Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.
Any Texan with a TV has been barraged with primary ads from Republican political hopefuls trying to out-Trump each other.
And few have embraced Trumpian hyperbole more fervently than former Texas senator Don Huffines, now running for Texas Comptroller. In his ads, Huffines promises to use his position as the state’s chief financial officer to eliminate “woke DEI” along with “benefits for illegal aliens,” not to mention a litany of other MAGA bugaboos.
Assuming Dandy Don pulled off a W this week, it’s clear Texas Republicans have zero interest in putting a grownup in charge of the state’s checkbook. Otherwise, they would have voted for an accountant, not a clickbait machine.
Not to mention, a clickbait machine who campaigned on the absurd promise to “DOGE” a state budget already squeezed tighter than a bull’s ass in fly season. (And who the fuck in their right mind turns “DOGE” into a verb?)
It should be clear from the Dallas real-estate baron’s self-funded 2022 gubernatorial bid that he’s short on ideas about actual governance and long on rhetoric about “woke” schoolroom indoctrination and accusations that then-opponent Gov. Greg Abbott — no friend to the LGBTQ+ community — “promoted transgender sexual politics to Texas youth.”
Uh, yeah, right.
For all his efforts to outflank Abbott from the right, voters handed Huffines a decisive loss — a third-place finish with just 12% of the primary vote. It was a result some hoped would send him fucking back off to play with his real-estate empire.
Instead, Huffy Baby dumped that same nutball energy into his current run for the Texas Comptroller’s Office. You know, the job that involves revenue estimates, budget projections and making sure Texas can actually pay its bills.
Somehow given the task at hand, Huffines’ TV spots haven’t centered around dollars and debt but foreign terrorists, gun rights and, you guessed it, wokeness. You know, whatever Fox News outrage is peddling at the time. The diminutive developer even threw in footage of himself trudging through the woods in camouflage with a small arsenal strapped to his back to make sure we know just what a hard-on he has for firearms.
But the comptroller’s office isn’t a podcast studio for staging culture-war rants. It’s where math happens. It’s where adults make sober calculations how much money the state will bring in and whether it has enough to pursue worthwhile aims like educating its kids.
It’s hard to imagine Huffines taking any of that seriously. Instead, he seems determined to transform the office into an opportunity to grandstand and target MAGA’s perceived enemies — the same approach Attorney General Ken Paxton used to sully the rep of his respective office.
If Huffines wants to wage a never-ending culture war, there are plenty of cable networks hiring. If he wants to be comptroller, he might consider talking about spreadsheets instead of scapegoats. Texas needs a serious bean counter, not another bomb-throwing assclown.
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