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November, 2019:

The quiet runoff

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

Mayor Sylvester Turner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chron overview of the At Large #1 runoff

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

Raj Salhotra

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second mobile voting locations lawsuit filed

Same claims, different plaintiffs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

Texas GOP accidentally releases its 2020 strategy

Oops.

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One more thing:

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

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

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

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

Trib overview of CD28

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

Rep. Henry Cuellar

Not many people understand South Texas.

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

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

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

Jessica Cisneros

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

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

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

Cuellar declined to comment for this story.

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

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

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

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

Runoff endorsement watch: Revisiting races

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

Brad Jordan

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

Letitia Plummer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kathy Blueford Daniels

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day One Runoff 2019 EV totals: Wait, there was early voting?

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

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

Thanksgiving video break: I haven’t done one of these in awhile

So let’s redo one of my greater hits:

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

The aoudad story

Did you know before reading this post what an aoudad is, other than a potentially useful word to know the next time you play Scrabble? I admit that I had never heard of them, but the state is Texas has loads of them.

Froylan Hernandez has spent the better part of the last two months counting sheep from a helicopter. That’s not a metaphor or a kind of experimental sleep study; it’s his job.

“Oh, that’s a pretty good-sized group,” Hernandez says, looking down from the helicopter.

Hernandez is the desert bighorn sheep program leader for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. He rides in the helicopter each summer for a bighorn census. It’s the most effective method out in the West Texas mountains. But even though he’s looking for bighorns, he mostly finds another kind of sheep.

“Alright, so 32 aoudads? Yeah, 32 aoudads, copy,” Hernandez says.

Aoudads – also known as Barbary sheep – are all over West Texas, but they’re originally from North Africa. They have a long set of horns that curl back into a crescent shape, and a distinctive strip of long, shaggy hair on their neck and chest. They were brought to Texas in the 1950s as exotic game. Since then, wild populations have flourished in the dry, rocky terrain. In fact, from Hernandez’s point of view, they’ve been too successful.

“It’s not uncommon for us, when we’re flying, to see groups of two and three hundred,” he says.

Hernandez’s job is to support Texas’ population of desert bighorn sheep, not aoudads. Desert bighorns are native to Texas, but died out here in the 1960s due to overhunting and disease spread from domestic sheep. The state has worked to bring them back for the better part of three decades now, nurturing small populations in various mountain ranges. Now, there are about 1,500 desert bighorns in Texas, and Hernandez is working to increase their numbers even more. And that’s where the problem with aoudads comes in.

“They can pose a great threat to bighorns, not just [from] a competition-for-resource standpoint but also from a disease-threat standpoint,” he says.

Aoudads and desert bighorns compete for the same resources. And since there are already so many aoudads, they’re a speed bump on the desert bighorns’ road to population growth. Plus, Hernandez says that several West Texas aoudads tested positive last fall for a species of bacteria that’s caused fatal respiratory disease in desert bighorn populations elsewhere.

“And it’s not uncommon to have localized population extinctions because of this Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae,” he says.

So, while Hernandez is hovering over West Texas counting desert bighorns, he’s also keeping an eye out for aoudads, and shooting them whenever possible. Wherever he does an aerial survey, he asks the landowner’s permission to cull aoudads.

“And we try to do a total removal of any aoudad that we encounter,” Hernandez says.

Turns out that hunting aoudads is a nice piece of business for ranchers in Texas, in part because there are no limits on how many one can shoot due to their non-native invasive species designation. Do an image search for aoudad, and you’ll find a lot of places where you can get your hunt on for them. They’re going to be around, making life a little harder for the native desert bighorns, for a long time. And now we both know about the aoudads.

Beep baseball

Here’s a cool thing you might not know about.

Beep Baseball isn’t the only sport for the blind, and most players are multi-sport athletes. A sport called Goalball – think, if you can, of a cross between bowling and soccer – came across as the most popular among Beep players. But there’s something about Beep that is different from the other sports for the blind.

Every sport has a behind the scenes debate over how much injury or safety risk is tolerable on the field. In sighted sports, the default is that players should be given freedom to play — sports are inherently an injury risk. A safety measure – such as a requirement for a helmet or the implantation of a rule to protect athletes — should be imposed only when the danger of injury is too great.

In baseball, for example, rules for sliding into home and second base were only imposed in recent years after lack of regulation resulted in serious injury. For better or worse, the default stance was to let the players play until that proves untenable.

Sports for the blind have long approached that debate from the assumption that safety – rather than competition, fun or challenging oneself – should be the guiding principle. One such sport, however, is unique.

The story of Beep Baseball – perhaps unsurprisingly given its name – begins with the invention of the ball. In 1964 Charlie Fairbanks, an engineer for the Mountain Bell Telephone Company, heard that the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind was in need of a ball that would work for their students to play sports. They had a football with bells attached to it, but once the ball stopped moving, it became impossible to locate. It didn’t make for a particularly fun game.

After experimenting with various balls, Fairbanks decided softballs would be the best carrier for his beeping device – a combination of spare telephone parts he had lying around his home workshop. He would deconstruct softballs, insert his jury-rigged beeper and hand them off to his wife, Vi, to stitch back up.

The first version of Beep Baseball popped up a few years later. In 1971, Ralph Rock of the San Francisco Telephone Pioneers created a new game using Fairbanks’ beeping ball. However, safety was at the center of the game in a way that sapped the fun from it. Like your local swimming pool, running was illegal: Batters had to walk to the base. If you ran, you were out. Likewise, fielders had to walk in pursuit of the ball. A fielder caught running would result in the batting team getting an automatic run. In short, trying hard was against the rules.

Obviously, Rock’s goal wasn’t to create a sport – what kind of game outlaws running! – and he said as much. “We’re not trying to create a new sport,” he told the Associated Press in 1973. “This is therapy. We’re trying to break through the frustrations and give the kids a sense of accomplishment.”

Unsurprisingly, the game never really caught on.

What’s the point of sports? Sure, they provide entertainment for spectators and fans, but that’s more a happy accident than the actual point. Sports are about the people who play them. They’re about athletes accepting a challenge, dedicating an almost-troubling amount of time and energy to it, taking risks along the way and, after all that, achieving something that no one thought possible.

It didn’t take long for players to create a more enjoyable game. John Ross was frustrated by the lack of challenge available in this version of Beep Baseball. A publisher of a Braille sports newspaper called Feeling Sports, Ross was given a version of Fairbanks’ ball and began to develop a new game, one that removed many of Rock’s kid gloves. The “Minnesota Rules” Ross came up with sport a very similar look to the current game.

Most importantly, the game was fun. Sure, fielders would occasionally bust their knees diving for balls or get shaken up colliding with each other in the field, but the players liked it.

There’s more, with pictures and some video, so go check it out. The Effectively Wild baseball podcast did a short interview with a Beep Baseball player in 2017, if you want to know more. I don’t have a point to make here, I just think this is cool, and wanted to share the story. Enjoy!

Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #5

Our last At Large race, and another one with many candidates. There wasn’t a clear division among the nine contestants here, so I’m presenting them all.


Dist Batteau  Garcia Flowers    Dick  Rivera  Bonton  Alcorn   Woods McNeese
============================================================================
A        654     955   1,232   4,224   1,676     952   2,526     835   1,333
B      1,421     826   1,905   1,206   1,567   2,973   1,068   1,328   1,674
C      1,459   1,502   2,782   7,167   2,769   1,377  14,491   1,852   2,147
D      3,661   1,076   3,588   1,910   1,901   2,385   2,528   1,733   2,130
E      1,275   1,271   1,498   7,117   2,865   1,311   3,966   1,233   1,774
F        553     599     865   1,997   1,165     848   1,172     646     809
G      1,107     939   1,693   7,974   1,821   1,199   9,274   1,237   2,754
H        577   1,718   1,449   1,635   2,459     843   2,574     789     703
I        654   1,661   1,173   1,251   2,277     639   1,369     573     570
J        371     447     585   1,415     865     474   1,034     434     468
K      1,440     910   2,056   2,523   1,729   1,755   3,012   1,250   1,611
									
A      4.55%   6.64%   8.56%  29.36%  11.65%   6.62%  17.56%   5.80%   9.27%
B     10.17%   5.91%  13.64%   8.63%  11.22%  21.28%   7.65%   9.51%  11.98%
C      4.10%   4.23%   7.83%  20.16%   7.79%   3.87%  40.77%   5.21%   6.04%
D     17.51%   5.15%  17.16%   9.13%   9.09%  11.40%  12.09%   8.29%  10.19%
E      5.71%   5.70%   6.71%  31.90%  12.84%   5.88%  17.78%   5.53%   7.95%
F      6.39%   6.92%  10.00%  23.08%  13.46%   9.80%  13.54%   7.46%   9.35%
G      3.95%   3.35%   6.05%  28.48%   6.50%   4.28%  33.12%   4.42%   9.84%
H      4.53%  13.48%  11.37%  12.83%  19.29%   6.61%  20.19%   6.19%   5.52%
I      6.43%  16.34%  11.54%  12.30%  22.40%   6.29%  13.47%   5.64%   5.61%
J      6.09%   7.34%   9.60%  23.22%  14.20%   7.78%  16.97%   7.12%   7.68%
K      8.84%   5.59%  12.62%  15.49%  10.62%  10.78%  18.49%   7.68%   9.89%

Here again in our hypothetical ranked-choice election world – which by the way would take a change to state law, so if this is something you really want to see happen, I suggest you contact your State Rep and State Senator – of the nine candidates present I’d list no more than two. Of the remaining seven, I only have the barest idea about the two perennials, one of whom is now in the runoff. Having a lot of candidates run is not at all the same as having many good choices.

Sallie Alcorn led in Districts C (by a large margin), G, and H. Her strength in those districts gives her a clear path to victory if she can consolidate the Democratic vote. Like the other Dems in the runoff she has collected the establishment endorsements, and she is running against an actual Republican elected official. Some Dem activists are not on board, however, in part because she has collected some endorsements from conservative groups like the Houston Realty Business Coalition, and in part because of some hard feelings from the GLBT Political Caucus endorsing her over Ashton Woods. I have no idea how much to make of that.

You don’t need me to tell you about Eric Dick, but I will anyway. This is his fourth run for city office – he ran for At Large #2 in 2011, for Mayor in 2013, for At Large #2 again in 2015, and now this. He was elected to the HCDE in Precinct 4 in 2016, and has been adjacent to some scandals. He littered the town with his yard signs in 2011, hilariously and dishonestly claiming that all the ones that had been illegally placed on utility poles were the work of overzealous volunteers, and made crude sexual jokes about Mayor Annise Parker. After his initial campaign, ads for his law firm became a fixture on the back page of the Houston Press (RIP), and just the other day I saw a brief ad for his firm – not his campaign, because he’d have to report those expenditures – on TV. In other words, whether you ever wanted to or not, you have probably heard of Eric Dick. He led the way in Districts A, E, F, and J, and I have no doubt that helped him. His name and the fact that despite being an actual elected Republican official he’s not closely identified with the Republican Party are his two best assets in the runoff.

Beyond that, what is there to say? Michele Bonton carried District B, perennial candidate Brad Batteau carried D, with Catherine Flowers right behind him, and Sonia Rivera carried I. None of them raised any money, and one presumes their voters are gettable. Alcorn has funding and endorsements, including the Chron – my interview with her is here in case you want to give it a spin – and Dick has himself. We’ll see what happens.

People liked the voting centers

They’re great, so of course they do.

Diane Trautman

Half of Harris County voters who turned out Nov. 5 cast ballots outside of their home polling places, taking advantage of a new program that lets citizens vote at any Election Day polling place rather than only their assigned precincts.

The move to “voting centers” was a key plank in Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman’s campaign for the office last year, and this month’s election was the first time it was used on a wide scale.

Nearly 17 percent of the county’s 2.3 million registered voters cast ballots earlier this month, far more than the 4 percent turnout last May in a trial run of the voting-center approach, which Trautman’s office calls “Vote Your Way.”

Prior to last May, Harris County residents could cast ballots at any one of dozens of locations during early voting but were required to visit polls in their home precincts on Election Day.

Trautman said the benefits of the change are clear. In November 2018, she said, 2,500 voters showed up at polling places other than their assigned precincts on Election Day and had to cast provisional ballots that likely were not counted.

“This year there was no wrong location,” said Trautman, a Democrat. “One voter replied to us (on social media) and said, ‘I was just out jogging by West Gray and decided to go vote.’ It’s where your day takes you is where you can wind up voting. You see the signs out and you just go in and vote.”

[…]

A Houston Chronicle analysis of voting data shows that 52 percent of Election Day voters cast ballots at a location other than the polling place associated with their home precincts. Setting aside votes from the 265 precincts that had no home polling site cuts that figure to 46 percent.

Among the 747 polling places on Nov. 5 were roughly 50 early-voting locations that Trautman left open on Election Day, assuming voters would prefer familiar sites.

That hunch was right: Of the busiest 35 polling places on Election Day, 28 were early-voting locations. The busiest polling place — the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center in Montrose, which recorded 1,625 votes on Election Day — typically is the busiest location during early voting.

The trend did produce some counterintuitive results: Though voters could cast ballots anywhere, citizens’ preferences for familiarity left some needlessly waiting in line.

Of the 1,800 votes cast after the polls closed at 7 p.m. — the ballots count as long as voters stay in line — 63 percent were cast at early-voting sites, led by West Gray, Trini Mendenhall Community Center in Spring Branch, and Sunnyside Multi-Service Center.

You can see that analysis here. The experience of people preferring some locations even if they have to wait is one that other counties with voting locations share, and as Bob Stein notes later on, they’re fine with it because they’re voting where they want to. That makes sense, because the voting location most convenient to you may be the one near where you work, or on your way home from work, or some other place that is not in your precinct (never mind that not all precinct locations are available in many elections). I can’t emphasize enough how great it is to not have people miss out on having their votes count because they went to the wrong precinct location. It’s weird that we even have to talk about this, because in a world built for convenience and ease of use, we are totally unaccustomed to the idea that voting should be easy and convenient. Well, now it is in Harris County. That’s pretty damn awesome.

Chron overview of the District D runoff

The story headline about it as a “friendly runoff” between two very different candidates is a good summary.

Carolyn Evans-Shabazz

Standing beneath a papier-mâché toucan earlier this month, Carolyn Evans-Shabazz told a handful of potential voters about her aspirations to be a bus

Both she and her Houston City Council District D opponent, Brad “Scarface” Jordan, want to be vessels for change, but understand that doing so requires getting as many perspectives as possible — hence, Evans-Shabazz’s talk of being a bus.

“A vehicle has more than one passenger,” Evans-Shabazz said. “And I wanna be a bus. I. Want. To. Be. A. Bus.”

Just outside the wood-paneled room, hip-hop icon Jordan sipped soda and munched on finger foods. He had not expected to be there, and was still “stunned” to have made the runoff days earlier.

His stump speech, delivered a few minutes later, reflected that shock. “These are good cookies,” he said before telling the group of mostly senior citizens about the 30 million-plus records he has sold and his desire to better his childhood neighborhood.

“I want to give back to a city that has given so much to me and allowed me to do what I do,” he continued.

[…]

Brad Jordan

Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said he believes Evans-Shabazz is the front-runner in the race. She has been a longtime trustee for Houston Community College, he said, and as an African-American woman in her 50s, is reflective of many District D voters.

Jones has not entirely ruled out Jordan, who unexpectedly made it to the runoff after getting the second-highest number of votes of the 16-candidate field Nov. 5.

Jordan’s name recognition may not help as much in a head-to-head race, Jones said. With his stature in the international Hip Hop community, however, his election to council would be “national news” and could change the district long-term.

“District D has always been one of those that’s last at the table in terms of getting resources,” Jones said. “One advantage that Jordan has is his unique perspective… He can make the claim that he can not only work better with marginalized groups because he’s walked in their shoes, but also that, because of his celebrity status, he might be able to get more things for the district.”

You can listen to my interview with Carolyn Evans-Shabazz here, and my interview with Brad Jordan here. I included Mark Jones’ commentary because I basically agree with it. I said myself in a recent Chron profile of Brad Jordan that the bulk of his name ID is likely to be with people who are younger than the typical voter. He did do better than expected – better than he expected, anyway – in Round One, so who knows. The voters have two good choices here.

Texas blog roundup for the week of November 25

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes everyone a very happy Thanksgiving as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

Interview with Brad Jordan

Brad Jordan

Lots of people who run for Houston City Council are first-time candidates. Along with the State House, it’s a great entry point to elected office. And lots of first time candidates have profiles and backgrounds that are outside the traditional law/government/business milieu. Brad Jordan, also in the runoff for District D, checks both of those boxes. You’ve probably heard of him as a founding member of the Houston hip hop group the Geto Boys, though as a recent Chron story on him noted, he’s got more going on than that. A native Houstonian, Jordan is a member of The National Forum for Black Public Administrators and serves as co-founder and chairman of The Positive Purpose Movement. Here’s what we talked about:

You can still refer to the Erik Manning spreadsheet for your race and candidate information. The July finance reports that include District D are here, and the 30 day finance reports are here.

Chron overview of the District A runoff

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet.

Amy Peck

Two candidates with different approaches to politics but agreement on some key issues are facing off for the District A seat on City Council.

Amy Peck, a Houston native and seasoned staffer for term-limited District A Councilwoman Brenda Stardig, says she can best represent the constituents of the city’s northwestern district because she has spent years listening to their concerns and working for them.

George Harry Zoes, owner of Spring Branch wig shop Ruby’s Wig Salon, prides himself on not being a politician, saying his business experience has prepared him to best serve the interests of the community in which he was born and raised.

Peck, who is making her third run for the District A seat, finished well ahead of the six-candidate field on Nov. 5, but she heads to the runoff with second-place Zoes.

“With over a decade of experience in resolving constituent issues, I know what it takes to find solutions, navigate complicated governmental agencies, and get results,” Peck said. “I have worked very closely with the residents of District A for many years, and I have the hands-on experience to help our community.”

[…]

Zoes did not respond to requests for an interview.

Yeah. You know what, if you cannot be bothered or are too disorganized to respond to an interview from the main media outlet in your town when they want to write a story abut your candidacy for office, you have no fricking business being elected to anything. Peck had over 45% of the vote in Round One, and she’s easily the best qualified candidate. Sometimes it’s just that simple.

Early voting for the 2019 runoffs begins tomorrow

From the inbox:

Early Voting for the December 14 Joint Runoff Election begins Wednesday, November 27, halts for Thanksgiving break, and resumes December 2-10. The polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., except Sunday, December 8, when they will open from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. On Election Day, December 14, the polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The deadline to apply for a ballot by mail (received, not postmarked) is Dec. 3.

Harris County will open 33 polling locations during early voting, and 385 on Election Day. Registered voters can vote in the runoff election even if they did not vote in November. A total of 389,494 people voted in the November 5th election out of the more than 2.3 million registered voters in Harris County.

“We remind voters that they do not have to go to an assigned polling location in this election,” said Harris County Clerk Dr. Diane Trautman. “With countywide polling, they can cast their ballots at any voting center near their home, work, school, or wherever they may be during Early Voting and on Election Day.”

On the ballot are races for Houston Mayor, city council members, Houston Independent School District and Houston Community College board members, and City of Bellaire council members. The State of Texas has set January 28, 2020 as the runoff date for the House District 148 Special Election. Early voting for that election is January 20-24, 2020.

“We truly hope that all registered voters exercise their right to vote,” added Dr. Trautman. “Every voice matters, please be proactive and remember you can now vote YOUR way.”

Harris County voters can find individual sample ballots, polling locations, and utilize the new wait time feature at www.HarrisVotes.com. Mobile phone users can text VOTE to 1-833-937-0700 to find the nearest voting center.

District B will also not be on the ballot. You can find the map of early voting locations here – remember that this is City of Houston, HISD, HCC, and City of Bellaire only, so that’s why the farther-out locations are not open. The interactive map is here. Info for Fort Bend folks is here. Remember that the next EV day is Monday, December 2, and after that it’s a normal schedule. Happy voting!

Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #4

We move now to the first of two open seat At Large races, where the candidates were many and the clarity was lacking. Here’s an abridged look at At Large #4:


Dist  Ericka Hillyer Baldwin   Dolce  Javier Plummer
====================================================
A      1,584   1,454   1,475   3,951   1,335   1,400
B      2,994     272   1,022     829   1,124   4,428
C      2,759   8,458   5,248   7,150   1,768   3,517
D      3,250   1,142   1,634   1,663   1,328   8,015
E      2,108   2,666   2,539   7,956   1,443   1,408
F      1,142     711     820   1,804     907   1,217
G      2,525   4,902   3,190   9,212   1,023   1,932
H      1,231   1,329   1,703   1,845   2,601   1,542
I        868     858     784   1,571   2,593   1,411
J        683     566     594   1,319     720     911
K      2,135   1,722   1,297   2,470   1,169   4,470
					
A     11.00%  10.10%  10.24%  27.44%   9.27%   9.72%
B     20.74%   1.88%   7.08%   5.74%   7.79%  30.67%
C      7.87%  24.12%  14.96%  20.39%   5.04%  10.03%
D     15.22%   5.35%   7.65%   7.79%   6.22%  37.55%
E      9.31%  11.78%  11.22%  35.15%   6.38%   6.22%
F     13.11%   8.16%   9.42%  20.72%  10.42%  13.98%
G      9.15%  17.76%  11.56%  33.37%   3.71%   7.00%
H      9.48%  10.23%  13.11%  14.20%  20.02%  11.87%
I      8.53%   8.43%   7.71%  15.44%  25.49%  13.87%
J     11.08%   9.18%   9.64%  21.39%  11.68%  14.78%
K     12.87%  10.38%   7.82%  14.89%   7.05%  26.95%

There were eleven candidates in the open seat At Large #4 race. Amanda Edwards’ decision to run for the US Senate changed this from a race between an incumbent and two or three challengers you’ve never heard of to a wide open race of 11 contenders you’ve mostly not heard of. Seriously, how many of the six names here do you recognize? How many of the five names I didn’t list can you think of? Most of these candidates raised little to no money and had campaign presences to match. How are people to decide for whom to vote?

Well, one way is by picking a name they recognize. In this race, that name was Anthony Dolcefino. How many votes do you think a first-time candidate who had raised about $12K as of the thirty-day report and whose name was Anthony Smith would have received? He did well in the Republican districts and he’s got Republican endorsements plus the firefighters. Basically, he’s Tony Buzbee at this point, minus ten million dollars.

Along those same lines, Letitia Plummer did well in the African-American districts, and has the Democrats behind her bid. She’ll be riding on Sylvester Turner’s coattails, and the better he does the better off she’ll be. This race is the closest proxy to the Mayor’s race, and the main challenge Plummer will face is ensuring that Turner voters go down the ballot. She can’t afford a 22% undervote rate in the runoff.

I don’t know how many more times we will have to learn the lesson that while there is room in a citywide race for a Nick Hellyar OR a Bill Baldwin to be viable, there is not room in citywide elections for a Nick Hellyar AND a Bill Baldwin to be viable. Hellyar was in the race first, having moved over from District C (along with Dolcefino) following Edwards’ announcement, while Baldwin entered later and raised more money in a short period of time than any of the other candidates. It wasn’t enough to matter.

There’s been some discussion in the comments of previous posts about ranked-choice elections and how they might work in municipal races. I’d like to point out that there would be 39,916,800 possible rankings of these candidates (that’s eleven factorial, for my fellow math nerds), which, you know, is a lot. I might consider ranked-choice voting as an option if it were done like Cy Young voting in MLB, where you pick your top five only. Honestly, even that may be too much – in this race, I can think of at most four candidates that would have been worth a spot on such a ballot of mine. Ranked-choice voting would enable us to get a winner on Election Day. It’s not at all clear to me we’d get results that are more representative or less goofy than what we get now.

Chron overview of the District H runoff

This one’s in my back yard.

CM Karla Cisneros

Strolling through Independence Heights one recent cloudy afternoon, Councilwoman Karla Cisneros encountered reminders of the issues facing her district: a stray dog roaming from home to home, illegally dumped trash blocking a drainage ditch, a constituent still patching up damage from Tropical Storm Imelda.

Flooding and the stray animal population are among several issues Cisneros wants to continue tackling on city council if voters award her another term. Standing in her way is Isabel Longoria, a 31-year-old former legislative aide and city planning commissioner who has mounted a spirited campaign against the first-term incumbent.

In the first round, Cisneros secured 38 percent of the vote — enough to lead the four-candidate field, but short of the majority needed for an outright win. Longoria finished second, with 27 percent, and faces Cisneros in a December runoff.

While in office, Cisneros, who chairs city council’s economic development subcommittee on education, has focused much of her attention on education and workforce development.

“We need to be growing our own, because we have a huge population of young people who could be doing these jobs,” Cisneros said on the recent block walking session. “And if we don’t, then they’re not going to be contributing. They’re going to be a burden. And there’s no reason that they shouldn’t be what our city is built on.”

Longoria, meanwhile, has cast herself as the more progressive candidate and claims to be more in touch with district activists. She does not hide her wonkish approach to politics, running in the vein of presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren as the one with the plans to turn her ideas into policy.

At the core of Longoria’s pitch for change is her argument that Cisneros has not been adequately proactive about key issues in District H, an L-shaped area that takes in Independence Heights, Near Northside, East End and Woodland Heights. Longoria contends that Cisneros, a former school teacher and HISD board trustee, has focused her attention too squarely on education and workforce development to the detriment of other topics.

“I’m not one who backs down from confrontation,” Longoria said. “I think confrontation is a warrior fighting for their community. And I don’t think Karla has that same warrior spirit. I think she’s a teacher, and that’s great. But we can’t teach our way out of this problem.”

Cisneros, 65, sees things differently, arguing that she deserves another term based on her record over four years.

Here’s the thing: They’re both good. There are current members of Council that I will be happy to see the end of, but CM Cisneros is not on that list. You can read the story for the arguments for and against her, but she’s a perfectly decent Council member. Longoria is a wonk after my own heart, and there’s no question in my mind she’ll be terrific. I said in an earlier post that I hadn’t noticed a lot of Cisneros yard signs in the blocks around where I live – my dog likes going on long walks, so I see all the houses sooner or later – but that is no longer the case. She’s winning the yard sign race at this point. Looking at the official canvass, Cisneros got 52% in Precinct 0003, and 46% in Precinct 0004. In 2015 she got 53% in 0003, and 62% in 0004, so about the same in one part of the neighborhood and some slippage in the other. I don’t know what if anything that may mean for this year, but there you have it.

Another District B update

This whole situation is so unfortunate, and more than a little infuriating.

Cynthia Bailey

The two candidates who qualified for a stalled runoff in Houston City Council’s District B joined hands in unity on the steps of City Hall Friday, condemning the lawsuit filed by the third-place finisher that led officials to remove the race from the Dec. 14 ballot.

“We want to vote! We want to vote!” Tarsha Jackson and Cynthia Bailey chanted with about 40 others from the Texas Organizing Project, which has endorsed Jackson in the race and advocated for Bailey to remain on the ballot.

The candidates at the center of the contested election have taken the dispute from the courtroom to the community as they wait for legal proceedings to resume.

“I’m not going to throw a rock and hide,” Renee Jefferson-Smith, who narrowly missed the runoff and filed the lawsuit, said Thursday night at a meeting of the Acres Homes Super Neighborhood Council.

“It makes no sense to have a candidate on the ballot (if) her votes do not count,” Jefferson-Smith said. “If (Bailey) were to win in the runoff, she would not be able to take the seat. That’s what the law says. I didn’t write it, but that’s unfair.”

[…]

Jefferson-Smith initially asked a state district court judge to declare Bailey ineligible. When Judge Dedra Davis denied that request last Friday, Jefferson-Smith’s attorney filed three additional motions: an appeal of the ruling, a “mandamus” appeal seeking to replace Bailey with Jefferson-Smith on the runoff ballot, and a separate lawsuit contesting the election results.

The First Court of Appeals denied the mandamus appeal early Friday, but the ruling did not affect Jefferson-Smith’s motion contesting the election. That lawsuit triggered a portion of state law that county officials said forced them to put off the race until the suit is resolved.

Bailey’s attorney hailed the denial of the appeal as a second court victory in the saga, while Jefferson-Smith’s lawyers said it was expected after the county postponed the runoff.

See here, here, and here for the background. I have no idea what the courts will do, and I have no idea how long it may take them to do it. If we’re very lucky, we may get this race on the ballot in January, at the same time as the HD148 runoff. If not, well, who knows how long this may take.

Jefferson-Smith has said she didn’t pursue the lawsuits out of any animus toward Bailey, but the law wouldn’t allow her to take the seat, which she thinks is a disservice to voters. Her lawyers have cited a case in Galveston from 2006, in which a candidate was elected to city council despite a well-known felony conviction and then was removed from office.

“It makes no sense to have a candidate on the ballot (if) her votes do not count,” Jefferson-Smith said at a neighborhood meeting earlier this week. “If (Bailey) were to win in the runoff, she would not be able to take the seat. That’s what the law says. I didn’t write it, but that’s unfair.”

[…]

[State Rep. Jarvis] Johnson, a former District B councilman himself, said he would file a bill in the next legislative session to clarify the state law at the center of the litigation.

“The fact is if you have the right to vote, then that means you should have the right to run for office,” Johnson said.

The simplest scenario is we get the runoff, maybe on January 28 and maybe later, we get a winner and that person takes office and we’re done. We could get a runoff at some point, and after a Bailey victory another lawsuit is filed that removes her from office, in which case a whole new election has to be held. We could get what amounts to a do-over in B, in which Bailey is declared ineligible to be on the ballot but the judge refuses to declare that this means Jefferson-Smith gets to replace her so we start over. I have a hard time imagining a judge booting Bailey and putting Jefferson-Smith on the ballot in her place, but this whole thing is so crazy I hesitate to insist that anything is impossible. I applaud Rep. Johnson for pursuing a legislative fix for this mess, but since we all know the right answer is to allow full rights to felons who complete their sentences and we also know that Republicans will not support that bill, I don’t expect anything to get fixed. I don’t know what else to say.

Weekend link dump for November 24

Say what you want about Bill Belichick, but NFL coaches go for it more on fourth down now thanks to a famous failed fourth-down conversion attempt by the Patriots ten years ago.

“The television show The Golden Girls was originally a joke. NBC prepared a parody of Miami Vice, Miami Nice, featuring old people sitting around playing cards. NBC’s senior vice president thought it sounded like an excellent idea, so he asked for it to be made into a show.”

“Mixhalo changes the fan’s experience at live events, allowing them to hear the show as the band (or sound engineer) intended. It no longer matters whether Madison Square Garden has poor acoustics or if you’re sitting too far away from the PA system—with Mixhalo, every seat in every venue can hear perfectly. Thanks to Incubus.”

RIP, Vera Clemente, widow of Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente and MLB Goodwill Ambassador.

“As you can hopefully see, the White House did not release the aid until after it became publicly known that there was a hold. They didn’t release it until after congressional committees announced an investigation into a potential quid pro quo. The State Department portion was actually released by John Bolton on his own authority, and the Pentagon portion wasn’t released until after Bolton was gone.”

“Chick-fil-A has pledged to finally stop funding anti-LGBTQ organizations after years of protests against the brand.” Yeah, we’ll see about that.

“I do wonder why it was necessary to smear my reputation.”

RIP, Azellia White, trailblazing aviator and one of the first African American women to earn a pilot’s license in the United States.

Oh, Prince Andrew. At least we’ll always have Pizza Express.

“So Juul used research specifically designed to make smoking palatable to teenagers, and then produced a product with lots of fruity flavors. And during their first year of operation, they explicitly marketed their product to teenagers.”

“It is truly impressive that Hollywood continues to try to convince us that there is an actual Cats movie and that it is coming out this year and that it will be in cinemas, going so far as to produce two different trailers to further the deception. You have to admire the commitment to a scam. Illuminati MC Skat Cat did what he had to do.”

Everything you ever wanted to know about Fartgate but were afraid to ask.

“Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me.”

“Giuliani really has a talent for putting defense arguments as unconvincingly, unappealingly, and suspiciously as possible.”

“Thus, by moving directly to impeachment, the House gets its best chance of winning the testimony of Bolton, Mulvaney, and others, and doing so in a timely fashion. The House likely won’t be able to depose witnesses or examine all the documents in advance, but that’s a small price to pay for obtaining the evidence at the trial.”

RIP, Gahan Wilson, legendary outlandish cartoonist.

Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #3

Another At Large race, another incumbent in a runoff. Here’s At Large #3:


Dist  JCGonz  Kubosh  Marcel Janaeya
====================================
A      2,944   7,730   1,698   2,395
B      2,405   5,417   2,293   4,802
C      5,452  17,022   3,402   9,584
D      3,554   8,903   3,052   6,250
E      3,840  14,064   2,335   2,889
F      2,195   3,618   1,404   1,676
G      3,646  18,141   2,756   3,630
H      4,452   4,664   1,168   2,820
I      4,283   3,336     984   1,867
J      1,543   2,777     826   1,170
K      3,092   6,989   2,287   4,567
				
A     19.94%  52.35%  11.50%  16.22%
B     16.12%  36.31%  15.37%  32.19%
C     15.38%  48.00%   9.59%  27.03%
D     16.33%  40.92%  14.03%  28.72%
E     16.60%  60.81%  10.10%  12.49%
F     24.68%  40.68%  15.79%  18.85%
G     12.94%  64.39%   9.78%  12.88%
H     33.97%  35.59%   8.91%  21.52%
I     40.91%  31.86%   9.40%  17.83%
J     24.43%  43.97%  13.08%  18.52%
K     18.26%  41.27%  13.50%  26.97%

Here’s what the 2015 data looked like. Incumbent Michael Kubosh cruised to an easy win against three white male candidates, with over 60% of the vote. This year he fell short of an outright win; he was over fifty percent after early voting, but could not keep up that pace. This time he had three non-Anglo opponents, and you can see that it had an effect on his numbers. He’s still a strong performer and a heavy favorite to prevail in December, but he did decline from four years ago.

Janaeya Carmouche gets the chance to try again against Kubosh. She’ll benefit from the turnout that Mayor Turner will generate, and she’s the Democrat in this race, but she has no money, she has a 50K vote deficit to make up, and she trailed Kubosh in the three African-American districts. It’s going to take a lot for her to win.

I don’t know what to say about Marcel McClinton. He got a lot of hype for his candidacy – I was called by two different out of town reporters who were supposedly writing about him; I say “supposedly” because I never saw either of the stories that I was talking to them about – but it translated to nothing. He raised little money, he got no major endorsements, and whatever campaign he did have was invisible to me. Being a candidate is hard, especially citywide, and he’s just out of high school, so I don’t intend to be harsh. I’m just kind of puzzled.

Jose Carlos Gonzalez finished two points behind Janaeya Carmouche. I know even less about him. He got the numbers he got. I don’t have anything to add to that.

Chron overview of the At Large #4 runoff

It was a weird election, but there’s a clear distinction between the candidates in the At Large #4 runoff.

Letitia Plummer

The race to succeed City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards pits youth and name recognition against real world experience and a business mindset.

Anthony Dolcefino, a university student and son of former investigative television reporter Wayne Dolcefino, was the leading vote-getter in the Nov. 5 election for the At Large 4 seat vacated by Edwards, who is running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. He faces Letitia Plummer, a politically active dentist who ran for Congress last year, in a Dec. 14 runoff for the seat.

Dolcefino, 22, gleaned 20.9 percent of the vote in the first round, followed by Plummer, 49, with 15.9 percent.

While city elections are nonpartisan, Dolcefino and Plummer’s respective coalitions in the first round generally matched the city’s conservative-liberal divide.

Dolcefino did best in city council districts that are home to conservative voices at City Hall. Plummer performed best in areas that are reliably blue.

I’m still working on the At Large #4 precinct data, but this is basically correct, with the caveat that no one got that much in any particular district. The runoff is between two not-well-known candidates, and as such it is wide open. About all that really needs to be said is that in the same article, Dolcefino says he is running on a “vision of fiscal conservatism”, and also the need to give “extreme raises” to the firefighters. He’s going to need to employ some super advanced math to make that work.

MLB investigating more than 2017 for Astros’ alleged sign stealing

This sounds ominous.

Major League Baseball’s investigation into the Astros’ alleged sign-stealing will include the 2018 and 2019 seasons, commissioner Rob Manfred revealed Thursday, adding two more years to an inquiry already involving Houston’s World Series-winning 2017 team.

“We are talking to people all over the industry, former employees, competitors, whatever,” Manfred said at the conclusion of the owners meetings on Thursday. “To the extent that we find other leads, we are going to follow these leads. We will get to the bottom of what we have out there in terms of what went on to the extent that it’s humanly possible.”

[…]

“Every time we’ve gotten a lead, we chased that lead down to the extent we felt was investigatively possible,” Manfred said. “Obviously, an individual breaking what is a pretty firm commitment to silence about what goes on in dugouts and clubhouses is a big break in an investigation and an opportunity to push forward that we hadn’t had previously.”

The expanded investigation into sign-stealing is being combined with MLB’s other probe into the Astros for comments made by former assistant general manager Brandon Taubman and the team’s response.

[…]

Manfred clarified Thursday that the league’s investigation into Taubman and sign-stealing started independently of one another and “ended up as one big thing.”

“It’s hard to separate them out,” Manfred said. “I hope at the end of this undertaking, I’ll put both of these issues to bed at one time.”

See here and here for the background on the sign-stealing, and here for some background on the Taubman investigation. It makes sense to combine the two – if nothing else, I presume MLB has only so many investigators available at any one time – though what effect that may have on its direction or timeline is unknown. Of greater interest is what kind of penalties the Astros may face. Craig Edwards from Fangraphs takes a look. There’s too much to easily summarize (go click over, the first paragraph has links to more reporting on the sign stealing allegations), but the bottom line is that it doesn’t look great for the Astros. If Rob Manfred comes down on them, it’s going to leave a mark. Be prepared. ESPN has more.

Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #2

Welcome to At Large #2, the second of three At Large races in which an incumbent is in the runoff.


Dist  DavidR   Davis   Griff  DeToto   Honey
============================================
A      4,570   3,995   1,643   3,575     809
B      5,779   5,416     958   1,921     391
C     16,691   6,446   3,568   7,649   1,551
D      8,588   7,122   1,634   3,300     621
E      7,221   7,447   2,335   4,077   1,700
F      2,947   2,422     853   2,061     503
G      9,561   9,072   3,057   4,983   1,399
H      4,558   2,048   1,018   4,657     595
I      3,207   1,900     822   3,892     425
J      2,164   1,600     622   1,462     352
K      7,089   4,668   1,381   2,971     617
					
A     31.32%  27.38%  11.26%  24.50%   5.54%
B     39.95%  37.44%   6.62%  13.28%   2.70%
C     46.49%  17.95%   9.94%  21.30%   4.32%
D     40.39%  33.49%   7.68%  15.52%   2.92%
E     31.70%  32.69%  10.25%  17.90%   7.46%
F     33.54%  27.57%   9.71%  23.46%   5.73%
G     34.06%  32.32%  10.89%  17.75%   4.98%
H     35.40%  15.91%   7.91%  36.17%   4.62%
I     31.30%  18.54%   8.02%  37.99%   4.15%
J     34.90%  25.81%  10.03%  23.58%   5.68%
K     42.38%  27.91%   8.26%  17.76%   3.69%

Here’s the 2015 precinct analysis for comparison. Incumbent David Robinson had about a 20K vote and ten percentage point lead over Willie Davis in both years, though his own percentage of the vote increased from 32 to 38. Robinson arguably had a tougher field in 2015, with Eric Dick and Andrew Burks also on the ballot. Dick did better in the Republican districts than Davis did, and Burks did better in Districts B and D, but Davis was still able to come in second. But as in 2015, Robinson was better than Davis nearly everywhere – Davis nipped him only in District E this year – and as such it’s hard to see Davis’ path to victory. Robinson has a big cash advantage, and he’s the Democrat in this race. Mike Knox may lose. David Robinson is highly unlikely to lose.

By the way, despite his lukewarm showing in November of 2015, Robinson scored a solid nine-point win in the runoff. It might be a more interesting race if there were no corresponding Mayoral race, but given that there is I expect Robinson to cruise.

Is this the end of Griff as a factor in these multi-candidate races? He failed to crack ten percent, which is weaker than I’d have expected. He got almost 13 percent in 2015, and actually finished third in the At Large #1 pileup. We were four thousand votes away from a Mike Knox-Griff Griffin runoff. I get a little dizzy every time I think about that.

More to come. Let me know what you think.

Judge officially approves final Harris County bail settlement

It’s officially finally final and official.

A federal judge has signed off on a historic bail reform agreement for Harris County, setting in place new protections for people accused of minor offenses in the country’s third largest criminal justice system.

The sweeping agreement and consent decree, officially approved Thursday by Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal, seeks to level the playing field for the thousands of people arrested each year on misdemeanor charges. For years, judges jailed poor people by default while they awaited trial, while those with money to cover bail could walk free and return to their families and livelihoods.

[…]

Rosenthal wrote that her ruling was rooted in extensive legal findings over the past three years.

“No system can guarantee that all those accused of misdemeanors who are released on personal bonds — rich or poor — will appear for hearings or trial, or that they will commit no crimes on release,” Rosenthal said in a 55-page opinion. “No system can guarantee that all those accused of misdemeanors who are detained pending trial — rich or poor — should have been detained. But Harris County … can stop systematically depriving indigent misdemeanor defendants of their constitutionally-protected rights by detaining them simply because they cannot afford to post money bail.”

Her opinion acknowledged the objections brought up by “amici,” or friends of the court, including the state Attorney General’s Office, District Attorney Kim Ogg and County Commissioner Steve Radack, who voiced concerns at the final hearing that the deal limited judicial discretion and did not do enough to ensure the safety of communities.

“The court does not question the amici and objectors’ good faith,” she wrote. “The public safety and public resource concerns they raise are important.

“The proposed consent decree and settlement agreement are approved because these concerns are fully recognized and addressed,” the opinion said.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo issued a statement following the judge’s decision, saying it “puts to rest the arguments used to instill fear regarding the impact of bail reform.”

“We do not have to choose between protecting the constitutional rights of defendants and protecting public safety,” she said. “In fact, by reforming our broken bail system, we are taking a step toward rebuilding trust between our system of justice and the residents it serves.”

Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis said: “After decades of harmful injustice and three years of a legal battle waged in defense of our core principles of liberty, equal treatment and due process for all — no matter how much money you have or the color of your skin — Harris County’s oppressive and discriminatory misdemeanor cash bail practices are ending.”

You know the story by now. At this point, we need to focus on making this work as it is supposed to, to ensuring that we are making adjustments to the risk assessment tool as needed, and just generally measuring everything so a year from now we can present some metrics to show how it all has gone. There are still political fights to be had – just ask the people running against Vince Ryan and Kim Ogg, for starters, and the Lege still needs to address bail reform in a meaningful way – and there are still legal fights to be had – the second bail lawsuit, which is about felony defendants, and the Dallas County bail lawsuit, among others – but this was a huge step forward. A copy of the consent decree is here, and a copy of the settlement agreement is here. Kudos to everyone who helped make this happen.

Metro moves towards cashless fares (maybe)

We started with this.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority on Thursday will consider the first in a series of agreements to revamp its fare payment system that eventually could offer riders the option of using smartphones, credit cards and electronic wallets to hop aboard its buses and trains.

In a nod to the changing ways consumers use to pay for services, the transit agency is expected to spend nearly $100 million to remake its collection of bus and train fares for the next 15 years. That future could lead to cash being kicked off the bus as transit officials weigh whether to replace aging fareboxes.

Metro is among a handful of large American transit agencies giving some thought to how to reduce the number of riders tossing coins and convert them to tapping a card, which could help speed up bus trips.

“Metro would be in the first wave of agencies making this transition but won’t be doing it alone,” said Ben Fried, communications director for TransitCenter, a New York-based advocacy group.

The first step for Metro is a seven-year $37 million contract with INIT, Innovations in Transportation Inc., for new software and management of its fare collection system, including new validators — the cinder block-sized devices people tap with their Q cards.

Two-thirds of the initial cost, more than $24 million, would go toward equipping buses and installing computer systems in Metro offices to handle fares.

With the new gear will come new options for riders. Currently, riders can use Q cards, cash or Metro’s smartphone app to hop aboard.

The new machines will accept the current Q cards, along with such options as contactless credit cards that allow customers to pay by tapping a card reader and Apple Pay and Google Pay that store credit card info on mobile phones.

“The system will let us use mobile wallets,” said Denise Wendler, chief information officer for Metro. “It transitions very nicely with our old system and new opportunities.”

[…]

Many transit agencies are looking to reduce or avoid cash payments altogether for a variety of reasons, including speeding up transit and eliminating the cost of handling money.

“Boston has made cashless bus fare collection an explicit goal, and the (Metropolitan Transit Authority) in New York has eliminated cash payment on express buses, intimating that regular buses could go cashless in the next few years (the earliest would be 2023),” Fried said.

Paying cash typically takes a few seconds longer than tapping a Q card, with those seconds adding up along a route. The faster people can board, the faster the bus can get moving again — improving the efficiency of trips and getting people to their destinations faster.

Eliminating cash fares also could give transit agencies better use of bus space by allowing passengers to board at the front and rear doors. In Houston, Metro riders can only exit from the back door, but must enter in the front to tap their cards or pay cash.

San Francisco opened its buses and trains to all-door boarding in 2012, and checks fares now with fare inspectors, similar to Metro’s enforcement of light rail payments in Houston. A 2017 study showed San Francisco’s bus speeds increased 2 percent and ridership on buses increased 2 percent.

As the story notes, it would probably not be till 2022 when we see something like this happen. About twenty percent of Metro fares are paid in cash, so ensuring that those riders would not be left behind is a priority. The benefit for Metro is clear – better and more efficient boarding, which means buses can run on a more dependable schedule, which boosts service and ridership overall.

The story then got this reaction from Tory Gattis:


On the surface, this makes a lot of sense. Fare collection revenue is a very small part of Metro’s budget. Free fares would make boarding even more efficient, would certainly ensure that cash-paying riders are taken care of, would increase ridership further, and would free up capital for buying more buses. Seems like a win all around, right?

It appears that argument had an effect.

Metro on Thursday delayed consideration of a $37 million contract for a new fare system so transit officials can ponder how it would affect efforts to eliminate fares altogether for some riders.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority board of directors was scheduled to approve the seven-year agreement, but the item was pulled from the agenda in the morning, Chairwoman Carrin Patman said, “in light of the fact we are also doing a free fare study.”

The transit agency is researching options for eliminating fares, or eliminating them for certain groups of riders, such as schoolchildren and college students.

[…]

Though fares make up a small percentage of Metro’s budget — $67.6 million, or 11.1 percent, of its 2017 operating revenues, according to federal data — eliminating them entirely can be tricky. Transit agencies must follow federal laws, which require fares to be fair and equitable for all users, based on the type of service offered. Removing fees for bus or rail use likely would mean Metro also would have to remove fares on paratransit for disabled and elderly passengers, an increasingly costly part of the agency’s budget.

Eliminating fares also could complicate federal funding for major agency projects if officials in Washington worry that Houston is not bringing in enough money to share the costs of projects.

[…]

Though some transit agencies offer free rides in partnerships with schools or within certain fare-free zones to encourage bus use in urban areas, Chapel Hill, N.C., is the only large transit agency to entirely remove fares in the U.S. That transit system is heavily subsidized by the University of North Carolina, the main campus of which is in Chapel Hill. Several small systems in college towns offer free transit.

Free ride programs have faced ups and downs in other cities, with transit systems similar in size to Houston. Portland, Ore., offered free trips within a special zone for nearly 40 years and saw huge gains in transit ridership as a result. The free zone, however, also led to complaints of increased crime and vagrancy, and it made enforcing fares difficult in a larger region around the zone. Tri-Met, Portland’s transit agency, abolished the fare-free zone in 2012.

Metro Chair Patman said in this story that she had spoken to Gattis, and that the fare box contract would be taken up in December, after a free fare study had been conducted. I think Tory’s argument has merit, but I worry about the politics of it. If public transportation were completely fare-free, a significant portion of the population will come to see it as an entitlement, something that “poor people” get that “the rest of us” pay for with our taxes. Once that happens, there will be political pressure to cut funding for transit, since after all it only “benefits” a small number of people. Republican legislators in Texas are already scheming to siphon off city sales tax revenues. Don’t think for a minute that making Metro rides free wouldn’t increase their incentive to do that. And yes, I am fully aware that this is a factually inaccurate and morally bankrupt way of thinking about transit. But it’s there, and it will be even more there if we eliminate fares. Which is a shame, but this is the world we live in. We’ll see what the result of Metro’s study is.

Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #1

I’m going to take a look at the five At Large Council races as well, since all of them have interesting things to say about what happened. First up is At Large #1, where incumbent Mike Knox will face first time candidate Raj Salhotra in December.


Dist    Knox Provost     Raj     YNF    Bmon
============================================
A      7,587   1,465   2,482   2,730   1,108
B      1,952   5,515   1,856   3,485   2,473
C     14,652   2,129  15,043   4,713   1,547
D      3,148   7,214   3,719   4,185   4,266
E     13,721   1,711   3,257   3,140   1,942
F      3,405   1,116   1,522   2,119   1,004
G     18,030   1,836   5,034   2,845   1,585
H      2,869   1,352   3,578   5,080     847
I      1,982   1,323   2,329   4,381     781
J      2,300     685   1,487   1,393     631
K      4,237   3,285   4,396   2,985   2,798
					
A     49.36%   9.53%  16.15%  17.76%   7.21%
B     12.77%  36.09%  12.15%  22.81%  16.18%
C     38.47%   5.59%  39.50%  12.38%   4.06%
D     13.97%  32.02%  16.51%  18.57%  18.93%
E     57.72%   7.20%  13.70%  13.21%   8.17%
F     37.15%  12.18%  16.60%  23.12%  10.95%
G     61.47%   6.26%  17.16%   9.70%   5.40%
H     20.90%   9.85%  26.07%  37.01%   6.17%
I     18.36%  12.25%  21.57%  40.58%   7.23%
J     35.41%  10.54%  22.89%  21.44%   9.71%
K     23.94%  18.56%  24.83%  16.86%  15.81%

A couple of big-picture items before we get into the district numbers. Knox got 36.51% of the Harris County vote in 2019. He was the only Republican candidate in the race this year. He got 24.75% in 2015, but Griff Griffin was also in that race, and the two of them combined for 37.65% of the vote. The two Republican Mayoral candidates (Buzbee and King) combined for 42.79% of the vote this year. This is all very fuzzy and I wouldn’t put too much stock in it, I’m just trying to get a (very) rough idea of the overall Republican vote in the city.

At Large races are notorious for having a high undervote rate, largely because the candidates are usually not well known to most voters. In this case, At Large #1 had the lowest undervote rate of any of the At Large races, at 17.65%. The others ranged from 21.05% to 23.00%. By contrast, the Mayor’s race had an undervote rate of 1.59%. One possible reason for this is that four of the five At Large #1 contestants had been in at least one race before, and the fifth raised enough money to do some mailers.

Mike Knox showed strength where you’d expect him to, in Districts A, E, and G, and he did pretty well in C, F, and J. If he can repeat that kind of performance in the runoff, he can win. Like Tony Buzbee, he would have preferred for there to be runoffs in E and G as well, but unlike Buzbee he doesn’t have a ton of money to throw around to generate turnout for himself. The risk for him is that Buzbee will go down with a whimper and drag him and the other Republican runoff candidates as well.

Raj Salhotra carried Districts C and K, both by small amounts. He did pretty well for a first time candidate, but he has his work cut out for him. He has about a 29K deficit to overcome, and he has to win a lot of votes in districts like B and D despite having Georgia Provost and Larry Blackmon endorse Knox in the runoff. Honestly, I’d probably put whatever money he has into mailers and robocalls tying Knox to Buzbee and Trump, and hope for the best. Getting those Democrats who have been endorsing Mayor Turner to speak up on his behalf would help, too.

I admit, I expected Georgia Provost to be Salhotra’s main competition for the second runoff slot. She’s run before, she made the runoff in 2015, and she starts with a base of support. But she doesn’t raise money, and while she obviously does well in the African-American districts, she doesn’t do much more than just split that vote with the other African-American candidate on the ballot. In fact, she did better in 2015 with Chris Oliver also in the race than she did this year with Larry Blackmon, who is just a perennial candidate. You could muster up an argument that Blackmon cost her a shot at the runoff, as her total plus his would have outscored Salhotra, but the presence of Oliver in 2015 didn’t hold her back.

I was a little surprised to see Yolanda Navarro Flores do as well as she did. She was last on a ballot in 2013, and had not won races other than for HCC Trustee. She entered late and raised no money, but as you can see she did very well in H and I, she outpaced Provost everywhere except B, D, and K, and outpaced Salhotra everywhere except C, E, G, and K. An earlier entry and some actual fundraising, and she could still be in this race.

I’ll be looking at the rest of the races over the next few days. Let me know what you think.

HERO 2.0

I’ve been waiting for this, though in reading this story I’d argue we should wait just a little bit more.

Houston’s two mayoral candidates say they support expanded anti-discrimination protections for the LGBTQ community, but would leave it to voters to pursue a revived version of the measure that was roundly defeated at the ballot box four years ago.

Outside groups, meanwhile, already are readying for a redux of the high-profile and vitriolic fight over the so-called HERO measure.

Mayor Sylvester Turner supported the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance in 2015 but has not advocated for revisiting it during his first term. On Tuesday, he acknowledged that “community-driven efforts are underway” and that he is working with his LGBTQ advisory board to find “opportunities to do more public education,” though he did not say he would advocate for a ballot measure in 2021.

He previously has said that groups need to focus on outreach and grass-roots campaigning.

“It’s important to educate people, because if you put something up, let’s say right now, and it goes down again, it just sets us back,” Turner said in August. “So, let’s educate, let’s continue to work with the LGBTQ Advisory Committee which I put in place, and let’s work with other organizations, and then we can move forward.”

[…]

Harrison Guy, chair of the mayor’s LGBTQ advisory board, said the 2015 defeat forced advocates to overhaul their approach to organizing, particularly in a city as diverse and geographically spread-out as Houston.

“It was a pretty big mountain to climb when we were honest about why HERO wasn’t a success,” he said Tuesday.

Since then, he said, groups have focused on in-person outreach to “soften hearts,” and readied for a potential, 2021 rematch.

“It’s tedious, slow and strategic, which isn’t sexy,” Guy said.

He said he is fine with Turner taking a backseat on the issue.

“The fight cannot belong to one group or one person,” Guy said. “It can’t belong to the mayor. The coalition needs to be really broad and really big.”

[Former Mayor Annise] Parker agreed with the grass-roots tactic, but warned that “if the mayor doesn’t want it to move, it’s not going to move.”

Tony Buzbee was quoted in the story saying he supported a watered-down HERO that would “[prohibit] discrimination by employers and housing providers, but would oppose expanding the measure to apply to places of public accommodation, including public restrooms”. Of course, he has also said that he would support a HERO that included public accommodation, and he has promised Steve Hotze that he would oppose any effort to pass a new HERO, so you can’t believe a word he says.

As I said, I have been waiting for this, I fully support this, and I agree that this is the right approach to trying again. My one hesitation is in putting HERO 2.0 on the 2021 ballot. There are no city elections in 2021, just HISD and HCC Trustee races, and who even knows how much anyone will care about the HISD races at that time. That means that basically all of the turnout for such an election will come from the campaigns for this measure, and we saw what happened with that in 2015. My suggestion would be to wait and have it in 2022, when at least the baseline will be higher, overall more Democratic, and will include more young voters. It’s true that plenty of Democratic voters voted to repeal HERO in 2015, but that’s a problem that the new outreach strategy needs to solve. If that hasn’t been successful then we could hold the vote on a Sunday afternoon in July and it won’t make any difference. Engage with the Democratic base, move the needle with voters who should be on our side since they very much support politicians who support what’s in HERO, and then schedule the election at a time when many of these people would be voting anyway.

(You may ask “why not go all the way turnout-wise and do it in 2020?” One, that may not be enough time for the engagement project to work, and two, the 2020 election is not two full years after the 2018 election, when Prop B passed, so by charter it’s too soon. Right idea, but not feasible under the conditions we have.)

Anyway. I’ll want to know a lot more about the engagement strategy – who the public faces of it are, what the funding model is, what the message will be, etc etc etc – but it’s a step in the right direction. And whether we do this in 2021 or wait till 2022 as I would prefer, there’s no time to lose. Campos has more.

Chron overview of the District F runoff

Here’s one with a very clear choice.

Tiffany Thomas

District F residents have two distinct choices in the City Council runoff election — stay the course with an aide to the incumbent councilman or choose a fresh start with a former Alief ISD trustee.

Tiffany D. Thomas, 38, finished in first place in Election Day balloting, ahead of six other candidates. The Prairie A&M University assistant professor of community development said she wants to change F’s reputation as the “forgotten district,” and said the area has lacked a strong advocate in City Hall.

“There’s a huge opportunity for us to revitalize our neighborhoods, and remind people that this is one of the best places to live in Houston,” Thomas said.

Van Huynh, chief of staff to current District F Councilman Steve Le, said his platform centers on reducing burglaries and robberies, ensuring timely trash pickup, improving flood control and cracking down on nuisances like speeding and illegal dumping.

An immigrant from Vietnam who came to Houston in 1991, Huynh said he would work to help the high number of non-U.S. born District F residents connect to government services of which they may be unaware.

“A lot of people living in my district are newcomers to the country and the city,” Huynh said. “They don’t really feel connected to local government, and there is a lot of opportunity the city can bridge with the community.”

The candidates are running for a four-year term to replace Le, who has represented District F since 2016. Le in July announced he would not seek re-election, two months after the Houston Chronicle reported his then-top aide continued to collect his salary while out of state at military training.

My interview with Tiffany Thomas is here. She’s brought a little heat to the runoffs, and she’s got some material to work with. Steve Le was not a good Council member, and the case for a clean break and a new direction is clear. Thomas led the field in round one, and I’m rooting for her to win.

Precinct analysis: 2019 Mayor’s race

I know you’ve been waiting for this. I have the draft canvass, I’ve been doing the Excel things, so let’s get down to it.


Dist  Lovell    King  Turner  Buzbee Boykins  Others
====================================================
A        217   3,002   6,481   7,061     646     727
B        114     523  13,274   1,211   1,778     846
C        888   7,259  22,661  12,619   1,536   1,015
D        181   1,127  16,608   2,650   4,095   1,007
E        224   6,134   7,452  14,920     890     727
F        122   1,216   4,773   3,610     517     691
G        366   9,436  11,316  14,493     602     619
H        310   1,573   7,721   3,824   1,167   1,181
I        203   1,086   5,829   3,176     955   1,061
J        117     876   3,402   2,367     392     449
K        204   1,647  12,383   3,739   1,669     698
						
A      1.20%  16.55%  35.74%  38.94%   3.56%   4.01%
B      0.64%   2.95%  74.80%   6.82%  10.02%   4.77%
C      1.93%  15.79%  49.29%  27.45%   3.34%   2.21%
D      0.71%   4.39%  64.70%  10.32%  15.95%   3.92%
E      0.74%  20.21%  24.56%  49.16%   2.93%   2.40%
F      1.12%  11.13%  43.67%  33.03%   4.73%   6.32%
G      0.99%  25.62%  30.72%  39.35%   1.63%   1.68%
H      1.97%   9.97%  48.94%  24.24%   7.40%   7.49%
I      1.65%   8.82%  47.35%  25.80%   7.76%   8.62%
J      1.54%  11.52%  44.75%  31.13%   5.16%   5.91%
K      1.00%   8.10%  60.88%  18.38%   8.21%   3.43%

I combined all the remaining candidates into the Others column. I should note that Sue Lovell actually received one vote fewer than Victoria Romero, so I suppose there’s an argument for changing whose totals get displayed and whose get aggregated, but we all know who Lovell is and we have no idea who Romero is, so here we are. Looking at this, you have to wonder how it is that Sue Lovell thought it was a good idea to enter the race. Whatever it was she was hoping to accomplish, she didn’t.

Next, there’s Dwight Boykins, the guy that ran as the champion of the firefighters. Remember how much noise there was over the Battle Royale between Mayor Turner and the firefighters, whose proxy in this race was Dwight Boykins? Turner outscored Boykins four to one in Boykins’ own district, and nearly eight to one overall. Not much of a fight, was it? The firefighters have now settled on Tony Buzbee for the runoff, while the rest of labor has lined up behind Mayor Turner. As above, whatever the firefighters hoped to accomplish this election, you have to say they didn’t.

Is this finally the end of Bill King? After getting 66K votes in November of 2015, he fell short of 34K in 2019. Of course, in 2015 he was the default Republican choice, having benefited from Oliver Pennington’s premature exit from that race. Here, he was completely overshadowed by Buzbee’s flash, cash, and trash. He couldn’t even beat Turner in the three Republican Council districts. I feel like there’s more I should be saying here, but honestly these numbers speak for themselves.

As for Buzbee, he did lead the pack in Districts A, E, and G, though he didn’t beat Turner by much in A or G. As noted before, there are no runoffs in E or G, so Buzbee is on his own to get those voters out again in December. Buzbee trails Turner by about 45K votes, while King trailed him by about 19K in 2015. I have no idea how Buzbee makes up that deficit, and if he’s really going to spend whatever it takes, I haven’t seen evidence of it yet. He ran a lot of ads during live sporting events in Round One, so we’ll see if he’s on the air during this weekend’s football games.

That leaves Turner, who did what the polls suggested he would do. He did what he needed to do where he needed to do it, with a much stronger showing in District C than he had four years ago. He’s got Democrats united behind him, and he should have sufficient funds to get his voters out again. If he wants to think big, he should be pondering how he can help some of those Dems in At Large runoffs get across the finish line as well. I’ll be looking at those races in the coming days. The one setback is the delay of the District B runoff, but there is still a runoff in HISD II, which covers a lot of the same turf, so that may mitigate the effect. Let me know what you think.

District B runoff still up in the air

Hoo boy.

Cynthia Bailey

The runoff in the contested District B race for Houston city council almost certainly will be decided with a special election, due to an election contest filed by the third-place finisher, officials said Wednesday.

Renee Jefferson-Smith, who missed the runoff by 168 votes, filed the contest in district court last Friday, essentially forcing election officials to hold off on the runoff, according to Assistant County Attorney Douglas Ray.

The Texas Election Code says a contested runoff cannot be held until there’s a final judgment in the matter.

“It’s as clear as any law I’ve seen,” Ray said.

The county, which has to send out mail ballots for the runoffs Thursday, is printing them Wednesday without the District B race. There are 12 other city council runoffs, set to be decided Dec. 14.

See here and here for the background. As the story says, Jefferson Smith has appealed the dismissal of her lawsuit from last week, which is why this is still ongoing. The law in question reads as follows:

Sec. 232.007. RUNOFF NOT HELD UNTIL FINAL JUDGMENT. (a) A runoff election for a contested office may not be held until the judgment in the contest becomes final.

(b) This section does not affect the conduct of a regularly scheduled runoff for another office that was voted on at the same election as the contested office or at an election held jointly with the election in which the contested office was voted on.

That is indeed quite clear, and I have since received a notification from the County Clerk’s office that:

“Due to a legal challenge, the City of Houston Council Member District B race will not appear on the December 14, 2019 Runoff ballot. This will not affect any of the other races or the election procedures the Harris County Clerk’s Office carries out.”

So to sum up, we have the city of Houston/HISD/HCC runoffs minus District B on December 14, we have the HD148 special election runoff on January 28, we have the 2020 primaries on March 3, and somewhere in there we will also have a stand-alone runoff in District B. As Tommy Lee Jones said in The Fugitive, What. A. Mess.

A later version of the story has a few more details.

Jay Aiyer, a public policy consultant and former political science professor at Texas Southern University, called the delay unprecedented.

“You’ve never had anything where a runoff election itself is just left off,” he said.

City taxpayers will have to foot the bill for the additional election, according to the mayor’s office. Both Ray and Nicole Bates, an attorney for Jefferson-Smith, said it is possible the special election could be held Jan. 28, when a runoff for the open House District 148 seat is scheduled to take place, if the lawsuit is resolved by then.

Alan Bernstein, Mayor Sylvester Turner’s director of communications, said the city would hold the special election on Jan. 28, but would support an earlier date if the suit contesting the election is resolved before then.

[…]

Oliver Brown, Bailey’s attorney, said Jefferson-Smith is arguing the same case in a different forum because she did not like the earlier judge’s ruling.

“The problem is, they’re not doing an actual contest. They’re still just trying to challenge (Bailey’s) eligibility,” he said.

Tarsha Jackson, the first-place finisher who also is in the runoff, has said voters knew about Bailey’s criminal past and said she should be able to continue in the race. Jackson said Wednesday she was disappointed in the delay.

“What’s happening right now is just a prime example of what’s been happening to District B forever. We’re a marginalized and disenfranchised community,” Jackson said. “We have been left behind in this election. The people should be able to go out and vote on the 14th.”

While Jackson and Bailey seemed entrenched in the runoff after the initial court ruling, Aiyer said it is possible that could change in the continuing lawsuit.

“The one thing that seems to be unclear is when you have a special election, who will be the participants in the election,” Aiyer said. “I don’t know if, for example, Bailey is declared ineligible, that doesn’t really presuppose that (Jefferson-Smith) should be in the runoff.”

The delay also calls into question who — if anyone — will represent District B between when Jerry Davis’ term ends on Dec. 31 and the election is held.

While I agree with the interpretation of the law here, I’m still bothered by the way this has all played out. I will say again, the right time to have filed this lawsuit was in September, after the filing deadline passed and before mail ballots were printed. Courts are often reluctant to get involved in electoral disputes before the election, but this was a straightforward question on the law, and no one can claim that waiting till after the election was less messy or controversial. To add onto what Jay Aiyer says at the end here, I’m also bothered by the idea that Renee Jefferson Smith could benefit now from Cynthia Bailey being kicked out of the runoff. We have no way of knowing what might have happened in the November election if Bailey had not been on the ballot. Who’s to say that Alvin Byrd (1,630 votes to Jefferson Snith’s 2,137) or Karen Kossie-Chernyshev (1,408 votes) would not have benefited more from Bailey’s absence? We should have resolved this before any votes were cast. That’s not an option any more, and it’s not fair to any of the candidates involved, never mind the voters themselves. If nothing else, I hope we clarify the law in question in 2021. KUHF has more.

MLB has had its eye on the Astros

The story develops.

Early in the 2019 season, Major League Baseball instructed video monitors working in Minute Maid Park to listen for banging sounds emanating from the Astros’ dugout, a person with knowledge of the directive said Monday.

The Astros are alleged to have stolen signs during their World Series-winning season of 2017 using a system that included players banging on trash cans to signal certain pitches. That MLB directed those working at Minute Maid Park to listen for such sounds is an indication the league already had an eye on Houston.

Conversely, a video monitor who worked in another American League ballpark told the Chronicle they were not “implicitly told” to listen for any sounds from either dugout.

MLB began investigating the Astros last week after former Houston pitcher Mike Fiers outlined how the team stole signs in 2017, using a camera in center field and a video screen in the tunnel next to the dugout, then banging on trash cans.

[…]

The Athletic’s report detailed alleged wrongdoing in 2017 only. Whether the Astros continued their practices into 2018 or 2019 remains unconfirmed. Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow said he was “confident that in general, we did things right and we try and follow the rules.”

The team has said it is cooperating with MLB’s investigation.

“Beginning in the 2017 season, numerous clubs expressed general concerns that other clubs were stealing their signs,” MLB said last week. “As a result of those concerns, and after receiving extensive input from the general managers, we issued a revised policy on sign stealing prior to the 2019 season. We also put in place detailed protocols and procedures to provide comfort to clubs that other clubs were not using video during the game to decode and steal signs.”

Part of that revised policy included a group of video monitors at each ballpark responsible for ensuring clubs adhered to the new regulations. Each game last regular season had at least one person around both the home and visiting dugouts monitoring the replay room, clubhouse, tunnel and any other area.

“What they told us was we were essentially looking for people who were using technology to steal signs,” said one video monitor.

One person familiar with the Astros’ video monitoring said those who worked at Minute Maid Park were instructed “early on” to “make sure there was no one in the dugout banging.”

See here for the background. We don’t know the extent of what may or may not have happened yet, and MLB hasn’t said when their investigation will end. What we do know is that if MLB does conclude the Astros were breaking the rules, the penalties could be harsh.

Commissioner Rob Manfred has “no reason to believe” Major League Baseball’s ongoing investigation into electronic sign-stealing will involve any club aside from the Astros — a franchise that could feel the full authority of Manfred’s power under the major league constitution.

Manfred has levied only one public punishment for electronic sign-stealing — an undisclosed fine to the Boston Red Sox during the 2017 season. That same year, the Astros are alleged to have electronically stolen signs with a center-field camera at Minute Maid Park, actions that are now the center of MLB’s investigation.

“Any allegation that relates to a rule violation that could affect the outcome of a game or games is the most serious matter,” Manfred said Tuesday. “It relates to the integrity of the sport. In terms of where we are, we have a very active, what is going to be a really, really thorough investigation ongoing. Beyond that, I can’t tell you how close we are to done.”

When he issued the fine to the Red Sox in 2017, Manfred warned any future violations were subject to “more serious sanctions, including the possible loss of draft picks.”

MLB’s most recent revised policy on sign-stealing promised “progressive discipline” for rule-breakers, “including fines, suspensions, and penalties or loss of benefits.” The benefits, according to the policy, included draft picks and international signing penalties.

“I’m not going to speculate on what the appropriate discipline is,” Manfred said. “That depends on how the facts are established at the end of the investigation. The general warning that I issued to the clubs I stand by. It certainly could be all those things, but my authority under the major league constitution could be broader than those things as well.”

Nothing to do but wait and see. Who says the offseason is dull?

Texas blog roundup for the week of November 18

The Texas Progressive Alliance had no idea it was pronounced “keev” as it brings you this week’s roundup.

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