Runoffs to Replace Texas State Senate Icons

Lubbock, TX, Avalanche-Journal ^ | 02-17-03 | AP

[Theodore R.]

Runoffs to replace state Senate icons Associated Press

Accusations have been flying and the money has been flowing in East and West Texas as state Senate candidates engage in runoff elections today to replace Republicans Bill Ratliff and Teel Bivins.

The two longtime senators resigned, and an election in January to replace them did not produce a winner. The top two candidates in each race advanced to a runoff.

In West Texas, Kel Seliger, who served four terms as mayor of Amarillo, faces fellow Republican and Odessa businessman Kirk Edwards in District 31 to replace Bivins.

District 31 includes Dallam, Sherman, Hansford, Ochiltree, Lipscomb, Hemphill, Roberts, Hutchinson, Moore, Potter, Randall, Harley, Oldham, Deaf Smith, Parmer, Bailey, Cochran, Yoakum, Gaines, Andrews, Martin, Howard, Glasscock, Midland, Ector and Crain counties.

Bivins resigned after he was nominated by President Bush to serve as ambassador to Sweden.

The winner of the runoff will have to run again in the March primary and the November general election because Bivins' term expires this year.

In the January 20 election, Seliger received 36 percent of the vote, and Edward's took 21 percent.

They emerged as the top vote-getters in a field of seven candidates.

Edwards, who hails from Odessa, which is in the southern half of the district and dependent on oil and gas, was expected to outspend Seliger, from the agricultural northern half, about 3-to-1.

"Water is an issue, who's the authentic conservative is an issue," said Harvey Kronberg, longtime editor of the nonpartisan Texas political newsletter Quorum Report. "There's been a lot of talk about school finance but nobody's really putting ideas on the table."

Seliger, 50, has accused Edwards, 44, of using "slimy" polling tactics earlier in the race when a pollster called Amarillo residents and asked questions that implied

Seliger supported Planned Parenthood and had raised funds for President Clinton, among other things.

Seliger denied any support of Planned Parenthood or Clinton and later released a booklet containing more than 100 pages of courthouse documents his camp says indicate Edwards' history of lawsuit abuse against farmers.

Edwards rejected the allegations and pointed out that most of the lawsuits cited were brought against a company he no longer owns.

The tone is even more shrill in the East Texas District 1 race, where former Democratic Rep. Paul Sadler is trying to beat Republican former Tyler Mayor Kevin Eltife in a Republican-leaning district to replace Ratliff.

"The Democrats are really pulling out the stops. They smell the possibility of stopping the Republican tide," said Kronberg. "They have been shy of any substantial victories for four years now. This one would give them huge bragging rights."

The candidates are running neck-and-neck on campaign spending, filling East Texas radio and late night TV with ads.

While the candidates have played relatively nice, outside parties have resorted to nastiness.

Texans for Lawsuit Reform has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads to criticize Sadler's litigation against asbestos companies and to portray him as anti-military for voting for an amendment that would have required soldiers overseas to fill out an additional form to vote in local elections.

Sadler, a Henderson lawyer, has rejected the criticisms and argued that the purpose of the bill was to make voting easier and protect against voter fraud.

Sadler has built his campaign on his experience writing landmark education reforms in the 1990s and his qualifications for dealing with the state's school finance crisis.

Eltife, a Tyler real estate developer, touts a record of using the half-cent sales tax to improve streets and buildings while reducing the city's debt and slashing property taxes in half.

Eltife has the muscle and political momentum of the Republican Party behind him, with endorsements from not only Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, but Ratliff, who had refused to endorse in the special election.

Ratliff's endorsement so late in the game surprised some, but Larry Carter, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Tyler, said the endorsement wasn't strong enough to sway the election.

"It wasn't an unqualified endorsement. He said he liked both of them, but I think he was just doing it for his party," Carter said. "It's more of a courtesy endorsement, rather than a heartfelt."