Is Pete Olson Worried about Kesha?

For a few weeks it has been a lone political dispute between myself and my neighbor across the street over whose lawn sign is the better one. When the calendar page turned and it was 60 days out to the November 2 election my neighbor planted a brand spanking new Pete Olson for Congress lawn sign on his front lawn.

When Labor Day came and went I joined in the fun and planted my Bill White for Texas sign. And from that day to this the only political signs visible on my street have been those two.

Up until today.

Driving home today I passed house after house (and not just on my street) with those brand spanking new Pete Olson for Congress signs.

Oh, and one of those loud noisy Bob Hebert for County Judge signs.

Now I have to ask myself, what is with that? When Democrats came to the polls in dribs and drabs last March to vote for their congressional candidate for CD 22 they did what Democrats sometimes do best when they don’t know who the heck any of these candidates are – they pick the first one listed.

The first one listed in CD-22’s most populous county, Fort Bend, was LaRouche Democrat Kesha Rogers. She won Fort Bend County. The one listed first in Harris County’s ballot, Doug Blatt, won Harris County.

And so on.

So CD-22 Democrats saddled themselves with a 3rd tier candidate in Kesha Rogers who thinks that Barack Obama is a puppet of the British monarchy and should be impeached for ending the Aries and Constellation projects at NASA.

Pete Olson, I told myself, was a shoe in for a second term.

Obviously though, Pete Olson disagrees.

I think Olson reads the papers, and has realized that this congressional election is his to lose if he doesn’t get his name out there. And maybe it’s because in 2010 CD-22’s most populous county may just go the way Harris County (CD-22’s 2nd most populous county) had gone in 2008, and break over to Democratic.

Democratic straight ticket voters have outnumbered their Republican counterparts in the past couple of election cycles. This must be of some concern to Pete. And ironically it is of some concern to me in this one race.

That’s because if there is enough voter backlash against the established Washington DC insider incumbent, which is something Pete Olson epitomizes, Pete Olson could just find his hat handed to him by a tin-foil hat-wearing LaRouche Democrat whose main strength in this race is voter ignorance over just what she stands for.

This must be what was on his mind when he ordered up all of those lawn signs.

Fort Bend County Democratic Party Grand Opening Fish Fry

Well the Fort Bend Democratic Party held its first in a long, long time headquarters grand opening party today. A head count was difficult because people came and left at will, but at the height of the event estimates ran to about 200 to 250 attendees. Lots of new faces, lots of old faces, but one thing I am sure you can see in the arena pictures below, what Fort Bend County Democrats lack in church ladies and dirty old white men we more than make up for in diversity.

The anteroom was a place to meet and greet party goers, as we see here with Frederika Allen and her campaign manager. Frederika Allen is running for 240th District Court Judge.

It was also a place to get campaign paraphernalia and sign in at the guest table.

Standing in the food line you eventually got a plateful of fried catfish fried up by County Commissioner Richard Morrison, some potato salad and fried hush puppies, and then you got to slather any manner of sauce on top of any of that.

Not just a few speeches followed and I will have more on that tomorrow. I was keen to get something from Congressman Al Green on the Shirley Sherrod affair and he did not disappoint. Tune in later this week for video clips on that and others.

But finally as a crowning glory to the day we got to give the boot once more to the LaRouchenik Democrat who managed to get herself nominated in the March primary to run against Pete Olson, Kesha Rogers.

Rogers and her retinue decided to crash the party, perhaps with the mistaken notion that the Fort Bend Democratic Party would allow her a place at the podium, something that was never, never going to happen. Here is a bit of video that I shot of Kesha Rogers being shown the door.

Finishing her sentence ...

"what I look like without my tin foil hat."

And Funding the Kesha Rogers Campaign…

The Houston Chronicle has an interesting take on the Kesha Rogers victory in CD-22.

It even mentions this blogger’s plan to vote for the 2nd place winner in the Democratic primary: Under Vote.

But in the final analysis, it all comes down to Doug Blatt’s own opinion on the nature of the race and CD-22 voters:

“I am sorry to inform you that we lost. I am sorry that I was not able to get the word out more. The winner, Kesha Rogers, is already claiming on her web site that this means that Democrats in district 22 want to impeach the President. I can't believe that most people who voted for her, knew that she wants to do that. I do believe that most of them didn't do any research about the candidates before voting.”

In my county-by-county review of the vote, it was very clear to me that the voter was very uninformed, and many voters simply selected the person whose name appeared at the top of the ballot box. Clearly, there was such a high amount of voter ignorance in this race that the second highest vote-getter in the race was “none of the above.”

But more than a few that I have talked to have suggested that Kesha Rogers was a stalking horse candidate with Pete Olson’s campaign secretly supporting it. It even occurred to me as I was quizzed by a Princeton, NJ pollster who I would vote for if Olson and Rogers appeared on the ballot in November.

So I decided to take a look at the FEC campaign reports to see where the money to fund Rogers’ campaign came from.

In the one filing that I looked at, the one filed in January, 2010, here is what I found.

Rogers had 10 campaign contributions from 9 individuals totaling $3,750. No PAC money was reported.

While none of the supporters stood out, and none of the contributions were higher than $500, it was clear that one supporter was a big local backer. This guy donated $500 to the campaign which was immediately returned to his company for the use of office space at that company.

And over the past 7 years, the same guy has contributed over $25,000 to the Lyndon LaRouche for President Campaign or PAC.

A student made two contributions of $300 each, making him the biggest contributor.

The same guy has donated over $1,000 to the Lyndon LaRouche campaign in 2004.

Some unemployed guy living in Las Vegas gave Rogers $500. The same guy has donated $11,500 to the LaRouche campaign over the past 3 years, $500 to the Hillary Clinton campaign, and $500 each to the three LaRouche Youth candidates running for Congress this year. Rogers was the only one of the three to win. Small wonder, the other two ran against Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank.

Actor Robert Beltran, who played Raoul in the 1981 cult classic “Eating Raoul” gave Rogers $500. He has also donated to the Howard Dean campaign and to the LaRouche campaign in 2003 and 2004 ($1000 each time).

By far the biggest honcho who contributed to Rogers’ campaign was the president of a document conversion company that is headquartered in Leesburg, Virginia (a city also known for being the hometown of LaRouchePAC). Since 1999 he has given over $27,000 to LaRouche or ones like Rogers who run under the LaRouche banner.

I could go on but you do see where this is leading, don’t you? If Pete Olson was behind Kesha Rogers’ campaign, he cleverly did it through LaRouche supporters spread out over the country. Something that I doubt.

No, according to the FEC, Rogers took in $3,326 spent $1,315 and had $2011 on hand, as of January 26th, 2010. All of her funding, from what I could see, was from followers of Lyndon LaRouche (who sometimes, but not often, donated to True Democrats).

As a footnote, I decided to take a look at who were the money people behind Doug Blatt’s campaign. That one was easy because the single biggest contributor to Doug Blatt for Congress was Doug Blatt. His wife and parents came in 2nd and 3rd. Oh, and one In Kind donation from the Texas Democratic Party for access to the Voter Activation Network.

Neither Freddie or Kesha took advantage of the TDP voter database, preferring to rely on general voter ignorance and some cosmic miracle in the game of what I call "Ballot Position Roulette."

Blatt was, after all, the only True Democrat running.

The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!

No, Paul Revere did not actually utter those words when he made his legendary ride between Boston and Lexington to warn the Minutemen (the real, ones not the modern-day yahoos who besmirch that name) that British troops were on the march (he said “The Regulars are coming” because the countryside was filled with British sympathizers).

But that is exactly what Lyndon LaRouche and his LaRouche Youth Movement are saying these days.

And why do I waste my time worrying about this fringe element in this blog?

Because they are on the march in my congressional district.

They have a candidate, one of three nationwide, who is running in the CD-22 Democratic primary. The other two are challenging Barney Frank in Massachusetts and Nancy Pelosi in her California district. This candidate, or one of her supporters, chastised a sometime commenter on this blog, calling him “stupid” for opposing their LaRouche candidate, Kesha Rogers, and supporting the only true Democrat on the ballot, Doug Blatt.

Ordinarily I don’t allow commenters to post disparaging remarks on other commenters, but I made an exception in this case because it exposed this fringe element for what it really is: a truly lunatic fringe element.

I recalled in that earlier post that I reproduced a paragraph from Rogers’ campaign flyer, one that had a truly odd statement. Let me reproduce it again:

“…to reject the fascist policies imposed by the British monarchy, through its puppet Obama, in favor of ‘the LaRouche Plan’ . . .”

Today I asked myself what the heck that was all about. British monarchy? Puppet Obama? So I did a little research, and was not surprised in what I found.

These claims all extend from a December 28 piece penned, they say, by Lyndon LaRouche. It’s here, but reader be warned, pregnant women and those with a keen sense of reason should probably avoid reading it for fear of spraining your brain.

LaRouche jumped all over the fact that the Senate version of the healthcare reform bill, passed on Christmas Eve, had some provisions in it that prevented future congresses from amending certain passages. Specifically Section 3403 (d)(3). The passage, among other things prevents future congresses from increasing spending in the Medicare program – something that would change the balance sheets that had been agreed upon.

LaRouche claimed that this was just another example of how the British monarchy, and Queen Elizabeth herself is intimately involved mind you, is attacking our constitution.

Just like they did in the Treaty of Lisbon.

That attacking our constitution is tantamount to treason.

And so on . . .

Okay, take a minute now and clear your head. Shake it. Bang it against the wall.

Okay, now read on.

Fellow Democrats, these are apparently deeply held convictions of the LaRouche candidate who is currently vying for the Democratic Party nomination to run against Pete Olson in November. Don’t take my word for it. Look here to see what one of her supporters wrote at her campaign website just yesterday.

Unfortunately, Kesha Rogers is at the top of the ballot in Fort Bend County, and in 2nd place in Harris and Galveston Counties. That means an uninformed primary voter might just cast their vote for the LaRouche candidate, not knowing what they were doing.

Get the word out.