Posted on 06/18/2005 12:43:09 PM PDT by Diddle E. Squat
AUSTIN — With the Capitol as a backdrop and a scorching sun beating down, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn turned the political heat up on Gov. Rick Perry today, formally announcing as a challenger to his re-election.
Strayhorn, saying she will run against Perry in next year's Republican primary, wasted no time in attacking her new opponent.
"You know that Texans cannot afford another four years of a governor who promises tax relief and delivers nothing," she said.
"Now is time to replace this do-nothing drugstore cowboy with one tough grandma," Strayhorn told a cheering crowd.
Strayhorn specifically criticized Perry for his decision today to veto the state's $35 billion education budget and call a new special session without having a plan on how to overhaul public school finance.
"A leader does not call a fifth special session — costing taxpayers another $1.5 million dollars — when he does not have a plan," she said. "A leader does not hold our children's education hostage and certainly would never even allow a discussion about schools not opening on time."
Strayhorn offered two specific suggestions on what she would do as governor. One is to pass her proposed program to pay for two years of college for every high school graduate. And the other is to legalize video lottery terminals with the revenue going to pay for a teacher pay raise.
Strayhorn has been able to brag in her statewide elections in 1996 and 2002 that she was the top vote-getter among Republican candidates in the general election.
But both times Strayhorn has been on the Republican primary ballot at the same time as the governor, Perry has received more of the primary vote. When she was running for re-election in 2002 and Perry was seeking election as governor, Perry received 80,000 more GOP primary votes than Strayhorn.
The GOP primary race was clarified on Friday when U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison announced she would seek re-election rather than join the contest to unseat Perry.
Strayhorn, 65, has a political career that has grown from local Travis County politics to statewide office.
The daughter of University of Texas law school Dean Page Keeton, she grew up in a world of politics and powerful people.
Strayhorn was the first woman president of the Austin School Board. She also was the first woman mayor of Austin, serving from 1977 to 1983.
Like Perry, Strayhorn was once a Democrat. She was the state co-chair of Democrat Walter Mondale's unsuccessful challenge to President Reagan's re-election.
Democratic Gov. Mark White appointed Strayhorn as a member of the State Board of Insurance in 1983, and while serving there she switched to the Republican Party.
In 1986, Strayhorn ran an unsuccessful challenge to incumbent U.S. Rep. J.J. "Jake" Pickle, D-Austin.
Strayhorn also lost a 1992 GOP primary for Texas Railroad Commission. Two years later she won election to the office and was re-elected in 1996.
Strayhorn won her current position as comptroller in 1998 and was re-elected in 2002. The job is that of state tax collector and revenue estimator.
Strayhorn has been married three times and has been known politically as McClellan, Rylander and Strayhorn. Her current husband, Ed, runs a company that builds tennis courts.
She has four sons, two of whom work in the Bush presidential administration. Dr. Mark McClellan is the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Scott McClellan is President Bush's press secretary. Sons Brad and Dudley McClellan are both lawyers.
Thanks for the ping!
Yep. All legal, done in the courts and everything.
I voted against the rat that I hated the most which was usually pretty easy.
The rat driven Universities might send out a bunch of kids to vote for Strayhorn, and other rats will cross, along with some rinos, but Perry will win.
I'm not so certain I'd call what Perry did "standing up." He pays lip service now and again, but where something requires bite, Perry is stark raving tame.
What bothers me right now is Perry's "solution" to the "problem" of public school financing. In his commercial airing on AM 570 KLIF, he brags that he's going to be spending so much more money on public schools, and that he'd make businesses pay "their fair share" of the tax burden, as if he didn't know that businesses pay no tax that they don't pass on to the consumer. So the property tax burden would be reduced. The overall tax liability is not; it just gets hidden, so you really don't know how much you're actually paying. Throwing money at the schools is not going to improve them, and I resent being spoken to as if he expects me to believe it would.
At least Strayhorn has come out in favor of opening up the school system to competition (which I interpreted as "vouchers" or something like it). I'm afraid I don't know much more than that about her, other than that and what I've read in this article.
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