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Precinct analysis: 2019 Metro referendum

Dec 8th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
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The one election of interest within Harris County that wasn’t mostly or entirely within Houston was the Metro referendum. Let’s have a look at how that vote went.


Dist     Yes      No
====================
A     18,795  10,648
B     15,120   4,037
C     32,384  12,659
D     19,304   4,823
E     15,912  12,942
F      9,357   3,699
G     20,985  14,163
H     11,049   4,065
I      8,439   3,282
J      5,208   2,063
K     14,987   4,509
		
A     63.84%  36.16%
B     78.93%  21.07%
C     71.90%  28.10%
D     80.01%  19.99%
E     55.15%  44.85%
F     71.67%  28.33%
G     59.70%  40.30%
H     73.10%  26.90%
I     72.00%  28.00%
J     71.63%  28.37%
K     76.87%  23.13%

Where        Yes      No
========================
Houston  171,540  76,890
Not Hou   51,323  28,676

Houston   69.05%  30.95%
Not Hou   64.15%  35.85%

I’ve said before that blowout elections lead to boring precinct analyses, and here you can see a good example. The referendum passed by big margins everywhere, inside Houston and out. It helped that advocates had plenty of money while opposition was sparse. I doubt it would have mattered much in the end – the 2003 referendum passed despite much fiercer resistance, after all – but you have to think that the absence of a vocal and powerful Congressional adversary had to make this a lot easier for Metro. And that’s just fine by me.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · ·

Beto: Still not running for Senate

Dec 8th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
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And as of Monday evening, we can stop talking about this.

Beto O’Rourke

Beto O’Rourke is reiterating that he is not running for U.S. Senate next year as speculation swirls ahead of the Monday filing deadline.

The former El Paso congressman has long said he would not challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, but since he dropped out of the presidential race last month, some supporters have held out hope for a reversal and buzzed that he may be giving it new consideration.

“Nothings changed on my end,” O’Rourke told The Texas Tribune in a text message Thursday night. “Not running for senate.”

O’Rourke’s statement comes three days after the release of a poll showing he would fare much better against Cornyn than other Democrats who are running. The survey, commissioned by a group led by an O’Rourke booster, breathed new life into the speculation simmering since early November that O’Rourke could be convinced to make a late entry into the race.

[…]

The lineup for the Democratic primary includes Chris Bell, the former Houston congressman and 2006 gubernatorial nominee; Amanda Edwards, a member of the Houston City Council; MJ Hegar, the 2018 congressional candidate; Royce West, a state senator from Dallas; Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, a progressive organizer; and Sema Hernandez, O’Rourke’s 2018 primary opponent who got a stronger-than-expected 24% of the vote.

So far, none of them has come close to replicating the massive fundraising or frenetic campaign pace of O’Rourke’s 2018 bid.

At least one of them, West, has weighed in on the prospect of an 11th-hour bid by O’Rourke.

“I’d be disappointed because one of the things that I did before getting into the race was to talk to Beto and ask him — not once, but twice — if he decided to get out of the [presidential] race, would he get in [the Senate race]? And he said no,” West recalled during at a Texas Tribune event last month.

You know how I feel about that poll. I don’t know why so many people have been resistant to taking Beto at his word, but here we are. It’s only for a couple more days. In the meantime, Beto is out there working to help flip the State House, and I think he’s doing fine.

Posted in: Election 2020.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Former judge McSpadden rebuked by State Commission on Judicial Conduct

Dec 8th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

Good.

A former district judge who served on the Harris County bench for 36 years has received a formal reprimand from a state watchdog commission for comments he made to a Houston Chronicle reporter stating black defendants were getting poor guidance from their parents about how to behave when they’re suspected of crimes.

The commission’s rebuke also cited the former judge’s comments in an editorial he penned for the Chronicle expounding on black defendants’ attitudes toward the justice system.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct issued a warning on Nov. 12 to Michael McSpadden, a Republican who served on the 209th Criminal Court from 1982 through the 2018 election, for “casting public discredit on the judiciary and the administration of justice,” based on a series of comments he made about defendants’ attitudes toward judges and police officers. The commission announced its decision on Monday.

The Austin-based panel found that McSpadden violated a portion of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct that instructs judges not to do anything outside of court that casts reasonable doubt on the judge’s ability to act impartially. The panel also found McSpadden violated the Texas Constitution’s prohibition against “willful and persistent conduct that is clearly inconsistent with the proper performance of his duties or casts public discredit upon the judiciary or administration of justice.”

The warning does not prevent McSpadden from sitting by assignment as a visiting judge, according to Eric Vinson, former executive director of the commission.

[…]

Ashton Woods, president of Black Lives Matter Houston, who called for McSpadden to come under scrutiny for the comments, said the former judge’s statement in chambers and in his editorial called into question his ideology, indicating he could not be fair to black defendants and people of color who came before him due to his preconceived notions of how they may think.

“There’s already an imbalance … and when people put their thumb on the scale like McSpadden did, it increases the disparity,” Woods said. “There may have well been innocent people going through his court and he may have thrown the book at them because he had a bias toward them.”

Woods said he hoped all of McSpadden’s rulings would be reviewed for impartiality.

James Douglas, president of the Houston branch of the NAACP, said he did not think the commission went far enough.

“I think he should be banned from sitting on the bench,” Douglas said. “I don’t think he has the mental temperament or understanding of racial issues…Those views are not the views of a person who is totally impartial on the issue. He indicates he is not impartial when it relates to charges against African American males.”

See here and here for some background. The original comments from McSpadden, who was thankfully removed from the bench last year by the voters, came in a story about how he and others had “directed magistrates to deny no-cash bail to all newly arrested defendants”, over a period of nearly ten years. I agree that McSpadden’s previous rulings should be reviewed, and I definitely agree that he should never be allowed near a bench again. The visiting judge system needs an overhaul as it is, and it should be updated to exclude specifically problematic jurists like McSpadden. This is a no-brainer.

Posted in: Crime and Punishment.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

Precinct analysis: 2019 Controller

Dec 7th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

Back to the precinct data. This one’s easy, as there are only two candidates.


Dist Sanchez   Brown
====================
A      8,771   7,059
B      4,507  10,779
C     17,652  21,540
D      7,391  15,225
E     14,505  10,672
F      4,798   4,559
G     18,093  13,451
H      7,174   6,579
I      6,089   4,834
J      3,482   3,213
K      7,286  10,680
		
A     55.41%  44.59%
B     29.48%  70.52%
C     45.04%  54.96%
D     32.68%  67.32%
E     57.61%  42.39%
F     51.28%  48.72%
G     57.36%  42.64%
H     52.16%  47.84%
I     55.74%  44.26%
J     52.01%  47.99%
K     40.55%  59.45%

You have to hand it to Orlando Sanchez. He’s been around forever – he was first elected to City Council, in At Large #3, in 1995, the year Griff Griffin started running for office, but he had run unsuccessfully for District C in 1993. He ran for Mayor in 2001 after serving his three terms on Council and nearly won, then ran again in 2003 and didn’t do quite as well. No worries, he jumped at an opportunity to run for County Treasurer in 2006, and was on the county’s payroll till the end of last year. Why not run for office again? Man needs a job, you know. He won everywhere except the three African-American districts and District C, a pretty fine showing for a nondescript Latino Republican, but it wasn’t quite enough. In a county that’s a bright shade of blue and a city where the next elections are in 2023, is this the last we’ll hear of him? I kind of don’t think so. One of the first things he did after losing last year was cheerlead for the TEA to take over HISD, which makes me wonder if he might angle for a spot on the Board of Managers. Water finds its level, and Orlando Sanchez finds opportunities, is what I’m saying. Don’t count him out just yet.

As for Chris Brown, here’s how he did in the 2015 runoff against Bill Frazer. As you can see, better in the Republican districts and District C, less well in the Democratic districts. It’s still a win this way, but he didn’t exactly build on his success from four years ago. Campos thinks he should have done better, and that he failed to get a leg up for a potential future run for Mayor. I think there’s something to that, but I also think no one will remember these numbers even one year from now. If Mayor is next on his agenda, then the most important numbers he’ll need are fundraising numbers. A little more visibility wouldn’t hurt, either. I have to think some of what happened this year is due to Orlando Sanchez’s name recognition, but it shouldn’t have taken that much on Chris Brown’s part to overcome that. It’s not like he’s some no-name generic, after all. A win is a win, and in the end that’s what matters. But probably no other potential future Mayoral candidate is quaking in their boots right now.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · · · · ·

In which Greg Abbott moves to protect an anti-gay judge

Dec 7th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

First, there was this.

The Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct on Monday issued a public warning to a Republican judge from Waco who refuses to perform same-sex marriages but still performs them for opposite-sex couples.

McLennan County Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley told the commission that the way she has handled the matter is based on her “conscience and religion” despite the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

“I sought a solution so that anyone in McLennan County who wants to get married can get married,” Hensley said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. “I have, do, and always will, follow the law.”

Hensley has spoken publicly about her decision, including in a 2017 article in the Waco Tribune-Herald in which she said she felt she was entitled to a “religious exemption.”

“I’m entitled to accommodations just as much as anyone else,” Hensley was quoted saying.

We’re all aware of the bullshit arguments for “accommodation”, the TL;dr summary of which is No, you’re not, you’re entitled to follow the law and treat everyone equally or resign from the bench. People have a right to get married. You can choose to marry any couple with a license and a wish to be married, or you can choose to not enter that entirely optional part of the job. To say “these people can get married but those people can’t” is illegal, insulting, and frankly worth a much harsher penalty from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct than this jackass received.

And then we got the backstory.

Two former members of the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct say Gov. Greg Abbott removed them from the panel because he disagreed with their position on a case involving same-sex marriage.

Amy Suhl, a retired information technology executive from Sugar Land, and retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Maricela Alvarado, of Harlingen, were appointed to the commission as public members in June 2018.

They served as voting members for nine months while waiting for the Texas Senate to confirm their appointments. Then, when they were about to come up for a Senate vote, the governor withdrew the nominations.

It’s extremely uncommon for Abbott’s office to go back on an appointment. Since 2017, only one other nominee has been withdrawn for a reason other than a resignation or death, records show.

Suhl and Alvarado, in recent interviews with Hearst Newspapers, say they were told that the governor had decided to go in a different direction. But they believe Abbott pushed them out because of their votes to sanction a Waco judge who officiates opposite-sex marriages but refuses to conduct gay marriages.

Suhl made an audio recording of a meeting with the governor’s staff and a later phone call. The recordings, which were reviewed by Hearst Newspapers, shows the staffers were encouraging her to act with Abbott’s views in mind.

“When we appoint people, we appreciate so much that people are willing to serve and hope that people understand that they’re serving the governor, not themselves,” one staffer said.

Suhl said the governor’s office wanted to “change them out with the hope that maybe more people would vote the way they want.”

“I thought it was wrong,” she said. “That commission is there to serve the public, to make sure judges are operating ethically, and not to serve any one group’s interest.”

Suhl is of course correct, in the same way that the US Attorney General is supposed to represent and serve the people, not be the personal attorney of the President. I admire her and Lt. Col. Alvarado for their convictions and their willingness to call BS on this. This, at a most fundamental level, is what corruption is. It’s not just about using power for personal gain, it’s also about using it to subvert and go around existing structures and processes to achieve a result that couldn’t have been achieved by letting the system work as designed. It’s about putting pressure on people who were hired or appointed to do a job to do that job in a bent and perverse way, to rig an outcome. This is what that old saying “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Greg Abbott, like Donald Trump, wields his power in service of himself. He does it because he wants to, and because he thinks he’s entitled to. If he had picked less honorable people to serve on this Commission, he might well have gotten away with it, too.

By the way, remember how Abbott rushed to condemn Rick Miller, because (he said) Miller’s comments were “inappropriate and out of touch with the values of the Republican Party”? Clearly, discriminating against some people is inappropriate and out of touch with Republican values, but discriminating against some other people is just peachy. Good to know. The Trib has more.

(Full disclosure: Amy Suhl is retired from the company I work for. I know who she is, though I had no idea about this appointment she was to have had. We never worked together – ours is a big company – and she may or may not know who I am

Posted in: Legal matters.
Tagged: · · · · · · · ·

Beto boosts State House candidates

Dec 7th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Very nice.

Beto O’Rourke

A month after ending his presidential campaign, Democrat Beto O’Rourke has turned his attention to state politics — namely, an effort to help flip the Texas House of Representatives from Republican control to the Democrats.

With Texas Democrats nine seats away from retaking the majority of seats in the Texas House, O’Rourke is trying to convince his donor base to send money to an organization called Flip The Texas House, which has targeted 17 House Districts in which Republican candidates won by fewer than 10 percentage points last year. More than half are districts in which O’Rourke won the majority of votes as he ran for U.S. Senate.

“In 2018, I carried nine of the 17 districts now represented by Republicans. So we know that we can do this,” O’Rourke said in the email. “We just need your help to make sure that we make the most of this opportunity.”

Ten of the targeted districts are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and five are in and around Houston. One is in San Antonio and one is in Killeen.

As always, my analysis of the interesting House races is here. Those five Houston-area districts are HDs 134 and 138 in Harris County, HD29 in Brazoria County, and HDs 26 and 28 in Fort Bend. HD26 is now an open seat after incumbent Rick Miller said some deeply stupid things that even Greg Abbott condemned. It’s not even 2020 yet, and things are already off the chain.

Let me just say, we’re really not ready for the amount of money that’s going to be spent on campaigns in Texas next year. Ads – on TV, on the internet, on Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and Instagram and everywhere else – and mailers and texts and calls and canvassers, it’s going to be nuts. We as a non-swing state for many years are not prepared for this. I feel like we all need to spend a week in Iowa or New Hampshire to get a taste of it. Just brace yourself, that’s all I’m saying.

Posted in: Election 2020.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Day Six 2019 Runoff EV Report: One day more

Dec 7th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

We’ve completed a five day early voting week, with a bonus day from before the week included. The Day Six EV Runoff file is here, and the final file from November is here. 


Date     Mail   Early   Total
=============================
Nov19   6,799  52,718  59,517
Dec19  14,902  56,079  70,981

And here’s the Friday Keir Murray report.

Over seven thousand mail ballots came in on Thursday, which more than doubled the total at that time. About half of all mail ballots have now been returned. Only about a quarter of mail ballots had been returned after six days in the November election, though do keep in mind that “six days” in the December context covers a week and a half. Remember also that the December ballots are all Houston, while the November totals were all of Harris County. That said, more votes are cast early in off year runoffs than in odd year November elections – 55% of all ballots were early in the 2015 runoff, for example. And there are only ten total days of early voting here, as opposed to twelve in November. We’ll take our guesses about final turnout later. For now, things are chugging along.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

Filing update: Focus on Harris County

Dec 6th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

One more look at who has and hasn’t yet filed for stuff as we head into the final weekend for filing. But first, this message:


That’s general advice, not specific to Harris County or to any person or race. With that in mind, let’s review the landscape in Harris County, with maybe a bit of Fort Bend thrown in as a bonus. Primary sources are the SOS candidate page and the Patrick Svitek spreadsheet.

Reps. Sylvia Garcia and Lizzie Fletcher do not have primary opponents, though the spreadsheet does list a possible opponent for Garcia. As previously discussed, Rep. Al Green has a primary opponent, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has three so far, with at least one more to come. Elisa Cardnell and Travis Olsen have filed in CD02. Mike Siegel and Shannon Hutcheson have filed in CD10, and none of the three known contenders have filed yet in CD22. (Before you ask, no, I don’t know why some candidates seem to wait till the last minute to file.)

In the Lege, the big news is that Penny Shaw has filed in HD148, so the voters there will get their third contested race in a four month time period. At least with only two candidates so far there can’t be a runoff, but there’s still time. Ann Johnson and Lanny Bose have filed in HD134, Ruby Powers has not yet. Over in Fort Bend, Ron Reynolds does not have an opponent in HD27, at least not yet. No other activity to note.

Audia Jones, Carvana Cloud, and Todd Overstreet have filed for District Attorney; incumbent Kim Ogg has not yet filed. Christian Menefee and Vince Ryan have filed for County Attorney, Harry Zamora has entered the race for Sheriff along with incumbent Ed Gonzalez, and Jack Terence, last seen as a gadfly Mayoral candidate in the late 90s and early 2000s, has filed for Tax Assessor; Ann Harris Bennett has not yet filed. Andrea Duhon has switched over to HCDE Position 7, At Large, which puts her in the same race as David Brown, who has not yet filed. Erica Davis has already filed for Position 5, At Large.

In the Commissioners Court races, Rodney Ellis and Maria Jackson are in for Precinct 1; Michael Moore, Kristi Thibaut, Diana Alexander and now someone named Zaher Eisa are in for Precinct 3, with at least one other person still to come. I will note that Precinct 1 Constable Alan Rosen has not yet filed for re-election, but three other candidates, two of whom filed within the first week of the period, are in for that position. Rosen’s name has been bandied about as a possible Commissioners Court challenger to Steve Radack, and if he is planning to jump to that race it makes sense that he’d take his time, since he’d have to resign immediately afterward. I have no inside scoop here, just a bit of idle speculation. There are no Dems as yet for either Constable or JP in Precincts 5 or 8.

This brings us to the District Courts, and there’s some interesting action happening here. There are a couple of open seats thanks to retirements and Maria Jackson running for Commissioners Court. Herb Ritchie is retiring in the 337th; two contenders have filed. One person has filed in Jackson’s 339th. Someone other than George Powell has filed in the 351st, and someone other than Randy Roll has filed in the 179th. I’m not sure if they are running again or not. Steve Kirkland has a primary opponent in the 334th, because of course he does, and so does Julia Maldonado in the new 507th. Alexandra Smoots-Thomas does not yet have a primary opponent.

Fort Bend County went blue in 2018 as we know, but Dems did not have a full slate of candidates to take advantage of that. They don’t appear to have that problem this year, as there are multiple candidates for Sheriff (where longtime incumbent Troy Nehls is retiring and appears poised to finally announce his long-anticipated candidacy for CD22, joining an insanely large field), County Attorney, and Tax Assessor (HCC Trustee Neeta Sane, who ran for Treasurer in 2006, is among the candidates). The Dems also have multiple candidates trying to win back the Commissioners Court seat in Precinct 1 that they lost in 2016 – one of the candidates is Jennifer Cantu, who ran for HD85 in 2018 – and they have candidates for all four Constable positions.

There are still incumbents and known challengers who have been raising money for their intended offices who have not yet filed. I expect nearly all of that to happen over the weekend, and then we’ll see about Monday. I’ll be keeping an eye on it all.

Posted in: Election 2020.
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County to seek new voting machines

Dec 6th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

About time.

Diane Trautman

Harris County Commissioners Court on Tuesday unanimously approved County Clerk Diane Trautman’s plan to seek vendor proposals for new voting machines.

The clerk’s office plans to issue a request for proposal for a new voting system this month. An evaluation committee composed of county government officials will vet proposals and recommend a model by August 2020, according to a timeline Trautman provided.

“We did establish a community advisory community and met with them, and we received written and online feedback,” Trautman said. “We also had an election machine vendor fair where the community came out … the next step is to start the RFP process.”

The clerk’s office plans to purchase the new machines by the end of 2020.

After training election judges and staging demonstrations for the public, Trautman plans to debut the devices in the May 2021 elections. Trautman initially had explored the idea of buying new machines in time for the November 2020 general election, which could see a record number of voters because it is a presidential year, but concluded that timeline was not feasible.

Rolling out the machines in a low-turnout election would allow elections officials to more easily address any problems that arise, she said.

[…]

County Judge Lina Hidalgo urged Trautman to look for ways to decrease wait times at polling sites in the 2020 general election. Since the Legislature eliminated straight-ticket voting after the 2018 election, a time-saving method 76 percent of Harris County voters used that November, officials across the state worry future elections would feature long lines to cast ballots.

“I just want to reiterate my commitment to you to support work to make those lines shorter and fast, and anything we need to do for these 2020 elections, given that we still use these old voting machines,” Hidalgo said.

Security, ease of use, and some form of paper receipt should be the top priorities. Look to Travis County for some ideas – as with voting centers, having Michael Winn on staff will surely help with that. Those voting centers are intended to help with the long lines – having extended hours and more locations during early voting helps, too – and maybe we could remind some folks that they have the ability to vote by mail, too. I’m very much looking forward to seeing the vendor proposals.

Posted in: Local politics.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · ·

HISD lawsuit to stop TEA takeover has its day in court

Dec 6th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

We’ll see how it goes.

As Houston Independent School District fights for its independence, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel gave little indication Thursday of whether he would tap the brakes on the state’s plans to strip power from the elected trustees and install a new governing board.

However, Yeakel complimented the district on a “well-presented” case and said he plans to rule quickly on HISD’s request for a preliminary injunction. An injunction would stop the state from making moves to upend management at the state’s largest school district until the court hears and decides the full case.

David Campbell, an attorney arguing on behalf of HISD, said the state’s attempt to appoint a board of managers to oversee the school district is like “bringing an elephant gun to shoot a mouse.”

[…]

“This case starts and ends with Wheatley High School,” said Emily Ardolino, assistant attorney general in the state’s general ligation division. She said the commissioner has a mandate to take action and much of what the state is challenging is not reviewable by the courts under state law.

Yeakel questioned whether the decision to take over the entire governing body of the school district was an overreaction to the failing performance of one in more than 280 schools.

“Texas law provides for this,” Ardolino said, adding government intervention is mandated by state law. She argued the current board has been characterized as “dysfunctional” by one of its members and said disarray in meetings has exposed racial tensions. She pointed to a state investigation that found HISD trustees were unilaterally taking actions that required board approval. The appointed board would serve for a matter of years, not indefinitely, according to the state’s defense.

See here, here, and here for the background. You know my opinion of this, so let me just say I appreciate that Judge Yeakel will give a ruling quickly. Whatever happens, best we know it soon. The Trib has more.

Posted in: Legal matters.
Tagged: · · · · · · ·

It could be March before District B gets to vote in their runoff

Dec 5th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

And honestly, by the same calculations, it could go later than that.

Cynthia Bailey

The Houston City Council District B runoff could be delayed until March if a lawsuit contesting last month’s election result is not resolved by Monday, the Harris County Attorney’s office said.

The third-place finisher in the race filed the contest, arguing that second-place finisher Cynthia Bailey’s felony conviction bars her from holding public office.

Meanwhile, incumbent District B Councilman Jerry Davis said he intends to hold the seat until a successor is elected, while Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis said the runoff should not have been delayed.

“There’s a lot of people out there that are angry,” Ellis said at this week’s Commissioners Court meeting on Tuesday. “And to be honest with you, I’m angry as well.”

Assistant County Attorney Douglas Ray said Dec. 9 is the deadline to place District B on the Jan. 28 ballot, which also will feature the runoff for the vacant District 148 seat in the Texas House of Representatives. The county will begin sending mail ballots for that election next week, Ray said.

“We don’t want to have to run another election in addition to the ones that we’re already doing,” Ray said.

A hearing on the election contest has been scheduled for Friday.

See here for the previous update. According to the Secretary of State, the deadline to send out the mail ballots for the March primary election is January 18th. That means that if we don’t have a resolution by the 9th, we have a bit less than six weeks to get resolution in time to have the election in March. Otherwise, the next opportunity is May. Isn’t this fun?

The District B race was a topic of discussion at Commissioners Court, where Ellis questioned whether the county should have yanked the runoff from the ballot. He suggested the county attorney could have sought to quickly dismiss Jefferson-Smith’s suit so the runoff could proceed as scheduled.

Ellis said the county’s decision sets a dangerous precedent where any disgruntled party could cause delays to an election.

“We’re going to be the laughingstock of the country if there’s some last-minute challenge, and then somehow we’re going to affect the presidential primary on Super Tuesday,” Ellis said.

County Judge Lina Hidalgo suggested the county attorney’s office develop a strategy to more quickly resolve election challenges in the future.

To be fair, the fact that the state law in question is ambiguous and has not been resolved by a court is part of the problem. Short of declaring Bailey ineligible when she filed, I’m not sure what the County Attorney can do or could have done. That said, I Am Not An Attorney, and they are (it’s right there in the name), so maybe they can think of something. Whatever they do think of, getting that law fixed needs to be a priority as well.

City and county leaders have said they support keeping Davis on council until his replacement is named.

“Although his term will expire on January 2, 2020, the City expects Council Member Jerry Davis to serve on a holdover basis (if necessary) until his successor is elected and qualified for office,” said Alan Bernstein, communications director for Mayor Sylvester Turner.

While some question whether that may run afoul of the city’s term limits, Davis and county officials said the Texas Constitution allows him to stay.

“All officers of this State shall continue to perform the duties of their offices until their successors shall be duly qualified,” Article XVI of the Constitution says.

I’m fine with this as well, but we all know this is another lawsuit waiting to happen, right? Lord help us if Davis is on the winning side of a 9-8 vote in Council in 2020. It sure would be nice if we get a verdict by Monday.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Why not appoint newly elected Trustees to the Board of Managers?

Dec 5th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

It’s a perfectly reasonable question, posed recently in the Chron op-ed pages by two of those new Trustees-to-be, Judith Cruz and Dani Hernandez.

Judith Cruz

As former Houston Independent School District educators, a product of HISD, and a parent in HISD, we are personally familiar with the inequity and mediocrity that plagues large portions of the seventh largest school district in the United States. We have experienced the average or below-average schools that hover just above “improvement required” status. We resigned or put our jobs on hold and spent the last few months in 100-degree weather walking door-to-door in Districts 3 and 8 in Houston’s East End. Our aim was to give our communities the voice and policy changes to make our schools excellent. Again and again, we heard we were the only candidates who had come to meet them in their neighborhoods and in their homes. We did the work. It paid off. In Districts 3 and 8, we have a clear mandate for change by winning 64 percent of the vote over the incumbent trustees. The people liked our message and spoke with their votes for change. Democracy worked!

Dani Hernandez

We won with a decisive mandate, though the victory was bittersweet. Within hours, rumors of a Texas Education Agency takeover came true. TEA announced it would be replacing the elected trustees with an appointed board of managers. Many were shocked by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath’s timing. The announcement came with a call for those interested in serving on the new board to apply online. Wait! What? Hadn’t Houston spoken on election day? Clearly, Districts 3 and 8 not only have “interested applicants”—they had just elected trustees who weren’t part of the problematic HISD board. We demonstrated our interest months ago when we filed for election and put our lives on hold to be the change we need.

Remember that the HISD takeover is partly about Wheatley High School, and partly about the investigation that concluded multiple Trustees had violated ethics rules, as well as the Texas Open Meetings Act. Two of the Trustees named in the investigator’s report were Diana Davila and Sergio Lira, who were defeated by Cruz and Hernandez. All indications we’ve had so far suggest that the TEA will replace the entire Board with the Board of Managers, and roll the elected officials back on over time, but there’s no reason why they couldn’t start with a couple of elected Board members. If that’s on the table, then it makes sense to put Cruz and Hernandez at the front of the line, precisely because they directly removed two of the problems. I don’t expect the TEA to buy this argument, but there’s nothing inherently illogical about it. We’ll know soon enough.

Posted in: Election 2019, School days.
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Day Four 2019 Runoff EV report: Steady as she goes

Dec 5th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

I’ll probably do these more or less every other day. The Day Four EV Runoff file is here, and the final file from November is here. 


Date     Mail   Early   Total
=============================
Nov19   6,362  35,467  41,829
Dec19   6,387  37,606  43,993

As an extra added bonus, here’s Keir Murrary’s analysis of the voter roster through Day 3. Here, as we can see, mail ballots are now at parity and in person voting is slightly higher for Round Two, though Wednesday was the slowest day so far. Runoff voters are the hardest of the hardcore, so all of this is sensible to me. Have you voted yet?

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · · · ·

Beacon Research: Trump 45, Biden 44

Dec 4th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

That’s not the headline of this story, but it’s what I’m leading with.

Beto O’Rourke

With just a week remaining before the deadline to run for office in Texas next year, some Democrats are still hoping to see Beto O’Rourke jump into the race to unseat Sen. John Cornyn.

Cornyn himself continued to raise money on Monday off the specter.

Poll after poll shows Cornyn would trounce the dozen or so contenders for the Democratic nomination at this point. None can touch the near-universal name recognition O’Rourke enjoys among Texas Democrats after his near-miss against Sen. Ted Cruz last year.

And a new poll commissioned by backers worried that the current crop of candidates would fall short shows that O’Rourke is by far the top choice of Democratic voters in Texas at 58%, with the runner-up, state Sen. Royce West of Dallas at 13%.

The poll also shows him in a near-tie, trailing Cornyn 46-42 at this point, which is far stronger than others already seeking the nomination.

[…]

The poll commissioned by the Democratic Policy Institute was conducted Nov. 9-21 – that is, after he ended his presidential campaign on Nov. 1.

“Beto has a strong statewide profile, certainly stronger than any of the other candidates at this point. He could certainly make this competitive,” said Chris Anderson of Beacon Research, a Boston-based Democratic pollster who conducted the survey.

“There’s no doubt that name ID is a huge asset for Beto, but it’s not something to be taken lightly,” Anderson said. “To have pretty much universal name ID across Texas is significant. And he has a loyal following that’s ready to reemerge for him. He really energized younger voters [against Cruz] and that means he could start with a leg up.”

You can see the poll info here. You may note there’s no mention of the Trump-Biden result in the excerpt I quoted. In fact, there’s no mention of it anywhere in the story, which as you can see is all about Beto. I’ll get to that in a minute, but in the meantime, here are the Presidential results from the poll:

Trump 45, Biden 44
Trump 46, Warren 41

Those are the only matchups they did. Biden does a touch better than Warren among Ds, Rs, and indies, and that explains the gap. The main takeaway here is that this is yet another result in which Trump tops out below fifty percent, and is in a tight race against all comers. And this is while the poll finds him even in favorability, 49-49. He’s had worse in other polls.

That was just an appetizer, because this poll was all about the Senate. Here’s what we get for that:

Cornyn 46, generic Dem 44 (broken down as definitely Cornyn 26, probably Cornyn 20, definitely Dem 26, probably Dem 18)
Cornyn 46, Beto 42
Cornyn 45, Royce West 33
Cornyn 44, MJ Hegar 30
Cornyn 45, Chris Bell 30
Cornyn 45, Sema Hernandez 29

For whatever the reason, they did not also test Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez or Amanda Edwards. I think the main difference between the Cornyn-Beto numbers and the Cornyn-other Dem numbers is, as evidenced by the Cornyn-generic Dem numbers, name recognition. I have no problem believing that some candidates may do better – or worse – against Cornyn than others. Candidates matter, and some people’s votes are up for grabs. We saw plenty of variance in the statewide vote last year among the races. But there’s Cornyn getting 44 or 45 against the four non-Betos; it’s a bit ironic, given the motivation for the poll, that he scores best against Beto, even if the margin is much smaller. Point being, Cornyn isn’t gaining at these other Dems’ expense, they just don’t have the consolidated support Beto has. Yet.

So make of this what you will. Beto isn’t running, and we’re going to be fine. The Texas Signal has more.

Posted in: Election 2020, The making of the President.
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Chron overview of the At Large #3 runoff

Dec 4th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

The basic story should be familiar by now.

Janaeya Carmouche

In the race for the third of Houston’s five citywide council seats, voters have a choice between candidates opposite in age, temperament, and, often, policy positions.

At-Large 3 incumbent Michael Kubosh is a bombastic 68-year-old bail bondsman. Seeking to deny him a third term is Janaeya Carmouche, 37, an even-keeled former nonprofit and government employee who most recently worked for Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis.

Kubosh relishes being a contrarian voice on the council, deploying thundering speeches, parliamentary delays or “no” votes when he sees fit.

“It’s not in my DNA to go along to get along,” Kubosh said. “You need me on council so I’ll speak up when I see wrong. If everybody just votes with the mayor, then why in the hell do we have a council?”

Carmouche is a self-proclaimed introvert with a “wonkish” bent who says community service works best out of the spotlight. She chose to challenge Kubosh rather than seek an open seat partly because she said he grandstands but produces little for Houstonians.

“He’s great at marketing, and I think we’ve given him a lot of credit for being politically savvy,” Carmouche said. “He is the Wizard of Oz: Pull back that curtain and it’s just a guy pulling knobs. We need to have sensible, thoughtful and critical-thinking folks around the table. This is a job of service.”

My interview with Janaeya Carmouche is here, and my analysis of the vote in AL3 is here. There’s not a whole lot to add here. Kubosh is what he is, Carmouche should get a boost from the Mayoral runoff, but she has a lot of ground to make up and Kubosh does better in the African-American districts than your typical Anglo Republican. We’ll see what happens.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

Time for the 2019 outrageous and dishonest mailer

Dec 4th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
13 comments

There’s at least one every cycle.

A handful of black Democratic elected officials are expressing outrage over a campaign mailer that appears to have used photos of the politicians without consent to falsely suggest they endorsed a slate of City Council candidates — including two backed by the Harris County Republican Party.

The mailer, circulated by a group called the Harris County Black Democratic News, features photos of former President Barack Obama, U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green, and several state legislators and county officials, along with Mayor Sylvester Turner.

On the other side of the mailer are photos of nine City Council candidates, including Willie Davis and Eric Dick — who are endorsed by the Harris County Republican Party — under the banner text “Endorsement Announcement.” It also purports to endorse Turner and two Harris County Department of Education board candidates.

“I have never been contacted by the Harris County Black Democratic News, nor am I sure that they are a legitimate news or community organization,” said state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, who is pictured on the mailer. “I did not consent to being included in the Harris County Black Democratic News and am appalled that a group would go to this extent to mislead voters.”

The mailer does not disclose which person or political committee funded it, an apparent violation of state law.

Dick, a Harris County Department of Education trustee who is in a runoff for the At-Large, Position 5 seat against former City Council staffer Sallie Alcorn, contributed $8,500 to the Harris County Democratic News in September and October, according to his campaign finance records.

You can see a picture of the mailer, front and back, here. It’s almost admirable in its shamelessness. John Coby has been all over this. The news coverage will of course reach more people than would have ever seen the mailer itself, which is a two-edged sword, as some of them will just remember the images and not the truth about them. The thing about stuff like this is that it’s fundamentally a sign of weakness. No one who is confident in their ability to win needs to claim phony endorsements. This isn’t Eric Dick’s first campaign. He knows what he’s doing and he knows why he’s doing it. I’d say he should be ashamed of himself, but that ship sailed a long time ago.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

State Rep. Rick Miller drops re-election bid

Dec 4th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

This happened in a big hurry.

Rep. Rick Miller

State Rep. Rick Miller, R-Sugar Land, is no longer running for reelection after he sparked a firestorm for saying he was facing primary challengers because they are “Asian.”

“During a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle I made some statements that were insensitive and inexcusable,” Miller said in a statement to The Texas Tribune. “In trying to make a point about the campaign I used a poor choice of words that are not indicative of my character or heart.”

“I do not want to be a distraction for my party or my constituents, and therefore I have decided not to seek re-election,” he continued.

In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Miller said that two of his Republican opponents — former Fort Bend GOP Chairman Jacey Jetton and Houston Fire Department analyst Leonard Chan — likely joined the race because they’re Asian in a district with a sizable Asian population.

“He’s a Korean. He has decided because, because he is an Asian that my district might need an Asian to win. And that’s kind of racist in my mind, but anyway, that’s not necessary, at least not yet,” Miller said of Jetton.

The backlash was swift earlier Tuesday as Gov. Greg Abbott pulled his endorsement of Miller and the Fort Bend county GOP chair asked him to consider dropping out.

Chan “jumped in probably for the same reason,” Miller told the Chronicle. “I don’t know, I never met the guy. I have no idea who he is. He has not been around Republican channels at all, but he’s an Asian.”

Here’s that Houston Chronicle story. As we know, Beto carried HD26 in 2018, though Miller hung on. There are now four Dems lined up to run, and it seems likely some other Republicans will now get in. Whether this winds up making the seat easier for them to hold or not remains to be seen.

I don’t have anything else to say about this, so let me turn the rest of this post over to Rep. Gene Wu.


Go read the rest.

Posted in: Election 2020.
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Our first Congressional race ratings

Dec 3rd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

From Politico, here’s the early view of the state of Texas’ Congressional races in 2020.

Lean Dem

CD23 (Open, R)
CD32 (Allred, D)

Tossup

CD07 (Fletcher, D)
CD22 (Open, R)
CD24 (Open, R)

Lean GOP

CD02 (Crenshaw, R)
CD10 (McCaul, R)
CD21 (Roy, R)
CD31 (Carter, R)

Likely GOP

CD03 (Taylor, R)
CD06 (Wright, R)
CD17 (Open, R)
CD25 (Williams, R)

The rest are all Solid for their respective parties. A few thoughts:

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher

– I think they are underrating CD07. It’s a Lean Dem to me, based on Rep. Fletcher’s performance, the continued anti-Trump atmosphere, the overall strength of the HCDP and the overall weakness of the Harris County GOP. Until and unless I see something to make me think otherwise, CD07 and CD32 are equivalent.

– The three Republican-held-but-open seats that are Lean Dem or Tossup seem right to me. I’ve been burned by CD23 before, but I’ve chosen to believe that Rep. Will Hurd had some special sauce that enabled him to survive two elections he really should have lost. We’ll see if I’m right about that or if this district will bedevil us again.

– The Lean GOP districts sure seem to be on a spectrum. On the one end, CD10 was carried by Beto O’Rourke in 2018, and all three Dems are raising good money; CD21 is a bit redder, but Wendy Davis is killing it in fundraising. On the other end, we still have no idea who might emerge as a serious contender in CD31, while Dan Crenshaw is getting Will Hurd levels of undeserved media attention, while also sitting on three million bucks in his campaign coffers. Both are trending in the right direction, and Elisa Cardnell is a good candidate (who now has a primary opponent), but it’s not hard to imagine these races being classified as “likely GOP” in the future or by other prognosticators.

– The Likely GOP districts seem about right, though the inclusion of CD17 is optimistic, to put it mildly, even if it is an open seat and even if the Ukraine-compromised Pete Sessions is the GOP nominee. (Unless someone persuades Chet Edwards to jump in, which would change things considerably.) CDs 03 and 06 have candidates with fundraising potential, and could possibly get upgraded if everything goes well. CD25 is a step behind them, but having it on the radar at all is a sign of how much things, and the perception of things, have changed since 2016.

– We’re getting way, way ahead of ourselves, but the GOP is going to have to think long and hard about what the landscape is going to look like over the next decade. The 2011/2013 gerrymander worked very well for them in a state that was 55-60% Republican. In a state that’s a tossup or close to it, they have a lot of seats to defend. Texas will get more Congressional seats in 2021, assuming its idiotic penury in supporting the Census doesn’t cause a dramatic undercount, which will give a bit more latitude, but the basic questions about how many reasonably safe GOP seats the state can support will remain. And if the Dems take the State House and gain leverage over the process, those questions will get even trickier for them.

Posted in: Election 2020.
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Chron overview of the At Large #5 runoff

Dec 3rd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

Of the five At Large runoffs, this one is the least predictable to me.

Sallie Alcorn

Sallie Alcorn is a proud nerd who sweats the small stuff.

“I like looking at ordinances and trying to figure out how to make them better,” said Alcorn, a long-time City Hall staffer. “I like the budget stuff. I like helping people. It’s the mundane stuff of city government that I like.”

In the race for Houston City Council’s fifth at-large position, Alcorn is touting her decades of public sector experience, and has been endorsed by a host of local and state leaders.

Her opponent, attorney Eric Dick, said his experience representing vulnerable people is the key difference between the two candidates.

Both have eschewed negative campaigning in favor of issues such as flooding.

[…]

After an unsuccessful run for mayor in 2015, Dick won a seat on Harris County Department of Education’s board of trustees in 2016. A supporter of Tony Buzbee for mayor — both are largely self-funding their campaigns — Dick is often billed as a Republican.

He disagrees with the classification, however, citing his views on climate change and criminal justice, views he calls out of step with many traditional Republicans.

“I probably agree with one-third of their platform,” he said.

As I noted before, it’s a pretty neat trick to run in and win a contested Republican primary while still claiming to not actually be a Republican. Let’s just say that since 2016, the year Eric Dick was was elected to the HCDE Board as a Republican, the state and national Republican Parties have offered many, many opportunities for wannabe “not one of those Republicans” to clearly and publicly distance themselves from their colleagues. Joe Straus, whatever you may think of him, has done it numerous times. Ed Emmett has done it. Some, like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, were almost entirely performative in doing it, but they still did it. We know because they all got lots of attention for it. If you can think of one example of Eric Dick, as shameless an attention hound as you’ll find in local politics, doing them same, well, then you know of one more example than I do. So please take those extremely conveniently-timed professions of being an apostate and stuff them in whatever remains of your Thanksgiving turkey. I ain’t buying it, and neither should you.

So, then. Here’s my interview with Sallie Alcorn. Eric Dick’s schtick may be a load of hooey, but some people will believe it, and that’s why I’m unsure of how this one will go.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

Day Two 2019 Runoff EV report: It’s going to be a weird EV period

Dec 3rd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

Let’s do a table:


Date     Mail   Early   Total
=============================
Nov19   5,708  17,287  22,995
Dec19   2,269  19,882  22,151

That’s pretty close! The Day Two EV Runoff file is here, and the final file from November is here. Remember that there will be fewer early voting days for the runoff than there were for November, so the comparisons are ultimately a little skewed. More mail ballots had been returned by this point in November, but that election had a long lead-in for mail ballots. Besides, there have been more ballots sent out for December than there were for November – 29,247 for the runoff, 26,824 for November – so look for those numbers to even up. At some point I’ll check and see how big a share of the final totals early voting is for runoffs – the population involved is different, after all – but for now, enjoy what we have.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · ·

Filing report update

Dec 2nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

We’re a week out from the official filing deadline for the 2020 primaries. There’s still a lot of known candidates who haven’t filed yet, but I expect there will be a mad flurry of activity this week, as is usually the case. Don’t be surprised if we hear of an out-of-the-blue retirement or two, as that is known to happen at this time as well. I’m going to take a quick look at where we stand now, and will provide other reports as needed before the deadline on Monday. My sources for this are as follows:

The Patrick Svitek spreadsheet.
The Secretary of State Candidate Information page, which is quite handy and reasonably up to date.
Texas Judges, whose provenance is unknown to me, but they have the most information I’ve found about candidates for statewide and Courts of Appeals judicial races.
Jeff Blaylock’s Texas Election Source – I may be too cheap to subscribe, but the free info he includes is always worth noting.

SBOE

We have a third Democrat in the race for SBOE6, Kimberly McLeod. She is Assistant Superintendent of Education & Enrichment at HCDE and a former professor at TSU. She joins former HCDE Board member Debra Kerner (who has filed) and teacher Michelle Palmer (who had not yet filed, at least according to the SOS, as of this weekend).

We have a filing for SBOE5, the most-flippable of the SBOE districts up for election this year, Letti Bresnahan. Google tells me that a person by this name was a Trustee at San Antonio’s Northside ISD (she is not on the Board now). She was elected in 2008, narrowly re-elected in 2012, and I guess didn’t run in 2016; the Bexar County Elections report for May 2016 doesn’t list the NEISD Position 6 race, so who knows what happened. In 2015, she voted to keep the name of San Antonio’s Robert E. Lee High school; it was subsequently changed to Legacy of Education Excellence (LEE) High School in 2017, by which time as far as I can tell she was no longer on the Board. That’s a whole lot more words than I intended to write about her or this race – and mind you, I can’t say for sure this is the same Letti (Leticia) Bresnahan. I noted this because I’ve been keeping an eye on this race – the district was carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016, it was the bluest of the Republican-held SBOE districts in 2018, and the incumbent is a wingnut. So I was gonna write something when a Dem filed, I just didn’t expect it to be this.

State Senate

Someone named Richard Andrews has filed as a Democrat against Sen. Borris Miles. The Svitek spreadsheet has him as a General Election opponent, but his website clearly says “Democrat”, and the SOS has him as a Democrat. He’s a doctor, and that’s all I know about him.

State House

Current SBOE member Lawrence Allen, Jr, who is the son of State Rep. Alma Allen, has filed in the increasingly crowded Democratic primary in HD26. It’s one of the nine GOP-held districts that Beto won in 2018. Rish Oberoi, Suleman Lalani, and 2018 candidate Sarah DeMerchant have also filed.

Travis Boldt has filed in HD29, in Brazoria County. That was one of two near-miss districts (Beto got 47.0%) in which no Dem was on the ballot in 2018; HD32, which does not yet have a candidate filed, was the other.

Sandra Moore, who lost in the 2018 Dem primary to Marty Schexnayder, has filed to run again in HD133.

Ashton Woods has changed the name of his Facebook page to indicate he plans to run in the primary for HD146, currently held by second-term Rep. Shawn Thierry. He has not filed as of this writing.

So far, no one else has filed to run in the primary for HD148, where Anna Eastman is in the runoff for the special election, and has made her filing for 2020.

First Court of Appeals

I hadn’t gotten into the Courts of Appeals in my previous discussions, but especially after the sweep of these races by Dems in 2018 (and not just on this court), they will surely be of interest to multiple candidates.

Veronica Rivas-Molloy, who has officially filed, and Dinesh Singhal are in the race for Place 3 against incumbent Russell Loyd, who was elected in 2014. The Texas Judges website also lists Keith F. Houston as a candidate, but he appears to have decided not to run.

Amparo Guerra and Tim Hootman have both filed for Place 5, which had been held by the now-resigned Laura Carter Higley. There are three Republicans running so far, and there may be another if Greg Abbott appoints someone to fill the still-vacant seat prior to the filing deadline.

14th Court of Appeals

Jane Robinson is the (so far, at least) lone Democrat running for Chief Justice. I saw her at the HCDP Friendsgiving last month but did not have the chance to walk up and say Hi. The position is held by Justice Kem Thompson Frost, who is not running for re-election. Justice Tracy Christopher, who holds Place 9, is running for Chief Justice. She was last elected in 2016, so she would not otherwise be on the ballot. My assumption is that if she wins, she will move over from Place 9, which will make Place 9 vacant, and Abbott will appoint someone who would then run in Christopher’s spot in 2022. If she loses, she’ll remain in her spot and run for re-election (or not, as she sees fit) in 2022.

Wally Kronzer, who has filed, and Cheri Thomas are running for Place 7. Kronzer ran for Place 5 on this court in 2010. Ken Wise, in his first term, is the incumbent.

District courts

I don’t see any primary challengers yet for incumbent Democratic district court judges. I have heard someone is circulating petitions to challenge Judge Alex Smoots-Thomas, which I think we can all understand. I’m not in a position to say anything more than that as yet.

County offices

Audia Jones has officially filed for Harris County DA. Christian Menefee and Vince Ryan have both filed for County Attorney. Michael Moore has filed for County Commissioner in Precinct 3; Kristi Thibaut and Diana Alexander both announced their filings on Facebook over the weekend, but the SOS has not caught up to those filings yet. Bill McLeod, of accidental resignation fame, has filed to win his old seat on County Civil Court at Law #4 back. Incumbent Judge Lesley Briones has not yet filed. We will have a contested primary for at least one of the two HCDE at large positions, as Erica Davis has filed in Position 5; here’s her appointment of treasurer. Andrea Duhon, who had run for a different HCDE position in 2018, has already filed an appointment of treasurer for this race. David Brown is running for the other spot, Position 7, and as far as I know has no Dem opponent as yet.

Now you know what I know. We’ll all know a lot more in a week’s time.

Posted in: Election 2020.
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Chron overview of the District J runoff

Dec 2nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

This unfortunately misses a relevant piece of information.

Sandra Rodriguez

The candidates vying for the District J city council seat in December’s runoff election have different backgrounds and separate bases of political support but have arrived at similar conclusions about the way forward for southwest Houston.

Edward Pollard, 35, was raised in the Meyerland-Westbury area and was an academic All-American basketball player at Morehouse College. He played professionally overseas, then returned to Houston to earn a law degree, open a practice and start a nonprofit. He has wanted to run for office since working a 2011 internship at the state Legislature, and sought the 2016 Democratic nomination for District 137 state representative, losing to current Rep. Gene Wu.

Sandra Rodriguez, 40, grew up in Gulfton. The first-generation American lived in an abusive home, a one-bedroom apartment she shared with her parents and four siblings. She joined the city’s anti-gang office shortly after high school, earned a bachelor’s degree in 2013, and is now in her 12th year with the city Health Department. She recently decided to run for council as a way to do community work full-time rather than volunteering on off hours.

Pollard pushes a centrist message — “That pothole could care less whether you’re a Democrat or Republican” — and touts endorsements from the Houston Police Officers Union, business groups like the Houston Realty Breakfast Coalition and industry groups representing city contractors, engineers and Realtors.

“No matter who you are, where you come from, we’re all in this community together,” he said. “You couldn’t run this type of race in most other districts because they’re so heavily partisan one way or the other, but in a true purple district like J it gives you the opportunity to really push that message, and I’m glad I’m at the forefront of being able to do that.”

Rodriguez stresses the need to engage new immigrants and improve the district’s poor civic engagement, and is backed by SEIU Texas and other labor groups, the Texas Organizing Project, the Houston GLBT Political Caucus, and a host of Democratic politicians at the federal, state and local level.

“I just want to do the work. I’ve been doing the work for 20 years, I enjoy what I do, and if this will help me push policies and move our district forward in Southwest Houston, to change the image — because you hear Sharpstown, Gulfton, Westwood, you think crime, you think prostitution, all the negativity — if this will help me serve the district, then I’ll run. That was the ultimate decision-maker.”

Ed Pollard was also accused by Beth Martin, the then-District Director for Rep. Gene Wu, of verbally harassing her during that 2016 campaign. I have no idea what has happened since then, if Pollard has owned up to the incident and sincerely tried to make amends, or if it has just gone down the memory hole like these things usually do. I do know it’s a legitimate thing to mention in a story about this person’s candidacy, and I’m disappointed that it wasn’t in this article.

Be that as it may, my interview with Sandra Rodriguez is here. If I lived in District J, I would be voting for Sandra Rodriguez. If you live in District J or know someone who does, that’s my recommendation to you.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · ·

The KLOL documentary

Dec 2nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

Of interest to me, and other middle-aged guys like me.

This past week Houston filmmaker and blogger Mike McGuff released a trailer for his upcoming film about the late, great radio station, Rock 101 KLOL-FM, and it’s getting Houstonians of a certain vintage very excited for the finished product.

The story of the raunchy Houston radio phenomenon will be told in McGuff’s first documentary, with appearances from the likes of Outlaw Dave (one of the Texican’s creative mentors), Lanny Griffith, Colonel St. James, Pat Fant, David Sadof and even the late Jim Pruett of morning duo Stevens and Pruett in footage shot before he passed away in 2016.

To help with this long-gestating rock doc, McGuff, a former newsman, has turned to crowdsourcing platform IndieGoGo to bankroll some final nips and tucks for the promotional side of things. He’s hoping for a wide release in 2020, just in time for the station’s 50th anniversary. KLOL, formerly KTRH-FM, was born in 1970 as a progressive-rock station, evolved into a more structured album-oriented-rock and then classic-rock station before owner Clear Channel flipped it to Spanish-language in 2004.

As McGuff says, it has been a long journey to get this film in the can. When it comes to labors of love, sometimes time is the best ingredient.

“This project was only supposed to take a couple of years, at least that is what I told my very patient wife back in 2010,” McGuff says. “The years kept piling on as I kept chasing people for interviews, conducted a bunch of research, and waited for people’s photos and video to be found.”

As their onetime promo went, I admit it, I listened to Stevens and Pruett back in the day, and not just them. My enthusiasm for Dayna Steele’s Congressional campaign came very honestly, I assure you. I was right in the sweet spot of their demographic. Anyway, you can see a trailer for this here, and if you want to contribute to the Indiegogo campaign, you can do that here. You know you want to.

Posted in: Music, TV and movies.
Tagged: · · · · ·

Weekend link dump for December 1

Dec 1st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

“This article is not about PED allegations. Roger Clemens doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame for an entirely different reason, and one which merits far more attention than it has thus far received.”

“Doctors have placed humans in suspended animation for the first time, as part of a trial in the US that aims to make it possible to fix traumatic injuries that would otherwise cause death.”

“Smallpox was gone, just over 250 years after inoculation was introduced to the West. Before that, it had been around for thousands of years, and inoculation had existed as a folk practice for centuries. What happened? Here are some factors.”

Meet King Kelly, Hall of Fame catcher from the 19th century, first celebrity athlete, and innovative cheater.

Here are all the books that should be on your nightstand.

“Two years after its launch, I still believe in the message, the protest quality, and the storytelling capacity of #EmptyThePews and similar hashtags as a means of inspiring people to confront the threat to democracy, human rights, and pluralism represented by right-wing evangelicalism and the Christian nationalism it fosters. As more stories of leavers of high-demand, anti-pluralist, fundamentalist religious groups are highlighted in the public sphere, we might begin to see prominent media outlets and personalities grappling seriously with the nexus of authoritarian religion and the authoritarian politics currently on the ascendant in America.”

“Under Trump, LGBTQ Progress Is Being Reversed in Plain Sight”.

“Mitch’s inaction is directly harming his home state. There’s no question in my mind.”

“This is a little bit like a baby with a hammer, or a monkey with a typewriter.”

“Just ask yourself where this game ends. Do demonic powers explain opposition to all politicians supported by Graham and Metaxas, or to Trump alone? Would they argue that all Christians (and non-Christians) who oppose Trump are under the influence of Satan? What about when it comes to specific issues? Should we ascribe to Beelzebub the fact that many Americans differ with Graham and Metaxas on issues such as gun control, tax cuts, charter schools, federal judges, climate change, the budget for the National Institutes of Health, foreign aid, criminal justice and incarceration, a wall on the southern border, and Medicaid reform?

“Why the hell does Tucker Carlson have a job here in the first place? The reality is this is someone who said white supremacy is a hoax and why does Fox allow him to still be here in the first place?”

“The fundamental question raised by the impeachment hearings isn’t: What did Trump do? The hearings have added details and witnesses to the account first offered by the whistleblower and later confirmed by the White House call record, but the narrative stands largely unchanged. Instead, the question raised is: Why is the Republican Party accepting, and even defending, what Trump did?”

How to deliver Christmas presents in a future without chimneys.

Joanne Rogers, widow of Fred Rogers, is a mensch. More here and here.

Posted in: Blog stuff.
Tagged:

Chron overview of the At Large #2 runoff

Dec 1st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

This one’s a rerun.

CM David Robinson

City Councilman David W. Robinson and the Rev. Willie R. Davis last faced off for the At-Large 2 seat in 2015, with Robinson winning by 10 percentage points and taking on his second term.

Four years later, the two are at it again.

This time, Robinson is hoping his experience and record from six years on council will be enough to win voters’ support, while Davis says his decades-long connections to the community make him a better candidate.

[…]

Bringing community reinvestment — meaning having residents benefit from the businesses and organizations that profit within their neighborhoods — is one of Davis’ main priorities, along with addressing the displacement of black Americans caused by gentrification.

“I’m for development, but it needs to be equal development,” he said.

He emphasized that if elected, he would aim to serve all communities, something he said is not possible if council members are serving special interests.

Well, as I recall, Davis was an opponent of HERO in 2015, so when he says he would serve “all communities”, he doesn’t actually mean he would serve “all communities”. These things do matter. As was the case in 2015, Davis hasn’t raised much money, and incumbent CM Robinson beat him pretty much everywhere, so I don’t expect it will matter much what Davis meant by that statement. There is a misleading and illegal mailer out there that lumps Davis (and Eric Dick, who largely paid for it) in with other Democratic candidates and claims that various African-American legislators have endorsed him. Confusion and misdirection are the main strategic moves that Davis has, so be prepared to make sure other people don’t get fooled by it.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · ·

Don’t shrink the minor leagues

Dec 1st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Bad idea, MLB.

Last month, we learned that Major League Baseball proposed a radical reorganization of the minor leagues, involving slashing the number of teams by 25 percent — mostly short-season and rookie ball clubs. The New York Times has reported which teams specifically are on the chopping block, 42 in total. [Update: Bill Madden of the New York Daily News reported more details this morning. It is certainly worth a read.]

It isn’t for a lack of interest that MLB wants to hemorrhage MiLB teams. As The Athletic’s Emily Waldon notes, 2019 was the 15th consecutive season in which 40 million-plus fans attended minor league games. 2019 saw an attendance increase of 2.6 percent over the previous year. Waldon also points out that 2019 saw the ninth-highest single-season attendance total in the history of the industry.

MLB’s suggestion to shrink the minor leagues comes on the heels of increased public pressure to improve the pay and conditions of the players. MLB successfully lobbied Congress to amend language in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, classifying players as seasonal workers thus they are no longer entitled to minimum wage and overtime pay, among other protections. As a result, more players have become vocal about the lack of pay and more reporting has been done on the issue, creating a bit of a P.R. problem for the league. Slashing the minor leagues would allow MLB, whose individual teams are responsible for the overhead of their minor league affiliates, to publicly say they improved pay while not actually costing them much money, if any at all. MiLB president Pat O’Conner foreshadowed this nearly two years ago, by the way.

[…]

Beyond the very obvious effect of eliminating upwards of 1,000 minor league baseball player positions, scores of related jobs would be eliminated as well, such as those of the minor league front offices, clubhouse personnel, ticket-takers, security, concessions, memorabilia stores, umpires, and many more. Many cities would lose an integral part of their local economies and cultures.

Perhaps most importantly, if the minor leagues were to be shrunk, many fans would lose access to professional baseball. If, for instance, you are a baseball fan who lives in Billings, Montana, the three closest major league teams to you are the Seattle Mariners (west), Colorado Rockies (south), and Minnesota Twins (east). The Mariners are about a 12-hour drive, the Rockies about seven and a half hours, and the Twins about 12 hours. But Billings has a minor league team: the Mustangs, a Pioneer League rookie affiliate of the Reds. Montana has two other minor league teams on the chopping block as well: the Missoula PaddleHeads (Diamondbacks advanced rookie) and the Great Falls Voyagers (White Sox advanced rookie). The minor leagues, for fans in certain areas of the country like Montana, are one of the few local connections to the sport. Eliminating those teams would sever those connections and drastically reduce the chance to create new baseball fans in that region.

As this piece notes, the Astros were pioneers in this, reducing their number of affiliates from nine to seven in recent years. Look, we know that the vast majority of minor leaguers never get close to the bigs. The MLB draft runs for forty rounds, and then they sign undrafted free agents, and that’s before we take into account the large number of international players that are outside the draft system that MLB signs. Most minor leaguers are there to fill out the teams so the real prospects can actually play regular games. But not every major leaguer was a prospect (see: Altuve, Jose, for one example) and as noted, the minor leagues have a ton of value on their own. MLB could very easily afford to pay every single existing minor leaguer a living wage (say, a minimum of $30K per year) and not even notice the payroll increase. The cost in shrinking the minors and making live professional baseball completely unavailable to vast swaths of the country far outweighs any cost savings. C’mon, MLB. For once, can you see that doing the right thing is also the better choice for you? Pinstripe Alley has more.

UPDATE: More as well from Baseball America and Fangraphs.

Posted in: Baseball.
Tagged: · · · ·

Texas Central and Lone Star Rail

Dec 1st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

Noted for the record.

In South Central Texas, 20 state legislators have revived talk of a San Antonio to Austin passenger rail line. Area lawmakers signed a letter in August asking Transportation Committee chair and state Rep. Terry Canales (D-Edinburg) to study the possibility of rail between the two cities.

On Wednesday, rail in Texas was the topic of a panel discussion that included [Holly Reed, the managing director of external affairs of Texas Central], State Rep. Ray Lopez (D-San Antonio), and Tyson Moeller, general director of network development for Union Pacific railroad, at a San Antonio Chamber of Commerce transportation committee meeting.

The discussion, which was closed to media, touched on passenger rail between Austin and San Antonio, freight rail, and the Houston-Dallas high-speed rail project, according to Jonathan Gurwitz, vice president of communications company KGBTexas and chair of the San Antonio Mobility Coalition who attended the meeting.

He was most struck by a few numbers that Union Pacific’s Moeller cited: Approximately 15,000 to 20,000 semi-trucks worth of goods are shipped on trains every day passing through San Antonio. That means 15,000 or so fewer trucks on Interstate 35.

“If you think of it in that way, what impact rail really has on San Antonio, the amount of goods and services that move in and out of our region by rail, it has an extraordinary impact on our economy,” Gurwitz said. “I think most people in San Antonio don’t realize the significance of rail.”

Union Pacific remains focused on moving freight and not people, said Raquel Espinoza, senior director of corporate communications and media relations at Union Pacific. The railroad company effectively killed an earlier Austin-San Antonio passenger rail project when it exited the Lone Star Rail District proposal in 2016.

Union Pacific has no plans to expand passenger rail access for other entities like Amtrak on its lines, Espinoza said.

“Our role is to move freight in an efficient, environmentally friendly way,” she said.

See here for the recent news that Lone Star Rail may rise from the dead again. I’m very much at a “believe it when I see it point”, especially with Union Pacific reiterating its long-held stance that they are not going to share their existing tracks for any passenger rail. A rail line between Austin and San Antonio – really, between Georgetown and the south side of San Antonio, as the original LSR envisioned – makes all kinds of sense, but it becomes a lot more expensive and problematic from a right-of-way perspective if a whole new set of tracks have to be laid down. Not impossible, one assumes, and certainly doable if the will is there. It’s just that there’s many years of evidence to show that it does not, at least not in sufficient quantities. But hope springs eternal, and I will always hope that somehow, some way, this gets built.

Posted in: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

The quiet runoff

Nov 30th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

Have you been enjoying this little break from the Mayor’s race? Break’s over, but then we’re now into early voting, so we don’t have much longer to go.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

After a colorful first round defined by biting attack ads, mudslinging debates and policy disputes over crime and city finances, the temperature of the Houston mayoral runoff has noticeably cooled heading into Wednesday’s start of early voting.

Since the Nov. 5 election, when Sylvester Turner and Tony Buzbee finished atop the 12-candidate field, there have been few of the day-to-day sparks that marked the final weeks of the first stage. Buzbee, who spent millions to maintain a regular presence on television, just recently began running ads after a post-election hiatus. Turner has touted support from elected Democratic allies and largely ignored Buzbee.

Nor, after partaking in scores of forums and three televised debates, do the candidates have plans to engage in any more square offs.

The sleepy tone of the runoff marks a divergence from the 2015 contest, too, when Turner and his runoff opponent, Bill King, participated in more robust policy discussions and jousted in a pair of debates leading up to a razor-thin outcome in December.

“It has definitely been more quiet,” said Renée Cross, senior director of the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. “I don’t think we can pinpoint it to one thing, but I think there are a variety of factors going on that didn’t occur in 2015.”

For one, Cross said, the 2020 presidential election appears to be eating up far more attention than the 2016 contest was four years ago.

“I’ve said this all along, the national election has just overshadowed everything, politically speaking,” she said, adding that the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Trump has only further diverted the attention of Houstonians.

Also dampening enthusiasm for this year’s runoff, Cross and Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said, is the perception among some voters that it’ll be difficult for Buzbee to overcome Turner’s first-round advantage. According to unofficial returns, Turner received 47 percent of the vote, Buzbee 28 percent.

“After Turner came so close to 50 percent and defeated Buzbee by close to a 20-point margin, the conventional wisdom is there’s no realistic way for Buzbee to catch Turner, unless Turner were to commit some type of egregious gaffe between now and Election Day,” Jones said.

I think both profs are largely right. That said, if Buzbee had been carpet-bombing the airwaves like he said he was going to, then we’d be having a very different conversation right now. I don’t know what’s going on in Buzbee’s head, but if I were on his campaign staff I’d very much want to ask him why he chose the past three weeks to stop setting his money on fire.

Buzbee of course has the harder job here. Turner just needs to make sure his people return to the polls. He’ll likely pick up some Boykins and maybe Lovell supporters as well, not that that were that many of them. Buzbee needs to not only convince his own supporters to get back out there for him, he needs to persuade King voters and anyone else who didn’t vote for Turner in round one. That’s a tall order, and he doesn’t have much room for error. Yes, he can try to turn out people who didn’t vote in November – there are always a few of them who make it out for the runoff – but that’s easier said than done. He has a lot of ground to make up, and not much time left to do it. The main question in my mind at this point is how the low-key-so-far nature of the runoff will affect the other races. As far as that goes, the members more likely to align with Turner need a boost from him, but a dud from Buzbee might help as well. I couldn’t say at this point where any of the other citywide races may stand.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · · ·

Chron overview of the At Large #1 runoff

Nov 30th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

“Sharp contrasts” is a good description of this race. “Clear choice” also works.

Raj Salhotra

A runoff between a conservative incumbent and liberal challenger for one of Houston’s citywide council seats presents arguably the sharpest contrast of any race on Houston’s December ballot.

Councilman Mike Knox, an Air Force veteran and former police officer, is seeking his second four-year term but faces stiff competition from Raj Salhotra, a 29-year-old attorney and former high school math teacher making his first run for elected office.

Last month, Knox secured 36.5 percent of the vote in the five-person race, far ahead of Salhotra’s 22 percent but not enough to win the race outright.

In his bid to retain the At-Large, Position 1 seat, Knox is pitching himself as a persistent check on Mayor Sylvester Turner and a leading advocate of reining in city spending. He also has framed Salhotra as a “Beto socialist” and alleged his challenger would distract city council by pushing partisan issues.

“This is a race where we have a young person who’s aspiring to become a career politician, who believes that political agendas are the most important thing for Houstonians,” said Knox, 61. “And I disagree with that.”

Salhotra, meanwhile, is casting Knox as a tea party Republican, contending that the incumbent has served as an antagonist on council and taken positions that threaten to hinder progress on key issues. He rattles off Knox’s dissenting votes by memory: opposing Turner’s pension overhaul, voting against stricter floodplain regulations, voting not to join a lawsuit opposing Texas’ so-called sanctuary cities law, Senate Bill 4.

“This is a nonpartisan race, but I do think there are real philosophical differences between Councilmember Knox and myself, and we’re making that clear to voters through knocking on doors, phone banking, texting, mail, Facebook ads,” Salhotra said Sunday while block walking through a high-turnout precinct in the Heights. “The thinking goes, if we can explain his record to voters and my vision and core values, we feel confident they will make the choice to support me.”

My interview with Raj Salhotra is here, and my analysis of the precinct data from Round One is here. Salhotra has had the fundraising advantage, and he will need to use it to make sure people know who he is and what he stands for. As we’ve discussed before, all of the At Large runoffs are Republican versus Democrat, though some of the candidates in those races lean into that more than others. Mike Knox is all in on it, and that by itself would be enough to want to vote him out, even before you look at his record. Raj has a lot of votes to make up, but he will have a favorable environment in December. The rest is up to him.

Posted in: Election 2019.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

Second mobile voting locations lawsuit filed

Nov 30th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

Same claims, different plaintiffs.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin. It is led by former Austin Assistant City Manager Terrell Blodgett, Texas Young Democrats (TYD) and Texas College Democrats.

“We are here to tear down an obstacle to the right to vote,” Mike Siegel, who is representing Blodgett, said during a press conference Tuesday.

Siegel, a civil rights attorney who is running for Congress against Republican incumbent Michael McCaul, said the law “suppresses the vote of young people, of seniors, of people with disabilities” and people without access to transportation.

Blodgett, who is 96, said he has almost never missed an election – that is until HB 1888 went into effect. Because of the law, the mobile polling site at Westminster, the senior living community he lives in, was forced to close. Blodgett said he has relied on that polling location and was unable to vote because he wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t use public transportation.

“I would have had to climb on this bus and go over from the house to the library and vote because we didn’t have the facility or the voting machines there at Westminster,” he said.

When asked, Blodgett said he thinks Republicans in the Legislature passed the law for political reasons.

“I think they did it to suppress the Democratic vote,” he said.

[…]

According to the lawsuit, many young voters were unable to vote in 2019 because they lacked access to transportation.

“For example, at three different college campuses in Austin where there are TYD constituents — Huston-Tillotson University, St. Edward’s University and Austin Community College — mobile voting locations that had been available and used by TYD voters in the 2018 elections were no longer available for use in the November 2019 election,” plaintiffs say in the lawsuit.

See here for more on the other lawsuit. A copy of this lawsuit and other information can be found here. As I said before, I agree with the motivation for HB1888 and I agree with the goals of these lawsuits, but I have little to no faith that the federal judiciary, at least once you get past the district courts, will have any sympathy. And to be honest, in reading this story, I can see what the likely defense strategy will be. Mr. Blodgett doesn’t need to worry about where any voting location is, because he is eligible to vote by mail, and if he had requested a mail ballot he would not have had this problem. As for the college students, Travis County isn’t barred from having early voting locations on those campuses. They just have to keep them open throughout the early voting period. Which costs more, sure, but they could choose to budget the funds for it. Whether any of that is actually responsive to the complaints is beside the point, because I can totally see the Fifth Circuit and SCOTUS buying it. I’ll be delighted to be proven wrong. The Texas Signal has more.

Posted in: Legal matters.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · ·

Texas GOP accidentally releases its 2020 strategy

Nov 29th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

Oops.

In a bizarre political blunder, a document laying out the Republican Party of Texas’s election strategy for the 2020 elections has ended up in the hands of Texas Democrats. Attacking Democratic candidates through websites and mitigating “the polarizing nature” of President Donald Trump are part of the plan.

The document — called a draft for initial discussion by the Texas GOP Party chair — was titled “Primary/General Election 2020 [Draft]” and began showing up in Democratic emails Monday evening.

It includes a target list of 12 statehouse districts, including six in North Texas, that Republicans are aiming to take back in next year’s elections. Negative attacks through websites, and highlighting diverse Republicans to counter a “narrative driven by Democrats” about the GOP’s lack of diversity are also part of the strategy.

Republican targets in North Texas are Dallas County Democratic Reps. Ana-Maria Ramos, Terry Meza, Rhetta Bowers, John Turner and Julie Johnson, as well as Denton County Rep. Michelle Beckley.

“Starting after the Primary, the RPT will generate microsites for negative hits against the Democrat candidates in our twelve target race—we expect each microsite to be roughly $500,” the document reads. “We will then begin rolling out these websites, prioritizing the races that were within 4% in the 2018 election.”

[…]

Many of the strategies in the plan, like identifying targets and setting up negative attack websites, are not uncommon in politics. But their public disclosure — especially if that disclosure is unwanted or embarrassing — and the level of detail that became public is unusual.

The document lays out a plan to purchase online domain names affiliated with the names of Democratic candidates so that Republicans can reroute them to the negative attack websites.

“For example, we will purchase ZwienerforTexas.com, ZwienerforTX.com, and so on,” the document reads.

Democratic Rep. Erin Zwiener of Driftwood is among the other six House members on the list. The others are Reps. Vikki Goodwin and John Bucy of Austin, James Talarico of Round Rock, Gina Calanni of Katy and Jon Rosenthal of Houston.

The document says Republicans will audit search engine optimization results to make sure that the negative attack websites are on the front pages of various search engines and work with other stakeholders — such as Texans for Greg Abbott, the governor’s campaign arm — “to get any more insight on issues that matter to these districts.”

The target list isn’t a surprise, and the online strategies are fairly common. Every serious candidate, and for sure every elected official, should buy up all the variants of their name as domains to keep them out of enemy hands. This isn’t new – I mean, David Dewhurst was the victim of a domain squatter way back when he first ran for Lite Guv in 2002. At least now Democrats are on notice they need to do this if they hadn’t already. The good news is that there should be more than enough resources to anticipate and address these needs. And putting my professional hat on for a minute, for crying out loud please please please make sure there are cybersecurity specialists on the payroll. You don’t need to be Fort Knox, but you very much do need to use multi-factor authentication and make sure your patches are current.

We could go on, but you get the point. The real value in all this is the reminder that the Internet is dark and full of terrors, and forewarned is forearmed. No excuses, y’all.

One more thing:

“Given the polarizing nature of the President, I suspect some Republicans will refuse to turnout during the General Election because they don’t want to vote for him – though I don’t know that we will know what this universe would look like without us or a stakeholder creating a model,” the document reads. “Regardless, I suggest we set up a contingency budget to target these folks with mailers, digital ads, and texts to encourage them to turnout for U.S. Senate, State Senate, State House, and so on.”

It is unclear who the “I” in the document refers to.

The plan also identifies the Republican-led elimination of straight ticket voting as “one of the biggest challenges ahead of the 2020 cycle.” To address that, the plan details an effort to convince Republican voters to vote for GOP candidates all the way down the ballot manually through a tagline. Some of the potential taglines include: “Vote Right All the Way Down!” “Vote Right To The Bottom!” and “Vote RIGHT Down the Ballot!”

I’ve written way too much about straight ticket voting and how ridiculous it has always been for the pundit class to assume that the lack of straight ticket voting in the future would spell doom for Democrats. No less an authority than the Republican Party of Texas agrees with me on that. If I had a mike, it would be hitting the floor right now. The Chron, the Texas Signal, the Current, and Political Animal have more.

Posted in: Election 2020.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Trib overview of CD28

Nov 29th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
No comments yet

It’s going to be an interesting race. I have no idea what will happen, and anyone who says with any confidence that they know is suspicious to me, but we will learn something from it, however it goes.

Rep. Henry Cuellar

Not many people understand South Texas.

It’s one of the handful of blue pockets in the state, but unlike the others, it’s not clustered in an urban center. The congressional districts that represent it encompass small border cities and ranch lands alike. Like other heavily Hispanic areas, the number of young voters grows each election, and what that means for the Democratic Party is uncertain.

But a spirited primary campaign in the district long held by U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from Laredo, could test if and how the politics of the area are changing. Cuellar, who has served in Congress since 2004, isn’t too different from the other Democrats who represent the Rio Grande Valley in Washington and Austin. But now he’s facing a challenge from a former intern who is running on a progressive platform.

Jessica Cisneros, a 26-year-old immigration attorney, has pushed for proposals like “Medicare for All,” gun control and the Green New Deal. Cuellar has argued that those ideas don’t align with the beliefs of the district and that the bulk of Cisneros’ support comes from people outside the region. The race has become one of the most closely watched in the country early in the primary season.

Jessica Cisneros

Texas’ 28th Congressional District spans from western Hidalgo County, right outside the McAllen city limits, and up north to Laredo and the eastern San Antonio suburbs. In 2016, it went to Hillary Clinton by 20 percentage points, and former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke won it by similar margins in the 2018 Senate election.

Cisneros said that’s evidence that dispels the myth that South Texas is conservative, and even more reason a right-leaning Democrat, or “Trump’s favorite Democrat,” as Cisneros calls Cuellar, should be replaced with a more progressive representative.

“I haven’t had a single person disagree with me in terms of my policies,” Cisneros said. “It’s not surprising to me to see folks super shocked that somebody who is running for office is at their doorsteps. There are people who simply respect that I’m putting the effort.”

Cuellar declined to comment for this story.

Both candidates have pointed to the other’s financial support as a sign that their opponents are out of touch with the district.

Cuellar has received money from the National Rifle Association, a political action committee associated with Koch Industries and the GEO Group, the private prison company that funds migrant shelters where several migrants have died. But he also takes in a large sum of money from donors within the district — and has tried to portray Cisneros’ support as largely driven by outsiders.

Few of Cisneros’ reportable donations come locally, which the Cuellar campaign has been quick to point out.

See here for the most recent finance reports. If you’ve read me for any length of time, you know I’m no fan of Henry Cuellar. I just don’t know if Jessica Cisneros is the candidate that can beat him. She’s done all right on fundraising, but if her donors are largely from outside the district – likely from mostly outside the state – then I’m not sure how much that means. I can believe she’s working the district, but Cuellar isn’t an absentee like some vulnerable-to-primary members have been. If I had to bet I’d put my money on Cuellar, but we live in weird times and I don’t feel any confidence in trying to guess what might happen. I just don’t know what to expect.

Posted in: Election 2020.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

Runoff endorsement watch: Revisiting races

Nov 29th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Most of the candidates that the Chron endorsed for November either won their races or made it to the runoff. A few fell short, which leaves a bit of unfinished business for them. They have since addressed that, in the three races where they needed to pick a new favorite. In District D, they went with Brad Jordan.

Brad Jordan

Twenty-five years ago, when Brad Jordan was making hits as a rapper called “Scarface,” it’s unlikely that he ever thought about being in a runoff election for Houston City Council. Celebrity alone didn’t bring Jordan this far. The longtime community activist has proved his concern for the District D neighborhoods where he grew up is genuine.

The editorial board didn’t recommend Jordan, 48, in the general election. Our choice was Rashad Cave, whose experience as the city Department of Neighborhood’s liaison to City Council was an asset. Jordan, though, has his own intangibles. He hasn’t just lived in District D, which stretches south from Midtown to Beltway 8; he has sincerely tried to improve it.

[…]

Also making the runoff to replace current District Councilman Dwight Boykins is Carolyn Evans-Shabazz, chairwoman of the Houston Community College Board of Trustees. Boykins ran unsuccessfully for mayor instead of seeking reelection.

Evans-Shabazz’s work on the trustee board could be helpful on another deliberative body like City Council. Jordan’s grassroots work in District D, however, suggests he would speak louder for voices that too often get lost when competing in a district that also includes tony neighborhoods, the Texas Medical Center, the University of Houston and Texas Southern University.

My interview with Brad Jordan is here, my interview with Carolyn Evans-Shabazz is here, and my comment on the original endorsement is here. The Chron usually leans towards the establishment, so this choice is a little unexpected, but it’s easy enough to understand.

In At Large #4, they went with Letitia Plummer.

Letitia Plummer

In many ways, Letitia Plummer embodies the diversity of Houston.

She hails from ground-breakers in the African American community. Her grandfather was one of the first African American judges in Texas, her grandmother a long-time educator at Wheatley High School, and her mother is an immigrant from Yemeni, reflecting the demographics of a city where one in four residents is foreign-born.

That gives the Houston native and candidate for City Council At-Large Position 4 valuable insight into the needs of Houston communities that often lack a voice at the table.

Plummer’s 20 years as a private-practice dentist also helps her understand the challenges facing Houston’s small business owners and the role entrepreneurs play in the city’s economy.

Plummer, 49, has also worked on political campaigns and successfully lobbied the Texas Legislature regarding adoption and surrogacy rights and was on the small business task force of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Her experience and her connections to the community give her a considerable edge over opponent Anthony Dolcefino, a 22-year-old college student and the son of former TV investigative reporter Wayne Dolcefino. Her candidacy promises to give Houston’s diverse communities a representative on City Council.

They had endorsed Nick Hellyar the first time around. I didn’t interview Plummer for this race, but I did interview her in 2018 when she ran for CD22. I had expected several of the candidates who didn’t make it through the Congressional races from that cycle to take a look at Houston City Council this year, but Plummer was the only one who did, and look at her now. She’s the clear choice in this race.

And in HISD II, they went with Kathy Blueford Daniels.

Kathy Blueford Daniels

Blueford-Daniels is running to represent District II on the HISD board. She is our choice in the runoff election against candidate John Curtis Gibbs, currently the outreach coordinator for City Councilman Michael Kubosh.

The 62-year-old former postal worker and community activist is a graduate of Wheatley and understands the opportunities a quality education provides. She also understands the perils that come when kids fall through the cracks.

Her community activism and desire to make a difference in the lives of Houston’s children were forged by the pain of her son’s death in 2006.

“The person who killed my son was a dropout,” she said. “He was on drugs; he saw no way out. We can’t let our kids go that way.”

If elected, Blueford-Daniels said she will do what’s right for students and make sure the community’s voice is represented on the board of trustees. If the state appoints a board of managers — a move that will strip the board of trustees’ of its authority — she said she will use her elected position to advocate for students and the community before the board of managers.

Here was the original endorsement. I’ve interviewed Blueford Daniels twice before, both times when she ran for District B – here’s 2011 and here’s 2013. She’s a good person and especially given her opponent’s cheearleading of the TEA takeover she’d be a good advocate on the HISD Board.

Posted in: Election 2019.
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Day One Runoff 2019 EV totals: Wait, there was early voting?

Nov 29th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
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Did you vote on that bonus early voting day on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving? Nine thousand four hundred and ninety people did – you can see the day one EV report here. For comparison, the final November 2019 EV totals are here, the final November 2015 EV totals are here, and the final December runoff EV totals from 2015 are here. I’ll wait till the Monday numbers come in before I start making a table for daily comparisons, as there were basically no mail ballots returned for this haul.

You may have noticed that the day one in person vote for the runoff was higher than the day one in person vote from November. The overall vote was greater in November because of mail ballots, but more people showed up at the polls on Wednesday than on October 21. That’s a little weird, because the November election included the rest of Harris County, while the runoff is Houston/HISD/HCC/Bellaire only. The same thing happened in 2015, though, so maybe it’s not that weird. Runoff voters are more hardcore, and there are fewer EV days available in the runoff. If nothing else, it showed that the extra day was indeed useful, even if all it did was shift people from Monday. I’ll be tracking the early vote through the runoff as usual.

Posted in: Election 2019.
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