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January 29th, 2022:

Three very early primary thoughts

Jan 29th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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1. After the exceedingly small number of mail ballots requested and cast in the District G special election, the primaries will be our next test of the SB1 effect on voting by mail. I will be interested to see if the number of mail ballots requested are down, and in particular if there’s a difference in the numbers for each party. For purposes of comparison, this is how many mail ballots were requested by voters in Harris County for each primary in 2020 and 2018.

2020

Dem – 38,667 requested
GOP – 31,162 requested

2018

Dem – 33,236 requested
GOP – 30,579 requested

That’s how many were requested, not all of which were returned. Switching to returned mail ballots, they made up the following percentages of total votes cast in each primary:

2020 Dem – 28,346 mail ballots out of 328,496 total = 8.6%
2020 GOP – 25,562 mail ballots out of 195,723 total = 13.1%

2018 Dem – 22,695 mail ballots out of 167,982 total = 13.5%
2018 GOP – 24,500 mail ballots out of 156,387 total = 15.7%

I will do a comparison with these totals after the votes are in. Still won’t be enough to draw conclusions, but it will be a significant data point.

2. Also of interest, given the huge amount of attention that the increase in Republican voting in various South Texas counties got in 2020, is how this may affect the turnout for the 2022 primaries. Dems have dominated these for years, so this will be a good test of the idea that the 2020 general election has changed voting patterns in this part of the state. Again, I would not draw any broad conclusions – primary turnout may be affected more by local races than the statewide or legislative contests, and primary voting may be a habit that dies more slowly than general election voting, if indeed there is a real change and not a one-election blip happening. I’m going to watch five counties – Cameron, Hidalgo, Maverick, Starr, and Webb. Here’s how they turned out in the 2018 primaries:


County      Dem votes  GOP votes
================================
Cameron        14,123      4,003
Hidalgo        37,739      7,050
Maverick        6,300        111
Starr           6,729         15
Webb           21,137      1,426

Those totals for Starr and Webb are not typos, I assure you. The Republican statewide primary races are much higher profile this year than they were in 2018, so that by itself might draw more people to that side of the ledger. As before, local races may pull people in the Democratic direction, in the way that numerous Democratic lawyers used to vote in the Republican primary in Harris County so they could affect the judicial races. I’m just looking for a data point.

3. I haven’t gotten any email from Erica Davis recently. That introductory video I noted in her email to Democratic precinct chairs from earlier in the month had 413 views and zero comments as of Friday afternoon. Her campaign Facebook page has 830 followers. She has five posts for January, with this one getting 24 likes and two comments. None of the others has as many as ten likes. By comparison, Judge Hidalgo has 47K followers, and most of her posts have hundreds of likes – this one has over 1,600 likes – and dozens of comments. To be sure, some of the comments are from people who oppose her, and of course she’s had a much longer time to build a following; this is very much an advantage of incumbency. All I’m saying is that whatever Erica Davis is doing, it’s not reaching a lot of people. And she still has not told us why we should vote to replace Judge Hidalgo on the ballot with herself.

HCC will have an election to fill its vacancy

Jan 29th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

So much for an appointment.

Re: HCC Board of Trustees District II Position

Residents of District II and the Community At-Large:

The Houston Community College (HCC) Board of Trustees remains committed to serving the best interest of the entire community. This commitment extends to our students, faculty, staff, and equally to each and every district that comprises the HCC service area.

During the course of the past few months, the HCC governing board has had the responsibility of navigating challenging circumstances which directly impact District II and its residents. In fact, these unforeseen circumstances impact the entire HCC district and call upon us as a governing board to act prudently in a manner that best serves our community, while meeting the legal and policy requirements available to us.

Notably, the events surrounding the District II position have been distressing for many in District II, the HCC community, and for the HCC governing board. However, we will overcome this difficulty by working together in service to our remarkably diverse community.

To advance this important matter, the law provides for an election to fill the District II trustee position in May 2022. This anticipated election empowers the people of District II to choose their desired trustee and once elected, that individual will begin service on the HCC Board of Trustees. Until a new trustee is seated, we invite the District II community to apprise us of any concerns, questions and needs that may arise.

We greatly appreciate all the residents of District II and your patience throughout this process. We will continue to diligently work – in partnership – with the community to ensure that we all emerge from this situation stronger.

See here and here for the background. The message was signed by Dr. Cynthia Lenton-Gary, the new Board Chair. I don’t know why they were unable to find a suitable person to appoint to the position, which has been the normal course of action, but here we are. The election has not yet been set – I presume that will happen at the next Board meeting – but as noted before, it will be the only election run by Harris County on the uniform election date in May, which is Saturday, May 7. The primary runoff date is Tuesday, May 24, so you lucky duckies in HCC District 2 will get to vote twice in May. The lucky ducky who wins that election will then have to run again in 2023 get to serve through the end of what would have been Skillern-Jones’ term, through 2025. I’ll let you know when there’s more.

We’ll probably never know who Ken Paxton’s big campaign donors are

Jan 29th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

He has no interest in telling us, and there’s basically no mechanism to make him.

Best mugshot ever

Attorney General Ken Paxton recently announced a hefty $2.8 million campaign haul, showing the competition he can still raise big bucks while under FBI scrutiny.

But where most of the money came from is a mystery.

Paxton has yet to name all his campaign donors, despite a deadline last week that required disclosure.

Among the missing are those who paid up to $50,000 to rub elbows with Paxton and former President Donald Trump at a fundraiser in December. Entry to the private reception, held at Trump’s swanky Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, started at $1,000.

Paxton’s campaign blamed technical issues for the delay and promised to file an update once fixed. But the campaign has not said when and a spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Lax state ethics laws give Paxton little incentive to move quickly, open government advocates said. The fine for turning in his campaign finance report late is a flat $500, no matter whether it is tardy by a day or a month.

“Texas has the weakest, most corruption-prone campaign finance system in the country,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas. “It is striking that our top law enforcement official can’t manage to meet our extremely low disclosure requirements.”

All statewide candidates had to file reports by midnight Jan. 18 that detailed their fundraising and spending in the second half of 2021. The accounts offer a glimpse at campaigns’ financial health heading into the final stretch before the March 1 primary.

Three Republicans are vying to oust Paxton in what many see as the marquee GOP primary race. Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, former state Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert all posted seven-figure fundraising hauls last week.

Paxton did too. But his report came a day late and named the donors who gave just $652,000 of his $2.77 million total. Details dropped off for contributions made after mid-October.

The report is notable because Paxton’s fundraising was dwindling in late 2020 after several top staffers accused him of abusing the office to help a campaign donor and the FBI began investigating. Paxton has denied wrongdoing, but his GOP challengers say the scandal makes Paxton unfit for office and leaves the post vulnerable to Democratic flip.

Paxton’s fundraising fortunes seem to have shifted last summer when Trump endorsed his bid for a third term as attorney general. The fundraiser at Trump’s club on Dec. 9 reportedly netted Paxton’s campaign a whopping $750,000 – more than he reported raising in the months of July, August and September combined.

Those donors should be disclosed in Paxton’s campaign finance report. Only people who write checks or give cash worth less than about $90 don’t have to be named.

Staff for the Texas Ethics Commission, which oversees campaign finance reporting, have been in touch with Paxton’s campaign, general counsel J.R. Johnson said in a statement. But Johnson said he is “unaware of any planned date for an updated filing.”

Not really much to add here. Paxton doesn’t care about not following the rules, he knows there’s nothing anyone can do to make him follow the rules or enforce any consequences, and he figures that basically no one will care. He’s shown us who he is at every opportunity, and then goes looking for more. John Coby has more.

I repeat: We need to get more kids vaccinated

Jan 29th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Come on, Houston.

In spite of the spread of the omicron variant, national COVID-19 vaccination rates for children ages 5-11 remain low. The same is true for children in Harris County, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of CDC data.

Of Harris County’s children aged 5-11, only 18.2% of them are fully vaccinated; 22.2% have received one dose. Pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced the FDA authorization of their COVID-19 vaccine on October 29, 2021.

In Texas, most counties have low vaccination rates. Only 34 of Texas’ 254 counties have child vaccination rates above 10%.

When compared to other counties in the U.S. with child populations over 100,000 Harris County comes near the bottom of the list when ranked by vaccination rate.

At 13% fully vaccinated, Harris County’s child vaccination rate is barely higher than Dallas County’s (11%), lower than Bexar County’s (14%) and is about half of Travis County’s (26%).

That 18.2% cited appears to be a typo – according to both the embedded image in the story and the Kaiser Health News story, the actual figure is 12.8% for Harris. Half of what Travis County has done to this point, in other words. We have to do better than that.

And as a reminder why, there’s this.

Vaccines continued to provide strong protection against death from COVID-19 in December, even against the new omicron variant, according to state data released Friday.

Unvaccinated Texans were 16 times as likely to die from the virus in December, and were two times as likely to test positive for it. That gap has shrunk from the fall, likely due to omicron’s increased transmissibility.

The divide was most evident for Texans between 65 and 75 years old, who were 19 times more likely to die from COVID if they were unvaccinated. Nearly 80,000 COVID deaths have been reported in Texas since the pandemic began, the majority of them in 2021, when vaccines became available. Just under 1,600 deaths were reported to the state in December.

Yes, not being vaccinated is not the same risk for a 5-year-old as it is for a 75-year-old. But still, there are a lot more kids in the hospitals these days, and the little ones can certainly spread COVID to their elders. Get them their shots already.