State District Judge Julie Kocurek, the only Republican with a black robe at Travis County's courthouse, is giving up the second title: She's still a judge, but she's now a Democrat.It's become a commonplace for Democrats to switch to the GOP in Texas — that's been a trend at least since it happened to the Dallas County Courthouse in the early- to mid-1980s. But going the other way is relatively unusual. Kocurek is a George W. Bush appointee who won her first election in 2000 and then won reelection — unopposed — in 2004. She's not up for reelection this year (so she's not forfeiting a spot on the ballot). Kocurek said she'd done some soul-searching and decided "there is no doubt that my beliefs are more in alignment with the principles of the Democratic Party." Voters turned out another Republican — Patrick Keel, a Rick Perry appointee — in 2004. Kocurek was the last Republican left on the district court bench in the state capital.

The Democrats meet in Fort Worth and will decide who's leading the fight for the next two years.Glen Maxey, the former state rep running for Democratic Party Chair, is using a website to defend himself, answering attacks and gossip in a Q&A format that lets him ask himself hostile questions and answer them on his own terms. It's an interesting strategy (and you can read the whole thing on his website, at www.maxeyforchair.com/rumorsandtruth.php. Maxey's running against a semi-incumbent, Young County Attorney Boyd Richie of Graham, who was chosen by the State Democratic Executive Committee to fill what was left of Charles Soechting's term when Soechting resigned. Maxey and his supporters want to modernize the party's turnout and grassroots mechanics and operations. Richie (his website is www.boydrichie.com) has adopted some of that. His supporters also want to keep working on changes already underway in the party and want some distance from Austin Democrats they think are too liberal for the state as a whole and from Maxey in particular, who led state efforts to win the Democratic presidential nomination for Howard Dean in 2004. Less talked about, in public, is that Maxey is the only openly gay man to serve in the Texas Legislature and was the lobbyist for the state's leading gay and lesbian rights group before that. You couldn't afford the beer tab for the number of barroom conversations among both Democrats and Republicans that have been engendered by that simple bit, and it's one of the questions Maxey writes about on his website. Would it help Texas Democrats? Hurt them? Help the Republicans? Hurt them? Have no effect? The Democrats vote on Saturday at their state convention.

The head of the Texas Department of State Health Services — Dr. Eduardo Sanchez — is leaving that post in October. Sanchez took over the old Texas Department of Health from Reyn Archer, a controversial George W. Bush appointee, and stayed on for five years that were marked by a reorganization of all of the state's health and human services agencies. In an email to the agency's employees, he said he'll stick around until October 6, and he said he wants to spend more time with his family and hasn't lined up his next gig. Two state legislators — Sen. Kip Averitt, R-McGregor, and Rep. John Otto, R-Dayton — are negotiating deals to go to work for Ryan & Co., the Dallas-based tax-consulting firm that also employs former state Comptroller John Sharp. Both Averitt and Otto are CPAs, and both were in the thick of things when the Legislature was rewriting the state's business tax laws in special session this spring. Tim Reeves, a Dallas political consultant who's made a specialty of local option wet-dry elections, has sold that business to the Fort Worth-based Eppstein Group and will become that company's main guy in Dallas. Reeves is a Democrat who ran campaigns for former state Sen. David Cain and former Comptroller John Sharp, among others, and the Eppstein Group is a Republican firm. Reeves will stay out of "partisan political races," focusing on public affairs, lobbying, and the kinds of local elections he's been doing. Gov. Rick Perry named Dr. Margaret Carter McNeese to the Texas Medical Board. She's an associate dean and pediatrics professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. Anna Arredondo Chapman of Del Rio is Perry's latest pick for the Texas Physician Assistant Board. She's the acting city secretary for Del Rio. Douglas Jeffrey III of Vernon will be the district attorney for the 46th district, which includes Foard, Hardeman and Wilbarger counties. He's been in private practice and is already on the ballot for a full term. Cara Wood, Assistant Montgomery County Attorney, will take over the 284th Judicial District Court there until the next election; she beat state Rep. Ruben Hope in the Republican primary runoff for that spot in April. Perry chose Jerry Hennigan of Arlington to wear the robes in the 324th Judicial District Court. He's an associated judge there and also won a GOP primary runoff in April, so he'll be on the November ballot. The governor picked Thomas Weir Labatt III of San Antonio for the Texas Water Development Board. He's president of Labatt Management Co., and "agent-in-charge" of an Edwards County Ranch. Perry named Grace Kunde, a Seguin attorney, and retired banker Tilmon Lee Walker of New Braunfels to the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority Board of Directors. House Speaker Tom Craddick appointed Dr. Joseph Bailes of The Woodlands to the Texas Cancer Council. Former Public Utility Commissioner Karl Rabago leaves the Houston Advanced Research Center for the AES Corp. in Arlington, Virginia. He'll work on global regulatory affairs there. Press corps moves: James Bernsen is leaving the press box for the field, moving from the Lone Star Report to spokesman for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's reelection campaign. Deaths: Federal District Judge William Steger of Tyler, who once ran for governor of Texas (in 1960) and who headed the Texas GOP from 1969-1970. He was 85.

The major parties got all the ink, but Texas Libertarians filled out the top of their statewide ticket while the Democrats had the center ring.Scott Lanier Jameson came out of a three-way contest to snag the nomination for U.S. Senate. Everyone else who made the ballot was uncontested. The Libertarian ballot includes these candidates: James Werner, Governor; Judy Baker, Lieutenant Governor; Jon Roland, Attorney General; Mike Burris, Comptroller of Public Accounts; Michael French, Land Commissioner; Clay Woolam, Agriculture Commissioner; Tabitha Serrano, Railroad Commissioner; Tom Oxford, Chief Justice, Supreme Court; Wade Wilson, Justice, Supreme Court, Place 2; Jerry Adkins, Justice, Supreme Court, Place 4; Todd Phillippi, Justice, Supreme Court, Place 6; Jay Cookingham, Justice, Supreme Court, Place 8; Quanah Parker, Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 7; and Dave Howard, Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 8. That party's new chairman is Patrick Dixon; the delegates elected Kevin Tunstall to serve as vice chairman.

You and Kinky and Carole and Rick and Chris and the rest of us will find out next week whether the two independent candidates running for governor will be on the ballot.Secretary of State Roger Williams hired an outside firm to type in all the names on the Friedman and Strayhorn petitions and they're supposed to finish their work on Monday. An announcement, according to a spokesman for Williams, will be forthcoming by mid-week at the latest. The lists, once entered in computers, will be compared against each other — you can't sign two petitions — and then against the list of registered voters — you can't sign, or "vote," unless you're registered. Friedman and Strayhorn each need 45,540 legit signatures to get on the ballot. Friedman turned in 169,574 signatures for checking. Strayhorn turned in 223,000. Once that's over with, the SOS can take up the question of what versions of the candidate's names will be on the ballot, assuming everybody makes it onto the ballot. James Richard Perry wants on as Rick, as he's been identified on past ballots. Richard Friedman is best known as Kinky. Robert Christopher Bell prefers Chris. And Carole Keeton Strayhorn wants to get on the ballot as "Grandma," a name she's used with her grandchildren and in past political ads that refer to her as "One Tough Grandma." She's known as OTG by at least one of her competitors' campaigns, but she's never been Grandma on a ballot before, and it'll be up to Williams to decide whether it flies this time.

Richie, in a runoff.Glen Maxey's pitch to Texas Democrats included a parallel to the plan National Democratic Chair Howard Dean is pitching. Both advocate broad organization over targeted efforts. Dean calls it the 50-state plan. Maxey didn't have a name, but had a similar argument: "We're targeting ourselves to death in this state," he told members of the Tejano Democrats Caucus. And he echoed a line he used earlier talking to the San Antonio Express-News: "It's not a Republican state because there are more Republicans. It's a Republican state because more Republicans vote." Maxey, who won a House seat in a Latino district in 1990 (you can still find some Austin Hispanics who haven't gotten over it), told that caucus he'd be on their side of the fight: "The state leadership needs to look like you and I'm here to help you do that." Boyd Richie's pitch included some elements first presented by Maxey, like an emphasis on technologies that can make voter turnout more efficient for one side or the other. He boasted that he'd attracted $300,000 in new money and pledges for the party during his interim stint as chairman and touted the lawsuit the party filed to keep U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, on the ballot on the eve of their convention. They got a temporary restraining order that froze Republican efforts to replace DeLay on the ballot as the convention began and Republicans are now trying to move that to federal court. Richie got a rise out of the Democrats when he said DeLay moved his residence to Virginia "just because he knew he was going to get his butt whipped and decided to take his marbles and go home." For conventioneers, that was red meat. Charlie Urbina-Jones appealed to delegates to toss the consultants out of control in the Democratic Party and said the past elections found Democrats "left like brides waiting in churches." He blames consultants — no names got into the discussion — for a series of losses that have left the party with no statewide officeholders and holding onto minority control in three legislative areas they controlled ten years ago: the congressional delegation and the state House and Senate. Richie almost won election on the first round of voting — a fourth candidate, Lakesha Rogers, got a handful of votes but Urbina-Jones got enough votes to push the floor battle to a runoff. It became clear before the votes were all counted that Richie was the winner (in the end, he had over 53 percent of the vote), and Maxey conceded. Richie finished it off with a pep talk: "We leave here today united. We are going to kick rump in November."

He's still mostly ignoring Kinky Friedman, but Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell has trained his sights on Republican-turned-independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn, emphasizing what she's got in common with incumbent Gov. Rick Perry.Bell's trying to keep Democrats together while pushing Republicans to choose between the governor and the comptroller they elected four years ago. It's a new tack from a candidate who had been focused mainly on Perry. And it produced a blast from Strayhorn, who insists that the contest is between her, Perry, and some also-rans. All this comes a week after Friedman started talking about policy for the first time, laying out his ideas on ethics reform. Bell, whose ethics complaint in the House was an early volley in Democrat's efforts to sink Tom DeLay, started his visit to the Democratic convention with visits to their special interest caucuses. At the labor caucus, he got a check from the Texas AFL-CIO's political action committee. This happened on Friday, June 9. "It's great to be accepting money," he said, "in front of a large group of people on Tom DeLay's last day in office." His pitch to delegates actually worked better in his short presentations to the various Democratic caucuses than in his speech to the convention. The short form: Perry and Strayhorn will split the Republican vote and if Democrats stick together, they'll be strong enough to win the race. "It is a strange year, my friends, and I'm not just talking about Kinky Friedman," Bell said. Here's the longer form: Strayhorn's votes, in Bell's analysis, will come from Perry. In recent elections, Republicans have landed 52 to 60 percent of the vote in contested races. If Strayhorn or even Friedman cut Perry down into the 35 to 40 percent range, a Democrat who gets all of his base vote — that would be Bell — would have enough to win. In his formulation, 60 percent of Texans appear ready to vote against Perry. (The view from the Perry camp, which we've written about before this, is that he'll get the Republican base vote, Bell will get the Democratic base vote, and everybody else will split what's left. Oh, and they say the Republican base vote is ten percentage points bigger than the Democratic base vote right now.) The bit of information that seems to surprise people wherever this race is discussed is that someone can become governor of Texas — or president of the United States, for that matter — with less than 50 percent of the vote. Ann Richards did it in 1990, for instance, when she beat Clayton Williams with slightly less than half the votes cast (the rest went to Libertarian Jeff Daiell and some write-in candidates). Bell told one group that he has to overcome the conventional wisdom of the race: "People get excited about campaigns when they see the opportunity to win."