I had heard rumors he was retiring. Unfortunately I was wrong.

After spending 12 years in the Texas House, accomplishing little if anything substantial, State Representative Dennis Paul will be running for the Senate seat being vacated by Money Mayes Middleton.

For the politically ignorant, Texas has 31 Senate districts. Senate District 11 (SD11) is composed of most of Galveston County, and parts of Brazoria and Harris County. The Texas House has 150 House Districts. Dennis Paul represents House District 129 (HD129) covering the area from Seabrook to Friendswood.

Dennis Paul has served for 10 part time years as a House Member and will run for Money Mayes Middleton’s seat. Middleton has decided to run for Texas Attorney General using $20 million of his own money. Attorney General Ken Paxton is challenging Senator John Cornyn and is expected to kiss Trump’s ass better than John.

Paul is leaving the House District in shambles. He has sat on the House Insurance Committee for 10 years yet property insurance is out the roof. Our electricity grid is still unstable. He voted in favor of passing the cost of upgrades to his constituents. NASA is poised to be gutted in 2026 leaving many without jobs. Paul has never publicly addressed his constituents. His local office is closed most of the time. He never responds to his constituents or even answers the phone. He has been invited to discuss the rising cost of insurance and has refused. He supported gutting our public schools with vouchers. He supported easy access to guns even after one of his own members of the State Republican Executive Committee was senselessly gunned down and 19 children were gunned down in Uvalde. Paul can’t raise money. After 12 years he still has an outstanding balance of $25,000 on a $150,000 personal loan that he used to initially win the seat. He has just $49,000 Cash on Hand.

In 2023 Paul was listed as “Furniture” by Texas Monthly, accomplishing little if anything and just getting in the way. In his comment to The Texas Tribune Paul ignored the very people he is suppose to represent, his constituents:

If elected to the Senate, Paul said, “I will faithfully represent those values which make Texas the greatest state to live, work and raise a family: faith in God; love for family and liberty.”

With Paul running for SD11 his buddy, CCISD Trustee Scott Bowen, will probably run for his seat. Like Paul, Scott can’t raise money. In his latest run for re-election Scott spent $20,000 of his own money. He lost. Like Paul, Bowen supported vouchers, cuts to public education, and unlimited access to guns.

HD129 is a safe gerrymandered district for any republican candidate. An opposing, well qualified, candidate could raise $500,000, knock on over 25,000 doors, make over 20,000 phone calls and they will still lose.

I know. It happened in 2008.

The darling of the Texas Republic Party needs an elected position.

After his crushing defeat in the CCISD election Scott Bowen will be looking for another office to run for. Hopefully this time he will run for a partisan position, one that allows him to run as a Republican because that is what he is, a MAGAt Republican. He has a couple of options and I expect him to continue his political career that started at Texas A&M where he served on the Senate along with a couple of extreme right wingers. You can read about them here. From a previous post:

• He has personal relationships (Served on the Texas A&M Senate) with the Director of Texans for Strong Borders who was seen chauffeuring [Nick] Fuentes
• He has personal relationship with Cary Cheshire, (Served on the Texas A&M Senate) the executive director of Texans For Strong Borders and a longtime employee of Defend Texas Liberty

Defend Texas Liberty was eventually disbanded after The Texas Tribune caught their leadership meeting with a known white supremacist, Nick Fuentes. But I digress. Bowen needs a position. Here are his possibilities. According to his voter registration he has some options:

For Congress
This might be a good place for him. Congressional District 36 is one of the most gerrymandered district in the United States. A republican can win this seat by 40 points just by putting their name on the ballot. A republican could be caught with a goat in the back of a 57 Chevy and still win. Our current congressman, Brian Babin, has been missing in action for the last 10 years. He has never communicated with his constituents because he doesn’t need to. Babin is old, frail, is worthless to the community, and should resign. Bowen would be free to run for his seat if he does.

For State Senate
Our Senator Money Mayes Middleton is running for Texas Attorney General. Bowen can’t run for that office because he does not live in his district but he could run in Senate District 6 and get his ass handed to him by Senator Carol Alvarado. This is a no go for Scott.

For State Representative
Rumor has it State Representative Dennis Paul is going to retire after 10 years with little, if any, accomplishments to his name. Paul will leave with a $25,000 pension and state provided healthcare for him and his wife for the rest of his life. This would be a good step for Bowen since the district is gerrymandered enough to give any goat loving republican an easy win but unlike Congress it pays little.

For Commissioner
He could challenge Commissioner Adrian Garcia but like Alvarado he would get his ass kicked. Again. The Precinct respects Garcia. He has performed well and other challengers have been unsuccessful in ousting him.

If Brian Babin steps down look to Scott to follow in his footsteps and continue kissing Donald Trump’s big ass.

In the words of Hank Hill: “Where you at?”

BTW. I have contact with a number of journalists and greatly appreciate what they do but their outlet needs to do better. The CCISD area has a couple of local media outlets including Community Impact, The Houston Chronicle, The Galveston Daily News, and the The Southbelt Leader. None of these media outlets have ever dug deep into the candidates for CCISD trustees. I can give a pass to Community Impact because that isn’t what they do although maybe they should reconsider. The 2025 election was a great example of our local media being missing in action.

No media outlet dug deep into the candidates past, abilities, or fundraising for the position. Trustee Scott Bowen has a history (documented by videos) of supporting school vouchers and advocating against public schools in Austin. He has a history of associating with extreme organizations and people. There is enough background on him to fill up a post titled “A Threat to CCISD Education” and yet no local media reported on it. Joe Machol, Bowen’s recruit, was probably the worst candidate in CCISD history to run for the Board and yet the media was silent. He had no money, no background in education, no campaign, and no business running for Trustee.

These positions are important to the community especially parents of school kids. The information about these candidates should be researched and provided to the community so they can make informed decisions. They should know their past, their qualifications, and their source of funding no matter how disturbing it may be. Over the last few years school districts across the country have been infested with extremists funded by white wing organizations like Patriot Mobile and Defend Texas Liberty and yet there was little if any coverage of this.

It’s disappointing that my small blog, Bay Area Houston, has to do the heavy lifting. All the information is public or available via a google search but I don’t have the coverage of the media in the Bay Area. I don’t have the audience to make an impact. I’m not an educated journalist. I’m just a loud mouth blogger. The community needs this information. They need our media outlets.

Do better. We need you.

With all the noise coming out of Seabrook I didn’t expect this.

The candidates of the Save Seabrook (SS) Squad were enjoying spicy crawfish at The Barge on election night, at least for a little while. In the end all but one lost. Angela Cervantes is the only SS candidate that won her seat on City Council. Jackie Rasco lost. J.P. Byers lost. Kyra Burton lost. Chris Hues lost. I really didn’t see this coming and I bet they didn’t appreciate the guy in the corner playing WOMP WOMP on his trombone.

As a side note former Seabrook City Councilman and former NFL referee, Joe Machol, was ejected from the game with a crushing defeat for CCISD school board. That was a win-win for both Seabrook and CCISD.

Mayoral candidate, Jim Sweeney, beat Rasco by only 13 votes out of a total of 1539. There will be a recount and possibly legal action by Rasco with wild claims of voter fraud, ballot harvesting, and other unsubstantiated claims that have never been proven across the county and country. If Harris County had handled this election there would be a paper trail that can be recounted and verified. I’m not sure what type of voting machines Seabrook uses so it might not be an easy recount and candidates could claim the machine switched votes. We shall see.

Otherwise Seabrook has elected an incredibly talented Mayor and great members of City Council. You might want to review Sweeneys resume here. Maybe the citizens were not ready to be the center of attention for local media and nosy bloggers. Congratulations to Jim Sweeney, Jared Sessum, Summer Sanford, Tyler Kubena, and Angela Cervantes.