Bill King's Shady Mayoral Campaign Mailers

Back in 2015 Bill King narrowly lost in a December runoff to current mayor Sylvester Turner in large part because ethnically diverse Houston, and especially the Black and Latinx parts of it ain't feeling Republicans right now. 

Our city hasn't elected a Republican to sit in our mayor's chair in over 40 years, so in this run, looks like King is deploying deception and racism in his attempt to knock Turner out the mayors chair at The Horseshoe.

He has already been called out for his dog whistle racist signs that are still up in many parts of town that say 'Clean Up City Hall', as if to imply there is rampant corruption going on with the Black mayor in charge.

Since our Houston municipal elections are theoretically nonpartisan, to imply that his Republican behind has bipartisan support, a mailer has appeared targeting the predominately suburban white Kingwood area in Northeast Houston  that lists some Democratic precinct chairs and makes the claim they support him.

Only problem is that many of those Democratic precinct chairs listed in the mailers DON'T support King, and were majorly pissed to find out their names appeared in his campaign literature without their knowledge.   Those Democratic precinct chairs want their names removed from King's campaign literature ASAP.

King apologized on August 7,  then three days later sent out another mailer targeting the predominately white Clear Lake area in suburban southeast Houston replicating the same tactic.

This statement appeared on the Harris County Democratic Party's website expressing support for their party precinct chairs outraged at the unauthorized use of their names or that they implicitly supported the King campaign.   

The Harris County Democratic Party has been made aware that Bill King, Candidate for Houston Mayor, recently mailed a political advertisement that identified as supporters, among others, Democratic Precinct Chairs. 

Our Precinct Chairs have unequivocally stated that at no time did they express support for Mr. King’s campaign or otherwise give their consent to be listed as supporters of his campaign. 

“We take the concerns of our Precinct Chairs very seriously, we always have their backs,” said Lillie Schechter, HCDP Party Chair 

We stand behind these chairs in asking that all candidates conduct their campaigns with the utmost integrity and obtain consent before listing any HCDP Precinct Chair as a supporter. 

Why am I not surprised that King would do what Republicans always do when they run for office?   Lie and do whatever shady crap they have to do to win.

UH and TSU Are Back To Being Harris County Polling Locations

When I was a student at UH, the 1980 presidential election was happening during my freshman year.  While I eventually cast my ballot in my home precinct at Crestmont Park, I was still happy to know that we had a polling location set up in the UC for students to vote at. 

The same was the case at Texas Southern, which is one of the largest HBCU campuses in the nation and just a few blocks west of the UH campus.

When the Republicans got control of ethnically diverse Harris County, knowing that it provides at this point 25% of the vote total in a statewide election, the polling places on the UH and TSU campuses were removed.

At the same time, Texas Republicans when they passed their voter suppression laws in 2011, made sure that student ID's from a Texas college or university were no longer valid identification in order to make it harder for college students to vote.

Elections have consequences, and one of the happy consequences of the 2018 Blue tsunami that flipped Harris County back to dark blue Democratic Party control was the election of Dr. Diane Trautman to replace the odious GOP hack Stan Stanart as our Harris County Clerk. 

The county clerk, for you non-Texans, is the Chief Elections Administrator.  She's the person that establishes the procedures and policies that determine how elections are run in the largest county in Texas by population, where we vote and even the times we're able to do so subject to state and federal election law and approval of Harris County Commissioner's Court.



In addition to the welcome policy of being able to vote at any polling location in Harris County, polling locations were reestablished on the University of Houston and Texas Southern University campuses.

"It's important for young people to be involved in the elections process", said Dr Trautman. "These additional voting locations will make it easier for students, faculty and staff, as well as the surrounding communities to vote " 

That's significant, because UH has over 40,000 students and 7000 faculty and staff, while TSU has over 9000 enrolled students.   They deserve a say in who will govern them while they are matriculating on the UH and TSU campuses at the local, state and national level.

This will be effective for the upcoming November 5 municipal elections.


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Moni Is Going To San Antonio!

Going to San Antonio for the second time this year, and this time it's for two purposes.

May 4 is election day here in the Lone Star State.  San Antonio, Dallas and other municipalities across the state will have elections on that day. 

One of the election campaigns I'm watching is a San Antonio city council race which pits Frankie Gonzales Wolfe against an incumbent council member in District 8.

If Wolfe wins, she would become the first trans Texan elected to public office in the Lone Star State, and possibly the first out trans Latina elected nationally to any office.  I definitely want to be there to witness that history should it happen.

It goes without saying that I enthusiastically endorse Frankie Gonzales Wolfe for that San Antonio city council seat

May 4 is also my birthday and I wanted to do something on my birthday this year besides chilling in my apartment.   

So that's just a few of the reasons why I'll be spending it on the San Antonio end of I-10.   I hope I'll have a lot to celebrate before that day is over.     

Why Y'all Want To Change Texas Judicial Elections Now, TXGOP?

Over the last 25 years the Texas Republican party has gleefully celebrated as they took over the state judiciary in large part because of partisan judicial elections.

In 2018, that script flipped in a major way.   In addition to being eviscerated from 59 judicial benches in Harris County (Houston), the TXGOP lost 22 benches in Bexar County (San Antonio), seven in suburban Fort Bend County and saw four Texas Court of Appeals districts serving Austin, Houston (which has two districts serving it) and Dallas flip to Democratic control.    The Texas Democrats also gained majorities on half of the state's 14 appeals court districts 

Can you say TXGOP panic?   Thought you could. 

Because the state of Texas is finally starting to show signs of turning purple because it has been since 2009 majority non-white in population, now all of a sudden the Texas Republican Party wants to change the way judges are elected in the Lone Star State,

The Republicans still have control of all nine seats on the Texas Supreme Court but SCOTX Chief Justice Nathan Hecht is calling for changes in the way that elects its judges.

Waah, cry me a river.   After using the GOP run Texas judiciary to roll back or stymie progressive policies and laws passed in Texas cities, now y'all mad that the political pendulum is swinging back in the direction of Texas Democrats. 

It's also the diversity of the judges bothering the TXGOP more than the fact they are now on the losing end of these judicial elections.  You're also big mad that with those Texas Democratic judicial wins also comes more diversity to the bench.   

In Harris County for example, we not only saw 17 African American women elected to the bench, we also saw our first ever Pakistani American female judge get elected in Rabeea Collier.

And naw TXGOP, it wasn't all straight ticket voting that was responsible for your disastrous election night.   That the fake news you told yourselves and your followers, but the reality is that your party is viewed by nonwhite Texans as racist and hostile to us.

In 2018 we decided to do something about that by bumrushing the polls is massive numbers across the state to throw you TXGOP bums out of power.   Didn't hurt that Beto O'Rourke was running for the US Senate against Rafael Cruz either.

The Texas electorate is changing to reflect the diversity of the state, and we want our judicial benches to reflect that diversity. 

So Texas GOP judges, it's either respond to the inevitable demographic changes that have been taking place in the Lone Star State since 2009, or continue to suffer the electoral consequences in 2020 and beyond.

One Week To San Antonio Municipal Election Early Voting

We're one week away from the start of early voting for San Antonio's municipal election and the possibility of trans history being made.

No out Texas trans person has ever been elected to public office.  While trans masculine and trans feminine people have won Democratic Party primaries, we still are waiting to break through that concrete ceiling and see a trans person win elective office in the Lone Star State. 

Frankie Gonzales Wolfe is running for the District 8 city council seat in northwest San Antonio against an unpopular incumbent.   The significance of this seat is that it not only sits in one of the most diverse areas of San Antonio, it has produced its share of people who have gone to enhanced leadership roles in Texas and the city of San Antonio.

Current mayor Ron Nirenberg once represented the district.   Now Gonzales-Wolfe seeks to do so as her campaign continues to build momentum toward the May 4 election day .

She has my TransGriot endorsement, and hope that you can contribute to her historic campaign.

For those of you in the Alamo City, early voting for the civic elections starts on April 22 and runs until April 30.  May 4 is election day.   Make sure you're registered so you can participate in making your voice heard at the ballot box.

Thailand Elects Its First Gender Queer MP!

While Pauline Ngarmpring failed in her bid to become Thailand's prime minister, it was still a historic election night in the Land of Smiles.

Filmmaker Tanwarin Sukkhapisit on March 24 became the first genderqueer person elected as an MP in the Thai House of Representatives. LGBT Thai's make up 13% of the electorate in the country.

Sukkhapisit was initially announced in many media outlets as trans,  but in a subsequent interview made it clear they identified as genderqueer and used they-them pronouns

They ran as a candidate with the Future Forward Party, which is projected to become the third largest party in the Thai government after all the ballot are counted.

If their name sounds familiar, it's because they just fought a successful five year legal battle to get their film  Insects In The Backyard on the Thai silver screens after it was censored and accused of moral indecency.  Once an agreement to cut a three second nude scene of struck, the film was allowed to be shown.

After that negative experience fighting film censorship, Sukkahpisit decided to run for office with the Future First Party, and said that the desire to fight for TBLGQ rights in their nation drove them to run for public office.

Tanwarin has been discussing political themes in their movies for over 20 years, and now feels it's time to establish new laws that address the changing mores in Thai society, starting with changes to Section 1448 of the Civil and Commercial Code to allow marriage equality

We'll see what happens as Sukkhapist begins their new role as an MP.  It will also be interesting to see is a Thai trans person finally breaks through and gets elected to the Thai House of Representatives .

You're Mad At Mayor Turner - But Who Are You Going To Replace Him With?

Sylvester Turner succeeded Annise Parker as mayor of Houston after narrowly defeating Bill King in a December 2015 runoff.   His first term has been a contentious and rocky one because of budgetary issues and the hard revenue cap that has forced him to make unpopular cuts.

There's also the contentious fight over Prop B.   Despite his repeated warnings that the city didn't have the money to pay for it, people passed it anyway, and now that has devolved into our own local Brexit style mess pitting him in a messy public battle against the firefighters.

Homeless advocates don't like the initiatives coming from the mayor's office they contend are anti- homeless.   I'd need another post to discuss the other groups who are big mad at Mayor Turner right now and want to fire Mayor Turner in November, and some of it is personal animus with him.

The Harris County Republicans are also big mad because the Blue Tsunami swept them out of power.  They went 0-59 in the Harris County judicial races, lost control of Harris County Commissioner's Court thanks to the wins of County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Commissioner Adrian Garcia, and haven't held the Houston mayor's chair since the early 70's. 

They would love to get some political payback for their massive Harris County losses by taking the Houston mayor's chair away from him.

There are several candidates who have stepped up to run against him, but they are far from the top tier candidate that is necessary to beat an incumbent mayor.

Turner has my vote for now because none of the declared candidates are demonstrably better than him, which is my standard to fire an incumbent ,mayor.   These declared candidates are all flawed in major ways, and are actually WORSE than the guy currently in the mayor's chair.



Tony Buzbee? 

Doing fundraisers for Trump at your River Oaks mansion and donating $500K to Orange Fooluis automatically calls his judgment into question.   And he's a Republican. 
Hell naw

Kendall Baker?

Please, that faux faith based HERO hater and transphobe who got fired from his city 311 director job for sexual harassment while falsely demonizing the Houston trans community at the behest of Dave Welch during the HERO passage and repeal fight? 

Naw player, I haven't forgotten about that, and neither has the Houston trans community, and FYI dawg, we vote.

Definite Hell Naw.

Booker T?

Really People?   Did y'all not learn anything from 2016?

Not a viable candidate, and too many questions about who is pushing him to run and why.  Not gonna let 'em have the mayor's chair.

Nope, not today.

Demetria Smith?

NOT an option either. She not only hated on HERO, she told me to my face she voted against it because I quote ' she didn't want 'men in women's restrooms' and was clueless to the fact it covered 15 categories.   Also wasn't smart to say that to a nationally known trans advocate who fought like hell to pass HERO.

I was in the room when she had the meltdown at the January 2018 GLBT Caucus meeting in large part because she got mad she couldn't get more than 1 minute to speak, and then tried to spin it as 'The GLBT's wouldn't let me speak and tried to bully me'

Naw Miss Thang, you thought we forgot that you hated on HERO?   You had nerve to even step your behind in that room to ask for our endorsement after demonizing our community. 

She's a perennial candidate not ready for mayoral prime time or ANY elected office, and an . .
Unequivocal HELL NAW

Bill King?

Another GOP HERO hater who lost to Turner in 2015, couldn't run Kemah without drama, but y'all think he's Houston mayoral material?    Did I mention he's a Republican?

Hard pass

What some of you peeps big mad at Mayor Turner are failing to realize is that the Houston mayor's office is now a four year term with a term limit of eight years.   The mayor's office combines the ceremonial functions  of a mayor's office with the administrative duties of a city manager, and the mayor gets a vote in our strong mayor form of civic government on council .   

It is a powerful office, with the mayor having lots of power to dictate how stuff gets done around The Horseshoe and at City Hall.   The mayor selects the committee chairs.  He dictates the legislative agenda and how, if or when issues come up.

It's no longer a two year term.   If we pick the wrong person this November, we can't correct it until 2023. 

As part of a community taking the brunt of the anti-trans animus stirred up by the contentious passage of HERO five years ago and the 2015 HERO repeal, I'm majorly concerned that three HERO opponents are running. and we don't know Buzbee's or Booker T's public stances about it.

Based on who Buzbee has been palling around with, HERO 2.0 is probably a NO with him as well. .

You may not like Mayor Turner right now, but as far as I'm concerned, unless someone majorly qualified steps up to run by July who is demonstrably better than Turner, I'd rather have him in office for his second and final four year term running this city than these currently declared candidates. 

Tired Of The Racist Commentary Being Aimed At Judge-elect Hidalgo

On Tuesday night no doubts were left that Harris County is undeniably blue as the blue tsunami knocked every remaining Republican judge off the bench, fired the much disliked Stan Stanart, and left every executive position in Democratic hands when the night was over.

Lina Hidalgo's upset win over longtime county judge Ed Emmett combined with Adrian Garcia's win for the Precinct 2 commissioners court seat put the Democrats in control of that body for the first time in over a decade.

Much of the racist vitriol about the shellacking the Harris County Republicans took Tuesday night is being aimed at our new county judge-elect, who at 27 is the youngest person ever elected to the position since 1937.  She's also the first Latina to also hold the top executive position in Harris County. 

And frankly. I'm tired of it.

As you have probably guessed, the commentary from the right wing peanut gallery is that 'straight ticket Democratic voters put her in office'.  And that came from sore loser Ed Emmett. 

The MAGAt's have picked up on that attack line, in addition to calling her 'unqualified' and 'inexperienced' along with other epithets I won't repeat in this post.   As for the other ridiculous charge of 'she's never attended a Harris County commissioners court meeting' or 'hasn't spent much time in the county', hello, she was spending that time outside the county getting a Stanford degree. 

I am a native Houstonian and I've never attended a commissioners court meeting either.   So what's your point with that BS line?    I know one commissioner court meeting I am going to attend soon is the one in which she and Adrian Garcia are officially sworn in.

Hidalgo has a degree from Stanford University and studied public policy at Harvard.  She's going to get a chance to put that education to work on behalf of the 5 million residents of Harris County. 

I find it interesting y'all don't worry about qualifications and experience when it's a Republican white male running for a position.   You also didn't complain about straight ticket voting when it benefitted your party in 2010 and 2014.

And speaking of complaints, I'll bet if Hidalgo were a white female with the same or lesser qualifications, we wouldn't be hearing a peep out of the GOP peanut gallery, especially if she was on their political team.  But because she's a Latinx woman, and her upset win flipped control of commissioner's court to make it look more like our diverse county, y'all wanna hate. 

I'm also tired of hearing people on the left grousing about Emmett being bounced.  Really don't care, because as far as I'm concerned, the only good Republican politician these days is an out of office one. 

If Emmett were a good man as y'all claim he is, he would have left the Republican Party.  Since he didn't, he paid the political price for it in a county that is filled with non-white people sick and tired of being repeatedly attacked and demonized by the Texas GOP.

Harris County is blue, I and the majority of Democratic voters wanted Democrats in these positions and we seized the opportunity to make Harris County blue again. 

And yes, I think she'll do an excellent job in the position. 

So be mad and stay mad about that Harris County GOP snowflakes.   But what we will not do is tolerate racist commentary being aimed at our new County Judge-elect.|

Why I Hate The 'Vote The Person, Not The Party' Line

One of the things I have been sick of hearing in the 2018 cycle is Republicans, knowing they are about to take a serious butt whipping at the polls on November 6, trotting out that 'vote the person not the party' line in a desperate attempt to save themselves from the Blue Tsunami that is about to engulf them.

What has me doing some hard solid thinking about this issue is a couple of local races.   There was an AKA candidate forum held here about two weeks ago in which one of the Black Republican judges, Melanie Flowers, got huffy because the Democratic ones kept saying vote a straight Democratic ticket during all their presentations. 

Flowers got appointed to the 257th District Court seat by Gov Greg Abbott, and is now being challenged by the Democratic nominee Sandra Peake for it.   

Because we have partisan election of judges here in Texas, we are subject to having these wild swings in which during the GOP waves of 2010 and 2014, we lost all the Democratic judges who had the misfortune of running that year, and in 2008, 2012 and  2016 the reverse happened to the Republicans. 

Black Republican judges also have to deal with the fact they get primary challenged by their bigot wing.  Flowers was bounced from a previous judicial bench in a GOP primary.   It's one of the major  reasons why besides the fact that Flowers is in the wrong party, why I'd rather have Peake serving on that judicial bench.

I've also been pissed by far too many white liberal progressives in my circles stating they are going to vote for the ten year incumbent Ed Emmett's problematic behind for Harris County judge instead of the eminently qualified Democratic nominee in Lina Hidalgo.   They usually say that BS line in a weak attempt to justify it, or harp on the nebulous 'experience' excuse.

Really?  Hidalgo is a Stanford grad pursuing a joint degree in law and public policy.

The vote the person, not the party' argument is highly problematic in a time in which one party has basically become unrepentantly fascist.   If you are a still a member of the Republican Party, by being a member of it you are signaling to me as a Black American you aren't a good person.

It's even more problematic to me if you are a person of color who is a Republican

You signal to me as a trans person of color by being a Republican that you are okay with the gleefully executed persecution of all non-white people, the TBLGQ community and immigrants.

You signal to me that you are okay with white supremacy as long as it doesn't personally impact you, your wallet, or that you can stay blissfully not woke about how it affects non white Americans.

You signal to me that you are okay with Trump's mispresidency, the anti-Black, anti-POC and anti-civil rights policies pushed by the Republican Party, and you're down with its platform.

Well, these Trumpian times call for you 'good Republicans' to make a choice.  If you don't want to get thrown out of office, and consider yourself a 'good person', the time has come for you to take a principled stand and switch parties.

Or you can stay and not only get swamped by the Blue tsunami that's coming, but lose your soul as well.   The choice is yours

Republicans don't vote the person.   They without question fall in line and vote for their party.  If they were really all about 'voting the person and not the party', Hillary Clinton would be living with Bill in the White House family quarters right now, Alabama Republicans wouldn't have voted in massive numbers for that pedophile Roy Moore to be their US senator, and Texas Republicans wouldn't have voted for a three time indicted felon in Ken Paxton to be our state's attorney general.

So no, why should we Democrats not do the same thing in terms of unrelentingly supporting our candidates?  Because the last few years should have taught us by now that you can't get liberal progressive policies from conservative politicians.

You also can't get justice from Republican judges who are making rulings in many cases based on concerns with fending off primary challenges from their bigot wing or getting GOP donors to back them for their next race.

If we want a liberal progressive policy agenda to be legislated into law, we must get control of our government back.   The only way that is going to happen is if we elect Democratic candidates in every election cycle in sufficient numbers.

Republicans have made it clear they don't care about the person, they vote their party.  It's past time that Democrats unapologetically do the same.
  

Afro Brazilian Trans Woman Gets Elected In Brazil!

There were over 50 trans candidates running in Brazil for various seats at all levels of the Brazilian government when their election took place on October 7. So far only one has broken through to make Brazilian electoral history.

She is Erica Malunguinho, an Afro-Brazilian community leader and activist who just became the first trans person to win elective office in a state congress in Sao Paulo.

She is the founder of Aparela Luzio, a space since its 2016 opening that has become important to Brazil's Black population.   Now this groundbreaking win.

Malunguinho was motivated to run after the March 13 assassination of queer Afro Brazilian politician Marielle Franco.    Franco was murdered a few days after she spoke out against police brutality   

Malunguinho was also part of the 'Seeds of Marielle' collective of 231 Black female candidates running for office in the country in memory of the slain advocate, and was deeply affected by Franco's murder.

“I cried a lot when I heard about Marielle’s murder,” she told Afropunk. “Her political project was just wiped out. It was a message to us that we should not be there fighting over our bodies and resisting genocide and racism. I had so much hate in me. At the same time, I knew I needed to take this hate and do something positive with it.”

That you did.   This is a groundbreaking win for Brazilian transkind and the Afro Brazilian community.   May you represent those communities well and to the best of your ability.        

Still Concerned About Massachusetts Question 3

As the folks in the Bay State are aware of, the rights of trans folks are on the November 6 ballot no thanks to the transphobic bigots behind the No on 3 team.

Question 3 puts on the ballot the just passed in 2016 law that extended public accommodations protections to Massachusetts transgender people.  It also prohibited discrimination against the Mass transgender community.

I was even more concerned when I saw the results of a June 14, 2018 that showed only 49% of the respondents in a Suffolk University poll would vote to keep the trans rights law vs 37% of the respondents that would vote to repeal it with 14% undecided about which way they would vote.



The No on 3 haters are trying to play the tired 'bathroom predator' attacks along with the race card by showing in their attack commercial a white woman going into a locker room after a burly male attacker hides out in there.

There has been a more recent poll (September 13-17) conducted by Suffolk University that shows the YES vote up to 73% while the NO vote is down to 17.4%.   The number of undecided voters is also down to 9.2%,

While the poll numbers look good, the only poll that counts is on November 6.    Massachusetts trans folks and the national trans community at large still have a reason to be concerned about it.

A repeal of Massachusetts law would open the floodgates on a wave of NC style anti-trans bills or anti-trans referenda across the US at a time when the SCOTUS with the addition of Kavanaugh on it is stacked with a conservative slant,   

This election is a must win for us, and it's why I'm urging Massachusetts peeps to vote YES on 3 

My friend Ben Power, who runs the Massachusetts based Sexual Minorities Archive, and has been an activist for several decades, says it best:

“There’s no reason why as Americans trans people shouldn’t have 100% equal rights. To have them possibly taken away is an outrage, and that option being on the ballot is crazy. How and why does the majority get to vote on the rights of a minority? If these rights are repealed, it would be another attack on the transgender community that will lead possibly to more calls to suicide hotlines, more harassment and hate crimes, more ugliness. It would be a black eye on the state’s image. I’m concerned about the welfare of my own friends. There’s only so much harassment and cruelty someone can take before they get very disheartened. We need to totally and unapologetically hold onto our rights here.”

Massachusetts trans kids, their trans elders and the people who unconditionally love us will thank you for helping them do precisely that with a YES vote.