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July, 2020:

July 2020 campaign finance reports: State races, part 1

Jul 31st, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

I’m going to take a look at the July finance reports from the various state races, which I will split into three parts. Part one will be statewide, SBOE, and State Senate, part two will be State House races from the Houston area, and part three will be State House races from elsewhere in the state. I’m not going to be doing every race of course, just the ones of interest. January reports for statewide candidates can be found here, and January reports for various SBOE and State Senate races can be found here.

Chrysta Castaneda, RRC
Jim Wright, RRC

Amy Clark Meachum, Supreme Court, Chief Justice
Nathan Hecht, Supreme Court, Chief Justice

Gisela Triana, Supreme Court, Place 8
Brett Busby, Supreme Court, Place 8

Kathy Cheng, Supreme Court, Place 6
Jane Bland, Supreme Court, Place 6

Staci Williams, Supreme Court, Place 7
Jeff Boyd, Supreme Court, Place 7

Rebecca Bell-Metereau, SBOE5
Lani Popp, SBOE5

Michelle Palmer, SBOE6
Will Hickman, SBOE6

Marsha Webster, SBOE10
Tom Maynard, SBOE10

Susan Criss, SD11
Larry Taylor, SD11

Roland Gutierrez, SD19
Pete Flores, SD19


Candidate   Office    Raised     Spent     Loan     On Hand
===========================================================
Castaneda      RRC    43,072    38,785   27,166      16,043
Wright         RRC   384,282    90,680   45,000     350,856

Meachum      SCOTX    51,093    44,271        0     132,303
Hecht        SCOTX   312,030   106,598        0     727,648

Triana       SCOTX    17,592     9,781        0     113,567
Busby        SCOTX   207,080   116,130        0     611,700

Cheng        SCOTX     7,637     4,033   90,174       9,292
Bland        SCOTX   264,370   106,000        0     417,335

Williams     SCOTX    14,135    47,262        0       7,466
Boyd         SCOTX   104,743   171,002        0     492,183

BellMetereau SBOE5    27,439     8,027    2,250      20,935
Popp         SBOE5    22,930    98,185   10,000      25,354

Palmer       SBOE6     6,873     9,134        0       6,076
Hickman      SBOE6     1,800     2,225    2,500       1,047

Webster     SBOE10     2,480     1,589       25       3,529
Maynard     SBOE10     3,170     1,103    5,000       4,216

Criss         SD11    22,586    14,071        0      13,644
Taylor        SD11    64,150   116,848        0   1,129,009

Gutierrez     SD19    60,074    99,208        0      11,309
Flores        SD19   295,760    65,577        0     563,459

I skipped the Court of Criminal Appeals races because no one raises any money in them. Jim Wright is the no-name Republican challenger who ousted incumbent Ryan Sitton in the GOP Railroad Commissioner primary, in an upset no one saw coming. He had $12K on hand in his eight-day report for the March primary. You can see where he is now, thanks to the Republican money machine including Tim Dunn (evil rich guy behind Empower Texans, $20K) and a slew of PACs. Ryan Sitton had $2.5 million in his account at the time of his defeat (all of which he can now donate to other campaigns, if he wants), so Wright isn’t in that league yet, but the point is that Wright wasn’t a no-name nobody for long. The establishment just moved over to his camp and did their thing. The Republican Party of Texas is currently a dumpster fire, and many of its county parties (see, in particular, Harris and Bexar) are even worse off, but the real power structure is still operating at peak efficiency.

The larger point I would make here, as we begin to see Joe Biden and Donald Trump ads on TV – I saw one of each while watching the Yankees-Nationals game on Saturday night – is that there’s more than one way to do a statewide campaign in Texas. For a million bucks or so, you could probably blanket local and cable TV in many of the media markets with ads for Chrysta Castaneda and the statewide Democratic judicial slate. I have seen my share of “vote for Republican judges” ads on my teevee, as recently as 2016 and 2018. Our Congressional candidates have shown there’s plenty of financial support out there for Democratic contenders, even those in odds-against races. There are many people who know enough to create a PAC, get some dough in the door, then cut an ad and buy some time for it. The numbers say this is the best chance we’ve had in a quarter century to win statewide. What are we going to do about that?

As for the Senate races, SD11 isn’t really competitive. It’s on the list of “races that may end up being closer than you might have thought because of prevailing conditions and recent political shifts”, but it’s too far out of reach to expect more than that. The thing I’d ponder is if the likes of Larry Taylor, and other Republican Senators in safe districts or not on the ballot this year, will put some of their spare cash towards helping their fellow partymates who are in tough races. I’m sure we can all think of a few of them. As for SD19, I’m not too worried about the current gap between Roland Gutierrez’s and Pete Flores’ cash on hand. I fully expect Gutierrez, the one Dem running in a truly flippable district, to have the resources he needs. But I’ll still check the 30-day report, because SD19 officially makes me nervous after the 2018 special election fiasco.

Nobody ever raises money in the SBOE races. It would have been fascinating to see what might have happened had cartoon character/performance artist Robert Morrow won that primary runoff, but alas. It’s just another boring contest between two normal people. Which, given the history of the SBOE, is actually quite comforting.

Update on that other vote by mail lawsuit

Jul 31st, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

From Daily Kos:

A federal judge has rejected Republican Secretary of State Ruth Hughs’ motion to dismiss a case brought by several Texas voters and civil rights organizations seeking to expand access to absentee voting for the November general election.

Plaintiffs are asking the court to order the state to prepay the cost of postage; require officials to count ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within a few days afterward (currently, they must be received by the day after the election); prevent the state from using arbitrary standards to reject absentee ballots for allegedly non-matching signatures without giving voters a chance to fix any problems; and allow third parties to collect and turn in completed absentee ballots.

Based on a schedule the judge previously set out, a ruling on plaintiffs’ requests is not likely until after Labor Day.

See here for the background. This lawsuit, unlike the TDP lawsuit that is awaiting action from the Fifth Circuit or the age discrimination lawsuit, which is also on hold pending action with the first lawsuit (info per the DKos Elections Litigation Tracker), is not about who is allowed to vote by mail. It is about the barriers that exist for those who are eligible to vote by mail. Here’s a summary of the plaintiffs’ claims, from the court ruling (the first link in my excerpt above):

First, Plaintiffs challenge Section 86.002 of the Texas Election Code’s failure to provide prepaid postage for mail-in voters. Id.; Tex. Elec. Code § 86.002 (“Postage Tax”). Second, Plaintiffs challenge the requirement mail-in ballots be postmarked by 7:00 p.m. on election day and then received by the county no later than 5:00 p.m. on the day after the election in order to be counted. See Tex. Elec. Code § 86.007 (“Ballot Receipt Deadline”). Third, Plaintiffs challenge the requirement that voters must submit two signature samples that “match,” according to local election officials, in order to have their early voting ballots counted. Id. § 87.027 (“Signature Match Requirement”). Fourth, Plaintiffs challenge the criminalization of a person assisting a voter in returning a marked mail ballot. Id. § 86.006 (“Voter Assistance Ban”).

The effect of this lawsuit, if the plaintiffs prevail, would be to make it easier for the people who can vote by mail to do so, and would likely reduce the number of ballots rejected for not having a legally accepted signature. That would be fairly small in the aggregate, but it would be quite meaningful for some number of people. The defense had also filed a motion opposing an expedited schedule, which the judge (Orlando Garcia, whom you may recall from previous redistricting cases) also rejected. The last filing in that schedule is for September 4, so perhaps we’ll get a ruling not too long after that. I have also read somewhere – it may have been on Daily Kos, I just don’t remember – that the Fifth Circuit is going to expedite the appeals hearing for the TDP vote by mail case, so who knows, maybe we will get some clarity before November. Doesn’t mean it will be good clarity, but it ought to be something.

Gohmert’s gonna Gohmert

Jul 31st, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

On brand, possibly to the end.

Louie Gohmert

Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert, a mask skeptic who tested positive for the coronavirus Wedneday as he was pre-screened to join President Donald Trump on a visit to Midland, told Fox News that he plans to take the controversial anti-malaria drug that medical experts have warned against for its health risks.

“My doctor and I are all in,” Gohmert told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “That will start in a day or two.”

Trump and other Republicans like Gohmert have touted the drug, though evidence continues to accumulate of its serious side effects and ineffectiveness treating the new coronavirus. The Food and Drug Administration has cautioned against using the drug and last month revoked its emergency use authorization for it, saying the potential, unproven benefit isn’t worth the risk.

Gohmert told Hannity that he has a friend who is a doctor who is taking the drug to treat his own coronavirus. He said his own regimen would consist of the hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin and zinc.

See here for the background. I mean, I don’t know why anyone would expect Gohmert to do something normal or rational or conventional now. I’m reminded of something my buddy’s mom said to him when we were kids and were about to do something crazy, “Well, if you break your leg, don’t come running to me”. You do you, Louie, but if it goes south please don’t expect any sympathy for your dumb decisions.

Matt Glazer: A way to end surprise medical bills

Jul 31st, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

(Note: The following is a guest post that was submitted to me. I occasionally solicit guest posts, and also occasionally accept them from people I trust.)

At a young age, I had to deal with medical issue after medical issue. It started with trips to M.D. Anderson and ended with an emergency appendectomy. Three major illnesses in 2 years was hard, but we were fortunate enough not to be financially destroyed by these unexpected medical expenses.

Fast forward to now and I am constantly nervous to go see a doctor. Yes, I have insurance now (something that was impossible before the Affordable Care Act), but I am also a pawn in a subterranean fight between health care providers and insurance companies. Basic treatments that should be covered sometimes aren’t and with no rhyme or reason. Then I am hit with unexpected bill that sends me back to eating ramen or cutting expenses again.

There is a real, bi-partisan opportunity to do something about this and protect consumers.

As COVID-19 continues to disrupt life in Texas throughout the country, health care access has never been more important. Now more than ever, people need to see a doctor when they’re sick – not just for their own health, but (given the contagiousness of the disease) for the health of those around them.

Yet some in Washington, D.C. are putting that access at risk in a ham-fisted attempt to stop surprise medical bills.

Most of us have dealt with the shock of a surprise medical bill in recent years – those charges you get billed for after getting medical care, when your insurance company refuses to foot the bill for an out-of-network health provider. Congress has been debating this issue for over a year, and two main camps have emerged. One group wants to end these disputes by creating an independent dispute resolution (IDR) system, where providers and insurance companies are pushed toward a negotiating table to figure out their differences, and patients are left out of the process. The other group wants pre-determined reimbursement rates for services based on insurance companies’ in-network rates.

The first option, IDR, is similar to what we passed last year for insurance plans regulated by the state of Texas – one of the country’s most patient-friendly surprise medical bill laws which won bipartisan support. Other states, such as New York, have instituted a similar system with successful results. (Unfortunately, these state fixes only apply to plans regulated by the state, which is why Congress needs to act. For example, in Texas only 16% of health plans are covered by the state surprise billing law.)

The problems with the second option become obvious quickly: If insurance companies are setting rates, they have all the negotiating leverage. Surprise bills go from being a dispute over how much to charge for a medical procedure to a take-it-or-leave it edict to hospitals, doctors, and other care providers. The rate-setting option would artificially drive insurance payouts down and create dire financial situations for doctors and hospitals – particularly in rural areas, where hospitals function as major hubs for local health care services. It would pad the bottom line for health insurance companies, though – not like they need it, since they have been among the few companies making more money during the pandemic.

Worst of all: Rate-setting would allow insurance companies to further enrich themselves on the backs of the doctors, nurses, and other health care providers who have been serving on the front lines of the pandemic, shouldering more risk than any of us in fighting COVID-19.

(Last month, the Trump administration proposed a third option: an outright ban on surprise medical bills with no outline for resolving the underlying dispute. That figures to throw any disputed bill into the court system, with costly lawsuits driving up the costs of both health care and insurance premiums. Everyone except the lawyers would lose in that scenario.)

Thankfully, surprise medical billing is one of the few truly bipartisan issues on Congress’s agenda, outside the drama of November’s elections. And there is bipartisan support for an IDR-based solution, which means that we can have some hope that Sen. John Cornyn, Sen. Ted Cruz, and the rest of our Congressional delegation will step up and do the right thing. And there are legislative options, put forward by members of Congress who are actual doctors: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) has more than 30 bipartisan co-sponsors for his “STOP Surprise Medical Bills Act,” and more than 110 House members have similarly signed on to the “Protecting People from Surprise Medical Bills Act,” sponsored by Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Ca.). Both of these bills solve surprise medical bills using IDR and keep the patients out of it.

We still have a long way to go in facing COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, and the time to come after, one thing should be crystal clear: We cannot make it harder for people to get health care when they need it. Access to health care will be essential as the economy struggles to recover in fits and starts, we need workers and customers who don’t have to worry about finding care if they get sick.

Forcing doctors out of business and pushing hospitals to the brink of financial collapse is no way to fight a pandemic – or to help patients.

This is a necessary solution for millions. A generation later, I am still terrified to go see a doctor because of the uncertainty surrounding every trip. I am still affected by the bad luck I was afflicted with before I could drive a car, vote, or serve our country. A generation later, I still feel the effects of being a pawn in a game I don’t want to play. There is a real opportunity to do something about this now. All it takes is for our elected officials to do it.

Matt Glazer is the past Executive Director of Progress Texas and co-founder of Blue Sky Partners.

CD25 poll: Roger Williams 45, Julie Oliver 43

Jul 30th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

This is genuinely astonishing.

Julie Oliver

To showcase just how extensively Trump’s decline has shifted the playing field, the DCCC shared with the Washington Post details of an in-house poll it conducted of Texas’ deep-red 25th Congressional District that finds Joe Biden edging Donald Trump 47-46 and puts Republican Rep. Roger Williams up just 45-43 on his Democratic challenger, attorney Julie Oliver.

That’s a huge shift from 2016, when Williams’ district went for Trump by a wide 55-40 margin. And that’s exactly what Republicans intended: The 25th is part of a careful gerrymander that cracked the Austin area six ways and allowed the GOP to win five of those seats. One of those is Williams’ district, which stretches far to the north toward Dallas-Forth Worth, combining a slice of the state capital with rural regions well outside of it.

As a result, the 25th is more rural (and whiter) than most of the suburban seats in Texas that are at the top of Democrats’ target list. As DCCC executive director Lucinda Guinn put it, the district had only been “maybe on the outer edges of our battlefield,” but that may now change. In 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz only carried this seat 52-47 over Beto O’Rourke, so it’s plausible that the leftward march here is continuing.

Here’s the WaPo story that originated this, which goes a lot broader but doesn’t add anything to the CD25 story. What’s most remarkable about this is that of the nine Congressional districts that Dems have some hope to be competitive in, this one is probably last in line. It’s the only one not projected to be won by Biden in the event of a Biden win in Texas. In terms of 2018 performance, CD25 was one of the two weakest for Dems overall, closely aligned with CD03 but without the rapid growth and suburban characteristic of that district. It’s been generally seen as a “likely GOP” seat, with only Rachel Bitecofer being more bullish than that.

So yeah, if Biden is truly leading in CD25, then 1) he’s also truly leading statewide, by more than just a hair, and 2) by enough that he’s also leading in eight other Republican-held Congressional districts. He’s probably leading by enough that the entire statewide Democratic slate is in position to win in November. He’s probably leading by enough that it’s not a question of whether the Dems would take the State House, but by how much. Like I said, astonishing.

Now again we have to trot out the caveats: It’s one poll, it was commissioned by the DCCC, which doesn’t make it suspect in and of itself but does mean that they could have put the result in a desk drawer if they hadn’t found it useful, and Congressional polling is always more variable than statewide polling. That said, it’s not really out of line when districts like CD03 are also polling as even for Biden. At this point, you can only wish there were more competitive districts available.

As noted by the dKos post, Julie Oliver’s main flaw is that she has little cash on hand, despite raising $681K so far, a greater sum than she raised in the entire last cycle. I don’t know what she’s been spending her cash on, but she’s going to need to make it stretch a bit more. Or maybe the DCCC will decide to come in and play, which at this point seems hard to argue against. If this is where the numbers are, maybe we should believe them.

The school situation remains a big ol’ mess

Jul 30th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

You can blame Greg Abbott for all this confusion.

After weeks of confusion and conflicting signals, Texas has settled into policies that effectively compel schools to reopen their classrooms this fall no later than eight weeks after the academic year begins, whether they want to or not.

Teachers, parents, school administrators and public health officials have been seeking clarity for weeks on how the state will approach reopening schools safely as coronavirus infections and deaths rise across Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott has not responded directly to questions from reporters about who has the authority to order schools closed in areas hard-hit by the virus, and the Texas Education Agency has sent mixed messages on reopening guidelines.

But despite the lack of any formal announcement from the governor, the die was cast in in a rapid two-step process Tuesday. First, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released nonbinding legal guidance saying local public health officials do not have the power to preemptively require all schools in their jurisdictions to remain closed, even as COVID-19 cases continue to climb in many Texas hotspots.

Then, state education officials reversed an earlier decision by announcing they will not fund school districts that keep classrooms closed for longer than the state allows even if ordered to do so by a local health mandate. Taken together, the actions put school districts in the position of reopening classrooms on the state’s timetable or losing funds and risking potential litigation.

Educators and families must now once again rethink their back-to-school plans this fall. The education agency has given school districts up to eight weeks to limit the number of students permitted on their campuses, after which they must open classrooms to all students who want to attend.

That ninth week is looming large for superintendents who are not sure what the public health landscape will look like at that point. Now, they can’t depend on their local health officials to give them more time, without losing money.

“Starting in the ninth week of our respective school years, regardless of the status of the virus in our communities, as the guidance is written today, we would be faced with two options,” said Northside Superintendent Brian Woods in an interview with the San Antonio Express News editorial board Wednesday. “One would be to ignore a local health order, and in doing so likely put our students and staff and families at risk, or lose funding, which is essential to teaching and serving our families.”

At a school board meeting Tuesday night, Woods indicated he and other superintendents would consider filing a lawsuit seeking to keep their classrooms closed longer if necessary. Paxton’s decision to step into the fray weeks before the school year begins has prompted more questions than answers, including whether a deluge of lawsuits is expected to hit Texas courts demanding health mandates be revoked or enforced.

Emphasis mine, and see here for the background. The Chron’s Jacob Carpenter tries to make sense of this hash.

What is the impact of Paxton’s letter?

Paxton’s letter is not legally binding. The only way the local health authority orders can be negated is through an executive order issued by the governor or a judge’s ruling in a lawsuit.

As of now, Abbott has not issued an executive order declaring that local health authorities cannot mandate school closures, and nobody has filed a lawsuit challenging the local closure orders.

As a result, at this time the school closure mandates issued by local health authorities are legally valid and enforceable.

What did Morath do Tuesday?

Hours after Paxton published his letter, Morath issued new guidance saying public school districts risk losing state funding if they keep campuses shuttered solely as a result of a local health authority closure order.

Districts still can require students with at-home technology access to remain in online-only classes for up to the first eight weeks of the school year. School boards also can push back their school start dates.

If local school closure orders are legally valid, why did Morath say districts risk losing state funding if they follow closure orders?

Morath cited Paxton’s letter in issuing the new guidance on school funding.

“As a state agency, we will follow the Attorney General’s guidance,” Morath said in a statement. “Consequently, a blanket order closing schools does not constitute a legally issued closure order for purposes of funding solely remote instruction for an indefinite period of time.

However, another section of TEA guidance says the agency will continue to provide funding to districts that are forced to close campuses by an entity “authorized to issue such an order under state law” — and as of now, local health authorities have issued legal orders.

Essentially, the TEA has provided two potentially conflicting pieces of guidance.

Who can clear up this conflict?

The simplest answer: Abbott.

At any time, Abbott could issue an executive order that negates all local health orders, or he could announce he will allow the orders to stand.

Abbott has made no move in either direction.

Asked multiple times by the Houston Chronicle earlier this month whether he planned to allow local health officials to order school closures, the governor’s office never directly answered the question. Abbott’s staff also did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday following the release of Paxton’s letter.

Yes, our Governor continues to be basically useless. At this point, the best advice seems to be just wait and see what happens. Maybe Abbott revises his executive order. Maybe all the school districts and county health authorities cave. Maybe someone (or multiple someones) files a lawsuit – unfortunately, one of those someones is gonna be Jared Woodfill, so prepare yourself for the stupid – and a judge makes a ruling that forces the issue one way or another. It’s still the case that schools don’t have to open till September 8, which is what HISD is doing, and the first six weeks after that can be online-only. It’s after that it gets dicey. So sit tight and wait to see how it gets sorted out.

Who gets to be on the I-45 panel?

Jul 30th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

I’m not thrilled about this.

Houston will have a say in a regional response to design differences in the planned widening of Interstate 45 within the city — and so will Sugar Land, Montgomery County and Waller County.

After voting last month to establish a working group focused on improving the plans by the Texas Department of Transportation for rebuilding I-45, members of the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s Transportation Policy Council approved the members of the panel Friday over the objections of critics and Harris County officials.

“I do take exception that those who are going to be most impacted are not as represented,” Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia said.

[…]

Houston, via a letter from Mayor Sylvester Turner to TxDOT officials, has sought changes to the project north of downtown to ease those effects. City officials want frontage roads in some areas eliminated or reduced to two lanes, and a greater reliance on transit instead of carpools by making the center lanes bus-only rather than HOV. TxDOT has said it is studying the proposal, but said that after years of discussion it is committed to moving its designs along to keep construction on track while addressing possible changes later.

Regional officials with the transportation council ultimately will decide whether $100 million or more of locally-controlled federal money is spent on the project as phases begin over the next five years, a sum that while small in comparison of the $7 billion-plus cost, significantly affects TxDOT’s ability to leverage state-controlled dollars. That leaves the council to support or not support the changes as a condition of its funding, or allow TxDOT to move forward with its own plans.

The 16-person working group approved Friday includes some Houston-centric officials — including At-Large Councilman David Robinson, Metropolitan Transit Authority Chairwoman Carrin Patman and Port Houston Executive Director Roger Guenther. Half of the members, however, hail from outside Harris County, including Sugar Land Mayor Joe Zimmerman, Waller County Commissioner Justin Beckendorff and Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough.

Galveston County Commissioner Ken Clark, chairman of the transportation council, said his aim in appointing people to the group was to reflect the entire region’s interest in the project.

“Their commuters are driving their freeway roads all over the place,” Clark said. “I thought it was important we had a group that had that … a critical working group if you will.”

Zimmerman, who last month argued Houston-area officials needed to put the project “in a positive light” noted that the regional body’s role was to reflect the entire eight-county area.

“The intent was to keep politics out of this,” Zimmerman said.

Critics, who have said for two years that their concerns have been heard by TxDOT with little progress toward resolving the issues, said a regional group that includes no members from the project area speaking directly for residents and neighborhoods indicates their concerns are being ignored.

“This proposal is inequitable and unacceptable,” said Jonathan Brooks, director of policy and planning for LINK Houston, a local advocacy group that has organized some of the opposition to the project.

First of all, you can never “keep the politics out” of an inherently political process. I cringe at this because the implication here, one that is widely made and shared, is that by keeping “politics” out of this process you are somehow keeping it “clean” and “fair”, because “politics” is dirty and tainted. But “politics”, as a process, is all about engaging communities and getting consensus. You can’t do that if key communities are being excluded while others that have a lesser stake in the outcome are given power over the process. The people whose homes, neighborhoods, jobs, and lives are going to be directly affected by the I-45 project need to have a seat at that table. It’s just wrong that they don’t.

Second, maybe the reason Houston-area officials haven’t been putting such a “positive light” on this project is because we don’t see it as being all that positive. Certainly, plenty of people who live in Houston don’t see it that way. Maybe the problem isn’t branding but the product itself.

And look, none of this would be a problem now if the people who will be the most affected by this project had truly been heard along the way. They’ve been airing the same complaints about the I-45 rebuild because so many of their key concerns are still there. You may say there’s no way to do this project without setting aside most of those concerns. We would say that’s exactly the problem, and should call into question the fundamental assumptions about this project in the first place. If you can’t do it without causing significant harm, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.

Texas blog roundup for the week of July 27

Jul 30th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

The Texas Progressive Alliance says “Person, woman, man, camera, TV”. Also, “Play ball!”, “Get the federal stormtroopers out of American cities”, and “Here’s this week’s roundup”.

(more…)

Louie Gohmert gets COVID-19

Jul 30th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
46 comments

The universe works in mysterious ways.

Louie Gohmert

U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, has tested positive for the new coronavirus, he said in an interview with East Texas Now where he speculated that he may have caught the virus from wearing his mask.

Gohmert, who spends ample time on the U.S. House floor without a mask, was one of several Texas officials scheduled to fly to West Texas this afternoon with President Donald Trump. He took one test, which tested positive, then took a second test during a pre-screen at the White House which also tested positive.

“I can’t help but wonder … if I injected the virus into my mask when I was moving,” he said in an interview.

[…]

Gohmert said he received guidance from the doctors at the White House and the attending physician at the Capitol that he only needed to self-quarantine for 10 days. He said he will drive back to his East Texas home and that his staff is all getting tested for the virus.

“Like Dorothy said, there’s no place like home,” Gohmert said.

The Republican lawmaker has been known for speaking at length with Capitol colleagues while not adhering to social distancing guidelines. Last month, he told CNN that he was not wearing a mask because he was getting tested regularly for the virus.

“I don’t have the coronavirus, turns out as of yesterday I’ve never had it,” he said in June. “But if I get it, you’ll never see me without a mask.”

We’ll see about that. Gohmert is truly one of the worst people in Congress, and one of the worst in Texas. He has spent his long, miserable career in Congress working to make his district, the state, and the country a worse, poorer, meaner, dumber, unhealthier, less safe, and more violent place. According to Slate, Gohmert “returned to his congressional office after his positive test to personally inform his staff of the result”, which is to say he knowingly put his entire staff at risk for no good reason. I have one wish for Louie Gohmert, and that’s that he gain some small measure of empathy for everyone who has suffered from this pandemic. I don’t have much hope for that wish, but it’s what I’ve got. The Chron and Mother Jones have more.

Morning Consult: Biden 47, Trump 45

Jul 29th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

The hits keep coming.

Another day, another poll showing that Texas is up for grabs despite President Donald Trump’s bluster.

Former vice president Joe Biden leads 47-45, with only one in 20 voters still undecided, in a Morning Consult poll released Monday night.

A raft of recent polls have found a dead heat, with the candidates within a point or two, and Trump returns to Texas on Thursday for the 16th visit of his presidency – an investment of time that would be out of proportion if Texas were as safely in his column as he professes.

In Odessa, he’ll meet with campaign donors before heading to Midland to inspect an oil rig at Double Eagle Energy and give a speech about energy policy.

[…]

Biden started running ads in Texas about two weeks ago, a one-minute spot urging Texans to wear masks and noting that “people are frightened” as the COVID-19 pandemic rages.

At the time, the Trump campaign called the outreach to Texas a “pipe dream.”

Trump’s last visit to Texas was only last month: a June 11 campaign-style event on police and race relations at a North Dallas church.

His 9-point margin over Hillary Clinton in Texas 2016 was the worst showing by a GOP nominee for president since 1976, when President Gerald Ford lost Texas and Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter ousted him from the White House.

Anyone want to place a bet on how many people are wearing masks at those Odessa and Midland events? More info on that Morning Consult poll, which covered numerous states, is here. I don’t see any crosstabs, so I can’t tell you much more about it. FiveThirtyEight rates them as B/C, so maybe not gold standard. It was a “likely voter” sample, so we’ve probably crossed that boundary now. In fourteen polls, Trump leads Biden by the skinny margin of 45.8 to 45.3, and if we limit ourselves to the ten polls since June 1, it’s a 45.9 to 45.6 lead for Biden. Have fun in Odessa, Donald!

Making NRG Arena the 2020 election headquarters

Jul 29th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

Sounds like a good idea.

Chris Hollins

Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins is seeking permission from Commissioners Court to use NRG Arena as a headquarters for the fall presidential election, converting the expansive space for voting, ballot counting and a call center.

The proposal would use $5.1 million of the $12 million former county clerk Diane Trautman secured to run elections during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The agenda item submitted by Hollins for Tuesday’s meeting states the clerk’s office plans to transfer all of its elections operations to Hall D of the arena. The 100,000-square-foot space would be used for walk-in voting, drive-through voting, a call center, ballot by mail operations, the county’s vote-counting operation and include a space for administrative personnel and equipment storage.

Hollins said the clerk’s office downtown is too small for elections staff to socially distance, and using a facility already owned by the county was a logical solution to that problem.

“It’s all about spacing. What we have on the fourth floor of 1001 Preston, we physically cannot fit while following social distancing guidelines,” Hollins said. “We need to move, just to be able to run our election operation at full staff.”

The polling place at the arena may be one of the largest the county operates, he said.

In a letter to court members, Hollins said the cost includes expenses for laptops needed for the ballot by mail, call center and administrative staff operations, as well as other IT needs.

This makes sense. As the story notes, the arena isn’t being used for anything else at this time, so scheduling is not an issue. This would also serve well as a mail ballot drop-off location, which is allowed during the extended early voting period. The arena is accessible by mass transit (the Red Line and the Kirby bus line, for sure) and is close to a lot of residences and businesses, including part of the Medical Center. Honestly, I can’t think of a good reason not to do this.

Paxton overrides county health orders on schools

Jul 29th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

So much concern for the children here.

Best mugshot ever

Local health officials do not have the authority to shut down all schools in their vicinity while COVID-19 cases rise, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in nonbinding guidance Tuesday that contradicts what the Texas Education Agency has told school officials.

Shortly after Paxton’s announcement, the Texas Education Agency updated its guidance to say it will not fund school districts that keep classrooms closed because of a local health mandate, citing the attorney general’s letter. Districts can receive state funding if they obtain TEA’s permission to stay closed, as allowed for up to eight weeks with some restrictions.

The change represents an about-face for the agency, which previously said it would fund districts that remained closed under a mandate. It will impact schools in at least 16 local authorities, many in the most populous counties, that have issued school closure mandates in the past month.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, whose county is among those with a mandate to close schools, said local officials will continue to make decisions to keep students safe “regardless of what opinion General Paxton comes up with.”

“The only way that it would really screw things up is if Abbott tried to take away the control from the local groups,” Jenkins said.

The guidance is non-binding, but local health authorities could face lawsuits especially now that Paxton has weighed in. Paxton’s office declined to comment on whether it would sue local health officials that don’t retract mandates, saying it could not comment on hypothetical or potential litigation.

[…]

The governor’s executive order allowing all school districts to operate overrules local mandates to close, Paxton said. Local health officials have some authority to order schools closed if people in it are infected by COVID-19, but not as a preventive measure.

See here and here for the background. I don’t know what happens next – maybe the counties fold and rescind their orders, maybe someone files a lawsuit to force the issue, maybe we wait and see what happens when schools are supposed to start in a non-pandemic world – but it is clear that one person could end the confusion. The head of the TEA is hand-picked by Greg Abbott, after all, and one presumes Mike Morath would not have let the TEA issue that directive if Abbott was not aware of it. Plus, as noted in the story, Abbott’s own executive order is part of the reason the counties don’t have this authority, at least according to Ken Paxton. So we just need Greg Abbott to come forward and clarify things and

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office did not respond to a request to clarify this earlier this month.

Yeah. You know, whoever runs against Abbott in 2022, they need to make a video montage of all of the “Abbott did not respond to a request for comment” lines in every damn story about coronavirus. If there’s a single defining trait of his reign of error, that’s it. Reform Austin has more.

UPDATE: This says a lot:

Truly, we have a weak and feckless Governor.

Checking in on CD21

Jul 29th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Thar’s the race where Wendy Davis is trying to unseat the mini-Ted Cruz known as Chip Roy, and the pundits are thinking she can do it.

Wendy Davis

All signs are pointing toward a competitive race between incumbent conservative firebrand U.S. Rep. Chip Roy and Democratic mainstay Wendy Davis in Texas’ 21st Congressional District.

The district, which stretches from northern San Antonio to Austin and includes a swath of the Hill Country, has long been viewed as a GOP stronghold. Roy’s predecessor, Republican Lamar Smith, held the seat for more than 30 years. But in 2018, Roy won it with a margin of less than 3 percent.

With $4.4 million raised, Davis has pulled in 75 percent more in campaign donations than Roy — a rare feat for a candidate facing a Republican incumbent.

The politically polar-opposite candidates have already begun casting each other as extremists of their parties. Roy’s campaign has sent a barrage of emails to supporters saying Davis “would be one of the most extreme liberal members of Congress, right there with AOC, Ilhan Omar, Pelosi and the rest of the socialist Democrats.”

Davis, a former state Senator best-known for her 2013 filibuster against an anti-abortion law, has seized on Roy’s response to the pandemic, criticizing his rejection of coronavirus relief funding for businesses. Roy was one of 40 GOP House members who voted against the bill and said he did so because he did not have enough time to review the legislation before voting.

She called Roy, who once served as chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz, “an extreme voice who has spent his time in Washington looking out for corporate drugmakers and wealthy special interests.”

Roy-Davis is one of four congressional races in Texas where Republicans have been favored but are seeing their opponents gain momentum, according to the Cook Political Report, a prominent nonpartisan political ratings group. The publication on Friday switched the 21st District from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up.” It was welcome news for the Davis campaign and other national Democrats.

We’re seeing a lot of Congressional ratings updates now, mostly I think because the Q2 finance reports are out, but also because of the seismic changes in Donald Trump’s approval and re-elect numbers. CD21 is to me in the second tier of pickup opportunities for Dems – CDs 23 and 24 are on top, and at this point I’d consider it very disappointing if Dems didn’t take them both. CD21 is in the next tier, along with CDs 10 and 22, and I’d consider it an upset at this point if Dems didn’t win at least one of them. After that comes all of the longer-shot districts, namely CDs 02, 03, 06, 25, and 31. The fact that we are seeing favorable internal polls getting released by the Democratic challengers in these races, including now a poll from CD21, says something about where we are now in the campaign. Granted, the poll numbers have been more favorable to Joe Biden than to the Dem challengers, but especially in districts with incumbents running for re-election, I think it’s likely that Biden will have to top 50% in most if not all of them for the Dems to have a strong chance. There’s likely more slack in the open seat races, but I’d expect even the more-ardent Trump-humpers to outperform the rest of the ticket on their turf, so a boost from Biden would be very nice.

Davis should also get a boost from the relentless voter registration efforts, which have been especially fruitful for Dems along the I-35 corridor, which overlaps quite a bit with CD21. (And CD23, and CD24, and CD31, and to a lesser extend CDs 03, 06, 10, and 25.) Davis has vastly outraised Roy, and while putting some of that towards tying him to Trump is needed, I’d hope she spends a lot of it on more voter registration and a ton of GOTV. (She will have to spend some of it countering the gobs of PAC money being spent to defend Chip Roy.) The opportunity here is about as good as it gets, and the more Democrats that get elected this year, the harder it’s going to be for Republicans to draw themselves a maximalist Congressional map in the 2021 redistricting process.

What a Democratic House means for redistricting

Jul 28th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Rick Casey makes a point about what a Democratic-majority State House will and won’t be able to do in 2021, in particular with redistricting.

I would put the Democrats’ chances of taking back the State House of Representatives as better than the fulfillment of either of their two other dreams — beating President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn — though recent polls show Trump and Democrat Joe Biden running even and a large “undecided” cohort in the Senate race.

But what if the Democrats win the Texas House? How much difference would it make?

One of the points I’ve seen made in the national media is that it would prevent the Republicans from gerrymandering legislative and congressional districts in the wake of the 2020 census. But that is wrong.

The Texas Constitution includes a provision, passed in 1951, for what happens if the Senate and House of Representatives can’t agree on lines for legislative seats. The lines are then drawn by the Legislative Redistricting Board which includes the lieutenant governor, the speaker of the House, the attorney general, the comptroller, and the commissioner of the General Land Office. Since the only office in play this November is the speaker, he or she would have little impact on the likes of Republicans Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, Glenn Hegar, and George P. Bush.

[State Rep. Trey] Martinez Fischer, however, thinks it may be possible for the Legislature to agree on lines.

“Lawmakers are probably not as trusting for a third party to draw their districts,” he said, suggesting that a Democratic House and a Republican Senate might compromise by agreeing to the plans each came up for their own members.

I’m skeptical. I think there would be a strong temptation for Republican leaders to try to take back the House through creative redistricting.

And no matter what plan the Legislature or the redistricting board come up with it will almost certainly end up in federal court. There, the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear, severe gerrymandering for political (as distinct from racial) purposes is perfectly acceptable. Martinez Fischer suggests, however, that a Democratic House could, through witnesses at hearings and floor debate, build a record that would make lawsuits more feasible.

The Constitutional provision Casey references is here. Note, though, that it only applies to the legislature itself, the House and the Senate. It does not apply to the apportionment of Congressional districts. That job, if the 2021 Lege is unable to draw a map that passes both chambers, will fall to the federal courts. That’s exactly what happened in 2001. The fact that a court had drawn the Congressional map in 2001 was cited by Tom DeLay as a justification for his 2003 re-redistricting effort – he insisted that the Congressional map needed to be drawn by the Lege, and if that couldn’t happen in 2001 it could happen in 2003. (The fact that both chambers were now Republican-controlled was a happy coincidence, of course.)

My point here is that while Republicans would have a backstop for legislative redistricting, they would have much less control over Congressional redistricting in this scenario. I don’t know what court would get this assignment – maybe they’ll get a panel with a majority of Trump-appointed judges, who knows – but it’s a roll of the dice. The members themselves would likely prefer to avoid that outcome,. In addition, if Democrats do pick up a boatload of Congressional seats – or, you know, if Joe Biden carries Texas – the argument that the Congressional map should strongly favor Republicans kind of falls apart. Doesn’t mean Republicans couldn’t take a crack at it again in 2023 if they take back the State House in 2022, but that’s a lot of uncertainty. It’s not crazy to think that some kind of compromise, in which each side gets a few concessions in all of the maps, could be reached. No guarantee, of course, and again the Republicans would very much want to maximize their chances of having full control in 2023 to clean up anything they don’t like, but having that lever of control is worth something. Not as much as the national media might portray, I agree, but not nothing. Just having a seat at the table means something.

(Also, too, Democratic control of the House means things like the budget can’t get passed without Democratic input and assent. Redistricting would be done in a special session thanks to the later completion date for the Census, but this is still influence for the Dems. Even if it’s not directly influential on redistricting, it’s a pretty big deal in its own right, especially in a session where revenue is scarce and cuts will be on the table. Anyone who remembers the bloodbath of 2011 knows what that would mean.)

So yes, while taking the State House isn’t the be-all and end-all, it’s a mighty fine goal with lots of ways to pay off. Twitter user Kafka provides an intro to the Democratic candidates in most of the districts of interest, and you can learn more at FLIP The Texas House. If you’re wondering how best to spend your campaign donation dollars this cycle, find a State House candidate or three and toss a few bucks in their direction. This is a great opportunity, and we need to maximize it.

Rep. Rodriguez concedes in SD14

Jul 28th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

No runoff after all.

Rep. Eddie Rodriguez

Former Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt will succeed former state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, in the Texas Senate after state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez said Monday he is dropping out of the race. Eckhardt and Rodriguez, both Democrats, were poised to face off in a special election runoff for the seat after the two finished first and second, respectively, in the six-way race on July 14.

After Rodriguez’s announcement, Eckhardt said she looked “forward to joining forces with him in the next session to advance our shared progressive values” for the community. Rodriguez congratulated Eckhardt on the race in an email he sent to supporters and said he is looking “forward to working with her to carve a progressive path forward for our shared community.”

Sen. Sarah Eckhardt

Pressure had been building over the past several days for Rodriguez to end his bid for the Senate and instead focus his efforts in the House, where he has served since 2003. Eckhardt finished first in the six-way race for Senate District 14 on July 14 with 49.7% of the vote — just shy of winning outright. Rodriguez, meanwhile, received nearly 34% of the vote for the historically Democratic seat that covers Bastrop County and parts of Travis County.

[…]

Some Eckhardt supporters and Capitol observers argued that Rodriguez was better off helping Democrats gain control of the House, which they are effectively nine seats away from doing, instead of focusing his energy and money on a Senate bid that Eckhardt nearly won outright earlier this month. There were also questions about the timing of a special election runoff and how that could impact Rodriguez’s seat in the House if he were to win the Senate race. Such a vacancy during a legislative session, some argued, could have implications if there is a slim margin between Democrats and Republicans next year.

First, congratulations to Sen.-elect Sarah Eckhardt. This race was a tough choice between two stellar candidates, and I have no doubt she will be a fine, fine Senator.

Second, this is a true team-first move by Rep. Rodriguez. Sure, Eckhardt had a commanding lead and came very close to an outright win on July 14, but Trey Martinez Fischer had a larger lead over now-Sen. Jose Menendez in the SD26 special election in 2015, and we know how that turned out. Because the two candidates were so well-qualified and differed so little on the substantial issues, this would have been the kind of nasty intramural fight over perceived differences and other minor issues that everyone pretty much hates, all happening at a time when we’re otherwise completely focused on November. And yes, you could imagine partisan control of the State House being affected by the need for Rodriguez to resign if he won, since a special election to replace him could not happen until after November. By far, this was the cleanest and least disruptive solution from a holistic perspective.

But even with all that, it’s still asking one person to put aside their legitimate ambition and aspirations for someone else’s, and given how fierce the competition can be to move up the ladder, that’s asking a lot. Rep. Rodriguez deserves a ton of thanks from Texas Dems. If there’s a way that his next preference for something, whether a legislative push or electoral opportunity or whatever, can be prioritized, that would be great. You can see Rep. Rodriguez’s announcement of his concession on Twitter. Go thank him there if you feel so moved.

Abbott officially extends early voting for November

Jul 28th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

It’s just by a week, but at least the announcement has been made early.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday extended the early voting period for the November election by six days, citing continued challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Early voting for the Nov. 3 election will now begin Oct. 13 instead of Oct. 19. The end date remains Oct. 30.

The extension of the early voting period is not a surprise. During a TV interview in late May, Abbott said he would add more time to the early voting period for the November election — as he did for the primary runoff election earlier this month — but did not elaborate.

Last week, Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins asked Abbott to provide more details so that election officials could have enough time to prepare. In a letter to the governor, Hollins requested that Abbott move the start date to Oct. 13 at the latest.

[…]

But the Monday announcement from the governor gave eligible mail-in voters more time to turn in their completed ballots in person if they would like to do so. Current law allows those voters to submit their ballots to the early voting clerk’s office in person instead of mailing them in — but only while polls are open on Election Day. Abbott’s latest move expands that option to the entire early voting period.

Democrats said Abbott’s latest moves were still not enough to create a safer environment for voting in November.

“Abbott’s decision to extend early voting by six days is exactly like his COVID-19 response: the bare minimum and not fully thought through,” state Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement.

See here and here for the background. I certainly would have preferred a second extra week of early voting, but this is what we’re gonna get. Note that the extra week actually starts on Tuesday, because Monday the 12th is a holiday (Columbus Day), and early voting doesn’t happen on national holidays because some buildings that are used for early voting are closed.

The extra days for early voting will help, not as much as it could have, but it will help. And god knows, we really better be in an improved position with the virus by October, or we’ll have a whole lot of other big problems to be concerned with. I would expect that election administrators will try to extend voting hours where possible, and hopefully will work to have as many locations open as possible. The restriction on mobile voting sites still sucks and was an otherwise pointless attack on voting access, but there remains unresolved litigation about that, so who knows. The ability to drop off mail ballots in person any time during early voting (confession: I hadn’t known about the prior restriction on that) is good, and I’ll bet Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins sets up numerous dropoff locations.

This is the situation we have, and we have to make the best of it. Apply for a mail ballot if you’re 65 or older or if you believe you meet the disability requirement. Plan when and where you will vote, to try to avoid using the busier sites. Volunteer now to work the election if you can. Don’t be the jerk who refuses to wear a mask when voting. And keep raising hell about the overall response to the pandemic, because getting the infection rate down is by far our best friend. You can read Chris Hollins’ press release in response to this announcement here.

A whole lot of Paxton case news all of a sudden

Jul 28th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Brace yourselves.

Best mugshot ever

A Houston appeals court on Monday abated a recent decision to move the criminal cases against Attorney General Ken Paxton from Harris to Collin County, giving a new judge on the case the chance to revisit that order.

The abatement is a win for special prosecutors Kent Schaffer and Brian Wice. It will also allow the judge, Jason Luong, to consider whether to reinstate pay to the prosecutors, who have not been paid since 2016. The prosecutors confirmed the appeals court decision to The News but declined to speak to the matter further.

Paxton’s lawyers said they were “disappointed” and “troubled” that the appeals court ruled without giving them a change to respond.

“Mr. Paxton’s response brief on the merits of returning the case to Collin County was due today and filed after the Court had already decided to abate the case,” Paxton defense attorney Bill Mateja told The News in a statement. “As such, we intend to ask the Court of Appeals to reconsider its ruling.”

I did not know that it was in play for the First Court of Appeals to “abate” the ruling that moved the Paxton case back to Collin County. (I also don’t exactly know what “abate” means here, and how it differs from “overturns or “reverses”. You lawyers out there, please chime in.) I did know that Robert Johnson, the judge in Harris County who ruled that the case should go back to Collin, then recused himself because the AG’s office will be representing criminal district court judges in Harris in the latest bail reform lawsuit. I had not known that a new judge – who, it should be noted, is in the same boat as Judge Johnson in re: the bail lawsuit, unless he decides to make like Chuck Silverman and side with the plaintiffs. I’m putting all that in here so as not to quote the whole damn story. Now back to the excerpt:

Paxton’s legal team applauded the decision [to move the case back to Collin County] at the time and said the attorney general is ready to have his day in court.

“We are gratified by the Court’s ruling and look forward to getting Mr. Paxton’s case back on track. This case has gone on far too long,” Paxton lawyer Dan Cogdell said in an emailed statement that day. Bill Mateja added: “The Prosecutors need to let Judge Johnson’s decision stand and allow Mr. Paxton to have his day in court.”

The special prosecutors appealed his decision.

In early July, the 1st Court of Appeals delayed moving the cases to Collin County until it could rule on the merits of the prosecutors’ arguments that they remain in Houston. Now, the prosecutors say the court has abated Johnson’s decision and allowed Luong, a Democrat, to revisit the move back to Collin County.

Luong, who is also being represented by Paxton’s office in the same separate case as Johnson, has not answered questions about whether he too will recuse himself from this case.

Did you know that the original Paxton indictments are now five years old? Let’s just say I don’t believe Attorneys Cogdell and Mateja in their assessment of how long this has taken and their client’s desire to see the inside of a courtroom, even one in front of a presumably friendly judge. It ain’t the not-paid-since-2016 special prosecutors who have dragged this out for so long. I have no idea what issue there may be for Judge Luong to decide in re: their pay, but 1) they deserve to be paid, and 2) any further action on that front will for sure drag this out until the heat death of the universe. In the meantime, the ball is literally in Judge Luong’s court, and we’ll see what the next action item is. The Chron has more.

UPDATE: I have been given the following explanation of what an “abatement” is:

A Texas appellate court “abates” a case when it decides that there is some action a trial judge must take before the case goes forward. The same word is used in other circumstances but it almost always means a court is pausing proceedings.

This is a mandamus in which the prosecutors are challenging Judge Johnson’s transfer order. A mandamus is technically a suit against the trial judge in their official capacity. The First Court’s order yesterday abated the case because it had learned Judge Johnson had recused himself and Judge Luong is the new judge. The case against Judge Johnson can’t proceed because there’s a new judge who must be given an opportunity to either agree or to vacate Judge Johnson’s order. If Judge Luong agrees with Judge Johnson, the mandamus will proceed against the new judge. If he vacates, it will be up to Paxton’s defense counsel to try the case here or appeal the new judge’s order.

This type of abatement is not unusual and is all but mandatory when there is a change in judges in the middle of a mandamus. It’s unfortunate that the appellate brief was filed after the abatement, but that happens sometimes. It would be unusual if the court of appeals had not abated the mandamus to allow Judge Luong time to rule.

That makes sense to me, and as you can see from the court order, the abatement is for 45 days. So, in the next six weeks or so we should know if the ruling to move the case back to Collin County is still in place or if it has been vacated. (This is assuming Judge Luong doesn’t recuse himself, in which case I presume the main effect would be to push the timeline further back, because sure, why not.) Once we have that, we’ll know who’s appealing what. Isn’t this fun?

Interview with Teneshia Hudspeth

Jul 27th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

Teneshia Hudspeth

As you know, HCDP precinct chairs will be picking a nominee for Harris County Clerk, to run for Diane Trautman’s unexpired term. The leading candidate for this is Teneshia Hudspeth, who has worked in the Clerk’s office for fifteen years and has been a top lieutenant in the elections division. I’ve interacted with Teneshia multiple times over the years, and I plan to vote for her in my role as precinct chair. With the selection process coming up on August 15, I wanted to take the opportunity to interview her, so my fellow precinct chairs and everyone who’ll get to vote for her in November can get to know her a little better. The job of County Clerk will be different when she takes office thanks to the adoption of an elections administrator by Commissioners Court, and that made this interview a little weird for both of us, since my questions to Clerk candidates have usually been about election matters, and right now we don’t know exactly what that will mean going forward. But we persevered, and you can hear the result here:

You can review the Q&As I did with the HCDE candidates as well:

Jose Rivera
David Brown
Obes Nwabara

How to lose a Congressional seat

Jul 27th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

As things stand right now, Texas will gain three Congressional seats in the 2021 reapportionment, as Texas continues to be the fastest-growing state in the country. There is one thing that can stop that, however: Donald Trump.

President Donald Trump opened a new front Tuesday in his effort to keep undocumented immigrants from being counted when lawmakers redraw congressional districts next year, a move that could cost Texas several seats in Congress if it succeeds.

Trump attempted last year to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census, but was shot down by the courts. On Tuesday, he signed a memorandum directing Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to exclude undocumented immigrants who might be included in the census count from the “apportionment base,” or the base population that’s used to divide up seats in Congress.

The order, which will surely be challenged in court, is Trump’s latest effort to differentiate between citizens and noncitizens when states redraw the boundaries of political districts each decade to account for growth. Recent estimates indicate the size of the undocumented population in Texas has reached nearly 1.8 million. Excluding those residents from population counts to draw up congressional districts would likely lead to a drastic realignment of representation and power throughout the state.

The U.S. Constitution mandates that representation in Congress be divided among states based on a count every 10 years of every person residing in the country. But the Constitution, Trump wrote, does not define “which persons must be included in the apportionment base.”

“Excluding these illegal aliens from the apportionment base is more consonant with the principles of representative democracy underpinning our system of Government,” the memo reads. “Affording congressional representation, and therefore formal political influence, to States on account of the presence within their borders of aliens who have not followed the steps to secure a lawful immigration status under our laws undermines those principles.”

[…]

“The Constitution requires that everyone in the U.S. be counted in the census,” Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said in a statement. “President Trump can’t pick and choose. He tried to add a citizenship question to the census and lost in the Supreme Court. His latest attempt to weaponize the census for an attack on immigrant communities will be found unconstitutional. We’ll see him in court, and win, again.”

Litigation has indeed been filed, in multiple lawsuits and venues at this point. My interest in pointing this out was the very narrow one of showing what this would mean to Texas.

If unauthorized immigrants were excluded from the apportionment count, California, Florida and Texas would each end up with one less congressional seat than they would have been awarded based on population change alone. California would lose two seats instead of one, Florida would gain one instead of two, and Texas would gain two instead of three, according to analysis based on projections of Census Bureau 2019 population estimates and the Center’s estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population.

Alabama, Minnesota and Ohio would each hold onto a seat that they would have lost if apportionment were based only on total population change. Alabama filed a lawsuit in 2018 seeking to block the Census Bureau from including unauthorized immigrants in its population count.

[…]

The Census Bureau does not regularly publish counts or estimates of unauthorized immigrants, although the Department of Homeland Security has done so. Last year, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against including a question about citizenship on the 2020 census, the president ordered the Census Bureau to assemble a separate database, using other government records, on the citizenship status of every U.S. resident. This has also been challenged in court.

The Center’s analysis relies on assumptions about populations to be counted in the 2020 census and estimates of unauthorized immigrants. The actual figures used for apportionment will be different from these, and so the actual apportionment could differ regardless of whether unauthorized immigrants are excluded from the apportionment totals.

You might think that Texas’ political leaders would be up in arms about this. That Congressional seat belongs to Texas! State’s rights! You know the drill. And sadly, you also know that our Trump-hugging Attorney General would never, ever say or do anything that would contradict his Dear Leader. What’s a Congressional seat (or two, or even three, if our dismal failure to support a complete Census effort causes the official count to be unexpectedly low) compared to a favorable tweet from Donald Trump? That’s a question we should all be asking, loudly and often, in 2022, when they are up for re-election.

One more thing:

Texas House leaders have previously indicated to The Texas Tribune they have no plans to alter the way Texas redraws political districts even if the Legislature obtained more detailed data on citizenship.

“Bottom line, the law for the Texas House and the Senate — and frankly the courts and the State Board of Education — requires it be done by total population, as does the U.S. Constitution with regard to congressional seats,” said state Rep. Phil King, a Republican from Weatherford who chairs the House Redistricting Committee.

That’s good to hear, but my understanding is that while the State House is explicitly mandated to use total population in redistricting, the State Senate is not. That’s why it was the Senate map that was targeted in the Evenwel case. So, while I hope Rep. King means what he says here, the possibility very much exists that the Lege will try a different tack. (Also, it’s usually the House that draws the House map, and the Senate that draws the Senate map. I’d like to know what the relevant Senate committee chair has to say about this.)

UPDATE: From Ross Ramsey at the Trib:

In a letter urging Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to take legal action to stop the proposal, state Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, framed the idea as an attack on Texas.

“Filing suit to block the Presidential Memorandum to the Secretary of Commerce dated July 21 would be wholly consistent with your official biography that explains as Attorney General, you are ‘focused on protecting Texans and upholding Texas laws and the Constitution’ and ‘fighting federal overreach.’ Indeed, if unchallenged, the President’s actions would likely hurt Texas more than any other state.”

The partisan politics here are clear enough. Turner is the chairman of the Texas House Democratic Caucus. Paxton, a Republican, is the newly branded co-chair of the national Lawyers for Trump.

But not all that is political is partisan, even in an election year. Does anyone in elected office here think Texas should have less influence in Washington, D.C.?

Good question. Someone should ask Ken Paxton, and Greg Abbott, and Dan Patrick, and John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and all of the Republican members of Congress.

The contact tracing debacle

Jul 27th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
6 comments

Let us never forget about this.

Just as coronavirus infections began rising a few weeks ago in Texas, contract workers hired by the state to track down exposed Texans were spending hours doing little or no work, received confusing or erroneous instructions and often could not give people the advice they expected, interviews and records indicate.

Health authorities around Texas also say they are running into technical snags with new contact tracing software the state has deployed, known as Texas Health Trace, saying it isn’t ready for widespread use in their counties.

The chaotic beginning and technical glitches — combined with exploding case counts and widespread testing delays — have undermined the goals of boosting COVID-19 monitoring statewide and the state’s massive deal for a privatized contact tracing workforce.

“I know that a lot of local health departments are still trying to figure out how to utilize that contract and some have decided to do the work on their own,” said David Lakey, chief medical officer at the University of Texas System and former commissioner of the Department of State Health Services (DSHS). “There is concern with local health department individuals I’ve talked to related to how they are going to benefit related to this large investment from the state.”

DSHS said problems identified by the Houston Chronicle have since been fixed and that “every week” more counties are using its software.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said months ago that robust contact tracing capacity would help Texas “box in” the coronavirus. But after the state reopened its economy, infections, hospitalizations and deaths skyrocketed, making it impossible for many health departments to keep up with contact tracing.

“When you kind of jump the gun a little bit and open too soon, and you skip the processes that need to be in place, this kind of thing happens,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said. “You might have the most successfully designed contact tracing program or you may not, but honestly it’s not gonna make a difference because you’re setting yourself up to fail.”

At the state level, Texas moved to ramp up and modernize contact tracing in May, when the Texas Health and Human Services Commission quietly awarded a $295 million contact tracing deal to little-known MTX Group, a tech startup that has a headquarters in North Texas. Abbott’s office has staunchly defended the emergency expenditure, but it’s been controversial from the get-go.

The bid for the work, which was never publicly posted, was awarded to MTX without input from top state leaders, and more than a dozen legislators subsequently called for the state to cancel the contract.

More recently, four people who performed contact tracing work for MTX or one of its partners raised questions about the tech company’s performance. They spoke to the Chronicle on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record about their employment. Three said they fielded only a handful of phone calls during several weeks in May and June.

You can read on for details of the various failures of the program as implemented, and you can see here for more on Texas Health Trace. My point is that having a certain number of contact tracers in place, a number that was never met, was one of the four conditions of reopening set by Greg Abbott. The real failure here, as has been the case with everything else, was the complete lack of effort to meet those metrics that were set out. The failure to do so led directly to the situation we’re in now. The fact that MTX was given a no-bid contract on Abbott’s say-so and no one else’s input is a separate issue, one that deserves a fuller exploration, but not necessarily a main cause of the failure. It’s possible to imagine a scenario in which a legitimate and fully-resourced company could have gotten this contract in a similar fashion and done a better job with it. The process would have still been a problem, but at least the result was okay. Here we had both a bad process and a bad outcome, and both of those need to be investigated. They also need to be hung around Greg Abbott’s neck from now until November of 2022.

Weekend link dump for July 26

Jul 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

The COVID risk chart we really need.

“Folks, this is the nature of child-rearing.”

“The detonation forever changed the course of history, ensuring the end of World War II and marking the dawn of the atomic age. After 75 years, the test is both revered for the scientific advancements it helped to usher in and vilified for the moral and diplomatic implications that still linger in its wake.”

One of the weirdest murder stories you’ll ever read, with implications for how crimes in outer space may be handled someday.

“Woman Who Refused To Wear Mask At Starbucks Wants Half The $100k In Tip Money Barista Got From GoFundMe Campaign”.

“The African continent is very slowly peeling apart. Scientists say a new ocean is being born.”

“The Roman Empire would have a better reputation if it had enjoyed more leaders like Augustus and Marcus Aurelius and fewer like Caligula and Nero, and someday a couple of thousand years from now there will be some blogger saying the same about America. Bad leadership matters, and George W. Bush and Donald Trump have provided the kind of leadership that leaves an indelible stain.”

“The key to Biden’s success is simple: He’s slicing into Trump’s coalition, pulling back the older, whiter voters Democrats lost in 2016. The Biden campaign’s insight is that mobilization is often the flip side of polarization: When party activists are sharply divided by ideology and demography, what excites your side will be the very thing that unnerves the other side.”

RIP, Vincent Mandola, longtime Houston restauranteur.

From the Bad Uses For Drones department.

“Trader Joe’s said it will change the names carried by some of its international food products in response to an online petition that called on the grocery chain to ‘remove racist branding and packaging.'”

“This is a thread of fun times I had while enforcing the new company policy of required masks at the grocery store I work at”. My God, so may people are huge entitled babies.

“Such resentment is a choice. It is not an easy choice, both because it is unpleasant and because it is laughably absurd. But if one is stubbornly determined to make such a choice, and to repeat it, and to stick with it, one can train oneself to ignore the absurdity of it and to learn to enjoy and to savor the bitter acquired taste of resentment. Stick with that choice long enough and you can lose your taste for anything else.”

“Guilt by association is really not a thing in American law.”

As long as we are rooting for Major League Baseball to be played in safety for its entire season, let us also root for someone to hit .400 during that season.

RIP, Pam Francis, Houston photographer known as the Annie Liebovitz of Texas.

MLB players take a knee on Opening Day. Good for them.

“Trump used northeastern states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which lowered their infection curve with strict stay-at-home orders, as part of a misleading argument that much of the US was free of the virus. What he didn’t say is that those states succeeded because they ignored his calls to reopen.”

“And so what I believe is that having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man. Lastly, what I want to express to Mr. Yoho is gratitude. I want to thank him for showing the world that you can be a powerful man and accost women. You can have daughters and accost women without remorse. You can be married and accost women.”

RIP, Regis Philbin, best known for being Regis Philbin.

“There is no acknowledgement here that Ted Yoho, not lacking political and professional ambition himself, was also building his brand by deciding to accost Ocasio-Cortez in front of reporters. Nor is there acknowledgment that it worked for him.”

RIP, Olivia de Havilland, two-time Oscar winner from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

July 2020 campaign finance reports: Harris County

Jul 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

You can always count on January and July for campaign finance reports. This roundup is going to be a little funky, because all of the candidates filed eight-day reports for the March primary, and a few also filed 30-day and eight-day reports for the July runoff. I’ll note those folks, because it means that some of the comparisons are not really apples-to-apples. But this is what we have. The July 2019 reports are here, and the January 2020 reports are here.

Kim Ogg, District Attorney
Mary Nan Huffman, District Attorney

Ed Gonzalez, Sheriff
Joe Danna, Sheriff

Christian Menefee, Harris County Attorney
John Nation, Harris County Attorney

Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor
Chris Daniel (SPAC), Tax Assessor

Rodney Ellis, County Commissioner, Precinct 1

Michael Moore, County Commissioner, Precinct 3
Tom Ramsey, County Commissioner, Precinct 3


Candidate     Raised     Spent     Loan     On Hand
===================================================
Ogg           64,109   223,775   68,489      29,698
Huffman       30,455    58,215        0      11,385

Gonzalez      37,352    28,320        0      73,959
Danna         56,446    26,240        0       8,490

Menefee       24,236    32,768        0      11,680
Nation             0         0        0           0

Bennett       
Daniel         1,302        51   25,000       1,705

Ellis         53,835   575,804        0   3,029,506

Moore        156,790   245,110        0      96,832
Ramsey       346,150    49,829        0     308,942

Both Ogg ($385K) and Gonzales ($317K) had plenty of cash on hand as of January, but they both spent a bunch of money in their contested primaries; Ogg needed to do so more than Gonzalez took the wise approach of not taking his little-known opponents lightly. I expect they’ll raise enough to run their campaigns, but as they’ll benefit from the Democratic nature of the county, I wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be big moneybags. I haven’t seen much of a campaign from Huffman as yet, and Joe Danna is a perennial candidate who gets most of his contributions as in-kind. What I’m saying is, don’t expect a whole lot from these races.

The same is largely true for the County Attorney and Tax Assessor races. Christian Menefeee had a decent amount raised for his January report, so he’ll probably take in a few bucks. I know absolutely nothing about his opponent, who doesn’t appear to be doing much. I don’t know why Ann Harris Bennett hasn’t filed a report yet, but he’s never been a big fundraiser. Chris Daniel has always used that PAC for his campaigns, and he had a few bucks in it as District Clerk but not that much.

Rodney Ellis brought a lot of money with him from his time as State Senator when he moved to the County Commissioner spot, and he will continue to raise and spend a significant amount. If previous patterns hold, he’ll put some money towards a coordinated campaign, and support some other Dems running for office directly. The race that will see the most money is the Commissioner race in Precinct 3. Michael Moore was in the Dem primary runoff, and the report you see is from July 6, which is to say it’s his eight-day report. That means the money raised and spent is from a 22-day period, which should give a bit of perspective. Both he and Tom Ramsey will have all the resources they need.

Abandon ship!

Jul 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

LOL.

During Troy Nehls’ recent bid for the Republican nomination in one of Texas’ battleground congressional districts, the Fort Bend County sheriff prominently displayed his support for President Trump across his campaign website.

“In Congress, I will stand with President Trump to defeat the socialist Democrats, build the wall, drain the swamp, and deliver on pro-economy and pro-America policies,” Nehls said under the top section of his issues page, titled “Standing with President Trump.”

Within two days of Nehls’ lopsided runoff victory, that section had been removed, along with a paragraph from Nehls’ bio page that stated he “supports President Trump” and wants to “deliver President Trump’s agenda.” Fresh language now focuses on his record as sheriff during Hurricane Harvey and managing the agency’s budget.

Nehls’ abrupt shift in tone captures the challenge facing Republican candidates in suburban battleground districts up and down the ballot, including Nehls’ district and two neighboring ones, where polling suggests Trump’s coronavirus response has alienated voters and, for now, created strong headwinds for his party’s congressional hopefuls.

In those contested districts, which even Republicans acknowledge Trump may lose, GOP candidates are navigating the choppy political waters by emphasizing their personal backgrounds and portraying their Democratic foes as too extreme. Most have dropped the enthusiastic pro-Trump rhetoric they employed during the primaries.

It is not uncommon for candidates to tailor their messages to the far ends of their party bases during the primaries before tacking back toward the center for the general election.

Still, it remains a unique challenge for Republicans in competitive races to distance themselves from the president and his lagging poll numbers without angering their supporters, said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

“I think how you do that is still not quite clear, but I also think the ground is really shifting,” Henson said. “(Trump’s) overall favorable-unfavorable numbers are going down, he’s losing ground among independents, and we see glimmers — but just glimmers — of doubt among some Republicans in some suburban areas.”

Hilarious. The story also notes the Republican challenger in CD07, who was endorsed by Trump in the primary but would prefer that you not talk about that, and the CD10 race where Democratic challenger Mike Siegel is working to tie Trump to longtime incumbent Mike McCaul. We’ve seen this movie before, though in years past it had always been Democrats attempting this tightrope act, either by emphasizing their close personal friendship with Dubya Bush or their many points of disagreement with Barack Obama. It worked better in the former case than the latter, as anyone who remembers 2010 can attest.

The main advantage the Republicans running now have is that the districts they’re in are (for the most part, CD07 being an exception) still Republican, at least as of 2018. Those Democrats of yore had been running in districts that were often 60% or more red, and they depended heavily on folks who were willing to split the ticket for them – until they didn’t, of course, which is what happened en masse in 2010. The challenge today is holding onto the folks who had been fairly reliable Republican voters before 2016. Donald Trump (and to a lesser extent his acolytes like Dan Patrick) are the reason these voters are turning away, which is why the strategy of pretending that Trump doesn’t exist is so compelling. The problem with that is that Donald Trump is the Republican Party these days, and the Republican Party is Donald Trump. That presents a bit of a conundrum for the likes of Troy Nehls, himself a longtime Republican officeholder. He may yet win – maybe the district won’t have shifted enough, or maybe enough people will vote for him because they liked him as Sheriff regardless of other factors, or whatever. But I’m pretty sure this isn’t the campaign he thought he’d be running when he first entered the race.

Harris County issues school closure order

Jul 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

This was expected.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

Harris County and Houston health authorities on Friday ordered all public and non-religious private schools to delay opening for in-person instruction until at least Sept. 8 — a date likely to be extended unless the region sees a significant reduction in its COVID-19 outbreak.

Flanked by their respective health authorities, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said the region’s novel coronavirus outlook appears too dire to allow the restart of face-to-face classes before Labor Day. Most Houston-area public school districts already had pushed back their in-person start dates to Sept. 8, though a few remained on track to hold on-campus classes in August.

“The last thing I want to do is shut down a brick-and-mortar representation of the American dream,” Hidalgo said Friday. “But right now, we’re guided by human life.”

With the decision, officials in all five of the state’s largest counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Travis — have ordered the closure of public schools through at least Labor Day.

None of the Greater Houston region’s other large counties — Fort Bend, Montgomery, Brazoria and Galveston — have issued closure orders. However, Montgomery County public health officials recommended this week that their school districts delay their start dates or remain online-only through Labor Day.

The Harris County order comes four days after Hidalgo and Public Health Executive Director Umair Shah issued a non-binding recommendation that campuses stay closed until October at the earliest. While county and city officials held off Friday on mandating closures through September, Hidalgo said reopening buildings immediately after Labor Day “is still likely too soon.”

County and city officials said they will need to see a significant decrease in multiple measures, including case counts, rate of positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths, before they OK the reopening of campuses. Local health officials, however, have not set specific COVID-19 outbreak benchmarks that must be met.

“If we want our schools to reopen quicker in person, it’s going to take all of us pulling together to do that,” Shah said.

See here for the background. This was done in part so that HISD would be in compliance with the TEA’s current guidelines. We all want our kids to get back to school in a safe manner as quickly as possible. That means not flattening but crushing the curve, getting coronavirus infections way down to much more manageable levels. We have the month of August to make that happen. Are we going to take this seriously – face masking, social distancing, self-quarantining as needed – or not? The choice is ours.

Of course Abbott’s “Strike Force” are all Abbott donors

Jul 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

I have three things to say about this.

Members of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s coronavirus “strike force” have contributed hundreds of thousand of dollars to his re-election campaign as the number of COVID-19 cases and the death toll has mounted, records show.

Since naming members of the Strike Force to Open Texas in mid April, Abbott pulled in just over $640,000 from appointees or affiliated groups, according to his most recent campaign finance report on file with the Texas Ethics Commission. All had donated previously to Abbott, one of the most prodigious fundraisers in Texas political history.

The new contributions drew fire from ethics watchdogs and the Texas Democratic Party, the latter accusing Abbott of having “profited off this crisis” and calling on him to return the money.

[…]

Among the latest strike force donors who gave to Abbott in the last six weeks: former Astros owner Drayton McLane, $250,000; Texas restaurant operator Bobby Cox, $137,596; South Texas businessman Alonzo Cantu, $25,000; the Border Health PAC, closely tied to Cantu, $150,000; Sam Susser, chairman of BancAffliated, $50,000; Bruce Bugg, chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, $25,000; and Balous Miller, owner of Bill Miller BBQ, $5,000, records show.

Susser, the banker and investor who recently gave Abbott $50,000, said he gives money to the governor not to influence any policy outcomes but because he believes the governor is “doing a terrific job leading our state.”

“If any of those critics would like to have my job, and can do it better, more power to them,” Susser said. “I try to do the best I can. It cost me a ton of time and money to do those things. And I’m not very empathetic to whatever criticism may be out there.”

1. Duh!

2. I mean, seriously, this is the way Abbott has operated since Day One. Donors get appointments, and appointees make donations. As it ever was, as it shall be.

3. Hey, remember when Abbott first named the Strike Force, which was supposed to help him reopen the economy now that we had that pesky virus under control? And it had a couple of medical expert types who were supposed to help develop a strategy for comprehensive testing and tracing? Good times, good times. What metric do you suppose Sam Susser is using to evaluate his and his teammates’ performance on the Strike Force? Because from where I sit, I don’t think it would be that hard to find people who would in fact have done a better job. The bar to clear is not very high.

CD03 poll: Taylor 43, Seikaly 37

Jul 25th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

I expect we’ll see a fair amount of Congressional district polling this cycle.

Lulu Seikaly

There is a single-digit race underway for Texas’ traditionally red 3rd Congressional District, according to a new poll from the new Democratic nominee’s campaign.

The nominee, Lulu Seikaly, starts the general election trailing incumbent Rep. Van Taylor, R-Plano, by 6 percentage points among likely voters, according to the survey. Forty-three percent of respondents said they’d vote for Taylor, 37% backed Seikaly and 5% supported Libertarian Christopher Claytor.

Furthermore, the poll found a tight presidential race in the district, with presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump by 2 points. Trump carried the district by 14 points four years ago.

In a memo, the pollster said the data showed the district is “very much in play” this November, noting that Seikaly is “within striking distance” of Taylor despite being known to only 18% of voters. The memo highlighted how her Taylor’s lead shrinks to 2 points among voters who described themselves “very motivated” to turn out.

The district is not among the seven that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified as pickup opportunities this fall in Texas. But Seikaly and some other Democrats see opportunity after Beto O’Rourke lost it by just 3 points in 2018

Taylor won the district by 10 points in 2018, ran unopposed in his March primary and remains far better-funded than Seikaly. The Plano attorney won her party’s primary runoff last week, getting 61% of the vote to 39% for Sean McCaffity.

See the aforementioned polling memo for more details. Here’s a good visual representation of how the district has shifted since 2016.

This is the second recent poll I’ve seen of a competitive Texas Congressional district. There was a poll in CD06 a little while ago, which also showed Joe Biden tied with Donald Trump, while the lesser-known Democratic Congressional challenger was a few points back. Both were internal polls, which require a higher level of skepticism, not because the poll is likely to be crap but because the candidate who commissioned the poll would not have released it if it had not been a result they wanted to tout. That said, keep two things in mind. One is that both sides can release internal polls, and there have been studies to show that a partisan difference in who releases internal Congressional polls is a correlated with that party doing well overall in that election. In other words, if we do wind up seeing a bunch of Democratic candidate polls, and few Republican internal polls, that does tell you something.

The other thing is something I discussed in 2018, when we saw numerous polls in hot districts like CD07 and CD32, which is that there is a correlation between how a top-of-ticket candidate (Beto in 2018, Biden in 2020) is doing in a particular district and how that candidate is doing statewide. In 2018, Beto was doing better in these Congressional polls than he was doing in statewide polls, for the most part. One of the points I made at the time was that it wasn’t possible for Beto to be (for example) tied in CD07 but trailing statewide by nine or ten points. What we have here – tentatively, with a very limited data set in this early going – is a bit of confirmation that Biden really is running close to, maybe even ahead of, Trump in Texas, because Biden winning Texas is correlated with Biden running even or ahead in a bunch of Congressional districts, including CDs 03 and 06.

Again, none of this is to say that either of these polls represent God’s honest truth. It is to say that you can’t have Biden running even with Trump in those districts without also having Biden running even with or ahead of Trump in Texas, and vice versa. Maybe those propositions turn out to be false, and we see that Biden is to fall short in both places. Even if Biden is in the position suggested by these polls, the challengers like Lulu Seikaly and Stephen Daniel may not be there with him – Beto ran ahead of nearly everybody wherever you looked, and candidates with weaker fundraising tended to lag several points behind him. Fundamentals still matter. The point is that right now, the data is telling us a consistent story. We should acknowledge that.

UPDATE: Another internal poll, from CD21, which shows Biden up three in the district (50-47) and challenger Wendy Davis trailing incumbent Chip Roy by one, 46-45. This too is consistent with the overall thesis.

A very early glimmer of some possibly good news

Jul 25th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

We may be finally bending the curve, thanks to people finally taking seriously the need to wear face masks in public.

Three weeks after Gov. Greg Abbott required Texans to wear masks, epidemiologists and disease modelers say they are cautiously optimistic that the mandate is helping the state turn a corner in its efforts to contain an outbreak that has killed more than 4,500 Texans.

Throughout the summer, Texas’ coronavirus outbreak became grimmer by the day and by almost every metric: case counts, hospitalizations, deaths. But in the past week or so, Abbott and some of the state’s public health officials began to see hope in the daily case counts as they appeared to stabilize.

A growing body of evidence points to widespread mask-wearing as an effective strategy for containing the virus, and one North Texas researcher’s statistical analysis published this week argued that local mask orders in the region reduced viral transmission enough to avoid a lockdown. The governor, who has faced blistering criticism for his handling of the pandemic from members of his own political party, immediately seized upon those findings in defense of his statewide order.

“A community lock down is not needed as long as masks & other distancing strategies are used,” Abbott wrote Monday on Twitter, citing the analysis by Rajesh Nandy, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of North Texas Health Science Center.

But public health experts warn that more restrictive lockdowns may still be appropriate in the state’s hardest-hit regions, as the disease continues to infect about 10 times as many people each day compared with two months ago, ravaging some parts of the state more severely than others.

State data now appears to show new daily infections leveling off, albeit at nearly record highs. There were around 9,100 daily new cases of the virus on average over the past week. The state recorded its largest number of daily new cases July 15, at 10,791. On Thursday, that number was 9,507.

“The downside is even though we are approaching another plateau, we are at a much higher level than in May,” Nandy said.

Yes, it would be good news if the case rate stops going up. But it won’t truly be good news until the number of infections starts to go down, and then continues to go down. You know, like it has in New York and Europe and Asia and other places with generally functional governments. It’s when we get the virus down to levels at or below where we were when we first shut down back in March that we can truly contemplate things like safely sending kids back to school and reopening the economy. You’d think this would be something that would be better understood by the elected officials who have been so resistant to taking basic measures to fight COVID-19 – poll data consistently shows that the public understands this, even if they’re not always great about doing it in the absence of leadership – but clearly for some people, these things have to be learned the hard way. And as they are learning this, the hospitals are still at capacity, and could get overwhelmed at any time.

The irony there is that it may take another broad, mostly national shutdown to get to the point we want to get to. That won’t happen under this President, and if it’s still a necessary thing under the next one, then my god have we effed this up beyond all comprehension. In the meantime:

Now Starr County is at a dangerous “tipping point,” reporting an alarming number of new cases each day, data show. Starr County Memorial Hospital — the county’s only hospital — is overflowing with COVID-19 patients.

The county has been forced to form what is being compared to a so-called “death panel.” A county health board – which governs Starr Memorial – is set to authorize critical care guidelines Thursday that will help medical workers determine ways to allocate scarce medical resources on patients with the best chance to survive.

A committee will deem which COVID-19 patients are likely to die and send them home with family, Jose Vasquez, the county health authority, said during a news conference Tuesday.

“The situation is desperate,” Vasquez said. “We cannot continue functioning in the Starr County Memorial Hospital nor in our county in the way that things are going. The numbers are staggering.”

That’s the same Starr County that was once lauded for its low infection rate and ability to keep the virus under control. That was back when local officials had the authority to make and enforce shelter-in-place orders, before Greg Abbott took that authority away. Starr County now plans to issue a new shelter in place order, though of course they won’t be able to enforce it. Greg Abbott could let them enforce it, and he could let other local governments that want to take a step back in an effort to get their numbers down do so, but that’s not something he has any interest in doing. And so here we are.

Beer gardens get jerked around

Jul 25th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

First, we had this.

Saint Arnold Brewing announced Monday that it will temporarily close its beer garden and restaurant. The reason? Gov. Greg Abbott’s office ruled it is a bar, not a restaurant, and therefore should close according to the latest coronavirus shutdown guidelines.

As a response to the surge in virus cases in Texas, the governor backtracked on his reopening plan, ordering bars to close again on June 29. As most restaurants sell alcohol and most bars sell food, the state’s delineation between the two is a “51 percent rule”: if a venue’s alcohol sales make up 51 percent or more of its total revenue, it is considered a bar.

Brock Wagner, Saint Arnold’s founder and brewer, got a call from a local Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) agent on Friday, saying they had received a complaint that Saint Arnold had reopened in violation of the current pandemic orders. When calculating the brewery’s sales breakdown, the governor’s office took into account the beer Saint Arnold sells to its distributors. In addition to its on-premise operations, the Houston brewery has a solid retail presence across Texas and in Louisiana, producing about 70,000 barrels of beer last year.

“According to that, we are the world’s biggest bar,” said Wagner. He believes this ruling defies common sense, as it does not distinguish beer sold to distributors for retail purposes from a beer sold at the restaurant to a customer.

Wagner tried to appeal the decision and contact the governor’s team over the weekend, but was unsuccessful. The brewery announced the closure on Monday. (The governor’s office did not return a request for comment by press time.)

Saint Arnold is back to doing curbside and drive-through sales only; the shutdown of dine-in operations will result in lost jobs.

“They claim that they want to be opening Texas and keeping people at work,” said Wagner. “Instead there’s decisions like this, which are going to eliminate 75 jobs if we don’t get this reversed.”

That story was from July 13. We’re familiar with the plight of the bars that serve food but not enough food for them to be classified as restaurants. This is an arbitrary distinction, one that doesn’t make a lot of sense, and it’s having a bad effect on a lot of craft breweries. But then it looked like there was a breakthrough last week:

You still may not sit down in a bar for a drink, but you may be able to get served at a Texas brewery or other retail alcohol establishment and then sit down at an outdoor patio to enjoy your drink, provided social distancing is followed.

In a decision issued with little fanfare late last week, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission began allowing retail and the manufacturers of alcohol beverages, like breweries, to reopen their outdoor patios to service again.

Community Impact Newspaper in Houston reported that TABC’s decision follows a direct appeal from St. Arnold’s Brewery, which had been forced to close its beer garden under Gov. Greg Abbott’s late June order that shut down all bars that generate more than 51% of their profits from alcohol sales.

TABC did not notify the news media of the change or make a public announcement about the new order. It has apparently also not been available to answer questions from owners who are confused about qualifying for change.

Still not a reprieve for the bars that had to close their dining rooms, but something. Unfortunately, it didn’t last.

Late Wednesday night, the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission reversed a recent guideline change that would have let the state’s breweries reopen their patios for service.

The move is an abrupt about-face from last week, when the TABC signaled that brewers could pour product for patrons, so long as they quaffed their beers outside. Under that rule, breweries would have been clear to temporarily modify their licenses to exclude patios and beer gardens from their on-site premises, the Houston Chronicle reports.

However, in the latest turn, the TABC amended its guideline to say that modifying a business premises as unlicensed doesn’t exempt it from Gov. Greg Abbott’s June 26 executive order closing bars and other drinking establishments.

This is ridiculous. If we’ve decided that it’s safe for restaurants to operate at limited capacity, then it surely makes sense for outdoor patio restaurants, which is what these beer gardens are, to do so. Making a certain amount of revenue from alcohol sales should not prevent a restaurant from being treated like any other restaurant. We’re so in thrall to these ridiculous ancient laws and the all-powerful lobbies that keep them on the books that we’ve lost the plot. It just makes no sense at all. Like many businesses in Texas right now, craft breweries are having a rough time. Let’s not go out of our way to make it rougher.

UPDATE: And the pendulum has swung back in favor of beer gardens, though there are still issues with the 51% rule and the overall ability of small brewers to do their business. But it’s at least something.

There’s a lot of COVID litigation out there

Jul 25th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Texas Lawyer surveys the landscape.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a growing subset of new business litigation in Texas: companies suing the government over shutdown orders or definitions of essential versus nonessential businesses.

One of the latest examples to make headlines was a large group of bar owners who sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott over his order that closed bars again because of the rising infection rate in the Lone Star State.

But Texas Lawyer’s research revealed that the bar litigation was at least the 15th similar lawsuit filed in the state since the onset of the pandemic in early March. It’s likely that there are even more cases filed in small or mid-sized cities in Texas.

One of the most interesting legal claims raised by this type of litigation is whether the governor has exceeded his authority under the Texas Disaster Act to suspend laws in the state, said Brad Nitschke, partner in Jackson Walker in Dallas, who has been tracking COVID-19 litigation.

“The executive is given a large toolbox to respond to emergency situations. To some extent, at least, it sort of has to be that way,” Nitschke said. “I think we are more accustomed in Texas to what that looks like for a hurricane or tornado, or a catastrophic drought.”

Using the same statute to respond to a pandemic is sort of like trying to put a square peg into a round hole, he added.

“It’s clear the governor has significant authority to act in the case of a disaster,” Nitschke said. “I think the unique circumstance of a pandemic like this one is going to give courts a chance to figure out what the outer limits of that authority may be.”

[…]

It will be tough for plaintiffs to win these sorts of cases, said Christy Drake-Adams, assistant general counsel of the Texas City Attorneys Association and the Texas Municipal League.

Drake-Adams noted that the league’s insurance risk pool has seen eight similar lawsuits against small and mid-sized Texas cities, which generally argue about the definition of essential versus nonessential businesses.

“They think they should have been allowed to continue operating, because they were an essential business,” explained Drake-Adams.

She said that government defendants who are fighting these types of lawsuits have a strong defense: That governmental immunity protects them from the claims.

“To the extent that plaintiffs are throwing in constitutional claims, I would say it’s pretty clear that the government has broad authority to act to protect the public health and to regulate in times of emergency, and that authority is expressly provided in law. It’s not clear that anyone’s constitutional rights have been violated as a result of those regulations,” Drake-Adams said.

There was a quote in there from Jared Woodfill about why the plaintiffs are right, but 1) screw that guy, and 2) we’ve heard from him plenty in the stories about each individual lawsuit he’s filed. This was the first time I’d seen an analysis from someone not connected to any of the lawsuits, though since cities or counties are the defendants in some of them, the perspective given here isn’t fully objective, either. Texas Lawyer reviewed the Hunton Andrews Kurth COVID-19 Complaint Tracker for the basis of this story; you can see media coverage of that tracker here. About half of the lawsuits involve the state (two), a state agency (one), or local governments (five), the rest are between private entities. I feel like it will be multiple years before there’s little to no litigation of interest of this nature to continue tracking.

July 2020 campaign finance reports: Congress

Jul 24th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Congratulations, everyone. Not only have we made it to the other side of another quarterly reporting period, we have also successfully navigated the primary runoffs. My next quarterly finance report post for Congress will thus be shorter, as this is the last time the folks who did not win their runoffs will be listed. So let’s get on with it already. The January 2019 roundup is here, which closed out the 2017-18 election cycle, the April 2019 report is here, the July 2019 report is here, the October 2019 report is here, the January 2020 report is here, and the April 2020 report is here. For comparison, the January 2018 report is here, the April 2018 report is here, and the July 2018 report is here. The FEC summary page for Congress is here and for the Senate is here.

MJ Hegar – Senate
Royce West – Senate

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Colin Allred – CD32

Hank Gilbert – CD01
Sima Ladjevardian – CD02
Lulu Seikaly – CD03
Sean McCaffity – CD03
Stephen Daniel – CD06
Elizabeth Hernandez – CD08
Mike Siegel – CD10
Pritesh Gandhi – CD10
Adrienne Bell – CD14
Rick Kennedy – CD17
David Jaramillo – CD17
Wendy Davis – CD21
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Candace Valenzuela – CD24
Kim Olson – CD24
Julie Oliver – CD25
Carol Ianuzzi – CD26
Donna Imam – CD31
Christine Eady Mann – CD31


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   Hegar         6,605,966  5,751,355        0    902,092
Sen   West          1,867,804  1,689,538  258,103    178,265

07    Fletcher      4,384,162    978,573        0  3,453,656
32    Allred        3,801,649    924,378        0  2,980,715  

01    Gilbert         245,146     96,526   50,000    148,619
02    Ladjevardian  1,674,680  1,129,634   50,000    545,046
03    Seikaly         409,531    370,312    3,000     39,219
03    McCaffity       507,661    441,938        0     65,723
06    Daniel          328,097    243,191        0     84,906
08    Hernandez
10    Siegel          917,771    756,306        0    164,956
10    Gandhi        1,276,854  1,200,742        0     76,112
14    Bell            103,734     81,576        0     11,247
17    Kennedy          97,859     87,125   11,953     12,161
17    Jaramillo        21,246     17,942        0      3,303
21    Davis         4,467,270  1,536,995        0  2,930,275
22    Kulkarni      2,530,971  1,352,948        0  1,205,791
23    Jones         4,133,598  1,215,227        0  3,009,888
24    Valenzuela    1,119,403  1,008,739        0    110,664
24    Olson         1,667,400  1,417,247   20,000    250,153
25    Oliver          681,850    591,851    2,644     89,999
26    Ianuzzi          84,645     66,691   46,050     17,954
31    Mann            372,445    353,802   44,500     20,080
31    Imam            449,274    407,175        0     42,099

First things first, any worries about fundraising capacity in these brutally awful times have been assuaged. The totals speak for themselves, but let’s go into some detail anyway. Basically, the candidate in nearly every race of interest is ahead of their 2018 pace, often by a lot. Let me put this in another table to quantify:


Dist  Year     Candidate     Raised       Cash
==============================================
02    2018        Litton    843,045    407,674
02    2020  Ladjevardian  1,674,680    545,046

03    2018         Burch    153,559     19,109
03    2020       Seikaly    409,531     39,219

06    2018       Sanchez    358,960     67,772
06    2020        Daniel    328,097     84,906

10    2018        Siegel    171,955     46,852
10    2020        Siegel    917,771    164,956

21    2018        Kopser  1,594,724    364,365
21    2020         Davis  4,467,270  2,930,275

22    2018      Kulkarni    405,169     89,434
22    2020      Kulkarni  2,530,971  1,205,791

23    2018   Ortiz Jones  2,256,366  1,150,851
23    2020   Ortiz Jones  4,133,598  3,009,888

24    2018      McDowell     61,324     28,091
24    2020    Valenzuela  1,119,403    110,664

25    2018        Oliver    199,047     78,145
25    2020        Oliver    681,850     89,999

31    2020         Hegar  1,618,359    867,266
31    2020          Imam    449,274     42,099

With the exception of CD31, where no one has come close to MJ Hegar (who as the US Senate nominee may help boost turnout in this district anyway), and CD06, where Stephen Daniel is a pinch behind Jana Sanchez in fundraising (but also a pinch ahead in cash on hand), each nominee is substantially better off this time around. Todd Litton, Joe Kopser, and the original version of Gina Ortiz Jones were all strong fundraisers, and they’ve all been blown out of the water this year. Mike Siegel, Sri Kulkarni, and Julie Oliver have all greatly outpaced themselves. I will maintain that we might have won CD24 in 2018 if we’d had a candidate who could raise money; that’s very much not a problem this year. Lulu Seikaly is well ahead of Lori Burch, who was herself quite a pleasant surprise in CD03.

There are still things to address. Seikaly, Siegel, and Valenzuela all needed to spend a bunch of money in the extended runoffs, and thus need to build up cash with less time to do it. Given their records so far, I’m not too worried about it. Both Jana Sanchez and 2018 Julie Oliver had May runoffs to win, so their modest cash on hand totals were understandable, but Stephen Daniel and 2020 Julie Oliver were both March winners, so I don’t understand why they’ve been spending as much as they have at this point. I hope that isn’t a problem. Donna Imam is not going to approach Hegar’s fundraising prowess, but she alone among the crowd in CD31 seemed to have some capacity for the task, so maybe she’ll at least make up some ground.

The big difference is that there isn’t a juggernaut Senate campaign, which was a boost to downballot candidates in 2018, this time around. On the other hand, we do have a Presidential campaign, which is already airing ads, and we have the DNC airing ads, and we have the DCCC, which has added CD02 to its already-long target list (though they may have dropped CD31 by now). Point being, there will be plenty of other money invested that will help with these races, directly or indirectly.

So overall, a pretty rosy picture, and the financial resources to support the notion that a whole lot of seats are actually in play. Remember how I spent much of the 2018 cycle talking about how there never used to be any Congressional money raised in Texas, outside of CD23? The world is in flames, but that one small part of the Before Times, I don’t miss.

Last but not least, a brief shoutout to Hank Gilbert, playing the part of Dayna Steele in this cycle – a great candidate and a swell human being in an absolute no-hope district against a terrible incumbent who is raising a surprising amount of money. If doing good and being good were all it took, Hank would be in the top tier of next year’s freshman class. Maybe someday we’ll live in that world. Godspeed, Hank.

A deeper dive into the Texas polls

Jul 24th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

From Decision Desk:

Whenever there is a new poll of Texas released, there are a ton of hot takes on Twitter. Old believers of Texas as the great blue whale for the Democrats move to dismiss the poll, saying that Texas has looked good for Democrats in the past, but that they just can’t seem to pull it off. There are others who say that the numbers are real, and are a result of inevitable demographic shifts. Others dismiss Texas numbers as not mattering, because if Texas is close, surely the election is already won for the Democrats.

So let’s look at all of these arguments, why they are right/wrong, what the actual contents of the poll (including the crosstabs, which get very little attention) are saying, and how you can extrapolate that into the broader electorate.

The first argument of new Texas polls, is that polls showing a small Biden lead now is wrong, and Trump will flip it back when he gains in the polls/ when likely voter screens are more prevalent. I’ve written about Likely Voter screens before, and why they may not hurt the Democrats as they have in past years, so I won’t write about that now, so instead I’ll talk about the first argument, that a small lead will not hold. Firstly, polls have underestimated the Democrats in Texas in 2016 and 2018, particularly in the 2018 Senate race, where Republican Senator Ted Cruz was expected to win by high single digits, only to cling to a ~2% win. Additionally, if you only believed the polls, there would be no Democratic representatives in TX-07 and TX-32, as both were polled by the NYT/Sienna, showing small GOP leads, along with a large lead for Will Hurd in the TX-23. Both the TX-07 and TX-32 were won by over 5 points, and the TX-23 turned into a nail biting finish on election night, which has (probably, at least in part) lead to the retirement of Will Hurd in 2020. Other people dismiss those numbers because they expect Trump to claw back some of his losses close to November. The problem with this assumption is that it is the same working assumption that analysts have had since Joe Biden won the nomination, and at every point it has yet to materialize. Since Biden locked up the nomination the pandemic has only gotten worse, and Trump has done nothing but lose ground almost every month. While there is likely a floor for the GOP in modern American politics, and while we are *probably* approaching that, there is no reason to think that floor doesn’t include a loss in Texas.

The author goes on to discuss Texas as a swing state, the crosstabs of that recent Quinnipiac poll, and the Senate race, so go read the rest. I’d also direct you to G. Elliott Morris on what to expect when the polls generally switch to a likely voter model from the current registered voter model. All of this comes with a certain level of uncertainty baked in, which is why it’s good to consider an array of polls and not fixate on any one poll, but if you want a quick response to anyone who will just dismiss the numbers we’ve been seeing, here you go.

County Clerk touts curbside voting, asks for more early voting

Jul 24th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

From the inbox:

Chris Hollins

On Friday, July 10, the last day of Early Voting during the July Primary Runoff Elections, the Harris County Clerk’s Office piloted Drive-Thru Voting as an additional option for voters to cast their ballot safely in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the first time in Texas history that an elections office held Drive-Thru Voting, where many voters at a time could cast their ballot without leaving the comfort and safety of their car.

“My number one priority is to keep voters and poll workers safe,” said Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins. “The feedback we received from the Drive-Thru Voting pilot proves that voters felt safe exercising their right to vote and that it was an easy and efficient alternative to going inside a voting center. We are exploring options to expand this program for the November General Election at select locations as another method of voting during COVID-19.”

Voters raved about the experience. Of the 200 voters who voted at the Drive-Thru Voting site, 141 completed an optional survey reviewing the new service. Some wrote that Drive-Thru Voting was “easy to use” and others cited how the service “made voters feel safe.” One respondent even wrote that it was their “best voting experience EVER!”

Voters would overwhelmingly use the service again and recommend it to others. When asked on a scale of 0 through 10, with 10 being extremely likely, whether they would consider using the same service if it is provided again in the future, voters on average gave a score of 9.70. On the same scale, when asked whether they would recommend Drive-Thru Voting to another voter, voters on average gave a score of 9.66.

Fear of exposure to COVID-19 was the top reason for using Drive-Thru Voting. When asked why voters chose to vote using the Drive-Thru Voting service as opposed to the traditional walk-in voting method, 82 (58%) cited worries about health and safety in the midst of the pandemic. Other frequently mentioned reasons included the convenience of the service and pure curiosity about the experience of Drive-Thru Voting.

Drive-Thru Voting was piloted from 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM on Friday, July 10th, 2020, at Houston Community College – West Loop.

There’s a video at the link if you want to see it for yourself. Curbside has been done in some other locations, and it was specifically discussed as an option, in a much larger and more ambitious context, in this Chron story from April, by poli sci professor Bob Stein. There are limiting factors to doing this – the equipment is difficult to move, it’s labor intensive, and those combine to make the process slow things down for other voters, at least when this is done on an ad hoc basis. Done like this, where there’s a set number of designated locations for curbside might be more feasible, depending on how many people want to use it. I don’t want to come off like Debbie Downer here, this is a great example of outside-the-box thinking, it’s just that there are challenges that would need to be addressed to do this at anything approaching scale.

One thing that everyone would agree worked well for the July runoffs was expanded early voting. Hollins also sent a letter to Greg Abbott to remind him that he promised us more early voting in November as well.

Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins has asked Gov. Greg Abbott to extend the early voting period for the November general election to ensure residents can cast ballots safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a letter to the governor Wednesday, Hollins asked for at least one additional week of balloting, and urged Abbott to set a schedule by the end of July. Early voting is scheduled to begin Oct. 19; Election Day is Nov. 3.

“It is crucial that elections officials and voters know the amount of time early voting will take place so that the many required complicated elections plans may be undertaken,” Hollins wrote. “Without that information, full planning and preparation for this important election cannot be undertaken.”

A spokesman for Abbott did not respond to a request for comment. Hollins noted that Abbott added extra days of early voting during the July primary runoffs, which were rescheduled from May because of the pandemic.

See here for your reminder about Abbott’s promise, and here for a copy of Hollins’ letter, which footnotes the Texas Tribune story that reported on Abbott’s extended early voting promise. I’d like to see early voting extended by two weeks, starting on October 5, but I’ll settle for one is that’s all Abbott is willing to give. It’s the best way – well, the second best way, after expanded voting by mail, which we’re not going to get – to keep the voters safe. Hollins is right, the sooner Abbott makes good on his promise, the better.

More like Ike than Harvey

Jul 24th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Not sure this is a choice I want to have to make, but here we are.

Hurricanes are expected to blow through Texas more quickly during the last 25 years of this century.

A study led by Rice University researcher Pedram Hassanzadeh found that climate change will make future hurricanes fast-moving storms like Ike in 2008 rather than slow-moving rainmakers like Harvey in 2017.

“We find that the probability of having strong northward steering winds will increase with climate change, meaning hurricanes over Texas will be more likely to move like Ike than Harvey,” Hassanzadeh said in a news release.

Hurricane Harvey caused an estimated $125 billion in damage, matching 2005’s Katrina as the costliest hurricane in U.S. history, according to the news release. Ike’s coastal flooding and high winds caused $38 billion in damage across several states. In 2008, it was the second-costliest U.S. hurricane. It has since moved to sixth.

The study is here. Ike cost less than Harvey, though that’s partially an accident of geography – had Ike stayed a bit more to the west it would have made a direct hit on Houston, in what has been described as a “worst case scenario” (at least pre-Harvey) for our town. Point being, neither is a good option. Maybe we ought to, I don’t know, do something about climate change so we don’t have to face choices like this in the future. Just a thought.

Quinnipiac: Biden 45, Trump 44

Jul 23rd, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

Just another poll showing Joe Biden in the lead in Texas, though you have to scroll way down in the Quinnipiac press release to get to that.

With Texas as one of the biggest hot spots in the coronavirus pandemic, voters say 65 – 31 percent that the spread of coronavirus is “out of control,” according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University poll of registered voters in Texas released today.

Nearly three-quarters, 74 – 25 percent, think the spread of the coronavirus in the state is a serious problem.

Two-thirds, 66 percent, say they personally know someone who has been diagnosed with the coronavirus, a 31-point spike since early June when 35 percent said they personally knew someone who had been diagnosed with the coronavirus.

“The concern is palpable as the number of virus victims soars and it’s getting more personal every day, as the patient lists increasingly include friends, family and neighbors,” said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.

CONCERNS ABOUT HOSPITALS

Nearly 7 out of 10 voters, 69 percent, say they are either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about the state’s hospitals running out of space to care for sick patients. Thirty-one percent say they are “not so concerned” or “not concerned at all.”

STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS

More than half of voters, 53 – 44 percent, think the governor should not issue a stay-at-home order for the state to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

However, voters say 68 – 29 percent that if local officials want to issue stay-at-home orders for their local areas, the governor should allow them to do so.

FACE MASKS

Eighty percent of voters approve of Governor Greg Abbott’s order requiring most people in Texas to wear a face mask in public. Nineteen percent disapprove.

RE-OPENINGS

More than half of voters, 52 percent, say looking back, Governor Abbott reopened the economy “too quickly.” Thirty-three percent say he reopened the economy “at about the right pace,” and 13 percent say he did it “too slowly.”

More than three-quarters of voters, 76 – 21 percent, say they believe that the closing of bars is effective in slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE

Voters are split on the way Governor Abbott is handling the response to the coronavirus with 47 percent approving and 48 percent disapproving. It’s a 21-point swing in the net approval from early June when 56 percent of voters approved and 36 percent disapproved.

In contrast, there isn’t much change in the way voters in Texas view President Trump’s handling of the response to the coronavirus. Texas voters approve, a negative 45 – 52 percent, compared to June’s 47 – 51 percent approval.

JOB APPROVALS

Governor Abbott: Voters approve with a split 48 – 44 percent of the job Governor Abbott is doing, a 20- point swing in the net approval from June when voters approved 56 – 32 percent.

President Trump: President Trump receives a negative 45 – 51 percent job approval rating, virtually unchanged from a month ago.

Senator Ted Cruz: 48 percent approve, 42 percent disapprove.

Senator John Cornyn: 41 percent approve, 35 percent disapprove.

“The governor takes a big hit for his haste in trying to jump start the state. Popular just seven weeks ago, his approval rating drops precipitously,” Malloy added.

2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

In the race for the White House, 45 percent of voters support former Vice President Joe Biden, while 44 percent back President Trump. That compares to early June when the race was equally tight and voters backed Trump 44 percent to Biden’s 43 percent. In today’s survey, Democrats back Biden 94 – 3 percent, independents back Biden 51 – 32 percent and Republicans back Trump 89 – 6 percent.

“With crises swirling through American society and a country deeply divided, there’s no other way to slice it. It’s a tossup in Texas,” Malloy added.

[…]

2020 TEXAS SENATE RACE

In the race for the U.S. Senate, Republican Senator John Cornyn leads Democrat MJ Hegar 47 – 38 percent.

When asked about opinions of the candidates, 41 percent hold a favorable opinion of Cornyn, 24 percent hold an unfavorable opinion of him, and 34 percent haven’t heard enough about him.

For Hegar, 24 percent hold a favorable opinion, 19 percent unfavorable, and 56 percent haven’t heard enough about her.

Three out of the last four polls, and four out of the last six, show Biden in the lead. Out of the thirteen total polls in our collection, the average is now Trump 45.8 and Biden 45.2, which sure looks like a tossup to me. And remember, a big chunk of Trump’s advantage comes from two of the four polls from before June. Take those out and limit the collection to the nine polls from June and July, and it’s Biden in the lead, by the tiny margin of 45.67 to 45.44 over Trump. Like I said, a tossup.

By the way, just for grins I went back and found the FiveThirtyEight poll collection for Texas from 2016. You know what they don’t have in that pile of polls? A single poll showing Hillary Clinton in the lead. That’s not really a surprise, as no one seriously thought Texas would be competitive in 2016, not after Mitt Romney won the state by 16 points in 2012, but it does show how different things are this year. I also found the 2018 polling archive, in which you can actually find one poll with Beto in the lead, and two others where he was tied with Ted Cruz. The final polling average there was Cruz by five, which as we know was an over-estimate. But again, my point here is that things are different this year. Trump is up by less than one point in this year’s 538 average.

As for the Senate race, as you can see Hegar trails Cornyn by nine, though with a significant number of undecideds still out there. She doesn’t do as well as Biden among Democrats (82-6, versus 94-3) or independents (42-40, versus 51-32), and trails among the 35-49 year old crowd while Biden leads with them. I think we’re still in low name recognition territory, with a bit of primary runoff hangover, but it’s another data point to suggest Cornyn may run ahead of Trump. We’ve had mixed evidence on this score, and it’s something I’m watching closely.

Finally, more evidence that Greg Abbott has damaged his standing by his poor handling of the COVID crisis. I think he has a better chance than Trump does of turning that around – not hard, since I think Trump has no chance of doing that – but he’s definitely hurt himself. May all polls going forward include these questions.

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