Lost in space
Space Command lands in Alabama and the forecast for Texas’ clout is decidedly chilly.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., isn’t part of the Republican leadership in the Senate, as Texas’ John Cornyn was until two years ago. Nor is he a frequent guest on Sunday morning talk shows, as is Sen. Ted Cruz.
He’s never run for president or mounted a movement. He’s quiet — so quiet you may not have immediately placed his name. But like your mama said, it’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for. If only Texas had heeded that advice.
The six-term senator from Tuscaloosa is discretely powerful. The Pentagon announced earlier this month that the headquarters for the U.S. Space Force, the first new branch of the military since the Air Force was created in 1947, would be headquartered not in Space City, not even in Texas, but in Huntsville, Ala., known ever more widely as Rocket City.
Space Force, with some overlap from the Air Force, will be responsible for America’s military footprint in space and is separate from NASA.
Landing the headquarters, with the prestigious name of U.S. Space Command, was another win for Huntsville, which is fast rivaling Houston as the center of gravity for America’s space program.
As we wrote in 2019, when NASA bypassed Houston’s Johnson Space Center to put Huntsville in charge of the lunar landing vehicles for the next mission to the moon, “jaws dropped across Texas like falling meteors.” Cornyn and Cruz both vowed to fight harder the next time around.
This time, though, Space City wasn’t even a finalist. But San Antonio and other cities with deep ties to space or the military were. They’re shouting mad about the decision.
Folks in Alabama? Color them unsurprised. It’s just another “mission accomplished” for Shelby.
“That’s been his real expertise over the course of my whole career, to not make a lot of noise but to be very, very good at bringing home the money to Alabama,” longtime columnist John Archibald of the Birmingham News told the editorial board this week. “There are buildings all over the campuses throughout the state that have his name.”
Wasn’t too long ago here in Texas that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was cutting ribbons and distributing billion-dollar bundles to transit agencies in Houston and Dallas. Seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? We’re no fans of pork barrel politics, but a little something for the home team, every once in a while anyway, might be nice.
What good is it to have our senior senator buddied up with Senate Republican boss Mitch McConnell — Cornyn served for six years as his deputy — if when it comes to a weighty decision like this, Texas is lost in space?
Both Cornyn and Cruz lobbied hard for San Antonio, sending letters on its behalf before and after it was named a finalist in December. Cruz, as chairman of the Senate subcommittee on space and aviation, has made space policy his signature legislative priority. In May 2019 he chaired a hearing on the “emerging space environment.”
But who knows how things might have worked out differently had he spent more time helping Texas maintain its claim on the final frontier and less time helping Donald Trump cling to an illegitimate claim on the White House.
A spokesman for Shelby has said the Air Force picked Huntsville because it scored best in objective criteria — not because of politics or any deference to Shelby’s role as the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Reports suggest that Huntsville did score well, with Colorado Springs just behind, but if you believe politics played no role, then we have some moon rocks to sell you.
Air Force officials confirmed that Trump and the White House were consulted before the decision. Huntsville better hope the decision can withstand scrutiny, because the Democratic governor of Colorado is already urging the new Democrat in the White House to take another look.
The command won’t physically relocate for another six years, so there’s still time for jockeying. But don’t look for a Texas miracle. If four years of kissing up to Trump didn’t give them enough pull, our fortunes aren’t likely to change now that Texas Republicans are living in political Siberia.
Add to that an entrenched Democratic majority in the U.S. House, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton positioning the Lone Star State as the top pain in the Biden administration’s backside, and we don’t need a weather satellite to make this call: The forecast for Texas clout in Washington is decidedly chilly.