The Travis County District Attorney's office just put out a statement regarding this morning's criminal complaint against Tom Craddick, which was filed by campaign finance watchdog group, Texans for Public Justice. From the DA's office:

The complaint received today from Texans for Public Justice regarding Tom Craddick and the Texas Jobs PAC is being reviewed by the Public Integrity Unit.

In order to determine whether there has been a violation of the Texas Speakers Act, it will be necessary to gather additional information. The Public Integrity Unit is in the process of gathering such information and steps are being taken to secure relevant documents. Additional comments will be forthcoming as appropriate.

Austin state lawmaker Dawnna Dukes, also considered a Craddick D, has said the $50,000 was made available to her but she declined it.

Posted by Elise Hu at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Travis DA candidate Rick Reed filed two ethics complaints against his opponent, Rosemary Lehmberg, for putting up campaign signs that don't clearly indicate they are "political advertisements." The Lehmberg campaign says it's simply a printing error, and the printer himself put out a statement to that effect:

We learned today that we failed to print from the proof that was approved by the Lehmberg campaign last month. We're embarrassed by our mistake, we accept responsibility for it, and we have called Ms. Lehmberg's campaign manager today to apologize. We plan to ship adhesive stickers with the required disclaimer language to the Lehmberg campaign this weekend, so they can be attached to Lehmberg's signs.

Sam Allen
American Campaign Signs and Graphics
Pittsburgh, Texas

Posted by Elise Hu at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Travis County District Attorney candidate Rick Reed is a stickler for the law. After all, until last week he worked for Travis County DA Ronnie Earle's Public Integrity Unit. Now that he's dedicated to campaigning full time, he's found a problem with the campaign signs of his former boss/current opponent, Rosemary Lehmberg, and doing something about it. (Lehmberg is Ronnie Earle's candidate-of-choice.)

Reed dropped two ethics complaints against Lehmberg this afternoon, for displaying and getting someone to make signs that don't include a notice saying they are "political advertisements".

So, he's popping her for a technicality, but the law is all about technicalities, which is also why I never went to law school. We'll see what the Ethics Commission does about it, given all of its investigations of late and the proximity of election day.

Posted by Elise Hu at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Harris County definitely has us beat when it comes to crazy contests for DA. Travis and Harris Counties are both going to elect new district attorneys, but under two very different circumstances. Travis County DA Ronnie Earle is retiring after serving for more than three decades. Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal was planning on running for another term, but he dropped out after a series of embarrassing emails from his public computer became, well, public.

Basically, Rosenthal's involved in a lawsuit and as part of the case, a federal judge unsealed a set of emails the married Rosenthal sent and received on his public computer. Within the emails are several lovey-dovey messages between him and his executive assistant, Kerry Stevens (who also made $75K a year and drove a county vehicle). Some of my favorite Rosenthal lines:

"You own my heart..."
"The next time I see you I'm going to kiss you behind your right ear."
"Bet I could make you sleep."

Once I stop blushing, I'm going to continue this post.

OK I'm back. Rosenthal had to drop out of the race for D.A., largely from pressure within the Harris County Republican Party. He's gone, but there are NEW EMAILS!!! Not only do they reveal he was using his public computer to run his campaign... there are several emails from Rosenthal's doctor (and husband of DA candidate Kelly Siegler) with racial and sexist undertones. For example, one recovered email photo shows a black man lying on a sidewalk, surrounded by half-eaten pieces of watermelon and an empty fried chicken bucket.

See the KHOU story here, plus the documents.

Now, I haven't seen Ronnie Earle's emails, but I doubt they can top Rosenthal's.

Posted by Elise Hu at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All four of the candidates running for District Attorney managed to either track us down or be accessible enough to be tracked down before four p.m. yesterday to be interviewed for a quick piece on the race. Video is here.

Obviously, squeezing in not just the four candidates but also outgoing DA Ronnie Earle into a 90 second story meant each candidate got between ten to 15 seconds of facetime. But at least no one was left out.

I'm curious as to what the narrative of this race will be, because until yesterday there wasn't much to report on it except that people had jumped in. It seems her thirty plus years on the job and the Earle endorsement makes Lehmberg the "establishment" candidate. For instance:

Clinton's line on how she's change:
“I want to make change, but I've already made change. I will continue to make change. I'm not running just on a promise of change, I'm running on 35 years of change."

35 years happens to be about the length of time Lehmberg has served the District Attorney's office. Lehmberg's line on change:

"If you want to see the issues that are important to me, you should look at the past about what's important... Ours is a dynamic office, and we've been changing everyday for as long as I can remember. I feel like I am change."

So they have some similarities in the way they talk about "changing for 35 years" or "for as long as I can remember". But it's unclear to me who in the DA's race is the anti-establishment candidate. I gather from conversations with Rick Reed that he is running more on his strong judgment and sense of morality than on a "fresh start" kind of message.

However, the DA's office isn't like the Bush Administration, which a majority of Americans want to eradicate and possibly forget. I haven't seen polling, but I imagine Travis County voters are more satisfied with the DA's office than they are with the president. That being said, perhaps "change" isn't going to be a driving factor in the race.

I dunno. This was basically written in stream-of-consciousness.

Posted by Elise Hu at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)