Trump’s Putin-love might impact Texas candidates

Plus, a one-sentence mistake leads to a resignation

Here’s a statement and a question: Texas leaders are joined to former President Donald Trump at the hip and probably several other body parts. They seem to think that is the way to victory for any political race from constable to governor.  

That’s the statement.

Here’s the question: In light of the attacks on the Ukraine will Trump’s adoration of Vladimir Putin make a close connection to him a liability?

It’s anybody’s guess at this point but the longer the war goes on, the trickier it will become for Putin both inside and outside Russia.

Trump has continually praised Putin, even when the dictator has ordered murders of journalists and innocent citizens and when he earlier threatened Ukraine. Putin is no different now than he ever has been, unless he has turned even more despotic.

He longs for the return of the old Soviet Union and has played Trump for all he is worth from long before Trump became president, including helping him win his race against Hillary Clinton.

Trump isn’t likely to repudiate Putin. I don’t know why he feels so beholden to the former KGB officer. It is one of those great mysteries.

The question is whether Texas voters will get sick of supporting that tyrant through Trump?

Hardly any state elected officials are closer to Trump than Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

This didn’t fully come to fruition for the primary but it could be big for the general election.

***

Politics is a tough business — just ask Volodymyr Zelensky — and no matter what your “side” might be there are always people hoping that you fail or make a fatal error and suffer the consequences.

It’s that way when the stakes are high, as in the Ukraine, or even when they are modest and mean little outside your home area, as in the matter with Tyler’s Nancy Nichols, who was the Senate District 1 representative to the State Democratic Executive Committee.

Was being the operative word.

She was on the SDEC until she resigned last week, the victim of a single written blunder that gave her opponents the opportunity to pounce and call for her to step down. And pounce they did.

The situation was this: Nichols routinely listened in on meetings of the State Democratic County Chairs Association. She had been invited to do so and it helped her in her position as an SDEC representative.

The meeting was on Zoom, which allows those watching a meeting to message the others. She messaged about gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke’s appearance in Tyler last month, saying that there were Republican protestors at the rally but that, as the event had been planned for “the chocolate side of town”, the protestors seemed to be afraid.

Uh-oh.

Nichols made a mistake that every white person reading this column has probably made at one time or another: She used a phrase she had heard spoken from a Black person, thinking that made it safe.

In this case the Black person was Dr. Cornell West, the highly regarded professor emeritus from Princeton, who was teaching a “Master Class” on race that Nichols was watching. West used the terms “chocolate” and “vanilla” to delineate the races and Nichols liked what she thought would be a non-controversial way to approach the matter.

In fact, it is a cultural appropriation, the kind of thing that can — and does — get people in trouble all the time. It isn’t just between Blacks and whites, either. You can run into the same problems with terms used by Native Americans, Latinx, Jews, women, Asians — anyone who adheres to a different culture.

Almost immediately, someone in the meeting protested that they were offended by what Nichols had written. Were they really offended? Perhaps, or maybe they just saw an opportunity to tag Nichols.

 In either case, it quickly became a major issue. Nichols has ruffled some feathers as she has worked to change Smith County Democrats and all those people were more than willing to return the favor.

She was asked not to come back to the county chairman meetings. Then people started telling her she should resign, including State Democratic Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa. She resisted their calls for just a bit, then resigned.

Nichols could have fought this — there is no mechanism for removing a member of the SDEC — but she likely calculated how much harm it could do the party both in East Texas and beyond. It would have been especially damaging to Smith County Democratic Chair candidate Hector Garza, who was backed by Nichols.

As it was, Garza bested his opponent, Hank Gilbert by a slim margin.

Nichols will no longer be on the SDEC but don’t expect her to go away from Smith County politics. She will still be a force and do a lot to lead the Democrats, even without a title.

It was a tough way to learn a lesson but, seriously, even those who called for her resignation couldn’t really question her beliefs.

This remains a persistent problem, though. In Texas and in the United States we have still failed to learn enough about one another. That education is not easy and sometimes it comes with a bit of pain.

Certainly, I’ve made my own stupid blunders over the year. You just have to apologize and keep moving forward with the best of intentions.

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