Three Republicans are hoping that the Dallas-area Democratic surge that put Rep. Robert Miklos (D-Mesquite) into a seat held by Republicans since the mid-’80s has subsided.

With Miklos’ narrow win over the Republican nominee in 2008, the Texas GOP is hoping on getting HD 101 back – making this one of the battleground races.

GOP contenders Cindy Burkett, Greg Noschese, and former Rep. Thomas Latham are each forging active campaigns for the Republican nod for the HD 101 seat on March 2 to face Miklos in the general election.

The three-way race raises the possibility of a runoff, which could drain funds needed to fight the Democrat in the eight months following the primary.

HD 101 spans an area east of Dallas consisting of Mesquite, Sunnyvale, and Balch Springs – a heavily retail and service industry district facing rising unemployment, with many transportation projects underway, according to each of the candidates.

We review the campaigns below.

Latham launches comeback campaign

Mesquite-area native Latham, who held the seat during the 80th Legislature, lost the ’08 Republican Primary to former Mesquite City Council member Mike Anderson 54-46 percent, a race that drew 7,539 voters (Miklos brought in 8,866 voters in the Democratic primary).

He said the low turnout may have hurt him, and Anderson didn’t have the clout to maintain the seat for the GOP. But this time, Latham said, a conservative reaction against the policies of the Democratic Party on the federal level and the popularity of the Tea Party movement will help a Republican to win.

Latham, a retired police officer of nearly 30 years and Vietnam veteran, said he was inspired to pursue a career in law enforcement on the day of the University of Texas Tower shootings in 1966, following his honorable discharge from the Army. After retirement, he was elected twice to the Sunnyvale Town Council and the city’s Board of Adjustment.

He said his advantage is that if he wins, it will be the incumbent versus a former incumbent. A newcomer, he said, might look weak against Miklos.

“If you look at the other two,” he said, “they can say they have been Republican organizers and kept their clubs together. They can say that they promise to be conservative. But we don’t know that.”

Latham was behind several memorable laws from the 80th session, including Jessica’s Law, which increases the penalty for child predators. He filed eight bills in his first year, including one that makes it a felony to misuse a child’s identity. Latham said he was instrumental in establishing a DPS high-speed vehicle training facility in Florence in Williamson County.

On transportation, Latham said he is not a fan of the Local Option (a plan to allow county commissioners to place gas tax or fee increase referenda before voters to pay for transportation projects) and favors a line-per-line analysis of the transportation budget.

He supported ending diversions from Fund 6, the state’s transportation budget.

“And I will never, ever suggest taking a road we already purchased and tolling it,” he added. “I do support building a toll road if that’s a new project.”

On property tax reform, Latham said he favors a switch to a consumption tax and the closing of exemptions on certain state sales tax-exempt items and services, such as bottled water and haircuts, to reduce the burden of school taxes.

Regarding immigration, Latham opposes additional penalties on businesses which hire undocumented laborers. He supports strengthening driver license requirements in order to prove citizenship so employers can more easily verify legal residency.

Latham’s main weakness, taking into account local endorsements for his opponents, may be his 2008 primary defeat. Also a factor: Latham declined to meet with the Dallas Morning News editorial board. The paper’s write-up on the Latham campaign was not favorable.

He is, however, endorsed by former opponent Rep. Elvira Reyna, who held the seat for many years before Latham ousted her by a mere 65 votes. Reyna now resides in Little Elm in Denton County.

In money terms, Latham must be hoping for name recognition to carry him through. As of Feb. 1, he reported spending half of the $2,250 in contributions (much of it his own money) he had raised. He trails both his of competitors in fund-raising.

Burkett touts business background

Burkett, formerly a staffer with Sen. Robert Deuell (R-Greenville) and an owner of a chain of five Subway restaurants, is backed by locally prominent Republicans. Other endorsements have come in from Empower Texans, Concerned Women of America, and David Barton, president of WallBuilders. The endorsements give her a social conservative edge over the other two candidates.

Burkett, making her first run for office, said her experience in small business gives her a “close look at how legislation is affecting the small businessman, and how it limits you …”

On transportation policy reform, Burkett said ending diversions is a good start and furthering the Texas Department of Transportation’s Sunset review may highlight other redundancies. “And I personally wouldn’t be opposed to having an elected transportation commission, responsible to the voters,” she said.

She said the eminent domain issues raised by the Trans-Texas Corridor constituted “a disaster,” and that existing taxpayer-funded roadways should not be tolled. She said a miles-driven tax structure and other plans may require study. “We have the advantage of 50 states, and if you look at what works for them it might help us arrive at a solution,” she said, wanting to keep options open. She said she resented granting land ownership in public-private partnership roads to non-U.S. companies.

On property tax reform, Burkett said she supports elected appraisal review boards on the county level, and would be hesitant to support appraisal caps.

Regarding illegal immigration, she supports penalizing employers who knowingly hire undocumented laborers. “If,” she said, “you make a good faith effort – I think we need to put E-Verify into place because it makes it a little bit easier – that should be what’s required. As an employer, we do a background check, and we always get their ID, Social Security, and all that, but it would be easier if you could just plug it into the system and see if it’s a bad number or not. I don’t think an employer should have to be a detective and do thousands of dollars worth of investigation for a single employee …”

Burkett is in second place in terms of fund raising, with $21,346.64 cash on hand as of Feb. 1 — $5,000 of it from former Transportation Commissioner David Laney. Republican Party of Texas Chairman Cathie Adams donated $250 to the campaign.

Burkett’s challenge will be building name recognition – she’s only been a local GOP activist since the early part of the last decade.

Noschese well-known by business interests

Having outraised the field, former Mesquite Mayor Pro Tem Noschese had $45,993 as of Feb. 1. Noschese has some feathers in his cap in the form of endorsements from the Morning News editorial board, Ebby Halliday Realtors, and the Texas Association of Business. He also picked up a $5,000 donation from Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas), chief proponent of the local-option tax for highway construction.

Noschese served on the Mesquite ISD Education Foundation Board for six years and while on the city council helped administer the city’s half-cent sales tax, which generates about $9 million per year budget for municipal development projects.

For Noschese, an attorney with Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr in Dallas who moved to Texas from Washington D.C. for law school, economic development is a big push.

“I’ve dealt with basic infrastructure issues, economic development issues, declining sales tax revenue issues, and all of those things that a legislator is going to need down in Austin,” he said. “… The plan that the Democrats are trying to bring to Texas [is] a model of bigger government. There’s a lot of big things we like here in Texas, but big government is not one of them.”

On transportation, Noschese said he favors ending diversions not mandated by the Texas Constitution and putting an emphasis on congestion-relieving projects. Using Dallas’ Woodall Rogers Expressway above-ground deck park – paid for by $16.3 million in stimulus funds, as it was a “shovel ready” project – as a “classic example of some window dressing that is not aimed at reducing congestion in the state.”

He called the Trans-Texas Corridor “a bad idea that completely ignored something that I feel is necessary for a free society, and that is private property.”

As far as property tax reform goes, he said he does not favor appraisal caps. “The only way we’re going to be able to help people out as a government is to make sure that we’re not adding to the tax burden, and that we’re properly prioritizing our spending and reducing our spending,” he said.

On illegal immigration, Noschese said via his Web site he would “work to help develop and fund programs for police and sheriff’s departments to be better coordinated with federal enforcement so we can more effectively apprehend and deport drug traffickers, human smugglers, and other illegal immigrant criminals who use our communities as safe havens.”

Aside from the endorsements and funds, Noschese said his strength as a candidate is having overseen budgets on the City Council and handled transportation funding and economic development issues through the Mesquite economic development board – “all within the largest population center of District 101,” he said.

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