The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime

We tend to say every election is the most important of our lifetime. And truthfully it has probably felt that way every time. This time it is more true than ever—because our country is now a post-constitutional republic, and this may be our only opportunity to turn around on the path back toward our Constitution.

Decisions are state and local, since it’s not a presidential election year. And yet they may add up to a greater impact than anything we’ve seen before. That is, if—we vote for that return toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

image found here

I’ll be looking at Texas and local races today. Principles will apply elsewhere, but you’ll have to do your own research.

The short and simple answer this election is to vote Republican. And vote Republican all the way down the ballot. In Harris County, that’s a long ballot—possibly the longest in the nation. We vote on our judges, and it’s around a hundred races total. I’ll highlight just a few. There is no straight-ticket voting anymore, so it requires tedious individual voting. Note that the Republican candidate is listed first in every race.

 

Governor

The choices are Greg Abbott, our current governor, and Robert (Beto) O’Rourke. Beto had no redeeming qualities when he ran against Ted Cruz for Senate in 2018, but he pulled in a great deal of out-of-state anti-Cruz money, and was a media darling. He failed. He attempted a run for president, without the anti-Cruz enthusiasm and money, and showed himself to be at the bottom of the Democrat heap, only slightly above Kamala Harris. So again he failed. He’s attempting to pretend the multiple failures are a reason to vote for him. He changed from his previous, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take Americans’ guns” (an actual quote) to something more nuanced that he thinks might play better in Texas. He’s pro-abortion without restriction and thinks that’s a winning issue. It isn’t.

So he’s not much of a threat.

As for Governor Abbott, he disappointed many during the pandemic by allowing lockdowns. He lifted statewide mandates pretty quickly, but defending our freedoms against more local tyrants has been piecemeal. He just extended the declaration of emergency for the 31^st time (Houston Chronicle story here). Fact: the pandemic isn’t an emergency and hasn’t been for a very long time. Only 12 states still retain these emergency declarations. We’re hoping the legislature will address that this upcoming session; the people are calling for an automatic requirement for the Texas Legislature to approve emergency orders in order to extend them beyond 30 days.

That being said, he has been mostly conservative, and has been good at growing Texas and our economy here. While we would have preferred some DeSantis-style boldness, we’re better off than most. So, with less enthusiasm than before the pandemic, I am definitely voting for Governor Greg Abbott.

 

US Congress

I’ve been redistricted from CD 2, Dan Crenshaw’s district, to the new CD 38. Our candidate is Wesley Hunt. He’s ex-military and supported by Crenshaw. Those of you who followed this race in the primary know I did not support Hunt. I campaigned for a much better candidate. But Hunt got the big money and pulled off a win without a runoff—despite failing to show at every event I was made aware of. As a precinct chair I have since been invited to an event or two, but at times I was unable to attend. That means I still have not seen him in person since he began his campaign. That is completely opposite of how Dan Crenshaw ran.

Hunt says the right conservative things. My impression of him, in person, when he ran a previous campaign in 2018, was that he wasn’t as clear on the concepts, or as committed to conservative principles as his opponents. But he said the right things then too, and won the primary but not the general.

This time he’s in a district that is designed to trend Republican. As long as he doesn’t blow it, he’ll get elected. Unless I look up the name on the sample ballot, I can’t even remember his Democrat opponent’s name (it's Duncan F. Klussmann). I have seen no campaign signs for the opponent. There seems to be no enthusiasm for him. So Hunt is likely to sail through.

I’ll be voting for Hunt, in hopes that he will live true to the conservative things he says. He will be better to work with than someone who openly opposes conservatives.

 

Harris County Judge

This is possibly the most important race on the ballot for people in Harris County. Again, a brief explanation that HC Judge is an administrative position. It is, in fact, one of the largest administrative jurisdictions in the nation. I think Los Angeles and maybe one other are larger. In smaller, rural counties, some county judges still act as judges, but in the enormous Harris County, that has not been the case for many decades; just the name remains.

It’s a challenge to list the many reasons we need to get rid of our corrupt socialist incumbent. But here are a few:

·       Lina Hidalgo directed $11 million in COVID-19 relief money to a partisan crony. Three of her main staffers were indicted on fraud charges; charges against her may yet come, but not likely before the election.

o   Claims the funds have been returned are not accurate. Stories here and here.

·       Lina Hidalgo and cronies on Commissioners Court changed the structure for voting, after a corrupt Democrat County Clerk stepped down in May of 2020, and called for a new elections administrator to handle elections, rather than the County Clerk. She hired an incompetent crony as EA, who messed up the Primary so badly that even Hidalgo asked for her resignation—although they postponed her leaving until after the runoffs could be mishandled as well.

o   There are ongoing serious chain-of-custody issues related to elections. Story here. 

·       She decided the way to allocate Harvey relief and recovery funds was—not according to who suffered the most damaged, but which ethnicities she wanted to favor.

·       She pushes for higher taxes at every opportunity. The three countywide ballot propositions are an example: totaling $1.2 billion for projects that haven’t even been delineated yet. Just-in-case money, during a recession.

·       She has misallocated money intended for police on the street to social programs. The state has called her to get back in compliance with the law against defunding law enforcement.

·       Even the Democrat District Attorney is at odds with Hidalgo for failing to allow prosecution of violent felons; Hidalgo won’t fund additional prosecutors.

·       Hidalgo supports the practice of letting violent offenders out on personal recognizance bonds; i.e., no bail bonds. Since Hidalgo’s election in 2018, the increase of PR bonds to violent criminals rose from 12 to 1283, including 110 capital murder offenders. 181 have died at the hands of these criminals out on PR bonds. (I wrote about this here.) 

But what about all the things she’s done right? Hmm. I can’t seem to come up with anything to list.

Back in the Primary, the Republicans ran several capable people. But my choice then and now is Alexandra del Moral Mealer. She’s a serious woman. Unlike Hidalgo, who took on this job at age 2;7, as her first job out of graduate school, with no real world experience, Mealer has considerable leadership experience, both in the military (leading bomb squads), and in business. She’s smart, well prepared, and articulate. Doing political schmoozing isn’t really her thing; you can see it’s not natural for her. But she’s likable and real. A telling detail for me was last summer, on my way into the Republican Party of Texas convention, I ran into her in the crosswalk. She remembered my name, my association with the Cypress Texas Tea Party, where we had had her speak, and that I had supported her.

Me with Alexandra del Moral Mealer (right),
at Cypress Texas Tea Party in March 2022

She has garnered quite an army of willing block walkers. Her signs are everywhere around the county. I see almost none for Hidalgo.

Even the Houston Chronicle denied Hidalgo their endorsement and went with Mealer. The editorial board said, "Where it counts, particularly on the issue of crime, Mealer seems to be listening to many in our community who otherwise feel unheard: crime victims and their families." 

If you’re interested in seeing them side by side, there’s this video. 

 

County Commissioner

We’ve had just two of the five members of the Commissioners’ Court siding with the people, and against Hidalgo and those who control her agenda. Redistricting following the census has been used as an attempt to oust one or two of the remaining ones. My commissioner, “Cactus” Jack Cagle, is one of my favorite people in the political world. Cowboy, poet, philosopher—very fun to hear him speak on just about anything. I will definitely be voting for him. If you’re in Tom Ramsey’s district or one of the others, know that you’re doing the world a service by voting Republican in these races.

That's me with the tall guys, Cactus Jack Cagle and Mr. Spherical Model
at Cactus Jack's Campfire (picnic) in 2021

 

County Clerk

Stan Stanart was our County Clerk for eight years. Elections ran so much smoother then. All we had to worry about were the more traditional attempts at voter fraud—not systemic ones implemented by county officials. It would be such a pleasure to have him back. If we can get a Republican County Judge and keep our Republican County Commissioners, we could even do away with the failed attempt at using an Elections Administrator and return that duty to the County Clerk’s office.

We heard from Stan at last Saturday’s Tea Party meeting. Vide here.

 

County Treasurer

This race is even lower on the ballot than County Clerk. Kyle Scott would be such a joy in that position. He understands how the County Treasurer can keep spending under control—by not signing authorization to any spending outside the law. What a concept! He proved his contrarian abilities as a member of the Lone Star Community College board, some years ago (term-limited out). He cheers us up every time he speaks at our Tea Party. Here’s video of him from last Saturday as well.

 

Judges

As I mentioned, we have a l-l-o-o-n-n-g-g ballot, because of all the judges. This year, because of the ridiculous policy of letting violent felons out on personal recognizance bonds, it is especially important to safety in our community to oust those judges and put in judges who abide by the law. I signed on for nearly all of these judges; getting signatures saves them big bucks in filing fees. Many of them have served before but got ousted in the Beto wave or its 2020 echo. The Democrats are both inexperienced and ineffective. And in many cases they have proven dangerous to our communities. An excuse for the PR bonds is that it takes up to three years to bring a case to trial. Wouldn’t the better solution be to get through the docket faster? Managing caseload is something a good judge must do.

A favorite for me this year is Julian Ramirez, running for the 248^th Judicial District; it’s one of those criminal courts. Julian had been in the DA’s office for many years, but because of his support of the previous DA, he got ousted after Kim Ogg’s election. He has been my guy with inside info on judges for close to two decades. I believe I can trust him to do the job to make our streets safer.

 

Propositions

There are three bond propositions on the Harris County ballot. I’m voting against all three. It’s not noral to put forth bond proposals that are not even attached to planned projects, but that’s what our County Judge and her Commissioners Court are doing. During a recession. There’s no good reason.

If you’re in the City of Houston, there are another 7 or so bond proposals. I’d vote against those too. Taxing yourself at higher rates for no good reason just doesn’t make sense.

At the Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee (the precinct chairs) earlier this month, we vote to oppose all three Harris County propositions and all of the Houston propositions.

Vote All the Way Down the Ballot

Republicans tend to hesitate to vote down ballot where they don’t know all the candidates. This year especially, just trust that the Republican candidate will be better than the other guy. And vote every race all the way down the ballot. Plan on taking 20 minutes to vote—after you reach the machine. Good luck finding a place with a short line. The inexperienced Democrats running the election are particularly bad at allocating resources appropriately. In my polling location they have cut the number of machines in half from what we had in the Primary, and have cut our staff—as though we would have fewer voters in a general election than in a Primary. We’ll be adding to our staff with volunteers to make sure we can get the job done. But it appears from Early Voting, which started Monday, that we are having a high turnout. So plan your time accordingly. Paper jams took a lot of time in the Primary. The machines weren't expected to handle two-legal-size pager per voter. They now have installed a guide, which they said makes it almost impossible to jam. Nevertheless, in my training, we had a jam on our first try (not trying to jam, just trying to insert the paper). And then we had a second jam when they were demonstrating the curbside duo-go.

from page 153 of the official manual for this election

Voting in person on Election Day, preferably in your precinct polling location, is the gold standard. But if there’s any chance you can’t do it on Election Day, do Early Voting. (Locations for both here.) I didn't find a place to check for estimated wait times, but that would be handy info to have.

It took until just a couple of weeks ago, but the County’s website finally has its sample ballots up. They can’t seem to find me by name—in this place where I’ve been a registered voter for 24 years. So I use the VUID (voter unique ID) on my voter registration card, and then they recognize me.

Will your vote count? We watch for voter fraud here. There’s an army of people daily looking at the voter list of unqualified voters (dead people, people who have moved away) who have been identified but not removed from the voter rolls as they should have been. If any of those people vote, they’re immediately flagged. Also, there’s an army of trained poll watchers, in addition to the army of trained Presiding Judges, Alternate Judges, and Clerks. If you vote in person, you can believe it will be counted. And if we can get enough of us to vote to exceed their ability to cheat, that’s how we beat them.

So, vote! Vote Republican! Vote all the way down the ballot. This is indeed the most important election of our lifetime.

No One Gets to Sit at Home on Election Day

Last night, after a monthly religious study group, while we were standing around visiting, three people separately asked me the question, “What do you think is going to happen in the November election?” I’m not a good predictor. But I am, in some very local circles, the go-to person on political matters. I wish I had more answers. But I do have thoughts.

The prevailing estimates are that it will be a bloodbath for Democrats in November. Recent polls are trying to say otherwise, but I doubt their validity; I’m guessing such polls have an opinion-forming purpose, rather than an opinion-learning purpose.

FiveThirtyEight makes these predictions for House races.
Image from here; you can go there to click on individual races.

Typically, the midterm after a presidential election goes against the president’s party.  Typically, when the economy is in bad shape, the midterms go against the president’s party—and the state of the economy right now is pitiful. There’s a useful Katie Pavlich article here. And here are a few stats from a Heritage Action email I received today:

·        Inflation rose 9.1% for the month of June, even higher than anticipated.       

·        Milk and coffee prices are up 16% percent, butter is up more than 21%, flour by more than 19%, eggs are up a staggering 33%, regular gasoline is up more than 60%, natural gas is up 38%, and electricity is up almost 14%.

·        Real wages are down 3.7% over the past 12 months, which is nearly a 40-year record. This means that a typical family now pays more than $1,900 in inflation tax.

In any normal year, that would be an automatic death knell for the party in power.

meme found on Facebook here

Add to that, the country’s respect worldwide has plummeted under Biden. His Middle East tour this week produced nothing positive. Without a strong America, the imminent attainment of nuclear weapons by Iran leaves Israel alone to protect itself and others. In case you've forgotten, under Trump’s leadership, Middle East countries allied against Iran in the Abraham Accord. Biden has managed to undo all that progress.

Add to that the spending of taxpayer resources on the Ukraine/Russia conflict rather than on our own southern border. And then add the Hunter Biden evidence of Biden family corruption, including deals that seem to explain Biden’s favoritism toward China.

Any of these things would be enough to sink a presidency that was otherwise functional. This one is not otherwise functional. The president’s own party entertains the possibilities for replacing him, in full view—only a year and a half into his administration.

So of course the predictions are for a Democrat blood bath.

FiveThirtyEight makes predictions for governor races, here.
This shows that in 96 out of 100 scenarios, Abbott beats Beto in Texas.

However, these are not normal times. And these are not normal people. These are power mongers. They will do anything to maintain their power. That means they will be desperate, like a cornered wild animal. Expect lashing out. Expect the unlikely.

And remember, they have the media covering for them. Even though those of us with eyes wide open can clearly see what they’re doing, people who allow themselves to be fed the propaganda day after day don’t know what we know.

What can we do?

As far as that November election goes—be more vigilant than you have ever been. No one gets the luxury to sit home on election day this year. This is not a call to simply go vote, although you must do that. It is a call to volunteer to be part of the army necessary in this very real war against those who want to take away our freedoms.

This is not a year that you can leave it to someone else and maybe you’ll volunteer another time. Because if they get away with stealing elections this November, we will not have a next time that matters.

Be a poll worker—a presiding judge, an alternate judge, or a clerk. Or be a poll watcher. All of these are necessary for Early Voting, Election Day, and for the counting of the ballots after the polls close.

In Harris County it takes an army to run an election. There are roughly 1,000 voting locations on Election Day. Each takes an average of 6-8 workers. That’s 6,000-8,000 right there. We need more than half of these to be Republicans. Add in Early Voting. With roughly 50 locations, with more clerks to handle more voters, there’s probably 10-12 workers for each—and we’ll assume they all work all the Early Voting days, for simplicity. That’s another 500-600 workers, of which we need at least half to be Republican. Add on the counting of the ballots. I’m not sure of numbers, but I’d say around 20 of each party to do this.

I haven’t mentioned the many volunteers who handle the pickup of equipment and supplies, including ADA regulations. That’s probably another 20-40. And the people to deliver equipment to those 1,000 voting locations, another 20-30, I’m guessing.

And, besides the people who count the ballots, there are the workers who accept the ballots and equipment being turned in. There are an additional several dozens of these.

In addition to all these jobs, the Harris County Republican Party is trying to put at least one poll watcher at every polling location. Close to 1,000. Some of these got practice at easy places during the Primary Runoff.

Harris County’s now-fired-and-finally-gone Elections Administrator has tried to institute pickup of the ballots and equipment by Constables and random (Democrat) county employees—breaking the chain of custody between election officials. Republicans have refused to go along. But any polling place led by a Democrat presiding judge will do that again in November, if we don’t stop it by then.

The point here is, there is something you can volunteer to do. And you should. Here in Harris County, you can go to the party website and find a way to volunteer. The Harris County signup is here. Training opportunities are underway. And, in our party (can’t say as much for the County, whose official training you’ll probably also have to undergo, depending on the position you volunteer for), we have good training from some of the best experts on election integrity in the country. Poll watcher training is especially good on election law.

Another way you can help is on cleaning up voter rolls. For us, here’s the instruction:

1.      Go to https://www.harrisvotes.com/VoterRegistration/Search.

2.      Search by your address; i.e., house number and street name.

3.      Confirm the list for valid, registered voters.

4.      Repeat for neighboring addresses.

If you see anything odd, send a message to your county party, preferably someone involved in ballot security, and they can help any citizen file to challenge a registered voter. This is a fairly easy process (I’m working on it right now; daughter Social Sphere, who hasn’t lived here or voted here since 2011, is on our rolls; I’ve checked, and no one has voted in her name, but I want that possibility to be gone). People move, yet our county, as most counties, has not done a good job in removing invalid voters. Spread the word, we can all play a small part in forcing the county election administrators to do their job.

There are lawsuits underway, and on the way, in our county, because of previous lawbreaking. There’s work to do in the state legislature. There’s holding people accountable to the law. Good people are working on those things.

But more than anything there is the need for everyone who cares about preserving our freedoms to be part of the solution in November.

We don’t know what the enemies of freedom will try. But we’ve seen them act as though they have a right to do whatever they want to get their way. We try to anticipate. But we don’t know what they’ll try next in their desperation. When they see the looming loss of their power, they’re going to pull out all the stops.

So, watch. Be vigilant. And be part of the army of volunteers that day. Voting is absolutely not enough at this critical time.