School officials decide to stay home, awaiting word on two major storms -- a hurricane and a court ruling. Hurricane Rita (and maybe some lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina) convinced two of the state's large education groups not to go to Houston this weekend for a convention. The Texas Association of School Boards and the Texas Association of School Administrators were set to meet at the George R. Brown Convention Center but decided to reschedule that for later. That could have been interesting timing in more ways than one: The Texas Supreme Court (according to its chief justice) has decided the school finance case and is readying its decision for public consumption. They usually announce rulings on Fridays. The court is deciding an appeal of a lower court ruling that set an October 1 deadline for a remedy to the state's school finance system. State District Judge John Dietz said in that ruling that the current system is unconstitutional. 

Kinky Friedman's first advertising is up, but not on TV or radio -- he's relying on its entertainment value to get people to drive viewers to his website. You can view it at www.kinkyfriedman.com/kinkytoon. Campaign folk say the ad won't go up on regular media -- and that the campaign probably won't mess with that until "maybe this time next year" according to Dean Barkley, who's running the show. Their model is a "JibJab" commercial spoof that ran during the 2004 presidential race, becoming an Internet phenomenon and a model for "viral advertising." It depends more on people passing it around than on people sitting in front of their TV sets and happening to see it. Friedman's two-minute spot includes a fair amount of campaign messaging -- some biographical material and swipes at issues like teacher pay, leadership, candidates who run by saying they love babies and Jesus (yup, he puts it pretty much that way) and speaking Spanish and tax cuts to sway voters. And it mixes it with the one-liners and visual jokes and cartoons to keep viewers interested enough to pass it on. It's got crosses and menorahs and a shot at Mississippi. "I don't think Kinky is the type of person who weighs the risk of who he offends," Barkley said. "... He doesn't like the politicization of Jesus." Barkley said they're working on more of the same sort of commercials and said they might come in with another one in about a month.  

Reboot the old Texas Association of Manufacturers. Lobbyists for companies in the manufacturing industries like oil, high tech, chemical, airplane, and timber are talking about reviving that trade group. The gripe of those big manufacturers -- sometimes called the heavy metal lobby -- is that their influence in other groups, like the Texas Association of Business and the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, is diluted. Their particular problem is with TAB, which doesn't lobby on some issues of interest to them because their interests don't parallel those of other businesses in the group. Their two pet peeves are in energy matters -- they spend large chunks of their money powering their manufacturing plants -- and on state taxation. Electric companies have different rates for different types of consumers, and what's good for a big manufacturer might not coincide with what's good for a retailer. That's true in tax policy, too, where relief for homeowners and small businesses from property taxes, for instance, might be financed with increases on bigger businesses. Lobbyists who've been talking about this say the tax bills considered by legislators this year pushed the industries to seriously talk about re-forming the association. They hope to have a "council" in place for the next special session, if there is one, on school finance. If that works, they'll probably formalize it and hang up shingles and hire full-time staff. The timing looks bad for TAB, which has been indicted by a Travis County grand jury on campaign finance and ethics charges related to the 2002 legislative elections. Temple-Inland's Tony Bennett and Rob Looney with the Texas Oil and Gas Association both said that wasn't the trigger -- that they've been talking about the new association for some time. And Bennett said TTARA is more focused on research and doesn't lobby, so the conflicts between diverse members there don't cause the same kinds of problems. Both said Texas is one of the biggest states without such a group and that the companies involved want a unified voice on just a couple of issues. 

Current officeholders and appointed officials have more slack than they might think when it comes to running for state office. The constitution says you have to resign one office to run for another, and also prevents some officials from running for another office during the term of their current office, even if they've quit with time left in the term. But the Secretary of State's election wizards say the best current set of rules can be found in a Texas Supreme Court decision and an opinion from then Attorney General Dan Morales. They read those two documents to mean that candidates who resign from their current elected or appointed jobs before they file for office will be eligible. Note the word "file" in that last sentence; the folks at SOS say announcing for office and raising money and that sort of thing don't count: It's the filing for office that trips the wire. The AG's office has a long version of this online, with the sorts of nuances you'd expect. It's an announcement for office, for instance, if you say you're gonna run in some sort of public forum or in a press release. If you're "seriously considering" it, you're not announcing. Here's a dinger: An announcement by, say, a county official automatically loses her the county job -- even if it turns out she is ineligible for the office she planned to seek.
  We were prompted to ask by the number of people in official jobs who feel the need to legislate (it doesn't apply to current legislators or other elected state officeholders). Examples: Robert Nichols, who quit the Texas Transportation Commission to run for Senate; Frank Denton, an appointee to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation who's in that same contest; Bob Reeves, a member of the Sabine Compact Commission and yes, a candidate for that same SD-3 seat; Mark Ellis, a Houston city councilman running for state Senate in SD-7; a number of school trustees around the state. You get the idea. 

Somebody who wants the constitutional ban on gay marriage to pass has been putting unsigned flyers on car windows in downtown Austin. The one-page missives contend "homosexual activists plan to bus in hundreds of people from other states a month early, in order to vote against the traditional marriage amendment." It tells readers not to "blow this off and not bother to vote." • Gov. Rick Perry got endorsements from the Texas Association of Realtors, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and adds U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio, to the list of fellow politicos who are supporting him. Add to that list the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas • John Courage, a San Antonio Democrat who has been on the ballot several times over the last decade, says he'll run for Congress against U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio. CD-21 runs from San Antonio into Austin. Courage's website: www.courageforcongress.org. • San Antonio lawyer Rene Barrientos, formerly of Eagle Pass, has been telling interested parties there that he's planning to run for state Senate against Frank Madla, D-San Antonio, in SD-19. • Hans Dersch, who won a gold medal in swimming at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, will run for the Lege in HD-54. Rep. Suzanna Gratia Hupp, R-Lampasas, is giving up that spot after this term. Dersch is now a small businessman in Marble Falls, and he's running on lower property taxes, better schools and limited government. No website yet. • Andy Smith, a communications manager at Texas Instruments, will run as a Democrat in HD-107 against Rep. Bill Keffer, R-Dallas. Smith's platform includes lowering local property taxes and reforming legislative and lobby ethics laws. If elected, Smith would be the only openly gay member of the Texas House. His website: www.electandysmith.com. • Austin attorney Hugh Brady thought about running for the House (in HD-48, now held by Rep. Todd Baxter, R-Austin) but has decided against it. It would have been crowded: Three other Democrats have already said they'll run, including Andy Brown, Donna Howard, and Kathy Rider. • The Texas Farm Bureau is holding a campaign seminar for "candidates, their spouses, and others involved or interested in campaigns" in Austin on October 25-26. They try to cover the basics and don't care which party you're in. There's more info on their website, at www.txfb.org. • The Texas Lyceum has put together a statewide conference on education. That's in Fort Worth on October 7 (convenient for people going to a football game in Dallas that weekend) and it's titled "The Texas High School Diploma: What is it worth?" More on that one on their website: www.texaslyceum.org. • Department of Corrections: In a recent item on Alex Castano, a Republican in the HD-47 contest, we had him home-schooling his kids. That was true until this year, when he and his wife enrolled the five oldest (of seven total) in an elementary school in Austin... An item on TRMPAC indictments said the group had routed money to the Texas Republican Party; it should have said to an arm of the national GOP. Sorry, sorry, sorry.