2016 US Elections (Texas Edition)

So here we are, finally. After months of interminable campaigning and media sensationalism, Election Day in the United States has finally arrived. I am reasonably confident that the only decent candidate will win the presidential election [Late Update: to everyone's great misfortune, I was wrong, but then I was hardly the only one], but it is frankly disgraceful that the Republican candidate will win any support at all. Anything other than a complete electoral shutout, which of course won't happen, reflects poorly on Americans (though having said that, many other countries have elected or come close to electing some pretty awful people). The outcome for Congress is less certain. I think the Democrats will probably win the Senate, though maybe not by more than a seat or two, which is all the more unfortunate because even some of the Democrats are not all I might want them to be (for example, several of the candidates running this year took the morally indefensible position of supporting a temporary halt on bringing Syrian refugees into the US in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, even though, one, the Paris attacks were not perpetrated by refugees, and, two, refugees are already very well vetted and there has not been a single terrorist attack launched in the US by a refugee since 2001). Nevertheless, even Democrats like that will be an improvement over the Republicans. Unfortunately, the House probably will remain in Republican hands thanks to gerrymandering, absent a late surge by the Democrats, but at least their majority should be reduced. Of course, if the majority of American voters were well-informed, rational, and at least somewhat empathetic to others, the vast majority of the current crop of Republicans wouldn't stand a chance and even some of the more conservative Democrats would be in danger of being replaced. But I digress.... On to my overview of the major races on my ballot for this year. Unfortunately, I'm registered in Texas, which still leans heavily to the Republicans, though that is changing slowly but surely. While the Republicans will probably still win even with such an appalling nominee on the top of the ticket, it'd be nice if it was close, and even better if the Democrats actually managed to pull off a win or two in the statewide races (not likely, but not totally impossible).

I only received my ballot only a week prior to the election (by email), so my time for both researching the candidates and writing about the results of my research was quite limited (though my ballot should get counted even if it arrives after Election Day, as long as I’ve mailed it before polls close in Texas, I’d prefer to get it there sooner). Fortunately, in most races the choices are fairly obvious. Of course I’ve already written many times about the presidential race. I didn’t know much about the local candidates, but as with the previous election and the one before that, I used the candidate questionnaires prepared by the Dallas News and Vote 411 as my main sources (though the latter is rather short). Also, many of the minor party candidates (the Greens and Libertarians) are the same as in the last race. Due to time constraints, I didn’t always take time to search for additional information on candidates who failed to respond to the questionnaires, though I did in some cases. As I noted last time, if you’re a third party candidate with no money (or even a major party candidate who wants to let voters know where you stand), you should be trying to fill out all the questionnaires you can to get your message out. While someone might have an legitimate excuse for failing to fill out one (e.g., if they simply didn’t receive it on time), it’s a bit harder to accept missing out on two, and a few of the candidates didn’t even have any blogs or Facebook pages with any information about their campaigns in the last race, though in cases where one of them was running again I didn’t always bother to check if they’ve rectified that this time around.

More generally, while in theory a lot of my own political opinions align most closely with the Green Party’s theoretical positions, I was less inclined than in the past to seriously consider their candidates, except in races where the Democrat seemed particularly weak. As noted below, Jill Stein has looked worse and worse as this year’s race has gone on (I now regret doing a vote swap with one of her supporters in 2012, even if it won Obama a vote in a swing state), and a lot of the Green candidates in Texas are weak or just odd. I still think there’s a place in the US for a serious Green Party, if only to push the Democrats to wholeheartedly embrace all the steps we need to be taking to protect our environment, but if they simply play the role of spoilers who throw the election to the anti-environmental Republicans, they are doing absolutely nothing for the cause of the environment; in fact they are hurting it (and if, like Stein, they can’t or won’t recognize this, then they are not even worthy of consideration). If they run in local races in Democratic areas where the local Democrats are weak on the environment (whether due to ties to fossil fuel interests or for other reasons), then they might accomplish something. But in most Texan races, or for that matter in a presidential race like the one this year, they are worse than useless. So while I did look at the Green candidates, if the Democrat looked halfway decent I chose them. Only in races where the Democrat looked pretty bad and the Green pretty good did I seriously consider a Green. As for the other parties, even the best possible Republican can be dismissed from consideration simply because they are still members of that party, which has come to represent the absolute worst in every way (perhaps 30 years ago it would have been different, though they were going downhill even then) – after all, not only is it the party of their current awful presidential candidate, but also of Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Mike Pence, Scott Walker, Jeff Sessions, Steve King, Mitch McConnell and a whole lot of other awful people. As for the Libertarians, while a few of them have good positions on a few issues, all share to some degree the basic selfish, me first, anti-government outlook of their party and many are even more extreme on some issues than the Republicans, so I couldn’t vote for any of them either.

President
Hillary Clinton (D)
Pumpkin Hitler/aka Hair Furor/aka Cheeto Mussolini/aka Donnie Drumpf (R)
Jill Stein (G)
Gary Johnson (L)

My Vote – Hillary Clinton

I’ve discussed the presidential race extensively on this blog, most recently in my previous post, but to summarize: the Republican is a terrible candidate in every way, as he is a narcissist, a bigot, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, a cheapskate, a tax dodger, an admirer of authoritarians, and a probable sexual predator, and he clearly has none of the knowledge needed for the job and shows a complete inability to learn or even listen to anyone who does anything other than flatter his absurdly overinflated ego. Another point that anyone with a brain should care about is that he doesn't even have coherent policy ideas. It should be no surprise that newspaper and magazine endorsements in this race have been unprecedentedly lopsided, with almost none of them (even the conservative ones) endorsing Hair Drumpf. As for the main third party candidates, as I noted at length in my previous post, Stein shows little real grasp of the mechanics of governing, she (like the GOP con man) is overly friendly with Russia, she panders to conspiracy theorists (she even appeared on InfoWars, which sensible people avoid like the plague), she picked a running mate who has claimed the bloodthirsty Assad regime is a democratic government, and contrary to all reason she claimed that a Clinton presidency would be worse than one under the orange menace. Johnson is an idiot and would be terrible on issues like climate change, economic inequality, and getting money out of politics. And even if the other candidates weren’t so awful, Hillary Clinton is extremely well qualified, intelligent, experienced, and articulate, and she has an excellent grasp of the issues and detailed plans for governing. Her policies aren’t perfect, but she can usually be pushed to do the right thing even where she isn’t initially so inclined. She will make at worst a decent president, and possibly an excellent one.

US Representative, District 24
Jan McDowell (D)
Kenny Marchant (R)
Kevin McCormick (G)
Mike Kolls (L)

My Vote – Jan McDowell

This was another easy choice. The incumbent Marchant is terrible on virtually every issue (this time he avoids outright climate denial, but his position amounts to the same thing), and Kolls is even worse than the average Libertarian, as he is a climate change denier, a pro-gun extremist, and only moderate on immigration, where a true libertarian would be against restrictions on migration. His only virtue is being in favor of relaxing restrictions on marijuana (despite his supposed “small government” philosophy, the hypocritical Marchant is not), but McDowell and McCormick are too, and they are superior to Kolls on everything else. McDowell’s answers to the questionnaires were impressive all around. She supports admitting refugees, immigration reform with a path to citizenship, raising the minimum wage, reforming tax policies that favor the rich, addressing climate change, background checks for gun purchases, and other eminently sensible policies. McCormick sounds good on most issues, but shows flashes of ideological rigidity, and rather bizarrely punted on the gun question, so even independent of my current reservations about the Greens, McDowell would be my choice. It’s unfortunate she has little chance of winning, but perhaps if we can get rid of the pro-Republican gerrymandering after 2020, she’ll have a real shot.


Railroad Commissioner
Grady Yarbrough (D)
Wayne Christian (R)
Martina Salinas (G)
Mark A. Miller (L)

My Vote – Grady Yarbrough

This one was a slightly more difficult one than most of the others. Yarbrough’s answers didn’t really impress me – at the very least he needs an editor to polish his writing. Salinas failed to respond to the Dallas News questionnaire, but she did answer the other one, and in the last election I was favorably impressed by her responses to both questionnaires. The Democratic candidate in that race also impressed me favorably, though since two years ago I was less turned off by the Greens (despite the obvious weakness of some of their candidates), I had a hard time deciding, though I believe I went with the Democrat in the end. If the Democrat was as good this time, it would be an easy choice, even though Salinas is one of the Greens’ better candidates. As it is, I finally went with Yarborough, because as a Democrat he stands at least a slight chance of winning, and despite his somewhat unclear writing he managed to convey basically pro-environmental positions, such as cooperating with the federal government on climate issues, opposition to fossil fuel subsidies and opposition to fracking. The misnamed Railroad Commission is in charge of managing the state’s oil and gas industry, so it is important to take it out of the hands of idiotic anti-environmental, pro-fossil fuel nuts like Christian (or Miller, though at least he has reservations about fracking).

Justice, Supreme Court, Place 3
Mike Westergren (D)
Debra Lehrmann (R)
Rodolfo Rivera Munoz (G)
Kathie Glass (L)

My Vote – Mike Westergren

The questions for judicial candidates were rather general, so they weren’t as revealing about the candidates’ stances on specific issues, but Westergren had mostly good answers (with the exception of his response on arbitration, which failed to mention its many problems). Munoz would be better off working as an activist on Native American issues: all his responses revolved around the idea that US rule in Texas is illegitimate because the land was stolen from his people. While there is something to this argument, Munoz’s obsession with it is more appropriate to an advocate than a judge (and in any case, as noted above, I’d only consider even a good Green candidate if the Democrat were particularly weak). Glass ran as the Libertarian candidate for governor in the last election, and though these questions don’t make it apparent, she espoused some crazy things in that race, and I have no reason to believe she’s changed. Interestingly, Lehrmann was accused by her primary opponent of being the court’s most “liberal” justice because she frequently dissented from majority opinions. But even if the accusation is true, she would only be the most liberal in a relative sense; after all, she’s still a Republican. So in the interest of ending the Republican lock on the court, I went with Westergren.


Justice, Supreme Court, Place 5
Dori Contreras Garza (D)
Paul Green (R)
Charles E. Waterbury (G)
Tom Oxford (L)

My Vote – Dori Contreras Garza

This was a relatively easy choice. Though as noted above the questions for judicial candidates were pretty general, Garza’s answers were good as well as articulate. She seems to be far the strongest Democratic candidate for Supreme Court this year. Waterbury had some decent answers (though many seemed overly brief), but his references to the “Democrat party” were off-putting, and anyway, as discussed above, I’d only pick a Green if the Democrat were particularly weak. Oxford might be okay for a Libertarian, but he’s still a Libertarian, and Green, aside from being a Republican, didn’t even respond to the questionnaires.

Justice, Supreme Court, Place 9
Savannah Robinson (D)
Eva Guzman (R)
Jim Chisholm (G)
Don Fulton (L)

My Vote – None

I would really have preferred to vote in this race, but none of the candidates seemed worth voting for. I wasn’t about to vote for a Republican or a Libertarian for the reasons mentioned above. Chisolm has run before, and like before he didn’t even bother to respond to the questionnaires. Robinson would normally have been my choice, but her answers to the questions were very unimpressive. I don’t have any problem with concise, simple English – in fact I consider it far superior to the verbose jargon-ridden nonsense that some lawyers spew – but Robinson didn’t even seem to be taking the questions seriously, and her frequent typos and misspellings didn’t look good (also, while there may be many good reasons for admiring retired judge James Klager, “Has a Glock at his bench” doesn’t sound like a good one to me). Furthermore, in her case I did look for a campaign site, and her official Facebook page didn’t have any entries after January, so it doesn’t look like she’s a serious candidate. While I hate the idea of leaving this seat on the court in Republican hands, I couldn’t quite bring myself to vote for Robinson, so I just left this one blank.


Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 2
Lawrence "Larry" Meyers (D)
Mary Lou Keel (R)
Adam "Bulletproof" King Blackwell Reposa (G)
Mark Ash (L)

My Vote – Larry Meyers

Reposa, who calls himself a “pizza lawyer” (as he’s a “criminal defense attorney and pizza restauranteur”, seems like as much of a character as that and his name itself suggest, but that doesn’t mean he’d be a good judge. He admits that he’s running as a Green just because they asked him to (his reasons for saying yes are even more candidly self-interested). His answers on the Vote411 site are more serious, but then there’s the attached video… (I didn’t actually look up the unscrambled version, but just the thumbnail looked pretty out there). Meyers is the incumbent, and currently the only Democrat holding statewide office, though this is because after many years on the bench as a Republican, Meyers switched parties a few years ago. Unfortunately, he didn’t bother to respond to either questionnaire, but I did find a report which mentioned how he and several other candidates agree that people with drug and mental issues don’t belong in the court system (in the same article, Keel expressed little sympathy for this view, even though Republicans in other races did). In another article, one which mentioned his opposition to overly harsh sentences, he gave some good reasons for his 2013 switch in party affiliation, and in a third article focusing on him personally, he called himself a progressive and said the Republicans have become too conservative. Keel and Ash are a Republican and a Libertarian, which is enough to rule them out. If they were running for prom king, Reposa might well get my vote, but in this case Meyers seemed like the obvious choice.


Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 5
Betsy Johnson (D)
Judith Sanders-Castro (G)
William Bryan Strange III (L)
Scott Walker (R)

My Vote – Judith Sanders-Castro

Sanders-Castro gave decent responses to the questionnaires (though oddly where last time she sometimes used all caps in her Dallas News, this time she hardly capitalized at all; she could also use more proofreading). Johnson, Strange and Walker (who shares a name and party affiliation with the governor of Wisconsin, though that’s hardly a recommendation) didn’t respond at all. Oddly, I came across an article about the Republican primary for this race, and it stated that Walker didn’t have a campaign site or respond to requests for comment (all three other candidates did). It’s strange that Republican primary voters seemed to have picked the least serious of the Republican candidates; maybe they actually thought he was the Wisconsin governor. Walker did respond to a more recent article on the race, one which noted that Johnson was not actively campaigning. So, despite my issues with the Green Party in general, I decided to vote for Sanders-Castro in this race, mainly to send a message to the Democratic Party to run serious candidates.


Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 6
Robert Burns (D)
Michael E. Keasler (R)
Mark W. Bennett (L)

My Vote – Robert Burns

Keasler’s responses to the somewhat general questions aren’t too bad for a Republican, but he still is one. Burns isn’t obviously much better (though in one of the news articles mentioned above, he also spoke out on the problems drug addicts face in the legal system), but he seems okay, so I gave him my vote.


Fifth Court of Appeals, Place 4
Gena Slaughter (D)
Lana Myers (R)

My Vote – Gena Slaughter

Though most of the questions reveal little about the two candidates’ thinking except in vague terms, Slaughter’s given reasons for running as a Democrat were a point in her favor and the fact that Myers is a Republican was a strike against her, so Slaughter was my choice.


Fifth Court of Appeals, Place 7
Dennise Garcia (D)
David John Schenck (R)

My Vote – Dennise Garcia

Not a lot of obvious difference here, so since both seemed to have the basic qualifications, it came down to party affiliation.


State Representative, District 103
Rafael Anchia (D)

My Vote – Rafael Anchia

Though Anchia, the incumbent, was unopposed, I decided to vote for him, as he got a 100% grade (and an endorsement) from the Texas League of Conservation Voters.


Dallas County Sheriff
Lupe Valdez (D)
Kirk Launius (R)
J.C. Osborne (G)
David Geoffrey Morris (L)

My Vote – Lupe Valdez

I originally intended to skip the local races, as I don’t feel I know about the sort of local matters the candidates might be expected to address. However, I decided to make an exception for this race. Not only are the Republican and Libertarian unacceptable for the usual reasons, but Osbourne, the Green candidate, seems more than a little wacky, and among a number of over-the-top remarks in his responses there were some that were homophobic and xenophobic, so he also is not by any means an acceptable choice. I admittedly don’t know much about the incumbent Valdez’s record, including on controversial policing issues, but I read part of her speech to the Democratic National Convention, and it sounded pretty good, especially since she noted that members of her own family had had run-ins with bad police officers, and that she’s taken specific steps to encourage her officers to improve community relations. The fact that she has had disputes with the governor over treatment of undocumented people is a point in her favor as well. As for the local judgeships, I did cast votes in a few of them, voting for the Democrat in races where the Republican revealed from their responses that they were a right-wing ideologue (for instance, two named Scalia as the judge they most admired, and another emphasized his support for the Second Amendment).