The Texas House has 150 members, and all of them are on the ballot. But not all of them have races, and not all of those with races are in trouble. More than 60 percent of the people on the House ballot have either no opponent at all (63 of them), or no major-party opposition (30). The "practically elected" class includes 39 Democrats and 54 Republicans; 11 of them will be entering as freshmen. Some are unopposed: Democrats (32): Allan Ritter, Joe Deshotel, Ryan Guillen, Sergio Muñoz Jr.*, Rene Oliveira, Eddie Lucio III, Armando Martinez, Aaron Peña, Richard Raymond, Edmund Kuempel, Chente Quintanilla, Naomi Gonzalez*, Marisa Marquez, Tracy King, Mark Veasey, Eric Johnson, Rafael Anchia, Roberto Alonzo, Helen Giddings, Barbara Mallory Caraway, Yvonne Davis, Trey Martinez Fischer, Joe Farias, Ruth McClendon, Mike Villarreal, Alma Allen, Sylvester Turner, Armando Walle, Harold Dutton, Carol Alvarado, Borris Miles*, and Garnet Coleman. Republicans (31): Dan Flynn, Lance Gooden*, Bryan Hughes, Jim Pitts, Fred Brown, Lois Kolkhorst, Brandon Creighton, Mike "Tuffy" Hamilton, Dennis Bonnen, Geanie Morrison, Todd Hunter, Jimmy Don Aycock, Jim Keffer, Tan Parker, Van Taylor*, Jerry Madden, Rick Hardcastle, Ken Paxton, Drew Darby, Tryon Lewis, Tom Craddick, Charles Perry*, John Smithee, Warren Chisum, Jodie Laubenberg, Kelly Hancock, Vicki Truitt, Charlie Geren, Joe Straus, Wayne Smith, and Gary Elkins. Others have only minor-party opponents: Democrats (7): Ron Reynolds*, Jose Manuel Lozano*, Dawnna Dukes, Elliott Naishtat, Joe Pickett, Jose Menendez, and Joaquin Castro. Republicans (23): Leo Berman, David Simpson*, Rob Eissler, John Otto, Charles Schwertner*, Larry Taylor, Randy Weber, Harvey Hilderbran, Ralph Sheffield, Sid Miller, Phil King, Larry Phillips, Myra Crownover, Burt Solomons, Lanham Lyne*, Susan King, Doug Miller, Diane Patrick, Mark Shelton, Angie Chen Button, Jim Jackson, Allen Fletcher and Beverly Woolley. Those with asterisks are freshmen, and that group includes Van Taylor, who's already been sworn in to replace Brian McCall, and Borris Miles, who served one term, lost, and is now on his way back in.

Here's the Texas House list, all of them Democrats: Valinda Bolton of Austin, Ellen Cohen of Houston, Jim Dunnam of Waco, Kirk England of Grand Prairie, Stephen Frost of Atlanta, Yvonne Gonzalez Toureilles of Alice, Joe Heflin of Crosbyton, Abel Herrero of Robstown, Mark Homer of Paris, Carol Kent of Dallas, David McQuade Leibowitz of San Antonio, Diana Maldonado of Round Rock, Jim McReynolds of Lufkin, Robert Miklos of Mesquite, Joe Moody of El Paso, Solomon Ortiz Jr. of Corpus Christi, Paula Pierson of Arlington, Patrick Rose of Dripping Springs, Kristi Thibaut of Houston, Chris Turner of Burleson, and Allen Vaught of Dallas.

House Speaker Joe Straus says he's now got 130 votes for reelection as speaker, saying the only change is that a House with 99 Republicans instead of 76 will be a much more conservative House. But State Rep. Warren Chisum says he will continue the challenge to Straus that he announced three weeks ago. The Pampa Republican told reporters crowded into his office this morning that the next speaker should be elected by the House Republican Caucus and said he's not convinced — in spite of Straus' claims — that the 130 members who've pledged their support to the incumbent will hold fast. "I'd just like to announce that I'm still in the race for speaker of the House. I understand that the current speaker has released his list of people that he has signed cards for. But the race is not over." Straus says it is over, and says proof is in the number of people who've pledged to support him: Less than two dozen members are still free agents. He says he's not opposed to holding the election in the GOP caucus — "that's up to the members" — but notes Chisum's opposition to a caucus election when he was toying with a run for speaker in late 2001. Another member, Leo Berman of Tyler, accused Straus of buying votes — by making contributions to the campaigns of House candidates from his own campaign funds. Straus, for instance, contributed $100,000 each to state Reps. Linda Harper-Brown of Irving and Charles "Doc" Anderson of Waco when those two were facing scandals that threatened their incumbencies. They won, and Berman now suggests those were bribes. Chisum wasn't as blunt, but didn't disagree with the idea. "I will not deny that," he said when asked about Straus giving more than he did. "He passed out a lot of money to a lot of people." Straus deflected that charge, saying simply that he has taken care to follow the state's ethics laws and adding, a little more pointedly, that he worked hard to help Republican members who found themselves in electoral trouble. The actual election of a speaker takes place in January, usually on the first day of the legislative session. Two years ago, Straus upset House Speaker Tom Craddick — even after Craddick claimed to have enough votes to win reelection. Chisum's trying those same waters, hoping that the House is as unhappy with its incumbent today — if for different reasons — than it was after the 2008 elections.

The numbers are new, the charts are different...

Rick Perry didn’t beat Bill White on Tuesday because he was more ruthless, raised more money, or looked better on television. He didn’t win because conservative voters in Texas vastly outnumber liberals or because Texas’ economy has created more jobs than the rest of the country. And he didn’t win when he tried to hand President Barack Obama a letter or when he shot the coyote with a laser-sighted pistol while jogging with his daughter’s puppy. Rick Perry won re-election because of what he did on April 15, 2009. Few remember that at the time U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was considered a near-lock to beat him. She was stomping the incumbent in the polls by as many as 25 points thanks to her stratospheric approval ratings, and Perry looked like he was headed for the woodshed. The incumbent began to turn it around when, despite accepting $17 billion in federal stimulus money to balance the state budget, he made a great show of rejecting $556 million in federal stimulus money to bail out the state’s unemployment trust fund. This was all about posturing for the 2010 Republican Primary. Unlike the southward-facing Goddess of Liberty atop the Texas Capitol, Perry turned toward Washington, wagging a hypocritical middle finger like an ineffectual toy sword. Because he was sniffing around the anti-Washington message, he realized sooner than any other major Republican politician what a boon the tea party movement could be for him. So on April 15, 2009, when 1,000 Tax Day Tea Parties took place nationwide, Rick Perry went to three of them in Texas after he had gone on Fox News in the morning to compare the tea party rallies to the battle of the Alamo. "It is a very powerful moment, I think, in American history," he said. Later he donned a camouflage ball cap and railed against Washington to the assembled throngs, saying, “Washington needs to hear us loud and clear. Cut the spending, cut the taxes, shrink the government. And reread the Constitution." Then, in a genius stroke, he linked the anti-Washington rhetoric to Texas mythology, quoting Sam Houston, who said, "Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression." That, right there, is how he won the election, by positioning himself as the defender of Texas against Washington oppression. Remember, this was a day in which very few major Republican politicians thought showing up at the rallies would be appropriate, and for good reason. Hutchison certainly stayed away, and she probably thanked her lucky stars when she heard that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn was booed lustily at the Austin event because of his vote for the bank bailout. Even Perry drew what the American-Statesman called “scattered boos” from toll-road opponents, but his anti-Washington grandstanding cast him as a worthy leader of this jihad, a role he embraced after the rally when asked by a reporter about his reaction to the various pro-secession signage at the Austin rally. "There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot." My standards for a good Texas governor have fallen a bit since Ann Richards, and I’d like to think that I’d demand a Texas governor who’s steadfast in defending the Union, but I’d settle for one who knows that you can’t modify “unique.” His understanding of Texas history was as ignorant as his command of basic grammar. He covered his secession statement by claiming that Texas’ constitution allows it to withdraw from the Union if it felt like it. Pesky constitutional scholars pointed out that Texas would instead be allowed to split up into five separate states, not secede from the United States, but by that time Rick Perry had done his damage. You win elections by looking around corners, and on April 15, 2009, Rick Perry saw that the unruly mobs assembling around the country could become a powerful constituency against Texas’ most popular politician, Hutchison, as well as the Democrats’ most popular leader, Obama. By grabbing the anti-Washington mantel for himself before everyone else realized what was going on, Perry assured himself of re-election against Bill White last Tuesday. Jason Stanford is a Democratic consultant and ran Democrat Chris Bell's 2006 campaign against Perry.