Watch "Last Man Standing" Tuesday 7/20

[sonias]

This is being broadcast tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. on KLRU in Austin. Many PBS stations across the state are also showing it. You can check local listings on their web site to help you find what time it's showing on your PBS station.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2004/lastmanstanding/
(snip)
So a challenge to an incumbent Republican Texas legislator by an upstart 24-year-old Democrat with a Princeton education should have resulted in a predictable defeat. But as dramatically captured in "Last Man Standing: Politics — Texas Style," Patrick Rose's challenge of Rick Green was proof that nothing stands still for long in American politics. Some of Texas's leading political lights, whose very names demonstrate the pull of the state's politics on the nation — Bush strategist Karl Rove, former Governor Ann Richards, Clinton appointees Henry Cisneros and Paul Begala, and writer Molly Ivins — help decode the state's electoral dynamics, illuminating national politics in the process.
(/snip)

Sonia

[Longhorn]

1. Thanks for the reminder!

I had lost track of the date and really wanted to see this, as you might guess from my signature! :)

[sonias]

2. Longhorn were you involved in the first Rose race?

In any case, Rose came across as outstanding. His victory is simply amazing in view of the fact that the repukes just voted straight ticket for the most part. It was that hard grassroots work he did. Hope he's up to it again.

One question about the documentary that bothered me, the Green ethics cases were dropped? That's not right. Regardless of his losing that house seat, what he did was wrong in representing that client before a state agency. Our ethics commission is totally worthless. Jeff Wentworth should have been thrown out as well.

Sonia

[Longhorn]

3. Yes, I worked the phone banks a couple of times,

something I actually can't stand to do!

If I recall correctly, there was some sort of loophole or gray area that meant that Green and Wentworth hadn't technically broken the rules. I have to say that Wentworth's response was far superior to Green's -- first, he didn't deny it, and then he apologized and said he didn't realize that it was a problem but that he took full responsbility for doing it. And then I think he sponsored legislation to make the rules more clear. Green, on the other hand, tried to defend his actions and kept claiming it was political. If the timing was political, Patrick had nothing to do with it. Green ran such a dirty campaign that this incident looked mild in comparison! This wouldn't have been enough to sink Green if he hadn't already had so many other ethics violations.