Join us for this family-friendly event with speeches,
live music, a silent auction, children’s activities and more!

Saturday, August 21, 2010
11 am-2:30pm.   Doors open at 10:30 am.

Come for Lunch!
Box lunch tickets are $7.50 and available now.
Call 361-576-2911 or email vufccc@gmail.com
to get yours today.   Soft drinks, coffee and water will
be sold.  

Democratic candidate for governor Bill White questioned Monday whether Gov. Rick Perry acted ethically when he bought and sold a Hill Country lake lot that enhanced his investment by almost $500,000.

Perry again defended the transactions as properly handled and disclosed.

White told a conference of Texas sheriffs that one of them would be under criminal investigation if he or she relied on the kind of professional courtesies and personal favors from friends and campaign donors that Perry did in the land sale.

“There would be federal investigators all over that sheriff very quickly,” White said.

The exchanges stemmed from Sunday’s Dallas Morning News report on land transactions that helped make Perry a millionaire during his 26 years in elected state offices.

They included the governor’s 2007 sale of a lot at the Horseshoe Bay Resort.

Perry, at the same conference, told reporters he bought the resort lot based on a real estate appraisal.

The seller, state Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, has said he didn’t have an appraisal done.

“We bought a piece of property, the property appreciated in value, and we sold it,” Perry said.

White said the governor’s Horseshoe Bay dealings “smell to high heaven.” He accused Perry of buying the land below market value and selling it well above to a partner of the first owner.

“This is one of the red flags there is for official corruption,” White said.

The Horseshoe Bay resort is owned by Doug Jaffe, whose family has long ties to Texas politics.

His company sold the parcel to Fraser, a friend and political ally of Perry’s. And Fraser later sold the lot to Perry for just above $300,000.

The latest public opinion poll, released Thursday, showed White will need whatever advantage he has. Perry led 50 percent to 41 percent in the latest Rasmussen Reports survey of 500 likely Texas voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

In public polls since the March primary, Perry has stayed in the mid- to high 40 percent range while White has wavered between the high 30s and low 40s.

White announced that he will begin the fall campaign with more than $9 million in the bank, while Perry launches with $5.8 million.

White also held a slight edge on Perry for the amount of money raised since the March primaries. White pulled in $7.4 million between late February and June 30, while Perry managed a little more than $7 million during that same period, according to the two campaigns.

Perry has a history of winning elections despite being outspent, including the 3-to-1 margin spent against him by millionaire Tony Sanchez, whom the incumbent trounced in 2002.

However, White’s financial lead in this campaign should give the Democrats a psychological edge as the race begins heating up next month.

“For Bill White, the numbers indicate that he’s competitive,” said Austin consultant Bill Miller. “Of course, Tony Sanchez showed that money alone will not buy a race. Money alone will not do it, but you’ve got to have it to be in the race.”

Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson said White’s funds give him an advantage not held by Democratic candidates for governor in 1998 or 2006.

“They’ve had no money, no opportunity to get up on television. With Bill White, you’d have to say he’s running with the wind in his hair — if he had any hair,” Jillson said. But he added: “Money has to be in the service of message, and right now, White doesn’t have a compelling message.”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7110073.html

Our Democratic candidates will take the fight to the failed Republican politicians and give Texans the opportunity to restore responsible leadership in Austin. After ten years of Rick Perry’s cronyism and partisan politics, it’s time we bring back the commonsense decision-making and bipartisan balance that made Texas great in the first place.

	Bill White – Governor Website Facebook Twitter
	Linda Chavez-Thompson – Lieutenant GovernorWebsite Facebook Twitter “Meet the Statewides” “Conoce a tus Candidatos Estatales”
	Barbara Ann Radnofsky – Attorney GeneralWebsite Facebook Twitter “Meet the Statewides” “Conoce a tus Candidatos Estatales”
	Hector Uribe – Land CommissionerWebsite Facebook Twitter “Meet the Statewides” “Conoce a tus Candidatos Estatales”
	Hank Gilbert – Agriculture CommissionerWebsite Facebook Twitter “Meet the Statewides” “Conoce a tus Candidatos Estatales”
	Jeff Weems – Railroad CommissionerWebsite Facebook Twitter “Meet the Statewides” “Conoce a tus Candidatos Estatales”
	Jim Sharp – Supreme Court, Place 3Website Facebook “Meet the Statewides” “Conoce a tus Candidatos Estatales”
	Bill Moody – Supreme Court, Place 5Website “Meet the Statewides” “Conoce a tus Candidatos Estatales”
	Blake Bailey – Supreme Court, Place 9 Website “Meet the Statewides” “Conoce a tus Candidatos Estatales”
	Keith Hampton – Court of Criminal Appeals Website Facebook Twitter “Meet the Statewides” “Conoce a tus Candidatos Estatales”

The League of Women Voters forum before about 275 people at the Kathleen C. Cailloux Theater in Kerrville gave Democrat Bill White and Libertarian Kathie Glass, both of Houston, the opportunity to make their case against Perry without rebuttal. The event was carried only on local television, but was available statewide on the Internet.

White chastised Perry, saying he has run his office as a “political machine” and a “revolving door” for lobbyists. White said Perry wants to avoid accountability for his record of 10 years in office.

“Rick Perry will see how many times he can say (President) Obama and liberal in slick T.V. commercials and see if that will get him by with 51 percent of the vote,” White said. “In prior elections, he attacks his opponents with negative campaigns, takes credit for what’s good and accepts no responsibility for a lot of mismanagement.”

White said Perry should not be allowed to avoid forums where the questions come from citizens in the audience.

“If you don’t have the guts to get up here on stage and answer to the taxpayers who pay your salary, then you shouldn’t be re-elected governor,” White said.

Perry has said he will not appear on stage with White until the former Houston mayor releases income tax returns from the years when he was deputy U.S. energy secretary and Texas Democratic Party chairman in the 1990s.

Perry spokesman Mark Miner called White a “shameful candidate” who worked to limit military voting, “mismanaged the Houston budget and profiteered by steering business to a company he had financial ties with during Hurricane Rita while he was mayor of Houston.”

Miner compared White to President Obama and said he did not unveil any new policy initiatives during the forum, choosing instead “to continue a campaign based on personal attacks.”

In a later forum for the candidates for attorney general between Democrat Barbara Ann Radnofsky and Libertarian Jon Roland also criticized Republican incumbent Greg Abbott for not attending the event. Radnofsky said the League should have insisted that he attend.

White insinuated that there was a link between Perry’s investment with a gas company owned by the late Ric Williamson and the state’s decision to give a contract to build the now-defunct Trans Texas Corridor to a Spanish construction company. Williamson and Perry served together in the Texas House, and Perry named Williamson as state transportation chairman. Williamson was in charge when the contract was let.

White said the public doesn’t know if Perry made money off the “land grab” because the investment was put into a blind trust where no one knows if the partnership was ended.

Glass was critical of Perry and the new state franchise tax. She said the last Legislature exempted businesses making less than $1 million a year, but she said that exemption goes away next year. She said Perry should have made sure the cut was permanent.

“If you’re a small business and you lose money, next year you’re going to get walloped by the franchise tax,” Glass said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7095168.html

Pol. Adv. Bill White Campaign

Texas political candidates are scrambling today to raise money by midnight to show how well their campaigns are faring. The next reporting period will cover money raised through the first six months of the year. And both Rick Perry and Democrat Bill White are beating the bushes for campaign cash. Candidates like to show how much money they’ve raised to demonstrate the strength of their campaigns and to discourage their opponents.

Although the reports aren’t due until July 15, there are some hints about how the two gubernatorial candidates have done between January and June 30. The Republican incumbent is clearly a favorite among seasoned political committees that know their way around Austin – among them Fort Worth’s billionaire Bass Brothers ($100,000 from two separate political committees), the USAA insurance PAC ($50,000), the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raises Associaton ($30,000), the Texas Apartment Association ($25,000) and the blue-chip law firms Kelly Hart & Hallman and Andrews & Kurth ($25,000 each). He also got money from the pawn shop industry ($5,000 from EzCorp) and Chevron Phillips ($5,000).

Meanwhile, state PAC filings show that White’s done well with unions, a traditional Democratic constituency. White will report $20,000 from the Pipe Fitters union, $10,000 from the Ironworkers, $10,000 from the Texas State Teachers Association and $5,000 apiece from the state AFL-CIO, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the natural gas pipeline company Xto Energy.

Victoria County delegates joined 18 other delegations from SD-18 to attend the Texas  Democratic Party State Convention in Corpus Christi, Texas on June 25-26, 2010.  Thank you for your participation and support for the 2010 State Democratic Convention.

Don Bankston and Vickie Vogel were re-elected to two-year terms as State Executive Committee Members.

Boyd Richie was re-elected to another term as state party chairman.  SD 18 voted for Boyd Richie by a margin of 188 to 82.

The majority report of the rules committee followed the suggestions from Senator Royce West’s task force which has been working on the issue for a year and a half. It recommended changes to make our delegate selection process run more smoothly and efficiently. The minority report called for scrapping delegate selection through the precinct convention process (popularly called the Texas Two-Step).  SD-18 voted to reject the minority report by a margin of 211.7 to 57.3.

In other words, SD 18 voted to improve the current system rather than throw the whole thing out.

Photos from the convention have been posted by several of our delegates.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=124971884208121&v=photos