Mary Katharine Ham of Hot Air fame served as my inspiration for summing up the state of the 83rd Lege.
One takeaway from the 83rd Lege is Democrats have established a framework to leverage bills passed out of the Texas House and Senate. Once the bill is signed into law by Governor Perry (or vetoed by him), they try to make a name for themselves outside their hometown, fundraise…then rinse and repeat!
First up was the June 25th filibuster of the abortion bill by Texas Senator Wendy Davis. Hardly a household name outside of Dallas let alone Texas, the Big Three Networks, as noted by the Media Research Center, by way of Life News, gave more coverage of stories devoted to Davis over a 19 day period than they did to the entire 58 days of the Kermit Gosnell trial:
“In the 19 days since her June 25 filibuster, ABC, CBS and NBC have devoted 40 minutes, 48 seconds of their morning and evening news programs to stories including Davis. That’s more than three times the 13 minutes, 30 seconds they gave Gosnell during the entire 58 days of the murder trial”
How much did Davis rake in from the publicity at the end of a campaign finance reporting quarter? Nearly $1 million in political donations.
Next up is Texas Senator Sylvia Garcia. The 83rd Lege passed HB 950 which Governor Perry wisely vetoed because it duplicates Federal law (and IMHO would have been a bonanza for trial lawyers). A no-name outside Houston, both the Houston Chronicle (oopsie, link is now broken) and the Huffington Puffington Post fecklessly attempted to catapult Garcia to national fame through her phony outrage against Macy’s and Kroger.
Macy’s and Kroger (which is a United Food & Commercial Worker union BTW; that’s for you LOFO Texas Organizing Project peeps) and the rest of us entry level pay for entry level work folks support Governor Perry’s veto. Not sure who Garcia’s consultant is, but publicizing this stunt as Texas goes into its Back to School tax-free weekend was a dumb move.
We’ll check back at the end of the Q3 reporting period to see how much campaign cash Garcia raised but the framework is clear…..
Bill. Name. Fundraise, Rinse. Repeat.
I’m searching for one more example of this framework to create a trifecta