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Today's stories
EARLY VOTING in the delayed primary runoff election starts today.
GREG ABBOTT (we'll get to the scored bit soon) is being sued by the Texas Bar and Nightclub Alliance for his Friday order shutting down bars.
Essentially, Abbott is being sued for picking winners and losers in the Texas economy as he bumbles about his coronavirus response.
The suit followed comments Friday by Shelley Luther vowing to fight for bar owners. The Dallas-area salon owner defied Abbott and reopened her business earlier this year.
Now, about that scorn.
After announcing his plans to selectively reverse reopening, Abbott involved himself in four runoff elections. According to an article in the Dallas Morning News, the motivation is spite for the conservative organization Empower Texans.
The three Texas house overtime contests at issue make sense; the fourth a county-level race involving outgoing Representative Mike Lang seems a stretch as a pure retribution play.
The weekend endorsements by Abbott and DMN article heavily sampling his consultant Dave Carney mark a continuation of the drumbeat from the Abbott camp against Empower.
Last week, Houston political commentator Erica Greider wrote an article featuring quite possibly the most boring secretly recorded audio ever.
According to the piece, Empower's Michael Quinn Sullivan, in 2019, tried to enlist GOP Chairman James Dickey to midwife a deal. Convince Abbott to call a special session to get rid of his toxic Speaker, and secretly recorded audio of Bonnen speaking ill of his colleagues would be buried.
Dickey said he couldn't get that deal done, and Sullivan was forced to release the audio to scoot Speaker Bonnen into a shameful retirement.
Greider's treatment of the audio is counterproductive if the aim is to suggest Sullivan is terrible for the GOP since, at face value, he was trying to smooth out the situation. Correctly viewed, the Greider byline was used as a bridge to keep Empower in the news.
The most notable item from the story is who was present and may have recorded the Sullivan-Dickey meeting, Mitch Carney.
ELECTIONS are being undermined in Texas and across the U.S. as the political left wields a crudely fashioned shiv to avoid another embarrassing defeat in November.
Hit the links
Chesapeake Energy filing for bankruptcy
Voter fraud alleged in Bexar Co.
Pence in Dallas, encourages prayer condemns removal of monuments.
Aaron Harris, Direct Action Texas drive reforms
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Coming up
7/15: FEC reports due
7/31: PFS filings due
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Please feel free to contact me (reply to this email or email me at pushjunction@gmail.com) with questions, comments, suggestions, or tips.