Category: Election 2020

David Bruce Collins for US Senate—the Official Site

Shortest. Candidacy. Ever.

9/12/2019

Hi y'all. This blog is back in business, although its proprietor may have to return it full strength gradually.

Two months ago, I put this thing on hold. A week before that, I was making noise about running as a Green for the US Senate currently occupied by Texas's senior senator John Cornyn. The plan was to run on the standard Green platform but make a lot of noise about Instant Runoff Voting and Move to Amend's proposed "We the People" Amendment.

Today, 9 December, is Texas's deadline to submit to the Secretary of State's Office (or the various County Clerks' offices) applications to run in the 2020 elections. Last Wednesday I gave mine to Green Party of Texas co-chair Alfred Molison, so that he could take it to Austin today. However, unless something changes very dramatically and very soon, my candidacy will be over before it has even begun. Click the Read More link to get the details.

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Alert the Prog Blog Squad, We're In for 2020

2/10/2019

Greenings, y'all! Sorry it's been a while since I last had time just to sit & blog. There has been plenty to keep me busy lately, between health issues, computer issues, & occasional gigs. Amid all that, I am trying to get my candidate muscles working again, starting a campaign for US Senate from Texas in 2020. This is the seat that John Corny currently occupies.

Consider this a soft opening for the campaign. We'll have a louder opening soon, after dbcgreentx.org undergoes some refurbishment.

Please Understand the Following

I need to submit 5,000 petition signatures or $5,000 by 9 December, the deadline for candidate filing.
I don't have $5,000. Sometimes even $5 is hard to come up with.
I'm not good at asking people for money. If you are, I could use some help in that department. But I'd rather get on the ballot via petition.
Very important: Those who sign the petition will be ineligible to vote in the big-party primaries or be delegates to any other party's conventions. That's the law. They also may not sign petitions for any other Green candidates for Senate.
About 70% of registered voters in Texas typically don't vote in primaries anyway. The trick is finding them.
If a stronger Green candidate emerges between now and December, I will end my campaign & help that candidate instead. There's no reason to try collecting 10,000 or more valid signatures for the same office.
If Sema Hernández wins the Democratic nomination in March 2020, I do not plan to campaign against her, but will instead use my position as Green nominee to campaign for Instant Runoff Voting in Texas.

Hawkins Completes Texas Tour in Houston

10/9/2019

A group photo with nine of the attendees at Howie Hawkins's campaign appearance, plus Don and Laura Palmer's two children.

Presidential candidate Howie Hawkins (third from left, in the Teamsters t-shirt) met with some Houston-area Greenies at the Palmers' residence.

First, a disclaimer: I like and respect Howie Hawkins as a candidate for president, but I haven't entirely made up my mind whether I'll be a delegate for him at the Green Convention in Detroit next year. I also like and respect Dario Hunter, the other Green who has met the requirements for presidential candidacy thus far, but I have yet to meet him in person.

That said, after last night (see this hour-long video of last night if you're so inclined), if Hawkins does win the Green presidential nomination, I plan to campaign for him as hard as I did for Jill Stein in 2012 and 2016, and possibly as hard as I remember promoting Ralph Nader in 2000. This is especially true if the Democratic Party nominates yet another triangulating centrist.

I am willing to overlook recent missteps in which Hawkins echoed the establishment narrative about Russia interfering with US elections, because no candidate is going to get everything right. Folks who accuse Greens of imposing "purity tests" on candidates because we can't abide voting for centrist Democrats can stick those accusations where the proverbial sun don't shine.

More importantly, however, I have enormous respect for some of the progressive luminaries lining up to support him, including the late Bruce A. Dixon and 2016 VP nominee Ajamu Baraka of Black Agenda Report. Plus, yesterday former Alaska senator Mike Gravel, briefly a presidential candidate in this cycle, urged his supporters to back...no, not Bernie; no, not Tulsi; Howie.

Sec'y of State Releases New Candidate Guidelines

26/8/2019

Psst. Hey you. Wanna run for office as a Green or Libertarian? There's an app for that.

As of this writing, the Secretary of State's Office has not released the petition sheet for candidates in convention-nominating parties who are too broke or cheap to pay the filing fee. That will supposed be ready next week.

The important dates to remember right now, if you are even contemplating a run for office, are 9 November and 9 December. Those are the beginning and ending dates of the period for filing an application with your county or state party. The November date is the earliest date you can walk into the SOS Office with your filing fee, the amounts for which are displayed in a table on the paged linked above.

It's Not a Real Clown Car If It Doesn't Make You Laugh

24/8/2019

The DNC honchos are having a meeting; they'll have to decide who they'll next be unseating. It's all been decided: Jay Inslee must go; his climate agenda's a threat to our Joe. The next to be booted is young Andrew Yang. Screw him and that nasty Millennial gang! And Beto, and Cory, and Julian, and Amy? No problem with them. They're so safe and so

The situation of the world is dire, but we still need a chuckle now and then to keep us from (insert preferred method of suicide here). Fortunately, the Democratic pre-primary reality TV series is providing us with a few laughs amid all the WTF and SMH moments.

With permission from the author, I present this bit of Seuss-esque anapestic fun that Trudy Hess wrote for the Movement for a People's Party. Trudy and I both contribute to Caitlin Johnstone's Patreon and frequent the secret Facebook group for Caity's patrons.

Regarding the text, I have just one quibble worth raising: The Democratic Party doesn't always nominate the world's biggest chump, even for president. Maybe substitute "As always..." in that verse with "Like last time...."

As of this week, we can add to Bernie Sanders's bullet-point agenda his own variation of the Green New Deal. If he wins the nomination, we can hope that he will implement it without too much pushback from the two corporate parties; if the Dems nominate someone who doesn't advocate the GND, we can kiss our future as a species toodle-oo.

Because I have become more sensitive to accessibility in recent years, I have transcribed the entire poem in the Alt text.

GPUS National Convention: Detroit 2020 Maybe

22/8/2019

The National Meeting Committee of the Green Party of the United States has selected Detroit MI as the venue for the next Green Presidential Nomination Convention, to be held 9-12 July 2020.

Or has it? So says Green Party Watch, anyway. Ballot Access News has a very short item, completely lacking in links.

For what it's worth, there's more detail on Wikipedia. The wiki also notes that this choice marks a return to Detroit after the Annual National Meeting there in 2010.

The decision was announced on the GPUS Facebook group page earlier this week. As of today, I can't find anything about it on gp.org, but the website crew may be waiting for more details to fall into place. There is also plenty of Election 2019 to discuss, and this year's ANM just ended a month ago.

Is Al Gore Officially a Prophet Yet?

2/8/2019

Remember what Al Gore said about Greenland in "An Inconvenient Truth"? It's happening. https://t.co/2p5Dpr2QAE
— David Bruce Collins □☮ (@dbcgreentx) August 2, 2019

Back in 2016, former Vice President Al Gore came to Houston to deliver the two-day Climate Reality Project speaker training, and Kayleen signed up for it. She got to spend some time with one of her heroes: She had shown excerpts from An Inconvenient Truth to her World Geography students back in her teaching days.

Gore, a Democrat to his very marrow, became less of a hero in her eyes when he came out in favor of his old friend Hillary Clinton in her quest for the presidency. The whole movement lost its luster as Kayleen discovered that the overwhelming majority of those present for the training placed their faith in the Democratic Party and its candidates to solve the impending climate crisis. Cuz we know that President Barack Obama dedicated his entire eight years in the White House to reversing climate change, starting at the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009--NOT!

So Kayleen, dejected, never did any Climate Reality speaking gigs. As consolation she did meet a new friend who came to the training from Zimbabwe, and who is now studying climate science in Paris. So we may have someone to visit if we ever make it to France.

None of the text below, which mentions several Democrats by name, is meant to imply that I'm turning into a Democrat. Generally, I vote for Democrats in local races in which there is no Green running. I will promote candidates and elected office-holders whose views I find genuinely progressive—regardless of how the Democratic Party establishment may treat them, regardless of occasional votes that seem at odds with the progressive agenda. I will defend them from baseless smears propagated by any party or media outlet. (Your findings of progressivity may vary, and that's OK: even Greens don't agree on everything.)

Sketch Comes Through and Other GPTX News

14/6/2019

At a lunch meeting Wednesday, Laura Palmer informed me that her husband Don "Sketch" Palmer was the angel who got harriscountygreenparty.org back online for another six years. As mentioned earlier this week, hcgp.org is no longer in HCGP's possession, and the Party will not likely spend the thousand bucks to ransom it.

As of last week's Annual State Meeting of the Green Party of Texas, Sketch is the newly elected GPTX treasurer. Here is the complete listing of the State Executive Committee, delegates and the Green National Committee, and current regional coordinators. The regional coordinator system may be retired soon.

Just prior to the ASM, I relented to Laura's plea to stand for an at-large position on the SEC, and fortunately for me I was not elected.

The Post 2504 Landscape
A Green buzz is reverberating through Texas and all around the nation in the wake of HB 2504 becoming law and guaranteeing a ballot line for 2020. The National Committee has a vested interest in having a strong Green presence in the second-most populous state. Veteran Greens like me, who have faded from the scene to avoid intra-Party squabbles, are becoming active again. Among those with whom I have conversed, the focus have shifted more than ever toward recruiting candidates for 2020 and amassing the funds to back them up.

Perverse Alliances: HB 2504 Passes House (Revised)

11/5/2019

Dude, I should be checking Ballot Access News more often. PDiddie sent several old-guard Harris County Greens a psst! by email this morning, linking to his new post concerning the progress of HB 2504 in the current 86th Texas Legislature (not the 92nd as I mistakenly wrote yesterday.)

The bill passed the House on a mostly party-line vote, 77-57, with five reps absent, and the Speaker not voting. Absent a major filibuster or a classic Dan Patrick Calendar Clusterfuck, this bill should sail through the Senate and get a signature from Governor Abbott.

In brief, HB 2504 allows candidates from convention parties (i.e., those that do not hold primary elections) to pay the same filing fees that candidates from primary parties do. In lieu of the fees, convention candidates may submit petition signatures, just as primary candidates currently may.

As if that weren't enough of a gift, another Republican's amendment to the bill, as passed by the House, reduces the criterion for retaining ballot access from 5% of the vote in a statewide race to 2%. Not in the next election, but in any of the previous five. Guess what? In 2014 and 2016, Green candidates crossed that 2% threshold in three four-way races. Since 2010, in races that the Democrats sat out, at least one Green has earned 5% or better, some scoring as high as 10%.

As Naomi Klein might say, This Changes Everything.

Transcribing a Twitter Thread

21/2/2019

This is me not caring about the Democratic race for the 2020 presidential nomination—not caring so hard that I'm writing about it again.

To be more precise, I am writing yet another post about Tulsi Gabbard, the candidate whose rhetoric thus far best embodies progressive ideals—yes, better than Bernie in that regard. And she delivers that rhetoric so calmly and smoothly. I'm beginning to wonder if she ever raises her voice to be heard over a cheering crowd.

This morning, inspired by the clip of Rep. Gabbard on The View, I took to Twitter and hammered out a nine-part thread. Rather than link to the tweets or embed them, I figured I should preserve them here. As of this afternoon, to my complete lack of surprise, Gabbard has yet to respond. She and her crew keep a rather busy schedule.

This was also inspired in part by a recent reminder in a secret Facebook group: The author of the post referred to Gabbard as a "tool of empire" and warned that as long as she remains a Democrat she will play a sheep-dog role in the campaign after the party nominates yet another centrist warmonger.

Figueredo has a lot to say about this View segment; Kulinski has even more. The first portion of her appearance is below the fold.

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