Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

I was right about that election and everything else about this still holds up. And that strategy is now even being used at the local level. 

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• Welcome to my post Super Tuesday voting update. The big takeaway is that the Republican Party in Texas, and in Wise County, moved further to the far right. And that Ken Paxton is somehow turning out to be the most powerful politician in Texas. Here we go . . . 
• First up is the Wise County Sheriff's race where we have, in my opinion, a shocker.  The choice of the renegade Wise County Conservatives, who have taken over the Republican Party of Wise County, was the top vote getter. Cary Mellema is a a former Rhome Police Chief and tows the MAGA line. He'll be in a run-off with Craig Johnson, the current Chief Deputy in the Wise County Sheriff's Office. I honestly thought it would be a run-off between Johnson and Hoskins. 
  
  
  
• In my closely watched State Rep race between Andy Hopper and incumbent Lynn Stucky, if I thought Wise County would be put off by the Oilman PAC trying to buy this election, I was sorely mistaken. (Does anything matter anymore?)  Hopper almost won outright, but he and Stucky will go into a run-off where I think Hopper will have a distinct advantage.
  
  
  

  

  
  
  
  
• Any my apologies for basically ignoring Elaine (Taylor) Hays throughout this race. We lived a stone's throw away from each other when we both grew up on the mean streets of Bridgeport. 
• The biggest stunner statewide was the little watched Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Three incumbent pro-prosecutor and tough-on-crime judges were thrown out simply because Ken Paxton targeted them (after they correctly ruled that DAs, and not the AG, had exclusive jurisdiction to prosecute voter fraud.) This is absolutely nuts. How does the disgraced Paxton have this much power? And these races ended up not even being close. Amazing. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I was worried for David Spiller (R-Jacksboro) after he led Paxton's impeachment as a House Manager, but Paxton, for some reason, never put him on blast. And the big money never lined up against him.  As a result, he cruised easily. 
  
  
  
• More proof that the ultra-MAGA extremists and the Texas Oilman PAC are gaining power is the victory, over an incumbent, by a COVID protesting hairdresser. Remember her?
  
  
  
• More Paxton power: One of his impeachment defense lawyers defeated an incumbent by just a hair.
  
  
   
  
  
  
• To our north, an incumbent District Attorney was defeated in Montague County. (Shout to the lawyer who told me yesterday in the Wise County district courtroom that this was gong to happen based upon what he had seen.) Man, this was a beat down. 
  
  
  
• I don't know anything about the guy, but the southern part of Wise County will be represented in Congress by Brandon Gill.  To clear 50% and avoid a run-off with that many candidates is amazing. He will replace the retiring Michael Burgess.  The rest of us will still be stuck with Ronny Jackson who did not have an appointment. 
  

  

  
  
  
  
• Trump rolled in Wise County (88%), in Texas (78%), and all across the nation. As you sat in your homes on the evening of January 6th, in your wildest dreams did you think this would happen?  

  

  Wise County (above)

  

  National Margin of Victory

  
  
  
  
• The above was so bad than Nikki Haley will (finally) drop out of the race today at 9:00 a.m.
  
  
  
  
• I doubt he can beat Ted Cruz in the Fall, but Colin Allred will be the best chance ever.  (And who wouldn't want a former Baylor linebacker over a Harvard graduate?) Breaking 50% an avoiding a run-off is, once again, impressive.
  
  
  
• The Paxton forces had Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan in their cross-hairs big time. They might still take him down since that race is headed to a run-off.
  
  
  
• As depressing as all this stuff is, I love it all. 

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

A story about a guy who would later be known as "Dr. Death" was on the cover of the Dallas Morning News. Interestingly, this story was before he was even arrested which would occur the following year in 2015.

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• Tonight's Wise County election results (official) will be posted here.
• Happy Super Tuesday. We've got some interesting local  races, but this is the first time in decades where there is absolutely zero doubt how the national presidential races will fall in the various states. Trump should win every single one. 
  
  
  
• I am guessing the Wise Sheriff's Office race will go to a run-off which won't be until May 28th. That's too long away. 
• As expected, the Supreme Court unanimously said Colorado, and all other states, can't decide to keep a presidential candidate off the ballot for engaging in insurrection.  Interestingly, they went further and said how it should happen: It will take Congress to pass a law making that 14th Amendment provision active.  I doubt that's ever going to happen so there is now, for all practical purposes, no Insurrection Clause in the 14th Amendment.
  
  
  
• Legal nerdy stuff: You think I look for legal nerdy stuff? Well someone checked the "meta-data" of the Supreme Court opinion (open the PDF document in Adobe Acrobat and go to File > Properties > Description)  and discovered that the opinion originally had a lone dissent (instead of a three judge concurrence.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• No one noticed on Saturday when the 5th Circuit took emergency action and prevented last week's federal judge's ruling -- that SB 4,  the Texas Show Me Your Papers Or I'll Arrest You Immigration Law,  was unconstitutional -- from going into effect.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• And then just as quickly last night, the Supreme Court overturned the Fifth Circuit and put the law on hold again. 
  
  
  
• You think we have a Fifth Circuit problem?
  

• Oh, my.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• When I first saw this, I guessed it was another case similar to teacher-student where the minor was some teenage boy.  But due to the nature of the charges listed in the story, the victim will have to be under 14. We don't have any details because no news agency is smart enough to track down the arrest affidavit which is s public record. 
  
  
  
• I'd tap the brakes on this. The lawsuit was filed by a well known mass tort lawyer who has accused a lot of companies of doing lots of things.  
  
  
  
• Ronny Jackson is mad at the Rolling Stone for publishing this article about him.  
  
  
  
• The lady claiming to be abducted and forced to drive to the border last month is now showing her face as she tries to "set the record straight." This interview was given to Channel 8. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• But even WFAA seems seems suspicious. So am I. Police are refusing to say anything. Maybe it's all legit. Or not.  
  
   
• The Business Second™. This will take a very large check. 
  
  
  
• Saw this on the back or a work truck yesterday. Kind of generic.
  
  
  
• Any web page that causes a pop-up to appear when you move the cursor from body of the page to the URL bar needs to be banned.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

This was a shootout by the Wise County Sheriff's Office that had occurred a year earlier in 2013, but it was the Denver Post which finally obtained the dashcam video of the DPS trooper and released it 10 years ago this week. Evan Ebel had been wanted in Colorado. 

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• The Wise County candidate who is trying to unseat Rep. Lynn Stucky made an editorial in the Dallas Morning News this weekend for being a Texas successionist. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Here's the key paragraph from above.. It references Andy Hopper and what I refer to as the Texas Oilman PAC. Hey, you can vote for whomever you want to, but you need to be aware of what is going on.
  
  
  
• I downloaded the finance reports for Hopper for the last two years. Here are his top donors and at the top, with staggering numbers, is Tim Dunn's oilman PAC. Throw Defend Texas Liberty in there, too, since it is also funded by Dunn. (I'm not sure about Darlene Pendery but a Google search has her come up multiple times as a "Texas Mega Donor." Mike Olcutt is running for the House as well and has received $50,000 from Dunn.)
  
  
  
• And if I haven't said it enough, Dunn is on the cover of Texas Monthly with a cover story of how he buys elections, I even included the "money paragraph" for you as to how Dunn targets incumbents who don't vote as he demands.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Wise County's final early voting numbers. Four years ago there were 5,136 who early voted in the Republican primary. If my math is right, this year we've got 7,172. That's a massive jump.  
  
  
  
• The above numbers buck the trend in Texas statewide where early voting is down. Is it the Sheriff's race or Hopper/Stucky which is causing the Wise County turnout?
  
  
  
• There was an authorized private burn in the Boonsville area on Saturday afternoon, but it sure got a lot of attention as a potential wildfire since the smoke could be seen county wide.
  
  

  

  
  
  
   
• The Supreme Court might bail Trump out today. We will know in a few minutes.  
  
  
  
• There was some kind of gala at the Alamo to celebrate Texas Independence Day. The outfits left a little something to be desired:

  

  Dan Patrick

  
  

  

  Failed governor candidate Don Huffines

  
  
• There was a 35 year plea bargain entered into last week in Wise County for a David Biggers who was charged with "Evading Arrest or Detention With a Vehicle with a Previous Conviction or Serious Bodily Injury" in cause number CR25026. That's one of the longest plea bargains sentences ever. I couldn't find anything about the case in the Messenger's archives, but there had to have been a long criminal history involved.
• Trump came on on top in a new New York Times poll, but national polls in a presidential election are meaningless. For example, this poll involved 980 likely voters.  But say the race comes down to Michigan, which it might.  If the poll mirrored the number of voters by each state (doubtful), that means they polled 29 people in Michigan. For the critical state of Wisconsin, it would mean they talked to 19 likely voters from that state.
  
  
  
• The Business Second™: This would be not far from the Speedway -- on the other side of I-35 and a couple of miles south.
  
  
  
• Very legal nerdy stuff: Here is a fantastic Twitter thread uncovering the little experience that a candidate for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Lee Finley, has by examining online Texas appellate records.
• Dak has a new look. 
  
  
  
• NCAA Softball: Oklahoma's amazing 71 game winning streak came to an end against the Ragin' Cajuns, 7-5, in extra innings.