Archives for September 2008

Will Ike help Mike get re-elected?

The Houston Chronicle reports today that damage from Hurricane Ike may keep displaced residents from voting in November.  We sure hope everyone gets to vote.

There is a case to be made that politics has no place in hurricane recovery.  Yet politics infuses every aspect of recovery efforts.  While not actively campaigning at this time, Senator Mike Jackson kept his own politics on display: 

“You don’t take anything for granted. But the advantage, I think, was mine.”

For example, all Texans may pay higher insurance because the windstorm insurance program doesn’t have enough money to pay claims, and is declining to pay anything for storm surge damage.  The intersection of politics and disaster recovery is right here with this issue, folks.  What’s Senator Jackson going to do to help folks get the assistance they need?  Is he going to continue to be beholden to the insurance lobbyists who keep his campaign flush with dollars or to the Texans hurt by the storm?

Smug comments (”the advantage was mine”) are the wrong kind of politics to use after a disaster.  The right kind of politics would be for every elected official in the Ike-impacted areas to devote their full attention to bringing the greatest relief and most assistance to the hurricane victims and to the coastal ecosystem.

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Ike, Capital Annex blog noted that only one official shared the dais with Governor Perry during his first press conference after the hurricane, which wiped out big chunks of the Texas coast.  That official?  Toxic Mike Jackson.  See, Jackson is up for re-election, and he might not win because candidate Joe Jaworski is giving him a real race.  Perry may be playing politics with the hurricane by giving Jackson some prominent positioning.  Will it help Jackson win in November?  That remains to be seen.  It could be that voters in the 11th District of Texas are tired of a senator who sides with the polluters and the insurance companies against the constituents of the district every time – especially in the aftermath of a terrible natural disaster like Ike.  Texans who’ve lost so much don’t need any officials siding against them and with the insurance companies — they need real help.