Mayor White reaps kudos for Katrina relief efforts

Texas officials are getting good poll reviews for their efforts in dealing with Katrina evacuees, with Houston Mayor Bill White leading the way.

The poll of 501 Harris County residents was conducted Friday-Sunday. The sampling error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Eighty percent of those polled rate White's response to the sudden arrival of evacuees as excellent or good.

[...]

Fifty-four percent of respondents rated [Harris County Judge Robert] Eckels' response as excellent or good. But 33 percent of those polled could not rate his performance, suggesting Eckels' name identification was not as high as White's. All but 7 percent polled had an opinion about White.

[...]

Perry, who asked Eckels to open Reliant Astrodome for evacuees, garnered a 59 percent favorable rating for his response.

Only 38 percent of those polled viewed Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina favorably, while 56 percent viewed his response as fair (21 percent) or poor (35 percent).

That roughly tracks national opinion. An AP-Ipsos poll found that slightly more than half, 52 percent of respondents, disapprove of Bush's handling of the hurricane relief.

Only 26 percent of Chronicle/KHOU poll respondents favorably rated the performance of [Louisiana Governor Kathleen] Blanco in the disaster, and 36 percent gave good or excellent ratings to [New Orleans Mayor Ray] Nagin.

FEMA's response to Katrina was rated favorably by 31 percent, with the highest percentage of respondents, 37 percent, rating it as poor.

Obviously, I'm happy to see Mayor White get this kind of credit for his performance. I think it's fair to say that he deserves it.

Rick Perry is the interesting case, given his anemic Texas Poll numbers from two weeks ago. As I said then, I think he'll get a bounce, but how much and how long it lasts is a guess. Too bad for him that the Texas Poll came out when it did. Depending on how the upcoming school finance ruling goes and how quickly another special session is called to deal with it, he may never see an uptick. Which, despite my antipathy, makes me feel a tiny bit sorry for him, since he has done good work here. Them's the breaks, though, and his awful overall record is more than enough to obliterate any fleeting goodwill I might otherwise have for him.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on September 14, 2005 to Hurricane Katrina | TrackBack