There are many things to be thankful for in Sylvester Turner. Some of them are listed in the endorsement vote below. Beyond his many manifest virtues as a consensus-builder (look at his legislative record as a State Rep.), there is the non-negligible fact that Sylvester Turner, now age 61, was once a child of Acres Homes in northwest Houston, one of Houston's most impoverished neighborhoods, and knows firsthand how essential it is to assist hardworking people near the bottom of the economic ladder to climb to middle-class status. Not everyone climbs as high as Turner has... a JD from Harvard, an active attorney and a legislator widely respected in both major political parties... but everyone deserves a chance to rise as high economically as their skills will take them, and Turner not only understands that, he acts on that understanding in his capacity as an elected official.
A word about Bill King, to his supporters and detractors alike: Bill King is not a nut-job! GOPers nationwide, please take note... by running as a genuine conservative, not a radical, they came very close to winning, and in Houston at least, they would not have come so close had King run as a Tea Party radical. That became apparent to me in the candidate debates: he is a mainstream Republican, but his key issues are exactly that, mainstream Republican issues. Regular readers know how much I despise much of the nut-jobbery of the Republican Party today, the Tea Party, the extremists among fundamentalist evangelicals (that's not all of them, but the worst of them are bad enough), etc. Bill King is pretty obviously not an outright right-wing extremist. Perhaps Mr. Turner really can call on him for advice on matters that fall astride the left-right divide.
My congratulations to Mr. Turner. I look forward to his term(s)!
Congrats on your guy wining. Fair warning: I'm going off topic. I said I was going to vote for Bernie but when Hillary wins the national, I would vote for her.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to do that now. If Hillary doesn't put the DNC in its place I might not vote or vote for a qualified republican (Is that an oxymoron?). It's up to her.
shirt - sorry I didn't see this until today 12/21; it's been a jam-packed few days. HRC's and Bernie's exchange at the beginning of the most recent debate assuaged my fears that HRC would try to destroy Bernie; I think she knows it isn't necessary even if some of her staff don't... just as Bernie knows delving into improperly obtained data was a terrible idea even if some of his staff didn't. As I look at the current field of candidates, I see Hillary as least likely to damage the institution of the presidency (and hence the USA itself), so absent further outrages or a miracle anointing Bernie as the Dem nominee (ain't gonna happen), I will in fact vote for her. The whole affair was stupid beyond excusing, but a voter does what a voter's gotta do...
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