Common Sense

(Ed. note: It took a whole week to figure out a decent title for this post. I passed on If loving you is Wong, I don’t want to be Right, To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything and Wong Turn.)

The gist of this Houston Press story is that Rep. Martha Wong is too conservative for her district and that she has passed on commitments to constitutents (or in blogger parlance a ‘total bitch’).

At Martha Wong’s recent campaign kickoff party in a Greenspoint strip mall, her tiny storefront war room held 50 people, many of them politicians and members of her family. The press was apparently uninvited and the speech short; the gathering was surprisingly low-key for a campaign kickoff, but then Wong has been keeping a low profile. She spoke with the Press at length two years ago yet declined to sit down for an interview for this story, citing a lack of time. “I’ve been very busy,” she said. Not too busy to go block-walking, appear in a parade and speak to a small group of voters in her apartment building, though.

Awww snap! She got slapped!

Wong’s reluctance to discuss her district on the record (she eventually granted a 15-minute phone interview) comes at a time when many of her constituents are asking tough questions. For example, Planned Parenthood’s White wants to know why Wong supported the so-called Women’s Right to Know Act. It requires abortion providers to inform women that abortion could cause breast cancer, a relationship that has been disavowed by major cancer groups. “There is no scientifically proven link on that,” says American Cancer Society spokeswoman Shelly Chetty. Indeed, right-wing legislators in South Dakota and Louisiana voted down similar bills. Yet Wong, who represents the Texas Medical Center, says studies show the “possibility” of a link and women should be informed.

According to many scientists, health risks do correlate with exposure to air pollution. And District 134 suffers from among the highest ozone levels in the city. The district accounts for the bulk of the citywide membership in the environmental group Mothers For Clean Air, which strongly supported the five clear air measures that Wong helped defeat. “I think they understand the issue,” says director Jane Laping, “and they realize it affects their health and their children’s health.”

Aw shit son. I haven’t seen a pounding like that since World’s Biggest Midget Gangbang 7!

So obviously, Martha Wong is a bad choice for her district. So, why is it that she’s not that worried. Perhaps it’s because this is deja vu for her. Many people said the same things about her in 2002 when she beat Debra Danburg.

Ousted from her Montrose stronghold by Republican-led redistricting, Danburg ran against Wong on the wind of support from many of the same groups that are now supporting Cohen. Danburg “had way more name ID than Ellen Cohen and a lot more money at the time,” Woodfill says. “The Democrats were saying that Martha was vulnerable to Danburg — and she beat Danburg soundly. So what’s changed? They’ve got a weaker candidate that has less money.”

That’s not the only thing. Those people that would otherwise vote for Cohen are disinclined to based on party affiliation.

Across the street on a sidewalk Cohen encountered Elizabeth Urquhart. The two women instantly hit it off. Urquhart wanted to know more about Cohen’s work with the Houston Area Women’s Center. Cohen expanded the conversation to discuss her successful fight against breast cancer. “Good for you,” Urquhart said.

“I care passionately about quality health care,” Cohen continued. “My husband had his life extended at the Medical Center by 18 years because of the quality of the doctors.”

“Oh, I agree,” Urquhart said. “My husband just had a second liver transplant; it couldn’t have happened anywhere else.” Only a minute later did Urquhart think to ask if Cohen was a Democrat or a Republican.

“I am a Democrat,” Cohen said quickly, “and I have found that the district is largely independent.”

“Democrats,” Urquhart said. “I can’t vote for pro-abortion.”

This is the kind of thing that makes me question the Founding Fathers and the whole idea of a republic. The woman can’t vote for her because of abortion, something that is totally legal and has been for decades. And she won’t vote for Cohen, as if the first act of office she would do is prance over to Planned Parenthood and begin aborting fetuses personally.

That’s a major hurdle to overcome in a majority-Republican district. Luckily, Wong is none too popular on her other stances. The district also happens to be mostly socially liberal and her claim to fame right now is abstaining on the gay marriage amendment last session.

When asked to cite a case in which she has bucked her party’s conservatives, Wong mentions her stance on the gay marriage amendment. This session she spoke against the amendment’s language banning civil unions between gay couples and in favor of its definition of marriage as “between a man and a woman.” “Since voting either for or against the bill would have put me in conflict with my beliefs,” she wrote in a statement, “I abstained.”

In one of the gayest districts in Texas, an abstention wasn’t socially moderate, says the GLBT community. Although state voters eventually passed Proposition 2, nearly 60 percent of ballots in District 134 rejected it. The vote has emboldened gay activists such as April Ayers, a local member of the Human Rights Campaign, who is so eager to oust Wong that she has created a blog called Firemarthawong.com. “The thing that cracks me up is Martha Wong claiming to be in the Republican image,” says Mike Holloman, an investor who is raising a son with his male partner in West University. “She basically is doing exactly the opposite of what the Republican Party stands for, which is small government — keeping the government out of our lives.”

So what have we learned today? Well, we’ve leawrned that Martha Wong is total, super kamehameha bitch and if you cross her she’ll stick her foot in the ‘Wong hole.’ We also learned that you need to donate your time and support to Ellen Cohen. At the very least, she won’t turn little kids away at her office in Austin when they are on a field trip. I’m not making this up, read the story. Thanks to Super Reader DH for the story, though it took me a while to post on it.