Taking on crankiness one statewide election at a time.

Ken Mercer, the Republican incumbent in seat #5 on the State Board of Education, sent out a message this morning laying into his primary challenger Tim Tuggey, a law firm partner and a former chairman of San Antonio’s transit board. This message, in particular, bears some analysis and commentary. In laying in, Ken lays out two major grievances:

Tim Tuggey gives money to Democrats. Ken specifically takes issue with Tim’s donations to Democrat politicians and organizations over the past few years, with personal checks to federal representative Chet Edwards, Texas senator Kirk Watson, and the federal Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee. Ken has a reasonable question to ask there, and could do so in that debate that he has requested. That said, I might already have an answer to this below. Read on.

Tim Tuggey is a “lawyer-lobbyist.” Ken doesn’t like lawyers much—heck, even lawyers make lawyer jokes—but he really doesn’t like lobbyists. So Ken writes that

        Conservative Republicans agree that a 'lawyer-lobbyist' should never run for public office. In our 2010 debates, I will call on Mr. Tuggey (and his supporters) to share and debate his bizarre definition of "Conservative."

I’ll first recommend that any sitting member of the Texas Board of Education learn the conventions of English capitalization. That’s conservative, as he’s using it in that sentence. (If Ken’s native language were Spanish, I might cut him some slack, but I’m fairly certain that’s not the case.) For guidance, I recommend consulting section 7.19 of the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition. (I’d send him to the 15th edition, but I’ve so far been too cheap to update my library.)

Still, as a Republican who’s also a pretty conservative guy, I’d like to know just why lobbyists shouldn’t ever run for office. Section 27 of Article 1 of the Texas Constitution—our Bill of Rights—guarantees that

        The citizens shall have the right, in a peaceable manner, to assemble together for their common good; and apply to those invested with the powers of government for redress of grievances or other purposes, by petition, address or remonstrance.

Those of us who live in Austin can easily go in person to yell at those so invested. Those in Texarkana or El Paso have a longer drive ahead of them. Moreover, if lots of people around the state have the same grievance, it may just be economically efficient to organize into an interest group, and to hire someone to do that grieving for them. It might even make sense to hire a lawyer to do it—lawyers usually know something about how government actually works, and they frequently look good in suits. So there should be no surprise that we have lawyers and lobbyists in Texas (like in almost every decently-governed country in the world), and that some of those lawyers and lobbyists are (gasp) lawyer-lobbyists. Thus, we actually do need these lawyers and lobbyists, and I can’t think of any legitimate profession whose members in Texas are prohibited from public office. Maybe Ken can help us out with that. He’s on the Board of Education, after all.

That gets me back to the issue of those donations to Democrats. I haven’t spoken with Tim about that, but I might wonder as well. It’s just possible that some of his clients are Democrats. That wouldn’t be shocking—some of my clients are Democrats, and I’m neither a lawyer nor generally a lobbyist. Heck, I even have friends who are Democrats. So maybe Chet or Kirk or someone on the DSCC shook Tim down. I don’t know, but Ken can ask that question if he wants.

So Tim gives money to Democrats, and he might be the useful butt of lawyer jokes. All the same, I still have more than sufficient reason for endorsing his candidacy in the primary:

Ken Mercer is a crank. Ken is a creationist, and he has been wasting a lot of the board’s time with fights over the specific language of educational standards that are never going to find their way into a classroom. That’s right—never. That’s because the vast majority of Texas public school teachers aren’t so stupid as to recycle logical fallacies about Piltdown Man. Intelligent design is an important concept, but when I was in high school, I got my theology in theology class, and my biology in biology class. Texas public schools don’t generally teach theology (no surprise there), so discussions of this issue should be pretty limited.

Crankiness is eccentricity taken to obsession over a single subject. Ken would do better trying to assert a link between vaccines and autism, or extolling the economic merits of a gold standard. Those are lame ideas short of theory and evidence as well, but at least they’re objectively provable. His cranky creationist rants don’t belong on the board, and as such, neither does he. If we Republicans are going to continue to thrash the Democrats across Texas—including rolling into Travis County—we need officeholders with some intelligence and design behind their viewpoints and policies. And that’s why we need Tim Tuggey.