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Bill Baldwin

Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #4

Nov 25th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

30 day campaign finance reports: Open City Council seats, part 2

Oct 22nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Finishing up with City Council candidates. Part One, for the other open seats, is here. July reports for F, J, and At Large #5 are here, and for At Large #4 are here. All of the finance reports that I have downloaded and reviewed are in this Google folder. Except for the reports that were filed non-electronically, which you can find here. Erik Manning’s invaluable spreadsheet remains my source for who’s in what race.


Candidate     Raised      Spent     Loan     On Hand
====================================================
Thomas        31,040     13,401        0      28,433
Huynh         21,600     20,599    9,500           0 
G Nguyen         740      1,001        0      19,981
Nelson         2,385      3,100        0       1,678
Zamora             0        305        0           0
R Nguyen

Adriatico     27,606     25,393   22,000      19,129
Cuellar       21,300     14,297        0      36,069
Curtis        15,105     11,867        0       7,639
Pollard       13,051     30,277   20,000      17,226
Rodriguez     10,069     10,070        0      10,620
Galvan           200        695        0         200
Patterson

Baldwin      110,394     38,562        0      52,074
Hellyar       49,841     36,372        0      32,763
Dolcefino     15,355      9,002        0       7,112
Plummer        9,834     23,490        0      32,139
Hausman        5,845      8,654        0       2,098
Bastida        1,103         51      200         750
McCrutcheon        0          0   34,000         150
Joseph
Laney
Rowe
Gonzalez

Alcorn        71,421     66,284        0      258,320
Woods          9,791      7,624        0            0
McNeese        9,705     13,606   30,000        3,305
Flowers        8,015     12,471    2,987        2,157
Rivera         2,335      1,732        0          602
Dick           1,435     93,248   75,000        1,435
Bonton           200     10,005   20,000       20,000
Batteau            0          0        0            0

We know that fundraising is not destiny. Especially in races where no one raises enough money to really do effective outreach, other factors (which most definitely include random luck) will affect the outcome. Plus, not all fundraising hauls are equal. A large number of small donations beats a small number of large donations, as that indicates breadth of support, and while all candidates can and do tap their personal networks, donations from within the city or district are worth more than donations from people elsewhere. You get the idea.

With all that said, we can draw some broad if shallow conclusions here. Tiffany Thomas has been the strongest fundraising in F from the beginning. Van Huynh has done a good job since July – he entered too late to have a July report – but apparently doesn’t have any cash on hand. His report leaves that field blank, and that figure can get fuzzy when a candidate also writes his own check. As for Giang “John” Nguyen, he reported $20K raised in July with the absurd amount of $8 in expenditures. He apparently hasn’t spent much more, so despite not taking in anything significant he’s still got almost $20K in the bank. You know how baseball fans say that at any given game you’ll see something you’ve never seen before? Reviewing city election campaign finance reports is kind of like that.

District J looks pretty wide open. It’s rare to see a race where nearly everyone has at least raised some decent amount of money. I would not take any bets on who might make that runoff.

At Large #4 and #5 follow more familiar patterns. Bill Baldwin was a late entrant in #4 but has done well since then. I wouldn’t call that enough money to really get your name out citywide, but he has the potential to get there. He lives and has his office in my neighborhood so many people around here know him. I’ve seen a respectable number of Baldwin signs, and a couple of signs that say “Don’t vote for Bill Baldwin in At Large #4”, which amuses me. There are also signs for Tiko Hausman, who lives in the First Ward but has been a fixture in the PTAs at Travis and Hogg. Nick Hellyar and Letitia Plummer have gotten the lion’s share of the endorsements. Insert shrug emoji here.

Sallie Alcorn has dominated fundraising in At Large #5 from the jump, and she has the most endorsements. Ashton Woods has a few, and no one else has more than one. She’s in a similar position to Abbie Kamin in C – do you spend a bunch now to maximize your chances of getting into the runoff, or do you hold back and hope to overwhelm whoever your runoff opponent is, assuming you get there? I say fire your shot now and let tomorrow take care of itself, but there’s room for debate.

That’s it for the city elections. I will not have the capacity to review 8 day reports, but I’ll probably at least take a look at the Mayoral numbers. As always, I hope this has been helpful. I’ll have HISD and HCC reports up soon.

Endorsement watch: Our first two At Large races

Oct 18th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Continuing with its “one contested incumbent and one open seat” theme, the Chron begins by endorsing David Robinson for another term.

CM David Robinson

Unlike council members who speak for specific districts, at-large representatives must take a wider view and consider the city as a whole when making decisions and setting priorities. During his time on the council, David Robinson has providedfor his more than 2 million constituents a thoughtful and balanced voice.

Robinson, 53, told the editorial board there is still a lot more work to be done at City Hall. Voters should allow him to continue that work.

Part of that effort is to improve the city’s resilience in the face of changing climate.

“We’re existentially threatened by global climate change, by storm surge, by things that have not yet struck our city and we are in the infancy of providing protection for,” Robinson said. He added that the city must figure out cost-effective ways to supplement flood mitigation projects undertaken by the county and the federal government.

[…]

The incumbent has proven he understands the problems facing Houston and that he is focused on finding solutions to them. We continue to place our trust in David Robinson and recommend him for At-Large Position 2.

Here are the July finance reports that include At Large #2. I’ll have the 30 Day reports posted this weekend. Not much to add here, Robinson’s main opponent is an anti-HERO pastor who got into a runoff with Robinson in 2015 and then lost to him by nine points. I don’t see much different this time around.

Over in At Large #4, the seat vacated by Amanda Edwards once she entered the Democratic primary for Senate, the Chron goes with Nick Hellyar, who jumped into this race from District C after Edwards’s departure.

Nick Hellyar

The contenders, who bring a wide range of experience and involvement in community advocacy, include Bill Baldwin, a civic activist known as the “King of the Heights” and member of the city planning commission; Letitia Plummer, a dentist and granddaughter of a Tuskegee Airman flight instructor; James “Joe” Joseph, pastor and founder of a Fifth Ward nonprofit, and Tiko Hausman, a business consultant with a background in government procurement.

Their qualifications and grasp of the issues facing Houston — from flood mitigation to city finances — are impressive. The residents of Houston should be heartened by the caliber of candidates seeking to represent them.

One, however, stands out for his knowledge of the inner workings of city hall: Nick Hellyar is a 37-year-old real estate agent with a “passion for municipal government” that grew out of early jobs working as constituent services manager for then-city council member James Rodriguez, whose three-term tenure representing District I ended in 2013. Hellyar also served as district director in then-state Rep. Carol Alvarado’s District 145 office.

It was there, Hellyar told the editorial board, that he learned how important city services are in the everyday lives of Houstonians.

“If their trash can doesn’t get picked up, and they call their council office and it gets picked up, that makes a huge difference in somebody’s life,” he said. “We need common sense leaders at the city level just to get everyday stuff done — make sure our roads are smooth, make sure we have adequate drainage, ensure that the water runs when you turn on the tap, ensure that we have public safety. So I want to be a common sense leader.”

The same link above includes the AL4 finance reports from July, which I had started working on before Edwards’ announcement. I’m working on these now. Hellyar actually entered the local political scene before his employment in then-CM Rodriguez’s office. I met him when he was volunteering for Jim Henley’s 2006 campaign for Congress in CD07. As I’ve said before, Tiko Reynolds-Hausman is a friend of mine, I know Bill Baldwin, and I interviewed Letitia Plummer during her campaign for CD22 last year. There are some good choices in this race.

Your Houston PAC

Jun 29th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
16 comments

There’s a new player on the local scene.

Bill Baldwin, a longtime real estate broker, volunteer and member of Houston’s planning commission, has launched a political action committee aimed at improving the city’s neighborhoods, schools and local governments.

The tenets of the nonpartisan PAC, called Your Houston, will center around issues of quality of life, resiliency, mobility and neighborhoods. It will focus on local elections and referendums.

[…]

The new PAC, he said, will work to support the efforts of local advocacy groups, many of which lack funding and influence.

“All of these groups are doing great advocacy work, but they don’t have money. They don’t have political power,” Baldwin said. “I’m going to add money and political power to advocacy, and elect amazing officials that think of our city as a 21st century city.”

Their Facebook page is here and their still-in-progress website is here. The Chron story says that they intend to engage in the Harris County flood bond election, “urging the county to clearly define the projects involved and then educating the public”. Which is fine, we can use all the engagement we can get on that. Beyond that, I’ll wait to see what they have to say on specific issues and which candidates they choose to back. A couple of their initial board members are people I know and trust, so that’s good, but as always the devil is in the details. Campos has more.

Chron overview of Heights dry referendum

Nov 2nd, 2016
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

For an issue that directly affects a few thousand people, this sure had gotten a lot of attention.

[Bill] Baldwin is part of the “Keep the Heights Dry” movement, a group of individuals urging residents who live in the dry part of the Heights to vote against the city of Houston proposition that would allow the legal sale of beer and wine for off-premise consumption.

If the proposition passes on Nov. 8, retailers like convenience and grocery stores would be able to sell beer and wine in a part of the Heights that has been dry since 1904. The change would not affect restaurants, which are able to sell alcohol by forming private clubs that their customers can join by providing their driver’s licenses.

Baldwin’s group is going up against the Houston Heights Beverage Coalition, a political action committee formed earlier this year to push the reversal of the dry law.

Largely at stake is the proposed development of a new H-E-B on a former Fiesta site at 2300 N. Shepherd.

H-E-B wants to buy the property but said it needs to be able to sell wine and beer in order for the store to be economically feasible.

“From a business proposition, if I spend $25 or $30 million building a store I also need to make sure it can earn a fair return,” said Scott McClelland, Houston division president for H-E-B.

The San Antonio-based grocer has put more than $60,000 into the coalition, according to finance reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission.

Baldwin, who lives in the Heights but outside the dry area, said the election is not about being against H-E-B but preserving the character of the neighborhood.

His group has been urging residents of the dry area to consider the issue apart from H-E-B.

He said more service stations and convenience stores could diminish property values of the homes around them.

“This election is not about H-E-B, it’s about changing the fabric about my community,” Baldwin said.

Honestly, there’s nothing here that you couldn’t learn from reading the dueling op-eds or listening to the interviews that I did with Baldwin and Reilley. The story did remind me that there used to a a tiny HEB – it was called an “HEB Pantry store” back in the day – in the Heights that no one went to because it didn’t have much in it. This whole debate is a little nuts because people in the greater Heights area have been begging to get a real HEB like the one in Montrose in the neighborhood, and if it weren’t for this oddball quirk of history, the announcement that there would be an HEB built on the site of the old Fiesta would be greeted with handsprings and huzzahs. But because we’re held hostage to the way some people viewed the demon rum a century ago, we’re stuck with this silly debate. Everyone in America is ready for the Presidential race to be over, I’m ready for this referendum to be settled.

The dry debate

Nov 1st, 2016
by Charles Kuffner.
12 comments

The Chron hosted a mini-debate about the vote to change the Heights dry ordinance on its Monday op-ed pages. Bill Baldwin represented the status quo, for keeping the Heights (the original Heights) dry.

With the stark reality of land use as it is today, our deed restrictions are patchy, and most properties on high-traffic streets here are not restricted at all. In a city with no zoning, other typical neighborhoods have deed restrictions where the Heights does not. Undoubtedly, the dry area has successfully kept large operators such as Walmart, Target, Sprouts, Kroger and a Whole Foods concept on the way all outside of our historic borders. Eliminate that barrier and you make way for future big-box retailers, gas stations and convenience stores, along with their parking demands and high traffic.

You don’t build a fence to keep out the good neighbors; it’s for the bad ones. In this scenario, we still consider H-E-B a good neighbor, but I am concerned about operators without the reputation of H-E-B.

We don’t know exactly what will happen if we change the dry area, but we do know this: All around the city there is concern about the changing character of neighborhoods. Like the rest of the city, the Heights is wrestling with these issues of development and identity. How do we responsibly progress, increase property values and keep a sense of identity intrinsically tied to the community? In the Heights, the dry area has in many non-obvious ways functioned toward those ends. Keeping the Heights dry means also keeping it local and residential.

Steve Reilley spoke for the pro-change faction, to amend the historic dry ordinance to allow beer and wine sales for off-premise consumption, i.e., retail sales.

We need to alter this regulation in order to welcome locally oriented businesses into the community. Rest assured, this is a grassroots effort, and is not driven by businesses wanting to sell alcohol. More than 1,700 Heights voters signed the petition requesting the measure be placed on the Nov. 8 ballot. Our effort has been criticized because of H-E-B’s involvement. H-E-B didn’t sign the petition – we did. And the Texas Constitution gives us the right to have this election because we want to preserve our neighborhood, increase consumer options, raise property values and increase walkability, as Mayor Pro Tem Ellen Cohen, the chairwoman of the Houston City Council Quality of Life Committee, recently noted that the repeal of this regulation will do.

Some have suggested that permitting the sale of beer and wine for off-premise consumption will lead to the opening of convenience stores along Heights Boulevard, negatively affecting the Heights’ character. High property costs in the area would inhibit such use. In addition, much of Heights Boulevard and most of the affected area falls within the Houston Heights East and Houston Heights South Historic Districts, which prohibits existing covered structures from being torn down and replaced with nonconforming structures, such as convenience stores. Moreover, various properties along Heights Boulevard and other parts of The Heights are subject to deed restrictions that preclude commercial use.

Some opponents to the proposition have unfortunately engaged in “scare tactics” by suggesting unrealistic harm will fall upon our neighborhood if Heights-area stores are permitted to sell beer and wine for off-premise consumption. This election has nothing to do with liquor stores, bars, strip clubs or chain restaurants. It will have no impact on restaurants that operate as private clubs to serve alcoholic beverages to patrons. Residents will not be able to sell beer, wine or liquor out of their homes. This activity is already prohibited by numerous state laws, county regulations and city ordinances.

I did interviews with both gentlemen about this – here’s Baldwin and here’s Reilley. The latter was done in June after the petitions were submitted and before there was any organized opposition, so that interview was more informational, since there were still a lot of questions about what this effort was and what it meant. Baldwin doesn’t really say anything in his piece that he didn’t say in the interview he did with me, while Reilley’s article necessarily includes some rebuttals of pro-dry talking points. If you are in the affected area and somehow haven’t yet decided which way to go on this referendum, the two opinion pieces and interviews should tell you all you need to know.

I have no idea which side will win. I won’t be surprised by either result. There’s been a lot of recent discussion of it on the Heights Kids mailing list, with a fairly even split between the factions; the few recent threads I’ve seen on Nestdoor were all started by pro-dry people. I’ve seen more pro-dry yard signs than I have seen pro-amend signs, but I’d say half of those signs are in yards that are not in the affected area. (A good bit of the discussion I’ve seen in both places has been about who actually gets to vote on this issue.) I’m pretty sure there will continue to be a lot of chatter about this after the election, whichever way it goes.

Interview with Bill Baldwin of Keep Heights Dry

Oct 25th, 2016
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

heightsdry1

As you know, there will be a referendum on the ballot for a very limited electorate this year, to alter the existing ordinance that enforces a dry zone in the historic Houston Heights to allow the sale of beer and wine for off-premise consumption – for retailers, not for restaurants and bars, in other words. This referendum, formally known as City of Houston Proposition 1, was placed on the ballot by a petition drive led by the Houston Heights Beverage Coalition, which in turn was backed by HEB, which has announced its intention to open a store in the old Fiesta location on North Shepherd at 24th if this referendum passes. I did an interview with Steve Reilley of the HHBC back in June when petitions were still being circulated to clarify some questions about this. At the time, I noted that I was unaware of any organized opposition to this effort.

Well, formal opposition to this effort does exist, and it’s called Keep The Heights Dry. I’ve seen a few of their yard signs around the neighborhood in recent weeks. Their argument as you can see on that Facebook page is one part preservationist and one part neighborhood protection, and last week they reached out to me to see about doing an interview. Bill Baldwin, who has a real estate office on Heights Blvd at 16th Street, is one of the leaders of this opposition effort and the person I spoke to about it. Here’s the conversation:

Interviews and Q&As from the primaries are on my 2016 Election page. I will eventually get around to updating it to include links to fall interviews.

Preservation reconsideration

Nov 23rd, 2010
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

One of the pieces to the new historic preservation ordinance was the designation of a period in which already-existing historic districts could submit a petition to have the city reconsider their status. The deadline for that has passed, and 8 of the existing 16 districts got the necessary 10% of homeowners to sign on.

If owners of 51 percent of the tracts in the district vote against the historic designation, Planning Department Director Marlene Gafrick would recommend City Council repeal the district or shrink its boundaries. The authority to repeal, amend or leave a district intact rests solely with council.

Planning Department spokeswoman Suzy Hartgrove said city staff has yet to verify the signatures in the applications submitted by residents of Avondale West, Boulevard Oaks, First Montrose Commons, Houston Heights East, Houston Heights South, Houston Heights West, Norhill and Westmoreland historic districts.

You can find maps of these districts here.

Officials have said districts could be redrawn to encompass only the blocks where a majority of owners support the new protections.
Bill Baldwin, of Responsible Historic Preservation for Houston, which worked to gather petitions against the new ordinance in the Heights and provided guidance to opponents elsewhere, said he was pleased.

“We always wanted a survey and we’re going to get one, so we’re happy about that,” he said.

Baldwin said he was confident a majority of homeowners in Heights East and South oppose the new ordinance. Avondale West opponent Dana Thorpe said the same for his neighborhood.

“Will 51 percent of those tract owners receive a ballot and return it in opposition? I have no way of knowing,” Baldwin said. “To get 51 percent of people to return a ballot is a monumental task.”

That challenge is encouraging to Bart Truxillo, co-chairman of the Houston Historic Districts Coalition.

“It is so disappointing that people are not understanding the potential good that the districts will do,” he said. “But there’s always going to be 10 percent against everything … 51 percent is a little bit harder.”

We’ll see what happens. I’m rooting for the attempts to change these districts to fall short, but if that’s what the residents want, then so be it. Swamplot has more.