Carole Keeton Strayhorn hasn't said in any definitive way where she wants Texas voters to put her next year, but she's hired two of the people who'll help her campaign.Alex Castellanos of Alexandria, Virginia-based National Media, Inc., has worked on three of Strayhorn's previous statewide campaigns. He was on the George W. Bush reelection team in 2004 and worked for George H. W. Bush's campaigns back in the day. His firm does political advertising. John McLaughlin is a pollster and general consultant. His firm, Blauvelt, New York-based McLaughlin & Associates, was part of the phalanx that helped Arnold Schwarzenegger win the special election for governor of California. Strayhorn has hinted broadly that she'll be running for governor against Rick Perry next year. But she's got a placemat at the table; when Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs said last year she's running for comptroller and that Carole wasn't, Strayhorn stepped in to say Combs had gone too far. Strayhorn wants to keep the option of reelection open. So far, she and Perry and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison -- who's also got her eye on the Governor's Mansion -- are the only prominent state politicos making a show of gearing up for next March's GOP primaries. Castellanos worked in the California race, too, but not for Schwarzenegger. He did ads for the "American Taxpayers Alliance," which was critical of Gov. Gray Davis, whose unseating made the actor's rise possible. And if you remember the commercial knocking Al Gore in 2004 -- the one by the Republican National Committee that flashed the word "RATS" for a second and raised some news controversy about subliminal advertising -- you've seen a famous Castellanos ad. The consultant also worked for Jeb Bush, now governor of Florida, in Bush's first and unsuccessful run at that post. In Texas, his ads for Strayhorn were among the best of the last cycle, featuring a sepia look at old dusty western scenes while an announcer talked about "One Tough Gramma." McLaughlin worked for presidential hopeful Steve Forbes on campaigns in 1996 and 2000. He's worked on a bunch of U.S. Senate races -- he and Castellanos both worked for former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

Sherry Sylvester, lately the voice of the Texas Republican Party, is leaving the Lone Star State for New Jersey, where she'll be snapping the verbal towel for gubernatorial candidate Doug Forrester, a businessman and former mayor who's leading a six-person field in the GOP primary.Sylvester joined the Texas GOP late last year. She wrote Texas Media Watch, an online press critique, before that and was the political reporter at the San Antonio Express-News before that. But she was in New Jersey and New York first, working in Democratic politics (for former U.S. Sen. Geraldine Ferraro and former NYC Mayor David Dinkins, among others) and then working for papers. Sylvester starts Monday; no word on who'll be the new spokesperson for the Texas GOP. New Jersey has an off-year gubernatorial race, with the primary set for June 7 of this year, and the general in November. Texas will just be coming to a boil when New Jersey gets through.

David Hartman, a retired Austin banker and active Republican financier (and a former candidate for state treasurer in 1994) was so unhappy with the House's tax bill he called for House Speaker Tom Craddick should "step aside."Hartman, who is also the chairman of the nonprofit foundation that publishes the Lone Star Report, wrote in that publication that HB 3 includes a payroll tax that in his view "looks like, and smells like, a personal income tax." He said Craddick pushed the bill through with "a heavy gavel" and closed by saying the speaker should be appreciated for working to elect "well-qualified legislators capable of improving Texas state government." His closing looked to some like a call for the speaker's head; to others like a prayer that the Senate would undo what the House did: "It is now time for him [Craddick] to step aside and let them usher in a new efficient and progressive era of state government. It is to be hoped the Senate will prove capable of joining them in this crusade." For the record, he favors a business activity tax as an alternative to the current state franchise tax and says the school finance problem is "a remarkable opportunity" that state leaders ought to exploit to revamp the tax system. "It's about time somebody showed some leadership somewhere in the higher offices of the state," he said. Craddick responded with a letter saying the House's proposed taxes on payrolls aren't income taxes and are based on unemployment insurance taxes that have been in place in the state since 1936. He didn't get into a fight over the weight of his gavel, but did say the bill was the product of work by members of the House. He also quoted Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn (the letter is dated before she concluded HB 3 was out of balance) as saying an earlier version of the bill would add to personal income growth, investment growth and new jobs in the state. Janelle Shepard, meanwhile, wrote in "Texans for Texas" that Comptroller Strayhorn -- the top vote getter among state Republicans -- ought to step down. Shepard is among those listed by Gov. Rick Perry's reelection campaign as an early supporter -- that list went out early this year to highlight some of his support among well-known conservative Republicans. Strayhorn is openly considering a challenge to his reelection bid next year. And Shepard says the comptroller is showboating. Shepard is executive director of Texans for Texas, which publishes periodic email flyers on state issues from a conservative viewpoint (it's free; sign up at www.tx4tx.org). Without repeating her support for Perry, she blasts Strayhorn in the latest edition for flunking the House's tax bill and calls on the "rough grandma" to resign. Strayhorn, you'll remember, said the bill as passed by the House would raise $4 billion less than it spends; House leaders said she ambushed them after they consulted with her. She said they made big last-minute changes without asking her tax wizards about the effects. Shepard sides with the House and says Strayhorn was playing to the spotlights. Strayhorn aides passed when given a change to comment, but noted Shepard's support for Perry.

Hays, Giuliani, Simmons, appointees, births and a duckSusan Hays is resigning as chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party, the victim of infighting spurred by her endorsements -- one on Party letterhead -- of a couple of Republican federal appointees. Those are old news -- Hays has said she'd rather endorse good judges who are Republicans than fight everybody with an elephant pin in George W. Bush's home county. And the Democrats have started winning races there, topped by Lupe Valdez' election as Dallas County sheriff last year. Dallas County Democratic precinct chairs will meet over the weekend to elect her replacement. Hays, an attorney, has held the post for three years. Say goodbye to the artist formerly known as Bracewell & Patterson. The Houston-based firm has a new partner of some renown, former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and has changed its name to Bracewell & Giuliani. The new guy will work out of firm offices New York office. Add a blog to your list. Lobby Duck is an anonymous lobbyist who's writing about the session as if he/she/it were on vacation here. Check it out, at www.lobbyduck.com. The governor appointed Rebecca Simmons of San Antonio to the Fourth Court of Appeals for a term that expires at the next general election. She's currently a state district judge -- the 408th District Court -- and the chair-elect of the Texas Bar Foundation. Paul Green left that court to become a Texas Supreme Court justice in last year's elections. Perry reappointed Charles Aycock of Farwell and Jackie DeNoyelles of Flint to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Aycock is a former Parmer County attorney (that's Amarillo, to you new people), and still lives there. Denoyelles used to work for Perry, in economic development, and now works in the Palestine office of TBPP. And the Guv put Stella Caldera of Houston and Howard Johnsen of Dallas on the Texas Private Security Board, which licenses private investors, security guards and their ilk. Caldera is president and CEO of Etoile, Inc. Johnsen heads Hans Johnsen Co. and is a director of the Visiting Nurse Association of Texas. Born: Christopher John Mark Toureilles, to Rep. Yvonne Gonzalez-Toureilles, D-Alice, on the afternoon of Good Friday. He was 6 lbs. 12 oz., and 20" tall. Everybody's fine.

Will Texas House members have to go a "trust, but verify" strategy before voting on another tax bill? Will the folks in charge get a chance for revenge against the state's chief number cruncher? Does this sound like a bad imitation of a Batman comic book?Their first effort, pushed by House Speaker Tom Craddick and other House leaders (with significant help from allied lobbyists), passed by a narrow margin. A couple of days later, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn bombed it, saying the measure spent around $12 billion on local school property tax relief while raising only $8 billion for that purpose. The tax legislation, in other words, would create a $4 billion deficit. Craddick House leaders said she was either incompetent or dishonest, but state law says it doesn't matter: The only numbers that count, as a matter of law, are those from the comptroller. That's always been the case for state budgets, though lawmakers now argue the point and have seen some sympathy for that view from Attorney General Greg Abbott. But tax bills are different, since the comptroller is not only the official estimator but also the tax collector. As it stands now, what she says goes. Tempers have settled a bit, but there's still a quiet effort in the House to take away some of the comptroller's powers or to punish Strayhorn in some way for embarrassing the House. In the Senate, where the comptroller raised tempers two years ago, she's in better shape; they got their pound of flesh by removing performance reviews -- the e-Texas program -- from her office and putting in the LBB.

Gary Scharrer will remain in Austin, reporting and writing for San Antonio instead of El Paso.Scharrer, who has been working for the El Paso Times for a quarter of a century -- his words, or we'd have been gentler, will leave that paper at the end of April for the Austin Bureau of the San Antonio Express-News. He's been reporting on state politics since 1987 for the paper, and will actually pass his 25-year marker in mid-April. The San Antonio shuffle started with Gardner Selby's move to the Austin American-Statesman.