Suppressing students’ votes with Texas Rep. Carrie Isaac

Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.

Even among the Texas GOP’s beyond-flimsy justifications for filing a raft of new voter-suppression bills, freshman State Rep. Carrie Isaac’s is a standout for its absurdity.

The Wimberley Republican last month filed a proposal seeking to ban counties from locating polling locations on college campuses. Her justification? Campus safety. Indeed, she also said she wants ban polling places from K-12 schools.

“I don’t think it’s wise we’re inviting people to come on to our school campuses that would otherwise not have any business there,” Isaac said. “So, I believe that we should do anything and everything possible just to make sure that our campuses are as safe as possible.”

Never mind, of course, that college students tend to skew Democrat, and that Isaacs’ proposal dovetails with other GOP measures that are engineered to steer folks who tend not to vote Republican — people of color, poor people and people with disabilities — away from the polls.

Never mind that college campuses regularly host sporting events, concerts, lectures and other gatherings that draw far larger — and harder to monitor — crowds than those that typically show up at voting centers.

Also never mind that Isaacs’ campaign website puts her pledge to “preserve the Second Amendment” front and center while including endorsements from Gun Owners of America and the Texas Gun Rights Political Action Committee. Such credentials suggest school safety isn’t something the state rep would normally give a wet shit about.

When public radio program the Texas Standard queried Isaac about the difficulties her proposal would present to college students, many of whom don’t have cars or much time between classes to cast ballots, she replied with trite platitudes about America’s college students being smart enough to figure it out.

“I have the utmost confidence in our young adults to be able to vote no matter where the polling location is,” Isaac said.

In a sane world, Isaac’s anti-democratic efforts would ensure that she remains a one-term member of the House. But the political reality is that she’s the kind of autocratic assclown with a bright future ahead in the Texas GOP.

— Sanford Nowlin

The Republican Party of Texas voted to censure U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, who has committed the cardinal sins of voting in favor of gay marriage and to pass a gun safety measure that gained bipartisan support after the Uvalde school massacre. Gonzales, who represents a massive South Texas district that includes Uvalde, has also been criticized from the right for his failure to support extreme immigration policies.

The Alamo Collections Center opened on Friday with some 500 artifacts from the Texas independence fight on display, including some donated by the British pop star and Alamo enthusiast Phil Collins. The center is the first new building constructed on the site of the Alamo grounds in nearly 70 years, and it will serve as a temporary home for the artifacts until the new Alamo Museum and Visitors Center is completed in 2026 at a cost of $150 million.

District 7 has a new council member. City council voted unanimously last week to appoint civil-rights activist Rosie Castro to fill the position vacated by Ana Sandoval on an interim basis. Castro, the mother of Democratic U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro and former Mayor Julián Castro, will fill the last three months of Sandoval’s term before the winner of a May 6 election is sworn in. —

Abe Asher