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Posted on 12/22/2009 8:54:54 AM PST by BuckeyeTexan
This is so potentially great, even greater than we thought it could be.
For a while, ex-Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle talked about running for governor. That could have led to a November battle between Democrat Earle and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, now running against Gov. Rick Perry in the GOP gubernatorial primary.
Earle v. Hutchison would have been a rematch of the battle previously known as The State of Texas v. Hutchison, a long-ago criminal case in which Earle was The State of Texas and he wanted to send Hutchison to prison for up to 51 years.
The background: Four months after she won the Senate seat in 1993, Travis County grand jurors indicted Hutchison for allegedly misusing state employees and equipment — and destroying state records to cover her tracks — while she was state treasurer.
The case died in February 1994 when Earle, unable to get a ruling guaranteeing he could use key evidence at trial, refused to proceed. The judge ordered jurors to proceed and, absent any prosecution case, they acquitted Hutchison.
"Earle balks, Hutchison walks," said this newspaper's headline. (Headline-writing 101: If you have the time, make it rhyme.)
So you can see why a gubernatorial race rematch of the Hutchison-Earle smackdown offered unlimited potential for the always-festive reopening of old wounds.
Alas, Earle balked at a governor's race and walked into the lieutenant governor's race.
Here's the upside: Four years of Hutchison and Earle trying to work together as officeholders should be even more fun than eight months of them battling each other as candidates.
It's the dream scenario for those who believe legislatures legislate best by legislating least. How much lawmaking would you expect from a governor and a lieutenant governor when the latter once tried to send the former to prison?
Yes, it was a long time ago, but I'm guessing the Hutchisons and Earles to this day do not trade holiday cards.
Just to make sure bygones aren't bygones, here's something Hutchison said about Earle in 1994: "Ronnie Earle's record is spotted with controversy, allegations of misuse of power and corruption."
Earle on Monday told me he's a guy willing to work with whomever the voters choose.
"I have been able to work with lots of people of divergent backgrounds and positions," he said when I asked if he could, as lieutenant governor, work with Hutchison as governor.
And no, the two (both University of Texas School of Law, class of '67) have not spoken since the trial. "We do not frequent the same places or run in the same circles," Earle said.
Let's try one more quick question: Was Hutchison guilty? "I'm not going to comment on that," he said.
In Texas, governor/lieutenant governor is not like president/vice president. You can have a governor of one party and a lieutenant governor of another. We enjoyed that fine dynamic 1979-83 when Republican Bill Clements was governor and Democrat Bill Hobby was lieutenant governor. They reprised their interparty performance 1987-91. It happened again 1995-99 with Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bob Bullock.
In Texas, lieutenant governors (lite guvs to cool guys at the Capitol) are powerful due to the Senate president role that allows them to appoint committee chairs and hold great sway over the legislative flow.
Even when they're from the same party, Texas governors and lite guvs have a fine tradition of getting on each other's nerves. Sometimes it's about policy. Sometimes it's about personality.
The latter reached something of a zenith from January 1991 through January 1995 when Gov. Ann Richards and Bullock roamed the Capitol as big-personalitied recovering alcoholics who occasionally annoyed each other like a long-married couple married a bit too long. Bullock, a former state comptroller, once said he could do Richards' pre-governor job — state treasurer — with a secretary and a phone.
More recently, the governor/lite guv team of Bush and Perry did not exactly produce a lifelong friendship. Some of Bush's top aides now are backing Hutchison over Perry in the GOP primary. Curiously, Bush and Bullock got along pretty well.
None of the previous mismatched governor/lite guv teams could hold a candle to what we might see with Hutchison/Earle.
So this holiday season, for a gift that will keep on giving, please consider committing to giving us Gov. Hutchison and Lt. Gov. Earle. You've seen a lot of fun and games at your state Capitol (lawmakers fleeing the state — twice, a legislator having himself shot, etc.), but this could be one for the ages.
You've let Capitol mayhem slip through your fingers in the past (remember when you didn't elect Claytie Williams as governor in 1990). You owe it to yourself not to let it happen again.
kherman@statesman.com; 445-3907
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I have to admit, it would be good entertainment value for money, but Ronnie Earle is as slimy, crooked and dishonest as they come. I also liked how this writer uses the term “holiday card.”
Sorry. I apologize to the slime of the world for using it in the same sentence as the name Ronnie Earle. I do think that if the race comes down to KBH and Ronnie Earle, Tom DeLay will be out there killing himself to raise money for her. Strange bedfellows indeed.
I was a relative newbie to Texas back then and certainly not yet involved in politics, so please excuse my ignorance on this subject. I have to know ... was she guilty?
He also engaged in a partisan witchhunt of Tom DeLay (that saw him step down from office to handle the case, Republicans surrender their chairs when there is an ethics probe even if there is no “there” there).
Tom DeLay’s case (initiated by Chris Bell, Democrat LOSER) has still not been brought to trial yet (nearly 4 years later).
“Oddly” enough, the Rats want to be in charge for the next redistricting in this state. Recall the last time district lines were drawn, they raised holy Hell and fled the state to prevent a quorum.
Ronnie Earle waged a partisan prosecutorial witchhunt against Tom DeLay that STILL has not been brought to trial. Not just no, but HELL F*** NO!
The Rats are making this next election cycle easy for me.
I will be voting in the Democrat Primary this time.
AGAINST Bill White
AGAINST Ronnie Earle
AGAINST Kinky Friedman
AGAINST all encumbant Democrats on the ballot
Well, when the judge required Ronnie Earle to present the evidence he planned to use to move forward with the prosecution, Earle declined, so the judge directed the jury to acquit her. One might infer that he didn’t have any useable evidence. General opinion, at the time, was he brought the charges in the first place to stop her from being elected to the Senate, and as a favor to any Democrat who might have wanted that Senate seat, ie, Richard Fisher, because she beat the pants off of Bob Krueger (she got 68 percent) in the special election runoff, which apparently drove Ronnie mad. Ronnie saw that seat as a Democratic hereditary right, seeing as it had been occupied by man of the people Lloyd Bentsen. Another element: if every elected official in Texas who used government equipment and government employees on government time to run for election or re-election (Ronnie Earle included) were prosecuted, I suspect 90 percent of them would be in prison. Must have given members of the Legislature the heebie-jeebies.
One more reason to vote for Rick Perry. Can’t give the AAS any hope or joy.
No. Her office, under her direction, and following all state rules, had deleted outmoded information- after making hard copies of it all. That's how I heard it at the time, but the upshot was that she had been properly doing her job.
Yep, it's great fun to set the playing field more to our liking.
The way I see it, the Red Diaper Doper Babies have overtaken much of the Democrat Party. DINOs they are.
And some Democrat politicians have found careers in jumping ship and becoming RINO Republicans.
So the political tug-of-war has moved the middle to the Left. “Far Right” only seems “far” when you have the Pravda Media beating the school drum and cheerleading for College Marxism 101.
I’m here to push back. Kick the RINOs out of the RNC and kick the Socialists out of the DNC. There have always been socialists there, but since 1970, the agitators and beyond on the Left have moved in to become THE establishment Left (in media, academia, and government).
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