Monday, January 15, 2007

Runoff Election Set for Tomorrow in HD 29

Will the voters in Texas State House District 29 ever get a break?

Last November, during the General Elections, voters were given the choice between a living breathing young MD full of vision and sense of duty, and a corpse. They voted for the corpse. The corpse’s campaign committee, run by State Rep. Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton), saw no real reason to inform voters of the death of the Republican incumbent, Glenda Dawson, even as they sent mailers out to voters with the smiling face of Rep. Dawson plastered on them.

So because the voters were going to be represented in the state house by someone who was no longer able to cast a vote, because she died, Rick Perry hemmed and hawed about when, just when, should they have a Special Election? Well, didn’t he have to wait for the election to be certified? That’s the ticket.

So, hey, why not have a special election 6 days before Christmas? Well, I guess it would have been a good idea if they moved the polling locations to the malls, but no. They didn’t As a matter of fact, in Matagorda County, where Dr. DiNovo did better than his Republican rival, Randy Weber, there was one early voting location. One, in the entire county.

Voter turnout in the special election just topped 4 percent. That’s a miserable showing. A 7 percent showing is more the norm for a special election. The week before, Ciro Rodriquez beat out Henry Bonilla for CD 23, and the turnout was an impressive 17%. Tammy, DiNovo’s campaign manager, bemoaned the turnout. It was a unique chance and they stayed home or went to the malls.

And even then, no one in the field of four candidates got a majority of the vote. I mentioned in a previous post that Dr. DiNovo has endorsed his Republican opponent, Randy Weber. John Gorman, his other opponent did the same. They may all have disagreed with each other on the campaign trail, but there was one thing that they could all agree on, and that is Mike O’Day is the wrong one to go to the state house.

So Rick Perry again had to decide on a day to hold the special runoff election, waited for the official certification, screwed up and didn’t get the day named until it was too late leaving HD 29 voters without a voice in the state house during the first two weeks of the 110th Legislature. So he finally named it, it’s tomorrow, January 16th.

The day an ice storm is expected to hit the area.

A dead candidate, Jesus’ birthday, Perry, and now an ice storm.

Incredible.

No comments: