. The firm quickly expanded to become Lake Snell Perry Mermin and Associates, and in 2005 continued to grow through a merger with Decision Research. Our principals are leading information and political campaign strategists, serving as tacticians and senior advisors to a wide range of advocacy groups, labor unions, non-profits, government agencies, companies and foundations, as well as dozens of elected officials at all levels of the electoral process. The firm is national in scope, with offices in Washington, DC, New York, and California, and senior staff located in Washington, Oregon, and Virginia.

Lake Research Partners is committed to walking it like we talk it.

We’re a woman-owned business with a commitment to diversity. We have a strong client screen built upon our core values, working only for pro-choice candidates, clients with whom our labor friends can work, and good corporate citizens. Check our competitors’ client lists – you’ll find many cannot say the same.

We maintain a stable, professional staff of expert researchers and strategists. We don’t ramp up with temporary employees during election cycles just to fill demand. Instead, we cultivate and train the current and future stars of the polling world and enable them to develop unparalleled expertise on specific issues and geographic regions.

We offer all employees of Lake Research Partners a generous benefits package we wish every American worker enjoyed. We are one of the few firms left that pay 100% of health care insurance costs for comprehensive coverage. We also pay 100% for dependent and domestic partner coverage. We provide paid maternity and paternity leave. Our firm makes contributions to retirement plans, and we offer a generous leave package consistent with a healthy work and life balance.

Most of all, we’re a firm of true believers – each one of us feels privileged to work with our clients to advance progressive ideals – it’s the primary ‘intangible’ benefit of Lake Research Partners. Many peers told Founder Celinda Lake in 1995 that building a firm with a progressive values client base wasn’t economically viable for a new business. Fourteen years later, we’re still at it, and still proud of every project we’ve done.

* * * *

The office Parker and Locke are seeking is a nonpartisan office, but the threat of an anti-gay attack on Parker has partisan implications, as Republican activist Steven Hotze emerged as the chief spokesman against Parker. Parker doesn’t neatly fit a Democratic profile, however, as she spent most of her career, prior to entering politics, working for Robert Mosbacher in the oil and gas business. Mosbacher, of course, is the third most prominent Republican in town, trailing only George H. W. Bush and James A. Baker, having served as Secretary of Commerce in the Bush 41 administration.

Locke identifies himself as a Democrat and has the credential of having served as chief of staff to the late Mickey Leland. So an alliance with Hotze would definitely be a case of strange bedfellows.

Kuffner has a good analysis of the poll and the race.

Today’s daily message from the Hutchison campaign is that Perry’s record in education is woefully weak: stagnant test scores, rising dropout rates, a shortage of math and science teachers that keeps getting worse, inadequate state funding, several hundred million dollars down the drain for an ideologically and politically motivated plan for merit pay for teachers that failed to improve student performance. And she’s right. The Hutchison message goes on to talk about her own efforts for education: co-sponsoring a $21 million increase for math and science education, increasing the amount of Pell grants, and helping move Texas from sixth to third in federal research funding.

But here is what is missing from the release, and in fact has been missing from the Hutchison campaign: What does she intend to do about the situation? This reminds me so much of Ann Richards’ campaign against George W. Bush. It was all about what was wrong with Bush, and what Ann had done in the past. This was so obvious that when I was on the debate panel for the governor’s race, I asked Richards a softball question: “You have told us what you have already accomplished, but what are your three biggest priorities for your next term?” There was an uncomfortable silence, and then she said, “Raise teachers salaries.” Raise teachers salaries? She had had four years to raise them and hadn’t done it.

Here’s what’s missing from the Hutchison battle strategy: She doesn’t hesitate to say that Perry is doing some important things badly, and she doesn’t hesitate to say that she has done good things in the Senate. What she doesn’t say is what she will do when she is elected governor. Voters have no more clue what the top priorities of a Hutchison governorship might be, or how she might carry them out, than they did when she first announced that she was running a year ago. She can’t win just by saying that Perry is no damned good. She has got to make the case for the voters to fire him and replace him with her. What is that case and will we ever see it?

Tagged: education, kay bailey hutchison, rick perry.

The gist of the accusation is that several of Locke’s clients while he was a lawyer/lobbyist at the well connected Andrews Kurth firm had significant ties to the city government and entities with whom the city had interlocking ties (Metro, the Houston-Harris County Sports Authority, and the Port Authority). The Parker campaign says Locke benefited from these relationships by at least $17 million, and that if he is elected mayor, he would have “inescapable conflicts of interest.” As the release points out, the mayor makes appointments to the boards of all these entities, all of which are represented by Andrews Kurth.

Is anybody surprised? Not I. There have always been ties between city hall, the mayor, the politically connected law firms, and (before the oil bust of the eighties wiped them out) the big banks. If you go back to the seventies, lawyers who were close to then-mayor Fred Hofheinz wrote the legislation creating Metro and then became Metro’s law firm. It has been ever thus.

The release follows:

The Parker campaign today released information revealing that Gene Locke and his law firm have profited by over $17 million from his legal and political relationship with local taxing authorities in just the last six years – a situation that constitutes a serious conflict of interest.

“If elected, Gene Locke would have inescapable conflicts of interest,” said Parker.

Lawyer-lobbyist Locke has billed local government agencies like Metro at rates of up to $640 an hour. He billed $574,000 in fees to the Sports Authority alone in the last 30 months.

Locke is a partner in the politically-connected law firm of Andrews Kurth. The firm has made more than $17 million in the last six years alone from the City of Houston, Metro, the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority and the Port Authority of Houston, the same public agencies whose boards Locke would appoint members as Mayor – while his law firm, Andrews Kurth, continues to work for the City and each of those agencies.

The mayor of Houston appoints half the members of the Sports Authority, five of nine members of the Metro Board, and jointly appoints the Chairman of the Port Authority. Andrews Kurth represents all of those agencies. Andrews Kurth also does millions in legal work for the City of Houston.

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Tagged: andrews kurth, annise parker, gene locke.

We had a brief conversation about his future this morning. It does not include running for the state Senate or anything else involving elected office. This is true whether or not there is a special election for the U.S. Senate, and whether or not Shapiro resigns to run for Hutchison’s seat.

Tagged: Brian McCall.

I am sad to see the news that Brian McCall has decided not to run for reelection. Brian made the House better just by his presence. He was the gold standard for how a legislator should conduct himself. When he had a bill on the calendar, he put on a clinic about how to pass legislation, with clear explanations and irrefutable policy arguments. His integrity was spotless. His respect for the legislative process was total.

Next to his character, what he will be most remembered for is his opposition to Tom Craddick. McCall was a charter member of the ABCs, the once sizeable cadre of Republican members whose choice for speaker was “Anybody But Craddick.” When Craddick was running for speaker in 2002, McCall sent a letter to his colleagues foretelling the dark side of a Craddick speakership. It proved to be prescient. In 2006, Republicans lost five seats in the November elections, and McCall decided to challenge Craddick’s reelection. But a rapid Craddick counteroffensive turned three key McCall pledges, and he eventually bowed out in favor of Jim Pitts. Craddick went on to win his third term after the key vote — whether the speaker should be elected by secret ballot — went his way by a narrow margin.

Readers know the rest of the story. The 2007 session was one of the most tumultuous in memory. Craddick lost effective control of the House, and his frantic efforts to hold onto power, including firing the House parliamentarians and obtaining a new ruling that he could not be removed during the session, only turned more members agaisnt him, including several of his own committee chairs. Those were amazing days; we will never see anything like them in our time.

Through it all, McCall never wavered in his belief that Craddick could not be reelected. Neither, however, could MCCall. As the ABCs met to choose their candidate for speaker on January 2, McCall had filed papers to run, but his moment had come and gone. As the ABCs took successive ballots to drop the low vote getters, McCall did not make it to the final round. Still, as the story goes, it was his vote for Straus that determined who the next speaker would be.
While there are no doubt many reasons for McCall’s decision to retire from the House, I believe that the closing of the door on his dream to be speaker must have played a part.

McCall went on to serve as Straus’s chairman of Calendars. a position from which he could enforce fairness for members of both parties, so that Republicans and Democrats, and combatants in the 07 and 09 speaker’s races, could feel they had an equal chance of getting their bills to the floor, without personalities or political loyalties. He played an essential role in calming waters that are too often roiled, and his performance earned him a place on the Ten Best list. His departure is a real loss.

Tagged: Brian McCall.