Mike Krusee loses big at home on the propositions

State Rep. Mike Krusee was a big proponent of Propositions 1, 3, and 9, all three of which he authored or sponsored. So what does it mean then when one learns that all three were rejected by Williamson County, his home turf?

STATE AMENDMENT NO. 1

 FOR  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    21,313   47.24

 AGAINST .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    23,804   52.76




STATE AMENDMENT NO. 3

 FOR  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    20,071   46.68

 AGAINST .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    22,922   53.32



STATE AMENDMENT NO. 9

 FOR  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    18,050   42.37

 AGAINST .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .    24,552   57.63

Campaign issue, anyone? Krusee's in a fairly safe seat, but if he's not a little bit worried about what the voters thought of the issues he cared about and campaigned for, he ought to be.

Meanwhile, via email from Sal Costello, it seems that the true believers in toll roads are not very happy about what happened to Prop 9 on Tuesday.

[I]n Texas the tollers are behaving arrogantly and with extraordinary political ineptitude.

They are over-reaching. Why six year terms for toll authorities? Four year terms would provide some insulation from sudden political change while constituting a more normal term of public office.

There's something sleazy too in that term "regional mobility authority"? It's a toll authority. Why run away from that? Only people without the courage of their convictions or who are too tongue tied to explain themselves resort to silly euphemisms. Does it fool anyone anyway?

Political support in TX has also been sapped by a bewilderingly unprincipled and unexplained intermixing of funding of projects by TxDOT. Wherever they go there's a furore because no one can figure out who's paying for what.

They talk privatization but so far it is all politics as usual.

Certainly the anti-toll groups there display a mean-spirited nastiness and are unreasonable about the alternatives, but TxDOT's promiscuous approach to raising funds and their promotion of projects without even a semblance of study has been the anti-toll groups' major recruiter.

Is it mean-spirited nastiness of me to say "Sweet"? I'll risk it. Given how little attention was paid to Prop 9, and how seemingly innocuous it was on its face, I have to agree that it was a big deal that it lost.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on November 11, 2005 to Election 2005 | TrackBack