The Chron endorses Janet Dudding for Comptroller.
Janet Dudding
In 2005, Janet Dudding found herself mucking out her home in Bay St. Louis-Waveland, Mississippi, after Hurricane Katrina sent a 32-foot storm surge across the town.
“The first time I cried was when the Red Cross truck came around,” she told the editorial board. “I’m supposed to be the one giving help. There I was going to get a hot meal because there is no electricity, no streetlights, no water.”
That experience — and the city’s struggle to get back on its feet financially — had a profound impact on Dudding and is among the reasons she is running for Texas comptroller as a Democrat against the Republican incumbent, Glenn Hegar.
Trained as a lawyer and formerly a state legislator known for pursuing abortion restrictions, Hegar was first elected as comptroller in 2014. In his 2018 re-election bid, this board endorsed Hegar, 51, for keeping “his head down and focused on his job” instead of pandering to primary voters. Sadly, we can’t say the same four years later. Now he appears more interested in attracting national headlines and preparing for the next stage of his political career.
We urge voters to elect Dudding, 63, an actual certified public accountant running to be the state’s accountant. She says her main objective would be holding government accountable to people, not special interests. That’s the job we want done, and she has 35 years experience running audits, administering teams and leading investigations to show she can do it.
I was thinking about that earlier endorsement as I read this. The 2018 version of Glenn Hegar had a good argument that he was a down-the-middle public servant doing his job in a normal way. The 2022 version of Hegar isn’t in the same ZIP code as that argument, and it’s not just for the more recent aggressions against Harris County, either. The Chron has some more examples of things I’d forgotten about or not been aware of in the editorial. Based on his behavior in the Legislature, none of this is surprising, but compared to Hegar’s first term as Comptroller, it really stands out. This is what happens when “doing a good job” is not an asset in your primary.
You can listen to my interview with Janet Dudding here. If you like the idea of a Comptroller who’s focused on the day-to-day Comptroller stuff and not looking for extracurricular activities to make their application for the next job more sparkly, Janet Dudding is your candidate.
The Chron also endorses Luke Warford for Railroad Commissioner.
Luke Warford
In a perfect world, the Railroad Commission’s mission statement of protecting Texas’ natural resources and promoting the oil and gas industry would not be contradictory. There’s an alternate reality in which the commission could be at the nexus of the global energy transition, laying the groundwork for emerging technologies such as hydrogen and geothermal energy while helping oil and gas producers become cleaner and safer.
That’s the vision that Democrat Luke Warford has for an agency that long has treated “regulation” of the state’s oil and gas sector as an afterthought. Warford, 33, a former Texas Democratic Party operative and energy consultant, is not running just to be another watchdog bureaucrat; he wants to fundamentally modernize an agency that is becoming as anachronistic as its name.
Warford isn’t your central-casting roughneck or wildcatter. He studied at the London School of Economics and worked at the World Bank before transitioning to consulting, where he worked with oil and gas majors as well as wind and solar clients seeking access to global energy markets. His knack for helping businesses adapt to a changing economy could be an asset on the commission. His solutions range from simple — he mentioned modernizing the agency’s antiquated website to make it more transparent and accessible to the public — to cutting edge, such as using methane leak detection technology pioneered by the Southwest Research Institute.
His desire to be an agent of change is rooted in watching his father, who owned a CD store, struggle to make ends meet once the internet changed the way we listened to music.
Warford told the editorial board that this personal experience has helped him forge connections with oil and gas workers who fear global decarbonization will render their jobs useless.
“Out in Midland, a couple of weeks ago, a geologist said to me, ‘Hey, you know, I’ve made my career in this industry, I’m sending my kids to college from work I do in this industry, but I’m sick of coming home and having my kid, my neighbors, think that I’m poisoning their air and their water,’” Warford said. “He was worried about what his job prospects are gonna look like in 10 and 20 years, even if oil and gas production continues, as automation happens. To be able to understand that on a personal level, I think, is effective.”
By contrast, the current commissioners, led by Chairman Wayne Christian, 72, the Republican incumbent, are more interested in raking in campaign cash from oil and gas producers and letting the industry police itself.
My interview with Warford is here. Christian was a lousy legislator, and unlike Hegar didn’t do anything in his first term in statewide office to try to change that narrative. He’s a toady and a waste of space, and Luke Warford would be a vast improvement even if he’s a lone voice for sanity on that Commission. That’s a question he addresses directly in the interview, by the way. Go give it a listen, and then vote for Luke Warford.