The first forum featuring all four Republican candidates for Texas Lt. Governor is in the bank. In front of a packed house at the Ronald Reagan Republican Women’s monthly meeting, David Dewhurst, Dan Patrick, Jerry Patterson, and Todd Staples tried to convince voters that they were the best choice.

The forum lasted right at an hour. Moderator Donna Detamore and timekeeper Suzanne Davis kept the candidates on track for the most part. Each candidate was allowed a three minute opening speech, a minute and a half to answer each question in a rotating format, and a three minute closing speech. There were a total of four questions that were chosen randomly from questions submitted by attendees.

Question 1 – Do you support the constitutional amendment for future water planning by establishing a “bank” using funds from the Rainy Day Fund?

All four candidates support the bill. The challengers to Dewhurst used the question to talk about the RDF and the need to maintain it but accepted that this was an acceptable use for it. Dewhurst made the case that they are not giving away money in the bill, that the funds will be repaid with interest. Patterson said that if the 2011 drought wasn’t considered an emergency, he didn’t know what would be.

Question 2 – TxDOT is talking about turning roads into gravel roads. Did the Legislature fail to adequately fund our infrastructure in the last decade?

• Dewhurst – No. We invested $21 billion in the last session on infrastructure. Over the past ten years we have invested over $100 billion.
• Staples – Our road policy should not be turning asphalt roads into gravel roads. That sends the wrong message to the nation about bringing their business here. Absolutely we have not done the job that needed to be done or we would not be in this situation today.
• Patterson – In 2001 our bond debt was less than $5 billion. Today it is $30 billion. The Legislature by its very nature wants to go home after each session and tell you that they have not raised taxes. What they have done is raise taxes on your children and grandchildren. Stop diversions and use vehicle sales tax to fund TxDOT.
• Patrick – We need to use RDF prudently. We don’t need to raise taxes, our budget is large enough. The reason we are short funding for TxDOT is that we refuse to fund it from General Revenue. We should end diversion but that will put a $500 million hole in education, so we have to prioritize spending. Stop using debt to fund it.

Question 3 – The Lt. Governor is the presiding officer over the Senate and controls the flow of legislation. What would you do differently?

• Staples – It boils down to leadership and results. You don’t go out wining and dining with lobbyists while business needs to be done. It is about getting there early and staying late and I have a record of getting results.
• Patterson – It was a mixed session and hindsight is 20/20. But you need to lead. When you start out by saying you will have no Democratic committee chairs, you are admitting that you are weak and cannot lead. Supports eliminating the 2/3rds rule and moving it to 60{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}.
• Patrick – Try to answer a question without being negative. Jerry and I disagree – conservatives have worked too hard to not control the committees. I ran against the 2/3 rule in 2006. If we change the rule to 60{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} we only need 19 Republicans and after we defeat Wendy Davis, we will have 20 Republicans.
• Dewhurst – The 2/3 rule is a Senators rule and the Senators have wanted it. I’ve been reducing the number of Democratic chairs since I came into office. We have 17 committees and only 5 Democratic chairs. Dan knows well that I asked the Republican Senators about the filibuster and not a single person told me that they wanted to break tradition and bust the filibuster.

Question 4 – How much transparency do we have on state spending, fees, and taxes collected for specific purposes?

• Patterson – At one time we had a strong press core but we no longer have that. Susan Combs has done a lot to make the budget transparent by putting everything online. Dan, I guess I’m wrong, you’ve changed your position on Democratic chairs, you first said zero, now you say something less than half.
• Patrick – We’ve done a lot on transparency but we need to do more. Correcting the record, on the day of the filibuster, I handed in a card with five signatures on it at 11 am – this should have stopped the filibuster. The Lt. Governor refused to recognize me. We should not have sent an amended bill to the House, then would have solved the problem.
• Dewhurst – I believe in transparency and created a committee this year to be more transparent. I have led the effort to make state government more transparent. We put the Senate and Committees online internationally. Back to the filibuster, I asked the Senators that morning, do you want me to break the filibuster rules? Not a single senator wanted to. Eleven hours later we broke the filibuster on three points of order and all hell broke loose. We came back days later and passed those bills.
• Staples – For taxpayers to have confidence that dollars collected for a specific purpose should be spent for that purpose. We’ll put that online. He used sunset laws on his own agency but today the sunset commission needs more businessmen and fewer legislators. The sunset process today doesn’t really deliver much.

Observations on the filibuster

Patrick is making a lot of noise about the way Dewhurst handled the filibuster. And Dewhurst is defending the way he handled it. Dewhurst says that in the Republican caucus that morning, not a single senator stood up to change the traditional filibuster rules. Patrick says that at 11 am, he turned in a card with five signatures on it to “Call the previous question” and claims that would have stopped the filibuster had Dewhurst recognized him at any point during the day. It appears that the Parliamentarian disagreed with Patrick’s contention – if Patrick had been recognized, the floor would have returned to Wendy Davis, so Dewhurst chose the “point of order” method that ultimately worked but the ensuing chaos caused time to run out.

I’ll let parliamentary experts argue that one but will say that I think Patrick has the upper hand in voter perception and is making an effective argument, even if it is technically incorrect. Dewhurst’s team will have to come up with a more effective way of making this point in 30 seconds or less.

Patterson goes after Patrick

No matter who your candidate is in this race, you have to like the way Jerry Patterson speaks his mind even when his remarks create a problem for him with the far-right. Patterson went after Patrick today for saying that if he (Patrick) is elected, there will be no Democratic committee chairs. Patterson said that just shows that Patrick would be a weak leader and that he (Patterson) could get legislation out of committees regardless of who the chair was.

Patterson has to be very careful here. The political climate today is very different than when he was in the Senate under Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock. Most tea party groups in Texas have morphed into hyper-partisan Republican operations that do not want to “work” with Democrats. I think this is one of the reasons that Patterson has not picked up steam with these groups, as many expected that he would. For all of the tea party talk about how bad Washington, D.C. is, Patrick’s rhetoric on this issue resonates with these groups because they want Austin to work like D.C., with the majority party completely in charge.

So who won?

Seldom does any candidate “win” these forums. The real question is did anyone make a serious gaffe that would cost them the election? No. The next question becomes which candidate helped their cause the most? That’s a tough one. If I had to pick just one, it’d be Todd Staples. He hit Dewhurst once with his line about lobbyists but for the most part, he made his case in front of people that didn’t know him without coming across as a negative person. In talking with a few people after the forum, it seemed like the younger people were most impressed by him. But, Staples also had the most work to do because of his relative obscurity with this crowd, so it remains to be seen how many he wooed.

This was a Dewhurst friendly crowd with a lot of longtime Republican officials in attendance. He was able to hold his own under Patrick’s attacks and weathered that storm for the most part. No one knows the numbers of state finance better.

Patterson has the ability to connect at a personal level with any audience he is in front of. And his point about using bonds to finance infrastructure, thus raising taxes on our children and grandchildren should resonate with conservatives, as should his straight talk. But in today’s climate, he needs to sharpen his rhetoric to rise above the noise and be heard.

Patrick was strong but might have been perceived as overbearing by some. In fact, one longtime Republican insider told me after the forum that Patrick made Dewhurst look like the grownup and that Patrick needs to be more statesmanlike and less talk radio like. I don’t know about that – again, in today’s political climate, rhetoric is valued over statesmanship because statesmanship is viewed as compromise. I didn’t think Patrick went over the top in his attacks on Dewhurst but he did throw some sharp elbows. Hey, politics is a full contact sport.

Sam Perlin promoted to Admiral in the Texas Navy

After the forum, Jerry Patterson introduced us to Sam Perlin. Sam is 94 years old and is an advocate for better nursing home care. He served in World War II as a private in the U.S. Army. After his tour in the Pacific, Sam was offered a promotion from Private to Private First Class but told the Army to shove it. Patterson had a certificate framed and promoted him to Admiral in the Texas Navy. It was hilarious when Sam took the microphone and said that he was a radical liberal and didn’t find much compassion among conservatives.

A big thank you to the ladies of the RRRW for hosting this event and giving us a preview of what the next five months will be like.

A few pictures: