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August 29th, 2018:

Beto and the downballot Dems

Aug 29th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
12 comments

I don’t sweat this too much, but there are a couple of points to address.

Rep. Beto O’Rourke

“If there’s $20 in a room, $10 of it is going to Beto. That’s just happening right now,” said [Joanna] Cattanach, who’s challenging Republican state Rep. Morgan Meyer of Dallas this fall. “The rest of it goes, in order, to the congressional candidates, [state] Senate candidates and then, if you’re lucky, as a state House candidate you can get some of that too.”

With the 2018 midterms less than three months away, Cattanach and other Texas Democrats are facing an issue that’s not uncommon for candidates lower on the ballot: getting noticed when the name at the top of the ballot is getting the most attention.

What stands out this year, many candidates and operatives say, is the level of excitement O’Rourke is generating among the party’s base, a situation that has led to the U.S. Senate race dominating attention this summer — over virtually every other race on the ballot.

Despite the fanfare surrounding O’Rourke’s run, the race remains Cruz’s to lose. Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide in nearly 25 years. Cruz won his Senate seat in 2012 by 16 points. Yet lower on the ballot, Democrats see races where a win is far more likely — if only they can get out of O’Rourke’s shadow.

But, as former Austin-based Democratic consultant Harold Cook points out, the only thing worse than having a popular name at the top of the ticket is not having one.

“If you have one Democrat that’s doing well, that’s going to help down-ballot races,” Cook said. “I can tell you that some Democrat in Texas is going to win a House seat who would not have won if Beto were not doing well at the top of the ballot. Beto is going to do whatever he can do to break up a straight-ticket Republican vote, and do a pretty good job increasing turnout.”

[…]

Even some Republicans consultants think down-ballot candidates have reason to worry about the focus on O’Rourke’s campaign against Cruz.

“If I were the Democrats, I’d be putting a lot more energy into competitive state House and state Senate races and stuff down the ballot. They have a real opportunity,” said Brendan Steinhauser, an Austin-based GOP strategist. “But that’s what happens, right? These big races do take up a lot of the time and energy of the volunteers and the money of the donors, and it’s going to be really, really difficult for any Democrat to win statewide — even O’Rourke.”

“So if I was a Democrat, I’d be saying, “I’m a state House candidate. I’ve got a shot to win. This race is competitive and if I just had $50,000 of what O’Rourke got, I can probably win this thing,” he added.

Once again I find myself in agreement with Brandon Steinhauser. We do need to be giving more money to State House candidates. There are some very winnable races that lack sufficient funding. To some degree that’s on the candidates themselves, but for sure there’s a lot less oxygen in the room for them after Beto and the top-tier Congressionals. We are all banking on the assumption that Beto and anger about Trump will help bring out Democratic voters who don’t normally vote in elections like this one, and that will help raise the tide for everyone. But that tide can always be made a little higher in a given locality, and there’s no substitute for ensuring that voters know who you are and what you’re running for.

That said, this is mostly an issue on the margins, and the existence of the enthusiasm for Beto is by far the biggest asset to everyone’s campaign. There’s also time to raise more money to help fund mailers and the like, and as noted in the story a lot of these candidates are getting spillover benefits from Beto. I can tell you that every candidate I’ve interviewed so far has spoken of the positive effects of his campaign. If you want to know what you can do right now to help Democratic candidates win, there are two main answers: Help register voters, and give some of your time, talent, and/or treasure to legislative and county candidates, or your local county coordinated campaign. A little of that will go a long way.

Stanart responds to Garcia

Aug 29th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

From the inbox:

Sen. Sylvia Garcia

Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart issued the following statement in regards to the letter received from Texas State Senator Sylvia Garcia, by way of social media and her attorney, that asserts a County Clerk has the power to order an election:

“I’m flattered that Senator Garcia and her attorney want to bestow upon me the power to order an election; but, frankly everyone from the Secretary of State’s Texas Election Division to the Harris County Attorney’s Office do not believe that I have any such authority.”

“I have been advised by the Secretary of State’s Office and Harris County legal counsel that the responsibility for calling an election to fill a State Senate vacancy lies with other public officials and that this authority has not been granted to a County Clerk under statute or the Texas Constitution.”

“I also understand that in this political season your attorney who sent your demand letter, is engaged to the Harris County Democratic Party Chair, and would like to make some political points by dragging me into this issue. I also understand that the likely reason you want to delay your resignation until after Jan 1, 2019, is to increase your state pension.”

“I won’t get into the legality of your resignation letter, but it seems that rephrasing it to make it clear that you are resigning on a specific date would save everyone a lot of time, money and drama.”

See here for the background. Can’t say this is a surprise, it seemed like a longshot based on an interesting reading of a particular clause in the Constitution. Maybe the argument would work better in a courtroom, but I wouldn’t want to bet my own money on that.

I’ve been reluctant to criticize Sen. Garcia over this because I do think Greg Abbott is being a jackass and the precedent Garcia cites of Leticia Van de Putte’s resignation letter is on point, but we’re past the point of academic debate, and this is not a suitable place for drawing a principled line in the sand. The downside far outweighs any benefit I can think of for winning this contest of wills. Suck it up and submit another letter with the language Greg Abbott is demanding. It’s stupid, but it’s not as stupid as delaying the election. The Chron has more.

Trump administration seeks to dismiss MALDEF lawsuit over Census citizenship question

Aug 29th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

It’s hard to keep all these Census lawsuits straight.

As multiple court fights over the addition of a citizenship question to the once-a-decade census heat up, the Trump administration is working to keep several Texas groups representing Latino and Asian residents on the sidelines.

In a late Friday filing, attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice asked a Maryland-based federal judge to toss a lawsuit filed by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus and the Texas Senate Hispanic Caucus — among other Texas-based organizations — that’s meant to block the controversial question from appearing on the census questionnaire in 2020.

Those groups allege that the addition of the citizenship question is unconstitutional because it will lead to a disproportionate undercount of Latino and Asian residents, non-citizens and their family members. Justice Department lawyers responded by challenging the plaintiffs’ standing to dispute the federal government’s decision to ask about citizenship status, and they argued it was unlikely the plaintiffs would be able to prove that the question would be harmful to them.

“The relief sought in this suit — an order barring the Secretary of Commerce from collecting demographic information through the decennial census — is as extraordinary as it is unprecedented,” the Justice Department attorneys wrote in the filing.

[…]

Throughout the almost 100 pages of legal briefs filed with the court on Friday, attorneys for the Trump administration sought to undermine those undercount concerns, repeatedly describing them as “too attenuated and speculative” to provide those challenging the inclusion of the question with firm legal standing.

A drop in responses and the alleged potential fallout “would be not be fairly traceable to the Secretary’s decision but would be attributable instead to the independent decisions of individuals who disregard their legal duty to respond to the census,” they wrote.

The Trump administration hasn’t had much success in fending of legal challenges to the citizenship question. As of this week, judges have greenlighted five federal lawsuits despite the administration’s objections.

[…]

In its Friday response, the Trump administration put forth several of the same arguments it presented in the Maryland suit [U.S. District Judge George] Hazel already ruled could move forward and even offered a rebuttal to what DOJ lawyers described as the judge’s “misguided” analysis.

See here for more on this lawsuit. In addition to the one in Maryland noted in the story, the lawsuit in New York was allowed to proceed as well. Given that the plaintiffs have discretion over where they file, you’d think that would bode well for this one as well.