TX-10

-by Mike SiegelMy friend Harvey Hayek is a vintage Texan. A third generation pecan farmer in Fayette County, he owns a gun club, hundreds of prime agricultural acres on the Texas Colorado River, and a bottomless store of homespun stories. Unfortunately, the most compelling of these relates to a coal plant that opened next door, forty years ago, and destroyed Harvey’s livelihood-- and almost his life.Harvey’s farm is a stone’s throw from the Fayette Coal Plant, a publicly-owned power plant built in the late 1970s.

Mike Siegel, the progressive candidate running for the Austin-to-Houston area corridor seat (TX-10) shakily occupied by Trump enabler Michael McCaul, put the above video together as part of his campaign to bring Texans along on the Green New Deal. It's worth listening and watching. About a month ago, Mike did a guest post here about the Climate Crisis town-hall he organized for September 21 and how environmental, labor and youth groups can work together to pass this existential program.

When Blue Dogs and Republicans Get Together, Only Bad Can Come Of ItAmericans love bipartisanship. When Long Island Republican Peter King signed on as the first Republican cosponsor of the bill to ban the sale of assault weapons, he may have been the only Republican to do so-- but he was joining Tom Suozzi, a Democrat in the Long Island district just north of his.

"Texodous" isn't in any dictionaries yet; it's just being written about and discussed by talking heads... and it's a hashtag on Twitter. But for Texas Republicans it's frightening real. Texas is hemorrhaging congressional Republicans. Last year the Democrats stumbled into two victories over "entrenched" GOP incumbents.

On September 21, at Huston-Tillotson University, an historically-black college in Austin, progressive congressional candidate Mike Siegel convenes a conference on the Green New Deal with representatives from political organizations, youth and environmental movements and labor unions to address dealing with the climate crisis.

The new Economist/YouGov poll, released yesterday, has more bad news for the GOP. Favorability for congressional Democrats (37%) is 8 points higher than favorability for congressional Republicans (29%).

Mike Siegel's gerrymandered Texas district (PVI is R+9 and Trump beat Hillary 52.3% to 43.2%) was considered too red for the DCCC last year-- so they ignored it. Mike Siegel ran an entirely grassroots campaign based on progressive issues-- never anything remotely Republican-lite. Michael McCaul, long-time right-wing incumbent and one of the wealthiest men in Congress, outspent him $1,754,122 to $477,926.

Aside from being Republicans serving in Congress, what do these 8 men and women have in common: Susan Brooks (R-IN), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Brain Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Will Hurd (R-TX), John Katko (R-NY), Tom Reed (R-NY), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Greg Walden (R-OR)?

Last cycle, just as election fever started revving up, the DCCC's regional vice chair for Texas, quit. Ben Ray Lujan and his lame reactionary staffers were overjoyed that they weren't going to have a disrupter sticking his nose into "their business." He promised to fill the empty seat quickly. But never even tried. The regional vice chair for the West Coast, Ted Lieu, flipped 7 seats.

Mike Siegel ran in 2018 in Texas' 10th district-- and he just announced he's running again... starting now. Last time he held entrenched Republican multimillionaire Michael McCaul down to a 51.1% win in a district with an R+9 PVI and where Trump beat Hillary 52-43%. The shift towards Mike Siegel in 2018 was 15 points, one of the strongest in Texas.