Thread: TX: Attorney general race heats up

Attorney general race heats up
Radnofsky and Abbott square off over high-profile lawsuits by state
By R.G. RATCLIFFE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Sept. 12, 2010, 7:10PM

Resources ABOUT THE CANDIDATES
Greg Abbott, 52, incumbent Republican, first won office as attorney general in 2002, then was re-elected in 2006. He previously served on the Texas Supreme Court. He was a state district judge in Houston in 1995 when then-Gov. George W. Bush appointed him to the state's high court.

Barbara Ann Radnofsky, 54, was a lawyer with the Vinson & Elkins firm in Houston until her retirement as a partner in 2006. She was the Democratic Party nominee for U.S. Senate in 2006, losing the race to Republican incumbent Kay Bailey Hutchison.

AUSTIN — Republican incumbent Attorney General Greg Abbott is running for re-election as if it is 1776.

Abbott's re-election bumper stickers and T-shirts are a combination of the Gadsden flag from the American Revolution, the official state seal and Abbott's own campaign declaration. The yellow sticker features a rattlesnake wrapped around a capital A and the words: Don't Tread on Me.

"It actually is a connection with the biggest issue of our time. It is the issue of the federal government encroaching into our lives more than any time in my lifetime," Abbott said. "We want to send a message that we are part of the process of trying to take our country back from this unprecedented overreach."

From Abbott's state office, he has led Texas into lawsuits challenging the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Gulf of Mexico oil drilling bans and the new national health care law. Abbott also has sided with Arizona in a friend of the court brief against the Obama administration on the state's right to pass a law cracking down on illegal immigration.

Abbott's Democratic opponent, Houston lawyer Barbara Ann Radnofsky, said the two-term attorney general has used taxpayer money to "pander" to the right wing of his party to win election with "show" or "concept" lawsuits.

"The concept lawsuit is one that doesn't do us any good but makes Mr. Abbott's political position very clear," Radnofsky said.

She was especially critical of Abbott for injecting Texas into the defense of the Arizona immigration law, considering that he told the Texas Legislature in a 2007 opinion that immigration issues belong to the federal government.

"Nobody knows that the state of Texas, because of the (attorney general) lawsuit, is now using the state's resources to defend the Arizona immigration law," Radnofsky said.

Abbott response
Abbott said no taxpayer money was spent on the Arizona lawsuit because Texas merely joined a brief authored by the state of Michigan. Abbott said the point is to protect Texans from border violence when the federal government is failing to do so.

"If you want to talk about wasteful spending, the real waste of taxpayer dollars is the Obama administration's lawsuit against Arizona Â*- a state that is just trying to enforce laws the federal government refuses to enforce," Abbott said.

Radnofsky has been fighting to get her message out before the voting public, a difficult task for a down-ballot Democrat this year. Radnofsky's platform includes suing Wall Street firms to recover money to pay for the state's $18 billion revenue shortfall; breaking up monopolies in the wholesale electric market; protecting consumers from deceptive practices by insurance companies; and halting employment discrimination against people for their sexual orientation.

In addition to incumbent advantage, Abbott has a substantial financial advantage to prosecute the campaign. No other candidate or political committee in Texas had as much money in the bank as Abbott on July 1: $11.2 million. Radnofsky had $463,852.

High-profile lawsuits
Abbott may not need all that money with the free publicity he has gotten on some of his lawsuits. They include:

Challenging the EPA on declaring carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas that the agency can regulate. Texas has more carbon dioxide emissions than any other state because of coal-fired power plants.

Fighting the EPA's decision to take over the flexible permitting process under the Clean Air Act. Texas has given leeway to refineries and power plants when upgrading pollution-control equipment, and federal regulators claim that has allowed for additional air pollution. Abbott calls it the federalization of Texas environmental regulation.

Asking the federal courts to throw out a U.S. Interior Department moratorium on deep-water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP spill.

The biggest lawsuit of all was in joining 19 other states in challenging the constitutionality of the new national health care law in a Florida federal court. A hearing on the federal government's efforts to dismiss the lawsuit is set for Monday.

"If Congress can order citizens to purchase insurance for health care, they can order citizens to purchase anything," Abbott said.

Radnofsky, however, said Abbott created a Texas health care insurance program that requires people in the child support enforcement program to buy health insurance for their children.

Runs federal program
In fact, the child support enforcement division is a massive federal program that Abbott's office manages. Abbott's office receives about $187 million a year in federal funds, mostly for child support enforcement, accounting for 37 percent of his total budget.

Abbott said state and federal law since 1995 have required parents in the child support system to provide health care for their children. Abbott said what he did was establish an alternative insurance program where those parents could buy affordable insurance in a pool.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 97912.html

Radnofsky, however, said Abbott created a Texas health care insurance program that requires people in the child support enforcement program to buy health insurance for their children.

Yea, created by Democrats and for Democrats and after being reigned in by a sensible legislature, the Democrats increased the spending and services on it in the 2007, with a stacked in their favor Legislature and Joe Straus who bargained with them to take the Speaker of the House seat.

Texas Democrats proposed, fought for, and passed the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that provided health coverage to over 500000 Texas children ...

http://www.txdemocrats.org/issues/healthcare/

Can someone please explain the logic in Radnofsky trying to pin this unpopular money pit program on Abbott?

Dixie

give me greg abbott any day