Good morning, 

A large number of grassroots leaders on social media were remarking last weekend about the governing differences between Texas’ Greg Abbott and Florida’s Ron DeSantis – both of whom are thought to be eyeing the 2024 GOP presidential contest. That’s the subject of the One Click Survey.

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Tuesday, September 29, 2020
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• Harris County Democrats are planning a massive, illegal ballot-harvesting scheme for the 2020 general election. That is the assertion made before the Supreme Court of Texas in affidavits filed by a former FBI agent and a retired Houston Police Department detective. Brandon Waltens has the details.
   
• Joe Biden’s Texas political director is directly implicated in the scheme, according to the affidavit of Charles Marler, a former investigative specialist with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
     
• Marler also alleges that former Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman resigned earlier this year not for the publicly cited “personal health concerns,” but because she was concerned she “would be included in the eventual arrest pertaining to illegal ballot harvesting.”
   
• In the second affadavit, retired HPD captain Mark Aguirre says he has “video-taped interviews of witnesses attesting to the aforementioned people having groups of people completing thousands of absentee and mail-in ballots, including completing ballots for deceased individuals; illegally going into nursing homes, with the complicity of the nursing home staff, and filling out and forging the signatures of nursing home residents; signing up homeless individuals to vote using the ballot harvester’s address then completing the ballot and forging the homeless individual’s signature.”

• Voters in Senate District 30 are heading to the polls today to cast their ballot in a special election to replace incumbent Pat Fallon, who has been nominated for a congressional seat. The SD 30 election candidates include one Democrat (Jacob Minter) and five Republicans (Craig Carter, Andy Hopper, Shelley Luther, Drew Springer, and Christopher Watts).
   
• Many observers see the contest as Springer’s to lose, as an incumbent state representative who was hand-picked by Fallon and is heavily supported by Austin lobby interests. Gov. Greg Abbott reportedly orchestrated the rapid timing of the election to aid Springer.
      
• The “wild card” in the race is Shelley Luther, the Metroplex salon owner who became a national celebrity this spring when she stood up against the business closure orders issued by Gov. Greg Abbott and echoed by Democrats in local offices. A Democrat judge in Dallas County sent her to jail, but she was released by order of the Supreme Court of Texas. (As a result, Abbott later took jail off the table as a penalty for violating his orders.)
   
• Texas Scorecard’s Erin Anderson will be on point covering the results this evening. Check out our website, Facebook page, or Twitter account for updates.

• A note about political “ownership.” State Rep. Drew Springer and his cronies in the Austin lobby have been crowing about Luther getting help from (Springer’s allies call it being “owned” by) conservative businessman Tim Dunn of Midland.
      
• But for some reason, Springer doesn’t want voters to know how much he is “owned” by the left-wing Austin lobby crowd. Nearly all of his political contributions read like a who’s who of crony lobbyists, establishment groups, and corporate welfare queens. And, of course, there is the fact that Springer worked for a lobbyist while serving in the Texas House.
       
• For example, TransparencyUSA reports one of Springer’s biggest donors is Houston beer distributor John Nau, a social liberal who contributes to Democrats against incumbent Republicans.

• A report from the watchdog group Truth in Accounting finds the unfunded debt of Texas is closer to that of Democrat-controlled states like California and New York, rather than Republican-controlled states like South Dakota and Florida. Robert Montoya has the details.
   
• “This report shows that Texas went into the coronavirus pandemic in poor fiscal health, and it will probably come out of the crisis even worse.” – Truth in Accounting
    
• Texas is identified as a “sinkhole state,” earning a D grade and ranked 34 out of the 50 states. The report finds it would take more than $11,000 from each taxpaying Texan to pay off the local and state government debt burden.

• In this week's episode of the Luke Macias Show, he takes a moment to remember Ross Kecseg, and then dives into the recent defiance of Gov. Greg Abbott’s mandates and orders by State Sen. Bob Hall (R-Edgewood) and State Rep. Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands), compared to the “meek response” of the Texas Freedom Caucus and others.

• From the “Say Anything To Get Elected Files” comes this gem from the leftwing opinion pages of the Dallas Morning News.
      
• Yesterday, the DMN endorsed incumbent State Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Plano) for re-election on the basis that he acknowledged to them “past mistakes and, when asked about his support of the divisive and pointless ‘bathroom bill’ that soured the Legislature two sessions ago, he notes that he would make different choices today.”
      
• They are referring derisively to the  Texas Privacy Protection Act, which the author – State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham) – described as legislation that “codifies what most Texans already expect” by “[designating] separate showers, locker rooms and restrooms for males and females in public schools, colleges, universities and government facilities.”
      
• The measure passed the Texas Senate in 2017, but was killed by the House leadership at the behest of the LGBTQ lobby. The Dallas Morning News is assured by Leach he would join them in opposing measures such as the Texas Privacy Act in the future. 

ONE CLICK SURVEY

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has fully re-opened his state, ending all the restrictions imposed during the early days of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. In contrast, Texas’ Greg Abbott (R) has kept significant sectors of the state’s economy closed or restricted. Whose approach do you favor?