I am the only March 6 Republican Primary opponent of 18-year incumbent John Culberson in Texas Congressional District 7. Congress is ineffective and we need new representation in District 7. I live in the District and my neighbors flooded. I will represent everyone in the District. I am a veteran (Air and Army National Guard six years). I am an engineer who solves problems. The House of Representatives is made up of 435 members and just like in an organization or business new personnel are needed at times to make things work. The incumbent has been there 18 years and issues that affect Houston get pushed down the road term after term. There is no indication that things will change or improve with the incumbent in office for another term. I will solve our problems and bring our tax dollars back here to help the District.
A Summary of My Positions:
I have set forth a flood plan (see below), I support term limits for Congress (8 years for the House, 12 years for the Senate), cut spending (1% to 3% a year with no indexed or automatic increases), a better tax plan (the recent changes in corporate tax rates will add jobs, but the changes in taxation will not help workers and families very much—instead of touted thousands of dollars a year savings, I think actual paycheck analysis will show only a part of those tax savings will be realized by workers and families—with the $ 10,000 deduction cap on real estate/local taxes a real problem in Houston that has high property taxes). We need to fix Houston’s streets and potholes (as part of infrastructure overall), public transportation, to preserve net neutrality or not slower service for people who do not want to pay more, to have a high quality healthcare system with lower drug costs, and people who earned Social Security will keep it.
Specifically for flooding, fix what we can control. We cannot control the rain, but when the water hits the ground we can control where it goes and when. These issues include: (a) de-bottleneck the bayous; (b) more retention (3rd reservoir and/or deepen areas behind the dams, dams upstream in other counties); (c) upgrade flood insurance for adequate coverage and require flood insurance or no more public funds for future losses (folks need to be encouraged to protect themselves where they can); (d) FEMA procedures, speed, and fairness need improvement; and (e) on local level rethink and continue to improve building, location, and permit issues.
I am not commenting much on immigration issues as of today. I am waiting and watching as the White House and Congress are working on a plan now—maybe. I will comment as this goes on. Basically, countries have borders and countries have laws.
Thank you, and please vote in the March 6, 2018 Republican Primary for TX CD 07.
Fellow Patriot,
When we Republicans in Harris County lost every countywide race in November 2016, the HCRP was in fact out-maneuvered by the local Democrats. As your next Chairman of the HCRP, I plan to put a stop to this. Over the last several weeks I have been sharing my plan with you for the future of the HCRP. Among those planks to win again is to improve the use of technology in the operation of our party.
We can start by making better use of free, far-reaching tools. But we can also invest in an App that our grassroots activists, candidates, and officeholders can use. This is about providing tools for those people that make up our party, to engage, to inform and to turn out our vote in each election.
This of course would all be connected to a voter database so that it actually means something to our end-users. If you are a precinct chair, you know the headaches involved with working through the mazes of that HCRP database in 2016. I have received plenty of negative feedback to know that the system needs to be built correctly. When our precinct leaders are not equipped with basic tools, leadership has failed.
I plan to run an HCRP operation that will utilize aggressive data sets to target voters based on voting propensity, not just voter history. This is a huge gap that the HCRP is leaving on the table, and we are losing elections at the same time.
The Republican National Committee has this raw data, and my plan is to use it correctly for a change. Anyone who knows anything about Big Data knows that all the data in the world is useless unless you make the data ask the right questions.
The GOTV efforts of the HCRP failed us all in 2016. My plan will make GOTV more effective and will deliver at a lower cost than the expensive and ineffective GOTV effort we saw in 2016. Technology and GOTV means more than just having a Facebook page.
This is just one part of the plan to help us win again in Harris County.
This past Thursday, the Houston Young Republicans, the Republican Liberty Caucus, the Washington Avenue Republicans and the Harris County Republican party hosted a candidate forum for the nine candidates vying to fill the shoes of retiring Rep. Ted Poe in Congressional District 2. You can view the candidates on the CD2 candidate page.
On Friday, I received an email from a long time Harris County Republican activist and precinct chair:
Kathaleen Wall only showed up at the last minute a few weeks ago at Downtown Pachyderm, gave a canned speech, and urged voters to look at her website. She had been delayed to the point that she missed (whether by plan or circumstance) the Q and A portion of the program.
Tonight at the Houston YR forum at HCRP headquarters, she gave the same rehearsed speech, and then abruptly announced she was leaving for a prior commitment, again missing the Q and A. I would be interested in your take on the manner how she did it. I was startled that she did not try to connect to the audience, say she was sorry, explain the nature of the other event, etc., but maybe I am not disinterested enough.
The video should be on HCRP or similar websites soon, if not already, and this event was very early in the program.
I did find the video and Wall’s appearance was indeed early. You can watch the whole thing like I did or just move to the 5 minute mark and watch Wall’s stump speech and exit.
I had pretty much the same reaction as the person that emailed me. Ryan Cagney made a video that mocks her exit:
Not only did she walk out on the most important forum of the primary without taking any of the hard questions that the other candidates did, she LIED about a previous engagement. She was confirmed for this event weeks ago. #WallWalkout #CD2
That’s a very strong statement. If you watch her exit, it does appear that everyone in the room is surprised. Especially her husband, who was sitting on the front row.
While Wall was walking out, the other supposed frontrunner, Kevin Roberts, really did have a previous engagement and didn’t show.
Yes, he missed a great opportunity to meet and greet with a building full of voters (and answer some pretty tough questions) but I’m sure he had a good time in Humble. And if you live near Eric Dick, you can go meet and greet Roberts this Thursday.
Unfortunately for Roberts, the organizers of the meeting allowed him to send in a prerecorded video. I say unfortunate because it might even be worse than Wall’s performance, sans the walkout. You can watch it in the first video at about the 51 minute mark.
Goodness, what has the Republican Party come to when Wall and Roberts are the perceived front runners in this race? I guarantee you that if you watch that entire forum, those two are not going to be anywhere close to the top of your list when you finish. I was floored when I saw a comment by Jim Lennon of the Kingwood Tea Party claiming that “Kathaleen was there early and spoke well.“ The response to Lennon from Josh Redelman was priceless: “Said no one in attendance.” Ain’t that the truth.
It’s great to see these candidates fighting back against the wall of money (see what I did there?) that Wall is pouring into the race. I hope the voters push back and pick one of the seven candidates that took the time to answer questions and articulate their vision for the position.
One of the most interesting races on the Republican side of the 2018 primary is the open seat on the 1st Court of Appeals, Place 7. The race features an experienced appellate attorney, Katy Boatman, versus an experienced criminal defense attorney, Terry Yates.
The race is so interesting that it forced the Houston Chronicle endorsement board to actually think for once and write a fair and balanced endorsement. It’s short enough that I’m going pull a Kuffner and copy/paste the entire piece:
This race for an open seat forces us to choose between two qualified candidates for the Republican nomination to this bench. Both have similar judicial philosophies; both exhibit a calm judicial demeanor. While each appears to be in the race for the right reason of public service, the legal backgrounds of candidates Katy Boatman and Terry Yates are starkly different.
Boatman is a lawyer at a big, national firm with 10 years of experience.
Yates’ career as former prosecutor, associate judge of the city of West University Place and solo practitioner spans almost three decades.
There is no single correct route to becoming an outstanding appellate judge, but in making this difficult call, we gave more to weight to appellate experience than to trial practice. Boatman, 35, who has spent her career as an appellate specialist at Andrews Kurth Kenyon LLP, earns our endorsement for this seat. The Baylor Law School grad clerked for Justice Dale Wainwright of the Texas Supreme Court and Justice Jennifer Elrod of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Yates is more familiar with all areas of substantive law within the court’s jurisdiction, is board certified in criminal law and would bring an understanding of the significance a judge’s decision has on the community. Nevertheless, Boatman appears more steeped in the craft of an appellate practice and more thoughtful about how to get the job done efficiently. Voters should cast their vote for Boatman in this important race.
That is a good recap of the race regardless of whether or not you agree with their choice.
I would characterize it a little bit different. If I were charged with a crime, I’d hire Yates. If he was unable to get me off, I’d hire Boatman to see if she could get it reversed on appeal.
The choice for voters is much the same but each voter looks at it through their own eyes. Perhaps voter X prefers someone with expertise in appellate law that can walk in on day one, understand the system, get cases moving and apply legal precedent to cases. Perhaps voter Y prefers someone with a broader background that understands what happened in the original trial court and can apply that background to see that justice is done. And then we come to voter Z, the one that blindly follows someone’s endorsement on a slate card and gives their vote away.
Which brings us, as always, to the money. Instead of using just the 30 day reports for the candidates, I combined all of their reports for this race.
And their top contributors:
We aren’t talking the huge amounts of money that we usually see in contested legislative races but it isn’t chump change either. One of the fascinating things to me, which is why I listed it, is the level of detail on Boatman’s reports versus Yate’s. I’m quite certain that Yates has for instance done some traveling around the very large area the position represents but he strikes me as more of a doer than a record keeper. I might be alone in this thought but to me it shows the differences between someone who has paid attention to the small details her entire career versus that guy that has to get in the ring and swing away.
If you look at the expenditures on consultants, it might seem as though Boatman is winging it. But look at the contributions and you’ll see that longtime Harris County Republican consultant Mary Jane Smith is helping Boatman on an in-kind basis. If you’ve ever met Mary Jane, you’ll know that she doesn’t help just anyone, especially for free. My guess is that she wants to help young, qualified females climb the ladder. Good for her, the Republican Party needs both characteristics.
If you look at the comparison page for this race, you’ll note that Yates has the social conservative slates. That might be why every social media advertisement that I’ve seen for him features his work on the undercover Planned Parenthood videos. From a strategic viewpoint, it appears that he is trying to use the social conservative vote in Harris County to springboard him into a frontrunner status. But we’ve seen many cases in First Court races where the outlying counties reject this strategy.
This is one race where I can say with confidence that whomever wins, Republicans will have a strong candidate in November.
A brief look at the campaign finance reports of three Texas House seats in Harris County. I was surprised at the number of Republicans that are now paying for block walking. That used to be a Democratic Party thing.
HD-126 Open Seat
This is another race that Empower Texans and Texas Right to Life is trying to influence in a big way. In addition to the $12,800 you see on this report from Kevin Fulton, ET has previously given him $20,000 and TRL $15,000. Harless appears to be tapping into the network that his wife, the former representative of 126 built up. And Stanart is relying on the little fella to get her into a runoff, although Fulton might have blocked that by also paying him.
HD-134 Sarah Davis (inc) vs Susanna Dokupil
This race continues to be the highest profile House race in the area. Outsiders continue to dominate the funding of challenger Dokupil. Although Davis has a significant advantage in COH, that is meaningless when Gov. Abbott can drop any amount he wants at any time. Davis continues to dominate in the number of contributions from individuals within the district. The HPOU pickup is very nice for Davis.
HD-150 Valoree Swanson (inc) vs James Wilson
I’m not sure that we should call this a contested race but the incumbent did have someone file against her, so that is the definition. Swanson’s COH advantage comes from earlier contributions from Empower Texans, Texas Right to Life, Texans for Lawsuit Reform and the Briscoe Cain campaign. She paid $28,000 to 90 Degree Agency, which to the best of my knowledge provides paid block walkers. As a perennial candidate, Wilson’s path to victory has never been clear and he has a very uphill battle to climb.
Simpson Boasts Impressive Fundraising 30 Days from Primary Election
Opponent raises less than one percent of what Simpson does in 25 days
HOUSTON – The Simpson for GOP County Chair campaign released 30-day fundraising numbers, showing it raised $34,077 from January 1-25, 2018. During the same time frame, the Harris County Republican Party released preliminary fundraising numbers of $82,073.
In just 25 days, Simpson, as the head of the Harris County Republican Party and as a candidate for re-election, raised a total of $116,150.
“The numbers speak for themselves: Paul is raising the amounts of money necessary to reelect Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, County Judge Ed Emmett and every down ballot Republican,” Simpson spokeswoman Catherine Kelly said. “Democrats are pouring millions in Harris County to create a groundswell for their liberal wave to try to take over Texas. We need a leader who can raise money to match the liberal mega donors dollar-for-dollar.”
While Democrats are expected to target Harris County with millions of dollars to turn Texas from red to blue, Simpson’s opponent reported raising just $465 in the latest Texas Ethics Commission 30-day election filing. That’s just 0.4 percent of what Simpson raised for his re-election campaign and for the Harris County Republican Party as chairman.
“Less than a month after Chris Carmona boasted to Republican Primary voters about his fundraising plans and abilities, Paul not only outraised his opponent as a candidate, but also as a county chairman,” Kelly added. “These numbers highlight once again that Chris Carmona ideas don’t add up to proven results.”
Texas state law requires all candidates to file campaign finance reports 30 days out from an election.
