As you probably know, the 311th Family Court has been in the news for the past six months because of the antics of the incompetent Judge Denise Pratt. Unfortunately for Harris County families, Pratt refuses to resign from the bench and continues to harm families in crisis. The best way for Harris County Republican voters to send her a strong message of rebuke is to vote for one of her opponents in the March 4th primary.
I’ll be voting for Anthony Magdaleno in that primary. Anthony’s long experience representing families in crisis has given him the right perspective for the job. In fact, I’ll let you read his perspective from a questionnaire he filled out for me four years ago:
Why should people vote for you in the primary?
Anthony Magdaleno
Because I believe that the “black robe” a family law judge wears is a robe of service and not a robe of power.
In my practice, when a client comes into my office with a family matter, such as a divorce, that client is quite often almost in a state of panic, thinking that his or her world is ending because of the threat that he or she is going to lose his or her children, house, car, retirement, etc. In such a situation, I have always enjoyed being able to sit down with that client, assess the situation, and advise that client of what could be done to address his or her particular situation so that the burden of stress he or she was under could be “lifted off his or her shoulders”. When that client left my office feeling a sense of relief, then I felt I had done an important part of my job — that of helping that client prepare emotionally to deal with the situation at hand and to proceed to court.
I would now like to take this perspective to the courthouse, and sit as a judge to help BOTH PARTIES get through the judicial process without unnecessary stress, grief, chaos, embarrassment, or expense. In addition, since litigants in family court quite often have the intimate details of their personal lives exposed in open court, I believe it is so very important for a judge to have the appropriate demeanor in dealing with litigants before the Court. A judge should be respectful to litigants, and not belittle, ridicule, intimidate, or yell at them. All that does is to make an already difficult situation unbearable. A family court should be respected but not feared.
I thought that was the most refreshing answer in that campaign and it still holds true today. Anthony would be a breath of fresh air in a family court system that desperately needs it. He has refused to play along with the pay-to-play slate system in both of his campaigns – a system that resulted in the wholly incompetent Judge Denise Pratt sitting behind the bench.
Anthony also won this year’s Houston Bar Poll for this bench among his Republican opponents:
2014 Houston Bar Poll results
Anthony has also been a tireless advocate of the Harris County Republican Party’s efforts to reach minority voters with a message of inclusion for small government, free market, maximum liberty principles. It is hard to go to a meeting anywhere in Harris County’s minority neighborhoods and not find Anthony already there spreading the message.
I urge you not to let the pay-to-play system result in another incompetent judge sitting behind the bench of the 311th. Study the candidates, talk to them, and I think that you will arrive at the same conclusion I have and that you too will vote for Anthony Magdaleno in the 311th primary.
One of the hottest races for a Texas State Representative spot is out in west Harris County in House District 132 to replace the retiring Rep. Bill Callegari. As I’ve noted before, George Scott at George Scott Reports has been covering this one very closely.
Today, he takes down candidate Michael Franks for his problems with the Texas Ethics Commission. As George says, don’t blame me for letting you know. Michael should have taken care of this long ago.
A quick snippet:
Let’s be clear:
George Scott Reports and the people of Texas did not assert that Michael Franks broke any campaign law.
The TEC did.
The AG did.
George Scott Reports and the people of Texas did not fine Michael Franks for breaking ethics rules.
In the hotly contested race to replace retiring Judge Bonnie Hellums in the 247th Family Court, I’ll be voting for Judge M. L. Walkerin the Republican primary.
I first met Judge Walker in 2009 when she was running in her first campaign. She seemed quiet and unassuming, relying upon her experience to carry her to the top. Obviously she was naive about Republican primary politics. My wife was especially impressed with her after they had an hour long discussion about the family courts and her vision of how she wanted to run a court.
She is supremely qualified for the job – reviewing her credentials and educational experience shows that. The other two candidates in the race simply can’t compete on that basis. Nor can they compete on her experience behind the bench as an Associate Judge. The results of the Houston Bar Poll certainly bear that out, as summarized by my friend (and future Supreme Court Justice) Leif Olson:
– In the HBA’s 2014 qualification poll, Walker’s Well Qualified/Qualified/Not Qualified numbers were 218/74/54. She received more “well qualified” votes than any other non-incumbent candidate for any of the family-court races. I have to qualify that with “non-incumbent” because the only family-court candidate who outpaced her at all was District Judge Lynn Bradshaw-Hull. Similarly, her “not-qualified” numbers are lower than any other candidate save for Charley Prine, who had 53 such votes—only one fewer than Walker.
– The results for the 2013 Evaluation Poll for Walker were similar, as shown by her Outstanding/Acceptable/Poor results in each category. Follows the law? 68/22/10. Rules decisively and timely? 67/24/9. Courteous and attentive in the courtroom? 73/17/10. Impartial? 68/21/10. Efficient use of lawyers’ time? 61/27/12. Works hard and is prepared? 69/22/9. And the overall analysis, by percentages? Excellent – 58, Above Average – 20, Average 12, Below Average – 4, Needs Improvement – 6. That overall “Excellent” rating, by the way, is higher than all but one of the associate judges and higher than all but three of the district judges: Judy Warne, David Farr, and Roy Moore (who is ahead of her by less than a percentage point).
– 2010 was an election year and so had a qualifications poll. Walker’s well/qualified/not split was 238/108/104. That was almost twice the “well” votes of the next-highest candidate and roughly 40 fewer “not” votes than the next-lowest candidate. (For comparison, the candidate who won was at 57/120/242, but received some—ahem—endorsements.) That was a busy year; there were 40 candidates rated across all family-court races. Only 11 of them received more “well” votes (most of them current or former district judges); only three received fewer “not” votes than she did.
Being an Associate Judge in a Family Court is arguably the hardest of all judicial positions. You must follow the policies set by the elected judge even when you disagree with them and have other ideas. Most importantly, you have to be consistent and follow the law. Judge Walker’s bar poll results indicate that the lawyers that practice in front of her hold her in high esteem.
The biggest “charge” against Judge Walker is the fact that she has stated publicly that she voted for Barack Obama in 2008. That is also one of the charges levied against another candidate in the race, Melanie Flowers. I sat down with both candidates and asked them about their vote. Neither of them took the easy road – they could have said, as many other candidates have (think Rep. Sarah Davis) that they voted for Obama as part of the Rush Limbaugh fun that year. Both ladies were very open and said that they believed that Obama offered the best hope for the future of their communities and the country as a whole. As well, both ladies said that they had learned from that mistake. Indeed, Walker told me that “fool me once shame one you…fool me twice shame on me” is very applicable”.
I think that if we, as a party, hold a single vote for Barack Obama as a litmus test of who we vote for while ignoring the life achievements and overall quality of the candidates that are on the ballot, we deserve the caricature of being small minded that our opponents paint us as. If we overlook the cultural significance of that vote, we do ourselves and our party no favor.
I’ll be voting for Judge M.L. Walker because I think that she is by far the most qualified person for the job in this race. I encourage you to learn about each of the candidates and think that if you do, you will join me and Judge Walker’s broad list of supporters in that vote.
I started to call this one the massacre at the Texas Asian Republican Caucus forum but it isn’t SEO friendly.
By all accounts, the Paul Simpson campaign for Harris County Republican Party Chair has the money and momentum to win the race. The amount of money he’s raised, over $160,000, is astonishing for a position that doesn’t pay a dime. Dick Weekly has helped him get the endorsement of Michael Berry. Life is good for the campaign.
Paul Simpson speaks as Jared Woodfill looks on.
With all of those positives, why has my day sucked? Because I knew I was going to have to tell you about the forum that I attended last night. My problem isn’t simply that Jared Woodfill crushed Paul in the “debate” – no, that would have been easy to brush off because from what I hear, that is routine when the two meet. And even though the communications part of the job is at least as big as the rest of the job, I had decided that Paul would be “good enough” to get the job done because he would be so much better at the rest of it.
Here is a little context for the rest of this. The forum was held directly after a forum that featured two candidates for HD149 trying to defeat Democrat Hubert Vo – Nghi Ho and Al Hoang. The room was full of people that were probably getting their first glimpse at the leadership of the party. You want outreach? You didn’t need to reach far because those who the party needs to “reach out to” were sitting next to us. So what does Paul do?
He started off with a personal attack on Jared and kept it up until the end. It is one thing to make a sharp contrast between yourself and your opponent on issues that affect the party. It is quite another to come across as a mean, desperate man by repeatedly making personal attacks. Even when Jared tried to give him an opportunity to lighten up by asking a silly question, Paul couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. Other than Paul’s true blue supporters, no one in the room was comfortable. Especially those people that need to be “outreached” to – they looked like they were in a torture chamber. What kind of outreach are we in for?
Perhaps the strangest thing about the very strange night was watching Paul make my little buddy Terry Lowry look like the saint he ain’t. You want “pay-to-play” removed from the party? You’d better not stand in front of a group of people and tell them that you tried to pay money to affect the content that Terry Lowry produces. That is exactly what Paul did last night.
Watch this video with both candidates answering questions about “pay-to-play”:
Watch it again because we’re going to talk about it. I’ll wait.
Okay, now that you have a good memory of what the candidates said, let’s look at a couple of points.
Paul may not think that Jared is a good attorney but Jared ate his lunch on that question. Hypocrisy, thy name is Paul Simpson says Jared. Now you might say, no, you’re blowing this out of proportion. No, I am not. Think about what Paul said.
“The pay to play slates are a cancer on the Harris County Republican Party.”
As you well know there are people out there that take issue with your system – that’s their fight.
Well, which is it Paul? I’ve been fighting these slates for seven years – I guess it is my fight and not yours. Jared was absolutely right to call out Paul’s hypocrisy – you can’t pay them and then knock them when they don’t endorse you.
Jared then points out that Paul wrote a check for $10,000 this cycle. Paul jumps up and says he only wrote a check for $5,000. Paul is correct but this note is included in his campaign finance report:
Initial (50{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}) payment for full page ad in March 2014 Link Letter
Clearly the commitment was for $10,000, which is why Jared used $10,000.
More from Paul in the video:
I sat down with him, said I’m interested in an ad, will you endorse my opponent? That’s all I asked. He assured me he would not. I wrote a $5,000 check to him. The party, the party, gave Mr. Lowry $5,000. Then Mr. Lowry endorsed Mr. Woodfill. He either lied to me or broke his word.
Okay, so Lowry broke his word. Or lied. But let’s listen to what Paul said in that January 8th showon Terry Lowry’s radio program:
I’ll buy an ad from you and I don’t know what you’re gonna do in my race, that’s the way it is.
Lowry then gives out Paul’s website and stresses that he has not endorsed in the race but never one time says anything to the effect that he isn’t going to skip the race. So which is it? Did Paul demand that Lowry not endorse anyone before he would buy an ad or did he buy an ad not knowing or caring who Lowry was going to endorse? I asked Paul to help me reconcile the discrepancy and he says there is no discrepancy and sent me this:
I asked Terry Lowry in December if he had decided what he was going to do in the County Chair race. I told him we would not buy an ad in his LinkLetter if it also carried his endorsement of an opponent, because such an ad would be a waste of money.
He then said that he was not going to endorse any of my opponents. I told him that, on that basis, I would buy an ad, and paid half the total ad price.
I did not ask or know what he was going to do in the race – i.e., if he would endorse me or stay out of the race entirely.
The next month, he informed me that he was endorsing Jared Woodfill.
So, he either lied to me upfront that he had decided not to endorse any opponents, or he later broke his word.
My campaign has not funded the second half of the anticipated ad payment.
I’m not an attorney and perhaps an attorney would say, okay, that is a good explanation. But this line really sticks out:
I did not ask or know what he was going to do in the race – i.e., if he would endorse me or stay out of the race entirely.
No, what Paul did was to tell Lowry, look, little fella, I’ll pay you but you can’t endorse Woodfill, okay? Deal?
That doesn’t cut it with me. What is the difference between someone sticking out their hand and saying “give me some money and I’ll endorse you” and someone walking up to you with $10,000 in their hand and saying “I’ll give you some money if you either endorse me or go away without mentioning my race at all”?
Tell me, what is the difference? Paul clearly admitted to paying for an ad conditioned on confirming what the content of the endorsements would be. This is very different from someone like Gary Polland that gives candidates the option of canceling their ads and getting a refund if he doesn’t endorse them. Lowry made clear in that interview that the ad is completely separate from the endorsement.
Back to the suitability of Paul as spokesperson of the party, which is at least half the job. Take a look at another portion of last night’s forum – listen to the tone, watch the body language, and ask yourself about “outreach”.
Refusing to have a little light hearted fun in front of people getting their first experience with party leadership? Questioning Jared’s commitment to the pro-life movement? Are you kidding me?
Look, I know I’m going to get a lot of grief for writing this. I get it, a lot of people are fired up about finally making some changes to the party. And after fighting this fight far longer than most of those that are going to criticize me, it would be easy for me to overlook stuff like this and just be glad that change is coming. But as a conservative person by nature, I’m wary of change for change’s sake. Sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Jared is not perfect but he doesn’t say one thing to one group and another to a different group. And I’ve never heard a peep that Jared would wave money in front of someone in order to affect the outcome of their content.
The party desperately needs to change the way it treats people that don’t pass purity tests put in place by the leadership so that more people are willing to participate. There is no question about. The question is what kind of change will Paul really bring? Are we switching one insider group for another? If so, who is in the new insider group? Why does Paul refuse to name the leadership team that he will put in place?
Now I don’t know who I’m going to vote for and that is as much a shock to me as it is to you. But my concern is not for Jared or Paul – it is for the future of the party that I think has the best ideas and principles to keep Harris County, Texas, and the nation prosperous.
Continuing our series of interviews with candidates in the 2014 Texas Republican Party Primary, David Jennings talks with Mayor John Manlove. Mayor Manlove is one of twelve candidates that filed to replace Rep. Steve Stockman in Texas Congressional District 36.
Texas is my home and it was my parents home as well. I never left Texas because this is a place where dreams come true if you work hard enough to achieve them.
I believe in hard work and perseverance. I am proud of my accomplishments with my church, my family and my business. I’ve been blessed with Gina, my wife of 37 years, two loving daughters who graduated from Baylor University and now help us in our family business, and with two grandsons.
I can promise you I will work as hard for you as your Congressman, as I did to put myself through college as a musician and substitute teacher, as I did to build my business from a broken down one car garage to a multi-million dollar, award winning marketing firm right here in Texas, as I did as Mayor to balance the budget, reduce crime and freeze taxes on our seniors in one of the largest cities in Texas. I was born here, went to church here, raised my family here, built my business here and will fight for you like only a self-made Texan can.
Earlier today, during a Texas Tribune event with Evan Smith, you personally attacked me by name and made a number of factually inaccurate statements about a sworn complaint I filed against you with the Texas Ethics Commission.
Despite your statement to the contrary this morning, my complaint against you was accepted by the Texas Ethics Commission (see attachment). It was not dismissed, as you falsely stated, and it will indeed be pursued by the Ethics Commission. A small portion of the complaint, concerning clerical issues, was determined not to be within the jurisdiction of the Ethics Commission. The main focus of the complaint, which involves the legality of you personally profiting over $21,000 from a personal loan you made your campaign, is currently pending before the Commission.
You have stated publicly you believe it was legal for you to profit from your campaign account in this manner, despite a law passed by the legislature on your watch which appears to prohibit a candidate or officeholder from reimbursing themselves more than the amount they reported as a self-loan to their campaign. I would note that the Ethics Commission only has jurisdiction over allegations that, if true, constitute a violation of the law and that you have publicly acknowledged personally profiting over $21,000 from a personal loan to your campaign.
The question about whether or not the law allowed you to profit from this loan could have easily been settled had you requested an advisory opinion from the Texas Ethics Commission regarding this matter. You failed to request such an opinion, and continue to refuse to do so despite this option remaining available to you.
There remain a number of questions regarding the manner in which your campaign paid back, with interest, the $10,000 loan you made your campaign in 2000. During your appearance with Evan Smith earlier today, you appeared to indicate that the payment was made in some combination of cash and stock. In an article published in the Dallas Morning News last month, you appeared to indicate that you transferred stock from your campaign account to a personal account in order to avoid paying taxes, which you described as “money down the toilet.” In order to clarify these questions once and for all, you should immediately release all bank and tax records that show the exact manner in which you paid yourself from your campaign account as well as the amount of any taxes paid on profits you realized from interest on the personal loan to your campaign.
Additionally, during your interview with Evan Smith, you attempted to make issue out of my employment. My interest in seeing you defeated in the Republican primary has nothing to do with my employment, it has everything with wanting to have a strong Republican ticket in November. As I wrote last month (https://bigjolly.com/2014/01/09/sid-miller-poison-texas-republican-ticket/), your nomination would be poison to the Republican ticket.
The Democrats would love nothing more than to have a candidate on the statewide Republican ticket who is an ethically challenged, revolving door lobbyist. Making matters even worse is your decision to make an acknowledged serial adulterer who has a long history of making offensive remarks about women and minorities, in addition to other questionable behavior, as your campaign treasurer and co-chairman.
As further evidence that you will stoop to no low in order to further your personal ambitions, your paid campaign director made a despicable and, quite frankly, libelous tweet regarding one of your opponents in the Republican primary. His behavior is illustrative of the kind of gutter politics that most voters find reprehensible.
Sid Miller campaign manager’s libelous tweet.
As you are well aware, the Republican Party across the state is facing an aggressive challenge from the left. We must put our best foot forward and nominate qualified conservative candidates that voters can be proud of if we want to continue our success at the ballot box. This is why it is imperative that Republican primary voters nominate any of your opponents as the Republican nominee for Texas Agriculture Commissioner.
