The CD 25 Delicatessen

Becky Armendariz Klein (Photo By Jana Birchum)

No shortage of cold cuts along the Austin-McAllen campaign trail: a little sausage here, a little pork there, and a lot of baloney elsewhere. Recent high points:

Former District Judge Leticia Hinojosa launched an attack on U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett for caring more about birds than kids; Doggett voted for $1 million to study avian migration patterns, but against grants for McAllen's Driscoll Children's Hospital and Milagros Center for Migrant Health Care. "These votes are both tragic and ridiculous," Hinojosa said." However, Doggett supporter Dr. Ramiro Casso, a leading advocate for the Milagros Center, responded that Doggett "always votes for the underdog, the disadvantaged, and the poor." As for the birds, Doggett noted that nearly 200 House Democrats – including all of his border colleagues – supported the project, and that birding and ecotourism promise to bring economic development to the Rio Grande Valley.

Despite Hinojosa's positioning as a greater friend of the common people, after Doggett's endorsement by the United Farm Workers, it was almost inevitable that Hinojosa would earn the nod of the UFW's sworn enemies in the Texas Farm Bureau. Her campaign pointed to TFB backing as a sign of her credibility on agricultural issues, although UFW Texas leader Rebecca Flores noted the Farm Bureau "represents the opposite of everything we stand for."

Doggett laid some more money on the campaign table Tuesday, announcing a new $2 million earmark in the pending federal transportation bill for Austin's East Seventh Street Corridor project. The renovation of the street as a suitably safe and appealing gateway linking Downtown and the airport has been in the planning stages for three years and has already received $1 million in federal funds. Doggett says he will, in coming days and weeks, announce other projects in the transportation bill – the mother of all federal pork barrels – to help his Texas constituents. The bill has already been passed by the U.S. Senate and should be through the House by the end of March.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, former Public Utility Commission Chair Rebecca Klein – make that Becky Armendariz Klein – "formally" kicked off her campaign for the GOP nomination in the heavily Democratic district. At a Downtown event (actually held in Lamar Smith's district) featuring a crowd of supporters notable for its whiteness (at least when compared to CD 25), Klein proudly identified herself as "a reflection of the diversity of this district" and, more precisely "a Mexican-American, born and raised in South Texas." However, she then eagerly opined that "I don't believe in labels." (Others do. One backer told the crowd that if the GOP ran an Anglo candidate in this district – like that Doggett guy – "we'd be called racist.") Klein, a serial appointee to GOP patronage jobs in Austin and D.C., bragged about her connections to "the people who can make things happen," but then made clear she's "not a career politician." (Luckily for Klein, other people are – like Rick Perry.) "I am tired of career politicians who put partisan rhetoric over the interests of their constituents," she said – which Doggett later described as "a fitting description of Tom DeLay. I hope she will join me in condemning Tom DeLay's extreme effort to divide communities from the Rio Grande to the Colorado."