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May, 2018:

Quinnipiac: Cruz 50, O’Rourke 39

Quinnipiac giveth, Quinnipiac taketh away.

Rep. Beto O’Rourke

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has some breathing space from U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, according to a new poll released by Quinnipiac University on Wednesday.

In the banner statewide race in the state, the new survey showed Cruz had an 11 point lead over O’Rourke. Fifty percent of Texans backed Cruz while 39 percent supported O’Rourke in the coming U.S. Senate race in the fall.

An April poll from the same outfit showed the race “too close to call.” But now, at the dawn of the general election, Cruz in a stronger position than what Quinnipiac’s April survey conveyed.

In this new poll, Cruz is nearly universally known within the state. Forty-nine of Texans polled viewed him positively while 38 percent had an unfavorable opinion of him.

[…]

Quinnipiac also looked at the gubernatorial race. The survey showed the newly-minted Democratic nominee, former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez trailing Republican Gov. Greg Abbott with 34 percent to 53 percent.

See here for the previous result. As I said then, we don’t have enough data yet to know if one or the other of these is an outlier. I don’t buy that there was a significant shift in opinion in the last month or so – what would even have caused that? – but it does seem like the sample from one poll was friendlier to O’Rourke in one and to Cruz in the other. For witness to that, compare the Trump approval rating from April (43% approve, 52% disapprove) to May (47% approve, 47% disapprove). I’ll say again, that’s the main story of each of these polls. As Trump’s national numbers have been fairly stable over the past months, there’s no reason to think this is indicative of anything. If Quinnipiac is going to continue to produce a new poll every six weeks or so, great! That will help tell the story a bit better; if other pollsters join in, even better. For now, take this poll like you should have taken the previous one, as another data point. The picture isn’t clear enough yet to tell us more than that.

That’s the Texas State Historical Astrodome to you, pal

It’s got a marker and everything.

All this and history too

More than 56 years after ground was broken on what would become the world’s first domed stadium, the Astrodome is now a bonafide recorded Texas historic landmark.

Installed on the stadium’s southwest end, a Texas State Historical Marker it will be visible for years to come just yards from neighboring NRG Stadium. The $2,000 price tag for the marker was picked up by the Houston Astros, who called the Dome home for decades before moving to Minute Maid Park across town.

[…]

The Dome has already been declared a state Antiquities Landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The marker further solidifies its place in history and its permanence. The text mentions the part that the Dome played in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when it housed 16,000 refugees from the violent storm that hit New Orleans.

The 2017 state antiquities landmark designation provides special safeguards against demolition and requires Texas Historical Commission approval for any future changes.

See here for some background. I know some people don’t like the Astrodome redevelopment plan. Like it or not, your choices are the plan that’s been approved, some other plan that has not been vetted or approved, and going back to doing nothing and letting it rot. Which, now that I think of it, may be expressly forbidden by this latest designation. Point is, the Dome ain’t being demolished. Get used to it.

Stockman asks for his verdict to be set aside

Never know till you ask, right?

Best newspaper graphic ever

Attorneys representing former U.S. Rep. Stephen Stockman, R-Texas, who was found guilty in April of funneling what were solicited as charitable contributions into accounts that instead funded political campaigns and personal expenses, have asked the court to set aside the jury’s conviction in the case citing a lack of evidence.

Stockman’s defense team filed the motion asking Chief U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal for an acquittal on Monday. A jury convicted Stockman, 60, who was indicted in March 2017, on 23 of 24 counts, acquitting him on one count of wire fraud. Jurors deliberated for a little more than 15 hours over three days before returning their unanimous verdict in the trial that began with jury selection on March 19.

[…]

The former congressman’s attorneys argued in the motion that he’s entitled to an acquittal because the evidence presented at trial “could not be accepted by a reasonable-minded jury as adequate and sufficient to support a guilty verdict beyond a reasonable doubt.” Instead, the evidence showed that the wealthy conservative mega-donors Stockman was accused of defrauding — the now-deceased Stanford Z. Rothschild Jr. and Richard Uihlein — knew what Stockman was intending to use the funds for, according to the motion.

“With respect to fraudulent intent, the evidence must show Mr. Stockman had a conscious, knowing intent to defraud and that he contemplated or intended some harm to the property rights of the victim,” the motion argued. “The government has not established this.”

Sean Buckley, who represents Stockman, had told reporters immediately after the verdict there would be an appeal in the case. He reiterated arguments presented for the jury that the funds came from donors who knew the congressman would be using the money “to finance Mr. Stockman’s political work and his projects.”

See here for the background. The motion was made to the trial judge, Judge Lee Rosenthal, who I presume will rule on it before sentencing, which is scheduled for August 17. I can’t imagine this sort of motion works very often, but I suppose it’s a prelude to the eventual appeal. I’ll keep my eyes open for further developments.

Texas blog roundup for the week of May 28

The Texas Progressive Alliance welcomes you to hurricane season as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

Hiring and harassment at TxDOT

Good morning. Here’s another story about harassment and discrimination being suffered by female and minority employees at a public institution, in this case the state Department of Transportation.

The Texas Department of Transportation held Tamela Saldana up as a “superhero” when she trekked across the state working to help contract with minority and women-owned businesses. But everywhere she went, Saldana said she encountered a similar troubling scene.

“I traveled to almost every district in TxDOT, and the faces were the same. They were the same. They were male, and they were predominately white male,” Saldana said. “If you saw a minority person, they were going to be the lowest level – the person who checked you into the front desk or the person who was out in the parking lot picking up litter.”

After more than a decade of glowing performance reviews, Saldana’s tenure with TxDOT came to an acrimonious end in 2012. That year, TxDOT fired the former University of Texas track star. She, in turn, sued for discrimination.

A KXAN investigation of TxDOT’s workforce reveals Saldana’s experience is one of hundreds that underscore the agency’s ongoing struggle to address gender and racial disparities — and their unfortunate side effects — in a culture historically and predominantly composed of white men, especially at its highest echelons.

KXAN found workers officially made more than 200 allegations against the agency in the past five years. Many of those came from women and minorities alleging harassment, discrimination and retaliation, according to internal TxDOT documents obtained through an open records request. Dozens of workers have also sued the agency in recent years on those grounds, according to court records.

Go read the rest. Basically, TxDOT is less reflective of society at large and the state’s overall civil workforce than it was a decade ago. It’s a problem on a number of levels, and it would be nice if our state’s leadership paid some attention to it. Link via the Trib/a>.

Enabling better transit

This is great.

For less than the cost of a single bus, however, Metro might be the first transit agency in the country to take a significant step across an entire bus system that could open riding options to scores of vision-impaired customers with the use of a smartphone.

The secret is a small beacon about the size of a garage door opener, placed atop every one of those bus-stop poles.

“It is amazing when you see a need you can address it with new technologies,” said Lex Frieden, a member of the transit agency’s board and a nationally acclaimed disability-access advocate.

Users can plot their location using a mapping program, then the beacons are integrated into the directions. Often, the biggest challenge for some users is finding precisely where a bus stop is located at an intersection, or in the middle of a long block.

“It is about getting that information and getting it in your hands,” said Randy Frazier, Metro’s chief technology officer.

As someone approaches their intended stop, their phone receives signals from the beacon, which can send an alert to their phone. Alerts can be delivered either as audio instructions, such as how a mapping program gives drivers voice instructions to turn left or right, or as tactile directions that use pulsing so someone can understand the instructions via sense of touch. As they draw closer to the stop, the pulses increase until the rider knows they are in the correct spot.

[…]

The beacons are a relatively inexpensive leap that could put Metro at the forefront of making transit more accessible for many potential riders. In addition to an aging population of Baby Boomers, many of whom will need transit in the future as they lose the ability to drive, Metro and other transit agencies struggle to lessen para-transit costs.

MetroLift, which offers door-to-door service for elderly and disabled passengers, costs Metro $2.47 per mile, according to 2016 data. Providing a taxi, where applicable, reduces the cost to $1.26 per mile a passenger is carried.

Conventional transit, meanwhile, costs Metro less, about $1.11 per mile for a bus and $1.17 for light rail. When that’s considered across nearly 590 million miles of transit travel in the Houston area, shifting some of the riders to buses and trains could save millions of dollars and give elderly and disabled riders more freedom to travel without prearranged plans.

Installing a beacon at all of Metro’s roughly 9,000 bus stops is expected to cost $375,000, meaning for less than the cost of a single bus every place that a bus stops will be accessible to the visually impaired and others.

Better service for more people at a lower cost. Gotta love that. I don’t have a point to make here, I just want to make sure you keep this in mind when you hear all the blather from the usual blowhards when Metro rolls out its comprehensive transit plan later this year.

Pot versus Pete

I love this story.

Marijuana reform activists have created a new super PAC aimed exclusively at defeating Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions, the House Rules Committee chairman who has blocked cannabis reform legislation from reaching the House floor.

Marijuana Policy Project founder and former Executive Director Rob Kampia is leading the effort, which he said is crucial to legalizing medical marijuana federally and affirming federalism for recreational pot, two policies supported in principle by President Trump.

“Everyone knows who he is and that he’s our biggest problem on Capitol Hill. Half of my job has already been done by Pete Sessions himself,” Kampia told the Washington Examiner. “All I’m going to do is pass the hat.”

[…]

Kampia left MPP last year and now leads the Marijuana Leadership Campaign, a small group with a narrower agenda. He recently registered the super PAC, called Texans Removing Outdated and Unresponsive Politicians, ahead of a Wednesday donor meeting in New Orleans.

“[Sessions] is in fact what I call a sphincter who is constipating the process,” Kampia said. “The reason we haven’t won is just process; it’s not content.”

Kampia aims to raise $500,000, which he believes he can do after “having raised $4 million a year for this issue” at MPP, where he oversaw a variety of state efforts, including a major role in Colorado’s 2012 recreational legalization campaign.

In addition to the super PAC, which can independently spend unlimited amounts, Kampia plans to bundle contributions for the Democrat who wins a May 22 runoff primary and provide support for Libertarian candidate Melina Baker.

“I am going to bundle a whole bunch of checks and send them to the Democrat without talking to the Democrat. You are going to see a bunch of $2,700 checks flowing from the same people who you’re going to see on our [super PAC] reports,” he said.

The district’s two Democratic contenders, Colin Allred and Lillian Salerno, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Although he believes their positions are acceptable, Kampia said, “It doesn’t matter if they are good on marijuana — we just need him out.”

I noted this in my Congressional runoff report, but didn’t get around to running this until now, when we know that Colin Allred is the runoff winner. I just want to say that “Legislative Sphincter” is now the name of my Butthole Surfers tribute band. No joke, though, Pete Sessions is seriously anti-pot – just read the quotes in that Examiner story. As D Magazine noted, both Democratic candidates in the runoff favored medical marijuana, so there was a winner either way for this PAC. I can’t wait to see the ads that Texans Removing Outdated and Unresponsive Politicians produces. The Dallas Observer has more.

It’s all about the millennials

From Colin Allred:

Colin Allred

When Colin Allred, a 35-year-old former NFL linebacker-turned-congressional candidate, addressed two dozen student volunteers at a rooftop restaurant last week, he promised them that he knows millennials are more than avocado toast-eating social media obsessives.

“People think millennials just tweet … and complain, but you all are living proof that that’s not true,” Allred said. “You are the best part of this party.”

Allred — the newly minted Democratic nominee for a competitive House seat here— is part of a swell of young Democratic House candidates hoping to inspire higher turnout among fellow millennials in the midterm elections, when youth voting rates typically decline. At least 20 millennial Democratic candidates are running in battleground districts, a leap over previous cycles that could remake the party’s generational divide.

“I don’t recall a cycle with anything close to this number of younger candidates in recent times,” said Ian Russell, a Democratic consultant who served as the deputy executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Notably, younger candidates who actually have a good shot at winning – raising money, running professional campaigns.”

[…]

Allred’s youth and personal story appear to have made up for an initial lack of traditional campaign resources. Allred lagged behind his Democratic opponents in cash for a year and didn’t air a single TV ad before finishing ahead of them all in the first-round primary in March.

Allred — who blasted Drake’s “Started from the Bottom” in the car en route to his primary-night victory party — is a local high school football star who was raised by a single mom and made it to the pros before becoming a civil rights attorney. That makes him the “kind of candidate who has a compelling story that can meet the experience threshold” to defuse attacks on his credentials, said [consultant Zac] McCrary.

To Dan Crenshaw:

In a Republican Party in desperate need of younger, more vibrant voices, Dan Crenshaw might be exactly what the GOP is looking for.

When the 34-year-old who nearly died on a battlefield in Afghanistan six years ago surged to a stunning victory on Tuesday night, he didn’t just win the party’s nomination in a Republican Primary battle for Congress that few thought he could win. He became a potential star on the national stage because of his war-hero story and a charisma that is drawing younger voters.

“It’s so exciting to have fresh faces emerging like Dan who will lead the Republican Party forward into the next generation,” said Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Wise political observers will start keeping an eye on Dan right now, because he has a bright future.”

I’ll stipulate that Crenshaw has more charisma than most Congressional candidates, but you’re going to need to do more to convince me than assert it in a news story that he will be more attractive to millennials who aren’t already Republicans than some other Republican. Millennials are more associated with Democrats than older generations, in part because millennials are a lot less white than older generations. Charisma is only worth so much; at some point, you have to speak to the issues the voters care about. I haven’t seen anything about Crenshaw to suggest he’s all that different from other Republicans on matters of substance, but the campaign is still young.

(For what it’s worth, CD02 Democratic candidate Todd Litton is 47. Older than Crenshaw, but himself also considerably younger than the average member of Congress.)

As for Allred, the issue as always is less persuasion and more engagement. If millennials turn out, he’ll get plenty of their votes. How well he, and every other Democrat, does on that score is the big question.

Harris County hearing officers sue to overturn their conduct sanction

An interesting twist.

Three Harris County hearing officers have sued the State Commission on Judicial Conduct in an attempt to overturn their discipline for denying personal recognizance bonds to misdemeanor defendants, contending that the agency overstepped its authority by interpreting law in meting out punishment.

Eric Hagstette, Joseph Licata III and Jill Wallace are Harris County criminal law hearing officers who assist elected state district judges with initial criminal court hearings that advise criminal defendants of their rights, set money bail and determine whether the accused are eligible for release on a personal bond.

All three of the hearing officers were issued public admonitions by the Judicial Conduct Commission in January after it found that they failed to comply with the law in strictly following directives from state district judges to refrain from issuing personal bonds to defendants.

[…]

The commission noted that it gave weight to the hearing officers’ arguments that they feared for their jobs if they didn’t obey orders from state district judges to deny personal bonds to defendants. Nevertheless, the commission determined the hearing officers had violated their constitutional and statutory obligations to consider all legally available bonds when they denied personal recognizance bonds to defendants.

In a recent petition filed in a Harris County state district court, the hearing officers argue that the commission exceeded its mandate in issuing the disciplinary actions based on its own interpretation of the law, rather than on well-settled law.

“All courts to have considered this question have agreed: The commission is not permitted to interpret the law and then find a violation. Yet that is precisely what the commission has done here,” the hearing officers’ petition alleges. “It has been nearly thirty years since the commission’s authority has been examined in Texas; this case presents an important and rare opportunity to reaffirm that the commission may not interpret Texas law and to ensure that the Commission is not allowed to exceed its mandate.”

Sen. John Whitmire filed the complaint that led to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct disciplining the hearing officers. I didn’t note when that decision was handed down, but a month after that we had testimony that the misdemeanor court judges violated state judicial conduct rules themselves by ordering the magistrates to deny bail. If this action were about setting that record straight I’d be firmly in the corner of the magistrates, but this looks to be about the role of the Commission, which interests me a lot less. Nonetheless, I suspect there’s some potential for more dirty laundry to be aired, and I am here for that.

Let’s kill fewer pedestrians and bicyclists

Crazy idea, right?

Houston officials will find the 10 most dangerous intersections in the city and make safety adjustments where possible following a series of fatal bicycle crashes in 2018.

Mayor Sylvester Turner announced the initiative on Bike to Work Day, noting that streets need to be safer for bicyclists if the city expects to promote cycling.

[…]

The program will come as a citywide expansion of Houston’s Safer Streets initiative, a pilot project that was implemented last year in five Houston communities to make streets more friendly for bicyclists and pedestrians, Turner said.

The city’s public works and planning and development departments will work with the city’s Bicycle Advocacy Committee and bike safety nonprofit BikeHouston to identify the 10 intersections that will be adjusted.

Narrowing that list down to ten may be a challenge. Here’s a map showing the major incidents over the past two years. Most of them, anyway – as Swamplot notes, locations for about fifteen percent of crashes weren’t identified, so add another hundred dots to that map. Like I said, sure would be nice if we could reduce that number.

The Republicans’ risk factors in 2018

The Cook Report’s Dave Wasserman comes up with a system for evaluating Republican Congressional incumbents who may have some trouble in their future.

Armed with fresh FEC data, we have created a table listing seven “risk factors” to gauge Republican incumbents’ political health and readiness for a wave election. In the past, those incumbents with a high number of risk factors have typically been the ripest targets, while those with fewer risk factors could still be vulnerable but may be better able to withstand a hostile political environment.

The seven risk factors are:

1. Sits in a district with a Cook PVI score of R+5 or less Republican.
2. Sits in a district that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.
3. Received 55 percent of the vote or less in the 2016 election (or a 2017 special election).
4. Voted in favor of the American Health Care Act in the May 4 roll call vote.
5. Voted in favor of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in the December 19 roll call vote.
6. Raised less money than at least one Democratic opponent in the first quarter of 2018.
7. Has a Democratic opponent with at least $200,000 in cash on hand as of March 31.

Only one incumbent, Rep. Steve Knight (CA-25), has all seven risk factors. Eight incumbents have six risk factors, 23 incumbents have five, 23 incumbents have four and 32 have three. This is not a hard and fast list, and over the next quarter, many incumbents will add or subtract factors based on their own and their opponents’ progress.

What we care about are the Texans on this list, so here they are:

Six risk factors – Will Hurd, CD23

Five risk factors – Pete Sessions, CD32

Four risk factors – John Culberson, CD07

Three risk factors – John Carter, CD31; Brian Babin, CD36

Two things to note here. One is that this list is limited to incumbents, so open seat races are not included. Two, these risk factors do not necessarily correlate to the electoral prospects of the district in question. The Cook House ratings report includes CDs 07, 23, 32, and open seat 21, but not 31 and 36.

That latter one really stands out, as it’s a 70%+ Trump district. The risk factors for Brian Babin are the AHCA and tax cut votes – we would need to see some district-specific polling to know how risky those were to him, but it’s not crazy to think those actions would not be terribly popular – and having been outraised in Q1 by Dayna Steele. Babin still has a large cash on hand advantage, not to mention being in that deep red district, and Steele had a competitive primary to win, but as I said before, the fact that Steele has been able to raise that kind of money in that kind of district is nothing short of amazing.

Weekend link dump for May 27

“But I think these attention-grabbing silly questions are also damaging, and that they reflect a harmful, shallow, and ultimately off-putting approach to the Bible itself.”

The appeal of MLB in general and the Yankees in particular in South Korea.

“Everyone needs to wake up and realize that this is not a black eye on the FBI or President Obama. This is what counter-intelligence agencies do: they investigate and try to disrupt efforts of foreign powers to infiltrate and subvert the country, its government, its assets. In 2016, the FBI and the DOJ were faced with just such a situation at the highest level with a hostile foreign power. They went to extreme lengths to keep the probe confidential so as not to impact the presidential campaign. President Trump and his allies are now using the gravity of the threat and the efforts to protect the President as somehow facts in their favor.”

Cheers has been off the air for 25 years now. In related news, we are all old.

RIP, Billy Cannon, Heisman Trophy winner and the first star player of the AFL.

“The members of the NRA should know this history because while they may like it when [Oliver] North says we should have to go through five metal detectors to get into our children’s school, they won’t like it when North follows his nature and figures out a way to inadvertently expose their dirty laundry while scamming them out of their money.”

I honestly don’t know why anyone would want The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library book, but you will have the option to have it anyway.

“The ongoing debate around whether it’s feasible to have an electric grid running on 100 percent renewable power in the coming decades often misses a key point: many countries and regions are already at or close to 100 percent now.”

“Your mobile phone is giving away your approximate location all day long. This isn’t exactly a secret: It has to share this data with your mobile provider constantly to provide better call quality and to route any emergency 911 calls straight to your location. But now, the major mobile providers in the United States — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon — are selling this location information to third party companies — in real time — without your consent or a court order, and with apparently zero accountability for how this data will be used, stored, shared or protected.”

“Roughly speaking, Mishel estimates that the gig economy acounts for 0.1 percent of total hours worked in the American economy. He also, to my surprise, mentions in passing that Uber alone accounts for two-thirds of this. So not only is the gig economy small, but it’s basically just Uber and a few tiny stragglers. In other words, it’s probably best if everyone stops hyping the gig economy too much.”

“Bad news for those of you who currently emit a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, combined with the smell of a salted, wheat-based dough. You need to stop doing that immediately, because that particular smell has just been trademarked by the Hasbro Corporation.”

RIP, Dovey Johnson Roundtree, groundbreaking Washington, D.C., lawyer who persuaded the Interstate Commerce Commission to issue a ruling banning racial segregation on buses.

RIP, Philip Roth, groundbreaking novelist best known for Portnoy’s Complaint.

Sending cease and desist letters to The Onion is seldom a good idea.

“As someone who was part of diplomatic talks, this story on how Trump team screwed up China negotiations is a textbook case of nearly EVERY SINGLE THING you should NOT do. Bodes badly for North Korea summit.”

“These are not ‘conflicts of interest’. A ‘conflict of interest’ is a case in which the nature of a situation makes it impossible for a person to separate their personal interests from their public responsibilities (or to appear to do so). All previous Presidents put their private wealth into blind trusts. We assume they weren’t going to try to directly make money off the presidency. But they wanted to remove any question of it and avoid situations where there own financial interests would bump up against their public responsibilities. What we’re seeing now are not conflicts of interest. They’re straight-up corruption.”

“To the contrary, what we’re watching unfold is in some ways more alarming than the likelihood that Trump simply did more colluding than we thought. The countries that helped see to it that Trump became president, all of which are heavily corrupt, have been rewarded with extraordinary geopolitical spoils that have rendered U.S. interests an afterthought. Trump has frayed the western alliance more in a year and a half than the Russian government was able to do from the outside over the course of decades. He has at the same time thrown the weight of the White House behind a Saudi-Emirati effort to consolidate power in the Middle East at the expense of other U.S. allies.”

So much for that Nobel Peace Prize.

“Sixteen months into the Trump Presidency, it is finally time to say: we really do know. There are no deals with Trump, and there are increasingly unlikely to be.”

RIP, Alan Bean, astronaut and the fourth person to walk on the moon.

State asks for emergency stay of “motor voter” ruling

Also as expected.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday asked a federal appeals court to block a San Antonio judge’s order that gave state officials 45 days to correct an online voter registration system that was found to violate federal law.

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia on Monday ordered officials to create a process that lets Texans simultaneously register to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license on the Department of Public Safety website. The current system violates the National Voter Registration Act’s motor-voter provision by adding several hurdles to the registration process, the judge ruled.

Paxton quickly informed the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that he intends to challenge Garcia’s order.

[…]

Paxton’s filing argued that Garcia added requirements that are not included in federal law, such as ordering state officials to create a public-education campaign to explain the new voter-registration process.

In addition, Paxton argued that the three voters who sued lacked standing because they were already registered to vote when their lawsuit was filed in 2016.

He also complained that Garcia gave state officials only 45 days to make the changes, saying the state’s current online vendor could not complete changes before its contract expires Sept. 1, and the new vendor would need 90 days to create a process.

See here for the background. The next scene in this movie that we’ve all seen before is the Fifth Circuit giving Paxton what he wants, and then we wait for the appeals process to play out. Lather, rinse, repeat.

From doors to video games

See if you can tell what’s missing from this discussion.

While Democrats clamored for stricter gun regulations and Gov. Greg Abbott discussed measures to tighten school security following Friday’s mass shooting at Santa Fe High School, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick set his sights on another target: the makers of violent films and video games.

Patrick spent the weekend on national television talking about what was to blame for the tragedy in southeast Texas that left 10 people dead, the latest in a spate of mass shootings across the country. It wasn’t the ready availability of guns in this country, Patrick said. Instead, the bloodshed was the result of a “violent culture where we’ve devalued life,” Patrick told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

“We have devalued life, whether it’s through abortion, whether it’s the breakup of families, through violent movies and particularly violent video games, which now outsell movies and music,” he said. “Psychologists and psychiatrists will tell you that students are desensitized to violence, have lost empathy for their victims by watching hours and hours of violent video games.”

But many of those games are at least partially produced in Texas — including “Prey,” a first-person shooter horror game rated for mature players age 17 or older, and “Doom,” another mature-rated first-person shooter that depicts “mutilated corpses with exposed organs/viscera strewn in the environment,” according to the Entertainment Software Rating Board. And the state government has given millions of dollars in incentives to some of their creators.

Patrick has supported those state-funded incentive payments to lure film, television and video game creators to Texas, but on Wednesday he said those payments should be barred from certain projects or he would withdraw his support for the incentives program.

“The lieutenant governor does not support using state taxpayer dollars to make violent films or video games that are harmful to our children,” spokesman Alejandro Garcia said in an email, noting the Texas Film Commission may decide which projects get reimbursed. “If this is the direction they are going, the lieutenant governor will not support their funding requests in the future.”

Hey, you want to cut the film incentive fund, I’m fine with that, and I bet you could get a majority in the Lege for it. But that’s not what Patrick is proposing here – he’s saying that only films and video games that meet his standard for artistic merit should be eligible for those funds. Putting aside the ridiculousness of Dan Patrick as the official state movie and video game critic, there’s also the fact that the idea that violent films and video games lead to gun violence is even more ridiculous.

Pretty much everything Patrick said here is wrong. He also went on to blame abortions and broken homes and suggest arming teachers, but I’ll stick to his claims about video games.

Here are the facts. The evidence is abundantly clear at this point: Violent video games do not cause violence.

Longitudinal studies of youth have not found evidence that early game playing is associated with later violencedecreased empathy or conduct problems. In fact, the release of popular violent video games like “Grand Theft Auto” are associated with immediate declines in societal violence, and long-term relationships show that increased violent game consumption is associated with reduced youth violence — and we have to remember that youth violence is down by more than 80 percent from 25 years ago.

Also, playing games like “Grand Theft Auto” does not appear to decreaseempathy toward women. Internationally, the countries that consume the most video games per capita are among the least violent.

And analyses of school shooters have found that they appear to consume unusually low levels of violent media for males their age.

Villanova University professor Patrick Markey and I discuss much of this in our book “Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games is Wrong.”We note that, contrary to the lieutenant governor’s claims, most psychologists who study the issue do not link violent media to violence in society.

Indeed, across studies, only about 10 percent to 30 percent of scholars agree with him, making it a decidedly minority view. Just this year, the Media Psychology and Technology Division of the American Psychological Association (APA) released a policy statement asking politicians to stop making exactly the kinds of claims Patrick made about video games and violence.

Dan Patrick has a long record of not being interested in anything that doesn’t further his own political agenda. Nothing will change until Dan Patrick and others like him are voted out of office.

Lupe and Beto

Beto O’Rourke has a year-old, well-funded campaign for US Senate. Lupe Valdez doesn’t have anything like those advantages in her campaign for Governor. Will her lower profile effort have a negative effect on his higher profile one?

Rep. Beto O’Rourke

The race for governor is often the biggest spectacle in Texas politics, and the governor’s mansion the biggest prize.

But the contest between incumbent Republican Greg Abbott and Democratic nominee Lupe Valdez is forecast to be not much of a contest at all. Abbott, who in 2014 beat former state Sen. Wendy Davis by 20 percentage points, looms like Goliath on the political landscape, with Valdez lacking the weaponry to take him down. She needs more than five smooth stones.

Democrats have focused much of their attention on the remarkable campaign of Beto O’Rourke, the El Paso congressman who’s challenging incumbent Ted Cruz for Senate.

The Cruz-O’Rourke showdown is the marquee race of the season, and could change the fortunes of Democrats and Republicans alike.

With Abbott poised to spend more than $40 million to turn out the Republican vote and in the process help Cruz, the question becomes: does Valdez’s presence on the ticket hurt or help O’Rourke?

Lupe Valdez

“Compared to nothing, she helps,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University.

[…]

Paul Quinn President Michael Sorrell, who Democrats recruited to run for governor, said Valdez’s presence on the ticket will have little impact on O’Rourke’s efforts.

“I don’t think Lupe makes a difference to this race,” Sorrell said. “People view Beto’s race as a separate entity from Lupe’s race.”

Veteran Republican consultant Bill Miller said Valdez could be a problem for O’Rourke and other Democrats because her campaign is so irrelevant.

“The Democrats believe she helps, but in my opinion she hurts,” Miller said. “She’s not going to be a strong candidate and her race is not a hot race. She’s going to be discounted early on and that won’t help O’Rourke.”

My inclination is to agree with Michael Sorrell. We haven’t had a situation like this in recent memory. In the recent years where we have had concurrent races for Senate and Governor:

– Wendy Davis’s gubernatorial campaign was much higher profile than David Alameel’s Senate campaign in 2014. Not that any of it made much difference.

– The four-way Governor’s race in 2006 defies comparison to anything else.

– Both Tony Sanchez and Ron Kirk had well-funded campaigns in 2002, with Kirk doing a few points better in the end.

Honestly, the real factor here is Greg Abbott and his gazillions of dollars, which would be a major concern no matter who was his opponent. Valdez has improved as a candidate after a rough start, and in the end I think she’ll raise a million or two bucks, which is a water balloon against Abbott’s fire hose but will at least allow for some kind of campaign activity. The main way Abbott can use his money to affect other races is by spending a ton on GOTV stuff, which again he’d do if he were running instead against Andrew White or Julian Castro or whoever your fantasy alternative candidate might be. He still has to contend with whatever chaos Donald Trump unleashes, whatever discontent the electorate may feel about Hurricane Harvey and gun violence, and other things that money may not be able to ameliorate. All things considered, I think Valdez’s campaign will have little effect on Beto’s. It’s unlikely to be of any help, but it probably won’t hurt, either.

(Yes, I wrote this before the property tax story came out. I still don’t think one campaign will have much effect on the other.)

Opioid lawsuits

From last week:

Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading Texas into a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma for exacerbating the opioid crisis among Texans.

In an announcement Tuesday afternoon, Paxton, a Republican, flanked by several assistant attorney generals, said the state is taking the drug maker to court for misrepresenting the risks of opioid addiction.

“We must make those who have caused the opioid crisis feel the pain that they have inflicted on our community,” Paxton said.

Other states, including Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota and Nevada, are also pursuing lawsuits against Purdue.

While the state is planning to sue, Paxton said the main issue now is getting injunctive relief from the courts so that Purdue will have to stop misrepresenting their drugs.

The lawsuit comes as more states, cities and counties across the United States are turning to the courts as they grapple with how to hold drug makers and distributors accountable amid a harrowing — and growing — epidemic that led to more than 42,000 opioid overdoses in 2016. Main culprits in the public health crisis include prescription painkillers, such as Hydrocodone, OxyContin and the synthetic drug fentanyl, and heroin.

[…]

Paxton’s office wrote in a May 10 letter to the Texas Supreme Court that it planned to file a lawsuit under the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The consumer protection statute forbids companies from misrepresenting themselves or their products to Texans. Examples of misrepresentation include false or misleading advertising, exaggerating or misrepresenting the benefits or endorsements of a product or service, making false statements about the manufacture or origin of a product, passing off used products as new ones and price gouging.

Paxton said he’s leading Texas to sue Purdue for several reasons including for lying to doctors and patients about the possibility of increasing opioid dosages without risk, falsely representing that common signs of addiction are signs the patient needs higher opioid dosages and misrepresenting the risk of becoming addicted to the company’s abuse-deterrent formulation OxyContin.

Later in the week, Bexar County followed suit.

Bexar County on Thursday filed a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors that it says are responsible for the “tremendous expense” and devastating local impact endured as a result of the addiction epidemic.

“As of today we know that in San Antonio 100 residents have died annually from overdosing on opioids,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said at a press conference at the County courthouse.

Filed in state district court, the lawsuit follows commissioners’ resolution in October to pursue litigation against more than 50 companies, including Johnson and Johnson, Teva Pharmaceutical, and Purdue Pharma, the maker of the synthetic opioid OxyContin.

“These manufacturers and distributors did not only put opioids into the market,” Martin Phipps, a lawyer with Phipps Anderson Deacon, said at a press conference Wednesday. They also advertised opioids directly to the military and specific populations and misled prescribers regarding potential for addiction and other long-term health complications, including brain and liver damage, he explained.

The firm is working with local law firm Watts Guerra to bring the lawsuit forward on the County’s behalf.

The city of San Antonio may join in later in the year. Dallas County was ahead of the curve.

Dallas County sued a slew of drug companies and doctors this week over their alleged roles in the deadly opioid epidemic, joining dozens of other governments nationwide that have launched court battles.

The 59-page claim filed Monday in Dallas County court accuses at least 11 pharmaceutical companies — including Purdue Pharma, which makes the bestselling painkiller OxyContin — and three local doctors of knowingly pushing addictive drugs on patients while claiming they were safe. The three doctors have all been convicted of illegal “pill mill” over-prescription practices.

“While using opioids has taken an enormous toll on Dallas County and its residents, defendants have realized blockbuster profits,” the lawsuit said. “In 2014 alone, opioids generated $11 billion in revenue for drug companies like defendants.”

[…]

County Judge Clay Jenkins said the goal of the lawsuit is to recoup some of the money that the county has had to pay for medical care and substance abuse treatment at Parkland Memorial Hospital, as well as responses by law enforcement and the jail. The suit is seeking actual and punitive damages, without specifying a number.

“When a large swath of your population becomes addicted to drugs, it’s not just them — it’s a loss of productivity, an increase in criminal activity, the jail cost associated with this — it just hits you across the board,” Jenkins said. “Taxpayers feel all of that.”

I have to assume that Harris County and the city of Houston are looking into this as well. Perhaps a reporter ought to inquire about that. Other states and localities around the country blazed the trail last year. This may all seem far-fetched, but one need only look back at the litigation filed against tobacco companies in the 90s to see the possibilities. At some level, this is what tort law and the civil courts are all about. And when you read about the family that has been raking in millions of dollars from all this, you might think it’s about time someone did something about it.

Zipcar parking arrangement approved

Good.

The City Council on Wednesday said companies can start immediately applying for agreements with the city that allow them to use on-street parking spaces so vehicles are visible and easily available to users. Companies such as Zipcar allow people to check out vehicles with a smartphone app and rent them by the day or hour. Drivers can then leave the vehicles in any designated spot.

Council members also approved continuing the current agreement with Zipcar for four on-street parking spots in Midtown.

With citywide rules in place, Mayor Sylvester Turner said he hopes more companies come forward to offer vehicles. A handful of companies — typically subsidiaries of larger well-known car manufacturers or car rental agencies — have entered the industry.

After delaying approval two weeks ago, council members approved the proposal by the city’s regulatory affairs department, with some changes. District I Councilman Robert Gallegos, sought more focus on using renewable-energy and fuel-efficient vehicles, as well as greater oversight of exactly where the spaces will be located.

Up to 20 spaces total will be used for car-sharing at first, and any additional ones must be approved by council. Before any spaces may be used for car-sharing — following approval by a traffic engineer and ParkHouston — city staff must notify any property owners within 200 feet of the space and the appropriate city council district office.

See here for the background. As the previous story notes, Zipcar is leasing these spots from the city, which seems like a reasonable arrangement to me as long as they’re paying a fair market rate. We need to find ways to encourage people to use cars less on a daily basis, and one way to accomplish that is to make it easier for them to get a car when they do need one. This is a step in the right direction.

The revenue cap is stupid and harmful

Reason #4,739:

Mayor Sylvester Turner

In posting a sluggish population growth estimate for Houston, the U.S. Census Bureau blew a $17 million hole in the city budget.

City officials had expected the count would show Houston had added about 30,400 people by January from the year prior. The Census Bureau on Thursday, however, estimated the city grew by just 9,200 between July 2016 and last summer.

Because the revenue cap voters approved in 2004 limits the city’s annual increase in property tax collections to the combined rates of inflation and population growth, that means Mayor Sylvester Turner must adjust his proposed $2.5 billion general fund budget.

Or he will, if he is unsuccessful in challenging the Census estimate. The city’s estimates, he said, are more up to date and are “based on greater familiarity with local indicators.”

To challenge the estimate, Houston can submit data on topics such as residential building and demolition permits, mobile home placements, household sizes and apartment occupancy rates.

Houston successfully challenged its formal count in the 2010 Census, and also added 3 percent to its population estimate via an appeal in 2006, and a little more than 1 percent to its 2008 count, according to the Census website.

The city’s press release is here. Neither the rate of inflation nor the rate of population growth have anything to do with the city’s needs or its financial capacity. It also as you can see puts an awful lot of power in the hands of unelected federal bureaucrats. Who I’m sure are fine people, but they’re not accountable to the voters of Houston. I mean seriously, who thinks this makes sense? The whole stupid thing needs to be repealed.

Former cheerleaders file lawsuit against Texans over pay

I’d been wondering if something like this was going to happen here.

Three former Texans cheerleaders sued the team and its cheerleading supervisor Tuesday, accusing the Texans of failing to pay minimum wage and overtime and accusing the cheer squad director of body-shaming and failing to act on complaints that cheerleaders were physically assaulted by fans.

The former cheerleaders, who were on the squad for the 2017 season, are seeking class action status, which would include all Texans cheerleaders for the last three years who also complain of similar treatment by the Texans and their cheerleader director, Altovise Gary.

The suit against the Texans and Gary, filed in Houston federal court, joins a growing list of legal actions in which former NFL cheerleaders complain about pay, safety issues and working conditions.

“I have been a season-ticket holder since 2002. My name is engraved on the glass outside NRG Stadium,” said former cheerleader Paige G., who is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. “It was always a goal of mine to get on the team, and I thought this is so great that now I get to cheer for the team that I love.

“It was really unfortunate that we were treated with such disrespect.”

Paige G. claims in the lawsuit that while she was paid $7.25 per hour for a set number of hours each week, she did not receive overtime for team-imposed email monitoring and social media requirements and for other “off-the-clock” job-related duties, including gym workouts, spray tans before games and events and required attendance at other team functions and autograph sessions.

“One of the most famous quotes from (Gary) is that this was a part-time job with full-time hours,” she said. “We signed up for a part-time job that didn’t require more than 30 hours a week. If you’re going to make it full-time hours, make it a full-time job. I would be happy to do that.”

The suit also accuses Gary, described in the document as “Coach Alto,” of harassing and intimidating behavior and of cutting Paige G. and other cheerleaders from the squad in April after they sought improved working conditions.

Others may join in as plaintiffs, and they will seek class certification, assuming Neil Gorsuch hasn’t made that illegal. We have seen a number of lawsuits like this filed by other teams’ cheerleaders in recent years, some with truly appalling fact sets. Several teams have paid out settlements, and I suspect that is what will eventually happen here. Seems to me the right thing for the teams to do is to pay their cheerleaders a fair wage for their labor and to generally treat them with a minimum level of respect. But this is the NFL, and that’s not the way they do business, so off to the courts they go. I know who I’m cheering for.

Blake Farenthold is a gift that keeps on giving

Oh, Blake.

Blake Farenthold

Nearly a month after abruptly resigning from Congress in the wake of revelations over lewd and verbally abusive behavior, former Corpus Christi Rep. Blake Farenthold had been angling for several days to get a lobbying job at a port authority in his district.

And he appeared to be getting antsy.

“What’s up with the lawyers?” Farenthold wrote to Calhoun Port Authority director Charles Hausmann in an April 30 email, which was obtained by The Dallas Morning News through an open records request. “I’m ready to get work for y’all.

“Any problems that I should know about?”

Farenthold ended up landing the gig this month.  He  started Monday as a $160,000-a-year legislative liaison who will seek to boost the port’s “presence and visibility in Washington.”

The new position — which Farenthold announced in a radio interview — has created a stir in South Texas and beyond, in no small part because the former congressman said this week that he would not repay $84,000 in taxpayer money used to settle a sexual harassment suit against him.

Never stop never stopping.

Asked Friday about a news report that said former U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold’s recent hiring as a lobbyist for the Port of Port Lavaca may have violated the Texas Open Meetings Act, the Republican said he “wasn’t involved.”

The Victoria Advocate reported Friday that Farenthold’s hiring may have been illegal since the notice posted by the Calhoun Port Authority, which oversees the port, was too vague in describing what was going to be said at a closed meeting where the former congressman’s hiring was discussed.

“I’m trying to get on with my life. I wasn’t involved other than I talked to them about a job. I don’t know anything about it,” Farenthold said after an event hosted by The Texas Tribune. “I’m not talking to reporters. I’m a private citizen now.”

According to the Advocate, the posting said the board would meet “for the purposes of deliberating the appointment, employment, compensation, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline or dismissal of a public officer or employee.” But the Texas Supreme Court ruled that these notices need to be specific when they concern high-profile people.

Like flies to a garbage can, you know? Some people just have a knack for this sort of thing.

Farenthold, in a brief phone interview, said that he’s “a private citizen now” and is “trying to not be a news item anymore.” He declined to comment on what the Florida reference meant. He didn’t dispute the general timeline for how he obtained his new employment.

“I started looking for a job as soon as I was out of office,” he said.

Heck of a job not being a news item, dude. Maybe next time check and see if Chili’s is hiring first.

Post-runoff thoughts

I suppose one’s view on Democratic primary runoff turnout is a matter of perspective. I wrote that it was way more than the turnout of any primary going back to 2006 – indeed, more than double the turnout of any year other than 2012. The Trib saw it differently:

As of 11 p.m. Tuesday, just 415,000 Democrats had cast ballots in the gubernatorial runoff. For reference, that’s a decline of almost 60 percent from the 1 million Texans who cast ballots in the March Democratic primary.

That’s the largest primary-to-runoff decline — and the smallest number of ballots cast — in the 14 Democratic gubernatorial primary runoffs held since 1920. That year, 449,000 Democrats voted, according to Texas Election Source‘s analysis of Texas State Historical Association data.

They also used words like low-key and abysmal. I have no idea what they were expecting, but I guess this wasn’t it. The DMN calls is “historically low”, with extensive quotes from the guy behind Texas Election Source, though he does allow that there are other ways of looking at this.

As for me, I was comparing turnout in any statewide primary, while the Trib and the DMN limited themselves to gubernatorial primaries. Which means that their most recent example is 1990, the year Ann Richards topped Jim Mattox in a vicious, nasty runoff. I think we can all agree that the Texas of 1990 was a little different than the Texas of 2018 is; I’m not even going to comment on the Texas of 1920. Be that as it may, here’s another look at runoff turnout:


Year     Runoff      March  Runoff%
===================================
2018    432,180  1,042,914    41.4%
2016    188,592  1,435,895    13.1%
2014    201,283    554,014    36.3%
2012    236,305    590,164    40.0%
2008    187,708  2,874,986     6.5%
2006    207,252    508,602    40.7%
2002    620,301  1,003,388    61.8%

Here I went back to 2002. In all cases, I took the number of votes cast in the busiest primary for that given year’s primary to the busiest runoff for the same year, which in some cases was the only statewide runoff. As such, we’re comparing races for President, Senate, and Governor to races for Senate, Governor, and Railroad Commissioner. Not perfect, I suppose, but at least it gives me data points from this century. You can make what you will of all this, as clearly it’s in the eye of the beholder, but I have a hard time lining up the Trib’s words with the numbers before me.

The primary wins by Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia ensures that Texas will have at least two more women among its Congressional delegation. Gina Ortiz Jones and Lizzie Fletcher, and to lesser extents Jana Sanchez, MJ Hegar, Jan McDowell, Lorie Burch, and Julie Oliver could increase that number. They’re all Dems; thanks to Bunni Pounds’ loss in CD05 there will be no more Republican women in Congress from Texas.

Republicans may increase their female membership in the House, as Cynthia Flores won the right to succeed Rep. Larry Gonzalez in HD52 and Lisa Luby Ryan ousted Rep. Jason Villalba in HD114. Both will be favored in November, Flores more so. Democrats are actually down one in the House; Jessica Gonzalez ousted Rep. Robert Alonzo, but Trey Martinez-Fischer came back at Rep. Diana Arevalo’s expense, and Carl Sherman will succeed the retiring Rep. Helen Giddings. Dems do have something like 35 female candidates running against male Republican incumbents, and about a dozen of them have a chance to win that ranges from “top tier pickup opportunity” to “if the gods are truly smiling on us”. So, the story is far from over, but there are no guarantees.

As for the Senate, the Dems have two female candidates running in the swingiest districts, but both of them have female incumbents. There are also two female candidates running against male incumbents, in districts that are not as swingy. The single best chance of adding a female member to the Senate is in SD08, with Angela Paxton. Let that serve as a reminder that having more women in a particular group is not by itself an assurance of improvement.

Overall I’d say I’m happy with how things turned out. I was rooting for Fran Watson in SD17, but it’s not like Rita Lucido is an unsatisfactory choice. We have a strong slate, and statements from Watson and Laura Moser in support of unity will help us all get past the increasingly tiresome “establishment/outsider” narrative. By the way, about an hour after polls closed on Tuesday I got a press release from the Harris County GOP with “Far Left Lizzie” in the subject. So you know, that narrative didn’t quite take hold everywhere.

UPDATE: I had a slightly outdated turnout total for 2018, probably because I started writing this when there were still some precincts out. The number in there now is what is on the SOS election night returns page.

CCA refuses to hear Ron Reynolds’ appeal

It’s getting awfully close to midnight.

Rep. Ron Reynolds

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has refused to review state Rep. Ron Reynolds’ criminal conviction and one-year jail sentence, according to online court records.

The Missouri City Democrat had asked the court to overturn a 2015 misdemeanor conviction in Montgomery County for illegally soliciting clients for his personal injury practice. Reynolds still has 15 days to file a motion for a rehearing, according to a staffer at the court, but it is likely that Reynolds will soon serve his year-long jail sentence.

Joel Daniels, the main prosecutor in Reynolds’ trial and chief of the white collar division in the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, said the court’s next step would be to issue a mandate to the trial court to carry out the sentence.

“That will mean that Mr. Reynolds’ case will be put back on the docket, and he’ll be brought into court” and taken to jail, Daniels said.

Before then, Reynolds can request a rehearing, as the court staffer said, and, in theory, he could request time to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Daniels said. But that would be “extremely unusual and very rare.”

See here and here for the background. I don’t know if Rep. Reynolds has any tricks remaining in his bad to stay out of jail at this point. If not, then this will come to exactly the point I’ve been saying it will, which is that he’ll be in jail while a legislative session is happening, leaving his constituents without representation during that time, all because he was too self-centered to recognize the need to put their needs first and step down. To be fair, he can still do that: If he resigns effective November 6, we can at least get a special election in January and a new rep in place by March. Not ideal, but better than a Rep in the pokey. Reynolds sent me a whiny message via Facebook back in 2015 when I first called on him to leave office and get his personal life in order so I have no illusion that he’ll listen to me this time, but there it is. You did some good things in the Legislature, Ron Reynolds. Now do one more good thing and let someone else take your place. There’s nothing more to say about this.

Buc-ee’s wins in court

That was quick.

After about six hours of deliberation, a jury in Houston found Tuesday that Choke Canyon company’s alligator logo violated state and federal trademark law, infringing on the pre-established Buc-ee’s beaver mark established by the popular Texas road stop chain.

“It’s absolutely not about a beaver versus an alligator,” said Jeff Nadalo, general counsel for Buc-ee’s Ltd. “There are more than 10 similarities between the two marks that we presented to the jury in this case.”

[…]

The judge asked the lawyers to meet and try to hammer out an injunction on how to deal of trademarked materials that violate the jury’s finding.

The damages phase of the trial remains pending.

See here for the background, and here for a later version of the story. Six hours of deliberation for a week-long trial is pretty darned quick. I may have been skeptical based on my view of the two logos, but I wasn’t there in court and neither were you. We’ll see what the damages look like.

Texas blog roundup for the week of May 21

The Texas Progressive Alliance’s heart is broken for the people of Santa Fe as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

2018 primary runoff results: Governor

Here are the results. Before we begin, some numbers of interest:


Year      Total
===============
2018    428,933 (inc)
2016    188,592
2014    201,283
2012    236,305
2008    187,708
2006    207,252

There were at least 241,120 early votes cast in 2018 (that number kept increasing), meaning that turnout in this year’s runoff was already higher than every other years’ runoffs before a single ballot was recorded on Tuesday. As of just before 10 PM some 380,413 votes were tallied; that number rose to 406,021 by 11 PM, with ten percent of precincts still out. I’d estimate the final number will be around 420K, depending on where the stragglers are. Which isn’t that much in absolute terms, but as you can see more than double the total of any year other than 2012. (There were no statewide runoffs in 2010.)

And as of 10 PM, the race was being called for Lupe Valdez. She had a 21K lead with 5,788 of 6,978 precincts reporting. It was a tight race all evening, with the lead swinging back and forth as different counties checked in. Congratulations to Lupe Valdez, the first Latina and LGBT person to be nominated for Governor in Texas. Thank you to Andrew White for running a good and spirited campaign. Please do stay involved, we need you.

UPDATE: Got up this morning and the vote total had climbed to 428,933, surpassing my estimate from last night, with a handful of precincts still to report.

2018 primary runoff results: Congress and Legislature

All results are here. I began drafting this around 9:30 when there were still a bunch of precincts out, but with the exception of the tossup in CD25, all of the Congressional races were pretty clear by then:

CD03: Lorie Burch
CD06: Jana Sanchez
CD07: Lizzie Fletcher
CD10: Mike Siegel
CD21: Joseph Kopser
CD22: Sri Kulkarni
CD23: Gina Ortiz Jones
CD27: Eric Holguin
CD31: MJ Hegar
CD32: Colin Allred

At the time I started writing this, Julie Oliver led in CD25 by 70 votes out of almost 18,000 cast and about three quarters of precincts reporting. Later on, she had pulled out to a five point lead, so add her to the winners’ list as well.

On the legislative side, Rita Lucido was leading in SD17, Sheryl Cole had a modest lead in HD46 with most precincts reporting, Carl Sherman had a much bigger lead in HD109, and longtime Rep. Rene Oliveira had been shown the door.

As for the Republicans, Dan Crenshaw won big in CD02, Lance Gooden won in CD05, so no more Republican women in Congress, Chip Roy and Michael Cloud led in CDs 21 and 27, respectively. The wingnuts in HDs 08 and 121 lost, and incumbent Rep. Scott Cosper lost.

Congratulations to all the winners. I’ll have some more coherent thoughts on all these races in the next day or so.

2018 primary runoff results: Harris County

Here are the election night results, with a handful of precincts still not in as of 11 PM. Most of these races were basically decided once the early voting numbers were in, but one was neck and neck all night. The winners:

District Clerk: Marilyn Burgess
County Clerk: Diane Trautman
County Treasurer: Dylan Osborne
HCDE Position 3 At Large: Richard Cantu (probably)
HCDE Position 6 Precinct 1: Danny Norris
JP Precinct 7: Sharon Burney

Cantu was leading by a score of 25,427 to 25,026 for Josh Wallenstein, with 965 of 1012 precincts reporting. This one swung back and forth – Wallenstein was leading by a few votes as of the 10 PM update – and could still swing again.

Turnout was a smidge over 55K, which is higher than I expected, as about 36% of votes were cast on Tuesday. On the Republican side, turnout was at 50K with 981 of 1012 precincts reporting. One race, for 295th Civil District Court, was too close to call as Michelle Fraga led Richard Risinger 23,477 to 23,419. One bit of good news is that actual public servant Jeff Williams will retain his JP bench in Precinct 5, defeating the troglodyte Michael Wolfe. The downside to that is that Wolfe will remain on the HCDE Board of Trustees, but at least we can fix that in 2020. Congratulations to all the winners. Onward to November.

UPDATE: Got up this morning and Richard Cantu was still the winner in the at large HCDE race, 26,041 to 25,780. That’s a lead that will almost certainly hold up after overseas and provisional ballots are counted. Oh, and final Dem turnout was 57,237, compared to 50,716 on the R side.

Today is Runoff Day

From the inbox:

As the chief election officer of the County, Stan Stanart reminds voters that Tuesday, May 22, is Primary Runoff Election Day.

“Due to consolidation of precincts, many voters will be voting at a new location and are strongly encouraged to visit www.HarrisVotes.com to find their polling location,” Stanart advised. Polls will be open from 7 am to 7 pm. Voters must vote at the designated Election Day poll for the precinct in which they are registered.

According to Stanart, finding your polling location before heading to vote on Election Day is more important than ever due to a decrease in polling locations. “Voter participation on Election Day in Primary Runoff Elections is much lower. As a result, the political parties significantly consolidate many voting precincts into one poll,” informed Stanart.

“The Primary Runoff Elections are a party function. For Election Day, the political parties determine the number of voting locations, where the polls are located, and who runs the polls,” clarified Stanart. For these Primary Runoff Elections, there will be a total of 202 Election Day polling locations: The Democratic Party will have 112 Election Day Polling locations and the Republican Party 89. In contrast, for elections directly administered by the Harris County Clerk’s Office, on Election Day, there are usually over 750 polling locations.

There are a total of thirteen (13) races in the Democratic Party Primary and four (4) in the Republican Party Primary to be decided by the Runoff Election. “Every voter in Harris County is eligible to vote in either the Democratic Party or Republican Party Runoff Election. Still, a voter who participated in the March Primary Election may ONLY vote in the Primary Runoff Election of the same political party,” concluded Stanart.

It is not necessary to have voted in the March Primary Election to vote in one of the Primary Runoff Elections.

For more information about the May 22 Primary Runoff Elections, view a personal sample ballot, or review a list of acceptable forms of identification to vote at the polls, voters may visit www.HarrisVotes.com or call the Harris County Clerk’s office at 713.755.6965.

As I said before, check to see what your precinct location is before you head out. The odds are good you’re not voting at your usual place. I don’t expect it to be terribly crowded wherever you go. I’ll have results tomorrow, and we’ll analyze the data and review where we are going forward.

State appeals “motor voter” ruling

No surprise.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

The legal fight over whether Texas is disenfranchising thousands of voters by violating a federal voter registration law is on its way to federal appeals court.

Just after a federal judge gave Texas less than two months to implement a limited version of online voter registration, the state on Monday formally notified U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia that it was appealing his finding that Texas was violating the law — also known as the “Motor Voter Act” — by failing to allow drivers to register to vote when they renew their driver’s licenses online.

Pointing to registration deadlines for the November election, Garcia created a 45-day deadline for the state to create the online system for drivers in order to comply with the federal law that requires states to allow people to register to vote while getting their drivers licenses.

[…]

The AG’s office tried to defend the state’s practice of directing drivers to the secretary of state’s website. But Garcia ruled that practice “is not enough” and violates the Motor Voter Act and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause by treating voters who deal with their driver’s licenses online differently than those who register in person.

The state had also argued that there are technological difficulties associated with online voter registration even in this narrow form, particularly because state law requires a signature when an individual registers to vote. But Garcia also dismissed that argument because the state already keeps an electronic signature on file.

The state’s “excuse for noncompliance is not supported by the facts or the law,” Garcia said in his ruling.

See here and here for the background. I figure the first order of business will be for the state to try to get the Fifth Circuit to put this on hold pending the appeal. Given that court’s track record of granting such injunctions whenever the state comes knocking, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that online system to come about. The Chron has more.

Beaver v alligator

It’s a roadside rest stop animal logo legal smackdown, and it’s off to the jury.

Buc-ee’s, a popular chain of Texas pit stops, fought hard to build its reputation and wants a San Antonio-based competitor to stop “riding its coattails” by using a logo that confuses highway travelers into pulling off at a rival business, the company’s lawyer told jurors in his closing statement Monday in Houston.

“We don’t want to put Choke Canyon out of business,” said Buc-ee’s lawyer, Tracy Richardson, poised between poster boards displaying similarly colored T-shirts, beer koozies and plastic grocery bags with the animal logos from the two rival chains. Buc-ee’s just wants Choke Canyon’s owner to curtail what it views as an unfair ad campaign: “We just want him to stop using the logo.”

Richardson and the lead attorney for Choke Canyon offered closing pitches to jurors before they began deliberations Monday afternoon, following a week of testimony about the dueling roadside travel centers in a federal trademark case before U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison. The jury of three women and nine men will resume deliberations Tuesday.

The lawsuit brought by mega-chain Buc-ee’s claims that Choke Canyon’s alligator logo, posed against a circular yellow backdrop, is too similar to the buck-toothed beaver that is synonymous with its 33 gas stops. The Buc-ee’s chain, headquartered in Lake Jackson, also contends that Choke Canyon illegally mimicked its in store offerings, including friendly service, ample stock and plentiful, clean bathrooms.

[…]

[Defense attorney Charles] Hanor said the two trademarks are quite different, as are the offerings. The alligator is advertising a chain that specializes in barbecue, he told jurors, noting that Buc-ee’s only complained in court about its road stop competitor when Choke Canyon sought to open a chain in New Braunfels, where Buc-ee’s also had operations.

Trademark law doesn’t give either company a hold on any one attribute of their logo. Instead, the jury will consider the strength of Buc-ee’s logo, the similarity between the two logos and the stores’ product lines and whether Choke Canyon set out to or actually did confuse customers with the overlap.

It’s a balancing act, the judge explained in his directions to the jury. The goals of trademark law are to protect the public from being misled, to protect the rights of businesses to identify themselves in public and to protect the public interest in fair competition, Ellison said.

See here for some background. Earlier stories from the trial are here, here, and here. As I said when news of the lawsuit first appeared, I think Buc-ee’s is stretching it here. Maybe it’s because I’ve never seen a Choke Canyon, but I don’t see how a reasonable person could confuse the two. That’s up to twelve jurors here in Houston to decide. I wish them luck.

The Trib on CD22 and Fort Bend

A closer look at a lower-profile but highly interesting primary runoff.

Sri Kulkarni

At a glance, volunteers at Sri Kulkarni’s campaign headquarters are no different than those for congressional campaigns across the country — huddling over laptops, tapping voters’ numbers into their cell phones and concentrating on the call scripts in front of them.

But when the person on the other end of the line picks up, some volunteers greet them not in English but in Vietnamese, Hindi, Urdu or Mandarin Chinese.

For Kulkarni, a Democrat vying for a congressional seat in a Republican-leaning district, getting his message out to voters means not just knocking on doors and calling voters but also speaking the language they speak.

“You need to reach out to those communities the way they are and the way they want to be reached,” Kulkarni said. “The blue wave is real. That force is coming from all of us.”

Letitia Plummer

Kulkarni and Letitia Plummer are vying in Tuesday’s Democratic runoff to take on U.S. Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land. Though President Donald Trump won the district by 8 percentage points in 2016, both Democrats see it as vulnerable, in part due to demographic changes — the same shifts that both candidates are using to their advantage. The district includes most of Fort Bend County, one of America’s most ethnically diverse counties: 20 percent of its residents are Asian, 20 percent are black, 24 percent are Hispanic and 34 percent are white. Clinton won the county decisively in 2016.

In the March primaries, Kulkarni and Plummer came in first and second among five Democrats vying for the seat, drawing 32 and 24 percent of the vote respectively.

Kulkarni, a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer, has focused his campaign on groups of voters that he thinks will help bring about a local “blue wave” in November — particularly Asian-Americans and Latinos, who have had low voter turnout in the past.

When they’ve gone block walking in minority neighborhoods, Kulkarni and his team said they’ve noticed a sense of gratitude mixed with shock because campaigns have so rarely engaged those areas.

“A lot of folks have told me that no one has knocked on their door before, no one has called them before,” Kulkarni said. “Some of them just grab me and pull me in like a life preserver because they’ve never had somebody come out that way.”

Kulkarni’s campaign has translated his website into Spanish and Chinese, visited local temples and mosques and arranged appearances with Latino, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese and Indian media outlets, including Hindi/Urdu, Telugu and Malayali talk shows.

[…]

Nathan Gonzalez, editor and publisher of the Washington, D.C.-based Inside Elections, said he’s skeptical when campaigns appear to be relying heavily on turning out non-voters, but doesn’t rule out the strategy’s potential effectiveness, particularly in a climate in which Trump’s presidency is prompting an increase in civic action.

“I think the burden of proof is on Democrats to show that they can harness the energy from the protests and increasing fundraising and large number of candidates in races into votes,” Gonzalez said.

CD22 also includes parts of Harris and Brazoria counties, but going by the 2016 and 2014 results, about two thirds of the total vote in CD22 will be cast in Fort Bend. If a Democrat hopes to win CD22, he or she is almost certainly going to have to carry the part of the district that’s in Fort Bend. That’s a tall order based on electoral history, but it’s the task at hand.

The story notes Fort Bend’s diversity. That carries over into CD22, which has more Asian-American residents than any other Texas Congressional district (the “Other” classification in these reports generally refers to Asian-Americans). And while Nathan Gonzalez’s point is well taken, if you’re going to go after non-habitual voters, Asian-American voters make a lot of sense from a Democratic perspective.

In 1992, the first year that exit polls specifically tracked Asian Americans—an umbrella term referring to anyone with ancestry from East Asia, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent—55 percent of them supported George H. W. Bush over Bill Clinton. Eight years later, Al Gore became the first Democrat to win a majority of Asian American votes, and by 2012, the group favored Obama over Mitt Romney by almost 75 to 25. And the trend seems to be accelerating. More than a quarter of Asian American Republicans have abandoned the GOP since 2011, by far the largest shift of any demographic group. At the same time, the Asian American share of the population has doubled since 1990 to 6 percent overall.

The GOP’s increased nativism after 9/11 has long been a turnoff for Asian Americans, even before Donald Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower in June 2015. Trump has spent the better part of three years fear-mongering about undocumented immigrants—one out of six of whom is Asian. Asian Americans are the biggest beneficiaries of family reunification policies, which Trump and other prominent Republicans have taken to bashing as “chain migration.” (Family reunification is how nearly all Vietnamese and Bangladeshi immigrants have come to America.) Asian Americans might not be the direct target of Trump’s disdain as often as Hispanics, but the modern Republican Party’s increasingly overt hostility to nonwhite immigration can’t help but push them away.

All of which is good news for Democrats. But here’s the problem: Asian Americans have among the lowest voting rates of any racial group in America—49 percent of eligible voters, in 2016, compared to 65 percent among white people and 60 percent among black people. Not coincidentally, they also are less likely to be contacted by parties and campaigns. “Democrats are leaving a lot of votes on the table,” said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and an expert in political demography. “They don’t need 100 percent Asian turnout, but if Asians could come close to what whites vote at, or even blacks, it could have a big difference.”

That may make Sri Kulkarni the stronger general election candidate, but he has to win the runoff first. We’ll know soon enough about that.

The Cornyn Ike Dike bill

Credit where credit is due.

With hurricane season right around the corner, Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said Wednesday he is introducing legislation to expedite a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study on a coastal barrier to mitigate storm damage along the Texas coast.

The measure, the Coastal Texas Protection Act, is directed at advancing the construction of a long-awaited “Ike Dike” or Coastal Spine – proposed after Hurricane Ike in 2008 – to better protect the Gulf Coast from storm damage.

“We’ve been working with local stakeholders as well as state officials to try to encourage this process to move along quickly,” Cornyn said. “The Corps of Engineers is an instrumental part of this, and we want them to finish these studies and come up with a plan that the stakeholders and the state can agree upon, and then we will work hard to make sure that coastal protection plan is funded.”

[…]

In 2016, Cornyn advanced legislation signed by then President Barack Obama to streamline the Army Corps engineering studies.

According to a Cornyn aide, the 2016 bill prevented the Corps from duplicating efforts by requiring them to take into account studies that had already been conducted by the Gulf Coast Community Protection and Recovery District (GCCPRD).

The new bill would direct the Corps to expedite the completion of the Coastal Texas Study. It also provides a necessary exception for the project under the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA). Currently, the CBRA restricts the expenditure of federal funds associated with coastal barriers to avoid encouraging development of such barriers.

Kudos to Cornyn, who is capable of getting stuff done when he wants to. Of course, introducing a bill is not the same as passing it, and the Republican Congress has a crappy track record by any measure. You have to start somewhere, and this is it. Check again in a couple months and see if it’s gone anywhere.

Cities and suburbs up, rurals down

The story of Texas’ population.

Recently released data from the Texas Demographic Center spelled bad news for many rural areas in the state: populations there were still shrinking, or growing slowly.

Population growth in Texas remained concentrated in urban areas in 2016, according to the new numbers. That meant the fight continues for many small towns in Texas that are struggling to maintain or build their communities and economies.

The new estimates, released in late April, approximate population per county as of July 1, 2016. They were calculated using different methodology than U.S. Census Data estimates. Usually, the two are within range of each other, said Lloyd Potter, the state demographer.

State results confirm an ongoing trend in the second-most populous state in the country of movement toward urban centers and the booming suburban areas that surround them.

“Texas is growing more than any other state,” Potter said. “Those points are really where the bulk of the population growth is occurring.”

Here’s the Texas Demographic Center website. There’s a link to the 2016 Preliminary Population Estimates, though when I looked the 2016 data was not yet there. I’ll be interested to see how these numbers compare to the Census projections for Harris County. Nothing is official until the 2020 count is done, as problematic as that may be, but this is a preview of the redistricting to come. It’s never too early to start thinking about what the next set of maps will look like.

Weekend link dump for May 20

“Women’s lives matter. Women’s lives matter more than men’s rules for moral purity. That is the overarching and underlying theme surrounding every biblical discussion of divorce. Get that wrong and you’re in danger, like Ezra, of arriving someplace truly monstrous.”

Here are your Russian-placed fake-news Facebook ads from 2016.

“The GOP is no longer the Party of Reagan. It’s the Party of Michael Cohen.”

“Let me offer an alternative explanation of the affair and the payoff. It is still just a hypothesis, but, I would argue, it fits more comfortably with what we know about the various players than the reported version of events: Donald Trump, not Elliott Broidy, had an affair with Shera Bechard. Bechard hired Keith Davidson, who had negotiated both Playboy playmate Karen McDougal’s deal with the National Enquirer and Stormy Daniels’s NDA with Trump. Davidson called Cohen, and the two of them negotiated a $1.6 million payment to Bechard.”

An open letter about female coaches, from longtime NBA player Pau Gasol.

Who knew stock photos of “scientists” could be so funny?

“The paperwork required by both [Jared] Kushner and [SNAP recipient Matthew] Cortland should have the same goal: protecting the U.S. taxpayers from our own generosity. But that generosity is generally unquestioned for the rich and ground into fumes for the poor.”

Why the ditched-by-Trump Iran nuke deal was an excellent agreement for the US, not a flawed one.

RIP, Margot Kidder, best known for playing Lois Lane in the original Superman movies.

RIP, Chuck Knox, longtime NFL coach.

“Speaking truth to power” is not something that CIA Directors have been known to do.

Oh, just more legal troubles for Donald Trump.