By SHEILAH PEPPER
The Gazette Staff
Notes from the gubernatorial race.
Barack Obama will be fundraising for Democrats August 9th in Houston and Austin, but Democrat gubernatorial candidate Bill White will not be on hand. His campaign said that that particular week is "jam packed."
However, Obama's favorability rating in Texas is extremely low, so that may have something to do with White's absence. His campaign has said that he will avoid celebrity endorsements and will instead focus on face-to-face meetings with voters.
On another issue, the White campaign says he support the Tiahrt Amendment, a favorite of gun advocates, which is now federal law.
The amendment states that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms cannot release information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or a prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation and that information cannot be used in a civil lawsuit.
However, White, until last year, was a member of a group called Mayors Against Illegal Firearms and was part of an open letter to Congress in March 2007 and an ad in USA Today in June 2007, that opposed the amendment. It appears he has changed his mind.
A new PAC held its first press conference in Austin recently to promote its endorsed candidates. The political action committee is called Hispanic Republicans of Texas. One big name behind the PAC is George P. (Pete) Bush, the son of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
In other developments, the State Board of Education voted to dedicate $100 million of public school endowment dollars for investment in charter school facilities. However there may be a push back from legislators who say political aims are overtaking the board's responsibility to manage the $22 billion Permanent School Fund. The endowment was created in 1876 to benefit Texas public schools.
State Rep. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, said the board appears to be overstepping its role. He and State Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, carried legislation last year that would have placed investment oversight of the endowment in the hands of an appointed board of financial professionals.
That measure cleared the House of Representatives with the 100 votes needed to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot but it never got a hearing in the Senate.
Howard says she will file the legislation again in 2011 when the Texas Legislature convenes, and she believes it will have bi-partisan support.
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