Populism Rewarded

DeSantis suspends Democratic state attorney, an elected official, calls him ‘Soros-backed’ https://t.co/aFtk89D29D

— Raw Story (@RawStory) August 4, 2022

The Texas Constitution, which is an absolute mess that has been amended more often than Herschel Walker has admitted to having children, is beginning to reveal its populist wisdom to me.

Texas, like apparently most Southern state constitutions, all written during or after Reconstruction, disseminated power as far and widely as possible.  We elect county court-at-law judges, district judges, county judges (not court positions, but county executives), justices of the peace, as well as many state agencies.  We elect the members of the Railroad Commission (originally created to tame the railroads, a populist cause in the late 19th century), the State Board of Education, the Lt. Governor; the Attorney General; the Secretary of State; the Ag Commissioner, the head of the General Land Office; you get the idea.

We have independent school districts, which are creatures of law (Texas Education Agency oversees them, primarily), but they raise their own taxes and still have some autonomy.  These days the more local the authority, the more likely the Lege is to pass laws controlling it.  But the constitutional establishment of elected state agency heads means the Governor has no authority over the lawyers of the Attorney General's office, nor over the district attorneys and county attorneys, who are elected at the county level and serve (absent an ethics problem of grave demesne) at the pleasure of the electorate.

We don't, in other words, have "state attorneys" whom the Governor can suspend.  Of course, we don't have a Governor with a staff member who talks like this:

"Prepare for the liberal media meltdown of the year," DeSantis' press secretary Christina Pushaw dramatically announced Wednesday night, saying the governor would deliver a "MAJOR announcement" Thursday morning.

After the governors announcement Pushaw continued her line of attack:

"Progressive prosecutors backed by Soros have refused to enforce laws across the country. They treat criminals with deference & victims with contempt. This dereliction of duty is why crime is surging. But @GovRonDeSantis won’t stand for this. He just suspended the one in Florida."

DA's in Harris, Dallas, Travis, Bexar, and El Paso counties (at least)  have already pledged not to pursue criminal investigations against anyone involved in an alleged abortion; and there's not a damned thing Greg Abbott can do about it, except campaign against them.  The vote in Kansas tells me that won't go far, either.  The major metropolitan areas are the "liberal" areas of Texas.

As for Pushaw, she makes Allen West and Don Huffines sound sensible, and neither of them (despite West being the Chair of the Texas GOP shortly before he ran) mustered any showing against Abbott in the GOP primary.  The idea that DeSantis is Trump redux and will sweep the country is, I think, a fear/hope that will never be realized.  Again, look to Kansas; or just Texas.

At least we don't want autocrats to have all the power they can grab.  I'm pretty sure there's not much of the country that does.