CD38

A walk through four districts, part 3: Try this at home!

In Part One I described my weird idea to take a stroll into four Congressional districts, something I decided I could do after taking a close look at the new map in Houston. In Part 2, I took you on that walk with me. Now I’m going to show how this could be done elsewhere and with different types of districts.

We do redistricting every ten years, so you might wonder why I picked Congressional districts as the object of this little obsession. Congressional redistricting had national implications, of course. As this recent DMN story points out, Texas Republicans squeezed out four more districts than the overall electoral numbers suggest they were entitled to, giving them nearly all of the seats needed to achieve a majority in the House. I wasn’t thinking of that a year ago, of course, but I definitely spent more time thinking about the Congressional map than about the others. It was that new Congressional map that I had zoomed in on, to see what things looked like in my immediate area, that gave me the inspiration.

But what about those other maps? How about in the State House, where the districts are smaller and there are 24 of them in Harris County? (There ought to be 25, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.) In the previous map, my neighborhood was sliced in half for no particular reason, which meant that I’d travel between HDs 145 and 148 every day walking my dog. Our neighborhood has been reunited under the new map, so I would need to travel a little farther to cross State House boundaries. That made me think, which State House districts did I pass through as I did Wednesday’s walk? Let’s take a look!

I started in HD145, entered HD147 when I turned south on Heights after walking along the boundary once I passed Studewood, and then reached the boundary with HD134 at Washington. I was fully in HD134 once I was west of Shepherd.

But look closer! With a slight modification, I could have started in HD142, on Jensen south of Lorraine, walked north to Quitman, then followed the same route to eventually get to HD134, with a terminus at the HEB just south of Washington. I didn’t fool around with Google Maps for this, but that looks like a roughly equivalent distance. I’m not surprised that this was doable in such close proximity, but I would not have guessed that these would be the four districts involved. This is why it’s fun to play with maps, kids.

That wasn’t where I had picked for what may be the shortest walk needed to be in four State House districts. Take a look at this:

Just start on Yorktown and walk till you’re past Fayette. Google Maps shows this as 1.6 miles because it won’t let you cross San Felipe or Westheimer at Yorktown – it insists on making you hike all the way to Sage, then doubling back on Westheimer to return to Yorktown – so as the crow flies it’s probably not much more than a mile. Someone who knows that area better than I do will have to tell me why you can’t just walk all the way down Yorktown. Be that as it may, even with the detours, it’s a pretty short walk.

By the way, why is that tiny rectangle south of Westheimer and east of Chimney Rock in HD137 and not HD134? I have no idea. Either it’s a super-optimization of whatever evil redistricting software the Republicans used, or someone asked for that specific change for some reason. I’ll throw the question out to you if you think you know the answer.

There are a couple of other possibilities in Harris County. Zooming out a bit, south of I-10 and east of US59 you could get from HD142 to HD147 via HDs 142 and 145, and north of 610 you could get from HD141 to HD145 via HDs 140 and 142, though you’d have to cross US59 to do it, which might be dicey on foot.

Looking elsewhere in the state, I see possibilities in San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas, where I even see a possible five-district walk:

Start in that weird southern finger of HD108 and head south-ish to wind up in HD104, passing through HDs 114, 100, and 103 along the way. You have to cross the junction of I-30 and I-35, which sounds like a nightmare, but maybe it’s doable. Point is, these districts are all right up against each other.

You might think that State Senate districts would be too large for this, as there are eight fewer of them than there are Congressional districts. Challenge accepted:

Start on Piney Point Road near San Felipe and head south as it becomes Fondren, and go a few blocks south of Richmond, to have visited SDs 07, 17, 15, and 13. There may be other possibilities elsewhere, but I was happy enough with that to quit looking.

Going back to Congress for a minute, I see opportunities again in San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas as before. That DMN story highlights a couple of places where the distance between one district and another, with a third in between, is ridiculously thin, like less than a quarter mile in the Dallas case. But just to finish this post, let me show you what my original walk route looked like under the old map:

Starting a bit farther east on Quitman in CD29, I could have headed on Quitman to White Oak to either Studewood or Yale, then gone south to Allen Parkway and east to Shepherd to visit CDs 18, 02, and 07 along the way. That might even have been a slightly shorter walk. Just a reminder that this was a thing before I ever decided to try it out, and will likely continue to be a thing ten years from now when we do this all again. Now go play with those maps and plan your own walk.

PS: I should have noted sooner that John Nova Lomax did a great series of articles some years ago when he wrote for the Houston Press in which he walked the entire length of a well-known Houston thoroughfare – Richmond and Shepherd are the two I remember from the series – and wrote about the experience. Some of the walks he took were in excess of ten miles and took him all day; he had planned meal and bathroom stops along the way, out of necessity. I don’t have that on my itinerary any time soon, but I was thinking about it as I did this walk.

A walk through four districts, part 2: Now with pictures

Jan 7th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

In yesterday’s post I described my weird idea to take a stroll into four Congressional districts, something I decided I could do after taking a close look at the new map in Houston. On Wednesday, a bit more than a year after I first conceived of this silly idea, I finally did it. Here’s a little photo essay of my journey.

I started out as noted at the Leonel Castillo Community Center, on Quitman at South, just east of I-45.

This was in CD29, but I wasn’t going to be there for long. I intentionally started at a point near the boundary with CD18 – this walk was going to be long enough, I didn’t need to make it any longer. As I walked over the Quitman bridge, at some point I passed from CD29 into CD18. Where exactly that line is I have no idea – I have joked before about the crazy way that CD35 is drawn between Austin and San Antonio, and that you can cross into other Congressional districts by changing lanes on I-35 – but it’s there somewhere. We’ll discuss this a bit more later, as it’s a bit more relevant when there are houses and businesses there along the border. Here it’s just traffic.

West of I-45 on Quitman and I am unquestionably in CD18. The White Oak hike and bike trail beckoned me to the south.

As I passed Houston Avenue and Quitman became White Oak, I had a choice to make. As you saw on my Google map, my walking path was along White Oak. But the sidewalk isn’t consistent, there’s a lot of cars whooshing past, and the hike and bike trail will get me where I want to go as well. What would you choose?

The choice was easy for me, though I should note that the path to the left that led down to the trail wasn’t paved all the way and I had to step carefully to avoid getting all muddy. But it was worth it.

I didn’t even notice that heron as I was taking the picture. I only saw him later as I was putting this all together. Going this way gave me another excuse to walk across the new trail extension. The view of downtown from where the extension meets the MKT trail, especially on a gorgeous morning like Wednesday was, just can’t be beat.

Don’t ever let anyone trash Houston’s aesthetics. The MKT trail put me back on White Oak the street, and soon enough I reached Heights Boulevard, which is where CD18 ends and CD07 begins. But unlike the CD29/CD18 boundary along I-45, the exact location of that invisible line matters. As in, my belief was that the east side of Heights was still in CD18 while the west side was in CD07. I know these things have to exist somewhere but that will always be weird to me.

Yale Street, to my immediate right and visible as I crossed over the bayou again just south of I-10, is fully inside CD07. I started on the CD18 side of Heights but crossed to the CD07 side a bit before I reached I-10. When I reached Washington Avenue, I was at the southern border of CD18 and was going to be fully in CD07 for most of the rest of the trip.

I have to say, the sidewalks along this stretch of Washington Avenue were atrocious, especially after having been on the hike and bike trails as well as on Heights. Broken and occasionally missing, with utility poles right in the middle of a much narrower space – I could have only done this as a fully able-bodied person. I may do a separate post on that, but go see it for yourself if you can. One corollary to this is that I could have both shortened my walk and dodged fewer obstacles if I had taken a slightly different path. West of Shepherd, CD38 was only a few blocks to the south. I could have turned down Sandman, for example, and been in CD38 just before Shepherd and Durham merge together at Feagan.

But I stayed the course, and soon enough I had reached the traffic circle at Westcott.

That was the view from the west side of the circle, on what I believe was Arnot, though I didn’t see a street sign. It’s in CD38, whatever it was. Again, the boundary was likely somewhere in the middle of the road, in this case Westcott. Maybe if state law required that the state pay to create and install signs at every district border, we’d get slightly less goofy districts. Be that as it may, this is the end.

I’ll have a brief wrapup and a suggestion for further pedestrian research if you’re interested. Let me know what you thought of this little tour.

A walk through four districts, part 1

Jan 6th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

As you know, I draft stuff before I publish it. Sometimes, things I draft that aren’t particularly time-sensitive can get lost in the shuffle when there’s a lot of news of interest. Those things may get taken from the pile during slower times, like the holidays. Sometimes I start something then don’t finish it. Once in awhile, a newer story comes along that directly relates to such a post and I go back to it. Sometimes, I finally get around to finishing what I started.

This is one of those times. After the Lege finally finished off redistricting in late 2021, I was taking a close look at the Congressional map – specifically, I had zoomed in on Houston near where I lived, and I realized that I could probably take a walk that would have me passing through four different districts. This Chron story was the inspiration for that.

The Texas Legislature on Monday put the finishing touches on a redistricting proposal that has major implications for millions of people who live in and around Houston. Here is a summary of how Harris County’s nine Congressional districts are changing for 2022.

You can go back and read the story, I’m not that interested in the details at this point. What I was interested in was seeing how easy it is to pass from one district to another, which all of us are likely doing any day we get out of the house, without realizing it. Let me start by showing the area I had zoomed in on:

From there, I used Google maps to sketch out a route for my walk:

According to Google maps, I’d get from the beginning in CD29 to the end in CD38 in one hour and 34 minutes, which would be a bit more than four miles. I walk about seven miles a day on average, and thus the idea took shape.

The thing about doing something like this, though, is that you can’t do it alone. I knew I could walk from point A to point B easily enough, but I had to get to point A and then get home from point B. Doing that all by myself would mean a heck of a lot more walking, and a lot more time. My plan was to get my elder daughter to drop me off at point A, basically at the Leonel Castillo Community Center, and then pick me up later near the traffic circle on Washington at Westcott. We would have done this over Christmas break last year. But for one reason or another it didn’t happen, and once school and work started up there was never a good time for it. So the idea, and the post that I began that included that Chron link and those pictures, got put on the shelf.

And then this Christmas rolled around, and I saw the old entry in my drafts, and I said hey, what about this year? Elder daughter was game, the weather was great for walking, and the plan came together. Wednesday, January 4 was a gloriously sunny day with morning temperatures in the 60s. I reviewed my route, coordinated the dropoff and pickup, told my ever-patient wife about the shenanigans I was about to get up to, and set out. I took some pictures along the way. I will tell you all about it and show you the pics of interest tomorrow.

Precinct analysis: Beto versus Abbott

Dec 14th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

All right, I have the full landscape data for Harris County and the November 2022 election, and I’ll be doing my usual thing with it. There’s a lot of data and a lot of ways to explore it, some of which I don’t realize until I’m in the process of looking at something else. I’m going to start here with the top of the ticket. Let’s roll out the numbers, and at the other side I’ll have all the words.


Dist   Abbott     Beto     Lib     Grn
======================================
CD02   73,159   50,757   1,333     445
CD07   45,780   84,973   1,545     452
CD08   43,294   48,380     860     371
CD09   20,661   74,545     788     504
CD18   39,628  115,106   1,562     703
CD22   12,585    8,669     264      83
CD29   30,228   69,265     920     778
CD36   66,728   44,969   1,410     439
CD38  158,198   98,989   3,130     751

CD02   58.20%   40.38%   1.06%   0.35%
CD07   34.49%   64.01%   1.16%   0.34%
CD08   46.60%   52.07%   0.93%   0.40%
CD09   21.41%   77.25%   0.82%   0.52%
CD18   25.24%   73.32%   0.99%   0.45%
CD22   58.26%   40.13%   1.22%   0.38%
CD29   29.87%   68.45%   0.91%   0.77%
CD36   58.77%   39.60%   1.24%   0.39%
CD38   60.60%   37.92%   1.20%   0.29%

Dist   Abbott     Beto     Lib     Grn
======================================
SD04   55,846   36,950   1,005     312
SD06   41,043   85,936   1,225     927
SD07  153,513  106,557   2,933     853
SD11   57,156   35,725   1,214     339
SD13   22,813  100,559     958     680
SD15   83,653  160,077   2,850     932
SD17   59,143   51,734   1,307     363
SD18   17,094   18,115     320     120

SD04   59.34%   39.26%   1.07%   0.33%
SD06   31.78%   66.55%   0.95%   0.72%
SD07   58.18%   40.38%   1.11%   0.32%
SD11   60.52%   37.83%   1.29%   0.36%
SD13   18.25%   80.44%   0.77%   0.54%
SD15   33.80%   64.67%   1.15%   0.38%
SD17   52.55%   45.97%   1.16%   0.32%
SD18   47.95%   50.81%   0.90%   0.34%

Dist   Abbott     Beto     Lib     Grn
======================================
HD126  35,835   23,627     711     185
HD127  39,102   26,791     722     221
HD128  31,983   13,915     513     171
HD129  37,118   27,144     864     227
HD130  44,983   20,891     775     198
HD131   5,963   25,387     231     169
HD132  35,079   25,603     627     173
HD133  33,195   26,971     684     156
HD134  29,592   51,010   1,044     181
HD135  16,443   24,121     369     208
HD137   7,860   13,421     245     116
HD138  31,077   25,464     708     209
HD139  11,643   32,115     394     199
HD140   5,717   13,400     166     187
HD141   4,549   20,922     210     156
HD142   8,666   25,793     289     204
HD143   8,420   16,047     208     192
HD144  11,566   14,683     260     178
HD145  12,631   32,765     623     228
HD146   8,511   33,610     333     200
HD147   8,952   37,366     476     216
HD148  15,451   21,460     435     175
HD149  12,068   19,844     256     173
HD150  33,857   23,303     669     204

HD126  59.37%   39.14%   1.18%   0.31%
HD127  58.50%   40.08%   1.08%   0.33%
HD128  68.66%   29.87%   1.10%   0.37%
HD129  56.80%   41.53%   1.32%   0.35%
HD130  67.29%   31.25%   1.16%   0.30%
HD131  18.78%   79.96%   0.73%   0.53%
HD132  57.06%   41.64%   1.02%   0.28%
HD133  54.41%   44.21%   1.12%   0.26%
HD134  36.16%   62.34%   1.28%   0.22%
HD135  39.97%   58.63%   0.90%   0.51%
HD137  36.32%   62.01%   1.13%   0.54%
HD138  54.09%   44.32%   1.23%   0.36%
HD139  26.25%   72.41%   0.89%   0.45%
HD140  29.36%   68.82%   0.85%   0.96%
HD141  17.61%   80.98%   0.81%   0.60%
HD142  24.79%   73.80%   0.83%   0.58%
HD143  33.86%   64.53%   0.84%   0.77%
HD144  43.34%   55.02%   0.97%   0.67%
HD145  27.31%   70.85%   1.35%   0.49%
HD146  19.95%   78.80%   0.78%   0.47%
HD147  19.04%   79.49%   1.01%   0.46%
HD148  41.18%   57.19%   1.16%   0.47%
HD149  37.31%   61.36%   0.79%   0.53%
HD150  58.34%   40.15%   1.15%   0.35%

Dist   Abbott     Beto     Lib     Grn
======================================
CC1    67,070  207,830   2,747   1,167
CC2    95,270  108,943   2,266   1,188
CC3   218,228  147,384   4,148   1,218
CC4   109,693  131,496   2,651     953

CC1    24.06%   74.54%   0.99%   0.42%
CC2    45.88%   52.46%   1.09%   0.57%
CC3    58.83%   39.73%   1.12%   0.33%
CC4    44.81%   53.72%   1.08%   0.39%

Dist   Abbott     Beto     Lib     Grn
======================================
JP1    60,159  127,746   2,343     728
JP2    21,749   30,575     520     300
JP3    35,283   42,924     715     405
JP4   168,373  130,575   3,308   1,100
JP5   140,459  148,609   3,076   1,101
JP6     4,970   17,898     228     168
JP7    11,615   67,072     582     414
JP8    47,653   30,254   1,040     310

JP1    31.50%   66.89%   1.23%   0.38%
JP2    40.92%   57.53%   0.98%   0.56%
JP3    44.48%   54.11%   0.90%   0.51%
JP4    55.50%   43.04%   1.09%   0.36%
JP5    47.90%   50.68%   1.05%   0.38%
JP6    21.36%   76.93%   0.98%   0.72%
JP7    14.58%   84.17%   0.73%   0.52%
JP8    60.12%   38.17%   1.31%   0.39%

My notes:

– Going forward, for the most part, I’m going to skip the Congressional and State Senate districts. Most of them are not wholly contained within Harris County – only CDs 18, 29, and 38, and SDs 06 and 15 are fully represented here – so I don’t find there’s sufficient value for the added work. When we get the Texas Legislative Council dataset for the 2022 election, then I’ll return to these districts plus the SBOE districts (none of which are entirely within Harris County now that SBOE6 extends into Montgomery). Also note that CD10 no longer includes any of Harris County.

– I will have a separate post on this, but if you’re wondering how Beto did compared to expectations on the new maps, see here and here for a first look. There will be more, I promise.

– Beto was the top performer for Dems in Harris County, getting 54.03% of the vote. That makes his performance in the precincts the best case scenario (usually), at least for this election. He would be a top performer but not the top performer in 2020 or 2018, so this is hardly an upper bound. For districts that Dems would ideally like to target, like HDs 133 and 138, this shows where we’re starting out in an okay but not great year.

– Honestly, I don’t have a whole lot to say here. I think the more interesting stuff will come when I look at the comparisons to past years and when I look at some of the other races. Even without looking at past data, there wasn’t much of a surprise in anything here. All of the districts performed more or less as you’d expect. The one item of interest may be Beto carrying (barely) JP/Constable precinct 5, given our previous discussion of those precincts. I’m sure we could draw six, maybe even seven Democratic precincts, though whether we could do that while equalizing population and not violating the Voting Rights Act is another question. For sure, we could make five solid Dem precincts.

– So I’ll end here, with a note that I will also look at how the vote went in the city of Houston, the split in the statewide races, the easy passage of the Harris County bonds, and a very deep dive into judicial races. All this and more, coming up soon. Let me know if you have any questions.

Endorsement watch: You have to want it first

Oct 6th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The Chron endorses Duncan Klussman in CD38, partly by default.

Duncan Klussman

When we gave Wesley Hunt our endorsement in the Republican primary, he made it clear he’d rather go without it. Now, in the general election, we are more than happy to oblige him.

Democratic challenger Duncan Klussmann faces an uphill-both-ways battle, but his years of public service and deep understanding of his district make him our pick for the race.

By all measures, U.S. House District 38 seems tailor-made for Hunt, a West Point graduate endorsed by former President Donald Trump. One of Texas’ two new congressional districts, this one is ultra-red, including bits of River Oaks, the Energy Corridor and western Harris County. Voters there went for Trump by 18.2 percentage points in 2020, a fair indication that Hunt would’ve fared much better there than he did in congressional District 7, where he lost to Democrat Lizzie Fletcher by a few percentage points.

Hunt, 40, was a clear frontrunner in this year’s primaries. Compared with many of his challengers, “steeped in conspiracy theories and fear-mongering,” as we wrote in February, Hunt stayed focused on more substantive conservative priorities, “namely border security, reining in federal spending and funding flood infrastructure projects.” He also boasts an impressive 20-year military record.

It was an easy pick then. This time around, it’s easy to pass.

Klussmann, 59, has a lengthy resume of public service and involvement in the district. His 11 years of experience as a school district superintendent in Spring Branch and his time serving as a Jersey Village city council member give him a distinct grounding in the district itself.

His experience serving local constituents is unmatched and he shows a willingness to work across the aisle to get things done.

As I often seem to do in stories that like to overstate the redness of a given district, going 58% for Trump is not “ultra-red”. It’s just red. There are districts in which Trump got over 75%. If you’re describing a 58% district as “ultra-red”, what can you say about the latter? There’s no description that wouldn’t sound ridiculous. I consider this yet another way in which people fail to understand numbers. Be more measured in your quantitative adjectives, y’all.

Anyway. You can listen to my interview with Duncan Klussman from the primary here. The Chron also issued some endorsements in non-competitive races, giving their nod to Rep. Lizzie Fletcher in CD07, a district that Joe Biden won by thirty points in 2020 and yet whose blueness went unremarked upon; State Rep. Ann Johnson in HD134; and State Rep. Alma Allen in HD131. Don’t bother looking for a pattern in the order of their endorsements. I’ve tried, and all I have to show for it is a minor facial tic. Whatever the race is you’re looking for, they’ll get to it when they get to it, unless they decide they’re not doing endorsements in that race, in which case they won’t.

All interviews and judicial Q&As with nominees so far

Sep 5th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Back in February, right before the primary, I posted a list of all of the candidate interviews and judicial Q&As I had done. A couple more Q&A responses came in after that, and I did some further interviews for the primary runoffs, so that post is out of date and also now contains people who will not be on the November ballot. So with that in mind, here’s a full updated list as I prepare to bring you more of these for November. Enjoy!

Interviews

Duncan Klussman, CD38

Jay Kleberg, Land Commissioner
Janet Dudding, Comptroller

Staci Childs, SBOE4

Sen. John Whitmire, SD15

Jolanda Jones, HD147

Lesley Briones, Harris County Commissioners Court Precinct 4
Carla Wyatt, Harris County Treasurer
Marilyn Burgess, Harris County District Clerk (Incumbent)

Judicial Q&As

Cheri Thomas, 14th Court of Appeals, Place 2

Gemayel Haynes, 183rd Criminal District Court
Katherine Thomas, 184th Criminal District Court
Andrea Beall, 185th Criminal District Court
Beverly Armstrong, 208th Criminal District Court
Judge Chris Morton, 230th Criminal District Court
Angela Lancelin, 245th Family District Court
Judge Hilary Unger, 248th Criminal District Court
Judge Dedra Davis, 270th Civil District Court
Dianne Curvey, 280th Family District Court
Teresa Waldrop, 312th Family District Court
Judge Natalia Oakes, 313th Family District Court
Judge Leah Shapiro, 313th Family District Court
Veronica Monique Nelson, 482nd Criminal District Court

Manpreet Monica Singh, County Civil Court At Law #4
Porscha Natasha Brown, County Criminal Court At Law #3
Judge Kelley Andrews, County Criminal Court At Law #6
Judge Andrew Wright, County Criminal Court At Law #7
Erika Ramirez, County Criminal Court At Law #8

Steve Duble, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1 Place 2
Dolores Lozano, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 2 Place 2
Judge Lucia Bates, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3 Place 2

As before, you can see a full list of my interviews and a whole lot more info about the Democratic candidates on the Erik Manning spreadsheet. Look for many more to come starting tomorrow.

What do we expect from CD23?

Aug 30th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It was the perennial razor-close high-dollar swing district all last decade. Will Hurd won it three times, but never reached 50% in any of the three elections. It moved a few points towards the GOP in 2020 when Tony Gonzales won it, and redistricting made it a bit redder still, but it remains the closest Republican-held seat and may never fade as a perennial battleground. But that may depend on this year, when Gonzalez will have an easier time of it at least financially. I don’t know yet what I expect from that race.

Gonzales remains the favorite for a second term — given the new political makeup of the district and his stark financial advantage — but he said he is taking the race “extremely seriously” and treating it like he was still running under the famously competitive boundaries that were in effect before redistricting.

“The [elected officials] that don’t have to fight, that are just there as long as they want it — they’re like declawed indoor cats that get fancy meals when the bell rings out,” Gonzales said in an interview. “I think Texas [District] 23 — you’re like an alleycat that has to scrape and claw and fight for everything, and I think that just makes you just different. Like, you’re fighting for your life.”

This cycle, Gonzales said, he wants to “run up the score” and “take this seat off the table completely.”

A former Navy cryptologist, Gonzales won the seat in 2020 by 4 percentage points, a wide margin by the razor-thin standards of the 23rd District. He was the successor backed by U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, a moderate who had built his own reputation for breaking with his party, perhaps most notably opposing former President Donald Trump’s push for a border wall.

Trump carried the 23rd District by 2 points in 2020. But redistricting morphed it into a district that Trump would have won by 7 points, and in March, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee officially removed the seat from its list of targeted races.

[Democratic candidate John] Lira argued redistricting “didn’t do Gonzales that many favors,” noting the Cook Political Report, an election forecaster, only increased the Republican advantage of the district by 3 percentage points. And he said he is encouraged by the cracks in Gonzales’ Republican support, the political fallout from the Uvalde shooting and the strength of Beto O’Rourke’s gubernatorial campaign at the top of the ticket.

As for the case against Gonzales, Lira said, “he’s got Will Hurd’s playbook in his back pocket and he’s trying to see how he can play both sides.”

While national attention has faded from the race, Lira recently got the backing of O’Rourke, who rarely issues formal down-ballot endorsements. Lira also has the support of the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which endorsed him after the district was redrawn.

[…]

“I do think the district is going to be a little more competitive than most people anticipated — now how competitive, I don’t know,” said Jeff McManus, chair of the Bexar County GOP. “We sort of have a three-way race going,” with the independent challenger from the right.

McManus said he wishes Gonzales “were a stronger conservative.” The two were on opposite sides of the county party chair election in May, when Gonzales backed the incumbent, John Austin, that McManus defeated.

The independent candidate is Frank Lopez Jr., a former U.S. Border Patrol agent who had to give up his position as chair of the Val Verde County GOP to run. He and Gonzales are very familiar with one another: Lopez was the campaign manager for Raul Reyes, Gonzales’ bitter rival in the 2020 Republican primary runoff for the 23rd District.

Lopez said he ran as an independent, not in the GOP primary, after seeing “the way Raul lost” at the hands of the party’s establishment, which had coalesced behind Gonzales.

“Texans are tired of these dangerous Democrat policies,” Lopez said in an interview, “but they’re also tired of the pandering and games from the RINOs, establishment and globalists in the Republican Party. I had to give Texans a true choice.”

Lopez added that he sees a “perfect storm” for his candidacy, citing the recent intraparty blowback Gonzales has faced and Democrats he meets who say they are looking for a new political home.

Gonzales jokingly asked “Who?” when asked about Lopez in an interview. More seriously, he said the 23rd District has always had a third candidate in November who gets 3% to 5% of the vote and that he expected Lopez would be no different. Still, he said he is not taking Lopez for granted and that it “helps me stay sharp.”

Most of the rest of the story is about Gonzales’ votes in favor of the Cornyn gun control bill and the House bill to protect same-sex marriage, both of which has drawn him some criticism and two censure votes from aggrieved county GOPs (a third, in Bexar County, failed to pass). Good for him and all, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here for the numbers.

For what it’s worth, Trump carried CD23 by seven points in 2020. The next two closest districts are both Dem-held (CD15, Trump +3; CD28, Biden +7), and after that it’s all double digits, with CDs 24 (Trump +12), 03 (Trump +14), 22 (Trump +16), 26 (Trump +18), and 38 (Trump +18) next in line. The main difference between CD23 and these other districts is that the latter all moved strongly towards Dems since 2012, with Mitt Romney carrying them by 38 to 44 points. It would not shock me if Beto does about as well in CDs 03 and 24 as he does in CD23. I don’t think Gonzales is going to achieve his goal of taking CD23 off the table, but I could easily see him winning by 10-12 points and discouraging any serious competition in the near term future. I could also see him winning by about the seven points that Trump won it by and remaining in the same position. He has some big advantages, but this is officially a Very Weird Year, and I’m not making any predictions about it. Long term I think this district remains on the radar, but maybe not at the front of the pack. We’ll see.

July 2022 campaign finance reports: Congress

Jul 19th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

The runoffs are now over, and we’re fully into the fall election season. As before, I’ve consolidated this list down to the elections of interest, which means I’ve dropped CD30 as it was a primary-only affair. I’m also dropping CD10 and CD22, because while those are districts that are of interest to me, neither Linda Nuno nor Jamie Jordan has managed to file a report so far, and so I just can’t be bothered. Better candidates next time, please. The October 2021 reports are here, the July 2021 reports are here, the January 2022 reports are here, the April 2022 reports are here, and you can get the links to the previous cycle’s reports from there.

Dan Crenshaw – CD02
Robin Fulford – CD02
Keith Self – CD03
Sandeep Srivastava – CD03
Michelle Vallejo – CD15
Monica de la Cruz – CD15
Chip Roy – CD21
Claudia Zapata – CD21
Tony Gonzales – CD23
John Lira – CD23
Beth Van Duyne – CD24
Jan McDowell – CD24
Henry Cuellar – CD28
Cassandra Garcia – CD28
Vicente Gonzalez – CD34
Mayra Flores – CD34
Wesley Hunt – CD38
Duncan Klussman – CD38


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
02    Crenshaw     14,140,850 13,216,975        0  2,776,589
02    Fulford         109,995    100,957   15,595      9,038
03    Self            314,699    240,821        0     73,877
03    Srivastava      160,121    141,656   65,000     18,464
15    Vallejo         699,131    540,643  100,000    158,488
15    De la Cruz    2,914,515  2,366,992        0    555,028
21    Roy           1,757,556  1,047,612        0  1,173,526
21    Zapata           77,500     68,918        0      8,581
23    Gonzales      3,346,655  2,054,016        0  1,323,998
23    Lira            486,541    395,459        0     91,081
24    Van Duyne     3,022,405  1,366,847        0  1,723,967
24    McDowell         44,677     27,975    3,843     16,701
28    Cuellar       3,351,820  4,664,602        0    237,690
28    Garcia          695,640    470,707        0    224,932
34    Gonzalez      2,251,211  2,201,071        0  1,420,633
34    Flores        1,765,515  1,651,532        0    113,983
38    Hunt          4,238,227  2,390,809        0  2,071,360
38    Klussman        180,323    145,198    7,000     35,125

I get kind of a 2012 vibe from looking at these numbers. Dems raised big money in two races – the eternal target of CD23, and the open seat CD14 which only drew interest because former Congressman Nick Lampson made a run at it – and decent money in CD27, a former Dem district lost in the 2010 debacle that was made more Republican in redistricting. No Dem candidate in a red district approached raising as much as $100K for the entire cycle outside of those three; I remarked on that multiple times in 2018 as Dem candidates were shattering records left and right.

It’s a little less bleak this time, but the shape is similar. CD15 is the new CD23, though for this cycle at least it’s still a Dem hold and not a flip. CD23 is redder than before though still closer to 50-50 than any other district, with a stronger Republican incumbent; Quico Canseco was a typical “dog that caught the car” in 2010, and that surely helped Pete Gallego in his quest to win it back. John Lira is not in Gallego’s fundraising neighborhood, but he might approach a million bucks before it’s all said and done. Duncan Klussman, Sandeep Srivastava, and Robin Fulford have all topped $100K already, with Claudia Zapata likely to get there. That’s a symbolic figure more than an impactful one, but given how bleak things were in 2012 we can at least reset some expectations. I have hope that the districts I’ve quit following will rejoin the conversation in future cycles. As for Jan McDowell in CD24, at least some things never change.

The top Democratic fundraiser in a district that ought to be competitive this fall was Jessica Cisneros, who raised over $6.5 million in her ultimately losing race against Henry Cuellar. Cisneros complained loudly and at length about Dem leadership supporting the incumbent in this race. I get that and I will not offer any defenses of Cuellar, but I will note that the lack of support she got on that front did little to hinder her ability to raise money. I’m pretty sure we’ve not heard the last of her. She did succeed in wiping out Cuellar’s cash on hand advantage over Cassy Garcia, but I assume Cuellar will reopen that gap this quarter.

Along those lines, that special election in CD34 certainly helped Mayra Flores rake it in, though Vicente Gonzalez still has a large lead in cash on hand. Flores has a lot more visibility now, but she’s running in a different CD34 in November, one that was drawn to be a lot friendlier to Dems. We’ll see if she has a big Q3 or if she comes back to earth in that reality.

On the Republican side, I still have no idea what’s going on with Keith Self. How is it he hasn’t raised more than $314K at this point, having had all of Q2 to himself as the nominee in CD03? It’s a mystery to me. Unlikely to matter much, as he should easily win this year, but it will get harder for him in this blue-trending district. Mostly, I just don’t understand why he’s lagging his peers. Not complaining, you understand, just puzzling.

I’m working on posts for the other finance reports of interest. Let me know what you think.

Runoff results: Harris County

May 25th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

As with the statewide roundup, here are the results from Harris County. As of 10 PM, 99 of 260 voting centers had reported, so while these results aren’t final, it seems likely to me that not much will change.

Congressional Dem

CD38 – Diana Martinez Alexander vs. Duncan Klussman. Klussman had a 67-33 lead after early voting (65-35 as of 10 PM) and looked to be an easy winner.

SBOE Dem

SBOE4 – Coretta Mallet-Fontenot vs Staci Childs. Childs was up 56.5 to 43.5, and was leading big in early in person voting (62%) and Tuesday voting (65%), which helped her overcome a 1,200 vote deficit in mail ballots. Given that trend, I’d say she’s on her way to winning.

State House Dems

HD147 – Jolanda Jones vs Danielle Bess. Jones was up 55-45, and unlike the special election led in mail ballots (by 300 votes) and early in person voting (by 200 votes), while running nearly even on Tuesday (the tally was 520-508 for Bess as of 10 PM). She seems likely to hold on.

Harris County Dems

185th Criminal District Court – Andrea Beall vs Judge Jason Luong. Beall led 54-46 and had the advantage in all three forms of voting.

208th Criminal District Court – Beverly Armstrong vs Kim McTorry. Armstrong had a big lead in mail ballots, while McTorry had small margins in in-person voting, but it doesn’t look like it will be enough as Armstrong was up 52-48.

312th Family District Court – Teresa Waldrop vs Judge Chip Wells.
County Civil Court at Law #4 – Manpreet Monica Singh vs Treasea Treviño.

Waldrop (63%) and Singh (65%) were in command from the beginning. I believe Manpreet Singh will be the first Sikh on the bench if she wins in November.

Commissioners Court, Precinct 4 – Lesley Briones vs Ben Chou. Briones led 55-45, with similar margins across all three voting types.

Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1, Place 2 – Sonia Lopez vs Steve Duble. Duble also led 55-45, using a 59-41 advantage in early in person ballots to overcome a modest deficit with mail votes.

Republicans

Alexandra Mealer cruised to victory for the County Judge nomination, while Jack Morman got his rematch in Precinct 2. The HD133 race was too close to call, with less than 100 votes separating Mano DeAyala and Shelley Barineau. Check on that one in the morning.

UPDATE: All of the Dems that were leading last night won. Mano DeAyala won in HD133 51-49.

Endorsement watch: Still in reruns

May 13th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The Chron re-endorses Duncan Klussman in the CD38 runoff.

Duncan Klussman

Last fall, Texas Republicans drew a new congressional district in western Harris County. This red-red-red seat was designed to specifically advantage Wesley Hunt, an Iraq war veteran who came within four points of beating U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher in another district in 2020.

The new district — the 38th — encompasses affluent parts of Houston such as River Oaks and stretches into conservative areas such as Tomball and Cypress. Hunt, who won the Republican primary, will be tough to beat. He’s been endorsed by both Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and has a formidable campaign war chest, with $1.8 million on hand as of March 31.

It will take a Democratic candidate with public service experience and a willingness to work across the aisle to make this race competitive. Of the two candidates in the primary runoff, we believe Democrats stand the best chance in November with Duncan Klussmann, a former Spring Branch ISD superintendent.

Diana Martinez Alexander, 48, a Houston ISD teacher and local activist, impressed us, and we admired her command of the issues facing the next Congress. She has fought hard to advance crucial issues near to the hearts of Democratic primary voters, such as voting rights, while also talking up local concerns such as flood mitigation and protecting Texas’ energy grid.

Okay, CD38 is not “red-red-red”. It went 58-40 for Trump in 2020, after having gone 72-27 for Mitt Romney in 2012. To be sure, it’s more red downballot, in the 62-35 range for most of those races, and I’d call that pretty red. I’m not disputing that it was drawn to elect a Republican, I just like a wee bit more precision in my quantitative analyses.

Anyway. My interview with Duncan Klussman is here, and my interview with Diana Martinez Alexander is here. One of these days I’d like to get a full oral history of the candidacy of Centrell Reed. I’ve seen a lot of strange things in this world over the past 20 years, and that whole thing was a new one on me.

Meanwhile, the Chron also re-endorsed Staci Childs for SBOE4.

Staci Childs

The Texas State Board of Education has a lot of power but perhaps not as much as some voters might think. Taxes? Budget decisions? As we wrote back in February: save it for another race. One of the important roles the state board does have, however, is shaping curriculum by setting standards and approving instructional materials. Curriculum has long inspired heated debate here in Texas but it’s especially relevant now in the era of anti-Critical Race Theory hysteria.

That’s why we’re thankful to see two educators in the SBOE District 4 Democratic runoff, including our pick Staci Childs.

Childs is a former teacher from Georgia turned lawyer who kept her foot in the education world through her nonprofit Girl Talk University. As a candidate for SBOE, her focus is on making the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards more flexible so teachers have more ability to address specific knowledge gaps for individual students while still helping them get on grade level and move on. Sometimes, she said, students fail to remain at grade level only because they didn’t catch on to a small part of the curriculum. The standards, she told us, should be flexible enough to allow them to get some special attention in those areas, so they can catch up without having to start from ground zero.

“I don’t want to say remedial, because that has a negative connotation,” Childs told us in February. “But we need a serious plan to address the TEKS, since … they do not address these learning gaps.”

My interview with Staci Childs is here and with Coretta Mallet-Fontenot is here. Meanwhile, they picked some dude in the GOP runoff for CD07 (now a 64-34 Biden district, but not called “blue-blue-blue”) and declined to pick either of the yahoos in the GOP runoff for CD29 (68-31 Biden, also not “blue-blue-blue”). Why they chose to spend time on that and not on the ignored judicial races, I couldn’t tell you. Whether they will complete their set of reruns in time for Monday’s start of early voting, I couldn’t tell you either.

April 2022 campaign finance reports: Congress

May 3rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The primaries are over, and while we do still have some runoffs plus now a weird special election in CD34, we do have a smaller set of races and candidates to review. Given how many I had to cram into the previous posts, I’m sure you can feel my relief at that. The October 2021 reports are here, the July 2021 reports are here, the January 2022 reports are here, and you can get the links to the previous cycle’s reports from there.

Dan Crenshaw – CD02
Robin Fulford – CD02
Keith Self – CD03
Sandeep Srivastava – CD03
Mike McCaul – CD10
Linda Nuno – CD10
Ruben Ramirez – CD15
Michelle Vallejo – CD15
Monica de la Cruz – CD15
Chip Roy – CD21
Claudia Zapata – CD21
Ricardo Villarreal – CD21
Troy Nehls – CD22
Jamie Kaye Jordan – CD22
Tony Gonzales – CD23
John Lira – CD23
Beth Van Duyne – CD24
Derrik Gay – CD24
Jan McDowell – CD24
Henry Cuellar – CD28
Jessica Cisneros – CD28
Sandra Whitten – CD28
Cassandra Garcia – CD28
Jane Hope Hamilton – CD30
Jasmine Crockett – CD30
Vicente Gonzalez – CD34
Mayra Flores – CD34
Wesley Hunt – CD38
Duncan Klussman – CD38
Diana Martinez Alexander – CD38


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
02    Crenshaw     12,249,172 10,844,572        0  3,257,314
02    Fulford          95,297     50,703   15,595     44,594
03    Self            235,044    225,791        0      9,253
03    Srivastava      100,619     96,231   55,000      4,388
10    McCaul        1,749,060  1,243,137        0    513,656
10    Nuno                  0          0        0          0
15    Ramirez         356,758    257,059   12,250     99,698
15    Vallejo         299,915    217,293  100,000     82,621
15    De la Cruz    2,313,272  1,957,129   13,000    363,649
21    Roy           1,454,476    830,885        0  1,087,173
21    Zapata           54,801     43,550        0     11,251
21    Villarreal       32,586     17,015   20,563     13,866
22    Nehls           670,482    322,270    5,726    367,417
22    Jordan                0          0        0          0
23    Gonzales      2,261,907    985,463        0  1,307,803
23    Lira            251,642    195,017        0     56,625
24    Van Duyne     2,035,203    731,839        0  1,371,774
24    Gay             208,661    165,886        0     42,774
24    McDowell         11,183      5,632        0      5,550
28    Cuellar       2,753,040  2,864,938        0  1,438,575
28    Cisneros      3,248,787  2,214,132        0  1,037,623
28    Whitten          58,037     57,036        0      9,142
28    Garcia          219,408    104,225        0    115,183
30    Hamilton        555,455    460,356   15,014     95,098
30    Crockett        502,506    384,575        0    117,931
34    Gonzalez      1,990,337  2,021,196        0  1,339,633
34    Flores          347,758    227,100        0    120,657
38    Hunt          3,385,520  1,743,508        0  1,865,954
38    Klussman        121,440     72,934    7,000     48,505
38    Alexander        33,812     30,882        0      2,930

I’ve taken out the people who are no longer running after the primaries, and I’ve removed some districts that aren’t particularly interesting for the general election; CD30 will be the next to go once that runoff is settled. Still a long list, but it will be shorter for Q3.

It’s weird to see the two nominees in CD03 having less than $10K on hand at this point in the cycle, but there are some extenuating circumstances. Keith Self was supposed to be in a runoff, one he just barely squeaked into, but then Rep. Van Taylor self-immolated, resetting everything in the race. I’m sure Self will post much bigger numbers for July. I would hope that Sandeep Srivastava is able to capitalize a bit as well – this district isn’t really competitive on paper, especially not in a tough year for Dems, but Collin County overall has been moving rapidly in a blue direction, and a good showing by Srivastava could put him in strong shape for 2024, which may be a much better year to run there. I’d love to see him at $250-300K raised in the Q3 report.

Also remarkable for his modest total is Rep. Troy Nehls, who really stands out in a “one of these things is not like the others” when compared to Reps. Chip Roy, Tony Gonzales, and Beth Van Duyne. I don’t know if this reflects a lack of interest in fundraising on his part, a lack of interest in him by the donor class, a lack of urgency given that his opponent hasn’t raised anything, or some combination. CD22 is another district that I expect to be competitive in a couple of cycles, so if Nehls proves to be a lackluster fundraiser that could be an issue down the line.

We’ve talked about the CD34 special election and the financial edge that the Republicans should have in it. The filing deadline for that was in April, so the candidates in that election, other than Mayra Flores who is the GOP candidate for November, is on this list. Flores also has less money than I would have thought, but as with Keith Self I expect that to grow between now and the next report. There will be some interim reports available before the election on June 14, I’ll check in on that in a few weeks.

Not much else to say at this time. Let me know what you think.

A roundup of runoffs

Mar 3rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

12 comments

I was going to just do a basic recap of all the primary races that will require runoffs, and then this happened, and I had to do some redesign.

Rep. Van Taylor

U.S. Rep. Van Taylor, R-Plano, has decided to end his reelection campaign after he was forced into a primary runoff amid 11th-hour allegations of infidelity.

Taylor made the stunning announcement Wednesday, hours after he finished his five-way primary with 49% of the vote, just missing the cutoff for winning the primary outright. The runner-up was former Collin County Judge Keith Self, who is now likely to become the next congressman for the 3rd District.

“About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world,” Taylor wrote in an email to supporters. “I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life. I want to apologize for the pain I have caused with my indiscretion, most of all to my wife Anne and our three daughters.”

The day before the primary, the conservative outlet Breitbart News posted a story that Taylor had had a monthslong affair with a Plano woman, Tania Joya, who he had paid $5,000 to keep quiet. The publication reported that she provided it a phone screen shot purporting to be communications with Taylor and a bank record showing that she deposited $5,000 into her account. The Texas Tribune has not been able to independently verify the report.

[…]

Taylor has until March 16 to remove his name from the runoff ballot, which he plans to do, according to a spokesperson. After he does that, Self is automatically the Republican nominee for the district. There is a Democratic nominee for the seat, Sandeep Srivastava, but they face long odds after the district was redrawn last year to favor Republicans.

Holy shit. There’s a link to that article in the Trib story, which I refuse to include. It’s one of the less important aspects of this story, but the timing is curious. Why not publish this earlier, if that’s what you’re going to do, and not take the chance that he could win without a runoff? It gets a whole lot more complicated for the Republicans if he withdraws after winning the primary, and he came quite close to doing just that. I don’t understand any of this.

Anyway, this is where I was originally going to start this post. Here’s a list of the races that have gone into overtime. You can also read the Decision Desk wrapup for some more details.

Statewide Dem

Lite Guv – Mike Collier vs Michelle Beckley.

AG – Rochelle Garza vs Joe Jaworski. As of Wednesday afternoon Jaworski had less than a 2K vote lead over Lee Merritt. When I first looked at this, it was a 3K lead, with all of the remaining ballots in Harris County, where Jaworski started the day with a 6K vote lead over Merritt. That had shrunk to a bit less than 5K votes by the afternoon, which almost made my logic that Jaworski would easily hold his lead look idiotic, but the gap appears to have been too large for Merritt to overcome. But who knows, there may be a bunch of late-fixed mail ballots out there, so let’s put a pin in this one.

Comptroller – Janet Dudding vs Angel Vega.

Land Commissioner – Sandragrace Martinez vs Jay Kleberg.

Congressional Dem

CD01 – JJ Jefferson vs Victor Dunn.

CD15 – Ruben Ramirez vs Michelle Vallejo, who has a 300-vote lead over John Rigney.

CD21 – Claudia Zapata vs Ricardo Villarreal.

CD24 – Jan McDowell vs Derrik Gay, who rebounded after my initial bout of pessimism to finish in second place.

CD28 – Rep. Henry Cuellar vs Jessica Cisneros. Cisneros had a big early lead that was mostly a function of the order in which the counties reported their results. Cisneros crushed it in Bexar County, then watched as Starr, Webb, and Zapata erased her lead. In the end, if what I’m seeing is the actual final tally, it was Cuellar who missed winning outright by nine (!) votes. This one could change to a Cuellar win as the overseas and provisional votes are tallied, and then of course there may be a recount. Hold onto your hats.

CD30 – Jasmine Crockett vs Jane Hope Hamilton.

CD38 – Diana Martinez Alexander vs. Duncan Klussman. This is the only Congressional runoff in Harris County for Dems.

SBOE Dem

SBOE1 – Melissa Ortega vs Laura Marquez. The third-place finisher had big charter school backing, so this race can go back to being one you don’t need to know about.

SBOE2 – Victor Perez vs Pete Garcia.

SBOE4 – Coretta Mallet-Fontenot vs Staci Childs. This is in Harris County, it’s the seat Lawrence Allen vacated in his unsuccessful run for HD26. I’ll put this one on my to do list for runoff interviews.

SBOE11 – Luis Sifuentes vs James Whitfield. Double-timer DC Caldwell finished third, while also losing in the Republican primary for this same seat to incumbent Pat Hardy. Let us never speak of this again.

State Senate Dem

SD27 – Morgan LaMantia vs Sara Stapleton-Barrera.

State House Dems

HD22 – Joseph Trahan vs Christian Hayes.

HD37 – Ruben Cortez vs Luis Villarreal

HD70 – Cassandra Hernandez vs Mihaela Plesa. This one was an almost even split among three candidates, with third place finisher Lorenzo Sanchez 29 votes behind Plesa and 102 votes behind Hernandez. Another overseas/provisional vote count to watch and another recount possibility.

HD76 – Suleman Lalani vs Vanesia Johnson. This is the new Dem-likely seat in Fort Bend.

HD100 – Sandra Crenshaw vs Venton Jones.

HD114 – Alexandra Guio vs John Bryant. Bryant was a Dem Congressman in the 90’s, in the old CD05. After winning a squeaker against Pete Sessions in 1994, Bryant tried his luck in the primary for Senate in 1996, eventually losing in a runoff to Victor Morales. Bryant just turned 75 (why anyone would want to get back into the Lege at that age boggles my mind, but maybe that’s just me), while Guio is quite a bit younger. Should be an interesting matchup. This was a five-way race with everyone getting between 17 and 25 percent, so endorsements from the ousted candidates may make a difference.

HD147 – Jolanda Jones vs Danielle Bess.

Harris County Dems

185th Criminal District Court – Andrea Beall vs Judge Jason Luong.

208th Criminal District Court – Beverly Armstrong vs Kim McTorry. Judge Greg Glass finished third.

312th Family District Court – Teresa Waldrop vs Judge Chip Wells.

County Civil Court at Law #4 – Manpreet Monica Singh vs Treasea Treviño. David Patronella was in second place after early voting, but fell behind as the Tuesday votes came in.

Commissioners Court, Precinct 4 – Lesley Briones vs Ben Chou.

Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1, Place 2 – Sonia Lopez vs Steve Duble.

Republicans

Not really interested in a complete rundown, but it’s Paxton versus P Bush for AG, Dawn Buckingham versus Tim Westley for Land Commissioner, and Wayne Christian versus Sarah Stogner for Railroad Commissioner. At least that last one will be interesting.

As noted yesterday, it will be Alexandra Mealer versus Vidal Martinez for the nomination for County Judge. I have no feelings about this.

I will put some other primary news and notes in a separate post. Let me know if I missed a race.

2022 primary results: Legislative races

Mar 2nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

You might start with the Daily Kos rundown of races of interest, which includes all of the Congressional races worth watching.

One of those got an early resolution, as former Austin City Council member Greg Casar declared victory before 9 PM. He had a ridiculous early lead, and was at just under 60% when I wrote this. He was one of the candidates backed by national progressives, and they may go two for two, as Jessica Cisneros was just over 50%, up by about five points in her three-way race with Rep. Henry Cuellar. This one may go to a runoff, and it’s one we’ll all be sick of by the end of March if that happens. Whatever the case, she built on her 2020 campaign, likely with a bit of an assist from the FBI, and if she wins she earned it.

Other open Congressional seat races: Rep. Lloyd Doggett waltzed to an easy and crushing win in CD37. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who moved from CD15 to CD34 to succeed Rep. Filemon Vela, was headed to victory there. In CD15, Ruben Ramirez led a more tightly packed field; it’s not clear who might accompany him to a runoff. State Rep. Jasmine Crockett was at around 55% in CD30 early on, and could win without a runoff. I generally like her, but stories like this one about a cryptocurrency super PAC supporting her really makes me scratch my head.

In the two seats that are currently targets for the DCCC, John Lira was in a fairly solid lead in CD23, while it appears that sigh Jan McDowell will be in a runoff in CD24. Derrik Gay, the best fundraiser and the candidate the DCCC has been backing, was in a tight race for second place. Lord help me. Claudia Zapata was in first place and headed for the runoff in CD21, Sandeep Srivastava was winning in CD03, and here in Harris County Duncan Klussman and Diana Martinez Alexander were basically tied in CD38, with a runoff in their future.

On the Republican side: Dan Crenshaw easily won against a couple of no-names in CD02, while Van Taylor was above 50% in his four-way race in CD03. Monica De La Cruz and Mayra Flores were above 50% in CDs 15 and 34, respectively, while Wesley Hunt was winning in the district that Republicans drew for him, CD38. Morgan Luttrell was above 50% in CD08. None of the incumbents who had challengers had any reason to sweat.

In the State Senate, Sen. John Whitmire had a 62-38 lead in early voting over Molly Cook in SD15. Cook lost the race, but I’d say she beat the spread, and if there’s another opportunity in 2024 she’s put herself in good position to take advantage of it. Morgan LaMantia and Sar Stapleton Barrera are one and two, neck and neck, for SD27; that will be a spirited runoff. Titus Benton was leading Miguel Gonzalez 51-49 with about half the vote counted in SD17.

House races of interest in Harris County: Harold Dutton had a 55-45 lead on Candis Houston early on. Alma Allen was headed to victory against two opponents in HD131. Jolanda Jones at about 45% in HD147, with a close race between Danielle Bess and Reagan Flowers for the other runoff spot. Chase West had a four-vote lead over Cam Campbell in HD132 in early voting.

Elsewhere in the state:

HD22 (open) – Joe Trahan was just short of a majority and will face Christian Hayes in the runoff.
HD26 (R held) – Daniel Lee defeated Lawrence Allen.
HD37 (open) – Ruben Cortez and Luis Villarreal in the runoff.
HD38 (open) – Erin Gamez won.
HD50 (open) – James Talarico, who moved over from HD52, won easily.
HD51 (open) – Lulu Flores won.
HD70 (open, new seat, R held, D pickup opportunity) – Too close to call among three candidates.
HD75 – Rep. Mary Gonzalez easily defeated her challenger.
HD76 (open, new D seat) – Suleman Lalani and Vanesia Johnson in the runoff.
HD79 (two Ds paired) – Rep. Claudia Ordaz Perez was leading Rep. Art Fierro.
HD92 (open, new seat, R held, D pickup opportunity) – Salman Bhojani won.
HD100 (open) – Sandra Crenshaw and Venton Jones headed for the runoff.
HD114 (open) – Too close to call among at least three candidates.
HD124 (open) – Josey Garcia won.
HD125 – Rep. Ray Lopez defeated his challenger.

On the R side, the main thing I will note is that former City Council members Greg Travis and Bert Keller will not be in the runoff for HD133.

Note that a lot of this is based on incomplete voting, so there may be some changes as of the morning. I’ll do some followup tomorrow.

Final roundup of interviews and judicial Q&As

Feb 22nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Here they all are. As noted, I may return to some races for the runoff. For now, this is what we have. As a reminder, much more information about Democratic primary candidates, including links to the interviews and judicial Q&As, can be found on Erik Manning’s spreadsheet. Vote well.

Interviews

Duncan Klussman, CD38
Diana Martinez Alexander, CD38

Jinny Suh, Land Commissioner
Jay Kleberg, Land Commissioner

Sen. John Whitmire, SD15
Molly Cook, SD15

Aurelia Wagner, HD147
Danielle Bess, HD147
Jolanda Jones, HD147
Nam Subramanian, HD147
Reagan Flowers, HD147

Candis Houston, HD142
Chase West, HD132

Ben Chou, Harris County Commissioners Court Precinct 4
Ann Williams, Harris County Commissioners Court Precinct 4
Gina Calanni, Harris County Commissioners Court Precinct 4
Lesley Briones, Harris County Commissioners Court Precinct 4
Clarence Miller, Harris County Commissioners Court Precinct 4

Dylan Osborne, Harris County Treasurer (Incumbent)
Carla Wyatt, Harris County Treasurer
Marilyn Burgess, Harris County District Clerk (Incumbent)
Desiree Broadnax, Harris County District Clerk

Judicial Q&As

Kyle Carter, 14th Court of Appeals, Place 2
Cheri Thomas, 14th Court of Appeals, Place 2

Judge Chuck Silverman, 183rd Criminal District Court
Judge Abigail Anastasio, 184th Criminal District Court
Katherine Thomas, 184th Criminal District Court
Judge Jason Luong, 184th Criminal District Court
Andrea Beall, 185th Criminal District Court
Lema Barazi, 189th Civil District Court
Judge Scott Dollinger, 189th Civil District Court
Judge Greg Glass, 208th Criminal District Court
Kim McTorry, 208th Criminal District Court
Samuel Milledge, 228th Criminal District Court
Judge Chris Morton, 230th Criminal District Court
Judge Tristan Longino, 245th Family District Court
Angela Lancelin, 245th Family District Court
Judge Hilary Unger, 248th Criminal District Court
Judge Amy Martin, 263rd Criminal District Court
Dianne Curvey, 280th Family District Court
Judge Barbara Stalder, 280th Family District Court
Judge Chip Wells, 312th Family District Court
Teresa Waldrop, 312th Family District Court
Paul Calzada, 312th Family District Court
Judge Natalia Oakes, 313th Family District Court
Glenda Duru, 313th Family District Court
Judge Leah Shapiro, 313th Family District Court
Ieshia Champs, 315th Family District Court
Alycia Harvey, 482nd Criminal District Court
Veronica Monique Nelson, 482nd Criminal District Court

David Patronella, County Civil Court At Law #4
Manpreet Monica Singh, County Civil Court At Law #4
Treasea Treviño, County Civil Court At Law #4
Porscha Natasha Brown, County Criminal Court At Law #3
Judge Kelley Andrews, County Criminal Court At Law #6
Judge Andrew Wright, County Criminal Court At Law #7
Erika Ramirez, County Criminal Court At Law #8
Judge David Singer, County Criminal Court At Law #14
Judge Michael Newman, County Probate Court #2

Chris Watson, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1 Place 2
Steve Duble, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1 Place 2
Ron Campana, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1 Place 2
Blair McClure, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 2 Place 2
Dolores Lozano, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 2 Place 2
Judge Lucia Bates, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3 Place 2
Herbert Alexander Sanchez, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3 Place 2
Ashleigh Roberson, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3 Place 2

UPDATE: Naturally, I woke up this morning to see another set of Q&A responses in my inbox. They will run tomorrow.

Endorsement watch: Almost all of the big ones

Feb 14th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The Sunday Chron was full of endorsements, which given the timing and the edition is what you’d expect. Most of them are not particularly remarkable, and I’m not going to spend any time on their recommendations for Beto and Mike Collier on the Democratic side, or Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, or Eva Guzman on the Republican side. Everyone except Collier is obvious, and Collier is both a good choice and the familiar one. Read them as you see fit, but I don’t expect you’ll take much away from them.

There were some other races with more interest, starting with the CD38 primary in which they tapped Duncan Klussman.

Duncan Klussman

Two years ago, Diana Martinez Alexander emerged as top vote-getter in a raucous six-member Democratic primary for a seat on the Harris County Commissioners Court. Now she’s asking party voters to entrust her with their hopes for picking up a seat in Congress, representing the new district Texas lawmakers created following the 2020 Census.

Alexander’s command of the issues facing the next Congress impressed us. So did her background as a teacher in HISD and fighter for causes near to the hearts of Democratic primary voters, as when she told us she’d make voting rights a top priority. “We have to make some progress in protecting our voting rights,” she said. “So that would be the number one priority, because we can’t have anything else if we don’t have a right to vote.”

But we believe it’s another candidate — former Spring Branch ISD superintendent Duncan Klussmann — who will give Democrats the best chance of winning in the fall.

When Texas lawmakers drew the new 38th Congressional District last year, they did so intending to give a Republican candidate the advantage, and the GOP primary field includes well-known and well-financed contenders. Democrats will need their strongest candidate to compete. Despite Alexander’s impressive showing in the March 3, 2020 primary, she lost the subsequent runoff to Michael Moore.

We believe Democrats stand the best chance in November with Klussmann, 58, on the ticket. His priorities are kitchen-table issues all voters worry about. He’d stress getting the supply chain moving, ensuring the Houston area gets federal support for flood mitigation and tackling rising inflation. “Some of us who were around in the 1970s remember when, when my parents were paying 12 percent, 14 percent interest on their mortgages,” he told us. “So we know how that can impact people’s lives.”

Coupled with his experience as superintendent for 18 years, Klussmann’s priorities could help him build broad consensus, something there is far too little of in Congress these days. But he knows fighting for the home team is important, too. He said he’d work to expand Medicaid for Texas and push universal pre-K.

My interview with Duncan Klussman is here and with Diana Martinez Alexander is here; as noted before, Centrell Reed declined the opportunity to be interviewed. Klussman is fine, well-qualified and knowledgeable, and can speak to the experience of being a former Republican, which can certainly be an asset. Lord knows, we’re going to need more people like that. If this election were in 1996, or even 2006, he’d be the strongest candidate on paper. I don’t know how much of an advantage his profile is now, given the shrinking number of crossover voters and potential for some Dem voters to be less enamored with that kind of centrism. I know and trust Diana Alexander and would be inclined to vote for her if I lived in CD38, but you have good options however you look at it.

One race I didn’t have a chance to get to was the SBOE4 race, which is an open seat as incumbent Lawrence Allen is running for HD26. The primary winner will be elected in November, and the Chron recommends Staci Childs.

Staci Childs

Voters have five options in the Democratic primary for the District 4 seat, but two candidates stood out to us as especially impressive.

Marvin Johnson, a former high school math teacher and chemical engineer who is a lecturer at North American University in Houston, had good ideas for how to improve schools, but he struggled with the narrow scope of authority granted to the state school board.

“What I see right now is not working,” he told us, adding that he was “disappointed” to learn how little say the SBOE has over how schools operate when he first filed to run. He’ll try to convince lawmakers and others to join his call to expand its responsibilities, should he be elected.

We’d rather see Democrats choose a candidate who promises to work full-time to improve school curriculum. We believe Staci Childs, a former teacher in Georgia, is that candidate. Though now a practicing attorney, she’s the founder of an education-related nonprofit called Girl Talk University.

We especially liked her ideas about how Texas’ use of TEKS standards — short for Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills — is failing some kids and their schools. Often, she said, all that stands between a student and knowing what’s required is a specific gap in their knowledge left unfilled from a previous grade. A quick effort to identify and bridge that gap can quickly allow them to come up to grade level and pass, without the stigma of being held back.

“I don’t want to say remedial, because that has a negative connotation,” Childs told us. “But we need a serious plan to address the TEKS, since … they do not address these learning gaps.”

I will come back to this race for the very likely runoff, as there are five candidates.

Finally, two judicial endorsements. One is for a challenger, Kim McTorry.

Kim McTorrey

Judge Greg Glass has decades of experience as a criminal lawyer in Harris County, but he’s fallen short of expectations on the 208th Criminal District Court bench. We recommend voters give his challenger, Kimberly McTorry, a defense attorney and former prosecutor, a chance to win the seat in the general election.

While we recognize how difficult bond decisions can be for judges, particularly when the right to bail is enshrined in the Texas Constitution, in the case of Deon Ledet, a twice-convicted ex-felon, it is clear Glass made an egregious mistake.

Prosecutors initially sought to have Ledet held without bail even though he hadn’t been charged with a capital crime, arguing he’d twice previously been convicted of a felony. A magistrate judge set bail at $40,000 initially; Glass subsequently agreed to a request from Ledet’s lawyers to reduce his bail to $20,000. Ledet immediately violated the terms of his pre-trial release, and when two Houston police officers showed up at Ledet’s home to serve an arrest warrant, he allegedly shot and killed Officer William Jeffrey.

Glass, 73, told the editorial board his decision to reduce Ledet’s bond was a mistake. “I really feel sorry for Officer Jeffrey’s family, it’s a horrible thing what happened,” Glass said. “If I could change it, I would.”

[…]

McTorry, 34, would bring a balanced perspective to the courtroom, having practiced on both sides of the docket. While she has only recently begun handling second-degree felonies as a defense attorney, we believe her trial experience as a Harris County prosecutor, where she handled thousands of felony and misdemeanor cases, makes up for that relative lack of experience.

“I believe in restorative justice, I believe in criminal justice reform, but I also believe that a judge should be equally as compassionate about the victims of crimes as they are about those who are accused of crimes,” McTorry told us.

My Q&A with Judge Glass is here. I have one in the queue for McTorry that will run tomorrow.

The Chron also went with an incumbent, Judge Frank Aguilar in the 228th Criminal District Court.

There are those who believe Judge Frank Aguilar of the 228th District Court in Harris County is too quick to side with prosecutors’ arguments in court. But in a county whose criminal court judiciary turned over en masse four years ago, and where concerns about rising crime and lax bond decisions are widespread, we aren’t persuaded that Democrats would be wise to part company with a judge in their party with a tough approach to crime. Whether Aguilar wins or his opponent criminal defense lawyer Sam Milledge II does, the party’s nominee can expect that question of how judges handle bond in violent cases to be central to the November general election.

Those considerations aside, however, we believe Democrats should vote for Aguilar, 64, because he’s spent his first term on the bench learning to be a better judge — training the voters have paid for. His docket clearance rate has been 99 percent for cases in the previous 90 days, about average for all judges, and 86 percent for the previous year, a little better than average. He has about 10 percent fewer cases pending than average.

My Q&A with Aguilar’s opponent Sam Milledge is here; I never got a response from Judge Aguilar. I find this endorsement a bit amusing, since they considered Aguilar the poster boy for why electing judges is bad, a sentiment they extended to after the election. Maybe all that gnashing of teeth was a bit over the top, eh? I know they have an all new crew doing these screenings now, but it still raises my eyebrows a bit that they didn’t come close to acknowledging their previous reservations about the incumbent.

So, as of the start of early voting, the Chron has managed to do nearly all of the endorsements they set their sights on. I haven’t tracked the Republican side closely, but on the Dem side the main omissions I see are Attorney General and five Criminal District Courts. I know they’re not doing county courts and JP races, I’m not sure if they’re doing civil/family/juvenile district court – if they are, add all of those to the tab. I’ve got judicial Q&As queued up through Friday; I don’t expect to receive any more responses at this point, but if I do I’ll add them in. Now go out there and vote.

January 2022 campaign finance reports: Congress

Feb 10th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

The filing deadline has passed, the primary lineups are set, and we have a new set of races and candidates to review. As was the case in the past two cycles, I’ll follow the contested primaries as well as the (fewer than before) November races of interest. I’ll drop the former once those contests are settled. The October 2021 reports are here, the July 2021 reports are here, and you can get the links to the previous cycle’s reports from there.

Dan Crenshaw – CD02
Robin Fulford – CD02
Van Taylor – CD03
Keith Self – CD03
Sandeep Srivastava – CD03
Doc Shelby – CD03
Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Mike McCaul – CD10
Linda Nuno – CD10
Mauro Garza – CD15
John Villarreal Rigney – CD15
Ruben Ramirez – CD15
Roberto Haddad – CD15
Eliza Alvarado – CD15
Monica de la Cruz – CD15
Chip Roy – CD21
Scott Sturm – CD21
Robert Lowry – CD21
Claudia Zapata – CD21
Ricardo Villarreal – CD21
Troy Nehls – CD22
Jamie Kaye Jordan – CD22
Tony Gonzales – CD23
John Lira – CD23
Beth Van Duyne – CD24
Derrik Gay – CD24
Kathy Fragnoli – CD24
Jan McDowell – CD24
Henry Cuellar – CD28
Jessica Cisneros – CD28
Tannya Benavides – CD28
Ed Cabrera – CD28
Willie Vasquez Ng – CD28
Cassandra Garcia – CD28
Abel Mulugheta – CD30
Jane Hope Hamilton – CD30
Jessica Mason – CD30
Jasmine Crockett – CD30
Colin Allred – CD32
Vicente Gonzalez – CD34
Mayra Flores – CD34
Greg Casar – CD35
Eddie Rodriguez – CD35
Rebecca Viagran – CD35
Lloyd Doggett – CD37
Donna Imam – CD37
Wesley Hunt – CD38
Duncan Klussman – CD38
Diana Martinez Alexander – CD38
Centrell Reed – CD38


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
02    Crenshaw     10,302,932  7,639,567        0  4,516,080
02    Fulford          49,692     15,595   15,595     34,097
03    Taylor        1,857,852    652,058  503,192  1,228,292
03    Self            165,608     58,297        0    107,321
03    Srivastava       59,699     49,257   25,000     10,441
03    Shelby                0          0        0          0
07    Fletcher      2,414,235    485,311        0  1,990,020
10    McCaul        1,413,600    643,881        0    777,453
10    Nuno                  0          0        0          0
15    Garza           504,584    162,893  663,201    387,578
15    V Rigney        151,025         26  151,000    150,999
15    Ramirez         108,280     34,054   12,250     74,225
15    Haddad          100,000    100,000        0          0
15    Alvarado         75,035     24,183   29,000     50,851
15    De la Cruz    1,539,153    921,051   13,000    625,607
21    Roy           1,240,412    651,863        0  1,052,131
21    Sturm            47,618     37,869        0      5,728
21    Lowry            39,725     36,227   27,325      3,497
21    Zapata           38,436     34,619        0      4,769
21    Villarreal       25,190     15,048   20,563     10,141
22    Nehls           670,482    322,270    5,726    367,417
22    Jordan                0          0        0          0
23    Gonzales      2,261,907    985,463        0  1,307,803
23    Lira            251,642    195,017        0     56,625
24    Van Duyne     2,035,203    731,839        0  1,371,774
24    Gay             208,661    165,886        0     42,774
24    Fragnoli         28,121     17,328   12,096     10,793
24    McDowell         11,183      5,632        0      5,550
28    Cuellar       1,853,133  1,056,272        0  2,347,334
28    Cisneros        812,072    320,983        0    494,058
28    Benavides        27,177     17,265        0      9,912
28    Cabrera         289,230    112,450  250,000    176,779
28    Ng              137,786     11,436   50,900    126,349
28    Garcia           85,601      2,742        0     82,858
30    Mulugheta       252,713     65,673        0    187,039
30    Hamilton        228,605    157,280    5,014     71,325
30    Mason           199,082    160,217        0     38,865
30    Crockett        101,281     21,094        0     80,186
32    Allred        2,213,564    621,340        0  1,751,646
34    Gonzalez      1,688,731    942,491        0  2,116,732
34    Flores          187,115    128,345        0     58,769
35    Casar           467,579    111,870        0    355,709
35    Rodriguez       251,472     31,134        0    220,338
35    Viagran          47,375      2,286        0     45,088
37    Doggett         635,901    360,138        0  5,476,237
37    Imam            210,983    110,414        0    100,518
38    Hunt          2,039,403    708,280        0  1,555,065
38    Klussman         17,865        385    7,000     17,479
38    Alexander        11,892      6,462        0      5,429
38    Reed             11,377        192    6,496     11,184

Some of these races have a lot of candidates, and in some of those cases I limited myself to people who raised a noticeable amount of money. Most but not all races have both Republicans and Democrats listed – the incumbent is listed first followed by other candidates from that party, if any. In the case of open seats like CDs 15 and 34, I listed the Democrats first since those are Democratic seats.

The two races that the DCCC has focused on as potential pickups are CDs 23 and 24. Leading candidates John Lira and Derrik Gay had raised respectable amounts so far, but if you look at the October reports you can see they didn’t add all that much to their totals. They spent more than they took in over the past three months, not terribly surprising given that they’re in contested races (Lira’s opponent didn’t report anything), but it means they’ll be starting way in the hole. If they don’t pick it up considerably in this quarter it won’t much matter anyway.

I’m a little surprised that State Rep. Jasmine Crockett hasn’t raised more in CD30, as she is the candidate endorsed by outgoing Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, but she was only an official candidate in that race for five weeks, so in that context she did pretty well. In the likely event of a runoff, we’ll see what her April report says. On the Republican side, I expected more from Keith Self, who was Collin County Judge and whose candidacy was fueled by the grievance of Rep. Van Taylor voting for the January 6 commission. I guess his buddy Ken Paxton is in no position to lend him a hand right now. Rebecca Viagran is the one San Antonio candidate in a district with two Austin heavyweights duking it out. You’d think that might be a good path to getting into a runoff, but her fundraising doesn’t reflect that.

Donna Imam had been running in CD31 as of the October report, but switched to the new CD37 when her old district became less hospitable. I expect she’ll join a long list of candidates who got their heads handed to them by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, but you don’t know till you try. All of the Dems in CD38 were late filers in the race, so they had less than three weeks to collect cash. If this were 2012, the eventual winner of that primary would struggle to raise more than about $50K over the entire year. This is not a race that Dems have any expectation of winning, but I’ll be interested to see if the nominee here can do better than their long-longshot counterparts from a decade ago. My theory is that after two exciting cycles and a fair amount of engagement and organization, there should be a higher base level of support for candidates like these. We’ll see how dumb that theory turns out to be.

I did not comment on the absurd fundraising total of Rep. Dan Crenshaw last time. I will do so this time: That’s a lot of money. Whatever else you might say about the guy, he’s a fundraising machine. Spends a lot of it, too – I don’t look at the report details, so I can’t say where it’s going. But anyone who can rake it in like that, you have to think he’s got his eye on a statewide run, maybe in 2024 if Ted Cruz makes good his threat to run for President again. He does have three primary opponents, who combined to raise less than $50K. He also occasionally says things that make the most rabid of Trump minions howl with rage, so the possibility exists that he could underperform against that collection of no-names. I would not expect it to amount to anything, but it might provide a bit of fodder for the pundits.

Interviews and judicial Q&As through February 4

Feb 6th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Updating from last week. This is to put all of the interviews and judicial Q&As in a single post for your convenience, in case you missed something. This past week was CD38 plus Candis Houston in HD142 and Chase West in HD132. Next up, for the final week of interviews, will be two Land Commissioner candidates, Jinny Suh and Jay Kleberg. After that, I still have several Q&As and will run them till I run out. As noted before, I will likely do some more interviews for the runoffs.

Here’s the interview list so far, followed by the judicial Q&As. As a reminder, much more information about Democratic primary candidates, including links to the interviews and judicial Q&As, can be found on Erik Manning’s spreadsheet. Thanks to CityCast Houston for the recent shoutout in the newsletter and on the podcast. Let me know if you have any questions.

Interviews

Aurelia Wagner, HD147
Danielle Bess, HD147
Jolanda Jones, HD147
Nam Subramanian, HD147
Reagan Flowers, HD147

Dylan Osborne, Harris County Treasurer (Incumbent)
Carla Wyatt, Harris County Treasurer
Marilyn Burgess, Harris County District Clerk (Incumbent)
Desiree Broadnax, Harris County District Clerk

Sen. John Whitmire, SD15
Molly Cook, SD15

Duncan Klussman, CD38
Diana Martinez Alexander, CD38

Candis Houston, HD142
Chase West, HD132

Judicial Q&As

Kyle Carter, 14th Court of Appeals, Place 2

Judge Chuck Silverman, 183rd Criminal District Court
Judge Abigail Anastasio, 184th Criminal District Court
Lema Barazi, 189th Civil District Court
Judge Scott Dollinger, 189th Civil District Court
Judge Greg Glass, 208th Criminal District Court
Samuel Milledge, 228th Criminal District Court
Judge Chris Morton, 230th Criminal District Court
Judge Tristan Longino, 245th Family District Court
Angela Lancelin, 245th Family District Court
Judge Hilary Unger, 248th Criminal District Court
Dianne Curvey, 280th Family District Court
Judge Barbara Stalder, 280th Family District Court
Judge Chip Wells, 312th Family District Court
Teresa Waldrop, 312th Family District Court
Judge Natalia Oakes, 313th Family District Court
Glenda Duru, 313th Family District Court
Alycia Harvey, 482nd Criminal District Court

David Patronella, County Civil Court At Law #4
Porscha Natasha Brown, County Criminal Court At Law #3
Judge Kelley Andrews, County Criminal Court At Law #6
Judge Andrew Wright, County Criminal Court At Law #7
Erika Ramirez, County Criminal Court At Law #8
Judge David Singer, County Criminal Court At Law #14
Judge Michael Newman, County Probate Court #2

Chris Watson, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1 Place 2
Blair McClure, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 2 Place 2
Judge Lucia Bates, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3 Place 2
Herbert Alexander Sanchez, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3 Place 2
Ashleigh Roberson, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3 Place 2

Interview with Diana Martinez Alexander

Feb 1st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Diana Alexander

My second interview for the Democratic primary in CD38 is with Diana Martinez Alexander, who is an educational diagnostician in Cy-Fair ISD, working with special education students, linguistically diverse populations, and lower socio-economic communities. She’s also a dedicated activist and community organizer, leading or working with efforts to send postcards to the Texas Capitol, connecting volunteers to Houston immigrant families and organizations such as Casa Juan Diego, and fighting for fair representation on the Spring Branch ISD Board of Trustees. She ran in the Democratic for Commissioners Court in Precinct 3 in 2020, and you can listen to the interview I did with her for that here. You can listen to the interview I did with her for this race below, after I remind you that there won’t be a third interview in this race because Centrell Reed declined the opportunity. Tune in tomorrow and Thursday for interviews with Candis Houston in HD142 and Chase West in HD132. Here’s Diana:

cakuffner · Diana Martinez Alexander Interview 011122

As with the judicial Q&A’s, more information about Democratic primary candidates, including links to the interviews and judicial Q&As, can be found on Erik Manning’s spreadsheet. I will periodically round up the links to these posts as well.

Interview with Duncan Klussmann

Jan 31st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Duncan Klussmann

This week we will have interviews with two of the Democratic candidates in the new CD38, as well as a couple of interviews with legislative candidates, about which I’ll say a bit more tomorrow. Today’s candidate for CD38 is Duncan Klussmann, a retired educator and former Superintendent of Spring Branch ISD. Klussman is a native of Brenham and a graduate of UT and Stephen F. Austin State University. He’s a resident of Jersey Village, where he has served on their City Council, and he was named a Houstonian of the Year for 2014 by the Chronicle. My interview with him is below, but I want to note before we get to it that candidate Centrell Reed declined the opportunity to do an interview, so that’s why there will only be two of them for this race. Here’s our conversation:

cakuffner · Duncan Klussman Interview 011022

Supreme Court rejects mandamus over Commissioners Court redistricting

Jan 12th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The primary will proceed as scheduled, but the issue could be revisited sometime after the 2022 election.

The Texas Supreme Court rejected an effort by Republican commissioners and voters to block Harris County’s recent redistricting plan on Friday, suggesting another challenge still in the works will meet a similar fate.

In their challenge, the petitioners argued that the new maps amounted to illegal Democratic gerrymandering. The new precincts approved by Harris County leaders last year resulted in dramatic shifts that the challengers argued would disenfranchise voters in the upcoming primaries.

But in a narrow ruling, the justices found that they likely couldn’t provide any relief to the challengers because the wheels of the election were already in motion.

“(N)o amount of expedited briefing or judicial expediency at this point can change the fact that the primary election for 2022 is already in its early stages,” their opinion read. “This Court and other Texas courts are duty-bound to respond quickly to urgent cases that warrant expedited proceedings, but even with utmost judicial speed, any relief that we theoretically could provide here would necessarily disrupt the ongoing election process.”

The result is that the new precinct maps will be allowed to stand. The Democratic majority on commissioners court adopted the maps on a 3-2 party line vote in October.

See here and here for the background, and here for a copy of the opinion, which is also embedded in the story. It’s fairly brief and pretty straightforward, so let me summarize:

– The current map violates federal law because of population differences among the four precincts. It was not an option for the court to order that the current map be used while the appeals played out.

– The court ruled that their role in redistricting is limited, and that they did not have nearly enough facts to go on, as many of the plaintiffs’ claims remain in dispute. The burden required to make them step in and halt or change the election, which is already underway, was far too high for them to take action on such a short notice.

– Regarding the (ridiculous) claim about people being disenfranchised because they would have to wait until 2024 to vote when they had been expecting to vote in 2022, the court noted that some number of people will always be in that position when redistricting occurs. The Constitution requires the State Senate (which like Commissioners Court has staggered four-year terms) to have everyone run after redistricting, but there’s no such requirement for Commissioners Courts, which moved to four-year terms by an amendment in 1954. Ordering all four precincts to be on the ballot in 2022 was rejected because of the limited time for anyone who might run in the other precincts to get going. The court also noted that any short-term remedy for Harris County might cause problems with other counties, if people could make similar claims about being disenfranchised.

– Given all that, the court said it had no choice but to reject the writ of mandamus and allow the 2022 election to go forward as planned. The court did not make any claims or judgments about the merits of the plaintiffs’ arguments, and said that if the matter comes back to them after going through the lower courts, they can evaluate them at that time.

So there you have it. There is still the Radack lawsuit out there, but as the story notes it seems extremely unlikely that will succeed at affecting this election based on this ruling. The Cagle/Ramsey lawsuit was dismissed in Harris County district court, so I presume the next step would be for the dismissal, which was made on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked jurisdiction (this is what the story said, perhaps this should be standing), to be appealed. Success for the plaintiffs would mean sending the case back to a district court, hopefully (for them) to get a hearing and ruling on the merits, which would naturally be appealed by whoever lost. My guess is that this whole process would take a few years if everything proceeds at its normal pace. While the Supreme Court allowed for the possibility of an all-precinct election (under another new map) in 2024, or even a special election presumably before then, I wouldn’t hold my breath on it. Same thing for the Radack lawsuit, which as far as I know has not had an initial hearing yet.

Finally, while this story does not mention it, I wonder if this may also signal the death knell for the two state court redistricting challenges, on the same grounds of not having enough time to do something before people begin voting. That last update suggested the possibility of a trial this week, but I am not aware of any news to that effect. The cases are in Travis County district court, if anyone wants to try to figure that out.

Lawsuit over Harris County Commissioners Court redistricting tossed

Dec 30th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

Missed this over the holidays.

A Harris County Judge on Wednesday tossed a lawsuit from Republican commissioners and voters over new county maps that favor Democrats.

Judge Dedra Davis ruled in favor of Harris County, finding that Republican commissioners Jack Cagle and Tom Ramsey and three voters did not have jurisdiction to sue.

The Republicans’ attorney, Andy Taylor, indicated that he planned to appeal the ruling.

Cagle, Ramsey and the three voters filed the lawsuit against Democratic County Judge Lina Hidalgo and against Harris County last month. The suit alleged that the redistricting map proposed by Democratic Commissioner Rodney Ellis, known as the Ellis 3 plan, amounts to an unconstitutional gerrymander that would deprive more than 1.1 million voters of their right to vote.

Texas election law staggers county precinct elections every two years. All county commissioners serve four-year terms, but commissioners in even-numbered precincts and those in odd-numbered precincts take place at two-year intervals.

The next election for even-numbered precincts is in 2022. The lawsuit alleges that the Ellis 3 plan shifts more than 1.1 million voters from even-numbered precincts to odd-numbered precincts, depriving them of their right to vote until 2024.

“Plaintiffs submit that there is a very simple explanation for why this occurred,” the lawsuit reads. “Commissioner Ellis wanted to do whatever it would take to draw a new map that would create three…Democratic seats. Thus, the Ellis 3 Plan does just that.”

See here for the background. The lawsuit seemed pretty flimsy on its face, and it was dismissed without comment by District Court Judge Dedra Davis. The plaintiffs, which include Commissioners Cagle and Ramsey, and fan favorite attorney Andy Taylor, have filed a writ of mandamus with the Supreme Court in a last ditch effort to stop the new map from taking effect. The mandamus, which you can see here, makes the following claims:

The 2020 census revealed population changes among districts that required redistricting.

It was possible to comply with the “one man, one vote” rule by transferring 4% of the county’s population.

But Hidalgo, Ellis and Garcia chose a plan that moved 48% and overstepped their authority.

That plan will deprive 1.1 million people of their right to vote for commissioner in the next election and likely tip the result from Republican to Democrat in one precinct, creating a 4-1 supermajority for Democrats.

As soon as I saw that “moved 48%” of voters claim, I said to myself, where have I seen a statistic like that before? Right here:

The initial Republican proposal for redrawing Texas congressional maps calls for Harris County to once again be split into nine districts, but with major alterations to protect the region’s endangered GOP incumbents.

The shifts mean more than a million voters who live west of downtown Houston would have a different member of Congress representing them.

Ultimately, Democratic-held districts now represented by U.S. Reps. Sylvia Garcia, Sheila Jackson Lee, Al Green and Lizzie Fletcher would all become more heavily blue under the proposed map released Monday by the Texas Senate. Under the proposal, Republican U.S. Reps. Dan Crenshaw and Troy Nehls would get more like-minded voters in their districts, too.

The proposal adds a completely new congressional district in west Harris County — District 38 — designed to favor a Republican, stitched together by cutting into four existing districts.

A little back of the envelope math here, we have “more than” a million voters, in a county with just under 2.5 million registered voters, that’s over 40% of voters being put into new districts, for the express purpose of creating a new Republican district in the county and bolstering the Republican caucus in Washington. So, yeah. Cry me a river, fellas.

Filing update: This is why we have to wait a few days before we know for sure who’s running

Dec 16th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

In the end, Rep. Lizzie Fletcher avoided a contested primary.

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher

In less than 24 hours, U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher went from having a competitive primary election in March to getting a free pass to the November general election for Houston’s 7th Congressional District.

On Monday morning, Centrell Reed, a Houston Democrat, qualified to be on the March 1 primary ballot against Fletcher. And later in the day, wealthy businessman Muhammad Tahir Javed filed to join the race just before the deadline to qualify.

But by the end of Tuesday, both challengers dropped out under pressure from key members of Congress.

Reed pulled out by the end of Monday and switched to a different Congressional race. And on Tuesday, Javed acknowledged he was being asked to get out of the race, but said he was determined to stay in it. Several hours later, Javed declared he had pulled out, too, with no further explanation.

[…]

Javed said a big reason he wanted to run for Congress was because of how the district had been redrawn to include nearly 200,000 new people from diverse Fort Bend County. The result is the 7th District now has the largest percentage of Asian voters of any in the state. About 70 percent of the voting-age population is now non-Anglo and 21 percent of the voting-age population is of Asian descent, according to U.S. Census records.

Javed, who immigrated from Pakistan nearly 20 years ago, said he felt like the district was perfectly drawn for him.

“This is home,” he said. “Our communities need representation.”

Javed, 55, has more than two dozen companies including hospitals, distribution networks, and real estate businesses. One of those businesses is Riceland Healthcare in Beaumont where former Congressman Nick Lampson, who once represented areas of Fort Bend County, is the chief operations officer.

The minute he got in the race, Javed said his phone started lighting up with people trying to get him to reconsider.

Reed, who lists her occupation as being in media, refiled her papers to run in the newly created 38th Congressional District, which includes parts like the Energy Corridor that have been in the 7th Congressional District. In that March 1 Democratic primary Reed will face Diana Martinez Alexander, who ran for Harris County Commissioners Court in 2020 and Duncan F. Klussmann, the former superintendent of the Spring Branch Independent School District.

See here and here for some background. For a lot of obvious – and yes, often self-serving – reasons, parties usually don’t like primary challenges to sitting incumbents. While Rep. Fletcher is no longer in a swing district, there would be a lot of money spent in her primary, and that’s money that could have been spent in November instead. It is what it is, and you can feel about it however you want. I will note that Centrell Reed has now made an announcement about her candidacy, which I am glad to see. I suppose this story explains why there hadn’t been an announcement before.

I don’t have any strong feelings about this right now. I like Rep. Fletcher and am not unhappy that she will be renominated, but I wasn’t terribly worried about her ability to win in that now-moot contest. I’d be interested to hear what Centrell Reed’s experience was – while Javed acknowledged that he came under pressure to leave the race, Reed wasn’t quoted about the issue in the story. Maybe she thought that CD38, which up until the end had no Dems running, would be a better race for her, I don’t know. I understand why Congressional Dems would want to clear the field for Rep. Fletcher – protecting fellow incumbents is always a top priority – but it’s not pretty to observe. This is what we have now.

Filing update: Not that Rick Perry

Dec 14th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I’m going to let this speak for itself.

Not that Rick Perry

Rick Perry is running for governor — but not that Rick Perry.

The Republican Party of Texas updated its list of candidate filings Monday — hours before the deadline for the March primary election — to include a Rick Perry running for governor. The party quickly confirmed that it was not Rick Perry, the former governor and U.S. energy secretary, against Gov. Greg Abbott. Instead it’s Ricky Lynn Perry, a man from Springtown, a town in Parker County northwest of Fort Worth. On the form, the man listed “Rick Perry” as the version of his name that he wants to appear on the ballot.

A LinkedIn profile for a Rick Perry from Springtown lists his current job as a senior desktop technician for Lockheed Martin. Neither Perry could be immediately reached for comment.

Abbott is running for a third term and has drawn at least three primary challengers. While Abbott may not be facing a challenge from his predecessor, having such a widely known name on the primary ballot could complicate his path to renomination.

Rick Perry was the longest-serving governor of Texas, preceding Abbott before the latter took office in 2015.

The candidate Perry’s form was notarized by Tony McDonald, an Austin lawyer who is active in anti-establishment conservative circles and has supported one of Abbott’s primary opponents, Don Huffines. McDonald told the Tribune that Perry is a “good conservative activist from Parker County” whom he knows through a “friend of a friend.” McDonald said he was supporting Perry and serving as his campaign treasurer.

Asked if one of Abbott’s existing primary challengers had convinced Perry to run, McDonald said he was “not aware of that.”

[…]

Abbott’s campaign, meanwhile, scoffed at Perry’s filing. The governor’s top political strategist, Dave Carney, said on Twitter that it was “another stupid pet trick” and that it “will backfire as these stunts always do.”

You know me, I love a good phony candidate story. Most likely this is just a dumb trick that will have no effect on the outcome. But it’s funny, and we could all use a laugh.

As yesterday was the filing deadline, there was a bit of a rush to get the job done, and the SOS Qualified Candidates page is missing a few names here and there. I’ll have another update tomorrow to fill in the remaining blanks, but in the meantime we have some coverage from the Trib.

The Democratic primary for lieutenant governor got a third candidate as Carla Brailey, vice chair of the state party, announced her campaign. Her launch came amid a lingering discussion among Democrats about whether their statewide slate is diverse enough.

Brailey said in an interview that she was running because she “really believe[s] our democracy is at stake, and I think this is gonna be one of the most important elections we have experienced in a very long time in Texas.”

“It’s very important that we have leadership that just reflects Texans — all Texans — and I think I will be able to do that,” said Brailey, who is Black.

She joined a primary field that includes Mike Collier, the last nominee for lieutenant governor who has been running since early this year, and state Rep. Michelle Beckley of Carrollton, who announced last month. Matthew Dowd, the cable-news commentator who once was a strategist for former President George W. Bush, had been running in the primary until last week, when he dropped out and said he wanted to make way for a more diverse field.

Brailey is not the only Democrat who has stepped forward for the statewide ticket as the filing deadline loomed. Janet Dudding, a 2020 candidate for a battleground state House seat in Brazos County, filed to run for comptroller, joining at least two other Democrats vying to take on GOP incumbent Glenn Hegar. Susan Hays, a prominent cannabis lawyer and hemp advocate, announced she was running for agriculture commissioner, giving Democrats their first candidate to challenge Republican incumbent Sid Miller.

“Farming is hard, but ethics should be easy,” Hays said Thursday as she announced her campaign against the scandal-prone Miller.

[…]

Over in the Houston area, where one of Texas’ new congressional seats is located, the longtime Republican frontrunner, Wesley Hunt, got arguably his best-known opponent yet: Mark Ramsey, a former member of the State Republican Executive Committee. The seat was drawn to favor the GOP, so Republicans have been watching how complicated of a path Hunt will have on his quest for a general-election win.

Until Monday, no Democrat was contesting the Houston-area seat — the 38th District — but that changed when Centrell Reed, a Houston life coach, switched to the race after filing for the 7th District. Reed’s decision spares the 7th District incumbent, U.S. Rep. Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, D-Houston, a primary challenge in a district that has been made much bluer by redistricting.

In state House races, there was little late drama involving incumbents. One question mark going into Monday was whether state Rep. Claudia Ordaz Perez would follow through on her plan to run against state Rep. Art Fierro, a fellow El Paso Democrat — and she did, filing with hours to spare. Ordaz Perez had chosen to take on Fierro after redistricting forced her into the district of a fellow El Paso Latina, Democratic state Rep. Lina Ortega.

In another late development in a state House contest, state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, drew a primary challenger: Candis Houston, president of the Aldine chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. Dutton, chair of the House Public Education Committee, was under fire from fellow Democrats earlier this year over how he handled legislation placing restrictions on transgender student athletes.

That Lite Guv primary is going to be a tough choice, those are three good candidates. Susan Hays picked up an opponent in her race, some dude named Ed Ireson. CD38 went from zero candidates to three – in addition to Centrell Reed (who the SOS still had in CD07 as of last night), Diana Martinez Alexander (candidate for Commissioners Court, Precinct 3 in 2020) and someone named Duncan Klussman filed. Other Harris County highlights:

– Three people, one of whom is the long-awaited Erica Davis, filed for Harris County Judge, making it a six person field.
– Sen. John Whitmire picked up a challenger, Molly Cook, who is one of the leading opponents to the I-45 project; see here for a story about that project that quotes her.
– Dems now have candidates for HDs 129 and 150, though I still don’t see anyone for HD133.
– Moving the lens out a bit, there are a few more primary challenges in the Lege – Erin Zwiener (HD45), Rhetta Bowers (HD113), and Ray Lopez (HD125) now have company – but if anyone was expecting a wave of such contests, you’re still waiting.
– By the way, the means I have to know that there are some filings that are not yet reflected on the SOS page is the photo album on the HCDP Facebook page, which contained most of the late arrivers. Here’s the full album with all the filers in alphabetical order. You think someone got the idea to take a picture of all the hopefuls to ensure there are no more of those mystery candidates? It’s a damn good idea, whether or not that was the motivation behind it.

Like I said, I’ll post another update tomorrow, to clean up anything we missed this time around. The Chron, which focused more on the Republican side, has more.

The filings I’m still looking for

Dec 13th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Today is Filing Deadline Day. By the end of today, we’ll know who is and isn’t running for what. While we wait for that, let’s review the filings that have not yet happened, to see what mysteries may remain.

Congress: Most of the potentially competitive districts have Democratic candidates in them. The ones that remain are CDs 22, 26, 31, and 38, though I have been told there is a candidate lined up for that latter slot. Of the rest, CD22 would be the biggest miss if no one files. I have to think someone will, but we’ll know soon enough.

For open seats, CD15 has five candidates so far, none of whom are familiar to me. CD30 has six candidates, with State Rep. Jasmine Crockett receiving the endorsement of outgoing Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. CD34 has six, with current CD15 Rep. Vicente Gonzalez the presumed favorite. CD35 has three serious contenders – Austin City Council member Greg Casar, former San Antonio City Council Member Rebecca Viagran, and State Rep. Eddie Rodrigues – and one person you’ve not heard of. CD37 has Rep. Lloyd Doggett and former CD31 candidate Donna Imam, in addition to a couple of low-profile hopefuls, but it will not have former CD25 candidate Julie Oliver, who has said she will not run.

Democratic incumbents who have primary challengers include Rep. Lizzie Fletcher in CD07 (I’m still waiting to see if Centrell Reed makes some kind of announcement); Rep. Veronica Escobar in CD16 (I don’t get the sense her challenger is a serious one); and Rep. Henry Cuellar in CD28, who gets a rematch with Jessica Cisneros, who came close to beating him last year. The Svitek spreadsheet lists some dude as a potential challenger in CD18 against Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, but so far no filing. Reps. Al Green, Joaquin Castro, Sylvia Garcia, Colin Allred, and Marc Veasey do not appear to have any challengers as of this morning.

Statewide: Pretty much everyone who has said they are a candidate has filed. Frequent candidate Michael Cooper and someone named Innocencio Barrientez have filed for Governor, making it a four-candidate field. Two Harris County district court judges, Julia Maldonado and Robert Johnson, have filed for slots on the Supreme Court and CCA, respectively. The Svitek spreadsheet lists potential but not yet filed contenders for two other Supreme Court positions but has no listings for CCA. The one potential candidate who has not yet taken action is Carla Brailey, who may or may not file for Lt. Governor.

SBOE: As this is a post-redistricting year, all SBOE seats are on the ballot, as are all State Senate seats. Dems have four reasonable challenge opportunities: Michelle Palmer is running again in SBOE6, Jonathan Cocks switched from the Land Commissioner race to file in SBOE8, Alex Cornwallis is in SBOE12, and then there’s whatever is happening in SBOE11. The good news is that DC Caldwell has company in the primary, if he is actually allowed to run in it, as Luis Sifuentes is also running. I would advise voting for Sifuentes.

There are two open Democratic seats, plus one that I’m not sure about. Ruben Cortez in SBOE2 and Lawrence Allen in SBOE4 are running for HDs 37 and 26, respectively. There are two candidates in 2 and three candidates in 4, so far. Georgina Perez is the incumbent in SBOE1 but as yet has not filed. If she has announced that she’s not running, I have not seen it. There is a candidate named Melissa Ortega in the race.

In SBOE5, the district that was flipped by Rebecca Bell-Metereau in 2020 and was subsequently made more Democratic in redistricting, we have the one primary challenge to an incumbent so far, as a candidate named Juan Juarez has filed against Bell-Metereau. I’m old enough to remember Marisa Perez coming out of nowhere to oust Michael Soto in 2012, so anything can happen here. The aforementioned Perez (now Marisa Perez-Diaz) and Aicha Davis are unopposed so far.

Senate: Nothing much here that you don’t already know. Every incumbent except Eddie Lucio has filed for re-election, and none of them have primary opponents so far. Lucio’s SD27 has the three challengers we knew about, Sara Stapleton-Barrera, State Rep. Alex Dominguez, and Morgan LaMantia. A candidate named Misty Bishop had filed for SD07, was rejected, and has since re-filed for SD04; I’m going to guess that residency issues were at play. There are Dem challengers in SD09 (Gwenn Burud, who has run for this office before) and SD17 (Miguel Gonzalez), but no one yet for SDs 07 or 08.

House: Here’s the list of potentially competitive districts, for some value of the word “competitive”. Now here’s a list of districts on that list that do not yet have a filed candidate:

HD14
HD25
HD28
HD29
HD55
HD57
HD61
HD66
HD67
HD84
HD89
HD96
HD106
HD126
HD129
HD133
HD150

I’m told there’s someone lined up for HD133. We’ll see about the rest.

All of the open seats have at least one candidate in them so far except for HD22, the seat now held by Joe Deshotel. There’s a name listed on the Svitek spreadsheet, so I assume that will be sorted by the end of the day.

Reps. Ron Reynolds (HD27), Ana-Maria Ramos (HD102), and Carl Sherman (HD109) are incumbents who have not yet filed. No one else has filed yet in those districts as well. Svitek has a note saying that Rep. Ramos has confirmed she will file; there are no notes for the other two. There is the possibility of a last-minute retirement, with a possibly preferred successor coming in at the same time.

Here is a complete list of Democratic House incumbents who face a primary challenge: Rep. Richard Raymond (HD42) and Rep. Alma Allen (HD131). Both have faced and turned away such opponents in the past. If there was supposed to be a wave of primary opponents to incumbents who came back early from Washington, they have not shown up yet.

Rep. James Talarico has moved from HD52 to the open HD50 after HD52 was made into a lean-Republican district. Rep. Claudia Ordaz-Perez, the incumbent in HD76, will run in HD79 against Rep. Art Fierro after HD76 was relocated from El Paso to Fort Bend.

Harris County: Again, nothing new here. Erica Davis has not yet filed for County Judge. County Clerk Teneshia Hudpseth is the only non-judicial incumbent without a primary opponent so far.

Far as I can tell, all of the county judicial slots have at least one filing in them, except for a couple of Justice of the Peace positions. George Risner, the JP in Precinct 2, Place 2 (all JP Place 2 slots are on the ballot this year) has not yet filed, amid rumors that he is mulling a challenge to Commissioner Adrian Garcia. Incumbent Angela Rodriguez in JP precinct 6 has not yet filed. No Dem challengers yet in precincts 4 or 8.

Other judicial races: Sorry, I don’t have the bandwidth for this right now. I’ll review it after today.

And that’s all I’ve got. See you on the other side. As always, leave your hot gossip in the comments.

Justice Department sues Texas over redistricting maps

Dec 7th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Add it to the queue.

The Department of Justice is suing Texas over its new redistricting maps, alleging that lawmakers intentionally discriminated against Latino and Black voters while redrawing the state’s political districts this year.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in El Paso, takes aim at Texas’ new maps for Congress and the state House of Representatives. The Biden administration alleges that several of the districts were drawn “with discriminatory intent” to increase the electoral power of the state’s white voters despite massive population growth among racial minorities.

“Our complaint today alleges that the redistricting plans approved by the Texas State Legislature and signed into law by the governor will deny Black and Latino voters an equal opportunity to participate in the voting process and to elect representatives of their choice, in violation of the Voting Rights Act,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a news conference.

Texas’ new maps, redrawn this year to reflect the state’s population increases since 2010, are already facing seven legal challenges in state courts. Critics have assailed them as attacks on Texas’ minority voters, noting that the state’s GOP-led Legislature declined to add any new majority-minority districts even as people of color drove 95 percent of the state’s 4 million-person population growth. Hispanic Texans comprised roughly half of that total.

“Our investigation determined that Texas’ redistricting plans will dilute the increased minority voting strength that should have developed from these significant demographic shifts,” Gupta said.

She added that the new maps were adopted through a “rushed process” that allowed for “minimum” public participation. The department is asking the court to prevent any elections from taking place using the new maps; the state’s primaries are scheduled for March 1.

Politico adds some details.

The suit notes that Texas’ past redistricting maps have repeatedly been smacked down by courts over the last several decades. But [Attorney General Merrick] Garland acknowledged during the press conference that this case presents more challenges than past decades because the so-called preclearance requirement, which mandated that jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory election laws get changes approved by either the Department of Justice or a D.C.-based federal court, was gutted by a mid-2010s Supreme Court decision.

“There are two problems: One, it means that we don’t get a chance to look at these things before they go into effect, which is a very significant aspect of our tools, and instead requires that we challenge every case individually,” Garland said. “And second, it flips the burden of proof.”

[…]

The suit takes particular issue with the 23rd Congressional District — a sprawling West Texas seat now held by GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales — accusing Texas Republicans of intentionally eliminating its status as a district where Latinos could elect their candidate of choice.

More than 50 percent of the voting age population in the new 23rd District is Latino, but the Department of Justice claims — as it has in previous litigation against other iterations of this seat — that GOP mapmakers swapped out Latinos who vote regularly with low-propensity Latino voters.

The end result, the suit says, is “an effort to strengthen the voting power of Anglo citizens while preserving the superficial appearance of Latino control.”

The suit also noted the lack of a new Latino opportunity seat in Houston’s Harris County and accused the legislature of having “surgically excised minority communities from the core of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (DFW) by attaching them to heavily Anglo rural counties, some more than a hundred miles away.”

The suit also singles out the new 24th Congressional District, held by freshman GOP Rep. Beth Van Duyne. By reducing the district’s swath of northwest Dallas County, the mapmakers dropped the Latino citizen voting age population from 40 percent to 23 percent. The suit says the map again strengthens the Anglo voting bloc.

GOP mapmakers created three new deep blue seats — in Austin, Houston and Dallas — to accommodate a growing number of left-leaning voters and keep them from overwhelming the red-leaning districts surrounding them. None of those seats have a Latino-majority. Republicans will likely control at least two dozen of the state’s 38 seats under this new map.

In the Houston area, the suit notes that the new 38th Congressional District was drawn “to give Harris County’s shrinking Anglo population control of yet another Congressional seat” even though “most of that population growth occurred within the Latino community.” That seat leans heavily Republican, and the current frontrunner in the GOP primary, Wesley Hunt, is Black.

Garland also urged Congress to restore those preclearance requirements that were effectively stripped out of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, which was decided in 2013.

As noted before, there are multiple lawsuits that have already been filed, and with the exception of the Gutierrez/Eckhardt suit, which raises different questions, have been combined into one action. Michael Li expects this lawsuit to be assigned to the same three-judge panel as the others as well. He also says this:

.
The lawyers litigating cases like the Texas case will do their best – and they will have great, compelling facts – but they still will be hamstrung by the fact that Congress can’t find a way to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

— Michael Li (@mcpli) 4:52 PM – 6 December 2021

Not really much else to say here – if the Senate can ever get around to passing one of the voting rights bills that the House has sent them, it could make the plaintiffs’ case even stronger, but unless that happens it’s hard for me to have a lot of optimism, despite the glimmer that Michael provides. It’s barely possible that the panel could put the March primary on hold, but to say the least I don’t expect that. A copy of the lawsuit is here, and the Trib and the Texas Signal have more.

Filing update: Judge Hidalgo makes it official

Dec 4th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

She has filed for re-election, in case you had thought there was some other possibility.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo announced her 2022 re-election campaign Friday afternoon as she filed paperwork at the Harris County Democratic Party headquarters.

Although progress has been made during her tenure, Hidalgo said her desire is for the county to continue its momentum on various social issues.

“This community has given so much to us, but we have to do better to remain competitive,” Hidalgo said. “Over the past few years we have done that on flood control, on early childhood education, on putting politics behind people… there is so much left to do.”

The incumbent Harris County judge will run against Republican candidate and Humble ISD School Board president Martina Lemond Dixon, who announced her candidacy on Sept. 22.

There are other candidates out there. Indeed, if you search the filings, Martina Dixon doesn’t appear yet. To be fair, neither does Judge Hidalgo as of Friday, but that may be updated by the time you read this. In my previous update I mentioned Republicans Vidal Martinez and Alexandra Mealer. On Friday, I heard that perennial candidate AR Hassan has filed as well, in the Democratic primary. Let’s just say I’m not worried about Judge Hidalgo’s chances there. If it makes her start campaigning in earnest earlier, that’s fine by me.

I see a new entrant in the race for County Commissioner in Precinct 4, Alief ISD Board President Ann Williams, whose Twitter account is here and whose personal Facebook page is here. I don’t know anything about her besides what I can tell from those sources. Oh, Williams’ colleague on the board Lily Truong has filed in the Republican primary in HD149 against Rep. Hubert Vo.

I don’t usually pay too much attention to the JP and Constable races, but I couldn’t help but notice that there are three people with filings for Justice of the Peace in Precinct 1, Place 2, which is where I am and where incumbent David Patronella presides. All three – Sonia Lopez, Steve Duble, and Victor Lombrana – are Democrats, which makes me wonder if Judge Patronella is retiring and I missed an announcement. Anyone have any ideas?

In Congress, I still don’t see a Democrat running in CD38. Nor do I see any primary challengers for Reps. Fletcher, Green, Jackson Lee, or Garcia. All of which is fine by me, though given that we’re in a post-redistricting cycle and there’s still a week-plus to go, I would not think that’s the final word. The main news of which I am aware is that Donna Imam, who was the Democratic candidate for CD31 in 2020, has announced that she will run in the new CD37 this spring. That will pit her against Rep. Lloyd Doggett, and with all due respect, she will not win. But no one is entitled to a seat, so go forth and good luck.

We now have a couple of Dems listed on the Svitek spreadsheet for Comptroller. One is Tim Mahoney, who ran in 2018 and lost in the primary to Joi Chevalier. Another is Angel Vega, who is a resident of Fort Bend and works in the non-profit industry. The spreadsheet also lists former HD14 candidate from 2020 Janet Dudding, whose campaign webpage has not been updated if she is indeed running. Dudding is a CPA.

Finally, the other news of interest is that Sen. Larry Taylor will not run for re-election. As with pretty much everything else to do with the state Senate, this is almost certain to make it a worse place than it is today.

Taylor chairs the Senate Education Committee and has served in the Legislature since 2003, first as a member of the House. He is also chair of the Senate Republican Caucus.

His decision comes just under two weeks before the candidate filing deadline for the 2022 primary. Within minutes of Taylor announcing his retirement, state Rep. Mayes Middleton, R-Wallisville, announced he had filed for for the Senate seat.

[…]

After news of Taylor’s retirement broke, he told a reporter with the Galveston Daily News that part of his decision was due to Middleton’s interest in his seat. Taylor told the reporter that he tried to dissuade Middleton, but that he is “ready to go and wanting to spend a lot of money.”

Middleton, an oil-and-gas businessman, is the chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House, where he has been a member since 2019.

I mean, Larry Taylor is your basic cookie cutter Republican. I have nothing nice to say about him, but he doesn’t make me want to scream. Mayes Middleton is a rich guy who primaried out the Republican that had been in HD23 because he wasn’t sufficiently wingnutty. We all need another guy like that in the Senate like we need another hole in the head, but that’s what we’re gonna get.

The filing deadline is December 13, a week from Monday. I’ll check in again as we go.

UPDATE: I am reliably informed that Judge Patronella is running for the County Court bench that Lesley Briones is vacating to run for Commissioner. Also, there are even more Republicans than the ones I’ve listed here that are running for County Judge.

A brief filing update

Nov 29th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Just a few observations as we head out of the holiday season and into what I expect will be the busier part of the filing period. I’m using the Patrick Svitek spreadsheet, the SOS candidate filing resource, and the candidate filing info at the harrisvotes.com site for my notes.

– There’s now a fourth candidate listed for Attorney General on the Dem side, someone named Mike Fields, who along with Joe Jaworski has officially filed as of today. I can’t find anything to clarify this person’s identity – there’s no address listed on the SOS page, and Google mostly returned info about the former County Court judge who is now serving as a retired judge and who last ran for office as a Republican. I seriously doubt this is the Mike Fields who is running for AG as a Dem. I know nothing more than that.

– No Dems yet for Comptroller or Ag Commissioner, though I saw a brief mention somewhere (which I now can’t find) of a prospective Dem for the former. I feel reasonably confident there will be candidates for these offices, though how viable they are remains to be seen.

– Nothing terribly interesting on the Congressional front yet. A couple of Dems have filed for the open and tough-to-hold CD15; I don’t know anything about them. State Rep. Jasmine Crockett, in her first term in the Lege, will run for CD30, the seat being vacated by the retiring Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, who has endorsed Crockett for the primary. That race will surely draw a crowd, but having EBJ in her corner will surely help. No incumbents have yet drawn any primary challenges, though Reps. Vicente Gonzalez (now running in CD34) and Lloyd Doggett (now running in CD37) will have company for their new spots. I am not aware of any Dem yet for the new CD38, which should be Republican at least in the short term but which stands as the biggest prize available for Harris County Democrats.

– Michelle Palmer has re-upped for SBOE6, which will be a tougher race this time around. I’m working on a post about the electoral trends for the new SBOE map.

– Sara Stapleton-Barrera and Morgan LaMantia have filed for the open SD27 Senate seat; Rep. Alex Dominguez has not yet filed. Nothing else of interest there.

– For the State House, I’m going to focus on area districts:

HD26 – Former SBOE member Lawrence Allen Jr, who ran in the 2020 primary for this seat, has filed.

HD28 – Eliz Markowitz still has an active campaign website and Facebook page, but I don’t see anything on either to indicate that she’s running again. One person who is running though he hasn’t filed yet is Nelvin Adriatico, who ran for Houston City Council District J in 2019.

HD76 – The spreadsheet lists four candidates so far. Two ran in 2020, Sarah DeMerchant (the 2020 nominee) and Suleman Lalani (who lost to DeMerchant in the primary runoff). Two are new, Vanesia Johnson and James Burnett. This new-to-Fort-Bend district went 61-38 for Joe Biden in 2020, so the primary winner will be heavily favored in November.

HD132 – Chase West has filed. He’s not from the traditional candidate mold, which should make for an interesting campaign. This district was made more Republican and is not the top local pickup opportunity, but it’s on the radar.

HD138 – Stephanie Morales has filed. This is the top local pickup opportunity – the Presidential numbers are closer in HD133, which does not yet have a candidate that I’m aware of, but it’s more Republican downballot.

HD142 – Jerry Davis is listed on the Svitek spreadsheet as a challenger to Rep. Harold Dutton. He hasn’t filed yet, and I don’t see any campaign presence on the web yet. That’s all I know.

HD147 – I am aware of a couple of candidates so far to fill the seat left vacant by Rep. Garnet Coleman’s retirement. Nam Subramaniam has filed. HCC Trustee Reagan Flowers sent out a press release over the weekend stating her intention to run. I would expect there to be more contenders for this open seat.

– For Harris County offices, there are already some people campaigning as challengers to incumbents. Carla Wyatt is running for Treasurer, Desiree Broadnax is running for District Clerk. On the Republican side, former District Clerk Chris Daniel has filed for his old office, and someone named Kyle Scott has filed for Treasurer. There are no Democratic challengers that I can see yet for County Clerk or County Judge, though there are a couple of Republicans for County Judge, Vidal Martinez and Alexandra Mealer. Finally, there’s a fourth name out there for County Commissioner in Precinct 4, Jeff Stauber, who last ran for Commissioner in Precinct 2 in 2018 and for Sheriff in 2016, falling short in the primary both times.

So that’s what I know at this time. Feel free to add what you know in the comments. I’ll post more updates as I get them.

Precinct analysis: The new Congressional map

Nov 23rd, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Previously: New State House map

We will now take a look at how the districts of interest in the new Congressional map have changed over the past decade. Same basic idea, looking at the closer districts from 2020 to see how they got there. You can find all of the data relating to the new Congressional map here, and the zoomable map here.

I’m not going to tally how many seats were won by each side in each year, for the simple reason that there just wasn’t any real movement like there was in the State House. You can browse the middle years, I’m just going to focus on 2012 and 2020.


Dist   Obama   Romney Obama%Romney%     Biden    Trump Biden% Trump%
====================================================================
03    67,799  153,969  30.1%  68.3%   152,288  204,514  41.9%  56.3%
07   101,379   82,810  54.1%  44.2%   179,334   96,259  64.2%  34.4%
10    73,300  150,282  32.1%  65.8%   134,799  198,754  39.7%  58.5%
12    73,392  141,316  33.6%  64.8%   130,111  188,548  40.1%  58.2%
15    82,049   64,589  55.3%  43.6%   109,172  115,719  48.1%  50.9%
21    87,795  195,130  30.5%  67.7%   164,243  246,188  39.4%  59.1%
22    64,502  149,023  29.8%  69.0%   138,243  191,927  41.2%  57.3%
23    85,081  107,169  43.7%  55.0%   134,574  155,579  45.8%  52.9%
24    87,716  206,535  29.4%  69.2%   168,176  216,381  43.0%  55.4%
26    60,849  148,265  28.6%  69.8%   144,834  212,009  40.0%  58.5%
28   103,701   66,693  60.1%  38.7%   131,699  114,156  52.8%  45.8%
31    63,054  139,030  30.5%  67.3%   132,158  201,379  38.8%  59.1%
34    95,897   42,597  68.5%  30.4%   116,930   85,231  57.2%  41.7%
38    70,264  186,032  27.0%  71.6%   143,904  208,709  40.2%  58.4%

I’m going to sort these into three groups. The first is the “don’t pay too much attention to the vote percentage gains” group. I explained what I mean by that, with the help of a sports analogy, here. I’d put districts 21, 23, and 31 as canonical examples of this, with districts 10, 12, and 31 being slightly less extreme. All of them saw a net decrease in the Republican margin of victory from 2012 to 2020, but the rate is so slow that there’s no reason to believe that any continuation of trends would make them competitive in this decade. (With the possible exception of 23, which is reasonably close to begin with but always finds a way to disappoint.) Maybe things will look different after the 2022 election – these districts do still include places with a lot of Democratic growth – but they’re not the top priorities.

The next group is, or should be, the top priorities, at least from an offensive perspective, because they did have real movement in a Democratic direction. I’d put CDs 24, 03, 22, 38, and 26 in this group, in that order. This of course assumes that trends we have seen since 2016 will continue more or less as before, which we won’t really know until 2022 and beyond, but those numbers do stand out. I know the DCCC is targeting both CD23 and CD24, at least so far in this cycle, but I’d make CD24 more likely to be truly competitive this year. CD03 now includes Hunt County while a big strip of Collin County was put into CD04, so it will take more than just turning Collin blue to make CD03 flippable, but it will help. CD38 is if nothing else the biggest non-Commissioners Court prize on the board for Harris County Democrats.

Finally, there are the districts Dems need to worry about. CD15 is already going to be a tough hold, and even if Dems manage to keep it in 2022, there’s no reason to think it will get any easier, and may well get harder. If that happens, then CD28 could well be in peril as well. As noted before, it’s more like a 10-12 point district downballot, and whatever you think of him Henry Cuellar has shown the ability to outperform that level. Who knows how long those things can last if the trends continue? CD34 is almost as blue now as CD38 is red, but it was also almost as blue as CD38 was red in 2012. Again, I don’t like that trend. The main difference here is that the 2020 election was the sole data point in the new direction, whereas the trending-blue districts have been doing so since 2016. But the numbers are what they are, and until we see evidence that the trend isn’t continuing, we have to be prepared for the possibility that it will. Don’t take any of this for granted.

The bottom line is that right now, only a couple of districts look competitive. That was the case in 2012 as well, and we saw what happened there after a couple of cycles. That said, the reason for the big change was only partly about changing demography – the Trump effect and efforts to register voters, by Dems at first and by Republicans later, all played roles as well. We can extrapolate from existing trends, but it’s hard to know how much that will continue, and it’s really hard to know what exogenous factors may arise. And for all of the movement that the 2011/2013 Congressional districts saw, in the end only three districts were held by the opposite party in 2020 than in 2012 – don’t forget, Dems won CD23 in 2012, but only held it that one term. As much as that map looked like it could be a disaster for the Republicans at the end of the decade, it mostly held to form for them. Would it be a big surprise if the same thing happens this decade? Obviously, I don’t want that to happen, but the GOP built itself some big cushions into this map. Overcoming all that isn’t going to be easy, if indeed it is possible. We have a lot of work to do.

October 2021 campaign finance reports: Congress

Oct 26th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Another three months have passed, and so we review the Congressional finance reports again. I fear these reports are about to get a lot more boring post-redistricting, but for now we will plow onward. The July 2021 reports are here, and you can get the links to the previous cycle’s reports from there.

Dan Crenshaw – CD02
Van Taylor – CD03
Keith Self – CD03
Lance Gooden – CD05
Kathleen Bailey – CD05
Charles Gearing – CD05
Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Morgan Luttrell – CD08
Mike McCaul – CD10
Vicente Gonzalez – CD15
Monica de la Cruz – CD15
Chip Roy – CD21
Troy Nehls – CD22
Matthew Berg – CD22
Tony Gonzales – CD23
John Lira – CD23
Beth Van Duyne – CD24
Derrik Gay – CD24
John Carter – CD31
Donna Imam – CD31
Colin Allred – CD32
Rochelle Garza – CD34
Lloyd Doggett – CD37
Wesley Hunt – CD38


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
02    Crenshaw      8,166,421  5,789,903        0  4,229,232
03    Taylor        1,440,084    348,042  518,792  1,114,539
03    Self                  0          0        0          0
03    Srivastava       25,770     23,560   25,000     27,210
05    Gooden          323,801    340,897        0    435,438
05    Bailey          191,055     41,210  175,000    149,844
05    Gearing         204,350     49,993        0    154,356
07    Fletcher      2,036,541    300,422        0  1,797,215
08    Luttrell        737,201     72,489        0    664,712
10    McCaul        1,064,632    378,327        0    694,038
15    Gonzalez      1,323,008    553,704        0  2,139,796
15    De la Cruz      980,432    565,849   13,000    422,088
21    Roy             970,732    506,014        0    928,301
22    Nehls           472,116    200,570    8,700    290,751
22    Berg            125,028    107,807    5,100     17,221
23    Gonzales      1,672,722    545,202        0  1,158,878
23    Lira            209,147    138,544        0     70,602
24    Van Duyne     1,542,073    519,647   20,000  1,090,836
24    Gay             146,454     68,596        0     77,857
31    Carter          607,121    320,931        0    486,595
31    Imam            113,582     17,346        0     96,186
32    Allred        1,885,946    453,968        0  1,591,400
34    Garza           200,134     55,741        0    144,393
37    Doggett         400,081    252,958        0  5,352,597
38    Hunt          1,026,844    203,946        0  1,046,839

Some new names on the list this quarter, Sandeep Srivastava in CD03, Kathleen Bailey in CD05, and Rochelle Garza in CD34. Charlie Gearing had originally announced as a candidate in CD05 but has since switched to HD114 after the final Congressional map drew him out of CD05. Other now-former candidates for Congress include State Rep. Michelle Beckley and Manor mayor Larry Wallace, who suspended their campaigns in CDs 24 and 10 respectively after concluding those districts were too inhospitable to a challenge.

That’s why I said that these reports may be pretty boring from here on. These districts were not drawn to foster competition. A quick look at the 2018 and 2020 electoral data, which is now available, tells the story. Only CD15, in which Democratic incumbent Vicente Gonzalez may run for CD34 instead, and the ever-popular CD23 are reasonably close to even. The Republicans intended to make the last two cycles the exceptions, and at least at first glance they appear to have succeeded. We’ll get some new map optimism in 2022, and we may see that the dynamism of the state’s population plus the continued effects of the Trump debacle will change the perception of some districts, but all that remains to be seen.

In the meantime, we’re mostly looking at primary races. Rep. Van Taylor in CD03 is lousy, but because he voted for the January 6 commission, he’s drawn a pro-insurrection opponent. Keith Self is the former Collin County Judge and a longtime crony of Ken Paxton – indeed, the ongoing effort to screw the Paxton special prosecutors out of their pay was initiated by Keith Self. If Rep. Gonzalez does shift to CD34, we’ll need someone to try to hold onto CD15, which I tend to think may not be that big a deal, but will likely be uphill. Rep. Lloyd Doggett is the big dog in CD37, but former CD25 candidate Julie Oliver has filed there, and could make things interesting. There are now multiple Dems looking at CD35, and I’ll be very interested in seeing their reports in January. We still don’t know if Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson will run again in CD30. I’m sure a few more incumbents on both sides will draw a challenger or two.

And that’s where we are today. Filing season is almost upon us, and I expect we’ll see some interesting names pop up here and there. Someone in Houston is going to file for CD38 as a Democrat, if only because it’s now the shiniest prize out there for a Dem. I’m hoping we’ll find that the 2020 numbers in these districts overstate Republican strength and thus make the 2024 elections more attractive, but that’s wishing and hoping right now. We’re not going to see the kind of money raised for Congressional races in Texas that we have seen these past four years. My advice would be to spend your political donation dollars on our statewide candidates, especially for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General. We’ve more than proven we can raise money for Democratic candidates in Texas. We just need to be strategic about it.

Senate passes Congressional map

Oct 9th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Start the litigation countdown. Yes, I know, this still has to pass the House, but still.

The Texas Senate approved a map Friday that would largely protect incumbents in Congress while reducing the number of districts in which Black and Hispanic residents make up the majority of eligible voters — stymieing the growth of the state’s Democratic Party representation in Washington, D.C.

The congressional map is focused more on protecting incumbents than on growing the power of the dominant Republican Party in the state by flipping districts from blue to red. But the map, proposed by GOP state Sen. Joan Huffman of Houston, helps Republicans by increasing the number of districts that would have voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and decreasing those that would have gone for Joe Biden.

In anticipation of federal challenges to the map, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican who presides over the Senate, said in a statement Friday that the proposal approved by the chamber was “legal and fair” and represented a “commitment to making sure every Texan’s voice is heard in Washington, D.C.”

[…]

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, proposed a map that would create three additional districts where Hispanics made up the majority, bringing the number of those districts to 10.

But Republicans rejected the proposal, with Huffman saying the amendment had been drafted less than 24 hours before the Senate’s vote on the maps and would result in a “detailed and painstaking racial gerrymander” in North Texas to draw a new Hispanic-majority district in the same area as the current Congressional District 33, represented by U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth.

Gutierrez accused Republicans of racially discriminating against voters of color.

“How else do we describe a situation where Texas gains new political power because of the physical presence of millions of Black, Brown, and Asian bodies, and yet the political establishment does not give those very Texans the ability to elect more candidates to represent them?” he said in a statement. “It is an insult to the foundations of our democracy.”

Under the proposed maps, voters of color may end up with less representation in the congressional delegation. The new map drops the number of districts in which Hispanics make up a majority of eligible voters from eight to seven, and the districts in which Black Texans make up a majority of eligible voters from one to zero.

The number of districts where whites make up a majority of eligible voters goes up to 23 although the state’s white population — which increased by just 187,252 — was swamped by the growth of people of color.

See here for more on the initial map, which looks to be largely the same as the final map. Which we know is totally fair and representative because Dan Patrick says it is. The House will likely make some changes, but it seems unlikely to be substantively different. I’ll say this much, they’ve given Harris County Democrats a new district to target, and I feel confident that any Republican who wins the new CD38 is never going to get a free pass. I’ll be interested to see who files for this on the Democratic side.

As for the coming litigation, the arguments are clear, it’s just a matter of what SCOTUS will allow in the post-Voting Rights Act world that it wants. I will say again, it’s not too late for a new Voting Rights Act to be passed. We’re going to need an upgrade in the US Senate to make that happen, I fear.

Speaking of litigation, I would love to know what the status of the Gutierrez/Eckhardt lawsuit is. That had to do with the legislative maps, not the Congressional map, but given the speed with which those maps are moving along, we will be reaching a point of no return soon. Let’s at least have a hearing on this one before events make it moot, OK?

UPDATE: I should have spent more time looking at the District Viewer, because I have just now realized that this map moves me out of CD18, where I’ve been for 30 years, and into CD29. I feel a little weird about that.

First proposed Congressional map is out

Sep 28th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

9 comments

It’s a thing.

Texas lawmakers on Monday released their first draft of a new congressional map for the next decade that includes two new districts in Austin and Houston — metropolitan areas with diverse populations tht fueled much of the state’s population growth over the past 10 years.

Republicans constructed this map with incumbent protection in mind — a strategy that focused on bolstering Republican seats that Democrats targeted over the last two election cycles rather than aggressively adding new seats that could flip from blue to red. However, the map does in fact strengthen Republican positioning overall, going from 22 to 25 districts that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. The number of districts that voted for Joe Biden would shrink by one, from 14 to 13.

Texas members of the House GOP delegation were closely involved in the drawing process and approved the map last week, according to two sources close to the Texas delegation.

While many incumbents appear safe in these maps, others were drawn into districts that overlap with one another — for example the proposed map pits Houston Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw against Democrat Rep. Sylvia Garcia. It also pits two Houston Democrats — Reps. Al Green and Sheila Jackson Lee — against each other.

The maps were proposed by state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, who leads the chamber’s redistricting committee.

[…]

Huffman’s first 38-district proposal would widen the gap between the parties, creating 25 districts that voted for Trump in 2020 and 13 that voted for Biden.

The racial makeup of the congressional maps is also expected to change as Texas added two new congressional seats based on last decade’s population growth, which was mostly driven by people of color. Based on eligible voters, the current map includes 22 districts with white majorities, eight with Hispanic majorities, one with a Black majority and five that have no majority. The newly proposed map includes 23 districts with white majorities, seven with Hispanic majorities, none with a Black majority and eight that have no majority.

Available data can be found here. Patrick Svitek has some numbers, which I’ll summarize briefly:

– Of the 14 districts carried by Biden in 2020, 12 were carried by him under this map. The exceptions are Republican-held CD24, which goes from Biden +5 to Trump +12, and Democratic-held CD15, which goes from Biden +2 to Trump +3. That may make CD15 the new CD23, which went from Trump +1 to Trump +7.

– Of the two new districts, CD37 in Travis County is deep, dark blue (Biden +53), while CD38 in Harris County is Trump +18. Let’s just say I don’t think it will remain that red over time.

– Regardless of what the story says, it seems clear to me that Reps. Crenshaw, Green, Jackson Lee, and Garcia would run in and win the same-numbered districts as they have now.

– Reps. Colin Allred and Lizzie Fletcher get much bluer districts. Maybe that makes them vulnerable to primary challenges, I don’t know. Rep. Henry Cuellar in CD28 gets a district that is less favorable for his 2020 primary challenger, Jessica Cisneros.

– Overall I think I agree with Michael Li:

.
One takeaway from both the proposed Texas senate and congressional maps is, man, are Republicans in Texas now scared of suburban voters – both because the suburbs are getting more diverse and because white voters in the suburbs are trending away from Rs. #txlege

— Michael Li (@mcpli) 10:08 AM – 27 September 2021

This map uses the same strategy as the Senate and SBOE maps in that it shores up a Harris County incumbent (in this case Crenshaw) by extending his district into Montgomery County, and shores up some other incumbents (see in particular Reps. Williams in CD25 and Carter in CD31) by making their districts more rural. As the meme says, it’s a bold strategy, we’ll see how it works for them.

The Chron focuses on the Harris County piece of this, with the following observation:

A spokesman for Wesley Hunt, a Republican who ran against Fletcher in 2020, said the former Army helicopter pilot would run for the new District 38 seat if lawmakers were to adopt the initial map proposal.

Hunt had previously announced he was running in 2022 but had yet to settle on a district while awaiting the proposed map.

That sound you hear is me rolling my eyes, and yes I am rolling them hard enough for it to be audible. The Texas Signal has more.

CD38

Calendar

Search

Categories

Archives

My linkage

Polling Texas 2020

Polling Texas 2018

Polling Texas 2016

Polling Texas 2014

Polling Texas 2012

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Tags

Blogroll

Utilities

Categories

Archives

Calendar

Pages

Meta