Herman: When a state official gets indicted.
Ken Herman says Uresti’s predicament isn’t the first for a lawmaker — on both sides of the aisle — and won’t be the last.
AUSTIN — Generally when a lawmaker is excused from a Texas legislative floor session because of “personal business” we don’t know the precise nature of the business is or just how personal it is.
This was not so at 11:13 a.m. Wednesday, shortly after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick gaveled the Senate into session, when he announced that Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, would be excused because of “personal business.”
At just about that moment, Uresti was due in his hometown federal court for personal business stemming from indictments regarding his personal business.
“Sen. Uresti turns self in to FBI,” said the headline on the San Antonio Express-News’ mysa.com website as the Senate moved forward Wednesday morning without him, “faces 200 years in prison.” Yes, that’s pretty personal. Uresti, a lawmaker since 1997, was named Tuesday in federal indictments alleging he benefited from a Ponzi scheme and was involved in bribing an unnamed official in Reeves County. He says he’s not guilty.
It’s easy to get worked up when a state official gets indicted. But it happens periodically, just as it happens periodically that a state official does something really, really good.
When you pay lawmakers only $600 a month, some of them perceive a need to seek salary supplements. FYI, Uresti’s full-time job is lawyer.
The first legislative indictment I lived through remains the best, with best defined as “most entertaining.”
In 1981, Mike Martin, then in his first and only term as a GOP representative from Longview, was charged with perjury in Austin in connection with a July 1981 incident in which he was hit with shotgun blasts he said were fired by somebody affiliated with a Satanic cult.
It turned out Martin was the voluntary victim of shotgun blasts fired by his cousin Charles Goff as part of a plot to gain attention and sympathy for Martin. He succeeded in gaining the first, not so much the second.
Martin was arrested when found hiding in a stereo cabinet, perhaps evidencing aspirations to one day become a speaker.
It was my first session and set me up for unrealistic expectations of fun and games to come.
Sure, we’ve had others charged with crimes since I got to the Capitol in 1979 — including a couple of House speakers, one former and two sitting attorneys general and one governor — but the charges never could measure up to getting voluntarily shot by your Cousin Charlie. Martin pled guilty to misdemeanor perjury.
This latest legislative indictment touched off predictably political reactions, including this pro forma statement from Texas GOP Chairman Tom Mechler: “Nobody should be surprised to see that crooked Texas Democrat, Carlos Uresti, has been indicted by a grand jury. As I’ve said before, there is an unprecedented amount of corruption among Texas Democrats, and Senator Uresti’s indictment only further proves that they are clearly incapable of being entrusted with governing in the state of Texas.”
And he spoke of “lawless liberals,” which, in GOP eyes, are only slightly worse than law-abiding liberals.
But let’s check the current indictment scorecard: Texas Democrats 2, Texas Republicans 1. The Dems now have one in each legislative chamber. Uresti joins Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, who’s pled not guilty to pending ethics charges.
On the GOP side, we have Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who, like Uresti, is charged with self-enriching financial shenanigans in the bidness world. Paxton says he’s not guilty.
And while Dems now hold a 2-1 lead over Repubs in indicted elected officials, fairness demands we use the Standard Indictment Conversion Factor to measure where we are. Here is the SICF, a time-honored metric I made up Wednesday: One statewide elected official equals three lawmakers. So the Repubs now actually are up by one.
“The charges against me are groundless,” Uresti said in a written statement, “and I look forward to proving my innocence in a court of law at the appropriate time.”
Like Mechler’s overcooked statement, Uresti’s was pro forma. Funny, isn’t it, how lots of indicted folks “look forward” to proving their innocence in a court of law? Splitting hairs here, but they don’t actually have to prove innocence. They just have to prevent prosecutors from proving guilt.
So I guess defendants look forward to their day in court the way you or I might look forward to a final root canal treatment.
As he left the San Antonio federal courthouse after a Wednesday hearing — minus the handcuffs and leg irons the government had provided for him on the way in — Uresti again said he’s looking forward to proving his innocence.
“We’ve got about two weeks left in the session,” he told reporters on a video posted on mysa.com. “I’m headed back to Austin today to finish the job that I was elected to do.”
He’s free to do that. Mysa. com reported Uresti is out on $50,000 bond.
I hope Uresti is not guilty. I hope that because our beleaguered system of government takes a hit any time one of its participants isn’t not guilty.
Let’s end on an in-happiertimes note: Head over to YouTube and check out Uresti dancing to the BeeGees’ “More Than a Woman” at his 2012 wedding.