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Austin's got its first mayoral candidate heading into the November 2022 race.
Jennifer Virden, a conservative real estate broker and general contractor who challenged District 10 Council Member Alison Alter last year, announced she is running in a series of tweets Monday.
As Mayor of Austin beginning in 2022, I'm going to lead and keep Council focused on what we are charged to do: competently manage and fund core municipal services, such as APD/AFD/EMS, water, waste, electricity, roads, and parks. (1 of 3)
— Jennifer Virden (@Jennifer4Austin) June 21, 2021
Virden's platform stands in sharp contrast to the direction of City Council in recent years, with four key planks, according to her campaign website:
- Restore police budget cuts
- End homeless camping
- Increase the homestead tax exemption to 20%
- End the land use code rewrite process
In addition to these issues, Virden tweeted that she would be a champion of parks and other green spaces, including the hotly debated Lions Municipal Golf Course, and "minimize the virtue signaling resolutions overwhelming our City Manager," if elected.
Regarding Muny, and our parks & nature preserves, there's a new, bona fide "Parks Lady" in town - me! I grew up in Austin & truly understand how our iconic parks & green spaces are a part of our DNA as Austinites - and I'm not just referring to neighborhood pocket parks. (2 of 3)
— Jennifer Virden (@Jennifer4Austin) June 21, 2021
Let's maximize our attention to those things and minimize the virtue signaling resolutions overwhelming our City Manager. Let's do this in 2022! 🏆🏆🏆 (3 of 3)
— Jennifer Virden (@Jennifer4Austin) June 21, 2021
Virden, a native Austinite, ran against Alter in the crowded District 10 council race last year. Both opposed the camping ban, but Virden clashed with Alter on other issues, including Project Connect, which Austinites overwhelmingly supported in the November election, and efforts to cut police funding. Virden forced Alter into a runoff, which she narrowly lost.
Although Austin mayoral and council seats race nonpartisan, Virden is a conservative candidate running in a very liberal city. Only 26% of Travis County voters supported Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential race. Alter highlighted Virden's donations to a Trump-affiliated PAC in the runup to the Dec. 15 runoff, telling the Austin American-Statesman, "I think that tells a lot about someone's character." A coalition of Young Republican groups also hosted a "statewide deployment" of Republicans to Austin to support Virden around the same time.
Virden has received endorsements from two former Austin mayors: Lee Leffingwell, a Democrat who served two terms from 2009 to 2015 and endorsed Virden as well as District 6 Council Member Mackenzie Kelly last year, and Ron Mullen, a former San Antonio police officer who served from 1983 to 1985.
Mayor Steve Adler's second and final term ends in early 2023, although he can petition for a third term. No other candidates have entered the race so far, but some speculate that District 4 Council Member Greg Casar and Adam Loewy, a personal injury lawyer and major donor to Democratic candidates, are mulling runs.
The winner of the 2022 mayoral race will serve a two-year term after Austin residents voted to change mayoral elections to presidential years in the May 1 local election. Another mayoral race will occur in 2024.
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Popular
(Eric Lee/The Texas Tribune)
By Eleanor Klibanoff
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional protection for abortion and allowing states to set their own laws regulating the procedure. This represents one of the most significant judicial reversals in a generation and is expected to have far-reaching consequences for all Texans.
Texas will ban all abortions from the moment of fertilization, starting 30 days after the ruling, with narrow exceptions only to save the life of a pregnant patient or prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”
The law that will go into effect in 30 days criminalizes the person who performs the abortion, not the person who undergoes the procedure.
This ruling will radically change the reproductive health care landscape in Texas and the entire nation, where more than half of all states are expected to essentially ban abortion in the coming months.
Most of Texas’ neighboring states are also expected to outlaw abortion as a result of this ruling, with one exception: New Mexico. As the sole outlier in the region, New Mexico is expected to become a haven for Texans seeking abortions. The state currently has no significant restrictions and no plans to limit access to the procedure.
Friday’s ruling represents a victory nearly five decades in the making for Texas’ anti-abortion advocates, who have played an outsized role in the national effort to overturn Roe v. Wade.
It also represents a crushing blow to the state’s abortion providers, who have fought to maintain abortion access in Texas amid a nearly endless parade of restrictions, limitations and political attacks.
Roe v. Wade’s Texas roots
Before it became one of the most well-known Supreme Court cases in the country, Roe v. Wade was just a Texas lawsuit.
More than five decades ago, a woman identified in the legal filings as Jane Roe, later revealed to be Norma McCorvey, wanted an abortion. But under Texas’ laws at the time, it was a crime to perform or “furnish the means for procuring” an abortion.
Two young female lawyers, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, saw an opportunity to use McCorvey’s case to challenge Texas’ abortion law more broadly. They filed a suit against Dallas County prosecutor Henry Wade, who would be the one responsible for bringing charges against anyone who violated the abortion law.
The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where in 1973 Justice Harry Blackmun shocked the nation with a ruling that blocked not just Texas’ abortion laws from being enforced, but all state laws that banned abortion early in pregnancy.
Blackmun agreed with Coffee and Weddington’s argument that the right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution extended to a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. That right to privacy must be balanced with the state’s interest in the “potentiality of human life,” a balance that shifted in the state’s favor the further along a woman was into her pregnancy.
This ruling did little to settle the abortion debate in the United States, instead kicking off nearly five decades of anti-abortion activism and legal challenges seeking to overturn the decision.
Texas, the birthplace of Roe v. Wade, has led many of those legal challenges, including a landmark 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld Roe v. Wade and the 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
But the Supreme Court has become much more conservative in recent years, thanks to three appointments by former President Donald J. Trump.
In late 2021, the court declined to block a Texas law that banned abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy through a novel enforcement mechanism that empowers private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” in an abortion.
That law remains in effect and will not be immediately impacted by Friday’s ruling.
In December, the court heard arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson, a challenge to Mississippi’s law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Rather than considering just the law itself, the court agreed to consider the question of whether Roe v. Wade should be overturned — and today’s ruling gave the answer.
Ongoing legal questions
But if Roe v. Wade did little to end the debate about abortion in the United States, Dobbs v. Jackson is not expected to settle the question either.
Health care providers are worrying about how these laws will impact their ability to provide care for high-risk pregnancies or people experiencing miscarriages. Some local district attorneys have said that they won’t prosecute abortion cases in their jurisdictions.
Republican lawmakers have made it clear that they plan to use every tool in their arsenal to ensure that the state’s laws are being enforced, likely sparking legal challenges as they do so.
One such challenge is already looming, as state Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican from Deer Park, has made it clear he intends to target nonprofit advocacy groups that help pregnant patients pay for abortions.
Under the current law banning abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, these abortion funds have helped hundreds of pregnant people leave the state to get an abortion. They’ve paid for travel, lodging, child care and the procedure itself, and they’re preparing for a surge in demand now that abortion is further restricted.
But Cain, an anti-abortion legislator, has issued cease-and-desist letters to these groups, warning that their work may be criminalized under the state laws that were on the books before 1973.
That argument didn’t carry much weight when Roe v. Wade was in effect. Now, legal experts say this may represent the first of many legal questions that will need to be sorted out by the courts as the state begins to navigate an entirely new reproductive health care landscape.
Peyton and Eli Manning's nephew Arch Manning has committed to the University of Texas. (Arch Manning/Twitter)
Arch Manning, the latest prospect in the Manning football family and No. 1 recruit in the class of 2023, has committed to the University of Texas.
Manning is the nephew of Eli and Peyton Manning and the son of Cooper Manning, a former wide receiver for Ole Miss. The Manning football legacy began with Archie Manning, Arch Manning's grandfather and namesake who played for the New Orleans Saints throughout the 1970s.
Committed to the University of Texas. #HookEmpic.twitter.com/jHYbjBaF5K
— Arch Manning (@ArchManning) June 23, 2022
Manning joins head Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian's program after a disappointing 5-7 first season. Manning, who has been the starting quarterback at New Orlean's Newman High School since he was a freshman, was the No. 1 recruit in the 2023 class, according to 247sports.
Manning had plenty of SEC suitors, including Georgia, Alabama and LSU, but committed to Texas after a recent visit to Austin.
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