Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Democrats go after Gov. Perry in Texas

By Dan Balz - Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 27, 2010; 11:07 PM

washingtonpost.com

In a surprise move, the Democratic Governors Association has decided to up the ante in Texas, with plans to launch an attack ad against Gov. Rick Perry.

The ad assails him as a career politician who has lost touch with the people of the Lone Star State.

The audacious action comes in a state that has been a Republican stronghold for more than a decade. But Democrats have concluded that, even in a year that tilts strongly toward Republicans, Perry is more vulnerable than he has appeared in his race against Democrat Bill White, the former mayor of Houston.

The DGA has already contributed $2 million to White's campaign. The new ad buy, which is scheduled to begin running in the Dallas area Tuesday, represents an independent expenditure on behalf of White. A Democratic strategist said the DGA would spend about $650,000 to $700,000 a week on its ad campaign.

The latest poll in Texas, conducted by Blum & Weprin Associates for a consortium of Texas newspapers, gave Perry a seven-percentage-point lead, 46 percent to 39 percent. The poll was published on Sunday. Perry's lead was consistent with other surveys taken in September.

The public poll showed White and Perry running about even in the Houston area, where White is well known. But Perry held a solid lead in the Dallas area. The DGA hopes its ad campaign will cut into that margin there, which could be the key to White's hopes of winning.


On the issues, 25 years as a politician
has changed Rick Perry ... For the worse.

Perry became governor in December 2000 after then-governor George W. Bush resigned to become president. He has been reelected twice to four-year terms and is now the longest-serving governor in the state's history.

In a year in which incumbents of both parties have found themselves on the defensive, Democrats hope to turn Perry's long tenure against him. The ad concludes by saying, "Twenty-five years as a politician has changed Rick Perry alright - for the worse."

A copy of the ad was made available to the Post before it went on the air.

The ad attacks Perry on several fronts. Among them are ordering 11- and 12-year-old girls to be vaccinated against a virus that causes cervical cancer and proposing a mammoth Trans-Texas highway corridor that would have taken land from many private property owners.

Both proposals eventually were blocked, but Republicans and Democrats have continued to criticize Perry for his actions. Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R ) included both in her primary challenge to Perry last spring but fell far short in her bid to unseat him.

Democrats face substantial losses in governors' races this fall, with Republicans looking to finish the elections with at least 30 of the 50 governor's mansions.

But Democrats are running competitively in three of the nation's most populous states, all of which elected Republicans governors four years ago.

In California, Democratic attorney general and former governor Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr. holds a narrow lead over Republican Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay.

In Florida, Democrat Alex Sink, the state comptroller, is running even with businessman Rick Scott, who was the upset winner or the GOP primary in August.

An upset in Texas could provide an improbable sweep of the big Sunbelt states, although defeating Perry is seen as the most difficult of the three. Democratic officials believe it is worth an additional investment in White's candidacy to see how vulnerable the incumbent may be.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

The GOP "Pledge"

Political Cartoon by Rex Babin - Sacramento Bee
Choosing The Wrong Driver

The GOP "Pledge": What's Not In It
MotherJones.com
By David Corn | Thu Sep. 23, 2010 10:06 AM PDT

The House Republicans on Thursday released a manifesto outlining what they intend to do should they triumph in the coming congressional elections.

The glossy document, which is adorned with photographs of the Statue of Liberty, Mt. Rushmore, and cowboys, is high-mindedly titled "A Pledge to America: A New Governing Agenda Built on the Priorities of Our Nation, the Principles We Stand For & America's Founding Values." And it offers few surprises: tax cuts for all (including the super-rich), slashing federal spending (without specifying actual targets), downsizing government, more money for the military (especially missile defense), and repealing the health care bill. It decries deficits—though it advocates proposals that will add trillions of dollars to the deficit.

It calls for reforming Congress—but in non-significant ways (such as forcing legislators to place a sentence in every bill attesting that the legislation is connected to a principle in the Constitution). It's full of Hallmark-style patriotism: "America is more than a country." It's infused with tea party anger: Washington has plotted "to thwart the will of the people and overturn their votes and their values." It is likely to have little impact on the elections.

You can read it yourself. Or peruse the reviews: liberal Ezra Klein dissects its internal contradictions; tea partier Erick Erickson decries the "Pledge" as a sell-out of the tea party movement; Republican curmudgeon David Frum finds it retro and short on "modern" and "affirmative" ideas for governing during a recessionary year.

But here's a short-cut for you. Below is a list of words and phrases and the number of times they are each mentioned in the 45-page "Pledge."

Wall Street: 0
Bank: 0
Finance: 0
Mortgage crisis: 0
Derivative: 0
Subprime: 0
Lobbying: 0
Lobbyist: 0
K Street: 0
Campaign finance: 0
Campaign contribution: 0
Campaign donation: 0
Disclosure: 0
Climate change: 0
Environment: 1 ("political environment")
Alternative energy: 0
Renewable: 0
Green: 0
Transportation: 0
Infrastructure: 0
Poverty: 0
Food: 0
Food safety: 0
Housing: 0
Internet: 0
Education: 0
College: 0
Reading: 0
Science: 0
Research: 0
Technology: 0
Bush administration: 0

That list is as telling as the actual contents.

Monday, September 20, 2010

KERA Interviews Bill White


KERA Interview
Former Houston Mayor Bill White charges that Governor Rick Perry is trying to hide the state's financial problems until after election day.

On Friday Perry told KERA the upcoming budget gap might be around $11 billion.

Bill White tells KERA's Shelley Kofler in this video interview the deficit is probably double that, and there will be an additional shortfall this year [now estimated to approach $21 billion.]

Sunday, September 19, 2010

The Houston Chronicle Endorses Bill White For Governor

Bill White's endorsement by the Houston Chronicle is the first major newspaper endorsement of the general election.
Houston Chronicle
Sept. 18, 2010

Texas faces an unprecedented budget deficit estimated at $21 billion, faltering health care and public education systems, and demands for new energy sources and transportation funding. For nearly a decade, Rick Perry — the longest-serving governor in Lone Star history — has been at the helm of an increasingly wayward ship.

Texas can't afford four more years of Perry's leadership.
The governor has shown a distaste for dealing with budget details, fobbing them off on the Legislature and even suggesting in a recent news conference that Comptroller Susan Combs had better uses of her time than issuing deficit projections.

Fortunately, voters have the opportunity to replace Republican Perry with former Houston Mayor Bill White, a Democrat with credentials as a successful lawyer, corporate CEO and public servant who demonstrated his management capabilities and hard-work ethic during a six-year tenure at City Hall.

As he did in Houston, White can bring innovative financial solutions, a passion for environmental protection, and a strong bipartisan and ethical commitment to a governor's office tarnished by charges of cronyism, partisanship and catering to contributors at the expense of constituents.

"Today our state is being run like a political machine to perpetuate Rick Perry in office," said White during his screening with the Chronicle editorial board. Gov. Perry has declined to meet with Texas newspaper editorial boards.

"People want a governor who can bring people together to get things done," White continued. "Leadership is not dividing the state into red teams and blue teams, playing people off against each other. Leadership is not having citizens and journalists have to pry information out of the government when it's funded by the taxpayers."

Read the full story at the Houston Chronicle

Gov. Perry Is Running On His Record


One of Rick Perry's campaign ads


One of Bill White's campaign videos
Gov. Perry is running on his record. Gov. Perry's record:

An $18 billion to $21 billion permanent structural deficit in our state budget created by the property tax swap that Gov. Perry and the Republican controlled legislature passed in '06. Texas' state debt has doubled under Perry.

Rick Perry's property tax increase is hurting our local schools

Almost 1 million Texans are unemployed, a state record. Texas' unemployment rate (8.4%) now has been at or above 8 percent for 13 straight months, the longest period since a 23-month run from February 1986 to December 1987, according to data from the Texas Workforce Commission.

The Texas poverty rate rose 11% last year. Now 4.3 million Texans live in poverty.

Dallas Morning News - 5,550 Texans continue to lose their health coverage each week. Texas leads the nation in percentage of residents without health insurance with only 49.5 percent of Texas residents covered by employer-sponsored insurance.

Health care premiums have increased 91.6% since Perry became Governor

A recent report showed that Gov. Perry's Texas Enterprise Fund is "not creating jobs as promised." The Texas Enterprise Fund spent $368 million of public funding and only 33% of the projects created the pledged jobs. And Texas companies like Dell, are spending more to create jobs in China at the expense of jobs in Texas or even the United States.

Houston Chronicle - Perry and his family headed to China - But funding raises concerns about the trade mission.

Texas Tribune - Texas college and university tuition skyrocketed by 63 percent while Perry has been Governor. Since 2003, when the Republican dominated State Legislature deregulated tuition by allowing individual boards of regents to set prices for each school, tuition and fees at four-year state schools has skyrocketed by an average of 63 percent, from $1,934 per semester to $3,150 according to the last state figures, from 2008.

Utility rates continue to rise, and some utility companies and Perry thinks that is just fine.

The student dropout rate in Texas is 30 percent and as high as 50 percent in some large urban districts.

Texas currently has the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the United States and “the highest rate of repeat teen births.

The rate of student pregnancies has increased as much as 57 percent and rates of sexually transmitted diseases are rising in some urban school districts.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Children Speak Rick Perry Quotes

A Texas Filmmakers for Bill White web video featuring children repeating Rick Perry's quotes about part-time lifestyle, living in a mansion, the HPV vaccine controversy, and the Trans-Texas Corridor.

When asked for a response to this video by the Houston Chronicle Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner said, "It's nice that Bill White put his policy advisers in a video."

In reply to Miner's comment White spokeswoman Katy Bacon said, "Of course Texas children are on Bill's mind when he's thinking about policy for our state's future. It's Texas kids whose future Rick Perry is mortgaging with his fiscal mismanagement and the $18 billion budget hole. Unfortunately, the only thing Rick Perry and his handlers are looking out for are their political friends and special interest lobbyists. That's why we need a new governor."

Sources of the quotes used in the video:
  1. “Texas is still competing and winning because of hardworking visionaries and committed economic development organizations who are willing to think bigger and work harder than anyone else.” (Source: Rick Perry speech, May 26, 2010).

  2. “I absolutely understand they want to get back to their homes. I'd like to get back to the mansion.” (Source: San Antonio Express-News, " Biggest obstacle to Galveston recovery is water" 9/19/08).

  3. “It has been a tragedy of unspeakable consequences that, for decades, activist courts denied many Texas parents their right to be involved in one of the most important decision their young daughter could ever make…” (Source: Rick Perry press release, 6/5/05).

  4. "“The simple truth is: When it comes to roads, we need more of them….And good roads mean a better quality of life for our citizens.” (Source: Austin American-Statesman, "Perry: Legislature 'abdicated responsibility' on transportation," 4/22/08).

Gov. Perry Is Hiding A $21 Billion Texes Budget Deficit


"Saddle bags" by Nick Anderson - Houston Chronicle
Dallas Morning News:
New assessments, obtained by The Dallas Morning News after a recent huddle of senior legislative staff members, show that even if lawmakers decide to spend all $9 billion in the state's rainy day fund, they still would need to come up with almost $12 billion more to close the gap - through some combination of spending cuts, accounting tricks and new taxes or fees.

The figures, prepared by staff at the Legislative Budget Board and then tweaked by House leadership, show the situation has deteriorated since spring.

In May, Pitts, the House's chief budget writer, drew derision from some GOP leaders when he said the shortfall could be between $15 billion and $18 billion. Perry said someone had "reached up in the air and grabbed" the figure.

The latest figures, though, show the gap as high as $20.6 billion.

Revenue is not rebounding quickly from the economic downturn, as Comptroller Susan Combs predicted it would. Population is expected to keep growing rapidly, which swells demand for education and social services, already high because of the recession.

You can watch a video clip here where Rick Perry say that "I've got a lot of confidence in this comptroller." [Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Republican Susan Combs] He goes on to say, "I don't necessarily think it's a particularly good use of the comptrollers time to do a budget estimate every time someone pokes their head up out of a hole and says 'let's do a budget estimate." It's quite obvious Rick Perry does not want his controller to release a budget report that shows a $21 billion budget deficit any time before the election, as the truth about Texas' fiscal health is clearly detrimental to Governor Perry's re-election bid.

Politifact verifies claims from Democratic opponent Bill White that our state's debt has doubled under Rick Perry. When he assumed office in December 2000, Texas held $13.7 billion in debt. Adjusting for inflation, that's today's equivalent of $16.6 billion. As of August 2009, we held $34.08 billion in debt. Rick Perry has more than doubled our state's debt, even after you adjust for inflation.

Perry also claims he's cut state spending as well, but it's actually increased 45%.

He's claimed to have vetoed $3 billion worth of spending, when, in truth, $2.5 billion of that never was passed into law anyway and would not have been spent, regardless of his 'veto'.

Despite all of the above proof that our Governor has failed miserably as a steward of our state's fiscal matters, he's running ads claiming

that, "the economic success Texas is experiencing because of the leadership and pro-growth policies put into place by Governor Rick Perry. The keys to success? Don't spend all the money. Keep taxes low. Keep regulations fair and predictable. Tort reform to prevent frivolous and junk lawsuits. Fund an accountable education system. Then get out of the way and let entrepreneurs and the private sector do what the private sector does best-- create jobs. Since 2005, Texas has created far more private-sector jobs than all over states combined."

We Texans here in Collin County know Perry's political ad claims are half-truths, slanted estimates, and flat out lies.

No wonder Gov Perry is too chicken to debate Bill White. He's tanked our state's fiscal health with one hand and written a book about what a great fiscal conservative he is with the other. In one breath he claims there is no budget crisis in Texas and then he claims Texas' has a financial crisis caused by the Obama administration.

Houstonians, who re-elected Bill White as mayor with 91% and then later, 86% of the vote, were proud to call him our mayor. It's time for Collin County to elect a Texas Governor in which we can again be proud. Visit Bill White for Texas and read about his accomplishments with the city of Houston that includes job growth and balancing budgets.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Election Day Vote Centers Coming to Collin Co. Again On Nov. 2nd

Late in the 2009 legislative session the Texas legislature passed HB719, which amends Section 43.007 of the Texas Election Code to require the Texas Secretary of State (SOS) to implement a program that allows Commissioner's Courts in selected counties to eliminate election precinct polling places and establish county-wide Vote Centers for certain elections.
These Election Day Vote Centers work almost exactly like Early Voting Vote Centers. During the early voting period for each election cycle, a number of polling places appear through out the county where any registered voter in the county can vote in any of those places throughout the early voting period.
Collin County gain approval from the Texas Secretary of State to use Vote Centers for the first time on election day in the November, 2009 constitutional amendment election.

The Collin County Commissioner's Court today voted to authorize Sharon Rowe, the Collin County Elections Administrator, to notify the Director of Elections in the Texas Secretary of State office, that Collin County seeks approval to implement the County Wide Vote Center Program again for the November 2, 2010 election. The Texas Secretary of State is expected to approve the request.

If approved by the Texas SOS, any Collin County registered voter will be able to vote at any of the 70 proposed countywide Vote Centers located around Collin County on Election Day, November 2, 2010.

In 2009, less than 5% of the voters turned out for the constitutional amendment election at one of the 57 countywide Vote Centers. The 2010 General Elections, which headlines the Gubernatorial contest between former Houston Mayor Bill White and incumbent Rick Perry, will likely have a turnout in excess of 38 percent of registered voters.

The 70 proposed countywide Vote Centers, which allows any registered voter to vote at any voting location on election day, is about half the number of polling locations that would be expected under the old local precinct voting location election model.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

New Republican Collin County District Clerk Plus Five Others Indicted For Organized Criminal Activity.

From the Dallas Morning News
by Ed Housewright:
July 31, 2010 - Patricia Crigger, the incoming Collin County district clerk, and five other office supervisors have been indicted on charges of engaging in organized criminal activity.

The indictments stem from a Texas Rangers investigation that alleges Crigger and the others pressured district clerk employees to work on Crigger's spring campaign.

Crigger received about 54 percent of the April 13 Republican primary runoff election vote, defeating law office manager Alma Hays.

She faces no Democratic opposition on the November 2, 2010 election ballot and is therefore due to take office Jan. 1, replacing longtime District Clerk Hannah Kunkle, who is retiring.

The general election is Nov. 2. The deadline to remove a candidate's name is Aug. 20, according to the Texas secretary of state's office.

If Crigger withdraws her name before then, the local Republican Party executive committee can name a replacement to be on the ballot, said Ann McGeehan, elections director for the secretary of state.

The Democratic Party of Collin County Executive Committee also would be allowed to place a name on the ballot, even though the party had no candidate in the primary.

Anyone can file as a write-in candidate through Aug. 24, McGeehan said.

If Crigger doesn't withdraw her name by Aug. 20, she will stay on the ballot. She would win the election if she receives the most votes.

If she is still under indictment, has not been convicted and decides not to take office Jan. 1, the county's state district judges would name her replacement, McGeehan said. The replacement would serve until the November 2012 general election and could seek election for the remaining two years of the term.

A candidate becomes ineligible to serve upon final conviction, McGeehan said. So if Crigger were convicted but appealed her case, she could take office while the appeal is resolved.

The Collin County Commissioners Court sets the budget for the district clerk and other elected officials. But commissioners can't fire an elected official or any of his or her staff.

County Judge Keith Self, who heads Commissioners Court, declined to comment on the indictments.

"Because it's a legal issue, I need to be very careful to make no comment," Self said.

Crigger and the other supervisors could not be reached for comment.

"It's really sad it's come to this," said Fred Moses, chairman of the county Republican Party. "She's worked hard for the party."

A judge issued arrest warrants on Friday and set a $5,000 personal recognizance bond for each. All six defendants appeared voluntarily at the Collin County Jail about 12:30 p.m. to be processed, said sheriff's spokesman John Norton. They left about an hour later, he said.

Under state law, a person can hold office while under indictment but can be removed if convicted.

Engaging in organized criminal activity is a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.

The one-page indictments were returned Thursday against Crigger, Sherry Bell, Rebecca Littrell, Amy Mathis, Lorrie Robertson and Marcia Simpson.

The identical indictments say the women tampered with government records and committed theft by falsifying time and attendance records to show employees were working when they were not.

"This is a dark day for Collin County and its taxpayers," Hays said in a statement Friday. "I hope the legal process reveals the truth and that the integrity of the district clerk's office is restored. I am proud to say that I ran an honest campaign and that I had nothing to do with this investigation."

The six women indicted are among nine supervisors in the district clerk's office, which has 63 employees.

A search warrant affidavit from the Texas Rangers investigation says district clerk employees were asked to assist Crigger's campaign in "various ways, such as walking neighborhoods and holding campaign signs at polling places."

They were rewarded with paid time off, the document says.

It mentions five unnamed district clerk employees who talked with the Rangers during their investigation.

Armed with a search warrant, authorities seized computer hard drives, memory cards, Crigger campaign literature, calendars and other items on June 3.

At the time, Kunkle released a written statement on behalf of her and her office, which is responsible for keeping state district court records. She criticized the execution of the search warrant.

"If they would have come to me directly, I would have turned over anything they wanted and would not have had to close down the district clerk's office, disrupt county business and cause inconvenience to the employees and citizens of Collin County," the statement read.

Kunkle couldn't be reached for comment Friday.

Moses said he hadn't talked to Crigger since she was indicted. "We want to let the legal system take its course," he said.

Moses said he would talk to state Republican Party officials and the Texas secretary of state's office to determine how to pick Crigger's replacement if she doesn't take office.

"We need to see what our options are," Moses said. "We want to do what's in the best interests of the party."

Six supervisors in the Collin County district clerk's office each face two counts of engaging in organized criminal activity in identical indictments handed down Thursday.

Indicted: Patricia Crigger, Sherry Bell, Rebecca Littrell, Amy Mathis, Lorrie Robertson and Marcia Simpson

Count 1: Tampering with a governmental record by making false entries in time and attendance records

Count 2: Theft by obtaining money between $1,500 and $20,000 from Collin County by falsifying time and attendance records

Punishment if convicted: Two to 20 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Mother Jones: Serial Butt-Biting GOP Operative Sinks Teeth Into Texas Race

Mother Jones: Charles Hurth has a history of biting women's behinds. Now it's Texas Democrats who have to watch their asses.  (Republican Scheme To Divert Votes From Democrats In November?)
By Suzy Khimm - Mother Jones

Meet Charles Hurth III. The Missouri lawyer has a long history of setting up under-the-radar groups to help Republican operatives game elections.

But the most sordid thing about Hurth's past is not his political scheming. He's also what you might call a serial butt-biter, with a well-publicized track record of sinking his teeth into the rumps of college coeds.

He recently struck again in Texas—not by biting derrieres, but by spearheading an apparent GOP dirty trick to derail a Democrat's gubernatorial bid.

Last month, Hurth and two other GOP operatives—one a former top aide to Texas Gov. Rick Perry—were implicated in a scheme to bankroll a petition drive to put the Green Party on the ballot. It is an apparent ploy to siphon votes away from Perry's Democratic challenger, former Houston Mayor Bill White. He's an appealing target: Tied with Perry in the latest poll, White's the strongest gubernatorial contender that Texas Democrats have seen in years.

But Hurth's first claim to fame was being sued in 1987 for approaching a fellow law student in a bar and biting her on the buttocks so hard that she required medical attention. During the trial, Hurth admitted that he'd used the same toothy overture to approach two other women at fraternity parties—and he said that his latest victim should have taken the gesture as a compliment. The jurors didn't buy it, and Hurth was successfully sued for $27,500. Since then, he has dedicated himself to being a persistent pain in the butt for Democrats, setting up shop in a tiny Missouri town to create a clearinghouse for Republican electoral schemes. The latest came this spring, when Hurth and his allies succeeded in getting the Greens on the 2010 ballot.
In response, the Texas Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in early June against a Hurth-run nonprofit called Take Initiative America, as well as Arizona-based GOP consultant Tim Mooney and "unknown conspirators" for their role in the effort. Mooney has admitted that he funneled money through Hurth's organization to pay Free and Equal Inc., a Chicago-based petition-gathering company that ended up amassing 92,000 signatures for the Texas Green Party's ballot drive. According to a court document, Hurth's group spent $532,500 on the effort.
Mooney has repeatedly refused to say where the money came from—and denies that it was a GOP plot to bring down White. "Take Initiative America is a nonpartisan organization," he told the Dallas Morning News, which first broke the news of his involvement. "They'd like to see everybody have a chance to get on the ballot—the more choices the better."

Especially if those choices draw votes away from Democratic candidates. This isn't the first time that Mooney and Hurth have resorted to such schemes to help Republicans at the polls. In 2004, Hurth set up an organization called Choices for America that furtively solicited help from Republicans to get then-presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the ballot in New Hampshire, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, among other states. Mooney assisted with Hurth's 2004 effort, along with Dave Carney, George H.W. Bush's former political director who's now one of Rick Perry's top consultants. At the time, Carney acknowledged to the Dallas Morning News that he was trying to gather signatures for Nader in order to help George W. Bush get reelected. According to the script for the petition drive, canvassers were instructed to tell Bush supporters, "Without Nader, Bush would not be president."

Three years later, Hurth undertook yet another effort to manipulate electoral politics to the Republicans' advantage. In 2007, Take Initiative America funded a California ballot initiative that would have distributed the state's 55 electoral votes by congressional district instead of winner-takes-all. Had it succeeded, the effort would have greatly benefited Republican presidential contenders in the state. Hurth similarly refused to reveal the donor behind the effort, who finally came forward after Democrats accused the group of money-laundering and California officials vowed to investigate. Paul Singer, a hedge-fund manager and major Giuliani fundraiser, admitted that he gave $175,000 to the effort. (Hurth himself contributed $2,000 to Giuliani's presidential bid.) Then-Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean decried the initiative and pointed the finger at the Giuliani campaign, which denied any involvement. The Perry campaign has similarly denied any role in this year's Green Party ploy. But the tentacles of the scandal reach dangerously close to his camp.

It was allegedly Perry's former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, who approached a 22-year-old college student, Garrett Mize, to talk to the Green Party about accepting the outside help, according to Mize's court testimony. (Toomey, who's now a lobbyist, also helped mastermind former Rep. Tom DeLay's scheme to funnel secret corporate money to help the GOP's redistricting effort in 2003.) The Texas Green Party eagerly accepted the offer—even though a court-released email between Green Party officials reveals that party officials were acutely aware the money could be coming from Republican sources. The email also mentions Perry's top political consultant Anthony Holm as being interested in paying for 40 percent of the party's petitioning costs, though he's since denied any role in the schme.

The Texas Green Party has refused to withdraw from the ballot, saying it was "misled" about the kind of money that was used to fund GOP's scheme. "It's not like we intentionally did this," said Kat Swift, statewide coordinator for the Texas Green Party, at a press conference in early July. According to her account, the Texas Greens never knew what Take Initiative America really stood for or who might be involved. But Swift has since embraced the GOP help as a form of realpolitik, arguing that Texas has some of the most stringent requirements for getting on the ballot in the country. "Wherever the money came from doesn't bother me," she told the Dallas Morning News. "People are trying to open the ballot to increase democracy and so, who cares how they vote?"

It's unclear, though whether the Green Party's presence on the ticket will actually hurt White's chances, as the recent controversy has divided Green Party supporters. Some of its closest allies have turned against the party for knowingly accepting the GOP assistance—and refusing to back out even after discovering it was paid for by Hurth's nonprofit corporation (which qualifies, for the purposes of campaign-finance law, as corporate money). The Texas League of Conservation Voters, which has often backed Green Party candidates, said the party's "use of corporate, out-of-state money directed from partisan operatives for a petition drive corrupts and manipulates the electoral process." One local Green Party candidate for Travis County Clerk has already withdrawn his candidacy, citing his opposition to the Green Party's acceptance of corporate-funded help—even though the party itself has called for the end of corporate funding in all elections.

Texas Democrats, for their part, have given up their push to keep the Green Party off the ballot: they dropped part of their lawsuit last week after the (all-Republican) Texas Supreme Court decided to let the Green Party remain on the ballot while it reviewed the case. But the state's Democratic party says it will continue with a legal challenge in a lower court to discover who was funding the GOP-backed petition drive, contending that the source and use of Hurth's funds might have been illegal. If even more incriminating evidence surfaces, the Green Party scheme could really end up biting the Texas GOP in the butt.