For almost four years now, I have posted periodic columns on this website. Followers of Big Jolly Politics should know by now that David and I agree on many things, but we often disagree, too. Remember that old Reagan line about someone who I agree with 80{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the time is my friend—well that applies to the friendship between David and me, and to our mutual respect for each other’s opinions on issues and candidates even when we disagree.
I was going to avoid announcing a public stand on either the race for HCRP Chair or Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice, and just let the endorsements announced by two groups of which I am a member—The C Club of Houston and United Republicans of Harris County—speak for me in these races. However, given David’s posts over the weekend in which he personally endorsed Jared Woodfill and Robert Talton for these posts, I felt it would be good for the readers of Big Jolly Politics to receive the counterpoint—my reasons for voting for Paul Simpson and Nathan Hecht.
HCRP Chair
It really should come as no surprise to anyone that I am voting for Paul, or the reasons I am voting for Paul. Last year, when David did one of his periodic updates of this website’s format, he asked me to provide him with a short bio to put at the end of each column I post. When I gave him my paragraph, I included a link to the written plan for the HCRP that I wrote in 2009 when I ran for HCRP Chair. Since last fall, it has been at the end of my columns for anyone to click on and read (and it is at the end of this column). Because that plan still represents the complete opposite approach to the current operation and management of our local party, because it is consistent with the successful approach Steve Munisteri has implemented at the state level, and because it is consistent with the goals and objectives Paul has espoused, it is the most comprehensive statement I can give you as to why I support Paul.
As one of the few people who has campaigned with, debated against, disagreed with, and worked with both of these men at times over the last four years, I have two other observations to make. First, both of these men are good, faithful men, who believe in the principles and planks of our party’s platform. Second, both of these men are human—they have different strengths and weaknesses. One is clearly a better public speaker and quick-witted advocate for the party, while the other is a better grassroots, block-by-block organizer.
Where I most disagree with David’s assessment of this race in his endorsement of Jared, is in his emphasis on the communication aspect of a Chair’s responsibility. The main reason many of us now see this aspect of the job as so important is because the current chair has made it that important. In a properly functioning party organization, the Chair should be the stage manager—the director, and the planner—identifying and mobilizing volunteers to find and register Republican voters in every precinct and then to get those voters to the polls in the fall election to support our ticket, and raising the funds necessary to support the fall campaigns. Our candidates and elected officials should be the stars who communicate the message, not the Chair. Our candidates and elected officials should be allowed to spend the money they raise on their campaigns, rather than diverting them to prop-up the party.
With all of the challenges that this party faces now, and will continue to face over the next decade in Harris County, across this State, and in urban counties across this country, we can’t afford to continue with a management, operational and financial plan that turns on the personal advocacy skills and personality of one man, and the narrow approach to growth that simply tries to mine more voters from the same precincts and churches. The vacuum such narrow leadership has created has been detrimental to our party, as it has ceded control of our primaries to a pay-for-play system controlled by a few men and complicit campaign consultants, and has allowed our most basic organization at the precinct level to wither through neglect.
Though Paul and I are different men who have disagreed in the past over tactics and strategy, we agree on what needs to be done to address the challenges our local party faces. Unlike David’s concern over whether the party will be managed in way that is open to all of the diverse members of the party, I have been assured by Paul that, if he wins, he will conduct an open, transparent process to find and select the next officers of the party whose skills best match the offices (regardless of the faction or Senate District they hail from), and to hire full-time staff as the party’s financial position improves; and I believe he will be addressing this part of his plan publicly soon.
As I have hoped for four years now, if the party can do what needs to be done, we can keep Harris County the most Republican urban county in this State and in the nation, keep our Republican majority in statewide elections, and present a model for the renaissance of the party in urban communities needed to win future national elections. A vote for Paul is a vote for this future, while a vote for Jared is a vote for the status quo of keeping the HCRP as a failing advocacy organization supported by its candidates to stay open.
I personally like Jared and hope he will continue to advocate for our party’s principles for years to come. But it is long-past time for new leadership at the HCRP. So, for me, the choice couldn’t be clearer—Paul Simpson for HCRP Chair.
Supreme Court Chief Justice
In my last post I said the following:
Over the past quarter century since the judicial scandals revealed by CBS News’ 60 Minutes helped to end over a century of one-party Democratic rule in this state, the modern Republican Party in Texas has built its dominant political position on the foundation of its promise to provide an ethical and competent judiciary. For the most part, we Republicans have kept that promise, and when we have found mistakes, we have done our best to correct them in our primaries.
What I didn’t make clear at that time was that one man’s judicial career helped to lead this Republican effort and has helped to sustain our promise of a competent judiciary over this quarter century: Nathan Hecht.
Hecht was there when the state needed to clean-up the judiciary, and when the Republican Party needed judicial leaders, to run with former Chief Justice Tom Phillips to become the first two Republicans elected to the Supreme Court since Reconstruction.
Hecht has been the rudder of a Supreme Court that evolved from a corrupt court run by plaintiffs’ personal injury lawyers and universally loathed by the legal and business communities across the country, to one of the most respected courts in the country. It is so respected that Justice Scalia says that the opinions of the Texas Supreme Court are some of the few lower court opinions he reads on a regular basis to stay current on the development of American jurisprudence.
Over 25 years are there opinions Justice Hecht has authored or favored that I have disagreed with? Of course. But the body of law this court has written over that time is sound and conservative, and has brought Texas back into a leadership role in the development of American law. The almost crazed anger that the Hotze family has against Justice Hecht for ruling against them in a case several years ago explains why they have joined plaintiffs’ lawyers in an effort to oust him in our primary. Their anger is both myopic and ridiculous—it was a sound legal decision (though, sadly, not all sound decisions are popular decisions). Just because your name is Hotze doen’t mean you get to win every legal case you bring—a fair and just legal system doesn’t work that way.
Hecht’s opponent, Robert Talton, is a long-time local attorney associated with the plaintiffs’ personal injury firm Jared Woodfill and former Judge Paul Presler ran, and as a state representative, was one of the leaders in opposition to the tort-reform legislation that has helped spawn the economic growth of Texas over the last decade. I like Robert, have worked with him, respect him, and have supported his candidacy for other offices. But his candidacy for this office presents the risk of a real step backwards for the law in Texas. Backwards to the pre-60 Minutes cozy relationship with the plaintiffs’ personal injury bar that Republicans ran against a generation ago, and that we see developing with the help of Mark Lanier and his Democratic friends who are pumping so much money into Robert’s campaign. If you don’t take my word for it, just read the article from the front page of the Sunday edition of the Houston Chronicle on February 23, 2014, which describes the Democrats’ effort to pack the Supreme Court with their candidates, including Robert Talton.
I don’t want to return to the type of corrupt judicial system that Republicans fought so hard to dismantle, which is why I continue to support one of the men who led the effort to dismantle that system and build the judicial system that is now well-respected across the nation. That is why I am voting for Nathan Hecht for Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court.
Ed, I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and your work, but I couldn’t disagree with you more on your assessment of the Texas Supreme Court. You correctly note the problems with the Texas Supreme Court and the “Justice For Sale” issues of the 1980’s. I do not want to return to those days, nor do I know anybody that does. However, the Court we have today has just a cozy relationship (if not more so) with big business interests as the Court did with the Plaintiff’s bar in the 1980’s. It is worth noting that Joe Jamail, the trial lawyer most prominently featured in the “Justice For Sale” reports, is a major donor to the Hecht campaign.
Robert Talton (who voted FOR tort reform legislation) and Sharon McCally are candidates of utmost integrity who would be tremendous assets to the Texas Supreme Court. They are not for sale, which is evidenced by Talton’s long track record as a state legislature and McCally’s distinguished tenure on the bench. These candidates are not running to be stooges for the Plaintiffs bar. They are running because of their belief that our Constitution and the rule of law, not political agendas, should determine the outcome of cases.
The Texas Constitution guarantees open courts and a right to a trial by jury. These Constitutional rights have come under attack in recent years by Judges funded by powerful business interests who have overturned verdicts rendered by citizen juries at shockingly high rates.
Everybody deserves a fair day in court, plaintiffs and defendants alike. A quick review of campaign finance reports will show that the campaigns of the incumbent Justices have received FAR more money from business interests and the lawyers who represent them than the challengers have from the Plaintiffs’ bar.
It is intellectually dishonest to argue that candidates like Talton and McCally represent what you describe as a “corrupt judicial system” by virtue of the support of lawyers who want nothing more than their clients to have a fair day in court when they are being vastly outspent by incumbents who have received far more funding from the big business interests that have been overwhelmingly victorious at the Texas Supreme Court in recent years.
Mark, I am not going to get into a back-and-forth with you here, as neither of us has the time, nor will we change each other’s mind on this race. So, this will be my last post on this thread.
First, I said nothing specifically about Justice McCally in my post. Though I am disturbed by who is supporting her, and I do support the incumbent, I agree that, of the three challengers, she has served as a local judge with distinction.
Second, I know you are close to Robert and work for Demcratic activist plaintiffs’ lawyer Steve Mostyn, and that you work in the field of plaintiffs’ contingent fee work. I have no personal dog in this hunt because I like Robert, too, and over the last 30 years of practicing law I have represented both plaintiffs and defendants, including plaintiffs in contingent fee cases. I, too, want a fair judicial system.
The problem I see is that the forces aligning against Hecht (and Brown and Johnson) are the same political forces (apparently without Jamail, who split with this group when it was dominated by John O’Quinn and when some of the lawyers involved in the Tobacco litigation got involved with the shenanigans that led Attorney General Morales and Mark Murr to run afoul of the law) that caused the problems with our judicial system that marred our state’s business climate and reputation during the 80s and early 90s. I practiced then and saw how this impacted the system in Harris and other counties. For instance, I was personally confronted by a sitting Supreme Court Justice to settle a case with a prominent plaintiffs’ personal injury lawyer and then locked in a courtroom by the trial judge until my client settled. You are too young to remember those years, but I do; and I will not return to those years willingly.
Hecht fought those forces, and has created a court that people throughout the country respect–including Justice Scalia. I’ll stick with him.
Ed, I appreciate your comments. Even though we disagree on this, you raise legitimate issues about where our judiciary once was. I agree with you that we should not go back to the judicial system of the 1980’s (which I admittedly did not practice in, as you have). However, I would also hope you would acknowledge that Robert Talton and Justice McCally would never engage in the conduct that you experienced with the Supreme Court Justice and would agree with us that such conduct is repugnant. I know lots of good people who support the incumbent Justices because they believe they are more qualified or would be better suited to the position (despite my best efforts to convince them otherwise). Good people can disagree on these things. But I think to insinuate that Talton and McCally are part of a scheme to bring corruption to the Texas Supreme Court is an unfair and baseless attack on their character and integrity.
Well stated Ed.