Judge Not, Jim

Margaret Keliher didn’t lose. Her party did. Straight-ticket voters did the judge, and the county, no favors. Margaret Keliher loses? Craig Watkins wins? And Kinky’s on a book tour starting next week pimping his Christmas Pig booklet. One of those I coulda predicted. Guess that Lupe Valdez thing wasn’t a…

Watching Chorizo Getting Made

Criminal District Judge Manny Alvarez is a Republican. But he’d prefer it if you kept politics out it. Back in May, a non-partisan poll showed that two years after Bush won a historic 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, Republicans’ stance on immigration was alienating Latinos at a rapid clip…

Perry and the Prez, Not Much of a Draw

Seems a bad time for The Dallas Morning News’ Web site to be buggy, doesn’t it? (It’s up and down, like my mood this election day.) Surely it’ll be fixed momentarily, but I don’t recall this ever being a problem before the redesign. (Update: At 12:08 p.m., the site was…

Re: Getting Polled

If nothing else, this would get you to the polls, wouldn’t it? Promises, promises. A few observations from my polling place: 1) At 9:12 a.m., there was a handful of folks voting, but there was plenty of room, which wasn’t the case at 7 a.m. According to one poll-watcher, there…

Getting Polled

Till, oh, two weeks ago folks living in Precinct 1117 had no idea they were supposed to vote at F.P. Caillet Elementary–where I went to school! Wee. Really, God bless the Democratic Party. Even when they do their best, it ends up shooting ’em right in the ass, then they…

Yes, Jesus Loves Him. You, Not So Much.

Rick Perry doesn’t wanna know about your god. Because your god’s gonna get you a one-way ticket to hell. Ya know, as a liberal Democrat and a bar mitzvah boy, I was so gonna vote for Rick Perry till I read this morning’s Dallas Morning News and saw this headline:…

Kinky Pickup

The real amusing thing about the weekend’s Silverado 350 Craftsman Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway wasn’t that rookie trucker chick Erin Crocker blew an engine on the first lap. Or that checker flag-grabber Clint Boyer led for 103 of the race’s 148 laps, dueling ferociously with Nextel Cup…

He Said, She Said and Nobody Said a Damned Thing

The News gave you no news about Rose Renfroe and Ken Mayfield today. But the paper’s story about their campaigns did answer the question: “You’re so awesome, how come you’re so awesome?” Kevin Krause of The Dallas Morning News normally does a very good job covering Dallas County politics, and…

“Eat My Bush” and Other Likely Signs

This is an anti-Bush rally in Salt Lake City–or about three more people than we expect to see this afternoon and Tuesday in downtown Dallas. Beleaguered by approval ratings still mired below 40 percent and a likely-probable-maybe-dunno routing by Congressional democrats, President Bush is seeking safe haven in Texas a…

The Candidate of Contempt

Rose Renfro: She wants to be a Dallas county commissioner. Or a Tarrant County jail prisoner. If you’re a candidate for office, there is one place you don’t want to appear four days before election: in court. But on Friday, the eternally bumbling Rose Renfroe, who is hoping to unseat…

Matt Pulle’s Crystal Ball

Although the November 7th election is more than a week away, the prescient minds at Unfair Park are able to divine some of the day-after press coverage. Excerpts after the jump…

That Wiley Commish

Dallas County Judge Margaret Keliher’s got a good friend in John Wiley Price. Power to the people and all that. Margaret Keliher and John Wiley Price have made quite the political odd couple over the last four years. She’s a demure Republican county judge from Highland Park; he’s a brash,…

Vote Early, Eat Often

I’m all about avoiding lines. I’ll buy movie tickets online. Hell, I’ll mail in checks that need depositing. Thus, you will most likely not see me on a certain Tuesday in November whipping some chad into shape. I might procrastinate on knitting holiday gifts and vacuuming, but I’m an early…

All Shook Up

Prosecutor Shelley Hallman, the wife of Republican candidate for District Attorney Toby Shook, will probably not be asked to write the couple’s Christmas cards this year. In this week’s feature story about the questionable legal tactics of prosecutor Shelley Hallman, we include a rather unprofessional internal e-mail she dispatched to…

Re: Van the Man?

Some dude named Zac Crain, who’s apparently running for mayor (that can’t be right), sends this missive concerning yesterday’s posting about the Republican National Congressional Committee allegedly pulling a million-dollar ad campaign for Waco-area U.S. House of Representatives candidate Van Taylor that was scheduled, or not, to appear on Dallas…

Van the Man? Or, Not So Much?

A story in a Waco paper this morning says the RNCC is abandoning Iraq War vet Van Taylor–by not buying ads on a Dallas TV station? Today the Waco Herald-Tribune ran a story about how the Republican National Congressional Committee is all but abandoning Republican Van Taylor, an Iraq War…

Why Kinky Did Not Play “The Gay Card”

Kinky Friedman got naked for this Observer photo shoot three years ago. No way he regrets it now. There’s a huge cover story about The Jewboy Who Would Be Governor, Kinky Friedman, in the new issue of The Weekly Standard (not even makin’ that up). It wonders of Friedman’s candidacy,…

The Next Mayor of the City of Dallas Will Be…

If this picture were at all legible, you could make out the four mayoral candidates gathered yesterday for small talk and lox yesterday at Temple Emanu-El. I wouldn’t consider it an entirely wasted Sunday morning. There were free Einstein Bros. bagels, after all, and lox and cream cheese; hell, that’s…

The Chosen People

This sounds like just the thing to kick off your Sunday morning: having a nosh with Bill Blaydes, Gary Griffith, Darrell Jordan and Mitchell Rasansky. But all those announced and likely mayoral candidates will in fact be at Temple Emanu-El this very Sunday at 9 a.m. participating in a…what, round-table…

Crain: The Candidate of Pocket Change

Since I’ve seen that one serious photo of Zac on his Web site a million times, I am using this one taken (by Aden Holt, I think) when Zac appears to have been 24. Or 8. Hard to say. Not 10 minutes after a helpful city employee faxed over my…

Take This Job and Shove It

Everybody knows why Laura Miller’s not running for mayor. And everyone knows who’ll take her place. Yeah. Right. Fine. Whatever. It’s not surprising to read this morning so many takes on Mayor Laura’s announcement yesterday, first to KTVT-Channel 11’s Sarah Dodd and then later to The Dallas Morning News’ Emily…

E&P & Z.C.

Last Zac Crain posting of the month; swear. (Fine–none in May either.) I just thought this one merited a mention because of its source–not a hometown blog, but venerable national journalism trade mag Editor & Publisher, which seems tickled by the fact “the former music editor for the alternative weekly…