It’s time for the week that was in Texas politics with Alana Rocha, multimedia reporter for the Texas Tribune.
On John Cornyn’s 2020 re-election campaign:
He’s taking his fourth re-election really seriously. M.J. Hegar, who ran unsuccessfully against John Carter up in Round Rock, has an impressive resume in her military career and advocating for women fighting on the front line. She raised $5 million in that race, which is no small feat, so a lot of people are looking at her and she’s looking at that seat.
On whether Beto O’Rourke will run in 2020:
It’s possible … but I’m not so convinced. He’s on the road this weekend to Illinois and Wisconsin – political battlegrounds for 2016. I don’t know why he’d go up there to run against Cornyn in Texas.
On gains for women in politics:
In November, we saw a lot of women on the ballot. Really, Democrats were the ones who benefited. Republicans only gained a single female Republican in each the House and the Senate. . . the same with the Congress – only one female Republican in the U.S. Senate. Texas Speaker Dennis Bonnen spoke about it this week, ‘We’ve done a bad job. We’ve alienated a lot of women.’ He cited a number [that] hundreds of thousands of Republican women voted for Democrats in November.
On the confirmation vote for Texas Secretary of State David Whitley:
He sent an apology letter to that committee that was supposed to vote on him on Thursday. He didn’t apologize, though, for the flawed data – the 95,000 list of names that needed citizenship review that was deeply flawed. … He didn’t apologize for referring the list to the Attorney General before counties had a chance to vet it, none of that, so I think his fate is pretty much in question. He continues to serve and can throughout the legislative session; if it never comes up for a vote and the legislature adjourns, then Abbott has to pick somebody else.
Written by Brooke Reaves.