2022 Democratic Primary Recommendations

Early voting in the Texas Primary has started, you’ve got nearly 10 days of early voting left then election day so really no excuse not to cast a ballot. Whether or not you think Democrats have a chance at winning statewide positions like Governor, there are two really important seats with districts that Democrats can and should continue to hold. One of those is the Texas 28^th Congressional District which I’ve already written about and hope you’ll vote for Jessica Cisneros. The other seat is State Board of Education District 5 in which Rebecca Bell-Metereau is the excellent incumbent, she’s a career educator, a professor at Texas State University in San Marcos and a strong advocate for teaching historical truth and real science as well as replacing Texas’ high stakes testing which benefits the test making companies and not the students. Our children deserve the continued efforts of her leadership and scholarship.

In the statewide races the race for Governor has five candidates but the only one with a track record on public policy issues and running for election is Beto O'Rourke. O’Rourke had a strong run against Ted Cruz four years ago and is our best chance to beat whoever Republicans put up including the incumbent who is backed by corporate funds including the very power companies that he failed to hold accountable for last year’s statewide power outage during the snow storm. The power companies got off the hook and those of us who pay our electric bills were left holding the bag, many of us will be paying extra on our electric bills for many years to come in order to cover it.

There are three outstanding candidates for Lieutenant Governor and I’m siding with Mike Collier who has worked tirelessly for years working to unseat the unscrupulous incumbent. Collier ran for the spot previously and has built name recognition around the state. He faces Carla Brailey, a university professor and social justice advocate. Also running for the seat is Michelle Beckley who won a state house seat in District 65 in 2018 beating the Republican incumbent, she’s an advocate for expanding Medicaid in Texas and fixing the power grid among other widely supported Democratic priorities.

There are five contenders for the Attorney General nomination. Joe Jaworski made a strong impression on me when I had the opportunity to listen to his pitch and ask him questions. Jaworski is a practicing attorney in Galveston and has held various local political offices over the years. His platform includes starting a Civil Rights division within the Attorney General’s office to insure that Texans are able to count on the Office of the Texas Attorney General to protect civil rights in employment, education, housing, voting, the courts, physical access to accommodations and above all interaction with our criminal justice system.

Comptroller of Public Accounts is a position that most of us don’t even recognize but is a truly important job. Janet Dudding is a CPA who began her governmental accounting career with the Office of the State Auditor investigating allegations that governmental officials had embezzled taxpayer money or taken kickbacks. She’s spent her professional life holding government officials accountable to the citizens, not special interests. Dudding is ready to hit the ground running and deserves your support.

There are four contenders for Commissioner of the General Land Office provides funding for Texas public schools. Jinny Suh is a community organizer, former patent litigator, and when I spoke to her expressed her determination to use the office to protect the environment while expanding funding for education.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 16, 2022

Election More Than Federal Races

I’m fairly sure that most if not all of the news, noise, and campaign material you’ve probably seen has been for federal candidates Joe Biden, MJ Hegar, and Vicente González. There are 11 other races that also matter quite a bit and some of them matter in ways not everyone recognizes.

Even some Texans don’t realize that the Texas Railroad Commission doesn’t regulate railroads, it regulates the oil and gas industry and this election we have an opportunity to elect a highly qualified individual who recognizes that global climate change is an existential threat to the existence of our way of life. Her opponent operates oilfield waste disposal businesses and stands to make more money by keeping oil and gas industry regulation to a minimum. If you drive through west Texas at night you’ll seen dozens if not hundreds of fires roaring into the sky as oil wells flare off natural gas that they don’t want to bother with capturing and instead is allowed to be wasted on top of contaminating the environment with the CO2 and other damaging gases. Because the Railroad Commission rules state that all three commissioners have to agree to a permit to flare at a well if Chrysta Castañeda were elected she would have the power to stop the wasteful and environment damaging flaring.

The State Board of Education (SBOE) is another state agency with a role that many don’t know or understand. The SBOE has two main functions, oversee the investment of money from the proceeds from the sale and the mineral-related rental of many public lands in Texas which in turn funds textbooks for every public school student in the state and setting curriculum standards then reviewing and adopting instructional materials. Our representative on that board is up for election this year and the incumbent isn’t running. This is a golden opportunity to elect respected teacher and former Fulbright Scholar, Rebecca Bell-Metereau. I first met her about a decade ago and know her to be conscientious and deeply committed to raising the quality of education in our state. She will work to reduce the load of standardized tests our students are put through so that teachers aren’t force to teach to the test. Bell-Metereau has two daughters who graduated from Texas public schools and understands the limitations forced on both students and teachers by Texas’ many make or break tests.

If you’re among those who have requested a mail-in ballot I urge you to fill it out and mail it as soon as possible to avoid any chance that it will be delayed by the disruption of mail service caused by the recently appointed Postmaster General’s edicts eliminating overtime and shutdown of mail sorting equipment at many facilities. If your ballot doesn’t reach the elections office by Wednesday November 4 it will not be counted. In person early voting started yesterday so take advantage of the extra week and get it done early when crowds are light to help protect yourself from potential infection. The longer you wait the heavier the crowds are likely to be and the longer you’ll be stuck with a bunch of other people. This election is ours to lose and the way to do that is to not show up to make your voice heard. There are 14 Democratic candidates on the ballot in Guadalupe County, since we can no longer vote straight ticket be sure to mark all 14 of our candidates on your ballot.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 14, 2020

Textbook Peddling Nonsense

"Mexican American Heritage," is the first textbook on Mexican Americans ever included in a list of pre-approved instructional materials for Texas public schools. The authors must have been fans of Donald Trump before it was cool because they attribute poverty, drugs, crime, non-assimilation, and exploitation to Mexican Americans and link the ethnic group to illegal immigration. Apparently the history books’ authors don’t understand enough history to realize that many Mexican American families can trace their roots in Texas to a time when it was part of Mexico. In case I’m not being the clear, the border moved not the people.

In another part of the book they claim “Studies have shown that the Mexican American community suffers from a significant gap in education levels, employment, wages, housing, and other issues relating to poverty that persist through the second, third, and fourth generations". These are the same insults used against every other ethnic group that has ever set foot on this continent since the 1700s. Irish Catholics, Italians and Poles are just a few of the groups who have suffered such ethnic slurs over the last 300 or so years.

As it turns out the publisher of this travesty of a textbook is owned in part by Republican activist and former State Board of Education (SBOE) member Cynthia Dunbar. This is the same woman who questioned whether public education was even constitutional. Apparently she shares Donald Trump’s aversion to reading our founding documents since the Texas Constitution states: “A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.”

There are numerous like minded members of the SBOE still in office, one of them represents our district. Ken Mercer has supported textbooks and curricula that even other conservative groups like the Fordham Institute consider bad. Here’s what they had to say “Indeed, both in public hearings and press interviews, the leaders of the State Board of Education made no secret of their evangelical Christian-right agenda, promising to inculcate biblical principles, patriotic values, and American exceptionalism. And politics do figure heavily in the resulting TEKS. . . . Complex historical issues are obscured with blatant politicizing throughout the document. Biblical influences on America’s founding are exaggerated, if not invented. The complicated but undeniable history of separation between church and state is flatly dismissed.”

Mercer also claims that evolution is a hoax. Even the conservative Catholic Church has accepted the science of evolution since the 1950s and Pope Francis has reiterated that position recently. I spent 12 years in Catholic schools and well remember the high school biology lessons including evolution.

Now here’s the good part, you have an opportunity this November to retire Ken Mercer by voting for Rebecca Bell-Metereau. She’s a professor at Texas State University in San Marcos, her daughters went to public schools here in Texas. Bell-Metereau knows education and what we can do to make it better for all Texas children. If you don’t have a single other reason to vote in November improving the education of the next generation of Texans by replacing a reactionary with a professional educator should be more than enough.

Mercer and SBOE extremists at it again, this time "Islamophobia"

Ken Mercer and the other extremists on the State Board of Education would have us believe that Social Studies textbooks in our state have been promoting the “Islamic agenda”. The only problem is that the textbook used as the exemplar isn’t in use in Texas and if it was it could only have been with the approval of the very members of the SBOE that are making an issue of it.

To paraphrase Pastor Niemoeller’s famous quote: “First they came for the Muslims and I did not speak out – because I was not a Muslim. Then they came for the Mormons and I did not speak out – because I was not a Mormon. Then they came for the Catholics and I did not speak out – because I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Perhaps Mercer and his fringe associates believe that Texans live in fear of “the other” and scapegoating members of other faiths will bring them votes in November. I believe that Texans are better than that and electing Rebecca Bell-Metereau to the State Board of Education will prove that.

Public debate between an incumbent and challenger is imperative for our society to survive

Numerous sources report that the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas has urged State Board of Education member Ken Mercer to follow Rick Perry’s lead and not debate challenger Rebecca Bell-Metereau.

If this were a war or a football game I’d appreciate the tactic since winning is what matters. This is about governance and service to the people of Texas and in that context avoiding debate on issues of consequence to voters is unforgivable. As a Texas citizen I resent any candidate whether from my party or not for failing to do justice to the people they claim to want to represent. This is not a game, this is about the quality of education that our children will require to succeed in the twenty-first century.

A full airing of the views of the candidates is not only appropriate but absolutely necessary in order to maintain a democratic society. Any candidate who refuses to debate indicates that they don’t have what it takes to persuade the public that they are fit to lead and therefore should not receive the public’s vote. I urge Mr. Mercer to reconsider his preposterous position and agree to debate Rebecca Bell-Metereau at the earliest opportunity.

Ken Mercer continues to mislead when questioned about evolution

In a recent interview of candidates for the State Board of Education in District 5, Ken Mercer responds to the question: What is your position on the teaching of evolution? “My biggest quote was, ‘If our kids do not have the freedom to raise their hands in science class and ask honest questions, then we are no longer living in the United States of America.’ You can call it strengths and weaknesses, but we won the right for kids to ask questions in class, and that was the battle. It wasn’t religion. It was just a right to ask questions.”

I don’t know about you but I’ve never been in a classroom whether as a student or as a parent observing where children didn’t have the right ask questions. Our teachers encourage questions as a way to participate in class and clarify understanding. Mr. Mercer’s answer is an evasion because he never states his position on the scientific validity of evolution. What he and the other conservatives on the SBOE did was encourage our children to not just ask questions but to argue with their teachers about whether or not scientific principles are appropriate to the study of biology.

Texas has some of the lowest performing schools in the nation and Mr. Mercer’s actions will keep it that way. That’s all the reason I need to send him packing in November by voting for Dr. Rebecca Bell-Metereau.