MRT: Beta Drenches TX, LA with Flooding in Houston; TX Historical Commission Rejects Moving Cenotaph at Alamo; Dems Take Aim at Houston Suburbs; TX Voter Registration Hits 16.6M
Here's What You Need to Know in Texas Today.
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BY: @MattMackowiak
WEDNESDAY – 09/23/20
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There are 41 days until Election Day.
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TOP NEWS
"Beta drenching Texas and Louisiana with heavy rain as significant flooding occurs in Houston,"The Washington Post's Matthew Cappucci and Jason Samenow -- "Tropical Storm Beta crawled Monday night inland along the middle Texas coast, the ninth tropical storm or hurricane to make landfall in the United States in 2020, tying a record. Now a tropical depression, Beta had already unloaded more than a foot of rain through Tuesday afternoon, with torrential downpours generating flash flooding around Houston.
Another 4 to 8 inches of rainfall was possible for some, with totals in some spots likely to close in on 20 inches. As Beta continues to drift northeast through Wednesday, “[f]lash, urban, and minor river flooding is likely” the National Hurricane warned.
Much of Texas’s Harris County, which includes Houston, was under flash-flood warnings through Tuesday afternoon because of the torrential rain and rising river levels. During the morning, parts of State Highway 288 were underwater south of Houston and closed in both directions. On Tuesday afternoon, additional downpours forced Buffalo Bayou to overflow, flooding streets in downtown Houston.
Slow-moving Beta isn’t going anywhere soon, the waterlogged atmospheric eddy unloading copious Gulf moisture in a swath from the Middle Texas coastline to the mid-South.
The National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center issued a rare high risk of excessive and flash-flooding rainfall for the Houston metro area, while a moderate risk extends into extreme southwest Louisiana, which was devastated by Hurricane Laura less than a month ago.
Beta made landfall at 11 p.m. Monday near the southern end of Texas’s Matagorda Peninsula with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph. It put 2020 into a tie with 1916 for most landfall tropical storms and hurricanes in a single season. Six of these storms have come ashore from the Gulf of Mexico." Washington Post
"Man, 77, charged in 1974 murder of Texas teenage girl," via AP-- "A man was arrested and charged in the 1974 killing of a Texas teenage girl after nearly 50 years of investigation and the advancement of DNA technology, police said Tuesday.
Glen McCurley, 77, of Fort Worth, was arrested early Monday and charged with capital murder in the abduction, torture, rape and slaying of 17-year-old Carla Walker. He is confined to the Tarrant County Jail with bond set at $100,000.
Online records do not list an attorney for McCurley.
Police had said the Fort Worth high school student was in a car with her boyfriend outside a Valentine’s Day party at a bowling alley the night of Feb. 17, 1974, when a man pistol-whipped the boy and grabbed the girl. Her body was found three days later stuffed in a culvert near Lake Benbrook, which is near where the abduction happened.
McCurley had been one of a number of persons under suspicion since the crime occurred, but investigators had been unable to link him definitively to Walker’s death.
“We had taken his case as far as they could with current technology and what evidence we had at the time,” Detective Jeff Bennett said at a Tuesday news conference.
Only when DNA technology advanced to the point where a complete genetic profile could be developed from evidence gleaned from the girl’s brassiere could a solid link be made, Detective Leah Wagner said." AP
STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
"Alamo Cenotaph to stay put — at least for now. Texas Historical Commission votes not to permit relocating the monument,"The San Antonio Express-News' Scott Huddleston -- "The Texas Historical Commission on Tuesday denied San Antonio’s request to relocate the Alamo Cenotaph, a key element in an ambitious makeover of the fabled battle site.
At the end of a nearly 10-hour virtual meeting Tuesday, the commission voted 12-2 against the city’s request for a permit to repair and move the monument.
The 56-foot-high Cenotaph, created by sculptor Pompeo Coppini, features carved statues of Alamo defenders and symbolic imagery in a work titled “The Spirit of Sacrifice.”
It now stands near the north end of Alamo Plaza. The plan for the Alamo makeover calls for moving the monument a few hundred feet south to a site near the Menger Hotel.
The public-private project, overseen by the city, the Texas General Land Office and the nonprofit Alamo Trust, also envisions closing the plaza to traffic, expanding pedestrian space and turning part of the plaza into an outdoor interpretive space to complement a new Alamo museum.
The project’s leaders had said relocation of the Cenotaph was critical to the larger overhaul. Lori Houston, assistant city manager, called the commission’s vote “disappointing” and said it meant “the Alamo Master Plan remains a plan without a project.”" San Antonio Express-News
"Dallas Council majority says $7 million in police overtime cuts will go back into public safety,"The Dallas Morning News' Kevin Krause -- "Dallas city officials are under pressure from two factions lobbying them on the next police budget: Social justice activists who want them to hack off a large chunk, and a contingent led by the mayor who want it untouched.
But when the roughly $3.8 billion city budget is formally adopted on Wednesday, money for police is expected to be largely intact. And Dallas will fall in line with most other large Texas cities that have rejected loud calls to “defund the police.”
In this spirit, a coalition of Dallas City Council members have revised their previous proposal to cut $7 million in police overtime from the 2020-21 budget. Under the new plan, the savings will be reinvested back into the police department as well as other public safety measures like streetlights.
This comes after Mayor Eric Johnson has tightened the pressure on his colleagues not to cut any money from police during what he calls a violent crime spike. Johnson has taken to the airwaves and social media with his campaign to cut $6 million from “bloated” City Hall salaries instead of the police cuts, which amount to about a quarter of budgeted overtime for the department.
The new amendment is sponsored by council members Adam Bazaldua, Adam Medrano, David Blewett, Paula Blackmon, Chad West, Tennell Atkins and Omar Narvaez." Dallas Morning News
2020
"Democrats take aim at Houston suburbs in bid for Texas House majority,"The Houston Chronicle's Jasper Scherer and Taylor Goldenstein -- "Former Texas state Rep. Mike Schofield felt so confident in 2018 that the voters in his northwest Houston suburban district would give him a third term that he left about $140,000 unspent in his campaign account and dedicated much of his time to helping other Republican candidates.
He ended up losing the House District 132 seat to Democrat Gina Calanni by 113 votes in a race that he says he never anticipated to be so close.
Now Schofield is up for a rematch with Rep. Calanni. This time, he says, he and other Republicans are ready.
“I spent a good chunk of September and October last time trying to get the judges re-elected,” Schofield told The Houston Chronicle editorial board as he launched his campaign earlier this year. “The first lesson I learned was what they tell you when you get on the plane: put on your own oxygen mask first. So, I will have a Schofield-centric campaign and we will work to get everybody else across the finish line after we get there.”
Democrats emboldened by close races in 2018 and by President Donald Trump’s flagging approval in the suburbs have even bigger ambitions in the Houston area in 2020, taking aim at a handful of traditionally bright red districts long thought to be out of reach.
Both parties acknowledge the high stakes involved in this year’s battle for the lower chamber, Democrats’ only chance to gain leverage before the 2021 legislative session, when lawmakers will redraw the state’s political maps. Republicans, who also control the Senate and governor’s mansion, hold an 83-67 advantage in the House after losing 12 seats in 2018.
The Democrats are unlikely to capture a House majority without picking up at least a few seats in the Houston area, party officials and political analysts said. Abhi Rahman, a spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party, said the party’s “path to the majority runs directly through Houston and the Houston suburbs.”
“Flipping the Texas House is the top strategic imperative for the Texas Democratic Party,” Rahman said in a statement. “Texas is changing rapidly and urban areas and suburbs across the state are trending Democratic. Suburbanites are sick of Donald Trump’s actions and Republicans’ inability to manage crisis situations.”
Atop the list of Democratic targets is state Rep. Sarah Davis, a moderate Republican who won re-election last cycle by six percentage points even as Senate Democratic nominee Beto O’Rourke carried her highly educated and affluent Houston district by 21 points. Also in the top tier is House District 138, the west Houston seat where Republican state Rep. Dwayne Bohac is not seeking re-election after he won by 47 votes in 2018.
Republicans, meanwhile, are playing offense in two neighboring west Houston seats that flipped to Democrats in 2018. In the Katy area, Schofield is seeking to reclaim control of House District 132 while next door, Democratic state Rep. Jon Rosenthal is defending his seat against Republican Justin Ray, the former mayor of Jersey Village.
Democrats have placed a handful of other seats in their crosshairs, such as House Districts 26 and 28 in Fort Bend County, and House District 126 in northwest Harris County.
Texas Republican Party Chairman Allen West said he expects GOP candidates will win suburban districts by “clearly articulating and delineating the detrimental effects of the progressive socialist left’s vision for Texas, and Houston.” He cited the Green New Deal resolution and Democrats’ gun control policies as examples.
The Texas House battlefield is centered almost entirely in the suburbs this year — in Houston and across the state — and recent polling suggests Trump’s support has dipped in those areas." Houston Chronicle
"Texas shatters voter registration records again as Trump-Biden election draws closer," The Houston Chronicle's Jeremy Wallace -- "Texas has once again shattered vote registration records, adding more than 1.5 million voters since the last presidential election.
Texas now has surpassed 16.6 million voters, according to the latest numbers announced Tuesday by Texas Secretary of State Ruth R. Hughs. And there are still almost two weeks to add more.
“Ahead of the November election, I encourage all eligible Texans who have not already done so to register to vote by Oct. 5 so that they can help shape the future of the Lone Star State,” Hughs said.
In the four previous presidential election cycles, Texas added about 700,000 new voters on average — less than half as many as have been added this cycle.
That fast growth in voters adds another wrinkle to Texas politics that already have been shifted by the pandemic. Campaigns don’t know how those voters are going to break or even if they are going to show up to vote at all, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor.
“It brings a lot of uncertainty,” Rottinghaus said.
That includes guessing whether they’ll show up by Election Day. It’s much harder to mobilize first-time voters and get them to the polls, Rottinghaus said." Houston Chronicle
TEXANS IN DC
"Texas cases raise stakes in fight to replace Ginsburg,"The Austin American-Statesman's Chuck Lindell -- "With Republican leaders steering the ship, Texas is pursuing several legal cases that could provide a steady diet of hot-button issues for the U.S. Supreme Court’s consideration.
From abortion to health care to immigration policy, the legal fights place added significance on the political fight to fill a sudden Supreme Court vacancy.
To borrow a phrase, what starts in Texas could change the world of law, particularly on a Supreme Court without Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday, raising the prospect of shrinking the nine-member court’s liberal wing to three justices.
Currently, the most notable case out of Texas is Attorney General Ken Paxton’s 2½-year-old lawsuit to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, the health coverage law also known as Obamacare.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in that case Nov. 10 — one week after Election Day and a little more than 50 days after Ginsburg died of complications from pancreatic cancer.
If leading Republicans have their way, Ginsburg’s conservative successor will be serving a lifetime appointment by then, replacing a justice who joined the majority in two decisions that upheld key aspects of the Affordable Care Act in 2012 and 2015.
“Not having Justice Ginsburg greatly increases the possibility that there will not be enough justices to form a majority to get rid of this lawsuit,” said Joseph Fishkin, a University of Texas law professor." Austin American-Statesman
"Cruz blocks RBG resolution, objecting to mention of her dying wish to keep seat open for next president,"The Dallas Morning News' Tom Benning -- "The Senate on Tuesday failed to pass a resolution honoring the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz objected to Democrats trying to insert a line about her dying wish that the vacancy be filled by the winner of this year’s White House race.
The Republican accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York of politicizing the ceremonial effort and turning a “bipartisan resolution into a partisan resolution.”
Cruz laid into the Democrats over their complaints about the GOP moving ahead this year with a nomination. He then suggested that a line instead be subbed in to reflect Ginsburg’s objections to packing the court with additional justices – an idea that’s been floated as Democratic revenge.
“We are sadly seeing one side of the aisle embrace more and more dangerous and radical proposals, including trying to use brute political force to politicize the court,” the Texan said. “That is not consistent with the Constitution.”
But Schumer was having none of it.
“Justice Ginsburg would easily see through the legal sophistry of the argument of the junior senator from Texas,” he said, rejecting Cruz’s modification. “To turn Justice Ginsburg’s dying words against her is so, so beneath the dignity of this body.”" Dallas Morning News
REMAINDERS
HOUSTON ASTROS: "Maldonado, Valdez push Astros past Mariners 6-1" AP
TEXAS RANGERS: "Kelly hits 3-run homer, Diamondbacks beat Rangers 7-0" AP
TEXAS STATE BASKETBALL: "Embattled Texas State men's basketball coach resigns, university officials say" AAS
'MACK ON POLITICS' PODCAST
LATEST "MACK ON POLITICS" PODCAST:The Trump White House is the subject of the 255th episode.
Our guest is former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, author of the new bestseller, “Speaking for Myself”.
In this episode we discuss how she approached writing a memoir, a secret trip to Iraq on Christmas in 2018, what President Trump is really like, what she thinks about diplomatic efforts with North Korea, how she views the current media landscape, where she thinks the 2020 presidential race stands, why she thinks the debates will matter more than usual, and what lies ahead for her future.
Available on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher and on the web at http://www.MackOnPoliticsPodcast.com.
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