Texas Elections

HOUSTON -- Justice Department officials have announced plans to monitor local elections Saturday in three areas of Texas to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Federal observers will monitor polling places in Dallas, Galveston and Jasper counties, according to a Justice Department statement released Friday. “Observers will watch and record activities during voting hours at polling locations in these counties, and Civil Rights Division attorneys will coordinate the federal activities and maintain contact with local election officials,” the statement said.

HOUSTON -- Justice Department officials have announced plans to monitor local elections Saturday in three areas of Texas to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Federal observers will monitor polling places in Dallas, Galveston and Jasper counties, according to a Justice Department statement released Friday. “Observers will watch and record activities during voting hours at polling locations in these counties, and Civil Rights Division attorneys will coordinate the federal activities and maintain contact with local election officials,” the statement said.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives had scarcely finished celebrating their nail-biting passage of President Clinton's economic plan last week when Kay Bailey Hutchison began fashioning a spear from their success. In Washington, the House victory is being hailed as a sign of political recovery for Clinton. But in Texas the vote has just provided another weapon for Hutchison, the Republican candidate in Saturday's special election to fill the U.S.

The Supreme Court gave an early win to Texas Republicans in the fight over redrawing election districts and the balance of power in Congress, ruling that the district lines should mostly follow those set by GOP lawmakers and not those by judges who drew new boundaries to favor Latinos. The 9-0 decision set aside a new map of congressional districts drawn by a special federal court in San Antonio that gave Latinos and Democrats a good chance to win three or possibly four new seats in the House of Representatives.

Nowhere in the United States do Mexican Americans boast greater political might than in Texas, home to fully half of the nation's 4,500-plus Latino elected officials. That influence is magnified the closer you get to the Rio Grande, where the civil rights struggles of a generation ago opened the corridors of power to an unprecedented roster of Spanish surnames. But here in the remote border town of Del Rio, the bizarre vote of last November has cast a pall over those electoral gains.

For the last month, Texans have witnessed what is widely regarded as the dirtiest campaign in the state's history. In Texas, that means it has been sordid indeed. At stake in the runoff election today is the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Most recently, the two contenders--state Treasurer Ann Richards and state Atty. Gen. Jim Mattox--have dealt in accusations of illegal drug use, bribery and improper business dealings. When George Christian, Lyndon B.

In what boiled down to a preliminary bout to eliminate the rest of a crowded field, the two front-runners in a special U.S. Senate election made a strong showing Saturday and advanced to a runoff. Democrat Robert Krueger, appointed in January by Gov. Ann Richards to fill the seat left vacant when Lloyd Bentsen was named U.S. Treasury secretary, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Republican state treasurer, finished atop the field of 24 candidates.

Supporters of Texas billionaire Ross Perot have turned in signatures to put him on the state ballot as an independent. They, however, are abandoning efforts to get his Reform Party officially recognized in the state because of the stricter rules governing such an effort. Russ Verney, national coordinator for the Reform Party, played down the significance of the development. He said that getting a candidate on the presidential ballot was the goal in 1996.

A Texas judge set a Feb. 7 date for the start of U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's felony trial, the Republican lawmaker's office announced. Hutchison had asked for the trial to begin next week so it could be completed ahead of the March 8 GOP Senate primary. Prosecutors had requested that the trial start in 45 days. Hutchison faces four felony charges of misusing state employees and equipment while she was Texas state treasurer. She is also charged with tampering with government records.

Like most Republicans here, retired oil executive Clark Bissett has long admired former President George Bush, who used to hunt quail in the fields outside this tiny South Texas town. But when Bush's eldest son, George W., brought his campaign for the Texas governorship to a farm bureau rally here last week, Bissett assessed him an improvement on the old man. "I find him to be a little more aggressive, a little more outspoken," he said. That description, in fact, fits both George W.

The Supreme Court is likely to decide early this week whether to act on an appeal from Texas Republicans and block the use of an election map that could help three or more Latino Democrats win seats in Congress next year. The case of Rick Perry vs. Shannon Perez is the first redistricting battle to come before the high court in the round of political line-drawing that followed the 2010 census. It mixes partisan politics with a continuing legal dispute over the role of the Voting Rights Act in aiding minority candidates.

American Crossroads, a conservative group founded by Republican strategist Karl Rove and other party leaders, has raised more than $24 million since it was started this year, including $8 million in the first 13 days of October. Reports filed Wednesday night with the Federal Election Commission shed some light on the group's funding sources. Major donations flowed by way of Texas, the reports show. Bob J. Perry, a Houston home builder known for financing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, contributed $7 million.

The Texas law that Tom DeLay is accused of violating dates to the era of the robber barons and has been widely emulated in other states concerned about corporate influence in politics. It bans the use of corporate funds on behalf of state political candidates. Such laws -- including bans at the federal level -- have withstood legal challenges that they violate the free-speech rights of corporations. Nonetheless, it is far from clear whether Rep.

Federal judges on Tuesday upheld election maps that Republicans drew last year to cement their control of Congress, extending the GOP's dominance in Texas. Democrats had charged in a December trial that the maps disenfranchised minorities and rural communities.

If demography is destiny, Latino businessman Tony Sanchez represents the inevitable future of Democratic politics in Texas. The question for Democrats is whether the future is now. Sanchez, the clear front-runner in Tuesday's primary for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, is the key figure in the party's strategy to restore its competitiveness in a state that has been dominated by Republicans.

Even as they made history in the nation's first Spanish-language gubernatorial debate Friday night, a pair of tough-talking Mexican American Democrats couldn't keep from wrangling over ethnic pandering and the politics of language. "I believe that we need to recognize that a great majority of the voters in the state of Texas--and including those who are Hispanic--speak English," said former state Atty. Gen.

Gov. Ann Richards on Friday set May 1 as the date for a special election to choose a senator to complete the term of Lloyd Bentsen, who resigned to become Treasury secretary. The term runs through 1994. Nine people have announced their candidacies, including Democrat Bob Krueger, who was appointed as interim senator.

TEXAS TUSSLE: Politics was never meant to be genteel, but the Texas gubernatorial race may set a new standard in the era of blitzkrieg negative campaigns. Republican Clayton W. Williams Jr. has been hammering away at Democrat Ann Richards since mid-June. The scathing tone he uses in calling her an "East-Hollywood Democrat" suggests that, in Texas at least, it is meant to be less than complimentary.

With the blessing of the Texas Supreme Court, state lawmakers on Thursday chose a new lieutenant governor--perhaps the most powerful post in Texas--by secret ballot. A few hours after the court turned aside a legal challenge by news organizations, the Texas Senate picked Bill Ratliff, a Republican from Mount Pleasant, about 100 miles northeast of Dallas. Ratliff was sworn in immediately. The 11-year Senate veteran received a standing ovation as he stepped to the podium.

This spring James Allen became the first African American elected to the school board in Amarillo, Texas, finishing first in the field with 7,619 votes. But that didn't mean 7,619 people voted for him. Some people may have given Allen two votes. Some three. Some even four. And it was all legal. The ability of voters in Amarillo to divvy up their votes was the latest example of Americans' altering, sometimes radically, the ways they choose elected officials. U.S.