Pete Sessions holds town hall meeting on healthcare

Tonight, Pete Sessions will hold a health care town hall meeting in Richardson; on Wednesday, he'll be in Irving, once again ignoring his constituents in the southern sector of the district.

Knowing Pete, he probably won't deliver any solid information about how you and your family can benefit from the new reforms of the insurance industry, but if anti-reform rhetoric is your idea of a fun evening out, bring your own popcorn to one of the following events:

Richardson Town Hall Meeting

Monday, March 29, 2010 7:00pm – 8:30pm

Charles W. Eisemann Center
2351 Performance Drive
Richardson, Texas 75082


Irving Town Hall Meeting

Wednesday, April 7, 2010
7:00pm – 8:30pm

Irving City Hall
825 W. Irving Boulevard
Irving, TX 75060

For even more fun, play GOP Talking Points Bingo!

Pete Sessions campaigns for Jon Barela in New Mexico

Again, no editorial comment, just a note for future reference:

Sessions To Campaign for Barela in New Mexico

Excerpt:

National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Pete Sessions of Texas will be making an appearance in New Mexico this weekend as the "special guest" at a breakfast rally for GOP House candidate Jon Barela...

...Barela, former chair of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce, faces an uphill battle to unseat freshman Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) in the Democratic-leaning district, and has put up only modest fundraising numbers...

Friend of Pete Sessions appointed to leadership role

No scandal here, no editorial comment, just a note for future reference: Walden Rises Up From Obscurity

Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.) appears to have done all the right things to win him an appointed seat at the GOP leadership table: be a good team player, prove you’ve got political and policy chops, and have friends in high places...

...He may be National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions’ (Texas) closest friend, he had become a regular counsel for leaders on top issues, and he was willing to give up a powerful committee post to make room for the Conference’s newest lawmaker.

“We wanted to put Greg in a position where he is at the leadership table every week,” said Sessions, who last year appointed Walden to serve as his deputy chairman at the committee.

The Voters Have Spoken: Sessions wins primary

Okay, all you Republican complainers, we Sessions Watchers don't want to hear any more tales of woe about how you wish someone would vote against the corrupt, hypocritical Pete Sessions; if only, you've told us, someone would run in the primary, you'd vote for "the other guy."

Well, this year, you had a choice, but at this writing, with 36 of 188 precincts reporting, Pete Sessions is on the way towards easily winning this one, with 84% of the vote so far.

Still, David Smith's 15% is a very good showing for a newcomer to this race.

Voter turnout was low; in Sessions' own precinct, Precinct 2222, for instance, only 110 people showed up to vote, and ten of them voted for David Smith. Not bad at all.

So Sessions lives on to fight in the general election against Libertarian John Jay Myers and Democrat Grier Raggio, and all you GOPers who say you want Sessions out have one more chance to get it right.

UPDATE: With 100% Reporting, the final numbers are:
David Smith (REP) 16.28%, 5,930 votes
Pete Sessions (REP) 83.72%, 30,492 votes
Total # of votes: 36,422

In the Democratic primary, Grier Raggio, running unopposed, won 7,460 votes.

Voter turnout: Democrats--5.01%, Republicans--8.63 %

Not bad for a primary, but it sure would be nice to see voter turnout in double digits, at least.

Scott Brown paves way for vote on jobs bill

Just one month ago, Pete Sessions was crowing about Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts, issuing a statement that said, in part:

Tonight, Massachusetts voters relived their historic roots with a mass revolt against the Obama-Pelosi agenda of bigger government, higher taxes, and fewer jobs. No matter how Democrats want to spin it, there is a movement building in America that threatens their majority in Congress. All across this country there are candidates like Scott Brown who have had enough and are running to put an end to a culture of fiscal recklessness in Washington.

But yesterday, Scott Brown joined a handful of Republicans in voting in favor of cloture on the Democrats $15 billion dollar job bill, allowing the bill to go forward for a vote.

Democrats are praising Scott Brown for his bipartisanship, while Republicans are calling him a low-life scum hypocrite. Wonkette has tweets, and you can vote for your favorite Facebook screenshot at Gawker.

A Streetcar Named Hypocrisy

Count Pete Sessions among the GOP stimulus bashers who are now campaigning to get some of that money in their districts. From Businessweek:

Sessions, who called the stimulus “a massive spending binge by the Democrat-controlled Congress,” wrote LaHood three times last September and October. Sessions promoted four projects, including a Dallas streetcar line he said “will create jobs in the region and improve the quality of life for North Texans.” The project got $23 million.

Sessions, in an e-mail, called the stimulus an “abject failure” and said he’d vote against it again if he could.

The lawmaker said his objections don’t keep him “from asking federal agencies for their full consideration of critical infrastructure and competitive grant projects for North Texas when asked to do so by my constituents.” Sessions has written agencies supporting six other grants, spokeswoman Emily Davis said.

(A streetcar line, huh? Hope the contract is awarded to someone who's actually made a streetcar before).

According to Alan Simpson, this is nothing new in Washington:

“It’s the original sin of Washington -- it’s hypocrisy,” Simpson said. “You can’t do that then say you go out and cut the other stuff.”

Dallas Morning News endorses Pete Sessions

No big surprise here, but the Dallas Morning News gave Pete Sessions their endorsement in the March GOP primary. Yesterday, when Sharon Grigsby announced on her blog that the endorsement would be in today's paper, one of our Sessions Watch readers posted this snarky note on her blog offering to do it for them:

I'll help write your endorsement of Pete Sessions:

"We wish Pete Sessions weren't so corrupt, we wish he cared more about the constituents he represents, we wish he'd give us a straight answer on questions instead of roundabout non-answers; in fact, we wish he was a totally different person. But we can't give the endorsement to a totally different person, we have to give it to Pete Sessions, 'cause we just like him. Don't ask us why, we just do! We really, really like him!"

C'mon, editorial board. Prove me wrong.

The endorsement wasn't quite as obviously sycophantic as that, just your standard "power of incumbency" nod, saying that Sessions is a better choice because he's been there longer, and the other guy just doesn't have the experience!

But they overlook the fact that he's not much of a leader in Congress. According to GovTrack, "Sessions is a follower according to our statistical analysis of bills in this legislative session. Sessions tends to cosponsors the bills of other Members of Congress who do not cosponsor Sessions’s own bills...Peter Sessions has sponsored 81 bills since Jan 7, 1997 of which 70 haven't made it out of committee and 2 were successfully enacted."

And the Dallas Morning News actually had the nerve to slam challenger David Smith for being partisan--after Pete Sessions said the GOP should use the Taliban as "model for insurgency. The Taliban! Not only is Sessions a hyper-partisan who can't work across party lines--or even with members of his own party--to get bills passed, he can't even find any "good guys" to identify with, he'd rather side with the enemy! Pete Sessions is one of the reasons Washington has turned into such a toxic hyper-partisan cesspool.

At best, we hoped for a "no endorsement" from Dallas Morning News, thinking the paper might follow the lead of all the Republican organizations that have refused to endorse Pete Sessions this time around. But there you have it, another endorsement from Dallas Morning News for Pete Sessions. No surprise there.