The election's over, but the latest battle for the House Speakership is just heating up in the blogosphere as in real life. Bloggers are also talking about the folks who won on November 4, and the ones who didn't. There are even some nonpartisan looks at voting results.

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Eakersp-ay Hearsay

Setting the scene for the conflict, the Dallas Morning News's Trail Blazers posts a video by the Associated Press's Jay Root about House Speaker Tom Craddick's "stand" to maintain his position at the end of the 2007 Lege session.

"Presently, prevailing wisdom here at the capitol is that if Republicans retained control of the House even by one seat, Craddick would win a fourth two-year term as speaker," says Rep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, in his A Capitol Blog. But Postcards from the Lege, the Austin American-Statesman's blog, writes why Craddick might be better off with a 75-75 tie than with a one-Republican majority.

By Capitol Annex's count, there's a good chance Craddick has 77 votes. He handicaps some Speaker candidates here. According to Blue Dot Blues, "the buzz is deafening that Democrats will back Rep. Pete Gallego (Alpine) for speaker." And Eye on Williamson thinks Rep. Dan Gattis, R-Georgetown, seems an "unlikely" Speaker choice "because of his relative youth."

Hoping that Texas House Democrats will stay united to dethrone Craddick, Burnt Orange Report swears off using the term "Craddick D" ever again. "The Ds didn't get enough done on Nov. 4th," muse says.

BurkaBlog says Craddick deserves credit for one of three seats the Republicans picked up, and deserves blame for the six they lost. He also outlines how the Democrats are making sure they'll lose again this time.

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Olive Wreaths

Pres. Barack Obama? Who woulda thunk it? Molly Ivins, apparently, says Texas Observer Blog, with photo evidence. Meanwhile, Trail Blazers was present for the Obama victory party at Grant Park in Chicago. And A Capitol Blog receives an invitation for the January inauguration in Washington, D.C.

KVUE's Political Junkie live-blogged from the Democrats' victory party in Austin at the Driskill Hotel here, here, here and here. Newsdesk, the Austin Chronicle's blog, was there, too. And so was In the Pink Texas.

Noting that every statewide Dem lost, Texas Cloverleaf expresses doubts about the efficacy of Obama's coattails in Texas. Obama performed worse than John Kerry in 100 Texas counties, says Annex. [eds. note: The New York Times has a neat map online that compares this election, by county, to any presidential race back to 1992. Click on Texas to enlarge it, and play away.]

"Democrat resurgence?" Not in Williamson County, says Williamson Republic, despite the victory of Democrat Diana Maldonado over Republican Bryan Daniel. Eye on Williamson has analysis. Meanwhile, A trainwreck in Maxwell is happy that Medina County went 100 percent Republican, "considering it is on the tan side." [eds. note: Medina County's population is 45.5 percent Hispanic and 2.2 percent African American, according to the Census Bureau.]

Steve Walker of Walker Report was elected Justice of the Peace in San Antonio, while Junkie talks to Trail Blazer Wayne Slater about Texans who could join Obama's administration.

Arguably the biggest winners on Election Day are the five folks who tied for the title of "Biggest Baddest Politically Savvy Mo-Fos in Texas," via Letters From Texas. And here's how the Trail Blazers fared with their presidential predictions.

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Sour Grapes

Policy Spotlight gives credit to Democratic leadership and reflects on the state of the Republican Party. The Travis Monitor has a 10-point strategy for victory, while Red Ink: Texas has six things the GOP needs to do in the next two years.

Before the election, PatriotWriter vowed that she'd move to "Alaska. Or at least Houston" in case of an Obama victory. (We'll see...) "Good job you liberal jerk-offs," says 123beta.

"It could have been much, much worse!" says Lone Star Times, who live-blogged the election for KHOU-TV. Follow this link for reader reactions to Obama's win. "Disappointed as I may be, I recognize the historical significance of this moment," says Texas Rainmaker, who was at the polls in Lake County, Indiana, on election night.

Judge for yourself if this post by Pondering Penguin comes off as a bit bitter. That's what the GOP gets for nominating a RINO who believes in global warming, among other things, says Texican Tattler.

UrbanGrounds live-blogs the election, then writes a congratulatory post to the Democrats that begins graciously and goes from there. Also kicking it at the Four Seasons for the Austin Republicans' election night party was yeah, right, whatever, who pledges not to "demonize" Obama the way Democrats did George W. Bush.

Rhymes with Right isn't happy that Obama's the President-Elect, but is proud of America anyway. Plowing, Sowing, and an Occasional Harvest finds solace in the Bible. And A Keyboard and a .45 wonders how Obama garnered the Hispanic vote.

Here's the complete text of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rick Noriega's concession statement, from Texas on the Potomac, the Houston Chronicle's blog. PoliTex, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's blog, has a concession email from Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth, who was ousted by Wendy Davis. And Texas Kaos has a concession post from Charles Randolph, who lost to Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford.

BeldarBlog prays for Obama to correct his flaws. North Texas Conservative has a very long post filled with after-election thoughts. Meanwhile, Big White Hat finds victory in defeat. And Discerning Texan wins Headline of the Week award for an entry on post-election blogging plans for conservatives, titled, "Time for a Vacation."

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So That's What Happened

Off the Kuff analyzes the 2004 and 2008 turnouts of mostly Hispanic and Black state rep. districts in Houston. And Mike Falick's Blog links to a site with historical results of presidential elections.

Here's the "Criminal Justice Implications of 2008 Elections" from Grits for Breakfast. And the Houston Chronicle consolidated all of its bloggers' election-related posts into one Election 2008 blog. Check it out here.

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Misc.

Local bloggers provide PoliTex with some of their favorite posts from the election season. And Rhetoric & Rhythm posts the Doonesbury strip the San Antonio Express-News wouldn't run.

Here's an interesting post from Rick Perry vs. The World: "Interpret this for me. Lots of google hits on this page over the past few days for some variation of 'rick perry term limits.'" (The blog is back, he says, because it "might actually happen this time.")

It's curtains for muckraker, who posts for the final time after picking up and moving to southern Illinois. And Friends of Justice is passing the hat around in order to stay afloat.

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This edition of Out There was compiled and written by Patrick Brendel, who hails from Victoria but is semi-settled in Austin. We cherry-pick the state's political blogs each week, looking for news, info, gossip, and new jokes. The opinions here belong (mostly) to the bloggers, and we're including their links so you can hunt them down if you wish. Our blogroll — the list of Texas blogs we watch — is on our links page, and if you know of a Texas political blog that ought to be on it, just shoot us a note. Please send comments, suggestions, gripes or retorts to Texas Weekly editor Ross Ramsey.

A group of 12 13 House Republicans wants another two years for House Speaker Tom Craddick.Under Rep. Wayne Christian's letterhead, the lawmakers list legislative accomplishments during Craddick's six-year tenure and say those things were done in spite of obstacles "including unprecedented efforts to disrupt the work of the House of Representatives" by parties not named in the letter. A second letter, over Leo Berman's signature, adds him to the mix. The lawmakers named (no signatures on the copy we got) are Warren Chisum of Pampa, Linda Harper-Brown of Irving, Carl Isett of Lubbock, Phil King of Weatherford, Jodie Laubenberg of Parker, Ken Paxton of McKinney, Dan Flynn of Van, Geannie Morrison of Victoria, Bryan Hughes of Mineola, Bill Callegari of Katy, Larry Taylor of Friendswood, and Christian. Craddick needs 63 more votes than that to win a majority in the House.

Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving, won another term in the Legislature, and the Republicans hold the narrowest possible majority, with 76 House members to the Democrats' 74.Dallas County went through the military ballots that hadn't been counted in HD-105, adding five votes to her total. Provisional ballots were lopsided in favor of her opponent, but not enough so to flip the results. She ended up with a 20-vote lead (out of 40,753 cast) over Democrat Bob Romano, who's also from Irving. The panel inspecting the votes in that race had 231 provisional ballots to look at — ballots that had been set aside because of questions about the eligibility of the voters. Romano won 36 votes there, to Harper-Brown's 24. That wasn't enough to do the trick. He won in early voting. She won on Election Day. And with everything counted, she's the winner by a nose. James Baird, the Libertarian in that race, got 1,061 votes, keeping both of the major party candidates from crossing the 50 percent mark. A full recount could follow. Harper-Brown has been in the House for three terms; she's part of the big 2002 class that gave the Republican Party its first Texas House majority since Reconstruction. And she's a backer of House Speaker Tom Craddick, who is being challenged for that position and who, like his rivals, hasn't yet amassed the votes he needs to win another term.

Maybe you remember laughing about this cockamamie idea, or maybe this scheme. But Carole Keeton Strayhorn wasn't kidding — she is running for mayor.

Strayhorn met Wednesday evening near the Capitol with around 200 potential supporters, asked them all to write down four things they'd like the next mayor to do. She told the group that she'll be raising money — Louise Epstein will be her treasurer — and a full-blown announcement of her candidacy will come after the holidays.

The theme is "Carole for Mayor."

One attendee told us that she didn't use the word grandma at all; she's campaigned for the last few years as "One Tough Grandma." Among the attendees: Former Austin Mayor Lee Cooke, former UT Chancellor Bill Cunningham.

Strayhorn was already mayor of Austin once — after she'd been on the Austin school board and before she was a state insurance commissioner, railroad commissioner, and comptroller. She's lost three elections, including a run for Congress against former U.S. Rep. J.J. "Jake" Pickle, her initial bid for railroad commission, and her bid, as an independent in 2006, for governor against Rick Perry, Chris Bell and Kinky Friedman.

Texas Monthly got all some of the candidates for Speaker of the House to say why they want the job and what they'd do if they got it.Here's the link to "Speaker Up."

A peculiar statistic from the unofficial returns on this year's general election: Election Day voting was virtually the same in the presidential election this year as in the gubernatorial election two years ago.

This year, 2,701,376 people turned out on E-Day, about 33.5 percent of those who voted. Two years ago, 2,704,245 showed up on Election Day, about 61.5 percent of those who voted.

Total voting was higher this year, even though the Election Day numbers were flat: 8,053,036 voted in this year's election, while 4,399,068 voted two years ago.

Another note while you're looking at this chart: The raw number of voters is steadily increasing (goober years are lower than prexy years, but the trend line is up). But the turnout — as a percentage of what the Census folk call "Voting Age Population" — is slipping, or flat. In gubernatorial years starting five elections ago, the numbers were: 1990, 31.1 percent; 1994, 33.6 percent; 1998, 26.5 percent; 2002, 29.4 percent; and 2006, 26.4 percent. In presidential years, the series goes like so: 1992, 47.6 percent; 1996, 41 percent; 2000, 44.3 percent; 2004, 46.1 percent; and 2008, 45.4 percent.

This was the second presidential election in a row where early voting exceeded Election Day voting. But in 2004, when early voting accounted for 51 percent of the total, it was fairly close. This time, the early vote accounted for two of every three votes — 66.5 percent. The state hasn't done that in a gubernatorial election year. The highest in recent history was in 2000, when 38.8 percent of the voters went early.

Only 88 of the state's 254 counties had early turnouts of less than 50 percent of the total vote. In Dickens County, only 17 people voted early, out of 972 voters. That's an early turnout of 1.7 percent.

In Wichita County, 80.6 percent of the votes were in the box before Election Day. Early voting accounted for more than 70 percent of the total in some of the state's biggest counties, including Bexar, Brazoria, Collin, Denton, Fort Bend, Lubbock, Tarrant, Travis, and Williamson.

Obama won only 28 of Texas' 254 counties, but they included some of the big ones. McCain won by nearly one million votes (946,854, to be unofficially exact). He did it by beating the Democrat in 226 counties, racking up an advantage of 1.4 million votes. Obama offset that with the 464,551 margin he amassed in 28 counties.What's interesting, though, is what counties fell where. McCain did best in suburban and large rural counties (Tarrant County being the big exception). Obama did best in urban counties and in South Texas.

Third-party candidates were a non-starter in the presidential race, getting only 64,124 of the 8.1 million votes cast.

Remember when everyone was looking at the numbers from the top 15 counties and talking about a Democratic turnout? They weren't that far off, but those counties weren't representative of the state. If only the top 15 counties had counted, Obama would have won in Texas. Those counties, taken together, voted blue; the margins there were obliterated by the rest of the state's voters. That was even more pronounced in the 10 largest counties. And the keys to the Democrat's victories there were Travis and Dallas counties, each of which gave Obama margins of more than 110,000 votes.

A few big counties didn't tip hard to one candidate or the other. In Harris County, the spread only accounted for 1.6 percent of the vote. It went to Obama, who picked up almost 19,000 votes over McCain, but that big number is, in that county, little more than a rounding error. Fort Bend County surprised a lot of watchers by almost landing at center court: Only 4,710 votes out of 102,846 separated the two candidates. Take that county out of the reliably Republican column. The difference in Bexar County was only 5.5 percent; Obama got the 29,091 vote difference, but it wasn't a landslide.

The smallest margin, in raw votes, was in Kenedy County, where Obama finished 15 votes ahead of McCain. Next in line was Hudspeth County, where McCain won by 28 votes.

You'll be sitting there in the Texas House in a few months, all set for the slow drone of another legislative day, when two dozen TV cameras come out of nowhere.

We call them TV bills, and the first legislative filings have plenty of potential (this was the first week bills could be filed for the 2009 session). This stuff is sometimes serious, sometimes goofy. It grabs headlines. It sucks the air out of everything else, eats time and attention and gets more press than some of the big things, like the budget and big industry regulation. Remember the cheerleader booty bill a couple of sessions ago seeking to regulate overtly sexual dancing at high school football games? The HPV vaccine? School vouchers? TV City.

Sample bill captions — the titles on the legislation — from the early offerings for the next legislative session:

• Relating to providing Internet access in certain local public libraries.

• Relating to the determination of the appraised value of a residence homestead for ad valorem taxation.

• Relating to an offense of using a wireless communication device while operating a motor vehicle in a school crossing zone.

• Relating to prohibitions on the use of a wireless communication device while operating a motor vehicle.

• Relating to repeal of authority for the establishment and operation of the Trans-Texas Corridor.

• Relating to disclosing information to persons obtaining emergency contraception.

• Relating to the procedures for registering to vote and accepting a voter at a polling place.

• Relating to requiring a voter to present proof of identification.

• Relating to limits on political contributions and expenditures in connection with certain legislative and executive offices.

• Relating to the use of direct recording electronic voting machines.

• Relating to the limitation on increases in the appraised value of a residence homestead for ad valorem taxation.

• Relating to the election of the commissioner of insurance.

• Relating to eliminating automatic admission to certain public institutions of higher education based on high school grade point average.

• Relating to regulation of property and casualty insurance rates.

• Relating to a limitation on the amount of tuition charged by public institutions of higher education.

A lobbyist who doesn't want his name in this newsletter or anywhere else offered up a new phrase for this phase of the race for speaker: Legislative Osteoporosis. He's referring to bone loss in the spines of some lawmakers.

Have a little sympathy. They're stuck between Speaker Tom Craddick and a sea of contenders for his job. Everybody's claiming momentum, but only one list has been made public and it's only got 13 names on it.

The Democrats claim 64 signatures on the Not Craddick pledge we wrote about last week. That's a lot, if they're all there and all telling the truth, but it's not the 76 required to knock the guy off.

You can add eight to ten Republicans to that if you include those who say they want to be speaker and those who say, directly or not, that they're looking for a change.

That's not 76, either, but it's close enough to give you goosebumps.

The short list is from a letter of support for Craddick from 13 Republicans. That's the 98-pounder on this beach and it caused some nervous giggles in the House and in the lobby world, but at least they're showing their names. That's unusual at this point.

They got some clarity out of Linda Harper-Brown's apparent win in HD-105. If that holds, the Republicans are in the majority. A Democratic speaker would be unlikely, so you can halve the number of candidates for now (a recount is likely).

That helped a bit. But in fact, there's been almost no public movement in days, as members tentatively feel their way though this.

They don't like it. Nobody wants to land on the losing side, whether they like Craddick or not, and that might be the incumbent's strongest selling point at the moment.

Delay works against him, one argument goes, because this institutional hesitation underscores his weak position and gives his foes time to forge deals and work on wavering lawmakers. The other side of that: Craddick's done this before. He's good at it, and the fact that the other side hasn't closed the deal is giving him time to talk to enough people to win him a fourth term.

Go back to those numbers, though: House Democratic leader Jim Dunnam of Waco sent a memo to his colleagues saying they've got 64. They're not naming names, but that'd be a helluva bluff.

The next play might come in Bastrop County, where the Republicans hold their first post-election gathering next week at the Hyatt Lost Pines Resort. They'll get a head-count, or might get one, and Craddick will have a solid idea of whether he can survive in a chamber with 76 Republicans and 74 Democrats.

It's probably not that important at this point to get 76 signatures on the Democrat's petition. They've framed the issue — keep him or quit him — and managed to make the scramble to replace him a secondary issue. That sort of scramble, you'll recall, helped undo the challengers to Craddick two years ago.

We're sticking with that headline for another week.

The current list of challengers on the GOP side includes Byron Cook of Corsicana, Dan Gattis of Georgetown, Delwin Jones of Lubbock, Jim Keffer of Eastland, Edmund Kuempel of Seguin, Tommy Merritt of Longview, Jim Pitts of Waxahachie, and Burt Solomons of Carrollton.

It seems like ancient history in some ways, but the scrap over the Texas Two-Step — the caucus/popular vote process for choosing presidential candidates in the Democratic primaries — is coming to a head.The Democrats came out of the primaries, and then out of their convention in Austin a few months later, with a promise to reexamine their oddball system. Sen. Royce West of Dallas headed a panel that's been around the state hearing from Democrats. Now they're ready to talk about changes. Party officials have said they want to tweak the system without killing it; others want to nix the caucus half of the deal and are loud about it, operating under the banner of Change the Caucus.

Refresher course: Democrats in Texas vote in primaries, then go to caucus meetings to choose delegates for their candidates. Barack Obama lost to Hillary Clinton in the voting, then beat her in the caucuses. They split the delegates and the whole confusing thing managed to irk Democrats on both sides. They meet Friday of this week for the last time. Recommendations will follow.

• The Secretary of State will canvass general election votes as early as next week (11/19). Candidates who want recounts have until two days after that's done to make their requests; after that, they have to live with what they got.

• Brian Walker of Tatum hasn't yet decided whether to ask for a recount. He also lost to an incumbent, but to a Democrat — Chuck Hopson of Jacksonville. The spread in that race was 102 votes and the four counties are split in their voting systems: In two, it's paper ballots; in two others, voters can choose between voting on a paper ballot or on an electronic ballot.

• Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst hosted a fundraiser for Republican Joan Huffman this week. Coming up: A funder for Democrat Chris Bell at Sen. Kirk Watson's house in Austin. Huffman and Bell face off in a special election runoff for the SD-17 Senate seat next month. Gov. Rick Perry hasn't yet set the date for that. The canvass in that election is set for Tuesday and Perry has to pick a date between 20 and 45 days after that canvass. That would put it somewhere after the first week in December.

• Several commercial real estate trade groups have formed a super-group — the Real Estate Development Association of Texas — to handle legislative worries for all of them. The joiners include the Real Estate Council of Austin, the Real Estate Council (Dallas), Greater Fort Worth Real Estate Council, the Houston Real Estate Council, Houstonians for Responsible Growth, and the Real Estate Council of San Antonio.

After the elections but before the (national) recounts, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison told a pack of reporters in Austin that she didn't see anything in the election results that would change her plans. Now there's a calculation about the GOP's status in the U.S. Senate to consider if she plans to step down early to run for governor.

Hutchison wasn't explicit about her plans, but she's a terrific political flirt, acknowledging her interest in running for governor without actually declaring her candidacy.

"I'm on the same course that I have been on. Nothing has changed my views about what I'll be starting to look at," she said.

"Let me say that I have looked at this from all angles, and I believe that from the standpoint of Texas in the Senate, if I did decide to step down in order to run for governor, that Texas would be, actually, well-positioned because John Cornyn will have had a full term and this is really a better time to be bringing someone new in, with seniority, to build seniority, when you've got someone that has it. Four years ago would have been less advantageous. But I think today is really the right time for Texas. I always think if you can that it's better to have one person with seniority and then the new person coming in, so that's about where we would be if I made that decision, which I have not," she said.

The situation in the U.S. Senate has changed some, but it's not clear that would affect her trajectory. And there's no requirement that she step down to run for governor. After all, Barack Obama and John McCain remained in the Senate while they were running for president.

So what if Democrats in Georgia, Minnesota, and Alaska pull rabbits out of their hats and bring their party's number in the U.S. Senate to 60? What if two come through and bring it to 59? Does that play into Hutchison's decision?

Alaska is in an excruciatingly slow count to determine whether Ted Stevens, the Republican incumbent, won his reelection bid. He was behind Mark Begich at this writing, but they're still tabulating. In Minnesota, they're recounting the results that put Republican Norm Coleman a couple of hundred votes ahead of comedian/writer Al Franken. And in Georgia, a runoff will decide whether Republican Saxby Chambliss comes back or is replaced by Jim Martin.

Those outcomes could bring the Senate closer to 60, which is the number of senators it takes to remove political minorities' legislative obstructions. If the GOP holds 41 seats, they have the power, if they can stay together, to block votes on legislation they don't like.

So Hutchison could have some extra things to think about. Should she resign early to prepare for a state election? Would that open up a national fight over her seat, with both parties trying to get an edge on that magic number?

The arguments for leaving the Senate: She would be able to devote all of her time and energy to the governor's race — raising money and cooking up policy ideas — without the heavy workload and the risky votes that come with the start of a new administration. It would signal to any remaining doubters that she is serious about the state bid and isn't backing out. And it would let her spend her time in Texas instead of shuttling between her homes in Dallas and the Washington, D.C. area. The arguments against: She gives up her power and a position that allows her to remain easily in the public eye. She isn't in Texas during a legislative session, with its temptation to do a running commentary on the Legislature and on the governor she's likely to face in the 2010 GOP primary. And she can raise as much, or more, money as a sitting U.S. Senator than as a former one. All of the federal money she raises can be converted, with few restrictions, to a state race.

If she bails early, Gov. Rick Perry will appoint her temporary successor and call a special election for the person who'll then hold the seat until 2012, when her term ends. Hutchison got to the job that way, knocking off U.S. Sen. Bob Krueger and a couple of dozen also-rans. The onus would be on Perry to appoint someone — and on the Republicans to back someone — who didn't mess up the numbers in the U.S. Senate.

If, after all that, the new Texas senator is a Democrat, the blame probably wouldn't go to Hutchison. It'd go first to the Republican who lost the race, and then to the governor who appointed that person.

What the pollster saw. What the prosecutor said. What made the Democrats jump. And what the Legislature will be allowed to spend.

Republican pollster Mike Baselice says the base margin separating Republicans and Democrats in this state election narrowed by 3.62 percentage points. Republicans retain an advantage, but it's skinnier than before. He had a couple other notes of note: Only a quarter of the total vote was cast in places where the GOP's fortunes improved, while 54 percent of the votes were recorded in places where Democratic fortunes improved. Baselice was on a panel talking to the Professional Advocacy Association of Texas.

• That crowd also heard from the new ethics sheriff in town: Travis County District Attorney-elect Rosemary Lehmberg, who'll replace Ronnie Earle in January.

She told the crowd not to expect any change in that office's emphasis on ethics, and told the lobbyist that this is "a most troubling era for your profession in history, particularly in Washington."

Her background was in the trial courts, and she said her approach is more "evidence-based" than Earle's "philosophically based" approach to cases, but left the impression that she's not going easy on people who get out of line.

"I am always ready to hear from someone who made a mistake, but I have little tolerance for those trying to work around the law and even less for those who thumb their nose at the law," she said.

An example of the latter? "Extravagant trips and benefits [to lawmakers] that we hear about... will always be given close scrutiny in my office," Lehmberg said.

The new D.A. said she wants to work with lobbyists and others when possible and said her office has published some guidelines on corporate involvement in politics.

She also said, unrelated to all of that, that her office will have a full-time environmental prosecutor on board early next year and that she's been talking to folks at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality about that. Her office has statewide jurisdiction on some of the issues regulated by that agency.

• Secret ballots are legal in races for House Speaker, according to Democrats reacting to a newspaper quote from the Speaker's office.

Alexis DeLee, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Tom Craddick, was quoted in the San Antonio Express-News saying, "The Texas Constitution requires a record vote to be open if requested by three members on any question. The House could close the ballot, but it will have to be open if requested by three members."

But such ballots were ruled constitutional when the issue arose two years ago, and the Texas Supreme Court gave them a green light just a few years ago when the Senate was electing a presiding officer to replace Rick Perry, who left that gig to become Guv when George W. Bush moved to Washington, D.C.

Secretary of State Roger Williams — presiding over the House two years ago — turned back a challenge to secret ballots, citing House history and practice and the court ruling. That's recounted in a memo to Democratic colleagues from Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, who ends with a towel snap: "So the next time you hear someone in Craddick's office say that the House can't use a secret ballot, you can tell them they're flat wrong."

• Brian Walker, the Republican who lost by 102 votes to Rep. Chuck Hopson, D-Jacksonville, wants a recount. He says that "credible reports" indicate some ballots in that HD-11 race were improperly rejected.

• And the Legislative Budget Board adopted a fairly conservative limit on budget growth that will hold increases in spending on undedicated state tax revenue to 9.14 percent, or about $6.7 billion. The LBB chose from five estimates of how the state economy will grow over the next biennium, ranging from a low of 7.74 percent to a high of 14.82 percent. And the limit they've chosen can be manipulated some. The comptroller's revenue estimate isn't out, and the numbers there set the actual numbers on the dollar limit. And any emergency appropriations that spend money in the current budget — that's spending that happens before next September — will raise the base amount. Raise the base, and you raise the limit.