I’ll note here that Bohacek has changed his stance on voting and representation TO “convince voters that your policies deserve a majority”.
It’s an exercise for the reader to decipher what his original stance was, because it apparently wasn’t about having voters think you should represent them.
I’m a little sad. I’ve been voting against him for years now. He was a corrupt cop (so corrupt other cops thought it was extreme) before he was a corrupt congressman, so I can’t just automatically vote against him.
Good riddance! Now we’re left with his equally corrupt brother, but that’s a local problem, for now.
Maybe. They’ve been re-gerrymandering the district (suburban Houston region) for quite some time and they’ve got a slim majority. Came close to flipping a few times. It’s one of those districts where they really can’t afford to be broadly unpopular or risk getting caught in a wave of seat flips.
Apparently said twin previously ran to succeed Nehls as a sheriff and lost, and subsequently lost a judicial election as well, so he may not necessarily be a shoo-in.
I’m reminded of a pair of twin brothers here in WA who got themselves elected sheriff of this county and the next one over as “independents”, then went full maga when 2020 hit and started spreading conspiracy theories about masks and vaccines, with the brother from the neighboring county making sure he was the “neutral outsider” to investigate our sheriff’s multiple drunk driving accidents in the meantime.
We kicked ours out in 2022 and replaced him with a social worker who ran the magas out of the department. Lewis County is still stuck with his brother.
The Sheriff position is voted by Fort Bend county (largely wealthy suburbs and also majority-minority which does not play well with candidates who are a half step removed from being outright race-baiting fascists) while the Congressional seat is gerrymandered to include a large chunk of Fort Bend and a small bit of Harris County but significantly diluted by including all of Wharton and Matagorda Counties and a small bit of Brazoria County - all less suburban/more rural and unsurprisingly more conservative or outright insanely MAGA.
The eventual Republican nominee has the inside track but it’s not a guarantee. It would help if they picked better in the primaries - the Nehls have been known to be total slimeballs for years but all they really had to do to this point was win the primaries. It’s a modern problem. If the Republicans ran halfway tolerable candidates, they’d sweep at the local level. But they keep running total racist and fascist losers and win narrow, instead.
These days, yes, but at the local level there are some that are harder to vote against - long time officials who have held their positions for years and whose personal views on issues didn’t really matter much. But it’s come to the point where if they aren’t vocally opposed to the nonsense of their party at either the state or national levels, they must accept being painted with the same brush.
Note this was the fate of former Harris County Judge (county judges in Texas are basically the executives of their counties, not judicial officials) Ed Emmett. Personally a decent guy but got voted out a while back as he ran as a Republican. Can’t say I felt too bad for him. He was actually an effective county executive but chose to stay in bed with the wrong crowd and got what he deserved as a result
University of Oklahoma recognizes a Constitutional right to a good grade for Christians.
In her essay, which was supposed to cover “how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender,” University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky presented a Biblically-fueled tirade against the notion that there are multiple genders.
The University supports her 100%
First, the college acted immediately to address the academic issue raised by the student. College leaders contacted her on the day her letter was received and have maintained regular communication throughout the process. As previously stated, a formal grade appeals process was conducted. The process resulted in steps to ensure no academic harm to the student from the graded assignments.
Second, the student reported filing a claim of illegal discrimination based on religious beliefs to the appropriate university office. OU has a clear process for reviewing such claims and it has been activated The graduate student instructor has been placed on administrative leave pending the finalization of this process. To ensure fairness in the process, a full-time professor is serving as the course instructor for the remainder of the semester.