Sen. John Whitmire
There’s never much of an offseason for campaigns. The city elections are finally behind us, and believe it or not we’re six weeks out from the start of early voting for the 2014 primary elections in Texas. I was busy over the holidays getting started with interviews for various contested primaries, and while I don’t know how many I’ll wind up doing when all is said and done, there are some races that I definitely plan to target. None are bigger or more closely connected to me than the primary in my Senate district, SD15, which pits longtime Sen. John Whitmire against challenger Damian LaCroix. I trust everyone is familiar with Sen. Whitmire, who has served in the Legislature since 1973, served in the Senate since 1983, and who has chaired the Criminal Justice committee since 1993. Sen. Whitmire had a lot to say in the interview, so much so that I hardly had to ask any questions. He just got on a roll and went places that I wouldn’t have known to ask about if I’d been directing things. The interview was long enough – 68 minutes all told – that the resultant MP3 file was too large to upload to my webhost. Rather than do surgery on it and risk messing it up, I went and created an account on SoundCloud and uploaded it there. Here’s the interview:
Greg had pointed me to SoundCloud after the last web-based audio player I used went extinct, but this is the first time I’ve tried it. Let me know what you think, if you like this better than what I’d been doing I’ll keep using it. If not, then I’ll just save it for future extra-long interviews.
You can see all of my interviews as well as finance reports and other information on candidates on my 2014 Election page.
Whitmire was in the Texas House of Representatives in 1973 and then later moved to the Senate after Jack Ogg retired. I don’t recall which year exactly but he may have become a state senator in 1983.
Temple – My mistake. I have corrected it. Thanks!
Just a small clarification. Senator was elected to the House in 1972 after winning a primary run off and then against a Republican. In 1982, Incumbent State Senator Jack Ogg, who in 1980 came within a hundred or so votes of being defeated in the Democratic primary, decided to run for the Democratic nomination for Attorney General and finshed fourth in the field behind eventual winner Jim Mattox , runner up John Hannah, who became Secretary of State and a Federal Jurist and a third candidate who I can not remember. Whitmire was opposed by a wealthy self funder named Richard Cross in the Democratic Primary which he won and then went on to election in November against a Repub and as Chairlican. He has served in the Senate since 1983 and chair of Criminal Jurisprudence since 1993 with the notable exception of 1997-99 when he was stripped of the Charmanship of the COmmittee by then Lt Governor Rick Perry because Whitmire vocally and actively supported Democrat John Sharp. After the Perry rebuke, Senator returned to the Chairmanship of the COmmittee where he has thankfully, for the citizens of Texas and especially those of us n SD15, served as Chair uninterrupted. And yes, I am a bit biased, because this man is my friend as well as my Senator but also because he serves ALL the people ALL the time. You call and you can either get him in person or on the phone or a member of his staff, so in addition to doing his legislative duties extremely well, he serves his constituents in a manner that is hard to equal.
Sen. Whitmire appears to be taking the primary challenge seriously. A report on his legislative accomplishments, with him pictured with minority constituents, appeared in today’s mailbox, and he telephoned by robocall over the weekend asking if there was any constituent service matter for which attention was needed. I think this is the first I have heard from him in the past 4 or 5 years.
Hes got a strong record,damian is in for a fight,in this democrat primary I would predict that john whitmire wins it with 74% of the vote………..
Joshua ben bullard