Free Republic

I am well aware that Wendy Davis lost the Texas governor’s race by a wide margin. It’s salt in a very personal wound. Her campaign meant a lot to me, and to so many other Texas women — thousands of whom stood in line for hours to cast their ballots in support. Greg Abbott won anyway, and he won by a lot. But he didn’t win by a lot across the demographic landscape. I went to the Texas Tribune first for a dissection of the election results, and one piece of information struck me as particularly… wrong. The Tribune cited...

Two of Texas's most popular megachurch pastors, T.D. Jakes of The Potter's House and Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church, Dallas, reflected dueling positions on the state's controversial voter identification law. Jakes dismissed it as "needless" while Jeffress argued that the law is necessary ahead of Tuesday's mid-term elections. The Texas legislature passed Senate Bill 14 (SB 14) into law in 2011 in a bid to curb voter fraud. It requires voters seeking to cast their ballots in person to present photo identification, such as a Texas driver's or gun license, a military ID or a passport according to votetexas.gov....

We do not always agree with Texas Sen. John Cornyn, and, as he is in Senate leadership, it’s difficult not to lay some of the blame at his feet for the gridlock that has seized Congress. We recommend him for re-election nonetheless, based on a long record of achievement — but also on a hope. Through his decades of public service to Texas as a state district judge, a state Supreme Court justice and attorney general, we’ve seen a John Cornyn who might not have been as comfortable as he appears today in the Beltway’s toxic politics. This, of course,...

The lone Texas gubernatorial debate took place in the Rio Grande Valley Friday night. Front-runner Attorney General Greg Abbott, the Republican, just had to get through the debate without making any negative news. The pressure was all on Wendy Davis, Democrat state senator trailing by a lot in the polls, to make something — anything positive — happen.Well, she made something happen. But it wasn’t positive. Davis attacked Abbott over a school finance lawsuit that’s in appeal.Abbott responded that as attorney general, he has an obligation to follow the law and keep the suit going.Davis then went into unleashed...

In her first television ad of the campaign, Democratic candidate for governor Wendy Davis goes directly at her opponent, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, attacking him for his role in a 1998 rape case. The ad entitled, "A Texas Story," heavily criticizes a vote Abbott made when he was on the state Supreme Court involving a case in which a woman was raped by a door-to-door salesman. The case at the center of Davis' ad involved the 1993 rape of Dena Kristi Read by Mickey Carter, who was employed as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman by a distributor of The...

Texas Governor Rick Perry has again made headlines for the wrong reasons when, speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California last week, he likened homosexuality to alcoholism. "Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that," he said. "I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way." Gay-rights groups reacted per usual. "Although he may not have the 'genetic coding' to think before...

Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis is a national household name for one reason: abortion. She became the face of the pro-abortion movement when she stood up against a pro-life bill in the Texas legislature to stop late-term abortions. Preferring to keep abortions legal in the Lone Star State up to the day of birth, Davis infamously filibustered the bill and was eventually defeated and the bill became law. Since then, dozens of abortion clinics have either closed down or stopped doing abortions. After the filibuster, conservative activist Erick Erickson of Red State called David “Abortion Barbie” on Twitter and the...

Texas conservatives are hoping to win two major Republican run-off elections on Tuesday, for lieutenant governor and attorney general, underscoring the Tea Party’s enduring influence in the state. In the race for Lieutenant Governor, Tea Party favorite State Senator Dan Patrick took 41.5 percent of the vote in the four-candidate March primary, and is favored to win on Tuesday. The three-term incumbent, David Dewhurst, finished with 28 percent. The run-off race for state attorney general features a similar showdown, after Tea Party-backed State Senator Ken Paxton took 44 percent of the primary vote and State Representative Dan Branch won 34...

HOUSTON, Texas—The Tea Party is alive and well and is firmly established as a dominant force in Texas Republican politics. Victories by Tea Party favorites nearly swept the statewide Republican runoff election. Establishment candidates like State Representative Dan Branch and State Senator Bob Deuell faded quietly in defeat while strongly supported Tea Party candidates like Sen. Dan Patrick, Sen. Ken Paxton, and former State Rep. Sid Miller sailed to easy victories in their statewide races. The trend of Tea Party victories continued down the ballot as well. In Senate District 10 (currently held by Sen. Wendy Davis), Tea Party favorite...

Ok, here's a thread for tonight. I live in MA so I don't know when the polls close.

J ohn Cornyn — or whoever runs his Twitter account — is on a roll. The Texas Republican senator was recently heckled by someone who called Cornyn a "RINO" — Republican in name only, for the uninitiated — and suggested Tea Party conservative Katrina Pierson should have run against him. "Did so great against Pete Sessions," Cornyn retorted. (Sessions, a nine-term Republican from Texas, defeated Pierson in the primary by a massive 64 percent to 36 percent.) Pierson's fans protested, but Cornyn wasn't done yet. Faced with protests from the supporters of other defeated Tea Party candidates — a tally...

The 2014 Republican primaries have been good for incumbents and the GOP establishment over Tea Party candidates. Texas is having none of that. In Tuesday's GOP primary runoff elections, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst lost his bid for re-election to state Sen. Dan Patrick, a former talk radio host backed by Tea Party groups. This is Dewhurst's second big loss to the Tea Party — he was upset by Ted Cruz in the 2012 GOP primary for U.S. Senate. Patrick will face state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte (D) for the unusually powerful Texas lieutenant governorship. The Tea Party also won...

AUSTIN (AP) - State Sen. Dan Patrick has defeated three-term incumbent David Dewhurst for the Republican nomination for Texas lieutenant governor.

Patrick, a fiery radio talk show host who founded the Tea Party caucus in the Texas state legislature, ousted Dewhurst after a campaign full of attack ads and mudslinging over which candidate was more conservative.Perhaps one day we’ll have a relatively calm, statesmanlike contest between an established candidate and a Tea Party insurgent. It would also be interesting if a few more of these races were run with something approaching financial parity. It’s significant when a feisty upstart overcomes a five-to-one funding disadvantage to unseat an incumbent, but no so much when the candidate with the huge war chest stomps...

HOUSTON — Dan Patrick, a state senator who has taken outspoken stands against abortion, same-sex marriage and illegal immigration, won a Republican runoff for lieutenant governor on Tuesday, handily defeating David Dewhurst, the longtime incumbent, in a race that illustrated the continuing power of the Tea Party in Texas.Mr. Patrick, 64, a radio talk show host from Houston who received widespread Tea Party support, had been expected by many political strategists to defeat Mr. Dewhurst. He finished well ahead of Mr. Dewhurst in the March primary, though he failed to get enough votes to avoid a runoff.“The people of Texas...

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) has lost his GOP primary, ending more than a decade in office. The Associated Press has called the race for Texas state Sen. Dan Patrick (R), a hard-charging conservative who focused on illegal immigration. Patrick led Dewhurst by 64 percent to 36 percent with 9 percent of precincts reporting. ADVERTISEMENT Dewhurst, a self-funding multi-millionaire, had finished well behind Patrick in the first round of voting two months ago. The race had gotten increasingly nasty in the closing weeks of the campaign, punctuated by the release of Patrick's mental health records. The lieutenant governor, first...

Some of Hollywood’s biggest power players are about to open up their wallets for Democrat Wendy Davis’s gubernatorial campaign in Texas. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg are hosting a celebration and fundraiser for Wendy Davis on May 22 in Santa Monica, Calif., the Davis campaign confirmed. The soiree will be hosted on the rooftop of Bad Robot, the production company owned by Abrams. A donation of $1,000 will get you in the door, but to be a co-host, you must raise or contribute $10,000, while hosts will fork over $25,000. Contributions will be evenly split between Davis’ gubernatorial...

THIS IS FOR THE MOUNTAIN WEST (Rest of the country is in separate threads and Pacific Coast coming later, see links below) There are numerous important House Primary Races! And places where we can WIN! PLEASE contribute! And if you can't contribute money ... the least we can do is go to their pages and give them a "like" or a tweet. All of these candidates are involved in primaries that are close (or could be close) against generally more moderate or liberal Republicans. All of these districts are winnable in November. Nevada: NIGER INNIS, NEVADA-4, June 10th .... winner...

PPP's newest Texas poll finds Republicans leading by double digits in all of the state's major races for 2014. In the Governor's race Greg Abbott's at 51% to 37% for Wendy Davis. ------snip----- There's been some thought that Democratic prospects might be better in the race for Lieutenant Governor but Leticia Van de Putte actually trails by slightly more than Davis, regardless of who her Republican opponent ends up being. Dan Patrick leads her by 16 points at 51/35. ------snip----- Although it hasn't really been on anyone's radar screen the likely US Senate match up between John Cornyn and David...

The Bush family doesn't waste any time indoctrinating the next generation into the world of politics. George H.W. Bush's baby great-grandson Prescott joined his father George P. Bush in the voting booth yesterday as daddy runs for Texas land commissioner. Baby Prescott was swept up by his mom Amanda just as dad went into the booth - but he still got an 'I Voted' sticker.