Williamson Primary Plans

Rep. Gattis: Would like to be Sen. Gattis, please

There's a long walk between saying you're running for office and being in the primary. Until filing for a ballot slot opens on Dec. 3, the best way to judge the seriousness of candidates is whether they have filed their campaign treasurer reports with the Texas Ethics Commission. With over a month to go, paperwork's flying up in Williamson County.

First stop up I-35: Georgetown Republican Rep. Dan Gattis’s House District 20 seat. On Oct. 15, Cedar Park Council officially vacated former mayor pro-tem Stephen Thomas’ seat, freeing him to face retired orthopedic surgeon Charles Schwertner and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's former director of research Milton Rister in the primary. If Rister's name seems famiiar, that because he was the controversial ex-boss of the Texas Legislative Council (and seemingly the only man left in Texas that would boast about working for Claytie Williams).

Gattis is out of that race, since he plans to fill retiring Bryan Republican Steve Ogden’s Senate District 5 seat. However, he's being savaged by challenger and Huntsville realtor Ben Bius for not being conservative enough (Apparently the fact that Gattis is a trial attorney must mean that he's secretly a Demmycrat). Buis makes the odd claim that Gattis was "the key figure in bringing down the first republican speaker of the house since reconstruction." While Gattis filed to run for speaker against Craddick last session, it was pretty late in the game. More importantly, he was not one of the Gang of 11, the original anti-Craddick Republican reps that sealed the ex-speaker's fate: So claiming he got rid of the old speaker seems like a bold statement.

It's a similar red-on-red story in neighboring HD 52. Four of the five Republicans suggesting they would like a shot at freshman Rep. Diana Maldonado, D-Round Rock, have submitted their paperwork: James Bernsen (the former spokesman for ex-Speaker Tom Craddick), professional Capitol insider Larry Gonzales (who served on both the attorney general and lite guv's staffs), ex-congressional staffer Ralph Pina, and former Texas Supreme Court clerk (and graduate of televangelist Pat Robertson's Regent University) Stephen Casey. The fifth, WilCo GOP founder John Gordon, still has all his paperwork in from when he ran for the nomination in 2007.

But that list is already out of date: Bernsen announced late yesterday that he's getting out of the way and instead is backing Gonzales (so, in quick terms, an ex-Craddick staffer is backing an ex-Greg Abbott, ex-David Dewhurst staffer). Considering how ugly the WilCo GOP primary got last cycle, with Gordon calling the eventual nominee Bryan Daniel "the special-interest candidate … an empty suit," a four-way fight could get bloody.