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My interest in the current Texas Legislative session is greater than the gun related bills, though I am keenly interested in those. I've been calling my House representative's office for several months but his phones now always go to voice mail and the calls are never returned.

Yesterday, I went to Austin and visited my representative's office. He was not in at 10:00 in spite of an important session starting at 2pm yesterday. His staff did not know when he would arrive. I was not alone - there were three women with me and all of us expressed interest in the representative's stand several key bills. The staff person could not tell us about any of those and claimed that responsibility for following each of those bills was "divided up among the representative's staff." She would not identity the staff member responsible for following any of the bills about which we had questions. Though I carefully, respectfully delivered my message of grave concern about the direction of the House this session, naming many of the separate bills that i had concerns about, I doubt that my visit had any impact. She assured the group that our representative was "working night and day" on these matters. I reminded her that effort is not a replacement for results.

My representative is and has been a strong supporter of Joe Strauss. The representative for a neighboring county, who I personally worked to help get elected campaigned on ousting Strauss. A year latter, he, too, was a public supporter. The likelihood that either of these men will get successfully primaried is very remote. They both come from heavily Republican areas but the interest level in what they do in Austin is so low that there is no backlash.

Unless and until the Strauss/Democratic coalition is broken, the Texas House is going to be in control of the Democrats. They are going to get hearings and votes on the bills that they want. Other bills that the Democrats don't want and the Republican representatives don't want to have to vote on are going to die in committee.