Anyone But Perry, The Texas Lawn Chair Larry
Submitted by Southern Shift on Mon, 2009-09-14 11:26
Authored by Linda Curtis
Remember Lawn Chair Larry? The former trucker, Larry Walters, got an honorable mention from the Darwin Awards which “salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it”.
Larry lived to tell the story of his 1982 experience attaching helium filled weather balloons to his lawn chair after hatching a plan to drink a few beers while floating 30 feet above his girlfriend’s house. But his friends cut the rope he had attached to his jeep, and the lawn chair with Larry in it, shot up to 16,000 feet. Larry wisely decided not to use the bb gun he brought along to shoot the balloons when he was ready to come down. He wound up being rescued when he came up on air controllers’ sites near the LA Airport. 
Rick Perry is our very own Texas Lawn Chair Larry. Though he is a big joke on Texas, his stunts, like bringing pigs to crash opponent Kay Bailey Hutchison’s press conference, just aren’t funny. Hey Governor, bringing pigs to press conferences are what grassroots organizers like me do to entice media attention. For god’s sake, you’re the flipping Governor!
I am advocating that independents carry out an “Anyone But Perry” strategy in the 2010 Governor’s race. We should use the Texas open primary and vote in the Republican primary and then again, in the general election as a massive voting block of at least 1.3 million voters. That is the number of voters who voted either for Carole Strayhorn or Kinky Friedman in 2006.
We’ve got two chances to cut Perry's rope. The first is to vote for one of Perry’s two opponents in the March Republican primary; Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison or Debra Medina, a Republican Party activist aligned with Ron Paul. Perhaps Medina can get enough steam going to split the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Kay Bailey could unite some Republican conservatives with Republican moderates and win over enough independents to beat Perry in the primary. The second chance will be in the general election in November. The Democrats may consider running a more viable candidate than the current menu (no offense Kinky and Hank) to take on one of the two titans, Kay Bailey Hutchison or Rick Perry. I predict that if, god help us, Rick Perry is the Republican nominee, most independents (including many third party voters, including Libertarians) will vote Democratic to help send Rick Perry 16,000 feet above the Dallas airport.
There are many reasons to cut Perry’s rope, but my favorite is the Governor’s dogged efforts to steal Texans’ land for a $700 billion project that nobody wants. The Trans-Texas Corridor (or whatever name the Governor cooks up to confuse us) is a massive road and utility trade corridor designed to import even more cheap mostly Chinese goods from Mexican ports. I believe the TTC, along with the Governor’s privatized toll road schemes, are his Achilles heal. Some of these toll roads are roads to nowhere, like the infamous Grand Parkway (aka “Porkway”) in Houston and the expansion of 290E in Austin. Thanks to the Governor and the now famously corrupt agency otherwise known as TxDOT, these two roads are slated to use stimulus funds to satisfy what I like to call the “Growth Lobby”. The Growth Lobby consists of companies like CINTRA (the Spanish toll road consortium, whose lobbyists have worked inside the Governor’s office); homebuilders like Bob Perry (no relation) who have given Perry millions; Democrats like our own Austin area State Senator Kirk Watson, some road contractors and a litany of related companies and lawyers.
The Growth Lobby helps ensure that Texas has the highest property taxes in the nation, and is one of only five states without real estate sales disclosure. Under this scenario large-scale commercial developments and raw land across Texas are undervalued by, on average, 40%. The Growth Lobby is driving population growth to areas like Austin, where they want to double the population in just 16 years. Their plans for infrastructure, including roads and water, are at best speculative. (For details go to CostofGrowth.com).
Lawn Chair Larry gave us all a helluva lot more than Rick Perry -- a great big laugh at our own silliness. Let’s not be so silly as to send this Governor back to the Governor’s mansion. The only award Rick Perry deserves is the one actually bestowed on Lawn Chair Larry. That was the Bonehead Club Award of Dallas.
Linda Curtis is a co-founder of Independent Texans and ChangeAustin.org. Independent Texans is the only voter association in Texas seeking representation for approximately 5 million non-aligned Texas voters.
