The mayoral race

This should be fun to watch. Two local high-profile women who want to influence how this town grows are now butting heads, as KSAT-12 reports:

SAN ANTONIO -- A campaign is underway to recall a first-term city councilwoman with mayoral aspirations.

A Web site to recall District 8 City Councilwoman Diane Cibrian has been started by the woman behind [sic] Terri Hall, the woman behind the Texas Toll Party, a group dedicated to stopping the inclusion of toll roads in current or future San Antonio and Bexar County construction.

Hall has registered the domain, RecallDiane.com and created a Web site claiming Cibrian opposed toll roads before switching her position and made accusations the councilwoman accepted a free trip to Cancun from a developer to which Cibrian had previous ties. Cibrian has claimed in the past the trip was not unethical, but did amend a financial disclosure statement filed with the City Clerk's admitting her trip.

...

Cibrian said Hall is "an out-of-towner" trying to influence local politics. Hall lives in Spring Branch, Texas, which is not within Cibrian's district. Hall said the movement to recall Cibrian is coming from Texas Toll Party members who live within District 8.

Remember, Cibrian wants to keep strip joints out of her district, and Hall wants no tolls, no how, nowhere.

Protesting on the ground

So far, there are no toll roads in the San Antonio area, but the Texas Department of Transportation (or TxDOT) wants to change that. As can be expected, there is heated opposition to the idea of toll roads in general and TxDOT in particular. A local ostensibly anti-toll group call The San Antonio Toll Party (which I've discussed before), held a press conference and protest on Tuesday, September 4. There, they called for the resignation of all top personnel at TxDOT. They've got several politicians on their side, but they also have the strange ones, too.


Bahram Mark Sobhani of the Express-News captured one of the protesters in rare form at Tuesday's press conference.







See the full image, read more about the protest, and get good views on both sides of the issue by reading the relevant post at Pat Driscoll's blog, Move It!

Protesting what?

The San Antonio Toll Party, a group opposed to toll roads, joined its friends in Austin to protest toll roads in Texas. At least, that's what I think they were protesting. They also seem to be against a lot of other things.

From the Express-News:

AUSTIN — A protest against toll roads highlighted a rally on the Capitol steps Friday, but the Texas Independence Day holiday put folks in the mood to raise hell about other grievances as well.

Many also complained about a national animal identification tag. Some grumbled about the state's loss of control of its borders. A few warned about the coming "North American Union." And some excoriated the United Nations for wanting "to take your gun," exhorting anyone within earshot to "get us out of the U.N."

That's quite a few disparate topics to be lumped together with toll roads. Oh well, I guess if you have the crowd together, and the people are worked up already, might as well get them to holler about your cause as well.

Giving it to the anti-tollers

I've talked about the silliness of the San Antonio Toll Party before. Specifically:

In short, Ms. Hall and the San Antonio Toll Party seem to be low on reason and acumen and high on raw passion and invective. The debate is heated (check this link to Pat Driscoll's blog to see some of the arguments on both sides), but Ms. Hall's approach is blowtorch hot. I don't see her winning over many undecided citizens with that approach, but I don't think that's her ultimate goal. She just wants zero toll roads, no matter what anyone else may think.

Now, Pat Driscoll from the San Antonio Express-News takes on the Toll Party's tortured logic on his blog with "Myth vs. Reality".

Once again, Terri Hall of San Antonio Toll Party is spouting homespun fallacies and misrepresentations in her effort to shoot down toll roads.

For more than a year I've explained to Hall at different times why some of her so-called facts don't see the light of day in the Express-News, yet she keeps marching on with the same wrong information.

It's a shame, because legitimate concerns and questions about toll roads are being couched in a cardboard argument.

He goes on to pick apart her assertions made in a statement released by the Toll Party November 29, whipping her back to reality in a manner usually reserved for dishonest politicians. This woman is not seeking office, but she is being dishonest. And she's using scare tactics to bully people to her point of view.

Those tactics, however, are backfiring, and people are blaming her and the Toll Party for holding up much-needed road improvements in San Antonio. For a taste of the heated opinions on toll roads in the Alamo City, check out the comment thread to this post on Driscoll's blog.

Claiming victory in the face of defeat

Critics of toll roads have been very vocal and very passionate about making sure those roads never get built in San Antonio. As I've said before:

In short, Ms. [Terri] Hall and the San Antonio Toll Party seem to be low on reason and acumen and high on raw passion and invective. The debate is heated (check this link to Pat Driscoll's blog to see some of the arguments on both sides), but Ms. Hall's approach is blowtorch hot. I don't see her winning over many undecided citizens with that approach, but I don't think that's her ultimate goal. She just wants zero toll roads, no matter what anyone else may think.

With the recent election, though, many of the people the toll road critics supported for their anti-toll stances were defeated. Yet, the San Antonio Toll Party is still claiming victory. Here's their press release on the topic, and Ms. Halls direct words: “Our preferred candidates may not have won, but their opponents, with the exception of Perry who didn’t win a majority, said they were anti-toll.”

So, their candidates lost, but the Toll Party still won.

And here's Pat Driscoll's take on it.

It also helps to not count a list of "good guys/gals" as endorsements — a distinction the Texas Toll Party didn't make — which cuts the local endorsements by half. Of eight left, four won, which doesn't sound so bad.

Then, let's see, assume that all the people who voted for Kinky Friedman would have voted for the Toll Party's horse in the governor's race, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, had Friedman not run. Though Strayhorn still would have lost by a large margin statewide, she would have carried Bexar County, a "major accomplishment."

The Toll Party is going to great lengths to make it seem like they had a big impact on the election in Texas, when it seems that their influence was negligible at best. It's strange to think your cause prevailed at the polls when the candidates you supported didn't get enough votes to win.

But, it's important to remember the Toll Party seems intent on doing whatever they can to prevent the construction of toll roads, no matter what form they might take or where they might be built. Now that the election is over, it will be interesting to see what the Toll Party does next.

Tolling like a tea party

Oh, I can't believe I haven't pointed this out yet: The San Antonio Toll Party.

To get you caught up, the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, is considering putting in some toll roads here in San Antonio. There are currently none in this city, though Houston and Dallas have some.

There are some people who are adamantly opposed to toll roads in the Alamo City, and Terri Hall is one of them. She is an open and vocal critic of TxDOT and the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority, or RMA (the group tasked with handling local toll projects). Ms. Hall denounces anything having to do with toll roads, and she has started the San Antonio Toll Party as "a non-partisan, grassroots movement to STOP the DOUBLE tax tolling of our existing FREEways and rights of way" [capitals in original].

Fine and good. Ms. Hall is entitled to her opinion on toll roads (I am neither pro- or anti- on the issue), and she has the right to voice that opinion. But the way she presents those arguments -- and the tactics she uses -- can be a bit off-putting.

For one, the tolling of a road seems morally neutral to me, yet Ms. Hall refers to people who are against tolls as "good guys" and people who are not sufficiently anti-toll as "bad guys". I fail to see how you can persuade anyone to see your point of view if you start them off in the bad guy camp.

For another, the Toll Party has teamed up with environmental groups to file a lawsuit to stop construction of toll roads on U.S. Highway 281 north of Loop 1604. This is odd, since Ms. Hall seems to want road improvements on U.S. 281, just of the non-tolled kind. And, an environmental lawsuit would probably halt all construction for a long time, whether of tolled roads or "free" roads. That's not going to win very many people over to Ms. Hall's side, especially if they like toll roads or don't care as long as some kind of upgrades come along.

The Toll Party also has ready-made fliers that refer to the whole planning process (complete with public involvement) as "madness" and "highway robbery". The higher-ups at TxDOT and the RMA may not be elected officials (the main sticking point with the Toll Party, it seems), but calling them insane criminals is not the best way to present your case.

In short, Ms. Hall and the San Antonio Toll Party seem to be low on reason and acumen and high on raw passion and invective. The debate is heated (check this link to Pat Driscoll's blog to see some of the arguments on both sides), but Ms. Hall's approach is blowtorch hot. I don't see her winning over many undecided citizens with that approach, but I don't think that's her ultimate goal. She just wants zero toll roads, no matter what anyone else may think.