I've been waiting, but not holding my breath, to see whether the letter I wrote Sunday to the editors of the Houston Chronicle might appear in the print edition before posting the text of it here. No such luck (until Sunday the 28th).
The Chron's editorial board's endorsement of incumbent Greg Abbott (R) for governor, alongside Beto O'Rourke (D, over incumbent Ted Cruz) for US senator and Mike Collier (D, over incumbent Dan Patrick) for lieutenant governor, inspired me to write the letter. It wasn't so much whom they chose as how they chose him—and what they overlooked.
You may need a digital subscription to houstonchronicle.com to read the entire endorsement.
DISCLAIMER: I am not, nor have I ever been, active with the Libertarian Party. I have voted for a few Libertarian candidates over the years, but I am careful about which Libertarians I consider worthy of that vote. As you may know the Green platform shares some policy views with the Libertarian platform. The primary shared interest between the two movements is ditching the Duopoly with all due haste, introducing reforms in the US and the various states that make it possible for more than two political parties to compete in the marketplace of ideas.
To the Editors:
In the Chronicle’s tepid endorsement of Greg Abbott to continue as governor, your editorial board bemoans the lack of better choices. However, the piece gives no mention to Libertarian nominee Mark Jay Tippetts. Although I am not a big-L Libertarian, I find the lack of even a mention (let alone a star rating) journalistic malpractice. You are not giving us the whole story.
Even if the board does not consider Tippetts a better option, the board should say so and tell us why. The same is true for all of the paper’s endorsements for 2018. Readers should expect better of a paper that, as recently as 2016, endorsed Libertarian Mark Miller for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission. Miller took more than 5% of the vote, securing a ballot line for Texas Libertarians for 2018.
Blatantly ignoring third-party candidates is an endorsement of the so-called two-party system, the partisan duopoly that has turned our nation into the world’s largest purveyor of death and destruction to enrich banks and billionaires while stealing from the rest of us. The majority of voters have rejected that duopoly. In the 2016 presidential race, the two major parties gave us a Wall Street warmonger and a white supremacist grifter. As your endorsement of Abbott puts it, we deserve better.