Hooks on Politics

School districts across Texas have had a rough go of things in the last couple years, starting with the Legislature’s $5.4 billion cut to public education funding in 2011. A lot of the state’s schools went on a starvation diet. Chronic underfunding of public education seems to be the state’s new norm. Which has left a lot of schools in Texas scrambling to find ways to pay for the bare necessities themselves. Take tiny Childress and Shamrock ISDs, two districts in the Panhandle that shelled out quite a bit of money—on guns. Childress ISD spent $150,000.

The money’s for more than just guns, of course—it’s for guns, and a support system for the guns, reports the Amarillo Globe-News.  The nearby town of Shamrock, with a population of 2,000 and a school district enrollment of about 430, paved the way for regional innovation with the installation of gun safes in classrooms, which would let staff members access heat in a hurry. Childress, with a population of a little over 6,100 and a school district enrollment of about 1,100, knew they were on to something good.

Childress ISD’s board approved a similar measure last year that allows certain school employees to access firearms kept in safes, [Superintendent Rick] Teran said. The school district devoted $150,000 to the purchase of firearms, safes, practice ammunition, a panic system and training, he said.

“With all the issues in the nation now, with gunmen coming into our schools and attacking our children, we felt it was our next step for our community,” Teran said.

It’s one of a number of precautions the rural schools are taking.

Childress and Shamrock’s programs include several training seminars, including a three-day session that included a simulated active-shooter situation, Teran said.
Childress police also have participated in active-shooter training in the elementary school, he said.
Childress ISD has completed other safety efforts, including hiring a liaison officer and installing a panic system that gives teachers access to hidden buttons in classrooms to alert law enforcement of a security issue, Teran said. The school district is also adding $150,000 in surveillance cameras, he said.

Teran showed the Globe-News he possessed a keen understanding of public education’s purpose. “We’re not here to take a life,” he said. “We’re here to protect children. Whether we’re safer or not, that’s up to each individual. But I think we’re a little more prepared.”

(Calls to Childress ISD were not returned.)

Questions abound: How long would it take a determined student to find a way into one of those safes? What happens if an adult in the school snaps? How much training is enough to effectively respond to a threat? If they’re going to be armed, are they armed enough? Could they defeat an intruder with body armor and an assault rifle?

It would be easy to poke fun at Childress ISD’s plan. But it’s part of a broader trend, and it’s not completely irrational. School shootings have become part and parcel of American life. Any individual school is very unlikely to be affected by one, but the horror when one is is enough to push schools to take extraordinary precautions. Although little Childress is an unlikely target, no one can really say what the likely targets are.

The parents and administrators of Childress ISD are trying, as best as they can figure how, to safeguard and bolster their children’s future. This is an wholly imperfect way to do that, but the sad thing is that we as a society haven’t given better options to the district’s frightened parents.

Childress has lagged behind academically: In recent years, they’ve fallen behind state average test scores. The $300,000 the school district spent on guns, panic buttons, and security cameras is the going rate of ten new teachers, according to salary information obtained by the Texas Tribune—or could pay for five for two years, two new teachers for five years, etc.

Or it could pay an additional college counselor’s salary for five years, with enough money to keep the debate and math clubs waist deep in the finest pizza Childress has to offer.

But instead, the “arm the teachers” plan is spreading—the Globe-News reports that Bushland ISD, near Amarillo, may take up a similar measure. A number of other schools around Texas already allow some personnel to carry concealed weapons on school premises. Tiny Leverett’s Chapel ISD, in East Texas, made that legal last year, with the charmingly evocative condition that “only ammunition designed to have reduced ricochet hazard will be permitted.” But Childress’ decision to purchase guns directly makes its situation somewhat unusual.

So Childress kids, and kids elsewhere, will have to wait on the next session of the Legislature for those extra college counselors—though they shouldn’t hold their breath.

House Bill 2, the sweeping anti-abortion bill shuttering clinics around the state, emerged last summer from a paroxysm of legislative and popular uproar—some of the most unusual events the Capitol had ever seen. But now that the bill’s snaking its way through the courts, spontaneity has given over to a grim legal march that’s likely to hold few surprises until it—or a measure like it—goes before the Supreme Court, too late to stop the cull of abortion providers in the state. Even if the bill’s supporters ultimately lose their legal defense of the measure, they’ve won.

On Wednesday, the two sides made closing arguments in the second of two legal efforts to reverse parts of HB 2. The first, which took place last year, challenged provisions in the bill that toughened restrictions around medication abortions, and required doctors to get admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. In that case, U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yeakel sided partially with abortion providers, but his ruling was quickly overturned by the conservative Fifth Circuit.

This time, a legal team representing a group of abortion providers challenged different provisions of the law in the same court, arguing that the admitting privileges requirement and a separate stipulation that abortion facilities be built to the standards of a surgical center would eliminate access to abortion in wide swathes of the state. Clinics in the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso have been or will be shuttered, leaving Texans seeking abortion with the prospect of overnight trips to other parts of the state, or travel across state or national borders. The diminished access, the plaintiffs argued, would impose an unconstitutional “undue burden” on women seeking access to an abortion.

Yeakel seemed receptive to that argument—at times, he pushed the abortion providers’ attorney, Stephanie Toti, to go further. If it would be an undue burden for a poor woman seeking an abortion to travel 550 miles to abortion clinic, wouldn’t it also be an undue burden to travel 150 miles? Wouldn’t it be an undue burden even for a “wealthy woman in a Mercedes Benz who drives fast” if that woman had to take a day off work to get a medical procedure she could have received in her home town?

“I have a problem with believing that it’s reasonable to ask anyone to travel 150 miles to get medical care they could get closer to them,” Yeakel said. He pressed Toti: Was there any other medical procedure the state had limited access to so severely? Would it be acceptable to force someone to travel 150 miles to get treatment for a sprained ankle?

The state’s closing argument boiled down to a simple message to Yeakel: Your hands are tied. The Fifth Circuit ruling that overturned Yeakel’s decision, along with other Supreme Court rulings on abortion restrictions, left the judge with little discretion, argued Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell.

Mitchell seemed relaxed and comfortable as he made his closing argument: He was bowling with the bumpers on. Ignore the Fifth Circuit’s recent ruling, Mitchell argued, and the court would “issue a decision that will be overturned.” Yeakel can rule how he wants, but we know where the Fifth Circuit, overseen by hyper-conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, stands. Only the Supreme Court itself could sort out these concerns, and that will be some time away.

So unless the Fifth Circuit surprises just about everyone, the raft of abortion clinic regulations will go into effect on September 1, a little more than two weeks from now. Toti told the court that “less than seven” abortion clinics are fully in compliance with all parts of the new law: Ultimately, seven may be operating, all in major cities in the San Antonio-Houston-Dallas/Fort Worth triangle. Yeakel told the court that his opinion would be issued as soon as possible—but his ruling, if he chose to issue an injunction against parts of the law, could be itself overturned with equal speed.

Even if the matter is taken up by the Supreme Court and parts of the law are ultimately ruled unconstitutional, the bill will have done what supporters, like Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, promised it would: Gut access to legal abortion in Texas. A network of clinics and providers had been built up over time, and action by the Supreme Court, when and if it ultimately comes, can’t restore that. The legal challenges will continue to provide drama, but for pro-choicers, it’s a lose-lose.

These days, we like our politicians to act and talk like us, and the Texas Senate is no exception. Long gone is the time that booze-soaked good ol’ boys hammered out legislation under the watchful eyes of Lt. Governor Bob Bullock. In recent years, the chamber’s relied to a large degree on independent dealmakers, figures like Tommy Williams and Robert Duncan, to take on the heavy legislative lifting. But that job has been getting tougher—Williams, the chair of the all-important Senate Finance Committee last session, had a hell of a time getting an important transportation funding package though the Lege, and he needed a special session to do it.

But Williams and Duncan will be gone next session, and the Senate appears to be otherwise lean on statespeople. There’s a decidedly populist mood in the air, which is a polite way of saying that there’s a few more cranks. New recruits like Don Huffines and Bob Hall, who beat dealmaker incumbents in the Republican primary, cast themselves not as small-r republicans but as champions for the voters—or rather, the minute number of people who voted in the GOP primary. And those are not people who are amenable to compromise.

Still, a budget must, by law, be drafted, and someone must take on the unenviable task of dragging it through the gauntlet. Enter state Sen. Jane Nelson, (R-Flower Mound), the new chair of the Senate Finance Committee. Outgoing Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst appointed her, but she’ll likely keep the post if Patrick takes over. She’ll be one of the Legislature’s most powerful people next session, and Tuesday afternoon provided her the opportunity for a coming-out party of sorts—the first meeting of her committee. She began it with a quick selfie.

Nelson’s rise to power—like the rise of Patrick and others—is more than a little remarkable given her origins. A socially conservative member of the State Board of Education at the beginning of the ’90s, she won a Senate seat in 1993. Her biggest legislative brawl that year was a fight over retaining the state’s ban on sodomy. It had already been ruled unconstitutional in Texas courts, and state Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston) argued passionately for stripping it out of the state’s criminal code. Nelson fought it tooth and nail. She introduced an amendment to keep the ban on gay sex. “I’m not interested in having a politically correct penal code,” she said. She lost the fight over the amendment 16-12, but her side ultimately won that year. (The sodomy ban is still on the books in 2014.)

For the next decade, her name doesn’t pop up much in coverage of the Legislature. She supported a ban on human cloning, and wanted the state to divest from companies that produce violent or explicit music. But time served is king in the Senate, and she ultimately took on the mantle of senior stateswoman. As the long-serving chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, she’s been the Senate’s ringleader for health system overhauls, although she thinks the women’s healthcare system is doing just fine. Next session, her hands will be on everybody’s purse strings.

If you watched the hearing yesterday for clues about the Lege’s priorities next session, you wouldn’t have come away with much. Representatives from the comptroller’s office and the Legislative Budget Board came to give testimony about Texas’ fiscal circumstances. Dan Patrick, who could be running the Senate come January, frequently conferred with his deputy, state Sen. Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels), but otherwise mostly kept mum. More than half of next year’s Senate class was in attendance, including Huffines and Hall, who sat in the audience to watch.

Next session’s budget battles are unlikely to look like those of the last few sessions. For one thing, the state will have a lot of money to play with next year. The economy is humming relatively smoothly. Oil revenues are skyrocketing. Which leads to a big question: Will the Legislature invest the surplus into roads, schools and services, or will it use the money to lower taxes or alter the way the state finances itself?

Here’s another question: How well are next year’s senators, with more freshmen and more ideological firebrands, prepared to do the dirty work of hammering out a budget? Here’s a slide the Legislative Budget Board prepared for senators on the shape of the budget process—information that will no doubt come in handy for the Senate’s new outsider-politicians:

Legislative Budget Board

To supplement the slideshow, the budget board prepared a thick compendium of information on the state budgeting and finance. Nelson, in her down-home, charming manner, loved it. She recommended it heartily to her fellow legislators. She took it on vacation with her, and read the whole thing. And it’s great bedtime reading, she added, because it puts you right to sleep. The 2015 session will probably not be so soporific.

There have been, roughly speaking, two groups of tea party legislators that took seats in the Texas House in the last few years. One group seemed more or less happy to be there, and one group seemed like it was a few incitements away from pulling a full Guy Fawkes on the Pink Dome. State Rep. Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands), who lost his bid for promotion to the state Senate last night, and is forfeiting his House seat in the process, was of the latter camp.

In the special election runoff in Senate District 4, Toth’s fellow state Rep. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe) won the day, taking almost 70 percent of the vote to Toth’s 30 percent. It was an unusually lopsided victory, given recent dynamics in Senate elections across the state. But it didn’t hurt that Creighton outspent Toth by more than 3 to 1.

The Texas Senate has lost some of its most important dealmakers in the last year. The pragmatists and moderates have been ruthlessly culled, and next session will see a number of bomb-throwers join the chamber’s ranks. Senate District 4 was formerly represented by state Sen. Tommy Williams, who left to take a job with Texas A&M. He crafted the budget last session, and played an important role in keeping legislators on task on issues like transportation funding.  

Toth’s most famous bill might have been an attempt to nullify federal gun laws, but he still fits the mold of recent Republican Senate primary victors better than Creighton. It’s not that Creighton is a liberal GOPer. As the Houston Chronicle noted in its endorsement of Creighton, the difference between the two men isn’t so much one of ideology as of temperament:

To understand the difference between the two candidates seeking to replace state Sen. Tommy Williams in state Senate District 4, look at their reactions to the surge of Central American children crossing our border. For state Rep. Brandon Creighton of Conroe, it is a “full-blown humanitarian crisis.” For state Rep. Steve Toth of The Woodlands, it is a “full-blown invasion.”

Lately, Toth’s been hugging fringe immigration groups like Stop the Magnet, which wants to make life more dangerous and difficult for undocumented immigrants in order to get them to self-deport, or stay far away from Texas. That’s been a recipe for victory for candidates in other districts, like Bob Hall, who narrowly defeated longtime incumbent Sen. Bob Deuell.

But it didn’t work in SD 4. Even with the strong backing and support of groups like Empower Texans, Toth underperformed in the special election in May, nearly losing the second-place position to a Coast Guard vet with no experience in office. Then he severely underperformed in the runoff—despite the fact that Toth’s home base, The Woodlands, has quite a few more people than Creighton’s, Conroe.

Still, if Creighton’s victory over Toth is a small positive sign for the Senate next session, it’s probably not a sign of much more. For one thing, Creighton walloped Toth in the money department—Toth had a healthy amount of financial assistance from conservative groups like Empower Texans in the first part of the race, but that seemed to collapse by the end. In July, Toth took in just $13,000 to Creighton’s $213,000, and spent only $52,000 to Creighton’s $177,000.

And Creighton, as mentioned before, is a pretty conservative fellow. That fact might have denied Toth the room he needed to stage a proper challenge. But as a side effect, the Texas House is losing one more member of the 2010 and 2012 tea party waves.

When troopers with the Department of Public Safety first started deploying to the border in June, DPS made clear that they weren’t going to be taking any part in enforcing immigration laws. DPS—much like the forthcoming National Guard deployment—would be on the border solely to assist with law enforcement efforts, like cracking down on drug smugglers. Gov. Rick Perry and others agreed: The deployments were about crime, not the migrants themselves.

But now apprehensions are apparently declining on part of the Texas border, and Texas lawmakers are eager to take credit, even there’s no evidence that the drop in apprehensions has anything to do with Texas’ border surge. To the contrary, the most likely explanations have to do with factors far out of the hands of Texas government. State lawmakers are also changing their story; now the border operations are about immigration enforcement, not stopping drug runners and traffickers.

Gov. Rick Perry was one of the first to take credit for the drop in apprehensions. At his press conference on July 21 announcing the deployment of the National Guard, he credited DPS for staunching the flow. “Apprehensions have dropped 36 percent, from more than 6,600 per week, to 4,200 per week,” Perry said. “This is a clear indication that the increased patrol presence” of DPS and other law enforcement efforts is “having a deterrent effect.”

(I asked Perry’s office for the source of the figures, and the office referred me to DPS. I’ll update when I hear back.)

But last week, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst went much further. On Friday morning, Dewhurst joined Fox News host Bill Hemmer to talk about the border crisis—but an ebullient Dewhurst had one thing in particular he wanted to say.

“As a result of our surge with our state police, Bill, over the last five weeks, we’ve been able to shut down and reduce illegal immigration” in a 60-mile stretch of the “Rio Grande Valley by some 50 percent,” he said. It was a great success, he said, even though the reduction had come at a cost of “$17 or $18 million a month” and the Texas-Mexico border is 1,254 miles long.

Put another way: There was a 50 percent drop in apprehensions, which is an imperfect proxy for illegal crossings, along 4.8 percent of the Texas-Mexico border at a cost of almost $20 million a month. It wasn’t clear what 60-mile stretch of the Valley Dewhurst was talking about. Nor was he asked by the host if apprehensions had gone up elsewhere along the border. If the coyotes are as wily as they’re represented by Texas politicians, then presumably they could lead their clients to a less-policed part of the border.

But most significantly, there’s no evidence that illegal crossings have slowed because of anything Texas is doing. Over the last few months, the U.S government has been involved in a major effort to dissuade Central Americans from making the journey while putting tremendous pressure on Mexico and Central American nations to crack down on migrants. The result of this “containment policy”:

Mexico has quietly stepped up the pace of deportation of migrants, some of them unaccompanied children. It announced plans to stop people from boarding freight trains north and will open five new border control stations along routes favored by migrants.

In particular, the Mexican authorities have cracked down on the use of La Bestia, the train that migrants use to travel from the country’s south to north. The trains run only periodically now, and when they do, armed authorities watch closely. That’s left a lot of Central American migrants stranded in southern Mexico, where, as the Dallas Morning News’ Alfredo Corchado chronicles in an exhaustive account, the situation is going from bad to worse:

At a nearby migrant shelter known as La 72, dozens of men are sprawled on a concrete floor covered with cardboard boxes, swatting mosquitoes. In a separate room, dozens of mothers cuddle their crying babies, quietly pleading for the mercy of sleep to fall on them before sunrise, or for the trains to roar again to continue their journey north.

“The real humanitarian crisis is here in Mexico,” says friar Guillermo Avendaño of La 72, a shelter named in honor of the 72 migrants massacred in 2010 near San Fernando, in Tamaulipas state, on their way to the U.S. “The trains aren’t running, which basically means lives have been interrupted.”

It’s a grave situation that’s left Mexican immigrant rights activists like Father Alejandro Solalinde warning of social instability.

Meanwhile, in the last few months, the U.S. government has been conducting a major effort to convince Central Americans not to come. And the numbers of migrants leaving Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have been in sharp decline, according to a New York Times article from July 20:

“It has gone down about 30 percent, the number of children we see passing through here,” said Marvin Lopez, a manager of one of the most commonly used bus lines here. “Not nearly as many families.”

At a police substation on the road to the border with Guatemala, which is about a 45-minute ride from the bus station, officers said that they had been detaining 15 to 20 minors a day in recent months, but that in the past couple of weeks it had dropped to two or three.

Yet the apparent drop in apprehensions has been recast by Perry and Dewhurst as a great policy success of theirs. Their message on the deployments of DPS and the National Guard has been: The federal government is falling down on the job. We’ll act if they won’t—we’ll solve the problem, Texas-style.

But pressure from the U.S. government played a substantial role in reducing the flow of migrants—even if it created more problems elsewhere. You can bet that if the numbers of migrant crossings continue to drop, Perry and Dew will attribute it to the addition of the National Guard to the mix—and if they spike again, they’ll blame the feds.

Texas politicians have changed their stories about the border deployments too many times to count. The DPS deployment was originally supposed to be about targeting drugs and organized crime. But Perry and Dewhurst’s gleeful attempt to take credit for a drop in migration gave away the game. The costly deployments along the border are more about perception than reality.

These are dangerous times. Disorder afflicts all corners of the world. There’s contagion, and many different kinds of war. The Slavic menace rises in the East. This is a time for men—Texas men—to rise to the occasion.

1) To run for president, Gov. Rick Perry needs foreign policy credentials, and though his pilgrimages to California may count as such within Texas, they do not, unfortunately for him, matter much to the rest of the country. But Perry has a longstanding interest in a region of the world that has been in the news lately. So he summoned up his office’s communications staff and associated interns for a new mission. This was the best idea anyone had ever had. Rick Perry would give his take on the conflict in the Gaza Strip.

The ensuing editorial in Politico Magazine, entitled “Stand With Israel,” will do just fine for its intended purpose. There’s a hell of a lot of money and support for anyone in the Republican presidential primary who strikes the right tone on Israel—Perry tried to win that crowd in 2011, and he’ll do so again this time, especially with comparative squishes like Rand Paul and Chris Christie also in the running. But if you were to give this thing the benefit of the doubt and assume that it’s supposed to be more than just pablum, you would be disappointed. The very first paragraph contains two odd misconceptions:

For Israelis, at any given moment a missile might be detected, rocketing toward a residential neighborhood; a bomber might detonate him or herself in a crowded public place; and terrorists sent by Hamas might infiltrate their borders through secret tunnels to kidnap or kill their children.

Hamas certainly uses rockets—but periodic suicide bombings haven’t really been a fact of “any given moment” in Israeli life for years. Suicide bombings targeting civilian areas peaked in 2002, and the last fatal one was in 2008. The last sentence is a slightly oblique reference to the kidnapping and murder of three students in the West Bank: It precipitated the current conflict. But even Israeli intelligence now doubts Hamas was responsible for the murders.

In fairness, Perry balances his hawkish analysis with compassion for the long-suffering people of the Gaza Strip, pawns of a brutal and bloody game.

I’ve visited with families who were afraid to let their children play outside, and seen the fortified playgrounds where they can go. I’ve seen the rubble of structures brought down by missile strikes and looked in the eyes of people who live with the threat of violence day-in and day-out.

Kidding, he’s talking about Israelis. And he has stern words for anyone who thinks shelling United Nations-run schools packed with families fleeing violence is probably not O.K.:

Thousands of miles away, it might be convenient to criticize Israel for having the temerity to defend itself against these murderous terrorist attacks.

But we shouldn’t. Because the stakes are high:

The conflict between Hamas and Israel is merely one part of a much-larger conflict, one with far-ranging implications that can affect the lives of every person on the globe.

That’s because of… China?

Any equivocation or perceived weakness on our part will be noticed immediately not just in Tehran, but in Moscow and Beijing as well. It can only help usher in a new nuclear arms race, one that holds the potential of becoming infinitely more frightening than the one the free world endured decades ago. Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups have demonstrated time and again that they have no regard for human life – Israeli, Palestinian or American. The possibility of individuals like that gaining access to a nuclear weapon is something we simply cannot allow.

He condemns the United States for “moving closer to Turkey and Qatar than to our traditional allies,” in recent negotiations. That’s kind of a weird thing to say, seeing as Turkey is one of our oldest allies in the Middle East and a member of NATO, and Qatar is home to one of the most important American military facilities in the world.

If it seems like Perry has not been getting particularly good information on the conflict, that might be because he’s been pretty bad at picking friends. In the run up to his 2012 race, he was appearing at public events with full-on nut job Danny Danon, then a member of the Israeli Knesset and later a deputy defense minister. Danon was canned by the pretty right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a few weeks ago for being, essentially, an out-of-control lunatic. He once called African refugees in Israel a “national plague” and wants Israel to unilaterally annex Palestinian land.

So Perry’s getting bad foreign policy advice, and he hasn’t demonstrated any ability to make up his own mind. And he’s running for president soon. To paraphrase a governor I know, the possibility of an individual like that gaining access to a nuclear weapon is something we simply cannot allow.

2) But Perry’s not the only Texas Republican who’s getting ready to save the world: There’s also state Rep. Scott Turner, who’s been traveling across Texas as part of his quixotic Empower Texans-backed campaign to win popular support in his race for speaker of the Texas House, even though people’s votes don’t matter (the speaker is selected by other reps.) The whole thing has been pretty weird.

Anyway, he was in Fredericksburg recently to explain how he feels about road funding diversions or whatever, and he decided to go BIG. Here’s how he opened:

Tel Aviv, Hamas, Israel, Gaza, you know, Malaysia flights, jet flights being shot out of the air, you know, what in the world is going on? A lot of people live in a hopeless situation. Anxiety is running rampant. Fear. Discouragement.

O.K. man, we got these people suitably freaked out. Now pull them in:

But hopefully tonight in this brief time that we have together, it’s my prayer that I can encourage you. And let you know that we’re not in a hopeless situation. Because myself and a few others around Texas and around the country are standing up for you. And it’s not hard—I mean, it’s not easy. It’s a very hard battle to fight.

Is Turner for or against Malaysia flights? The world wonders. And what’s Turner got planned to alleviate anxiety in East Jerusalem? Who are these “few others?” Is Turner part of a gang of conflict-mediating superheroes? If so, why is he in Fredericksburg right now? Seems like a bad use of time, is all.

3) In Washington this week, yet another Texan helped save the world. Ted Cruz, the guy who once saved the world from not being able to listen to him read Green Eggs & Ham on the Senate floor, and also saved women at Yale from not being able to look at him stroll up and down the corridors in a paisley bathrobe, saved the world this week from—a Republican-drafted border security bill. Wait, what?

Cruz’s theatrics are taking place in an ever-tightening series of concentric circles. His targets have shrunk: He used to mess with President Obama, but now he’s mostly messing with Republican House Speaker John Boehner, which seems like a pretty weird move. And kinda mean, given Boehner’s propensity for crying. You do you, Ted.

The bill collapsed at the last minute. Cruz was given credit, as he’d been rallying representatives against the bill. Republicans were forced to ask President Obama to take executive action on the border crisis, even though they’re suing him for taking executive action elsewhere. A reporter asked Cruz if he was responsible for Boehner’s humiliating day:

“The suggestion by some that House members are unable to stand up and fight for their own conservative principles is offensive and belittling to House conservatives,” he added. “They know what they believe and it would be absurd for anyone to try to tell them what to think.”

That’s the sound of a grown man petting other grown men on the head. He’s the chess player to Perry’s checkers player, except his main goal seems to be to make his team lose all the time. Yep, 2016 is going to be a hell of a year.

You might think that in a one-party state like Texas, the cream would rise to the top. The most capable and promising politicians would flock to take positions in the party of power. The resulting diversity of opinions and expertise might incentivize excellence. Of course, in Texas as in other one-party systems, the opposite is the case. During the two decades that Texas Republicans have a complete lock on political offices, the quality of the party’s candidates has waned. Like a royal family in which only cousins marry, the GOP’s blood here is thinning. Take Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for attorney general and possible future felon.

Paxton, a state senator who has served in the Legislature since 2002, made his political bones as a member of the Christian right. That faction had a particularly good year in the 2014 Republican primary, which is unusual for Texas. But the way Paxton really distinguishes himself is by his history of sleazy and unethical financial dealings as a lawyer in the Metroplex, which came to light through a Texas Tribune story in May. The state’s next top lawyer could very well be facing indictment and possible disbarment.

Paxton’s way of coping with that looming threat? Running away from—and occasionally manhandling—reporters who ask him about it and otherwise staying out of the public eye, even as he asks the public to entrust him with enormous power. And here’s the depressing thing: It hardly hurts his chances of being elected.

First, what did Paxton do? Outside of the Legislature, he made a living as a lawyer in McKinney. One day, a couple he represented named Teri and David Goettsche came looking for a way to manage their money. Paxton referred them to an investment advisory firm named Mowery Capital Management, run by Frederick “Fritz” Mowery, a friend of Paxton’s.

Mowery directed the Goettsches into a series of abysmally bad investments, some connected to a friend of Mowery’s with a disreputable past. Mowery had been on the verge of bankruptcy when Paxton recommended him, and his business partners were in similarly bad shape. When they went under, the Goettsches lost their shirts. After they lost their shirts, they were informed that Paxton had been receiving a 30 percent commission to refer his legal clients to Mowery. Whether legally or ethically, Paxton should have told the Goettsches about the commission, but he didn’t.

What Paxton did—abusing the trust of his clients to funnel money to a friend, then taking what was in effect an undisclosed kickback—was certainly improper and unethical, but it was also illegal. It’s not illegal to take a commission from an investment firm to refer clients, but you must register with the Texas State Securities Board when doing so. Paxton didn’t. He also didn’t disclose the work on the personal financial statements he was required to file as a legislator. In other words, he appeared to be hoping that no one ever found out about it.

And Paxton should have known about the laws he was breaking, because he voted for the bills that established them in the first place. In 2003, he voted for a bill that made what he did a crime—and in 2011, he helped up the punishment for the crime. He helped make what he did a felony. And there’s no doubt he did it, because this spring, in an effort to push the scandal behind him, he admitted in a sworn statement that he violated the Texas Securities Act.

Having acknowledged that he broke the law, Paxton left the door open for the left-leaning advocacy group Texans for Public Justice to file a complaint with the Travis County District Attorney earlier this month. TPJ might be a small group, but the complaint is far from insignificant: TPJ is responsible for the complaint that’s snagged Gov. Perry over charges of undue influence and may ultimately see him indicted, and their efforts also helped precipitate the downfall of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. TPJ’s complaint charges that Paxton “committed one or more criminal felony offenses.” It could take months for the DA’s office to process the complaint—but it’s also likely that Paxton’s opponents will file complaints with the state bar itself.

So Texas’ probable next attorney general faces the threat of indictment, and censure (or worse) from the State Bar of Texas, before his first day on the job. There are many questions still remaining—for one, given the nature of the crime, it may not be an isolated incident. Does Paxton have anything to say about that? Any reassuring words for the public? He has no words at all. He spent the last month of his primary runoff hiding from voters and the press. An appearance on a Christian radio show marked one of his only media appearances: His legal difficulties didn’t come up.

Knowing that his Democratic opponent, a lawyer named Sam Houston, is extremely unlikely to win, he’s adopted roughly the same strategy for the general election. When Nolan Hicks, a reporter with the San Antonio Express-News, tracked down Paxton after a speech to ask him about the incident, Paxton scurried away. His spokesman grabbed Hicks and pulled him back, ensuring that Paxton would face no scrutiny.

We’ve come to expect a certain level of grime from many of our state’s political leaders, but the attorney general’s office is one place where there really ought to be a certain degree of moral fiber—so it’s encouraging that Paxton is bringing the courage and honesty he learned in his legal career to his campaign. Virtually unopposed in his general election, Paxton has no incentive to speak forthrightly to Texans about his troubles. And so he won’t.

We’re a long way from Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock and Gov. George W. Bush, just fifteen years ago. Putting people like Paxton in positions of power and authority will arguably hasten the Democratic revival, but what a hell of a ride it’s going to be in between now and then.