Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

About Ed Hubbard

Ed Hubbard has been a contributor to Big Jolly Politics since 2010.  He is an attorney in Harris County, who practices complex litigation and appellate law with the firm of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP. Ed has been active in civic and political affairs in the Houston area since he came here after graduating from law school at SMU in 1983. He has served as a member and/or officer of several local organizations, including the boards of St. Paul’s Methodist Church and its Foundation; St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal School in Nassau Bay; the Institute of Hispanic Culture of Houston; the Clear Lake Area Republicans; the Greater Houston Pachyderm Club; Raging Elephants.Org; United Republicans of Harris County, and the Executive Committee of the “C” Club of Houston. Ed was the Republican nominee for a seat on the First Court of Appeals in Houston in 2008, a candidate for the Chair of the Harris County Republican Party in 2010, and Legal Counsel for the Harris County Republican Party.  Currently, Ed is a member of the “C” Club of Houston and the Immediate Past President of the Greater Houston Pachyderm Club, and is working with contributors to BJP and others on the development of a new civic project known as “Renewing the American Neighborhood.”

Texas and Harris County Republicans, Let the Dust Settle and Move Forward

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The primary season is over, and Republicans in Harris County and in Texas have new party leadership teams.  I wish both well.  Now, as we enter the final week of the convention process and the final general election campaign season, I want to share some thoughts for Republicans to consider about the future.

First, to our new leadership of the Harris County Republican Party, I pledge to you both my support, and (as always) my continued candor.  Although I standby the concerns and recommendations I made in response to social media posts made by the incoming Chair, and continue to be concerned that such posts will have consequences for our party’s candidates this fall, what’s done is done.  I simply hope that lessons were learned about how to use, and how not to use, social media in the future.  This hope has been kindled by initial reports of how the recent organizational meeting was run, and by the inspired choice of Kevin Fulton to serve as our new Vice Chair.

As we move forward, I want to share the following general observations with this new team:

  • The fundamental responsibilities of any political party are to present a coherent set of principles for public policy that unite a diverse membership of voters, to provide for a primary process to select candidates for office who will promote those principles in public office, and to provide a functioning organization that will identify and mobilize voters to turn-out and vote for those candidates.  All other functions of the party should focus on meeting these responsibilities.
  • Political party organizations are private associations—heavily regulated, especially as to their function in holding primary elections, but still private associations.  Compliance with the law, especially as to the public transparency in conducting primaries, is mandatory.  But, while transparency as to the internal affairs of the association also is important, that transparency applies to communications within the governing body; the Chair, officers and EC members have a duty to the association to maintain the privacy of the organization’s non-public business and records.
  • New administrations must be allowed to implement changes they deem important to fulfill their vision for the party, but prudent change should build on the foundation of positive accomplishments of the past, not tear down the edifice and start over.
  • Although I agree that the HCRP should not be wedded to any one consultant, very little that happened to Republicans in Harris County over the last 6 years can be blamed on the use of a single consultant.  In fact, during the mayoral election of 2015 and the general election of 2016, conservative/Republican turnout actually reached its zenith in Houston and Harris County (in 2015, we came within 6,000 votes of electing the more conservative candidate for mayor, and in 2016 virtually every countywide Republican candidate surpassed the historic 565,000 vote threshold of for winning countywide elections).  Unfortunately, the interplay of demographic changes accelerating since 2006, Democratic turnout increasing since 2008, and the separate Trump and Beto phenomena, swamped the local party by 2016 and 2018.

With these observations in mind, I want to share some recommendations with the new leadership team:

  • Build upon the organizational and fundraising advances made since 2014, don’t throw them away and start over.  And don’t return to the party’s dysfunctional organization and fundraising, and “pay for play” culture, that preceded it.  To rebuild the party, identify and persuade neighbors to support Republican candidates, mobilize them to vote Republican candidates in a county this large and diverse, and protect the security of their votes, we need functional organization, management and fundraising.  Make changes that you believe will improve this system, review what happened to incorporate lessons learned into your changes, but don’t spend your precious time conducting an inquisition of the past and don’t abandon the foundation that has been transferred to you.
  • Harris County is not the same as it was in 2004.  We cannot rely just on more turnout from our historically Republican precincts west of 610 and north of I-10, and on our churches, to elect our candidates (our new Chair should be aware of this situation, as he has worked for years to grow the party on the east side of the county).  We need to engage voters in every precinct to build lasting relationships and a party infrastructure in order to persuade new people to vote Republican, and then to mobilize them to vote for Republican candidates.
  • We need to help our candidates and elected officials develop policy ideas that address local issues in a manner consistent with our principles, in order to show persuadable voters that we have realistic ideas for addressing the issues they care about and that government is competent to address.  And then, we need to provide communication support to help their messages get through all of the 24/7 media and social media noise to reach and persuade the voters.
  • Finally, we need to realize that there is only so much that can be accomplished between now and when absentee and early voting start this fall.  While doing what can be done for the fall campaign, start organizing and planning for the day after the election and the coming 2022 election cycle.

Again, these are my personal recommendations—but they are based on years of observation of, and participation in, the party.

As for Republican Party of Texas’ new Chair and team, I have only a couple of thoughts:

  • Make changing the platform, and related party rules, a priority for 2022.  The current platform exceeds 330 planks and 30 pages.  It is an incoherent and conflicting monstrosity; it arguably is no longer a platform, but rather an amalgam of pet ideas and priorities (many of which are simply ridiculous).  It definitely is not a platform of principles that unite a political party.  Look at the Republican Party’s 1860 platform for guidance:  written for a relatively new party at the cusp of a civil war, it said all it needed to say in a Preamble followed by 16 paragraphs (heck, there are only ten Commandments, for goodness sake, which Christ distilled to two).  The 1860 platform united former members of disparate political factions and parties behind a set of ideas that carried the party through war and most of the rest of the 19th Century.  We need that type of clarity going forward.
  • Our candidates and elected officials need that clarity, too.  Recent rule changes now make declarations of fidelity to the platform crucial for candidates, and penalize elected officials for not following it, when no competent human being could consistently follow such a document.  Instead of promoting action, such a platform can only promote paralysis in office, because no ambitious elected official would dare do anything that could be interpreted as violating one of the 330+ planks.  If we are to earn and retain political control of the state, we need bold and principled men and women, not men and women who will be scared of their platform’s shadow.  Not only should the platform be reformed, the rules that create such a shadow should be scrapped.

I know that these simple recommendations will not be popular with those well-intentioned activists who have vested so much in the current platform and rules, and it will be hard to implement.  But, over the course of several conventions, we now have a mockery of a platform exacerbated by draconian rules.  We need to acknowledge this situation and change it.

Finally, to all my fellow Republicans, we need to come to grips with what type of conservatives we will be moving forward.  Remember, that an American Conservative, paradoxically, is committed to conserving one of the most radical political experiments in human history:  preserving and protecting a self-governing society of free men and women.  To continue to conserve this radical experiment, we must decide what type of conservatives we will be:  primarily a movement that says “stop” to everything with which we disagree; or primarily, a movement that tries to guide an ever changing future while preserving the essential ideals that form the foundation of a free society.  I for one want to be a conservative guide to the future—saying “stop” only when necessary to properly guide others to preserve the experiment.

The world of our parents is over, and my fellow Baby Boomers who lived our adult lives in Reagan’s America are passing the country to two generations who see many of our traditions as immaterial, wrong, or even evil, which, in turn, colors their view of the entire experiment we hold so dear.  I know how disconcerting all of this is, and we may believe they are wrong, but the future is theirs.  We need to guide them to preserve the essential ideals needed to preserve the experiment for them and their children, while recognizing their right, as Reagan once said, “to make the world over again.”  This won’t be easy for us or for them, but if we want this experiment to survive, we need to listen more than we talk, and persuade rather than preach.

Again, I wish our new leadership well.  It’s time to let the dust of the past settle, and move forward.

A Journey We Now Must Take

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It was almost 5 years ago that I wrote a post on this site related to the arrest and death of Sandra Bland:  https://bigjolly.com/simple-traffic-stop-call-action/.  That post sparked some interesting discussions in the comments to this site, on Facebook and other sites, face-to-face, and even led the Dallas Morning News to reprint a version in its online and print editions, which led to further comments.  But soon afterwards, we all moved on.

Now, I again offer my condolences to another family—the family of George Floyd—who are left grieving after a tragedy that should not have happened.

As I’ve watched and listened to all that has transpired over the last week after the death of George Floyd, I sadly realize that very little has changed over the last 5 years, and that the same raw feelings that were aroused by the traffic stop, and its aftermath, in Waller County in 2015 have continued to boil just beneath the surface of our society.  Now a lot of steam is escaping and many of us are left wondering, again, how we got here and how we will move forward.

Whatever might have justified the police officers’ original detention of George Floyd, nothing justified the actions taken by those officers after he was subdued.  For some reason we may never know, any mercy for the neighbor those officers had in their custody slipped away during the 8-plus minutes caught on video.  As we all watched the video with a degree of horror, it reinforced the fear and distrust that so many of our African-American neighbors have about the way they are perceived and treated by the rest of their fellow citizens.  Although none of the looting and violence that followed is justified, the protests are justified; and the conversations they are sparking are long overdue and must continue.

Today, I am left with the same observation I made 5 years ago, but now with a sense of even greater urgency:

… It is a national tragedy that so many of our neighbors wake each morning believing that their countrymen don’t think they matter, and wondering whether they will live through that day.  In fact, it is not just a tragedy—I agree with some of the leaders of #BlackLivesMatter movement when they call the current situation a “state of emergency.” …

Remember, if we truly believe in a limited federal government and in the power of families, the private sector and local governments to address most issues, our neighbors must trust each other and their local governments. That trust starts with each of us recognizing and protecting the humanity of all our neighbors, every day, in every situation. …

A progressive tide of politics has swept over the Democratic Party over the last 5 years since I made that observation, as has a populist tide washed over the Republican Party.  The disunity fueled by these often opposite movements appears to have worsened recently in reaction to the deaths, lockdowns and economic hardships caused by the unexpected emergence of COVID-19.  Now, in this context of disunity, history forces us also to confront what we failed to confront 5 years ago, let alone 50 or 100 years ago.

Frankly, I don’t know what mix of private and public action is needed at this time to address the fundamental issues raised by George Floyd’s death, or whether any mix of proposals would be acceptable right now to a majority of our politicians, let alone our citizens.  So, I am left, for now, with a suggestion as to how to start the conversation.

Because this issue is so fraught with emotion, and opens such deep wounds for our society, maybe it is best to start with a proposition from those Founding Fathers who published the Virginia Declaration of Rights a few weeks before the Declaration of Independence:

… it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.

Or, as simply stated in the Gospel According to Matthew:

Do to men what you wish men do to you.

If these ideals for humane, compassionate action (shared, in one way or another, by most societies and religions in human history) guide our approach, I am confident we eventually will find our way through the current disunity and begin to address, once and for all, the distrust at the core of our current discontent with appropriate actions that retain the best of our society’s ideals, institutions, and traditions, while guiding us all to a better future.

Again, I have no idea what answers we will find along this journey, and, because of our ancestors’ failure to properly address this problem, we are left with few guideposts to follow.  But I know we all must now take this journey in order for our society, and its ideals and promises, to endure.  History will not be kind to us if we try to wait another 5 (or 50, or 100) years to start this journey.

A Time for Perspective

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Like many of you, I find myself this weekend struck by the quick development of events created by the emergence and spread of COVID-19.  Thankfully, all around me in my own little corner of this world are, at the moment, not directly affected by this new virus; but we are all impacted by the current crisis it has unleased.  At a moment like this it is hard to keep perspective about both the present and future, but, as history teaches us, this moment, too, will pass.  It is with that knowledge that I ask all of us to be patient and keep perspective as we face this crisis—for it is not just a crisis facing our elected leaders, it is a crisis we all must face.

No truer observation about how to face a crisis was made than by FDR in his inaugural address of March 4, 1933, in which he said the following:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. … [O]ur distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it.

Although these words were intended to address an immediate economic crisis, the wider context of recent crises in which he spoke needs to be remembered.  Not much more than a generation earlier, centuries of routine waves of smallpox, yellow fever and cholera continued to ravage communities throughout the world; polio continued to infect millions, including FDR; 15 years before his address the world saw the end of both a world war and an influenza pandemic that decimated populations in the US and Europe; by 1933 the men who would create such carnage throughout the world over the ensuing decades had come to power—Stalin and Hitler (with Mao attempting to take control of China)—and the seeds of the Second World War had started with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.  The common element to each of these crises is that they all eventually ended.  They ended not just because of leadership from political leaders, but because of the perseverance of all of our ancestors who faced these crises.

Moreover, in just the lifetime of many of us, we have endured other critical events, both manmade and natural:  the social upheavals of the 1960s; the stagnation and Watergate scandal of the 1970s; the Cold War; the swine flu, SARS and H1N1 viruses; the HIV virus; 9/11 and the wars that followed; and the financial meldown of 2008—just to name a few.  But again, we have persevered through these times.  This history shows that we will persevere through this crisis as well—especially if we remember how to do so.

            As a former U.S. Vice President wrote in a personal memoir published over 60 years ago,

‘Seflessness’ is the greatest asset an individual can have in a time of crisis.  ‘Selfishness (in its literal rather than its lay sense) is the greatest liability.  The very fact that the crisis is bigger than the man himself takes his mind off his own problems.  The natural symptoms of stress in a period of crisis don not become self-destructive as a result of worrying about himself but, on the other hand, become positive forces for creative action.  … We are all tempted to stay on the sidelines, to live like vegetables, to concentrate all our efforts on living at greater leisure, living longer, and leaving a bigger estate.  But meeting crises involves creativity.  It engages all a man’s talents.  When he looks back on his life he has to answer the question:  did he live up to his capabilities as fully as he could” Or, were only part of his abilities ever called into action?

These are not just questions for political or medical leaders in this time of crisis, but, in a free society they are questions for all of us.  If we empathize with those who face this virus directly every day, follow the health and hygiene instructions, and find creative ways to help our family and neighbors through this current ordeal, we will all get through the next few months of crisis.  Most importantly, we may even come out of this better as individuals, and as a society, then we were when it started by re-learning how to care for and trust others.

So, just as we face this current crisis as it unfolds, we need to also keep “the day after” in mind.  What type of people do we want to be when this crisis ends?  As we think about this question, we should also remember these words from the same author:

…[L]eaders are subject to all the human frailties:  they lose their tempers, become depressed, experience the other symptoms of tension.  Sometimes even strong men cry.  … The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself.  …And the most dangerous period is its aftermath.  It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.

Let’s get through this time by keeping our wits about us, but also by building the foundation for a better tomorrow when this crisis ends by rebuilding caring relationships and trust—even with those with whom we disagree.  Let’s not let our guard down and revert to the isolation, self-centeredness, and distrust that has evolved over the last few years—we can and should be better than that. 

But being better tomorrow is always difficult, for it is our natural inclination to let our guard down and try to revert to old ways of “normalcy”.  Even the quoted author, Richard Nixon, who thoughtfully wrote those words in 1962 would let his guard down a decade later in such a spectacular fashion as to embroil the country in a deep political turmoil that still impacts our politics today, over 40 years later.

As Nixon’s story shows, it is hard work, even in the best of times, to build a better tomorrow, but it can be even harder after a crisis ends and even when we know what we should do.  Let’s remember that building a better tomorrow after a crisis starts with being patient, keeping perspective, and applying creative actions during the crisis to promote what is truly lasting and important, and then continuing to apply what we learn from this experience to all the days that follow.

Good luck, stay safe, and remember to help your neighbor—we’ll get through this, too.

Barbara Bush’s Wellesley Speech

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A lot has been said about Barbara Bush’s speech at Wellesley back in 1990, and the controversy that preceded it; but to read it again is to marvel at how timeless it is.  In a very short speech, she summarizes the core lesson to learn about life derived from all the greatest thinkers of our, or any, civilization.  It is remarkably consistent with the foundation of our Renewing the American Neighborhood project.

The true test of a great speech is whether it speaks beyond its moment, and this speech does.  I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that it may be one of the great American speeches of the last half of the 20th Century (and that period includes a lot of Reagan’s memorable speeches).  In a time when we have lost our way and use “diversity” as a political weapon, she puts “diversity” in its proper intellectual and social context to guide our journey together as a democratic people through life.

She truly was a remarkable woman.

Mrs. Bush’s Commencement Address to the Wellesley College Class of 1990

Thank you President Keohane, Mrs. Gorbachev, Trustees, Faculty, Parents, Julia Porter, and certainly my new best friend, Christine Bicknell, and, of course, the Class of 1990. I am really thrilled to be here today, and very excited, as I know you all must be, that Mrs. Gorbachev could join us.

These are exciting times. They are exciting in Washington, and I have really looked forward to coming to Wellesley. I thought it was going to be fun — I never dreamed it would be this much fun.

More than ten years ago when I was invited here to talk about our experiences in the People’s Republic of China, I was struck by both the natural beauty of your campus … and the spirit of this place.

Wellesley, you see, is not just a place … but an idea … an experiment in excellence in which diversity is not just tolerated, but is embraced.

The essence of this spirit was captured in a moving speech about tolerance given last year by a student body president of one of your sister colleges. She related the story by Robert Fulghum about a young pastor, finding himself in charge of some very energetic children, hits upon a game called “Giants, Wizards, and Dwarfs.” “You have to decide now,” the pastor instructed the children, “which you are … a giant, a wizard or a dwarf?” At that, a small girl tugging at his pants leg, asked, “But where do the mermaids stand?”

The pastor tells her there are no mermaids. “Oh yes there are,” she said. “I am a mermaid.”

Now this little girl knew what she was and she was not about to give up on either her identity or the game. She intended to take her place wherever mermaids fit into the scheme of things. Where do mermaids fit into the scheme of things. Where do mermaids stand … all of those who are different, those who do not fit the boxes and the pigeonholes?” “Answer that question,” wrote Fulghum, “and you can build a school, a nation, or a whole world.”

As that very wise young woman said. “Diversity … like anything worth having … requires effort.” Effort to learn about and respect difference, to be compassionate with one another, to cherish our own identity … and to accept unconditionally the same in others.

You should all be very proud that this is the Wellesley spirit. Now I know your first choice for today was Alice Walker (guess how I know!), known for The Color Purple. Instead you got me — known for the color of my hair! Alice Walker’s book has a special resonance here. At Wellesley, each class is known by a special color … and for four years the Class of 1990 has worn the color purple. Today you meet on Severance Green to say goodbye to all of that … to begin a new and very personal journey … a search for your own true colors.

In the world that awaits you beyond the shores of Lake Waban, no one can say what your true colors will be. But this I do know: You have a first-class education from a first-class school. And so you need not, probably cannot, live a “paint-by-numbers” life. Decisions are not irrevocable. Choices do come back. And as you set off from Wellesley, I hope that many of you will consider making three very special choices.

The first is to believe in something larger than yourself … to get involved in some of the big ideas of our time. I chose literacy because I honestly believe that if more people could read, write and comprehend, we would be that much closer to solving so many of the problems that plague our nation and our society.

Early on I made another choice which I hope you will make as well. Whether you are talking about education, career or service, you are talking about life … and life really must have joy. It’s supposed to be fun!

One of the reasons I made the most important decision of my life … to marry George Bush … is because he made me laugh. It’s true, sometimes we’ve laughed through our tears … but that shared laughter has been one of our strongest bonds. Find the joy in life, because as Ferris Bueller said on his day off … “Life moves pretty fast. Ya don’t stop and look around once in a while, ya gonna miss it!” (I am not going to tell George you clapped more for Ferris than you did for George.)

The third choice that must not be missed is to cherish your human connections: your relationships with family and friends. For several years, you’ve had impressed upon you the importance to your career of dedication and hard work, and, of course, that’s true. But as important as your obligations as a doctor, lawyer or business leader will be, you are a human being first and those human connections — with spouses, with children, with friends — are the most important investments you will ever make.

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a child, a friend or a parent.

We are in a transitional period right now … fascinating and exhilarating times … learning to adjust to the changes and the choices we … men and women … are facing. As an example, I remember what a friend said, on hearing her husband complain to his buddies that he had to babysit. Quickly setting him straight, my friend told her husband that when it’s your own kids, it’s not called babysitting!

Maybe we should adjust faster, maybe we should adjust slower. But whatever the era, whatever the times, one thing will never change: Fathers and mothers, if you have children — they must come first.

You must read to your children, hug your children, and you must love your children. Your success as a family … our success as a society depends not on what happens in the White House, but on what happens inside your house.

For over 50 years, it was said that the winner of Wellesley’s annual hoop race would be the first to get married. Now they say the winner will be the first to become a C.E.O. Both of those stereotypes show too little tolerance for those who want to know where the mermaids stand. So I want to offer you today a new legend: The winner of the hoop race will be the first to realize her dream … not society’s dreams … her own personal dream. And who knows? Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President’s spouse.

I wish him well!

Well, the controversy ends here. But our conversation is only beginning. And a worthwhile conversation it has been. So as you leave Wellesley today, take with you deep thanks for the courtesy and the honor you have shared with Mrs. Gorbachev and with me. Thank you. God bless you. And may your future be worthy of your dreams.

What to ask a judicial candidate before you cast your vote

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Periodically over the last 7 years or more years that I have posted columns on Big Jolly Politics I have wrestled with writing posts on certain issues that have deeply divided conservatives and Republicans in hope of generating thoughtful discussion and reflection.  As David Jennings can attest, some of my drafts have never made it to being published because we felt that it was not the right time to discuss the issue in the way I wanted to discuss it.  But, with the filing deadlines for our primary season fast approaching, I believe now is the time to discuss a subject that has energized conservatives for more than 40 years:  the role our social conservatism plays in our choices of candidates for public office.  In doing so, I know that I am touching the “third rail” of Republican politics, but I feel that someone must start a long-overdue discussion about this issue for the sake of the future of conservatism and our party.

By the early 1970s we had experienced many upheavals and changes in our society, many of which were long-needed and most of which were cemented into our constitutional law through Supreme Court decisions.  Many of these decisions were controversial at the time, but soon were respected and followed.  But some of those decisions that involved the role of religion in our public institutions have remained deeply controversial.  Then, in the early ‘70s, two more decisions were made by the Supreme Court—one not controversial at the time, and the other extremely controversial then and now—that began to animate our politics:  Baker v. Nelson, in which the Court adopted a decision of the Minnesota Supreme Court finding no constitutional right for gay couples to marry; and Roe v. Wade, in which the Court found constitutional protections for a woman’s choice to have an abortion.  The issues raised by these two cases, together with the issue of religious speech in the public square, have energized activists on both sides of the political spectrum ever since.

The paradox arising from the importance these issues have had on our politics is that they have very little to do with most of the day-to-day decisions, judgments and work of our elected officials at any level of government, but they are critical issues in defining who we are, and who we want to be, as individuals and a society.  As a result of this paradox, we increasingly choose men and women to represent us in government based on where they stand on these issues that government is both poorly designed to address, and that government rarely should address.  But when they do have to address them, all hell breaks loose—and the arguments over these issues can and do grind the normal functions of government to a halt until someone “wins” and someone “loses”.

Some of these battles have been and are still worth fighting—but we seem to treat every battle as if we were confronting Armageddon, when maybe some perspective should have been applied. Our conservative response to these issues, more often than not, has been to stand and yell “stop,” rather than to find a way to guide change in a way that preserves the best of our principles and traditions. Because of the trajectory that our society has taken over the last 40 years, the result of our actions has been to eventually lose on most of these issues, while paralyzing government from performing necessary reforms and functions that are within their core constitutionally delegated authority and competence.

Although this problem impacts the work of all elected offices, it is especially acute for judges in a state like Texas, where we select our judges in partisan elections.  For a Republican to win a judicial primary in this state, the candidate must make two, often contradictory promises to voters:  committing to preserving socially conservative values, while committing to apply the law “as written” rather than legislate from the bench.  The contradiction arises because the constitutional law in this country has now enshrined many “values” that are not socially conservative, so applying the law “as written” requires the judge to abide by and enforce laws that have not preserved socially conservative values.  And when the judge abides by and enforces such laws (which is, by the way, the primary constitutional responsibility of every judge throughout the United States, and especially trial court judges, who are constitutionally required to follow the precedents set by the governing appellate and Supreme Courts over their jurisdictions), he or she is seen as betraying socially conservative values, regardless of how the judge would have written the law if in the legislature or on the Supreme Court, or what the judge’s personal views may be.

Although, if I were on the Supreme Court or in a legislature, I would not have approved of some of the laws that have evolved over the last 40 years, I expect the judges who sit on our courts to abide by and enforce these laws.  If we don’t expect that from our judges, we will destroy one of the cornerstones that has maintained our liberties down-through the centuries—the rule of law, rather than by the whim of men.  If we don’t like it when judges ignore the law to thwart legal policies with which they disagree, we cannot encourage judges to ignore the laws with which we disagree.

So, regardless of how strongly I may feel about recent constitutional decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court, I will ask only two questions of each candidate in our primary:

  • Are you qualified and competent for the bench you are seeking?

and

  • Will you follow and apply the law as it is written by the legislature or a higher court, rather than ignore such law or create new law?

More often than not, the person who will answer both questions “yes” will be conservative both in temperament and values, so that he or she will reflect the values I want in an elected official—but the primary test I will apply is the one to determine their judicial temperament and competence, rather than ask them to contort themselves over the election-year contradictions that our social-conservative politics has created for them over the last few decades.

I endorse Paul Simpson and Governor Abbott for Re-Election—it is time for all of us to do the same.

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ed-hubbard
Ed Hubbard

I have refrained from regularly posting on BJP for the last 3 years out of concern that anything I might write could be attributed to the local Republican Party, because I held an office with the HCRP.  Now that I have stepped-down from that position, however, I plan to resume my regular posting here.  Although my friend, David Jennings, pleaded with me to write something about the remarkable World Series and the Astros’ championship, I will postpone sharing my thoughts about this season, and my beloved Baseball, for another post (or two) before Spring Training starts.  Instead, I want to jump back into BJP with some thoughts about the future of our State and our party.

But, before I do so, I want to publicly thank Paul Simpson for giving me the opportunity to serve our local party since the summer of 2014.  When Paul and I first ran against the incumbent Chair of the HCRP in the 2010 primary, the party infrastructure was in abysmal shape.  I presented a 10-point plan for rebuilding the party finances, management and organization, and for growing the party base—and Paul and I agreed on most of those points.  I am proud to say that, through Paul’s leadership and the combined efforts of so many local activists, so much of what he and I fought for in 2010 were successfully implemented under Paul’s leadership.  Today, the party has a strong organizational and fiscal foundation upon which it can continue to grow by identifying and mobilizing voters to elect our Republican state and local candidates.  Thankfully, those reforms came just in time, because, as we saw in the last election, Harris County is now so politically competitive that we need the effective organization he has built to continue to elect our candidates.  As a result, I whole-heartedly endorse Paul for another term as Chair of the HCRP—he’s earned it.

As we saw during this last election, though, we cannot rest on the foundation Paul established, for even though our down-ballot local candidates did better than the top of the ticket in both 2014 and 2016, such performance will not be enough if the top of our ticket is not supported by our local voters.  And the strength of that ticket next year will depend on the ability of our incumbents for the U.S. Senate, Governor and Lt. Governor to address the long-term needs of Texas, and on the unified effort of our party activists to support this ticket.

It is because these challenges are so immediate and obvious that I was distressed to see that some of the early endorsement emails recently circulating have left out the most obvious incumbent at the top of our ticket: Governor Greg Abbott.  I am not sure whether this was an oversight, an intentional delay to focus a later email just on him, or (what I fear) a desire by some in our party to recruit a challenger, but I am concerned that more than one endorsing entity has done the same thing before the filing deadline.

So, let me be clear where I stand:  I happily, fully, and unconditionally endorse Greg Abbott for re-election as Governor.  I believe he is still the right man for this job at this time, and that his best days as Governor lie ahead.

I don’t say this out of blind loyalty to either the Governor, or my party.  Like any other independently thinking conservative, there have been issues on which I have disagreed with him, or feel he has not yet done enough.  But, he is still the best man to lead this State at this time as it addresses the long-term challenges we face in Texas.

What are those challenges?

Regardless of whatever pet issue drives your political interest, there are at least six over-riding and obvious priorities that our state government must address over the next four years—some by itself, and some with through collective efforts with our business community, local leaders, and our Congressional delegation:

  1. Structural and financial reform of our K-12 public school system and our state-university undergraduate system;
  2. Modernization and expansion of our roads, bridges, ports, and flood control and coastal-storm surge protection systems;
  3. Reform of our public-employee compensation/pension, and municipal finance, systems;
  4. Re-imagination of our local and state public health delivery systems, including how we address mental-health care;
  5. Implementation of a more effective sunset-process for unnecessary or duplicative agencies; and
  6. Adoption of zero-based budgeting at each level of government.

You will note that I did not include property-tax reform on this list.  As important as that issue is, we cannot begin to reform our tax system until we truly know how much money our state and local governments need to properly meet these challenges.  Only after we address these reforms can we effectively change our property-tax system.

These are not easy issues to address and to solve; but solve them we must if we are to continue to grow as the most free and conservative state in the Union.  For instance, we have a K-12 educational system, and a flood-control system, that are both over 70 years old, and they are wholly incapable of meeting the needs of Texas today, let alone for the next generation.  As for our public university system, we have imbalanced the use of public resources by diverting too many resources to building world-class research institutions and away from the support of undergraduate education.  Our cities and school districts have become too debt burdened and are approaching insolvency.  And our state and local governments are too ossified in the status quo to reform themselves to meet present and future needs.

I love our citizen legislature that meets regularly for 140 days every two years, but this is not enough time for our legislators to address these long-term needs.  So, as Governor Abbott recommended to the last special session to address educational reform, we need a Governor who is willing to appoint and work with special commissions while the legislature is not in session to investigate and develop long-term plans to present to the legislature, similar to the Perot Commission in the 1980s, and modeled after the successful bi-partisan effort of civic and political leaders to address Houston’s pension problem during the last legislative session.

Governor Abbott is the one statewide official with the breadth of experience at the state and county levels to lead this effort, and I believe he sees these challenges and is ready to lead Texas to find solutions.

But he needs our unified support to do so.  So, our party—at every level—needs to not only support his re-election, but also support him, and the rest of our elected officials, to meet these challenges consistent with our principles of liberty, free-markets, and limited government.  As part of this effort, we need to reach-out to every neighborhood, build relationships and trust with voters, and persuade them that our agenda and principles will produce effective government throughout Texas for years to come.

Again, the best leader we have at this time to address these issues is Governor Abbott, and I endorse his re-election.  I challenge the rest of you to unify and do the same.