It’s Dem Primary Election Day 2022!

OK, folks! If you didn’t vote early, today is the day to VOTE so you can pick your choices for the November ballot! Print out your sample ballot here. Find a polling location here. Remember you can vote at any polling location in Harris County. Take a photo ID, your sample ballot, (AND A MASK), because there are too many names to remember.

Also, the 2022 Stace Slate is available for printing. (For those races not on my ballot, here are my choices for those.) There are a lot of slates out there–some are pretty dangerous anti-Democratic ones, too. I think mine are the best.

All that said, I’m glad it’s over today. As Dem primaries go, this one didn’t have too many explosive happenings. Sure, County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s Dem opponents came off as Republican-Lite in their attacks. And the dude wanting to unseat County Commissioner Pct 2 Adrian Garcia came off as the typical angry dude, but that may have been his target audience.

In the Pct 4 Commish race, Leslie Briones and Ben Chou and the rest ran races about who was the best for the job. I was hoping to have seen a response to Chou’s pothole vid-ad using one of those pothole patching trucks that are the rave, though. In open seat races, it’s all about introducing ones self and stating ones case. Not too much controversy.

But in the judicial races, particularly the Criminal Courts, there was talk of opponents to incumbent judges being recruited by the local DA, using bond reform and crime as a scare tactic. Of course, it doesn’t help when people who bond out are committing crimes once back on the streets, thanks to bail bondsmen discounting the cost of bail bonds instead of keeping the cost at 10%. It never fails that those who rake in the cash from the criminal justice system are the least blamed or reformed by the system. And the ignorance among the voters continues and is exploited by bad people, especially republicans. It was hard to figure out who was whom on the Dem side, but if you voted for all or most of the incumbent judges in the criminal courts, then you came out pretty good. Let’s hope that this is the result tonight.

The best thing about the end of the primary is the end of republinut ads. From blaming migrants escaping poverty and violence for their suburban kid’s fentanyl and other drug addictions, to labeling a right-wing zealot former justice as “woke” when she’s pretty sleepy, to some pendejo riding daddy’s 4-wheeler from the huntin’ ranch at the border wall, to a threat by a nut-job running for Congress against people protesting police violence, to demeaning and violent right-wing statements flashing on screen, the republinuts took fear-mongering to new levels.

Republinuts have always been about fear-mongering; unfortunately, Dems not of color have been in denial about this for decades. (My guess is they were defending their nice, yet racist, neighbors and relatives.) Dems who vote in the republican primary for the “better” nut-job are the worse. And look at where all of us are now. On top of being constantly attacked, it’s the policies that are taking effect that are hurting people. It’s weak Democrats who use the same scare tactics who weaken the Democratic message.

Anyway, the state of Texas keeps digging itself into a bigoted hole that will be harder to dig out of. We have good candidates in Beto O’Rourke, Mike Collier, Rochelle Garza and others to offer a real alternative. Despite the failures of Greg Abbott, County Judge Lina Hidalgo and a Democratic majority on Commissioner’s Court have led us through a pandemic while keeping their promises of transparency and open-government–the two things that scare republicans the most. We have a good team for the most part. But we need to VOTE to keep them.

So, get out there, make your voice heard. And don’t fall for the republican bullshit.