Two of the men indicted by a Travis County grand jury last year on money-laundering charges have been re-indicted, but only because prosecutors wanted to change the wording of the charges against them.  John Colyandro and Jim Ellis are accused of illegally converting corporate money, which can't be used in elections, into money that could be used in elections. The indictments say the two, working for Texans for a Republican Majority PAC, or TRMPAC, sent $190,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee, when then sent checks totaling that same amount to Texas candidates supported by TRMPAC. The word "check" in the original indictment is now replaced with references to "funds." Another campaign operative and eight corporations were also indicted last year, and four of the companies have gotten their charges dropped in return for telling what they know and also by contributing to an ethics program at the University of Texas that has become a pet project of Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle. Representatives of one of the indicted companies, Westar Energy of Kansas, were quoted in The Dallas Morning News saying the company gave the money to TRMPAC to gain access to its founder, U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land. According to the paper, Martha Dickie, an attorney for the company, said in an Austin hearing that Westar hoped to win DeLay's help with energy legislation in Washington. That grand jury, by the way, is a holdover. It was commissioned at the beginning of April to work on this and other cases for three months. Prosecutors say the term was extended for 90 more days, or through the end of September. That might turn out to be the last grand jury in a long procession that began with the 2002 elections. Prosecutors and grand juries have been working for more than two years on their suspicions that business and trade groups illegally coordinated their efforts with almost two dozen campaigns, and that some of those organizations, and their consultants, used corporate contributions in ways that are prohibited by state election laws. Most of the laws they're relying on carry three-year statutes of limitations, prosecutors have said, and so the deadlines fall between now and November.  

Henson takes another shot at the 3rd Court of Appeals Austin attorney Diane Henson, a Democrat, got 48.4 percent of the vote running for the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals last year. Republican Bob Pemberton, the incumbent, won that contest. Henson is taking another shot, this time for the seat that'll be left open when Bea Ann Smith opts against a reelection bid. Henson and Smith used to work together in an Austin law firm.  

The lowest reelection percentage turned in by a state senator last year was 57.1 percent -- hardly anything to worry over. And those senators aren't up for election again until 2008. But several House members won close races and could be called "Most Likely to Have Fine Reasons to Look Over Their Shoulders" while the Legislature is messing around with taxes and school finance. We pulled together a list of members who got elected after either a tight primary election and/or a runoff, a tight general election, or both. Rep. Charles "Doc" Anderson, R-Waco, had tight contests in March and November, for instance. So did Rep. David Leibowitz, D-San Antonio, who won a primary runoff and then, like Anderson, went on to beat an incumbent in November. A couple of caveats before you hit the list. The first is our version of the stockbroker's national anthem: Past performance is not necessarily related to future results. The second: Some of the races on the chart appear to be blowouts; in every such case, you'll find that the owner of the big number squeaked into a runoff and did well, but not without breaking a sweat. And one more: Some of the 2004 elections noted here were downright weird and probably won't be repeated. Several of the Democrats on the list were in tight races because they were running against incumbents. In the future, presumably, most of them won't start the next election cycle as underdogs. On the other hand, the elections were only seven months ago, and school finance is one of those touchy issues that's both important to voters and politically treacherous to solve.

Texas Democrats need to shake off the "Austin insiders," stop trying to "out-Republican the Republicans" and make education the centerpiece of their campaigns, Chris Bell writes in a speech prepared for a party meeting this weekend.  Bell, a former congressman and city councilman from Houston, says the State Democratic Executive Committee needs to try something new: "First, we can't afford another two years in which the people in this room are treated like props while Austin insiders pick our nominees like they're casting another sequel to Cannonball Run." He takes a couple of swipes at Gov. Rick Perry, and says the Democrats should take in moderate Republicans who Perry "is trying to kick out of the [Republican] Party" and "independents who are getting scared about what's going on." Bell, who's exploring a gubernatorial race but hasn't decided whether he'll run next year, takes a whack at "test-driven" education and suggests putting "principals and teachers back in control of schools and classrooms, give them textbooks that aren't censored by partisan ideologues, the materials they need to teach, [and] the technology needed for kids to learn." And he saves some harsh words for his own party: "We've tried to out-Republican the Republicans, and all we've gotten for it is a demoralized base, demoralized donors, demoralized activists, and demoralized leaders... our struggle is to build a majority party that articulates a positive vision of the future that unites the majority of Texans, and we do this by talking about Democratic values, not abandoning them at the first report of gunfire." He apparently plans to make a decision about whether to run within a month.  

The Texas Lottery's fourth director, like each of his predecessors, leaves amidst controversy. UP DATE: His number two will fill in while a replacement search is underway. Reagan Greer hung in for a week at the Texas Lottery Commission, but the agency's executive director resigned late on a Friday afternoon. Cause of death: The agency exaggerated the size of its jackpots at least four times in an attempt to boost sales. Winners on those occasions -- had there been winners on those occasions -- would have been entitled to lower-than-advertised winnings. Greer, a Republican who lost his bid for reelection as Bexar County's district clerk before joining the lottery, wasn't accused of making the decisions on the jackpots, but he's the head guy and took the blame for it. The lying about jackpots was compounded by the agency's firing of its chief financial officer. Lee Deviney was let go for unspecified reasons, but the public facts lead to questions: He recently got a good job review, and he's also the guy who blew the whistle inside the agency on the jackpot inflation. Gary Grief, the number two guy at the Texas Lottery, will be acting executive director while the search is on for that agency's fifth top boss. The agency's chairman, Tom Clowe, plans to put together a special board that will sort through resumes for a new director. And the commissioners have decided that one of them will have to sign off on prize estimates, expanding the board's role in setting policy to include some of the actual day-to-day operations of the lottery.