Off the Kuff Rotating Header Image

Dan Crenshaw

Yes, we’re talking about Texas Senate 2024

Gromer Jeffers points out that Ted Cruz may run for both President and re-election to the Senate in 2024, which he can do under the law that was passed to allow LBJ to run for Vice President in 1960 (and Lloyd Bentsen in 1988). Among other things, that means the list of potential candidates to fill his seat is already pretty long.

Not Ted Cruz

After eight years of the current GOP statewide leadership, many Texas Republicans are anticipating a shift in the state’s power dynamic.

The moves Cruz makes in 2024 could trigger some of Texas’ most notable elected officials to run for the Senate seat he holds, as well as other offices created by a domino effect.

Democrats are also watching Cruz.

U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, is a possible 2024 Senate contender whether or not Cruz seeks reelection.

So in any scenario, there could be political intrigue, which is frequently the case in situations involving Cruz.

[…]

If he changes course and doesn’t seek reelection, several Republicans have been mentioned as potential candidates to replace him. The list includes Paxton, who in November was elected to a third term, U.S. Reps. Dan Crenshaw of Houston, Pat Fallon of Sherman and Lance Gooden of Terrell. Other contenders are Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar and Texas Sen. Dawn Buckingham of Lakeway.

Statewide leaders like Paxton and Hegar could run for Senate in 2024 without risking the seats they hold. Members of Congress are elected every two years and don’t have that luxury.

[…]

Presidential politics aside, Texas Democrats are hoping to deny Cruz another term in the Senate. In 2018 Cruz beat former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke by only 2.6 percentage points. O’Rourke, who ran for president in 2020, lost a November governor’s race to Abbott.

With an O’Rourke vs. Cruz rematch unlikely, a potential candidacy by Allred, in his second term as a congressman representing North Dallas, is creating buzz among Democrats.

Allred, considered a pro-business moderate, has not sought any Democratic Party leadership post in the aftermath of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to step down as leader. That gives him the flexibility to avoid ultra-partisan votes that would haunt him in a statewide campaign for Senate.

The question for Allred and others: Can a Democrat win a statewide race in Texas?

See here for some background, and prepare yourself to hear way too much about Ted Cruz over the next year or more. Note that Dawn Buckingham is the Land Commissioner-elect, so she’s in the same “doesn’t need to risk her seat” camp as the other statewides. As for Rep. Allred, I had recently heard some speculation about his potential candidacy in 2024. It would be a bold move, giving up a safe Congressional seat for an underdog run for Senate, but Allred is young enough that he could have a second act in politics with little difficulty. If he loses in a close race, he’d be in the same position in 2026 and 2028 as Beto was after 2018, the default frontrunner for a second bite at the apple. If it comes to that, I sure hope he has a better result on the retry. Anyway, at least now we have a possible Dem candidate, one who has already won a tough November race and who has established himself as a good fundraiser. We’ll see how it goes from there.

Adoption is not a replacement for abortion

Anyone who tells you otherwise is at the very least misinformed. More likely, they’re just lying.

Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the loss of abortion access in many states, some conservative leaders have suggested abortion is unnecessary because of the option of adoption. They argue people do not need to terminate unwanted pregnancies because they can seek adoption placements after giving birth.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to revoke the constitutional right to an abortion, U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, tweeted, “Less abortion, more adoption. Why is that controversial?” In late June, Mike Pompeo, former U.S. secretary of state, tweeted, “Adoption, not abortion. With Roe overturned, we should find ways to make the adoption process in our country easier and safer.”

However, experts on adoption and abortion say offering adoption as a replacement for abortion access misrepresents the reality of the process. Lawmakers must work to provide financial and mental health support for the adoption triad — birth parents, adoptive parents and adoptees — before advocating for increased adoptions, they added.

But the most important point that often goes overlooked is that adoption and abortion are unrelated issues, said Malinda Seymore, a law professor at Texas A&M University School of Law who researches and teaches adoption law.

“Women are making decisions about pregnancy when they are considering abortion, and it’s only after they have made a decision to continue the pregnancy that they are making a parenting decision about whether to parent or place for adoption,” she said.

Adoption may relieve birth parents of parenting responsibilities, but it does not resolve the pregnancy, she added.

“Adoption doesn’t do what abortion does,” Seymore said. “It does not end a pregnancy, it does not relieve the burden of pregnancy, it does not avoid the health risks of pregnancy, it does not alleviate the psycho-social harm of relinquishing for adoption. It is not at all a substitute for abortion.”

Gretchen Sisson, ​​a research sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, said people who are seeking abortions are rarely interested in the option of adoption. Proposing adoption as an alternative to abortion does not meaningfully address the reasons why people seek abortions in the first place: Many abort because they don’t want to be pregnant anymore, not just because they want to avoid parenting, Sisson said.

Pregnant people can experience a range of health conditions that can create complications, but even without the health risks, a pregnancy can make it difficult to keep a job or provide for already existing children in the family. Being forced to carry a pregnancy to term, even with the option of adoption, does not address those issues.

Kenna Hamm, assistant director of the Texas Adoption Center, said adoption agencies such as hers are ready to handle a potential influx of expectant parents seeking adoption placements now that abortions are mostly banned in the state. But she said most people who are unable to end their unintended pregnancies will choose to parent the child once they are born, as adoption is a difficult decision.

Seymore pointed to The Turnaway Study, a long-term study at the University of California, San Francisco, that examined the effects of unwanted pregnancies on women’s lives. The team followed about 1,000 women who sought abortions, and about 15% of those women were denied access to the procedure because of gestational limits. Only 9% of those women who were denied an abortion chose to seek an adoption placement; the rest decided to parent.

The outcomes for those families are not as strong as families who decided from the beginning to keep their pregnancies and raise their children, said Sisson, who helped conduct The Turnaway Study. People who were not intending or wanting to have a child are much more likely to live in poverty and to have a hard time bonding with their children, the study found. They are also more likely to stay in abusive relationships, which also keeps their children in situations where they may experience abuse.

“If the only thing that you’re trying to do is just deny access to an abortion and then impose parenting on [people seeking abortions], then mission accomplished,” Sisson said. “But if you’re actually wanting to support families and ensure that children are in loving homes that are capable of caring for them, we need to have a social safety net that is far, far more robust in these states that are limiting abortion access.”

[…]

When people tout adoption as a replacement for abortion access, they often don’t understand the emotional challenges that birth parents, adoptive parents and adoptees experience during an adoption, [Rory Hall, executive director of Adoption Advocates, Inc] said. The adoptive parents gain a child, but their joy comes from the birth parents’ pain, she said. As the adoptee grows up, they also may experience a sense of loss and identity crisis from not being raised by or knowing who their birth parents are.

“I just would like for [adoption] to not be talked about as an easy option,” Hall said.

Tell that to Dan Crenshaw. Remember also that a significant number of abortions are the result of wanted pregnancies that ended in miscarriage or a threat to the life or health of the mother. The alternative to legal abortion is more unsafe abortions and more maternal mortality and morbidity. If that’s what you want then congratulations, you’re getting it.

Vote No and take the credit anyway

It’s a tale as old as time.

Not Ted Cruz

Republicans in Texas are proud to stand and announce local grants from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The problem is they all voted against it. All of them.

For the second time in two weeks, Houston scored a big grant from the Department of Transportation, and for the second time in two weeks, Republicans were quick to show up for the ribbon cutting. The back-to-back $21 million announcements, first for the Telephone Road Main Street Redevelopment project and then for 20 new electric buses, were celebrated by local Houston officials, even Republicans who opposed the projects.

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, both of whom proudly supported the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act back in 2021, talked about how these funds make needed investment in often overlooked communities. Both programs will serve low to moderate income communities by providing cleaner and more efficient public transportation as well as safer streets.

The announcement also attracted representatives of the “C” team – Cornyn, Cruz, and Crenshaw – who lined up to show support. Staffers from all stood with METRO Chairman Sanjay Ramabhadran and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner to make Monday’s announcement.

Earlier this year, Texas Republican Representative Ronny Jackson claimed an “instrumental” role in securing funding for a water purification project in his district despite vocal opposition to the infrastructure bill, which is funding the project. Jackson voted against the measure and mocked it as “bloated,” but apparently not too bloated for his pet project.

Newly-elected Congresswoman Mayra Flores of Brownsville also opposed the infrastructure bill, but is now touting the federal largesse pouring into South Texas without revealing that she vehemently opposed the enabling legislation as “wasteful” and smearing Republicans who voted for the bill “the RINO Bunch.”

She joins a long list of Republicans who have recently “voted no and taken the dough,” in refusing to support investments in their communities to please their far-right base, but then being the first in line to take credit.

See here for the background. The “C” team (great name, btw) also voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Sometimes, all you can really do is laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all. But if you’re going to laugh, it’s best to point fingers at the objects of your laughter as well.

July 2022 campaign finance reports: Congress

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.

April 2022 campaign finance reports: Congress

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.

2022 primary results: Legislative races

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.

January 2022 campaign finance reports: Congress

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.

Vote No and take the dough

It’s as Republican as insurrection and hydroxychloroquine.

Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, last year left little doubt why she was voting against a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure measure, calling it nothing more than a “socialist plan full of crushing taxes and radical spending.”

Yet, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced on Wednesday that very same infrastructure bill would be funding a $403-million flood control project in her district in the Fort Worth area, Granger wasted no time in hailing the effort.

“This is a great day for Fort Worth,” she said in a statement. She did not mention where the Army Corps was getting the money but thanked the agency for its “hard work and tireless commitment” to making her community safer.

Granger is not the only Republican cheering on projects generated by a bill that she voted to kill. In recent days, at least four other Republican members of Congress have praised initiatives made possible by the infrastructure law they opposed. Political analysts say they are not likely to be the last.

“Infrastructure remains a relatively nonpartisan issue, so even though those lawmakers may have not voted for the bill, they still have to answer to their constituents, and they want to align themselves with things that are popular,” said Cynthia Peacock, a professor of political communications at the University of Alabama.

[…]

Granger, the Texas Republican who commended the Army Corps of Engineers for addressing flooding problems, defended her vote against the legislation, saying she “wasn’t against this project.”

“I was against some of the other parts of that bill,” Granger said in a Thursday news conference.

I mean, sure, that’s one way to go about it. There’s also the Gene Wu approach, which gives you legitimate input into the process and enables you to secure at least some of your priorities, even if they come wrapped in a bill you otherwise don’t like. Lord knows, the Dems would have welcomed that collaboration, which they did manage to get in the Senate. To be sure, that route will not be popular with the seething masses of Republican primary voters, but that’s a much bigger problem within the Republican Party, and I can’t help you with it. If you are going to do it this way, you can and should be criticized for it.

And just to prove that this kind of hypocrisy is endemic:

Yes, what Rep. Crenshaw is doing here is perfectly legal. It makes absolutely no sense to ban elections administrators from doing this same exact thing, but that never stopped the vote suppressors. “It’s fine when I do it and it’s a travesty when you do it” is the logic here, and as you can see it’s pretty much impossible to argue with.

UPDATE: Crenshaw has gotten pilloried for this, not that it matters. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.

Republicans want to get the I-45 project going again

We all want things.

Seven Republican members of Congress from the Houston area are urging federal transportation officials to quickly wrap up a review of Texas’ planned Interstate 45 rebuild, arguing that much of the opposition to the project is “disingenuous” and has come from national environmentalist groups.

In a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls and six of his GOP colleagues criticized the Federal Highway Administration’s move to study the I-45 project’s effect on low-income and minority communities, which has put the rebuild on pause since June.

The Republican congressmen said the project would help alleviate traffic congestion, “establish I-45 as a viable hurricane evacuation route” and expand “commerce opportunities,” among other benefits for the Houston region. And while Buttigieg has sided with local officials and advocates who say the plan overly disrupts low-income and minority communities, the GOP officials said the federal halt on the project “will place the people you purport to be concerned about at a severe economic disadvantage and endanger their safety.”

Nehls, R-Richmond, was joined in signing the letter by U.S. Reps. Brian Babin, Kevin Brady, Michael Cloud, Dan Crenshaw, Michael McCaul and Randy Weber. They also argued that “a disturbing amount of opposition to the project is coming from outside of Texas,” noting that the Democratic Socialists of America and the Sunrise Movement are backing a local group’s efforts to halt the project.

“While we support and appreciate local communities engaging in government and the decisions that impact them, it is disingenuous to cloak radical environmentalism with the alleged local considerations,” the letter reads.

See here and here for some background – basically, the Federal Highways Administration is following up on a request to investigate the project’s effects on low-income and minority communities and its environmental toll; they’re also reviewing an agreement with TxDOT that allows the state agency to approve its own projects. Both of these will take some time, and while it’s reasonable to ask how long they may take, sometimes the answer’s gonna be “as long as it takes”. There’s also a lawsuit filed by Harris County to make TxDOT review the environmental review of the project, which needless to say would set things back a long way. I don’t know that Secretary Buttigieg could give these guys an answer that would satisfy them even if he wanted to. It’s fine by me if he just tells them they’ll need to be patient.

By the way, in the current Congressional map, Reps. Cloud, McCaul, and Babin have districts that do not include any piece of I-45. In the new map, the piece of Rep. Nehls’ district that crossed I-45 is now in Rep. Babin’s. I guess when their buddy asks them to sign a letter, it doesn’t have to have anything to do with them for it to get signed.

First proposed Congressional map is out

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:

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.

What about Lizzie?

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher is waiting to see what happens to her district with redistricting, just like the rest of us.

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher

Lizzie Pannill Fletcher’s political career became something of a trophy to Washington Democrats in 2018 after she won the Houston-based 7th Congressional District — long a bastion of Texas Republican leadership.

The seat was once held by the late President George H. W. Bush, and one of Fletcher’s most prominent constituents is U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. The 7th was designed to be a safe Republican stronghold, but the 46-year-old former trial attorney snatched it away three years ago. And while many of her classmates from the 2018 Democratic wave lost reelection in 2020, she held on against a formidable Republican opponent.

Any day now, she’ll find out how intent Texas Republicans are on taking the seat back.

The Texas Legislature is poised to unveil its proposed maps for new Texas Congressional districts, and some expect they’ll redraw the 7th in a way that dooms Fletcher’s chances of winning there again.

Fletcher is well aware she is in political purgatory.

“I’ve always known that this is just part of the process and … there’s so much happening here, that perhaps it’s good that it’s not my focus,” she said in an interview. “It’s on my radar that my job is to represent my constituents and certainly hearing what I’ve heard, knowing what I know, I do feel a responsibility to try to protect the district and to protect them.”

[…]

What that district will look like after the Legislature is done drawing new maps is now one of the most debated questions in Texas politics, and the merciful scenarios for Fletcher are limited.

It’s an open secret that House GOP leadership wants to elevate her 2020 rival, retired veteran Wesley Hunt. And after Republicans held onto the Legislature last year, speculation began about how to draw maps in a way that would make it impossible for her, and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a Dallas Democrat also elected in 2018, to win reelection.

[…]

But eight state and national Republican operatives with direct ties to the Texas delegation warned in interviews that an aggressive effort to unseat Fletcher could endanger the Republican incumbents who surround her district: U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul of Austin, Dan Crenshaw of Houston and Troy Nehls of Richmond.

Historically, the Legislature listens to the sitting Congressional Republicans when they redraw maps, and McCaul, as a senior Republican, is serving as a point person between the state lawmakers and his GOP colleagues.

While early details of the new districts remain closely held, some Republican sources said they sense survival instincts are setting in among the federal Republicans. Meaning, few are excited about the notion of pulling conservative voters from nearby Republican incumbents’ districts to take out Fletcher.

Instead, the map drawers could decide to leave Fletcher alone, and siphon Republicans from her district to bolster the long term reelection chances of Republicans in neighboring districts.

But that might hurt Fletcher in a different way: Her district could end up including many new Democratic voters unfamiliar with her, leaving her vulnerable to a primary challenge from an established Houston Democrat.

Wesley Hunt is running for something, he just hasn’t specified what yet. Moving is always an option, for when the Republicans draw the new seats. As for Rep. Fletcher, we’ve discussed the scenarios a few times here. The Republican decline in Harris and Fort Bend counties is a challenge for them. I’m sure they can draw something that would favor a Republican over Fletcher, but at what risk to their incumbents in close districts? For what it’s worth, Dave Wasserman is predicting that Reps. Fletcher and Allred get packed and not cracked, which is to say their districts become Democratic vote sinks to protect the Republicans around them. That may make her more vulnerable to a primary challenge, but she’s pretty well-regarded and she has lots of cash on hand, two things that would help her in that scenario.

And if she does wind up on the outs, one way or another?

“I don’t know that I’ve thought through my process,” she said, describing how she will sort out her political future. “But I’m generally most concerned about making sure that my constituents get the representation they deserve.”

“At this point, all options are on the table,” she said.

When asked if that included retirement, she laughed: “I’m too young to retire, right?”

But there is another option.

The 2018 wave was consequential in Texas partly because it gave Democrats a farm team for the first time in decades. Fletcher could run for a different office.

“If I think I have something to offer, or if I think I can contribute … I have to kick the tires for a long time before I feel confident that I can do a job here, but I think I’ve done a good job here,” she said.

Lord knows, we can always use good statewide candidates. This is not how I would prefer to find them, but it’s a possible path. We’ll see where we go.

July 2021 campaign finance reports: Congress

It’s July, and that means its campaign finance report season. I’m going to do a tour through the finance reports as I have done before, beginning with Congressional reports. I have posted reports from January 2021, which is the completion of the 2020 cycle, and the October 2020 reports, which gave a look back on that cycle and the 2018 cycle, but these are the first reports I’ve posted from the 2022 cycle, not counting the CD06 special election. Because we’re in that weird pre-redistricting period, when no one knows what districts will be where, there’s not a lot of new candidate activity. The list of mostly incumbents below will likely change over time, but for now here are some reports that may be of interest.

Dan Crenshaw – CD02
Van Taylor – CD03
Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Morgan Luttrell – CD08
Mike McCaul – CD10
Vicente Gonzalez – CD15
Monica de la Cruz Hernandez – 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


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
02    Crenshaw      5,184,216  3,143,696        0  3,893,234
03    Taylor        1,137,073    250,293        0    909,277
07    Fletcher      1,225,493    182,475        0  1,104,114
08    Luttrell        461,429     12,672        0    448,757
10    McCaul          745,285    260,682        0    492,336
15    Gonzalez        607,467    454,132        0  1,523,826
15    Hernandez       438,341    218,901        0    226,945
21    Roy             678,470    385,959        0    756,093
22    Nehls           312,512    112,897        0    218,821
22    Berg            113,753     41,564    5,100     72,189
23    Gonzales      1,088,487    331,330        0    788,516
23    Lira            100,789     49,833        0     50,955
24    Van Duyne     1,084,713    296,053        0    857,070
24    Gay
31    Carter          429,329    216,023        0    413,711
31    Imam              7,682          0        0      7,682
32    Allred        1,216,765    329,397        0  1,046,790

Couple of things. I’m including Republicans here mostly because there just aren’t that many reports of interest otherwise. That will likely change later, but for now this is what I’ve got. I’ve no idea what districts will be of interest this cycle yet, but we know these were all of interest last time. CD08 is an open seat, and as you can see there’s a candidate who has established a presence to note. CD34 is also an open seat, but as yet no one has filed a report with anything of substance. There are a couple of Democrats filing reports in CD30, where longtime Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson may or may not step down – she’s had challengers in most of the last few cycles, but no one has come close to really threatening her.

So far there are announced Democrats in four districts that were competitive in 2018 and 2020, and will likely be at least somewhat competitive in 2022. Derrik Gay and Donna Imam, who was the CD31 challenger in 2020, entered late enough in the cycle to not have anything to report. I find it somewhat heartening that even without knowing what the districts will look like, Matthew Berg and John Lira started out with totals over $100K; as you recall, almost no Dem challengers raised as much as $100K for the entire 2012 cycle. We’ve come a long way from that. That said, freshman incumbents Tony Gonzales and Beth Van Duyne are not taking their upcoming challenges lightly.

Along with the now-open CD34, CD15 was unexpectedly close in 2020, and the challenger from that cycle is back for another crack at it. Monica de la Cruz Hernandez raised some decent money, but incumbent Vicente Gonzalez maintains a strong lead in cash on hand. For all of the districts with two candidates, I listed the incumbent first.

Not much else to say here. Given when we’ll get the apportionment data, and assuming we’ll have the redistricting-oriented special session in September as expected, we probably won’t get a feel for who’s running for what until the Q4 reports come in next January. There will probably be some further announcements before then, and there’s always the possibility than an incumbent will choose to step down, but everything is written in pencil until we know what the new districts – including the two extra ones – look like.

UPDATE: This was drafted before State Rep. Michelle Beckley announced her intent to run in CD24. Her July report from the TEC is here – she reports $25K on hand, with her ability to raise funds limited by being in session for most of the year. Also, there is now a candidate in CD10, but he announced in July, so we won’t see a report from him until Q3.

Impeach him again

This is Donald Trump’s fault. All of it, though he did have plenty of assistance. Impeach him again, convict him this time, and then arrest him on the way out the door. There had been a call for censure before yesterday’s appalling disgrace, and I applaud Rep. Colin Allred for supporting that call, but we’re way past that point now.

And never forget that Ken Paxton had traveled to DC to be there for this. Never forget Ted Cruz sent a fundraising email in the immediate aftermath. Every day, they should both should be reminded of this.

All of Trump’s lickspittle seditious enablers, from Paxton to Ted Cruz to Louie Gohmert to Dan Crenshaw and more, should resign in shame, delete all their social media accounts, and never speak in public again, but only after they finally, finally, disavow Trump. Assuming they’re even capable of that. I don’t have words strong enough to adequately condemn all this.

One last thing: Given the failure of the DC police to stop or apprehend these thugs, it’s now on President Biden’s Justice Department to do a thorough review of all the video, news stories, social media posts, and anything else, and then arrest every single person they can identify that was inside the Capitol. None of them should be allowed to get away with this. Those who were just there for the lulz and didn’t invade the building should be named and shamed.

Now we wait on SCOTUS

The state of Texas filed its reply to the defendants’ responses to its democracykilling lawsuit, and, well, it’s something.

Best mugshot ever

This brings us the Texas AG Ken Paxton’s reply–or, rather, replies, as there are multiple filings, including a motion to enlarge the word-count limit, a supplemental declaration dated today from Charles Cicchetti, and a new affidavit prepared yesterday from one Lisa Gage.

The first reply brief focuses on rebutting the factual and legal claims made by the four defendant states. The brief starts with the facts, and AG Paxton’s choice of emphasis here is quite interesting, as the brief leads with an extended defense of statistical stupidity contained in the initial filing and the Cicchetti declaration (hence the newly drafted supplemental declaration which is attached). Here, the Paxton brief argues “Dr. Cicchetti did take into account the possibility that votes were not randomly drawn in the later time period but, as stated in his original Declaration, he is not aware of any data that would support such an assertion.” In other words, because he does not know anything about the two sets of voters, it was okay to assume they were identical for purposes of assessing the statistical likelihood that they would vote differently. That this is the lead argument in the reply tells you most of what you need to know. (Well, perhaps not, as other parts of the factual discussion misrepresent claims made by defendant states or repeat claims that were considered and rejected in other suits over the past month.)

On the law, the Texas reply essentially argues that the handful of attorneys in the Texas AG’s office who were willing to sign on to the brief know more about the election laws of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania than do the Attorneys General and Secretaries of State of those various states. It further argues that although state legislatures have “plenary” authority to set the manner in which states select electors, this somehow does not include the authority to authorize the involvement of courts and election agencies, and that the U.S. Supreme Court, not the supreme courts of the respective states, should be the final authority on the meaning of relevant state laws and constitutional provisions. (Yay federalism!)

The other Texas filing, styled as a reply in support of Texas’s plea for emergency injunctive relief, is not much better. It does, however, deploy a powerful use of capitalization in the Table of Contents (“Texas IS likely to prevail”). Note that Texas does not have to worry about any of the defendant states responding in kind (“Texas IS NOT likely to prevail”) because this is the last brief to be filed.

In this brief, Texas argues that it is not seeking to disenfranchise voters. Rather, Texas argues, “Defendant States’ maladministration of the 2020 election makes it impossible to know which candidate garnered the majority of lawful votes.” Of course, to the extent this were true, Supreme Court intervention would not be necessary. If the relevant state legislatures concluded that the results of the elections within their states were indeterminate–that the voters had failed to select electors on election day–they could act, but they have not. Here Texas repeats its arguments that federalism requires the Supreme Court ordering state legislatures to act and possibly even hold new elections because Texas does not like how other states have run their elections.

It’s already time for some tweets.

One possible way to avoid that outcome is for SCOTUS to shut this shit down hard.

The easy thing for the Supreme Court to do is simply deny Texas permission to file the complaint (and deny the motions to intervene as moot) and be done with it. No fuss, no muss.

But the court should do more. It is perfectly ordinary and appropriate for the justices to write an opinion explaining the various reasons why they are rejecting Texas’ request. Indeed, the minority of justices who think that the court is required to accept original actions like Texas’ may well write short opinions of their own or note that they think the case was properly filed. So there is nothing overreaching if a majority of the court explains why the case is meritless.

The justices’ decision whether to do that needs to account for this extraordinary, dangerous moment for our democracy. President Donald Trump, other supportive Republicans, and aligned commentators have firmly convinced many tens of millions of people that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. If that view continues to take hold, it threatens not only our national politics for the next four years but the public’s basic faith in elections of all types that are the foundations of our society.

A simple five-page per curiam opinion genuinely could end up in the pantheon of all-time most significant rulings in American history. Every once in a long while, the court needs to invest some of its accumulated capital in issuing judgments that are not only legally right but also respond to imminent, tangible threats to the nation. That is particularly appropriate when, as here, the court finds itself being used as a tool to actively undermine faith in our democratic institutions — including by the members of the court’s bar on whom the justices depend to act much more responsibly.

In a time that is so very deeply polarized, I cannot think of a person, group or institution other than the Supreme Court that could do better for the country right now. Supporters of the president who have been gaslighted into believing that there has been a multi-state conspiracy to steal the election recognize that the court is not a liberal institution. If the court will tell the truth, the country will listen.

I’m not so sure I share the optimism, but I agree it would be the best thing that SCOTUS could do.

More Republicans have lined up to join Paxton on his lemming suicide bomber dive, including some who are seemingly claiming their own elections are also tainted.

Maybe the most ridiculous thing about this ridiculous moment, is that among the 126 Republican House members who have signed on to a document that they know to be not just false in its content, but malicious in its intent, are 19 from states that are the subject of the suit.

So Representatives like Doug Collins and Barry Loudermilk in Georgia are arguing that their own elections were fraudulent. Except, of course, they’re not making that argument. They’re not making any argument. They’re just hoping to gain “street cred” from adding their signatures to a list of people who support Trump rather than America.

You know who else is on Team Dictatorship? Dan Crenshaw, that’s who. This Dan Crenshaw.

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw told Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie that a woman who reported sexual assault at a VA hospital had filed frivolous complaints when she and Crenshaw served in the same Navy command, according to testimony by several senior officials in a report by the agency’s watchdog.

Investigators said they were troubled by the way Wilkie and his agency handled the outcry of the woman, who is now a Democratic aide in the House of Representatives.

The Houston Republican’s link to matter, first reported by Newsweek magazine, was included in a report released by the agency’s inspector general on Thursday. The report details a number of apparent problems with the agency’s handling of complaints filed by the veteran, Andrea Goldstein, who alleged a VA hospital contractor “bumped his entire body against mine and told me I looked like I needed a smile and a good time.”

[…]

Senior VA officials told investigators that Crenshaw passed along information about Goldstein to Wilkie, the report says, which both Crenshaw and Wilkie have denied.

The report points to an email Wilkie sent Chief of Staff Pamela Powers and Brooks Tucker, assistant secretary congressional and legislative affairs, after a fundraiser that he and Crenshaw both attended. It said: “Ask me in the morning what Congressman Crenshaw said about the Takano staffer whose glamor (sic) shot was in the New York Times.”

While Wilkie told investigators that Crenshaw approached him at the December 2019 fundraiser and brought up the veteran, he claimed that Crenshaw merely told him they served together. When investigators asked Wilkie why that information was enough to merit the email he sent after the fundraiser, he responded, “Well, I don’t remember. I have no idea.”

Both Powers and Tucker, however, told investigators they recalled Wilkie making comments about the veteran’s reputation “based on information they understood he received from Congressman Crenshaw.”

The report also says Deputy VA Secretary Jim Byrne told investigators that Wilkie had “verified with Congressman Dan Crenshaw that the veteran had previously filed frivolous complaints when the two were serving in the same command in the Navy.”

Crenshaw and his staff refused to answer VA investigators’ questions about the matter, the report says. Crenshaw’s office did not respond Thursday to a request for comment.

The Newsweek story is here. Remember Crenshaw’s craven refusal to answer questions about this the next time he tweets some garbage about how “all cases should be heard, all investigations should be thorough”. As a reminder, the Chron endorsed Crenshaw for re-election. The Orlando Sentinel has apologized for endorsing Rep. Michael Waltz, one of Crenshaw’s fellow members of the Sedition Caucus. I await the Chron taking similar action; merely excoriating Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz, without even mentioning Crenshaw for his role in this debacle, is insufficient.

Montana Governor Steve Bullock has observed, as part of his own amicus filing against the Paxton mess, that Texas did not include his state as a defendant even though Montana made the same kind of changes that Georgia et al did that Paxton finds so objectionable. Of course, Trump carried Montana, so it’s totally different. Governor Bullock also knows how to bring the snark:

SCOTUS may act on the Texas case even before I finish drafting this post, so let me wrap up while the outcome is still unknown. First, a few words from Adam Serwer about why Trump has so many rats following behind his rancid Pied Piper act:

To Trump’s strongest supporters, Biden’s win is a fraud because his voters should not count to begin with, and because the Democratic Party is not a legitimate political institution that should be allowed to wield power even if they did.

This is why the authoritarian remedies festering in the Trump fever swamps—martial law, the usurpation of state electors, Supreme Court fiat—are so openly contemplated. Because the true will of the people is that Trump remain president, forcing that outcome, even in the face of defeat, is a fulfillment of democracy rather than its betrayal.

The Republican base’s fundamental belief, the one that Trump used to win them over in the first place, the one that ties the election conspiracy theory to birtherism and to Trump’s sneering attack on the Squad’s citizenship, is that Democratic victories do not count, because Democratic voters are not truly American. It’s no accident that the Trump campaign’s claims have focused almost entirely on jurisdictions with high Black populations.

From Elizabeth Dye at Above the Law:

But perhaps we shouldn’t get waylaid in Constitutional and procedural niceties, lest we distract ourselves from the point that THIS IS BATSHIT. The state of Texas has filed a facially nonsensical suit purporting to vindicate the rights of the Defendant states’ legislatures from unconstitutional usurpation by overweening governors and state courts, a usurpation which supposedly violates the Elections Clause. And the proposed solution is for the Supreme Court itself to violate the Elections Clause by postponing the electoral college vote, thus usurping Congress’s power to “determine the Time of choosing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.”

And instead of saying, “Slow your roll, Ken Paxton! We’ve been banging the drum about states’ rights for two hundred years now. It’s kind of our thing, you know?” the intervenor states are all in on this Frankenstein hybrid of vote dilution and anti-federalism. Rather than acknowledging the reality of Trump’s loss, these attorneys general would rather attach their names to a complaint which claims that it’s just mathematically impossible for Biden to have won those four Defendant states because, ummm, Clinton lost them. Don’t ask how Trump was able to flip Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan after Obama won them in 2012 and 2008 — that formula is still being calculated.

Never mind that Texas’s governor Greg Abbott extended early voting by a week, the same dastardly usurpation of legislative prerogative which supposedly voids the election in the Defendant states. Pay no attention to the fact that Mississippi also allows votes to be counted if they arrive within three days of the election, which Paxton argues is patently illegal. Or that Utah conducted this election entirely by mail, which is, according to the complaint anyway, prima facie evidence of intent to allow vote fraud. IOKYAR.

The Trump motion to intervene is little more than a cleaned up version of the president’s Twitter feed, drafted by John Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University who is nonetheless confused about birthright citizenship and recently penned a racist Newsweek editorial wondering if Kamala Harris was eligible to run for president.

Mentioning this John Eastman character brings us to the final tweets, because all good blog posts about election theft end with tweets. These two are embedded in that ATL article:

As noted before, Lawrence Joseph is the outside counsel Ken Paxton hired for his lawsuit, since the Solicitor General declined to come on board. Wheels within wheels, y’all.

And finally, nothing could sum up this entire experience better than this:

From the neighborhood of New Heights in the city of New Houston and the state of New Texas, I wish you all a happy weekend. CNN has more.

UPDATE: Didn’t have to wait long, as it turns out.

The US Supreme Court on Friday rejected Texas’s unprecedented last-ditch effort to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin by suing those four states in the high court.

At least a majority of the justices concluded that Texas lacked standing to bring the case at all, a threshold the state had to clear before the case could go any further.

“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections,” the court wrote in the brief order.

No justice noted that they had dissented from the decision to knock out Texas’s case from the start. It would have taken at least five justices to agree to hear the case, but the justices don’t have to individually indicate how they voted, so there’s no way to know the vote breakdown for certain. Justice Samuel Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that they believed the court had to allow Texas to file its lawsuit, but they wouldn’t have granted any other relief that the state requested.

It was a significant loss not only for Texas, but for President Donald Trump, who had asked to intervene in the case and spent the the past two days tweeting about why the justices should effectively hand him an election that Biden won. The court denied all of the other motions filed in the case as moot once it decided Texas couldn’t bring the case at all, which ended Trump’s bid to get before the justices.

There’s plenty more stories out there – go to Google News or Trending on Twitter if you haven’t come across any others. The Electoral College meets on Monday, and after that it really is over, though one presumes the delusions will continue. I’m going to finish with some more tweets. You should go outside and enjoy the day.

Not sure how I feel about this. It’s right there in the Constitution, but it’s also overturning the will of the voters, which is what the Sedition Caucus was trying to do. I am happy to have a discussion about this, however. Let these bastards explain why they haven’t violated the Constitution.

Speaking of bastards and being in opposition to the Constitution:

Yeah, I don’t even know what to say to that. But I would very much like to know what every elected Republican thinks about it. Let’s get them all on record, shall we? Rick Hasen has more.

The states respond to Paxton

Now we wait for SCOTUS. I sure hope they’re quick about it.

Best mugshot ever

Each of the four battleground states targeted by a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn President Donald Trump’s election defeat issued blistering briefs at the Supreme Court on Thursday, with Pennsylvania officials going so far as to call the effort a “seditious abuse of the judicial process.”

The court filings from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin come a day after Trump asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton seeking to invalidate millions of votes in their states. The lawsuit amounts to an unprecedented request for legal intervention in an election despite there being no evidence of widespread fraud.

“Texas’s effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact. The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” wrote Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

The Texas lawsuit, Shapiro said, rested on a “surreal alternate reality.”

[…]

Despite the slate of inaccurate claims driving the lawsuit, more than 100 House Republicans signed on to an amicus brief in support of Paxton’s motion.

Notable Republican leadership names on this list include House Minority Whip Steve Scalise and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Gary Palmer.

“The unconstitutional irregularities involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome and the integrity of the American system of elections,” the brief said without evidence.

“Amici respectfully aver that the broad scope and impact of the various irregularities in the Defendant states necessitate careful and timely review by this Court.”

Beyond the four states subject to the Texas lawsuit, more than 20 other states and Washington, DC, also submitted an amicus brief deriding the effort and urging the high court to deny Texas’ motion.

“The Amici States have a critical interest in allowing state courts and local actors to interpret and implement state election law, and in ensuring that states retain their sovereign ability to safely and securely accommodate voters in light of emergencies such as COVID-19,” the brief said.

Shapiro’s particularly fiery brief assessed that the Texas lawsuit is “legally indefensible and is an affront to principles of constitutional democracy.”

“Nothing in the text, history, or structure of the Constitution supports Texas’s view that it can dictate the manner in which four sister States run their elections, and Texas suffered no harm because it dislikes the results in those elections.”

See here and here for the background. A copy of the court filings are at the CNN story, but the best part of the Pennsylvania filing, which uses the word “seditious”, is here. Despite the sound and fury, there’s some suggestion that even the sedition-committers know that it all signals nothing.

Six states attorneys general, led by Missouri AG Eric Schmitt, have moved to intervene in Texas v. Pennsylvania, the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that seeks to prevent the selection of presidential electors based upon the November election results in four states (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan). Yesterday, 17 states, also led by Missouri AG Schmitt, filed an amicus brief in support of the Texas suit. I wrote about that filing here.

There are a few notable things about today’s filing. First and foremost, it is notable than only six of the states that joined yesterday’s amicus brief (Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah) were willing to join today’s motion to intervene and join the Texas Bill of Complaint. This suggests that some of the state AGs who were willing to say that the claims raised by Texas are sufficiently serious to warrant the Court’s attention were not willing to actually endorse the substance of those claims. Perhaps this indicates there is only so far they are willing to go to virtue-signal their support for the Trump tribe. (Yesterday’s filing from Arizona can be viewed in a similar light.) In the alternative it could simply represent discomfort with some of the claims this new briefing supports, which leads to my next point.

It gets into the legal weeds from there, so read the rest if you’re so inclined. In the meantime, there may still be a couple of respectable voices here in Texas.

The state’s Big Three — Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen — have all supported the suit, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has reportedly even agreed to argue the case before the U.S. Supreme Court if it advances, which legal experts say is extremely unlikely.

More than half of the Texas Republican congressional delegation — 12 members including Reps. Dan Crenshaw, Kevin Brady and Randy Weber — were among the 106 House members to sign onto a brief in support of the suit.

[…]

Still, in what is shaping to be yet another with-Trump or against-Trump moment for Republicans in Congress, the Texas delegation is splitting.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn doubts that Paxton even has grounds to sue. “It’s an interesting theory,” he said, “but I’m not convinced.”

On Thursday, Cornyn — a past Texas attorney general, as is Abbott — was joined by several more prominent Republicans in his dissent.

Rep. Kay Granger, who has represented North Texas for almost two decades, told CNN she did not see the suit going anywhere and called it a “distraction.”

“I’m not supporting it,” Granger said. “I’m just concerned with the process.”

Conservative firebrand Rep. Chip Roy excoriated the suit, saying he could not join colleagues in the House in writing a brief to support the suit because he believes it “represents a dangerous violation of federalism and sets a precedent to have one state asking federal courts to police the voting procedures of other states.”

“I strongly support the continued pursuit of litigation where most likely to succeed — such as Georgia — to bring to light any illegal votes and encourage, if necessary, state legislatures to alter their electors accordingly,” Roy tweeted. “But, I cannot support an effort that will almost certainly fail on grounds of standing and is inconsistent with my beliefs about protecting Texas’ sovereignty from the meddling of other states.”

I give Kay Granger a B+, Cornyn a C, and Roy a D – he was perfectly happy to throw manure on the concept of voting by mail, so his disagreement was entirely about tactics, not principles. I remind you, as recently as 2016, Republicans in Harris County cast more votes by mail than Democrats did. As for Dan Crenshaw, I hope that the next time we try to tell the voters in his district that he’s nothing more than a faithful foot soldier for Donald Trump, they believe us.

Not that Ken Paxton cares, but I appreciate what the DMN editorial board says to him.

Your lawsuit, as you should know, will fail on the merits. Every piece of evidence shows the same result. Donald Trump lost this election. This is why the high court will turn you away, as courts have repeatedly turned away suits seeking to reverse the election’s outcome.

That is not to say that your decisions are without consequence. As the state’s attorney general, you chose to mislead the public by acting as if there were a legal case to defy the will of the voters as expressed through legally administered elections, and this will cause lasting damage to our political system and to faith in our elections. Much like crying wolf when there is no animal in sight, your lawsuit will undermine legitimate complaints in the future about voter fraud and undercut legitimate work in the future to ensure ballot integrity.

Your leadership is also fueling cynicism, empowering conspiracy theorists who operate on accusation rather than fact, and enabling those who seek election confusion rather than clear, compelling and accurate election results. This is leadership unbecoming of your office. It is a disservice to Texans who deserve a well-run office of the attorney general and who depend on a fair administration of justice.

We really need to vote him out in 2022. I’ll wrap up with some tweets.

I’ll blog about that more fully when I see a story. It just sure is hard to separate the timing, and the cravenness, of this lawsuit from Paxton’s immediate needs. We’ll see what SCOTUS has to say, and when they have to say it. Daily Kos and NBCNews have more.

Precinct analysis: Congressional districts

Introduction

All right, let’s get this party started. In the past I’ve generally done the top races by themselves, but any race involving Trump provides challenges, because his level of support just varies in comparison to other Republicans depending on where you look. So this year it felt right to include the other statewide non-judicial results in my Presidential analyses, and the only way to do that without completely overwhelming you with a wall of numbers was to break it out by district types. That seemed to also pair well with a closer look at the competitive districts of interest, of which there were more than usual this year. So let’s begin with a look at the Congressional districts in Harris County. Only CDs 02, 07, 18, and 29 are fully in Harris County – we won’t have the complete data on all Congressional districts until later – so just keep that in mind.


Dist    Trump    Biden    Lib    Grn  Trump%  Biden%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
CD02  174,980  170,428  4,067    969  49.93%  48.63%  1.16%  0.28%
CD07  143,176  170,060  3,416    903  45.09%  53.55%  1.08%  0.28%
CD08   25,484   16,629    520     87  59.65%  38.93%  1.22%  0.20%
CD09   39,372  125,237  1,066    589  23.68%  75.32%  0.64%  0.35%
CD10  101,390   65,714  2,023    431  59.80%  38.76%  1.19%  0.25%
CD18   57,669  189,823  2,382    962  22.99%  75.68%  0.95%  0.38%
CD22   21,912   21,720    522    137  49.47%  49.04%  1.18%  0.31%
CD29   52,937  106,229  1,265    649  32.86%  65.95%  0.79%  0.40%
CD36   83,710   52,350  1,558    402  60.65%  37.93%  1.13%  0.29%

Dist   Cornyn    Hegar    Lib    Grn Cornyn%  Hegar%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
CD02  180,504  157,923  6,215  2,164  52.37%  45.82%  1.80%  0.63%
CD07  152,741  154,670  4,939  2,161  48.90%  49.52%  1.58%  0.69%
CD08   25,916   15,259    846    221  61.67%  36.31%  2.01%  0.53%
CD09   39,404  118,424  2,725  1,677  24.54%  73.76%  1.70%  1.04%
CD10  102,919   60,687  3,168    939  61.71%  36.39%  1.90%  0.56%
CD18   60,111  178,680  4,806  2,468  24.68%  73.35%  1.97%  1.01%
CD22   21,975   20,283    898    377  50.92%  47.00%  2.08%  0.87%
CD29   51,044   99,415  3,022  1,969  33.26%  64.77%  1.97%  1.28%
CD36   83,614   48,814  2,598    913  61.92%  36.15%  1.92%  0.68%

Dist   Wright    Casta    Lib    Grn Wright%  Casta%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
CD02  176,484  153,628  7,631  4,122  51.62%  44.94%  2.23%  1.21%
CD07  149,114  149,853  6,276  3,974  48.22%  48.46%  2.03%  1.29%
CD08   25,558   14,796    992    394  61.23%  35.45%  2.38%  0.94%
CD09   37,090  117,982  2,764  2,570  23.12%  73.55%  1.72%  1.60%
CD10  101,414   58,873  3,758  1,793  61.15%  35.50%  2.27%  1.08%
CD18   57,783  177,020  5,021  3,846  23.71%  72.65%  2.06%  1.58%
CD22   21,026   20,231  1,007    675  48.97%  47.12%  2.35%  1.57%
CD29   46,954  102,354  2,802  2,334  30.40%  66.27%  1.81%  1.51%
CD36   81,424   48,619  2,880  1,300  60.66%  36.22%  2.15%  0.97%

Dist      GOP      Dem    Lib    Grn    GOP%    Dem%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
CD02  192,828  148,374  5,524         55.61%  42.79%  1.59%
CD07  149,054  159,529  5,542         47.75%  50.79%  1.76%
CD08   25,906   15,212    926         61.62%  36.18%  2.20%
CD09   35,634  121,576  4,799         22.00%  75.04%  2.96%
CD10  103,180   60,388  3,496         61.76%  36.15%  2.09%
CD18   58,033  180,952  4,514  3,396  23.51%  73.29%  1.83%  1.38%
CD22   20,953   19,743  2,291         48.74%  45.93%  5.33%
CD29   42,840  111,305  2,328         27.38%  71.13%  1.49%
CD36   84,721   46,545  2,579    985  62.84%  34.52%  1.91%  0.73%

The first three tables are the Presidential, Senate, and Railroad Commissioner results, in that order. Subsequent presentations with State Rep and JP/Constable precincts will be done in the same fashion. For this post, I have also included the actual Congressional results – each Congressional race had both a Dem and a Republican, which doesn’t always happen, so they provide a good point of comparison. The candidate labeled as “Green” in CD18 was actually an independent – only CD36 had an actual Green Party candidate. In the other Congressional races, there were only three candidates.

How competitive CD02 looks depends very much on how you’re looking at it. On the one hand, Joe Biden came within 1.3 points, with Trump failing to reach fifty percent. On the other hand, Dan Crenshaw won by almost thirteen points, easily exceeding his marks from 2018 while clearly getting some crossover support. In between was everything else – MJ Hegar and Chrysta Castaneda trailed by about six and a half points each, with third-party candidates taking an increasing share of the vote. As we’ll see, most of the time the spread was between seven and nine points. That doesn’t tell us too much about what CD02 will look like going forward, but it does tell us that it doesn’t have a large reserve of Republican votes in it that can be used to bolster other Republicans. One possible outcome is that the map-drawers decide that Crenshaw will punch above his weight – he certainly fundraises at a very high level – which will allow them to leave him in a seemingly-narrow district while tending to more urgent matters elsewhere. The downside there is that if and when Crenshaw decides he’s made for bigger things, this district would be that much harder to hold with a different Republican running in it.

Another possibility is that Republicans will decide that they’re better off turning CD07 into a more Dem-friendly district, and using the space Republican capacity from CD07 to bolster CDs 02 and maybe 10. Lizzie Fletcher didn’t win by much, though I will note that Wesley Hunt’s 47.75% is a mere 0.28 points better than John Culberson in 2018. (There was no Libertarian candidate in 2018; do we think that hurt Hunt or Fletcher more in this context?) But other than Biden, no Dem came close to matching Fletcher’s performance – Hegar and Castaneda were among the top finishers in CD07, as we will see going forward. Like Crenshaw, Fletcher got some crossovers as well. It’s a big question how the Republicans will approach CD07 in the redistricting process. In years past, before the big blue shift in the western parts of Harris County, my assumption had been that the weight of CD07 would continue to move west, probably poking into Fort Bend and Waller counties. I’m less sure of that now – hell, I have no idea what they will do. I have suggested that they make CD07 more Democratic, which would enable them to shore up CD02, CD10, maybe CD22. They could try to add enough Republicans to tilt CD07 red, and at least make Fletcher work that much harder if not endanger her. Or who knows, they could throw everything out and do a radical redesign, in which case who knows what happens to CD07. Harris is going to get a certain number of full and partial Congressional districts in it no matter what, and there are Republican incumbents who will want to keep various areas for themselves, and the Voting Rights Act is still in effect, so there are some constraints. But there’s nothing to say that CD07 will exist in some form as we now know it. Expect the unexpected, is what I’m saying.

None of the other districts had as large a variance in the Trump vote. He trailed Cornyn and Wright in total votes in every district except CDs 29 and 36 (he also led Wright in 22). He trailed the Republican Congressional candidate in every district except 09, 18, and 29, the three strong D districts. Conversely, Joe Biden led every Democratic candidate in every district except for Sylvia Garcia in CD29; Garcia likely got about as many crossover votes as Lizzie Fletcher did. I’m amused to see Trump beat the designated sacrificial lamb candidate in CD18, partly because he was one of the co-plaintiffs on the state lawsuit to throw out all of the drive-through votes, and partly because I saw far more yard signs for Wendell Champion in my mostly-white heavily Democratic neighborhood (*) than I did for Trump. Maybe this is what was meant by “shy Trump voters”.

One more point about redistricting. Mike McCaul won the Harris County portion of CD10 by 43K votes; he won it by 46K in 2012 and 47K in 2016. He won overall by 30K, after squeaking through in 2018 by 13K votes. He had won in 2012 by 64K votes, and in 2016 by 59K votes. Now, a big driver of that is the ginormous growth in the Travis County Dem vote – he went from a 14K deficit in Travis in 2012 to a 57K deficit in 2020. The point I’m making is that there’s not a well of spare Republican votes in CD10 that could be used to redden CD07, not without putting CD10 at risk. Again, the Republicans could throw the current map out and start over from scratch – there will be new districts to include, so to some extent that will happen anyway – it’s just that Harris County is going to be of limited, and decreasing, use to them. They have to work around Harris, not with it. It’s going to make for some interesting decisions on their part.

I’ll have a look at the State Rep districts next. Let me know what you think.

(*) The two main precincts for my neighborhood went for Biden over Trump by a combined 68-28.

Initial thoughts about the election

And now for some reactions and analysis…

– The polls were garbage. Oy vey. Not just here, though they were definitely off here, underestimating Trump and the Republicans after doing the same to Beto and the Dems in 2018. This time, after all that national soul-searching following the 2016 state-level misfires (the national polling was fairly accurate overall in 2016), we got this flaming mess. Not my problem to solve, but I wonder how much of this is the known issue of “differential response” writ large. We know that in some circumstances, like when there’s been a big news event, one candidate’s supporters, or members of one party in general, may be more or less likely to answer the phone and respond to a pollster. It may be that just as a matter of course now, Republicans are less likely to respond to polls, in a bigger way than previously thought, and that had a disproportionate effect on the numbers. I’m just guessing here, but if that’s the case then perhaps the web panel approach to polling needs to be used more often. For what it’s worth, the UT/Texas Tribune and UH Hobby School polls from October, both of which had Trump up 50-45, used web panels. Maybe that’s a fluke, maybe they had a better likely voter model going in, maybe they were onto something that the others weren’t, I don’t know. But they came the closest, so they get the glory. As for the rest, thanks for nothing.

– Along those same lines, pollsters who did deeper dive polls on Latino voters, such as Univision and Latino Decisions, really need to question their methods and figure out how they went so mind-bogglingly wrong. I get that what we had, at least to some extent, appears to have been lower-propensity Latino voters turning out at surprisingly high levels for Trump, but damn, this is your job. You need to be on top of that.

– The old adage about “Texas isn’t a red state, it’s a non-voting state” can be safely buried for now. We had record-breaking turnout, over 11 million votes cast when we’d never surpassed nine million before, and yet Trump still won by six points while other statewide Republicans were winning by nine to eleven points. To be sure, that’s closer than 2016 was, but at this rate we’ll need to have thirty million people voting for Dems to catch up, and I feel confident saying that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon. The lesson here is that there are low-propensity Republican voters, too, and they are capable of showing up when they are persuaded. We saw that happen in 2018, and we saw it again this year.

I admit I bought into the hype, and put too much faith into the idea that the non-voters would be more consistently Democratic than Republican. To be fair, I think that was the case in 2018, as Democrats made huge gains relative to past off years. It’s certainly been the case in Harris County that increases in voter registration have led to significant increases in Democratic votes – I’ll get to this in more detail later in the post, but this can be pretty easily quantified, and it’s why Dems have been dominating the countywide races with increasing ease. It’s where those gains came from that seems to have been a difference-maker.

I don’t want to sell short what was accomplished here. Joe Biden got over 1.3 million more votes than Hillary Clinton; Trump improved on his total by about 1.15 million. Chrysta Castaneda got 1.36 million more votes than Grady Yarbrough. The statewide judicial candidates got between 3,378,163 and 3,608,634 votes in 2016; in 2020, the range was 4,762,188 to 4,899,270 votes. If you want to be particularly gruesome, Biden got 3.3 million more votes than Wendy Davis did for Governor in 2014. Granted, Trump outdid Greg Abbott by just over 3 million votes, but still. A lot more people now have voted for a Democrat in Texas than at any other point in history. Even as we pick through the wreckage, that’s worth keeping in mind.

So how do we close that remaining gap of 700K to one million voters statewide? One, we should remember that off year elections are far more volatile from a turnout perspective, and we need to do everything we can to make these new folks habitual voters while we continue to register and recruit new voters. Two, having dynamic statewide candidates, who can learn the lessons of these past elections while applying them to the environment they’re in, would help. And three, maybe we need to give another look to the reviled old “persuasion” strategy, and see how we can do a better job of peeling away some of the other guy’s voters. Easier said than done, but then that’s why I’m a blogger and not a campaign professional.

– By the way, if anyone asks you who the current all-time vote leader in Texas is, the answer as of 2020 is Supreme Court Justice Jane Bland, who tipped the scales at 6,002,233 votes. No one else topped six million. She was helped by not having a third-party opponent in the race; the Libertarians in three other races got between 254L and 283K votes.

– I take no position on the question about whether the Republicans’ continued use of traditional door-to-door campaigning during the pandemic, which the Democrats largely eschewed out of a sense of safety for their campaign workers and as a statement of living their values, was a factor in this election. The academic research on various methods of increasing turnout and persuading swing voters is mixed, and does not suggest that one method (such as door-knocking) is clearly superior to others (such as phone-banking). Winning teams always point to their methods and strategies as the reason why they won and the other team lost. I’m not saying this couldn’t have made a difference, or that it didn’t make a difference. It may have, and I have no way to disprove the assertion. I’m just saying that it’s anecdotal data, and I consider it to be such.

– Also, too: I saw people again cursing Beto’s name for not running for Senate this year. All I can say is that anyone who thinks Beto would have done better than Biden is not thinking clearly. He probably would have exceeded MJ Hegar, but there’s a lot of room between that and winning. With all the money that was spent in Texas this year, I do not buy the argument that having Beto on the ticket would have moved the needle for Dems.

– Speaking of money, hoo boy. I hope this isn’t the end of our candidates being able to raise enough of it. We’re going to need plenty in 2022.

– How much of an effect did the lack of straight ticket voting have? Far as I can tell, very little. In Harris County, there were 1,633,557 votes cast in the Presidential race. Way down at the bottom of the ballot, in the two At Large HCDE races, there were 1,551,731 and 1,548,760 votes. In other words, about 95% of the people who voted in the Presidential race also voted in these two HCDE races.

Now, if you look at the various judicial races, you will see that Democratic judicial candidates generally got 60-80K fewer votes than Biden, while most Republican judicial candidates (though not all) exceeded Trump’s total. Some of that was just crossover voting, which we knew was happening, but some of it may have been a greater propensity by Dems to skip some number of downballot races. It’s hard to say how much is each. For what it’s worth, 12 out of 15 Dem judicial candidates (district and county courts) who had a Republican opponent had fewer votes than MJ Hegar, who had 848K to Biden’s 911K, while 8 out of those 15 Republican opponents did better than John Cornyn’s 717K votes; Trump got 699K, and all but two of those Republicans did better than that, while no one came close to Biden.

So did the absence of straight ticket voting mean more crossovers in general? I will remind you, as I have done before, there’s always a range of outcomes in the judicial races, so there has always been some amount of crossover voting, just usually not that much. Why did MJ Hegar get so many fewer votes than Joe Biden did? Some of it was more voting for third party candidates – there were 22K votes for the Libertarian and Green Presidential candidates, and 42K such votes in the Senate race – some of it was the 26K fewer votes cast in the Senate race (about 98.5% of all Presidential voters also voted for a Senate candidate), and some of it was the 18K people who voted for Cornyn but not Trump. Make of that what you will.

– While I’m thinking about it, let me update that range-of-results table I just linked to:


2004 
Rep 524K to 545K
Dem 460K to 482K

2008
Rep 526K to 564K
Dem 533K to 585K

2012
Rep 550K to 580K
Dem 555K to 581K

2016
Rep 580K to 621K
Dem 643K to 684K

2020
Rep 690K to 740K
Dem 812K to 865K

So congratulations to Republicans, who have boosted their base vote by almost 200K since 2004, while Dems have increased theirs by over 380K. Five points was as close as any Republican got.

– Despite their successful defense of their Congressional and legislative seats, Republicans still face some tricky decisions in redistricting. Look at it this way – in an election year that clearly wasn’t as good for Dems as 2018 was, they still managed to hold onto all but one of the seats they won that year. The same map that gave Republicans 95 House members was only good for 83 this year, and it wouldn’t have taken much to knock that number down by a half dozen or so. Morgan Meyer and Angie Chen Button may have survived, but Dallas County is a problem for the GOP. Harris County has three safe Republican districts – HDs 127, 128, and 130 – four that are still pretty safe but have gotten a lot less so over the decade – HDs 126, 129, 133, and 150 – and two on the knife’s edge, HDs 132 and 138. That may have been hard to see from the vantage point of 2011, but the broad outlines of it were there, and as I have noted before, HDs 132 and 135 were already trending Dem in 2012, with both being a little bluer than they were in 2008 despite 2012 being a slightly lesser year for Dems overall. Who’s going to need protection, and whose seat may wind up on a target list a couple of cycles later because you didn’t understand the demographics correctly? In Congress, Dan Crenshaw won by a comfortable 14 points…in a district Ted Poe won by 24 points in 2016, and 32 points in 2012. How do you shore him up? Splitting pieces of Travis County into four Republican districts was a great idea, until it threatened the re-election of three of those Republicans. Who even knows how many Congressional seats we’ll have, given the chaotic nature of the Census?

Oh, and here in Harris County, I’m sure the Democratic majority on Commissioners Court will bolster Adrian Garcia in CC2, as the Republicans did for Jack Morman in 2010. The bigger question is do they go after their new colleague Tom Ramsey, or do they just not help him out and hope nature takes its course? That’ll be fun to watch.

I think that’s it for now. I’m sure more things will occur to me as we go. When I get a draft canvass, I’ll start doing the usual slicing and dicing.

Endorsement watch: Well, he does have a big Twitter following

I’m honestly not surprised that the Chron endorsed Dan Crenshaw for re-election. I just wonder if the editorial board ever reads what they write when they come up with this stuff.

Sima Ladjevardian

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw has 1 million Twitter followers. His fundraising power puts him within shouting distance of high-ranking members such as Steve Scalise, R-La., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. A former Navy SEAL, he has managed to appear both loyal and critical of President Trump, and was the only Texan elected official with a major speaking role at the Republican National Convention.

There’s no question of Crenshaw’s outsized national standing as a freshman congressman, but now his fate is in the hands of Houstonians in the 2nd Congressional District, which makes a wiggly westward arc from Kingwood to neighborhoods near Rice University.

Turn the stage lights off, though, and his race against Democrat Sima Ladjevardian, 54, looks rather conventional.

First, let’s consider what is unusual. Crenshaw, 36, has shown a penchant for standing up to party and president. He wrote a letter of support for the inclusion of Log Cabin Republicans, who represent LGBT conservatives, at the Republican Party of Texas’s state convention. He’s called for Republicans to take climate change seriously. When Trump criticized Sen. John McCain months after his death and when Trump told the liberal congresswomen in “the Squad” to “go back,” Crenshaw tweeted at the president to quit. When Trump withdrew troops from Syria, Crenshaw released a nearly 12-minute video that respectfully but emphatically rejects the president’s rationale.

We applaud Crenshaw for using his platform to take these stands. At other times, he has left us both troubled and disappointed. Like many others early in the pandemic, Crenshaw argued that masks weren’t effective against the coronavirus. While he changed his mind as evidence showed otherwise — even purchasing and then donating 50,000 masks — he continued to push misrepresentations, as he did in his more recent videos defending Trump’s coronavirus response. He was wrong to call Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s mask order “draconian” and was wrong to remove his mask for long enough while at a crowded fundraising party to be photographed without it.

We’re also concerned that his positions on key issues for Houston, including how to confront climate change, aren’t far-seeing enough. He’s called renewable energy “silly” and has not embraced a carbon tax, something even many major oil companies are willing to accept. His positions on the border and on prescription drugs also disappoint.

[…]

And yet, it’s impossible to ignore Crenshaw’s star power and his potential to shape the future of the Republican Party around respect, ideas and principles.

In addition, if he retains his seat, Crenshaw is likely to wield the kind of power that matters on delivering funding for dredging, roads and floodgates. We believe voters should return him to Congress.

There are two obvious problems with this. One is that in every way that the Chron cites to support the notion that Crenshaw is some kind of independent-thinking maverick it’s all talk and no action on Crenshaw’s part. Can the Chron name one bill of significance where Crenshaw is teaming up with a Democrat, or one vote he has taken where he opposed the party line? To be fair, even tweeting a mild rebuke at Trump makes him stand apart from the Louie Gohmerts, but surely the bar can be set a little higher than that. To put this another way, what exactly has he done for the greater Houston area and its residents that a replacement level member of Congress couldn’t have done?

Which gets to the second point, the belief that Crenshaw will someday be a force for getting big things for Houston. Which, sure, could happen, but for at least the foreseeable future he’s going to be in the minority, where there’s much less power to be wielded. Compare Crenshaw’s record of accomplishment to Lizzie Fletcher’s to see what I mean. Yes, Congressional majorities are fleeting, and the whole idea of getting anything done is meaningless as long as the Republicans control the Senate, but this puts an awful lot of faith into a guy who’s so far been a total show horse. Remember when the Chron endorsed Ted Cruz in 2012 with the hope that some day he’d grow up to be like Kay Bailey Hutchison? This gives me a similar vibe.

I agree that Crenshaw is a rising star in the GOP, and that the exodus of experienced (mostly Republican) members of Congress from Texas has left the state with less clout than it once had. If one believes that Crenshaw is going places, then there’s reason to hitch a wagon to him and hope that he’ll eventually use his powers for good. Alternately, you could sign on with the candidate who actually agrees with the things you say you value. Maybe Sima Ladjevardian doesn’t quite have Crenshaw’s star power, but I’d put more money on her actually doing the work to get stuff done.

In other Congressional endorsements, the Chron also recommended Rep. Al Green, and Rep. Brian Babin. They also endorsed in the other two countywide races of note. For Tax Assessor, they went with Chrin Daniel, former District Clerk, over incumbent Ann Harris Bennett. I don’t have any issues with Chris Daniel. He was perfectly competent as District Clerk. I also think Ann Harris Bennett has been fine as Tax Assessor, and think she will continue to be fine. (I’ve had this overview story of the Tax Assessor’s race on one of my tabs for a couple of weeks now because I haven’t been able to think of anything more original than that to say.) But look, in the year 2020 if you are on the same ballot as Donald Trump as a Republican, that’s an indelible mark against you. There may come a time when that isn’t the case, but that time is not today. Also, until we get some Democratic power at the statewide level and in the Legislature, we really need a unified county government, because the Republicans who wield power in this state are coming for us, and we need everyone pulling in the same direction to protect our interests as a county. and an independent entity of government As someone once said, it is what it is.

Finally, they endorsed Teneshia Hudspeth for County Clerk.

Teneshia Hudspeth

Hudspeth, 39, is the Democratic candidate running against Republican Stan Stanart, who was the clerk until 2018, when he was unseated by Diane Trautman. With Trautman resigning over health concerns earlier this year, the winner will fulfill the remainder of her term.

Usually, Stanart’s experience would give him the edge, but Hudspeth is no stranger to the clerk’s office, having worked her way up over a 15-year career from an administrative assistant in public affairs to the chief deputy position. Her climb through the ranks has given her a ground-level view of many of the office’s responsibilities, she said, from voter outreach to records preservation and archiving.

That will come in handy as she continues the office’s modernization by upgrading technology and enhancing online services to reduce wait times and improve efficiency. She also wants to make some of the clerk’s services more widely available outside the office by partnering with community centers.

While the clerk will no longer be a direct elections administrator, the position comes with a seat on the county election commission, a role where Hudspeth’s experience will also be important.

“I will be able to sit on that commission and hold the elections administrator accountable,” she said.

While Stanart is as affable as ever, it was time for new blood in the clerk’s office when we endorsed his opponent in 2018 — his pledge to “stop socialist Democrats” didn’t boost our confidence in his judgment — and that need for change continues.

At least this time, they understood who the candidates were. Good call.

Politico profile of Lina Hidalgo

Good stuff.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

In late April, Lina Hidalgo stood at a microphone in the Harris County emergency operations center in Houston and pushed up the teal fabric face mask that had slipped off her nose. Her voice was slightly muffled as she spoke. Next to her, an American Sign Language interpreter translated for an audience that couldn’t see her lips. But there was no need to worry her message would be lost. Soon it would become the subject of debate across the country—and so would she.

Hidalgo, the county judge of Harris County—the top elected official in the nation’s third-largest county—announced that millions of people in the Houston area would be required to wear a face covering in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus. People who didn’t comply would risk a fine of up to $1,000. Behind her, charts and graphs told the statistical story that had led Hidalgo to this moment. Since early March, when the state’s first case of Covid-19 had been identified in Houston, the urban heart of Harris County, the number of infected people in the county had climbed to 3,800. That day, the death toll stood at 79 and Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, warned that number could “exponentially increase.”

Hidalgo had been bracing for the disease for weeks. She had sought advice from officials in King County in Washington state, the nation’s first hot spot. Armed with their insight, she rallied her own emergency management and public health officials to prepare a response and on March 16 ordered the closure of bars and restaurant dining rooms. Initially, state officials followed suit. Three days after Hidalgo’s order, Gov. Greg Abbott declared a public health disaster for the first time in more than a century. Texans huddled indoors. But by early April, pressure was mounting on Abbott to end the lockdown. Hidalgo was pulling the other way.

You know what happened from there. You should read the whole thing, it’s mostly stuff you already know but it’s deeply satisfying to see someone who’s been right about the virus in all the ways that matter and who’s been the target of some vicious, racist insults as a result of her being right about it get her due. I’m going to highlight two other bits here:

“The perils of straight-ticket voting were on full display Tuesday in Harris County,” the Chronicle’s editorial board clucked. “Longtime County Judge Ed Emmett, a moderate Republican who’s arguably the county’s most respected official, was ousted by Lina Hidalgo, a 27-year-old graduate student running her first race.”

“We hope she succeeds,” the editorial continued, “but residents can be forgiven for being squeamish about how Hidalgo will lead the county and, by extension, the region’s 6 million people, through the next hurricane.”

I can understand the initial apprehension about a political newcomer taking over as County Judge, and I can understand some unease at it happening as part of a partisan wave. But I guess I’m just going to die mad about all the pearl-clutching over straight-ticket voting, which casts a whole lot of people as mindless automatons instead of individuals who made a choice. That choice in 2018 was to vote for change, and to vote against Donald Trump. One can admire Ed Emmett for his competence, his compassion, his deep concern for Harris County and its residents, and still disagree with him on principles and priorities, and want to see our county government move in a different direction. The sheer condescension in that first paragraph will never not annoy the crap out of me.

“I expect for some Texans it’s a little hard to take that a young Latina who earned her citizenship, as opposed to being born here, has the level of authority that she has,” one of her advisers, Tom Kolditz, told me. “She absorbs every criticism, she listens to every racial dog whistle, she puts up with ageist comments about what her abilities are or are not.”

[…]

Re-opening schools has emerged as another battleground. Hidalgo has taken a position that is consistent with her aggressiveness throughout the pandemic. On July 21, she ordered all school districts in Harris County to delay opening schools for in-person learning for at least eight weeks. Wearing a floral face mask at a recent press conference, her curly hair longer than normal due to the pandemic, she urged the community to work together “until we crush this curve.”

“Then, we can responsibly bring your kids back to school,” she said. “Right now, we continue to see severe and uncontrolled spread of the virus and it would be self-defeating to open schools.”

A familiar chorus of criticism from state and federal Republicans followed quickly. Rep. Crenshaw, among others, has beat the drum that schools must open. And a week after Hidalgo’s announcement, the Texas attorney general said that local health authorities can’t close schools to preemptively prevent the spread of Covid-19. The Texas Education Agency, which oversees public education in the state, announced it wouldn’t fund schools that closed under such orders.

Kolditz, Hidalgo’s adviser and a retired Army brigadier general, has framed the pandemic like a war that can’t be won without a common objective and unity. When Hidalgo was empowered to call the shots in Harris County the pandemic was relatively under control, he said. Since Abbott undermined that, “it’s been a disaster.”

“We’re going to wake up from this pandemic and be stunned by how many lives were wasted by bad leader decisions, and she is not a part of that,” he said.

Hidalgo has largely tried to avoid making the pandemic into a political fight, but she is not naïve about the political implications of every decision. “If we do the best we can and, politically, that wasn’t appropriate for people and I’m not re-elected in two years, I’ll be disappointed, but I’ll be able to sleep at night.”

I mean, we could listen to the person who’s been consistently right, or we could listen to the people who have been consistently wrong. Seems like a clear choice to me, but what do I know?

Congressional Dems winning the money race in Texas

The times, they have definitely changed.

Early this election cycle, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn publicly worried about complacency within the Texas Republican political class — even after Democratic gains made in 2018.

So in early 2019, the state’s senior senator encouraged Texas Republicans in the U.S. House to bolster their fundraising and think twice about sending money out of the state.

“There’s an attempt by the leadership to extract as much money as possible out of the state as they can and use that wherever they need it, and I understand that,” he told The Texas Tribune in June 2019. “But we need to make sure our Texas races — from the president and all the way down to the courthouse — are adequately financed and resourced. And that’s going to require us to raise a significant amount of money.”

More than a year later, a Texas Tribune analysis of recent campaign finance reports shows that Cornyn’s fears of a funding problem have come to life. Democratic U.S. House candidates in Texas have millions more aggregate cash on hand than their Republican counterparts. It marks an extraordinary six-year shift within the Texas delegation.

In 2016, U.S. House Republican candidates in Texas had $32.3 million on hand in July of that year. Their Democratic counterparts reported $11.4 million.

The next cycle, boosted by a backlash to President Donald Trump, Democrats saw a jump in fundraising. In 2018, Texas Republican U.S. House candidates had $34.8 million in cash on hand, compared with $21.8 million on the Democratic side.

Newly filed campaign finance reports show a complete shift this year. Republicans running for the U.S. House in Texas reported $19.2 million. Democrats had $26.7 million.

[…]

And the money affects more than just the seven or so competitive U.S. House races on the ballot.

Take the state’s 3rd Congressional District. Situated entirely in North Texas’ Collin County, it has been a longtime undisputed GOP stronghold. Mitt Romney won the district in 2012 with 64% of the vote to Barack Obama’s 34%. But in 2018, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, carried the county by only six percentage points, and U.S. Rep. Van Taylor of Plano saw the district’s margin narrow from 27 points in 2016 to 10 points during his first run for the seat in 2018.

Taylor took that race seriously, advertising on broadcast television, and he has over $1 million in cash on hand this year. His opponent, attorney Lulu Seikaly, only had about $40,000 on her last financial report, but the way she is spending that money is noteworthy. That same report revealed she had hired a national direct mail consultant. Additionally, her campaign said in a news release that it had raised $100,000 since the mid-July runoff and has had a well-regarded polling firm conduct an internal poll of the race.

Should a Democratic wave hit the state in the fall, Seikaly will already have poll-tested messaging and located vendors to potentially take advantage of the environment. If not, her efforts to bring Democrats in her district to the polls could still help others in her party above and below her on ballot. Taylor’s district overlaps considerably with that of state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, who is one of more than a dozen GOP incumbents Democrats are targeting in an effort to flip the state House.

You can see the July finance reports for Democratic Congressional candidates here. As this story notes, much of the difference comes from the two freshman Dems who knocked off Republican incumbents in 2018, Reps. Lizzie Fletcher in CD07 and Colin Allred in CD32, plus the challengers in CDs 21, 22, and 23. Sri Kulkarni in CD22 is the laggard of the bunch, with $2.5 million raised and $1.2 million on hand; the others all have at least $3.8 million raised and $2.9 million on hand. Wendy Davis has practically lapped Rep. Chip Roy in CD21. Mike Siegel in CD10 and Candace Valenzuela have less cash on hand after having to compete in the primary runoffs, but both had raised a lot as of the Q2 report and I expect they will keep it up. Sima Ladjevardian may not be able to keep up with the moneybags Dan Crenshaw, but she’s still hauled in $1.6 million.

It’s not just about what the candidates themselves have raised. Republican Congressional incumbents have been asked to kick in a bunch of money to the RNC, but their on requests to get a little help coming back have fallen on deaf ears. Usual suspects like the Club for Growth will spend big to protect their own, but the list that needs defending keeps getting longer. If there are three takeaways from all this, they’re 1) Dems should have all the resources they need to make a maximum push this November; 2) expect to be bombarded with ads like you’ve never been before – seriously, live sports is going to be a wasteland of political ads, if there are live sports this fall; and 3) Dems have no excuse for not raising a ton of money to win statewide elections in 2022.

Here comes Everytown

Bring it.

Gun safety groups planning to spend millions to turn Texas blue this year are rolling out their first round of ads, which say COVID-19 isn’t the only public health crisis facing the state.

Everytown for Gun Safety, the Michael Bloomberg-backed group that plans to spend $8 million in Texas this year, is launching $250,000 in digital ads targeting Republicans including Houston-area U.S. Reps. Dan Crenshaw and Michael McCaul, as well as Central Texas U.S. Rep. Chip Roy.

The group shared the plan exclusively with Hearst Newspapers. It includes ads targeting Central Texas U.S. Rep. John Carter and Beth Van Duyne, a former mayor of Irving running for a Dallas-area congressional seat. The ads say the Republicans “ignored our safety” by opposing universal background checks and other gun laws.

[…]

Everytown isn’t alone in targeting Texas, the top target in 2020 for groups pushing for more restrictive gun laws. BradyPAC, the political affiliate of one of the country’s oldest gun violence prevention groups, plans to spend more than $500,000 on elections in the state, more than it’s spending anywhere in the nation by far.

See here for the background. I approve of the target list, though I assume at some point these groups will turn to the State House races, since taking over the State House serves the goal of winning and holding Congress as well. But part of this is just about boosting Dem turnout, in the places where it grew the most in 2018. That should lift all the boats. The Trib, which has a longer story, has more.

Elisa Cardnell suspends campaign in CD02

From the inbox:

Elisa Cardnell

Monday morning, Elisa Cardnell, Democratic candidate for US House of Representatives in Texas’s 2nd District, suspended her campaign. She released the following statement.

“When we began this campaign no one thought this race was possible. Every rating had Dan Crenshaw in a safe seat with no chance of flipping, but we knew that wasn’t true. We organized, we built a movement here in Houston, and showed that voters across the spectrum want to hold their leaders accountable. That’s what this race has always been about, putting country over party and holding Dan Crenshaw accountable.

“Our movement is strong. We received over 5,000 contributions to our campaign. We received over 17,000 votes, more than the past Democratic nominee for TX-02. But unfortunately, after a hard look at the numbers, we do not have the resources and clear path to reach a majority in the runoff. That is why today I am suspending my campaign for the US House of Representatives for the Texas 2nd district.

“This is not the outcome any of us were hoping for, but ultimately it is the best thing for our party so the fight against Dan Crenshaw can start today, not in May. Dan Crenshaw has built a multi-million warchest funded by private prison groups, Big Pharma, the Koch’s, and other corporate donors. He has voted with Trump over 93% of the time and is the 5th most frequent Congressional visitor to the Trump properties. If we are going to hold him accountable, we need to start that work today instead of giving him more time to build a corporate war chest.

“I am deeply humbled by the support we have received. The fight for working class representation in DC doesn’t end here. I’m not done fighting for universal healthcare, a living wage, a green economy, safe schools, our veterans, and ending the influence of money in politics.

“I hope you’ll join me in supporting Sima Ladjevardian in this fight against Dan Crenshaw and his corporate donors.” said Cardnell.

The statement doesn’t say so it’s not clear at this time if Cardnell is withdrawing or just not campaigning. If she withdraws, there is no runoff in CD02 and Sima Ladjevardian becomes the nominee. My reading of the Elections Code is that the deadline for officially withdrawing is three days after the result is canvassed. She can work that out with the county and state parties as needed.

Of more importance right now is that this is a selfless and generous act by Cardnell, who was the first candidate in the race – indeed, one of the first candidates for any race in this cycle – and who ran hard and did a decent job fundraising. The DCCC has put CD02 on its target list, and they have affirmed their support of Sima Ladjevardian in this race. I’ve mentioned before that Cardnell is a friend of mine from the Rice MOB. I was happy to see her enter this race, and I’m proud of her and the race she ran. This had to be a tough decision to make, and I salute her for making it. Thank you, Elisa. The Trib and the Texas Signal have more.

Chron overview of the CD02 primary

Gonna be an interesting one.

Elisa Cardnell

Near the end of a recent forum for the three Democrats looking to unseat U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a seemingly innocuous moment hinted at some friction between candidates Elisa Cardnell and Sima Ladjevardian.

“At the end of the day, you’ve seen that all three of us are united here behind one goal: defeating Dan Crenshaw in November,” Cardnell said in her closing remarks. “And no matter who the nominee is, we have DCCC backing. … Whoever wins this primary will have the resources and the support to take on Dan Crenshaw.”

Cardnell’s reference to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — House Democrats’ campaign arm, which added the district to its battlefield map in January — drew a smirk and head shake from Ladjevardian. The reaction suggested that Ladjevardian, who declined comment on the matter, may be skeptical the DCCC would deploy resources to Texas’ 2nd Congressional District if Cardnell wins the nomination.

The DCCC has not indicated its involvement is tied to a particular candidate, though the group announced it was targeting Crenshaw and several other Republicans a day after Ladjevardian said she had raised more than $400,000 in the first three weeks of her campaign.

Sima Ladjevardian

Democrats will need all the help they can get in this Houston-area district, where Crenshaw won by more than 7 percentage points in 2018, but Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz beat Democrat Beto O’Rourke by just one point. The three candidates — Cardnell, Ladjevardian and former Department of Homeland Security employee Travis Olsen — align ideologically, rejecting policies such as Medicare for All while preaching the importance of winning moderate voters.

Where they differ is on style and their distinct backgrounds, which they are using to fashion their electability arguments.

“It’s going to take a veteran who can reach across the aisle and bring back independent voters,” Cardnell, a Navy veteran, said at the forum. “This district, Beto lost by 3,000 votes. But (Republican Gov. Greg) Abbott won by 13 percent. That means we have swing voters in this district and we have to be able to talk to them.”

Ladjevardian’s supporters say her fundraising ability, ties to O’Rourke as his former campaign adviser, and background as an Iranian immigrant and cancer survivor make her the most formidable threat to Crenshaw. She also has garnered the most support from local elected officials, including U.S. Reps. Sylvia Garcia and Sheila Jackson Lee, Mayor Sylvester Turner, eight members of the Legislature and the district’s 2018 Democratic nominee, Todd Litton.

We know the basics here. The Chron endorsed Sima largely on the basis of her fundraising strength, which they argue gives her the best chance to win. Cardnell, who has been a decent but not spectacular fundraiser, argues her status as a veteran is more important to winning, noting that Crenshaw outperformed Ted Cruz in the district. I don’t live in this district, I like all of the candidates, and I still hope to interview Sima if she makes it to the runoff.

Trib profile of Sima Ladjevardian

CD02 gets a boost in profile.

Sima Ladjevardian

In the final hours before the filing deadline on Dec. 9, Sima Ladjevardian arrived at the Harris County Democratic Party office in Houston to make a little bit of news: She was running for Congress.

The prominent Houston lawyer, Democratic activist and fundraiser, and former Beto O’Rourke adviser had been thinking about running for a while but had thrown herself into O’Rourke’s presidential campaign, which did not wind down until mid-November.

“It really wasn’t much time,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “I just went in and did it then.”

Now Ladjevardian’s candidacy is shaking up the primary for a seat that Democrats consider more flippable than some think — and held by a high-profile target no less: rising star and former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston. About an hour and a half after Ladjevardian announced she was running, O’Rourke endorsed her. The next morning, the 2018 nominee for the seat, Todd Litton, made clear he was supporting her. And 48 hours after filing, she announced she had already raised over $200,000.

In making the last-minute entry, Ladjevardian charged into a primary that already featured two candidates, including one who has been running since February, Navy veteran Elisa Cardnell.

“It wasn’t a complete surprise,” Cardnell said of Ladjevardian’s entrance. “I welcome her to the field, but since day one, this has been about how we hold Dan Crenshaw accountable for his voting record. Honestly, I’m just glad more folks are seeing what we knew back when we launched — that Dan Crenshaw is not safe in Texas 2 and this is a winnable race.”

The 2nd District is not among the six seats that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has prioritized flipping this cycle in Texas, but Democrats have ample reason to believe it is within reach. Litton lost by 7 percentage points in 2018, despite no significant national investment on his behalf and Crenshaw rocketing on to the national stage a few days before the election after “Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson mocked his war wound. At the same time, the U.S. Senate nominee, Beto O’Rourke, lost the district by just a point.

The DCCC is nonetheless paying some attention to Crenshaw, targeting him in a statement for this story over his vote last week against a prescription drug price bill.

Sima has a webpage now, which she didn’t have when she entered the race. The fact that didn’t have that kind of basic campaign material readily available, and that there was no pre-filing announcement, leads me to believe this was a late-breaking decision on her part. Which is fine, and she’s done quite well since entering, in terms of attention, endorsements, and fundraising. Her experience with the Beto campaign suggests she can roll out her campaign quickly. The “but” that I’m leading up to is that there’s such a short runway for the primary – hello, early voting starts in less than two months – and there are going to be a lot of people participating in the primary, many of whom will not be plugged-in, habitual Democratic primary voters. That adds a level of randomness to any race, especially for candidates without much name ID.

Elisa Cardnell has the advantage of being in this race for most of the year. She’s been quite active. Weirdly, the fact that she had the field all to herself for most of that time is not an advantage, because a lack of competition for the nomination means a lack of news about the race. This race should get a lot more attention now, which will be good for all three of the candidates in it. It should be on the national Dems’ radar, and I think over time it will be more prominent. For now, the three people running need all the attention this race can get.

Our first Congressional race ratings

From Politico, here’s the early view of the state of Texas’ Congressional races in 2020.

Lean Dem

CD23 (Open, R)
CD32 (Allred, D)

Tossup

CD07 (Fletcher, D)
CD22 (Open, R)
CD24 (Open, R)

Lean GOP

CD02 (Crenshaw, R)
CD10 (McCaul, R)
CD21 (Roy, R)
CD31 (Carter, R)

Likely GOP

CD03 (Taylor, R)
CD06 (Wright, R)
CD17 (Open, R)
CD25 (Williams, R)

The rest are all Solid for their respective parties. A few thoughts:

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher

– I think they are underrating CD07. It’s a Lean Dem to me, based on Rep. Fletcher’s performance, the continued anti-Trump atmosphere, the overall strength of the HCDP and the overall weakness of the Harris County GOP. Until and unless I see something to make me think otherwise, CD07 and CD32 are equivalent.

– The three Republican-held-but-open seats that are Lean Dem or Tossup seem right to me. I’ve been burned by CD23 before, but I’ve chosen to believe that Rep. Will Hurd had some special sauce that enabled him to survive two elections he really should have lost. We’ll see if I’m right about that or if this district will bedevil us again.

– The Lean GOP districts sure seem to be on a spectrum. On the one end, CD10 was carried by Beto O’Rourke in 2018, and all three Dems are raising good money; CD21 is a bit redder, but Wendy Davis is killing it in fundraising. On the other end, we still have no idea who might emerge as a serious contender in CD31, while Dan Crenshaw is getting Will Hurd levels of undeserved media attention, while also sitting on three million bucks in his campaign coffers. Both are trending in the right direction, and Elisa Cardnell is a good candidate (who now has a primary opponent), but it’s not hard to imagine these races being classified as “likely GOP” in the future or by other prognosticators.

– The Likely GOP districts seem about right, though the inclusion of CD17 is optimistic, to put it mildly, even if it is an open seat and even if the Ukraine-compromised Pete Sessions is the GOP nominee. (Unless someone persuades Chet Edwards to jump in, which would change things considerably.) CDs 03 and 06 have candidates with fundraising potential, and could possibly get upgraded if everything goes well. CD25 is a step behind them, but having it on the radar at all is a sign of how much things, and the perception of things, have changed since 2016.

– We’re getting way, way ahead of ourselves, but the GOP is going to have to think long and hard about what the landscape is going to look like over the next decade. The 2011/2013 gerrymander worked very well for them in a state that was 55-60% Republican. In a state that’s a tossup or close to it, they have a lot of seats to defend. Texas will get more Congressional seats in 2021, assuming its idiotic penury in supporting the Census doesn’t cause a dramatic undercount, which will give a bit more latitude, but the basic questions about how many reasonably safe GOP seats the state can support will remain. And if the Dems take the State House and gain leverage over the process, those questions will get even trickier for them.

Filing period preview: Congress

So even though we still have the 2019 runoffs to settle, the 2020 election is officially upon us. I say this because the filing period for 2020 candidates began on Saturday the 9th, closing on December 9. I expect there will be a tracker of filed candidates on the TDP webpage, but until such time as we have something like that, my guidebook for this is the Patrick Svitek spreadsheet of declared and rumored candidates. I’m going to do a series of posts on who has announced their candidacies for what this week, and I’ll be using that as the springboard.

I begin with Congressional candidates. We’ve sort of been tracking this all along via the quarterly finance reports, since you can’t be a candidate (or at least, you can’t be taken seriously as a candidate) unless you’re filing finance reports. My roundup of Q3 filing reports is here, and I’ll supplement that in this post.

The first thing I noticed after I clicked over to the spreadsheet to begin my research was that there’s a new Democratic candidate in CD02. And sure enough, there was a Chron story to go with it.

Travis Olsen

Former Homeland Security Department employee Travis Olsen this week joined the race for Texas’ 2nd Congressional District, becoming the second Democrat to vie for the seat held by U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston.

Olsen, who filed his candidacy with the Federal Election Commission Tuesday and launched his campaign Thursday, said he would seek to “provide an alternative” for residents “looking to move past partisanship and polarized politics,” contending that Crenshaw has not sought common ground with Democrats during his first term.

“We need leaders in Congress who are going to put country above party,” Olsen said in an interview. “And what we have seen is that Rep. Crenshaw will just follow the party line, follow the president, in his choices.”

[…]

To take on Crenshaw, Olsen first would have to win a Democratic primary next year that already includes Elisa Cardnell, a Navy veteran who filed her candidacy in February.

In response to Olsen’s campaign launch, Cardnell said in a statement that the race “has been, since day one, about how we put country over party and defeat Dan Crenshaw in 2020.”

“We’ve been making the case now for six months; if we want to hold Dan Crenshaw accountable for voting against lower prescription drug costs and against reauthorizing the national flood insurance program, it’s going to take a female veteran who can make him come to the table and talk about the issues, not just his past service,” Cardnell said.

Here’s Olsen’s website. He’ll need to start raising money ASAP, Crenshaw has bags and bags of it, and Cardnell has taken in $177K so far. From my perspective, this means another set of interviews to do for the primary. You’ll note as we go on there’s more where that came from.

Among Democratic incumbents, only Rep. Lizzie Fletcher in CD07 has no primary opponent. I won’t be surprised if some character wades in, but she won’t have much to worry about. Not in March, anyway; she will have a well-funded Republican opponent in November. Reps. Al Green in CD09 and Sylvia Garcia in CD29 each have one primary opponent. Melissa Wilson-Williams has reported $31K raised, though it all appears to be her own contributions. Someone named Nile Irsan says he’s running in CD29, but he has no web presence or finance reports as yet.

The primary for a Democratic seat with the most action is in CD18, where four announced candidates face Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee: Marc Flores (Q3 finance report), Bimal Patel (Q3 finance report), Stevens Orozco (Q3 finance report), and Jerry Ford (Q3 finance report). Flores and Patel have been in the race for awhile and have raised a few bucks; Orozco has only taken in $3K, while Ford has loaned himself $50K. Jackson had a token challenger in 2018 and took 85% of the vote. She had more serious challengers in 2010, including then-Council Member, now State Rep. Jarvis Johnson, but still won with 67%. It’s hard for me to believe she’ll face much adversity this time around.

The main event races are CDs 10 and 22, and there’s no change in status for them. It won’t surprise me if some stragglers file for them, but the contenders are as they have been all along – Mike Siegel, Shannon Hutcheson, and Pritesh Gandhi in CD10; Sri Kulkarni, Nyanza Moore, and Derrick Reed in CD22. The newest candidates are in CD08, the Kevin Brady district mostly in Montgomery County. Jacob Osborne established a campaign committee in May and has a campaign finance account, but no money raised or web presence as far as I can tell. Laura Jones is a more recent entrant and the Chair for the San Jacinto County Democrats, but has not filed any finance reports yet. Democrat Steven David got 25% in CD08 in 2018 so this is not exactly a prime pickup opportunity, but it’s always nice to see qualified candidates take a shot.

Elsewhere in the state, most of what we know I’ve covered in the finance report posts. I’m still hoping for a more serious contender in the admittedly fringey CD17, and we have things to sort out in CDs 03, 06, 25, and 31. We may yet see some new entrants here and there but for the most part the big picture is fairly clear. I’ll take a look at legislative offices next.

October 2019 campaign finance reports: Congress

Moving on to the Q3 FEC reports, we again have new candidates making their appearance. The January roundup is here, which closed out the 2017-18 election cycle, the April report is here, and the July report is here. For comparison, the October 2017 report is here. The FEC summary page for Congress is here and for the Senate is here.

MJ Hegar – Senate
Chris Bell – Senate
Amanda Edwards – Senate
Royce West – Senate
Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez – Senate
Sema Hernandez – Senate
Adrian Ocegueda – Senate
Michael Cooper – Senate

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Colin Allred – CD32

Henry Cuellar – CD28
Jessia Cisneros – CD28

Hank Gilbert – CD01
Elisa Cardnell – CD02
Sean McCaffity – CD03
Tanner Do – CD03
Stephen Daniel – CD06
Mike Siegel – CD10
Pritesh Gandhi – CD10
Shannon Hutcheson – CD10
Rick Kennedy – CD17
Jennie Lou Leeder – CD21
Wendy Davis – CD21
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Nyanza Moore – CD22
Derrick Reed – CD22
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Liz Wahl – CD23
Rosey Ramos Abuabara – CD23
Jan McDowell – CD24
Kim Olson – CD24
Candace Valenzuela – CD24
Crystal Lee Fletcher – CD24
John Biggan – CD24
Julie Oliver – CD25
Heidi Sloan – CD25
Carol Ianuzzi – CD26
Christine Eady Mann – CD31
Murray Holcomb – CD31
Dan Jangigian – CD31
Eric Hanke – CD31
Donna Imam – CD31


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   Hegar         2,058,080  1,211,904        0    893,657       
Sen   Bell            206,629     94,894   10,000    111,734
Sen   Edwards         557,430    219,645        0    337,785
Sen   West            347,546    172,926  202,162    376,782
Sen   T-Ramirez       459,442    233,953        0    225,489
Sen   Hernandez         7,551      7,295        0      3,891
Sen   Ocegueda          1,048        262      900        786
Sen   Cooper

07    Fletcher      1,789,359    391,448        0  1,439,978
32    Allred        1,705,723    355,711        0  1,453,457  

28    Cuellar       1,099,758    400,328        0  3,244,434
28    Cisneros        465,026    173,329        0    291,697

02    Cardnell        177,733    115,886        0     61,847
03    McCaffity       155,404      7,080        0    148,324
03    Do               16,947     15,725        0      1,221
06    Daniel          111,009     70,409        0     40,600
10    Siegel          355,691    207,532   20,000    161,650
10    Gandhi          527,967    209,989        0    317,978
10    Hutcheson       534,515    161,665    4,000    372,850
17    Kennedy          31,298     15,079   11,953     17,646
21    Leeder           15,697     14,509        0      1,188
21    Davis           940,581    336,645    8,863    603,936
22    Kulkarni        817,139    299,219        0    545,687
22    Moore           112,311    102,863   12,915      9,447
22    Reed            114,137     60,268        0     53,868
23    Ortiz Jones   1,652,739    303,861        0  1,440,396
23    Wahl              9,000      6,521    1,000      2,478
23    Abuabara
24    McDowell         57,515     52,519        0     18,316
24    Olson           567,394    241,708   20,000    325,685
24    Valenzuela      201,377     92,814        0    108,563
24    Fletcher        122,427     35,099      823     87,327
24    Biggan           45,893     35,999   13,834      9,894
25    Oliver          223,417     75,836    2,644    147,580
25    Sloan            56,043     23,125        0     32,918
26    Ianuzzi          67,828     35,539   47,604     32,288
31    Mann             95,449     58,685        0     38,200
31    Holcomb          66,610     57,770        0      8,840
31    Jangigian        23,265      2,248    1,500     21,016
31    Hanke            18,302      9,098        0      9,203
31    Imam             60,441      7,088        0     53,353

There’s a lot here – so much that it’s taken me this long to post, and so much that I thought about splitting this into two separate posts – but let’s start with the Senate candidates. MJ Hegar has been in the race the longest, and she has raised the most, matching her performance from the previous quarter. All the other candidates (save for the low-profile no-hope types, and hey isn’t it nice to finally see Sema Hernandez file a finance report?) entered during Q3 and their finance reports can be graded on a curve as a result. That said, time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking, and John Cornyn keeps on raising piles of money, so everyone needs to kick it up a notch or two. It was nice that every candidate at the Texas Signal candidate forum was asked about their path to victory, but raising money is a key part of that, even if it is a tacky subject to bring up. We’re going to need to see a lot more in the January reports.

Incumbents Lizzie Fletcher and Colin Allred are doing what they need to do. Their potential Republican opponents are raising a bunch of money, but they’re staying ahead of them, which they need to keep doing. Jessica Cisneros has done well in her challenge to Henry Cuellar, who is made of money, and she is getting some national press for her efforts. I still don’t know how much either money or national attention will mean in this race, but I do know that if she does win, it will be a very big deal and will make a lot of Dem incumbents look over their shoulders.

There are a number of new names on this report. Hank Gilbert is not going to win in CD01 because it’s a 70%+ Trump district, but Hank is a mensch and Louie Gohmert is a death eater from a hell dimension, so the least I can do is note that Hank is taking on the thankless task of challenging Gohmert. We noted last time that Lorie Burch has ended her campaign in CD03, and now several others have stepped in. Sean McCaffity, who is off to a strong fundraising start, and Tanner Do have reports for this quarter, and they will have company next time. Chris Suprun, whom you may remember as one of the wannabe faithless electors from 2016, has entered the race. He had also run in the CD27 special election last year, and had a brush with the voter ID law before that. Plano attorney Lulu Seikaly is also in the race, and I apologize to her for making her follow that.

Elsewhere in new candidates, Heidi Sloan has entered the race in CD25. Julie Oliver, the nominee from 2018, is well ahead of her fundraising pace from that year, so we’ll see how that goes. There are now a bunch of candidates in CD31, though I can tell you now that that article from August is out of date. I’ll have more on that in a separate post. Among the newcomers here are Dan Jangigian, Eric Hanke, and Donna Imam. Jangigian may have the most interesting resume of any Congressional candidate in recent memory – he’s a onetime Olympic bobsledder, and acted in the legendary bad movie The Room. He was subsequently portrayed in the movie The Disaster Artist, the movie about the guy who made The Room, by Zac Efron. And now he’s running for Congress. What have you done with your life?

A more familiar candidate making her first appearance here is Wendy Davis, who took in nearly a million bucks for CD21. That’s one of several top target races where there’s a clear frontrunner, at least as far as fundraising goes, which is a change from 2018 when most of the hotter primaries had the money more widely dispersed. Gina Ortiz Jones did even better, topping $1.6 million already. Rosey Abubara, who I thought might give her a challenge, has not filed a report. Candace Valenzuela and Crystal Fletcher have raised a few bucks in CD24, but Kim Olson is well ahead of them both, while Sri Kulkarni is lapping the field in CD22. The exception is in CD10, where all three candidates are doing well, but 2018 nominee Mike Siegel is a step behind Pritesh Gandhi and Shannon Hutcheson.

Rounding up the rest, Elisa Cardnell stepped it up in CD02, but faces a steep challenge as Dan Crenshaw is one of the biggest fundraisers in Congress now. Stephen Daniel is doing all right in CD06. I know their totals don’t look like that much compared to some of these other folks, but remember how much time we spent in 2018 talking about how rare it was for any Democratic challenger to raise as much as $100K for an entire cycle? We’ve come a long way. And I’m still hoping for either Rick Kennedy to start doing more in CD17 or for someone else to jump in, even if that race is a big longshot. The Quorum Report made my heart flutter with a teaser about a poll testing former CD17 Rep. Chet Edwards against carpetbagger Pete Sessions. I don’t know if this is a real thing or just someone’s idea of a cool thought experiment, but I’d be all in on another run by Edwards. We’ll see if there’s anything to it.

How many Congressional seats are really in play for Texas Dems?

By one measure, more than you probably think. From Jonathan Tilove of the Statesman:

Last weekend, I read an interview in Salon with Rachel Bitecofer, a political scientist at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va.

She is also an election analyst whose forecast of big Democratic gains in the 2018 midterm election was uncannily, uniquely accurate. She is now using the same model to forecast that any Democratic presidential candidate will win a minimum of 278 electoral votes in 2020 against President Donald Trump, eight more than the 270 needed to win.

But even more interesting to me, she is predicting that, if the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — the D-trip, as she and others commonly call it — applies resources generously and wisely, it could flip nine Texas House seats in 2020, half again as many as the six seats the DCCC is now targeting.

In addition to what will be open seats now held by Republicans in the 23rd Congressional District, where Will Hurd is not seeking reelection; the 22nd, where Pete Olson is retiring; and the 24th, where Kenny Marchant joined the Texodus; the DCCC is also setting its sights on the 21st, held by freshman Rep. Chip Roy; the 31st, held by veteran John Carter; and the 10th, which now belongs to Austin’s Michael McCaul.

But Bitecofer also includes three U.S. House districts on her list that are not now on the DCCC target list — the 25th Congressional District, where Democrat Julie Oliver is making a second run at incumbent Roger Williams, also of Austin; the 2nd, held by freshman Dan Crenshaw; and the 3rd, held by another freshman, Van Taylor, who I’ve never before heard mentioned as potential Democratic target of opportunity.

In fact, according to Bitecofer, nine of the Democrats’ 18 best chances for pickups in 2020 congressional races nationally are in Texas, which makes it, in her estimation, Ground Zero next year.

I interviewed Bitecofer on Monday and realized that it’s not so much that her analysis flies in the face of conventional wisdom about Texas politics, as it flies above it.

[…]

Under Bitecofer’s model, it doesn’t really matter if the Democratic congressional candidate is a fire-breathing progressive or a milquetoast moderate, as long as they remind voters that the election is all about Trump.

Bitecofer exudes confidence in her forecast.

Of McCaul, she said: “He’s a dead man walking if the DCCC drops money in that race, and then it doesn’t really matter who the Democrats nominate. Other handicappers will have it as `lean red’ when they do their races, and I will have it as ‘will flip’ if the DCCC has put it on its list.”

Bitecofer’s model is based on the number of college-educated voters in a given district, and it happens that Texas, being a mostly urban and suburban state, has a lot of them. You can read Tilove’s interview with her, or that Salon article, or listen to this interview she did on The Gist with Mike Pesca, but that’s the basic idea behind it.

Bitecofer’s model is alluring, but note the assumption of the DCCC targeting the district. That means pouring money into it, which also means that the Democratic nominee is already doing well in the fundraising department. By that reckoning, we need to dial back the enthusiasm a bit. CD03 has no candidate at this time now that Lorie Burch has ended her candidacy. CD31, which is on the DCCC list, doesn’t have a proven candidate yet. The two who filed Q2 finance reports have raised a few bucks, but the fact that freshman State Rep. James Talerico had been encouraged to run tells me this one is not at all settled. Elisa Cardnell in CD02 has raised some money and has been campaigning for months now, but Crenshaw has a national profile and a sheen from his Saturday Night Live appearance that he’s doing his best to tarnish but is still there. Julie Oliver is off to a nice start in CD25, but that’s the district of the nine with the weakest overall Dem performance from 2018. I’m still enough of a skeptic to think those numbers matter, too.

(Note also that Bitecofer does not include CD06 in her list. Beto did slightly better there than in CDs 03 and 25, and I personally would be inclined to think it’s a bit more reachable, but as of the Q2 reporting period there wasn’t a candidate yet. Minor details and all that.)

Anyway, I’d say that Dems are in a strong position in CDs 10, 21, 22, 23, and 24, and we’ll see what happens after that. For what it’s worth, just flipping those five seats – and can we take a moment to acknowledge how amazing it is that one can write such a thing and not feel ridiculous about it? – would make the Congressional caucus from Texas 18 Dems and 18 GOPers. That’s not too shabby.

Just a reminder, Will Hurd is still a Republican

That means he does Republican things.

Beto O’Rourke

Texas Republican Rep. Will Hurd said he would vote for Donald Trump in 2020 over his friend, former Texas Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, should he decide to run and win the Democratic Party’s nomination.

“My plan is to vote for the Republican nominee,” Hurd told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

“So, you would vote for President Trump over Beto O’Rourke?” Tapper asked.

“It’s most likely that Donald Trump is the likely candidate, right,” Hurd said.

“So, Trump over O’Rourke?” Tapper pressed again.

“That’s very clear,” Hurd replied. “Unless Beto O’Rourke decides to run as a Republican, which I don’t think he’s planning on doing.”

Normally, “Republican Congressman says he will vote for Republican President” is not news, but this is Will Hurd and Beto O’Rourke, stars of a buddy road trip video, in which Beto’s refusal to campaign against Hurd in the latter’s hotly contested Congressional race caused a minor kerfuffle before full-on Betomania made everyone forget the whole thing. Hurd survived his race by less than a point, in a district that Beto carried by five points, and it’s safe to say that some Dems think Beto’s hands-off approach to Hurd and his race was a decisive factor.

It’s really hard to say what the effect actually was, but here’s a look at some numbers.


Dist     Beto   Litton     Cruz Crenshaw
========================================
CD02  129,460  119,992  132,559  139,188

Dist     Beto  Sanchez     Cruz   Wright
========================================
CD06  124,144  116,350  132,290  135,961

Dist     Beto Fletcher     Cruz     Culb
========================================
CD07  130,185  127,959  115,642  112,286

Dist     Beto   Siegel     Cruz   McCaul
========================================
CD10  154,034  144,034  153,467  157,166

Dist     Beto   Kopser     Cruz      Roy
========================================
CD21  177,246  168,421  177,785  177,654

Dist     Beto Kulkarni     Cruz    Olson
========================================
CD22  147,650  138,153  149,575  152,750

Dist     Beto    Jones     Cruz     Hurd
========================================
CD23  110,689  102,359  100,145  103,285

Dist     Beto McDowell     Cruz Marchant
========================================
CD24  136,786  125,231  127,534  133,317

Dist     Beto    Hegar     Cruz   Carter
========================================
CD31  139,253  136,362  145,480  144,680

Dist     Beto   Allred     Cruz Sessions
========================================
CD32  152,092  144,067  122,736  126,101

First things first: Beto outscored every Dem in each of these Congressional districts, ranging from leads of 2,026 votes over Lizzie Fletcher and 2,891 votes over MJ Hegar to 11,555 votes over Jan McDowell. He led Gina Ortiz Jones by 8,330 votes, and in most cases led the Dem Congressional candidate by about 10,000 votes.

On the other hand, Ted Cruz trailed each Republican Congressional candidate/incumbent except for three: John Culberson, Chip Roy, and John Carter. Cruz had more votes in each district except the two that were won by Democrats, CDs 07 and 32, and Will Hurd’s CD23. Cruz trailed Dan Crenshaw in CD02 by 6,629 votes and Kenny Marchant in CD24 buy 5,883 votes, but otherwise was usually with three to four thousand votes of the GOP Congressional candidate.

In every case, there were more votes cast in the Senate race than in the Congressional race. In some but not all of these Congressional races, there was a Libertarian candidate. In CDs 02 and 22 there were also Independent candidates, while in CD07 it was just Fletcher and Culberson. Generally speaking, where it was an R/D/L race, the Libertarian candidate for Congress got more votes than the Libertarian candidate for Senate. For example, in CD21, Libertarian Congressional candidate Lee Santos got 7,542 votes, while Libertarian Senate candidate Neil Dikeman got 3,333. That accounts for some of the differences between the races, but not all of it.

What I’m left with is the impression that there was a set of voters, consistent across Congressional districts, who voted for Beto but skipped most or all of the downballot races, including the Congressional race. At the same time, there was a smaller but equally consistent number of Republicans who did vote downballot, particularly in the Congressional race, but skipped the Senate race. I presume these people refused to vote for Cruz but didn’t want to go all the way and vote for Beto.

That leads to two key questions: One, were there nominal Republicans who crossed over to vote for Beto, and – crucially – other Democrats. We know there were in CD07, because we see it in the varying levels of support for Republican candidates, at the local level as well as at the state level. How many were there, and did they exist in equivalent levels in other districts? That I don’t know.

Two, could Beto have moved votes in the CD23 election? Beto gained a lot of renown giving other candidates visibility and opportunities to campaign at his events. The gap between hit vote totals and those of the Congressional candidates suggests to me that such support only went so far. If Beto had explicitly stumped for Gina Ortiz Jones, might it have helped her gain the 900 votes she needed to win? Maybe. Maybe it would have pushed some of those non-Cruz voters to not skip the Senate race. Maybe it would have helped Hurd convince some Republicans who think he’s a RINO squish that he’s better than they give him credit for. Actions cause reactions, and they don’t always work in the same direction.

I wish I could give a more definitive answer to the question, but I can’t. The difference in the race is small, but there weren’t that many people who voted in CD23 but skipped that race. I certainly understand the frustration. I get why O’Rourke partnered with Hurd – he was in the minority in Congress, and he needed someone on the team that had a chance to pass bills to advocate for border issues, on which the two of them largely agreed. The larger picture is that nothing was going to change until Congress changed, and flipping CD23 could have been necessary for that to happen. Part of Beto’s brand was a certain maverick-ness that caused him to skip certain political norms when that suited him. That led him to not turn on his ally. As Harold Cook says, people can feel how they want to about that. I feel like the real difference in the CD23 race was more Will Hurd and Gina Ortiz Jones than Beto O’Rourke, but I understand if you feel otherwise.

Elisa Cardnell

Meet your first official candidate for CD02.

Elisa Cardnell

A naval battle just might be on the horizon in one of Houston’s most competitive Congressional districts.

On Thursday Navy veteran and science teacher Elisa Cardnell, a Democrat, filed papers with the Federal Election Commission to challenge newly-elected U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Houston Republican who is a former Navy SEAL.

Cardnell said she has been considering running for Congress for more than a month. In January, she told her social media followers she was getting ready for the race.

“Before 2016, I tried to stay out of politics, especially since as a member of the military I viewed my role as necessarily nonpartisan — at least in public life,” Cardnell said. “But now I feel that I have to do something, and my entire career of serving my country and my community has led me to this point.”

The 32-year-old Cardnell, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Rice University, spent 5 years on active duty in the Navy and nearly 6 years in the Navy reserves. While on active duty, she rose to the rank of lieutenant, serving as an anti-submarine warfare officer and an officer in charge of port operations in Yorktown.

I’ve mentioned Elisa before, after she reached out to me to tell me of her interest in running. Among other things, filing this paperwork means she can now raise money, so we’ll have a very early indicator of enthusiasm in three months, when the Q1 finance reports get filed. Quite a few of the 2018 Congressional candidates are at least in the picture for 2020 – Mike Siegel (CD10), Sri Kulkarni (CD22), Gina Ortiz Jones (CD23), and MJ Hegar (CD31) are running, thinking about running, or being wooed to run again. I’ve not heard anything about Todd Litton yet, but he’ll be part of the conversation until he says otherwise. CD02 is not currently on the national target list, but I expect it will eventually get there, and as it is wholly within Harris County, it’s the biggest target available for local Dems. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on it. The Hill has more.

There sure was a lot of money spent on Congressional races in Texas

If we’re lucky, it will be the start of a trend.

Never has Texas seen as much money spent on Congressional campaigns as it did in 2018.

New campaign finance data shows that the state didn’t just beat its old campaign spending records for Congress, it obliterated them. More than $97 million was poured into the November general election in 2018 for the U.S. House. The previous spending record was in 2004 when just under $60 million was spent by candidates running for Congress in Texas.

The record spending for the state’s 36 House seats was spurred by Texas suddenly having a half dozen competitive races that became a key part of the national battle for the control of Congress. Three of those races accounted for nearly one-third of all the spending.

[…]

Overall, the 36 Congressional districts averaged more than $2.6 million spent per contest.

That spending doesn’t count candidates who lost in the primaries like Republican Kathaleen Wall, who spent $6.2 million of mostly her own money in a failed attempt to win the 2nd Congressional District primary in Houston. Despite not making it to the general election, Wall still ended up spending more money on her race than any House candidate in Texas. Republican Dan Crenshaw, a retired Navy SEAL won the 2nd Congressional District primary and defeated Democrat Todd Litton in November. Crenshaw spent almost $1.7 million on his campaign.

The 2004 election was the one following the Tom DeLay re-redistricting of 2003, so that money was being spent in the five Democratic-held districts where Republican challengers were seeking to oust the Dem incumbents with the help of the new, friendly map. In other words, the same basic dynamic of multiple competitive races, which led to a crap-ton of money being raised. I know people have a lot of negative opinions – for good reasons! – about money in politics, but the fact remains that money gets spent when there are competitive elections. When there are no competitive elections, much less money gets spent. All things being equal, I’d rather have the competitive elections.

Here’s the FEC summary page for Texas Democratic Congressional campaigns from 2017-18, and here’s the last roundup of reports I did, at the end of Q3. The three biggest-money races were the ones you’d expect – CDs 07, 23, and 32 – but as we know there were four other Dem candidates who raised over a million bucks for the cycle, and a lot more big-money primaries, of which CD07 was definitely one.

To me, the big under-reported story is in how much money was raised by candidates in “non-competitive” races. Dayne Steele, God bless her, raised over $800K. Julie Oliver, who was actually in a reasonably competitive race that no one paid attention to, raised over $500K. Candidates Vanessa Adia (CD12), Adrienne Bell (CD14), Linsey Fagan (CD26), and Eric Holguin (CD27), none of whom cracked forty percent, combined to raise over $500K. The candidates in the highest profile races brought in staggering amounts of money – and note that we haven’t even mentioned the candidates whose name rhymes with “Schmeto” – but I cannot overstate how mind-bogglingly impressive what these candidates did is. They deserve more credit for helping to generate and sustain the enthusiasm that led to the massive turnout and major downballot Democratic wins than they will ever receive. We should be so lucky as to have a repeat of this performance in 2020.

What if he does it anyway?

That’s my question.

Gov. Greg Abbott, the state’s two Republican U.S. senators and a bipartisan group of 20 U.S. House members released a letter stating their staunch opposition to raiding Texas’ hard-fought Harvey money.

“Recent reports have indicated that your administration is considering the use of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers funds, appropriated by Congress and intended for Hurricane Harvey recovery and mitigation efforts, in an effort to secure our southern border,” they wrote. “We strongly support securing the border with additional federal resources including tactical infrastructure, technology, ports of entry improvements and personnel. However, we are strongly opposed to using funds appropriated by Congress for disaster relief and mitigation for Texas for any unintended purpose.”

Congressional signatories included nine lawmakers from the Houston metropolitan region: Republican U.S. Reps. Brian Babin, Kevin Brady, Dan Crenshaw, Michael McCaul, Pete Olson and Randy Weber; and Democratic U.S. Reps. Sylvia Garcia, Lizzie Fletcher and Sheila Jackson Lee.

Texans from other regions also signed on: Republican U.S. Reps. John Carter of Round Rock, Mike Conaway of Midland, Bill Flores of Bryan, Lance Gooden of Terrell, Kay Granger of Fort Worth, Will Hurd of Helotes, Kenny Marchant of Coppell and Roger Williams of Austin; and Democratic U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo, Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen and Filemon Vela of Brownsville

See here for the background. That certainly is a letter. Nicely typed, good sentence structure, no spelling errors as far as I could tell. Now what happens if and when Donald Trump goes ahead and declares an emergency and tries to tap into these funds anyway, because Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh called him mean names again? What are you, Greg Abbott, and you, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and you, Republican members of Congress, going to do then? We wouldn’t be here in the first place if Donald Trump were a rational actor. He’s gonna do what he’s gonna do. What are those of you who enable him at every step going to do when that happens?

2020 is starting early

Example One:

The calendar just turned to 2019, but the 2020 race for Congressional seats in Texas is already on.

A few days after Christmas, San Antonio resident Liz Wahl, 33, a former cable television news anchor, filed papers in Washington, D.C. to run in the 23rd Congressional District held now by U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes. Her filing came just 37 days after Hurd was declared the winner in his re-election by just 926 votes over Air Force veteran Gina Ortiz Jones.

Jones told supporters in late December that she is also “very likely” to run again in 2020 for the seat.

That story makes Wahl seem like some boring nobody. Turns out, she’s a lot more interesting than that.

Former RT anchor Liz Wahl announced Thursday that she is planning to run as a Democrat against Texas Rep. Will Hurd (R), who won reelection in November to a third term.

[…]

Wahl made headlines in 2014 when she quit her hosting job at the Russian-owned news network on air, while denouncing Russia’s involvement in Crimea, which voted to secede from Ukraine and is currently occupied by Russian-aligned forces.

“I cannot be part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin. I’m proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth, and that is why, after this newscast, I’m resigning,” Wahl said during a March broadcast that year.

The news network, which was forced to register in 2017 as a foreign agent, denounced her resignation at the time as a PR stunt.

Definitely not what I had envisioned when I read “former cable TV new anchor”. Wahl’s Facebook page is here, and it includes a link to this Crowdpac post she wrote explaining her motivation for running. I feel confident saying that Wahl will have company in the primary if she does run. Getting an early start, and having such a distinctive background, will help her stand out if she follow through.

Closer to home, we have this post to Pantsuit Nation by Elisa Cardnell:

Happy New Year! This year, my resolution is a little bigger than usual. I’m exploring a run for the Democratic primary in Texas’ 2nd Congressional District (Houston, Texas). The primary is next spring, but fundraising is a huge hurdle, so I have to start now.

I’m a Navy veteran – I served on active duty for five years after college and then for six years in the Reserves. I just hung up my uniform for good last April due to health issues (some related to my time in the service, some not). I’m also a teacher and a single mom, and I’ve seen just how desperately we need ethical leadership in DC to serve as good role models.

Before 2016, I tried to stay out of politics, especially since as a member of the military I viewed my role as necessarily nonpartisan (at least in public life). But now I feel that I have to do something, and my entire career of serving my country and my community has led me to this point. In Houston, we have a chance to flip some more House seats in 2020, and my district will be a particularly tough race (against Dan Crenshaw) in the general election.

It’s going to be a long two years – but it starts now!

Elisa is a friend of mine and a fellow member of the Rice MOB. She had reached out to me a couple of weeks ago, so I knew she was thinking about this. Todd Litton is still out there, and CD02 will be an attractive target for others in Harris County, so don’t be surprised to hear other names along the way. But as above, and as I’ve been saying, if this is something you’re thinking about, there’s no reason not to start as soon as possible. The election may be a log way off, but the filing period begins this November, and if 2020 is anything like 2018, you’re going to see a lot of fundraising activity happen well before then. Don’t get left behind.

And just so we’re clear, incumbents are going to feel the same pressures.

Shortly after participating in the official group swearing-in for House members, [Rep. Colin] Allred got down to business and voted for Nancy Pelosi as House speaker. That’s all it took for the National Republican Congressional Committee to come after him with one of its first paid campaign ads of the 2020 election cycle.

“Immediately after the Speaker vote, voters in districts across the country received text messages, paid for by the NRCC, informing them that with their first vote as a member of Congress, their Democrat Representative has already sold them out to the radical left and voted to hand the Speaker’s gavel to Nancy Pelosi,” the NRCC said in a press release. “Today’s vote sets the tone for what voters can expect from congressional Democrats as the party continues to follow their radical base and march to the left on everything from immigration to taxes to national security.”

The NRCC targeted 15 new House members with the ads, including Allred and fellow Texan Lizzie Fletcher, who knocked off longtime Houston-area Republican John Culberson in a district that, like Allred’s, voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump despite a long history of favoring Republicans.

I don’t expect the usual misogynistic squawking about Nancy Pelosi will be more effective than it was in 2018, though of course that depends on how well this Congress follows through on its promises. The other team is still out there making noise about every little thing, though. Keep your eye on the ball, and remember that the offseason ain’t what it used to be.

From the “If at first you don’t succeed” department

Three Dem Congressional candidates from 2018 may try again in 2020.

Todd Litton

Among the typically deep-red districts that came down to single digits were three races around Harris County. Incumbent Reps. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, and Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, won by margins of 4.3 and 4.9 percentage points in Texas’ heavily gerrymandered 10th and 22nd Congressional Districts. Rep.-elect Dan Crenshaw, R-Spring, won by more than 7 points an open race for the 2nd Congressional District, one also drawn to elect Republicans.

In recent elections, the districts had gone to Republicans by no fewer than 19 percentage points, with margins as high as 38 points.

Now, as they parse the results and consider what comes next, Democrats in these races must grapple with important questions. Did they come close because of a boost from Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s Senate bid and anger among voters prodded to the polls by President Donald Trump, or did they offer a preview of what is to come? Is a 40-something percent result the ceiling, and if not, where might they find more votes?

All three losing Democrats — Todd Litton, Mike Siegel and Sri Preston Kulkarni — said they may take another swing at the districts in 2020, when Trump could appear atop the ballot and galvanize even more voters than in 2018.

[…]

Litton acknowledged he was unlucky to draw an opponent as tough as Crenshaw, saying the former Navy SEAL “was not your standard first-time candidate.” For now, the defeated Democrat plans to see how Crenshaw’s first term goes, and decide later if he wants to run.

“I’d consider it. I don’t know that I’m going to do it,” said Litton, who directed an education nonprofit before seeking office. “We’ll see how Dan does and what he says.”

[…]

Mike Siegel

Texas’ 10th Congressional District covers much of the rural area between Travis and Harris counties, stretching across nine counties from Katy and Cypress all the way through downtown Austin to Lake Travis. It is one of four GOP-held districts dividing up deep-blue Travis County, the only county Siegel won.

Compared to McCaul’s 2016 race, turnout this year grew by more than 3,400 votes in Travis County, where McCaul’s support fell by about eight percentage points. In the remaining eight counties, turnout fell by 8,200 votes from two years ago, and McCaul’s support dropped from 70 percent to 65 percent.

All told, McCaul lost ground in every county from 2016, though his support dipped by fewer than two percentage points in Austin, Colorado, Fayette, Lee and Washington counties — all areas where Siegel failed to break even 23 percent.

[…]

One reason for Democratic optimism, Siegel said, is the changing nature of Bastrop and Waller counties, located next to Travis and Harris, respectively. Two years ago, McCaul won Bastrop and Waller by 22 and 32 percentage points, respectively, while this year the margin was 11 and 25 points. Siegel also drew 36 percent of the vote in Harris County, about 7 points ahead of Cadien in 2016.

[…]

Sri Kulkarni

Olson never had won a general election by fewer than 19 points — his margin in 2016 — but several trends gave Kulkarni reason to contest the district. Notably, it shifted 17.5 points in favor of Democrats from the 2012 to 2016 presidential election, the fourth most dramatic change in the country.

Kulkarni’s preliminary data also found that both parties had ignored major swaths of the district. In particular, Asian residents make up about 20 percent of the district’s population, far more than any other Texas congressional district, but Kulkarni found that three-quarters of Asian voters had not been contacted by any political party.

Kulkarni’s efforts hinged on turning out the scores of college-educated immigrants who moved to the district during the last several years. He ultimately lost by 4.9 percentage points, a result he attributes partly to not reaching enough Hispanic voters. He did not rule out giving it another shot in 2020.

“If I’m the best candidate, I’ll run again,” Kulkarni said. “I don’t want to throw away all the hard work that we did in organizing here, because going from 19 points two years ago or 34 points four years ago, to 4.9 — there’s obviously a change going on in terms of who’s participating.”

A few general thoughts…

1. Obviously, it’s very early to say who may or may not be running in 2020. Even if all three of these guys say they’re in, they could face primary opponents, and who knows what might happen in a Presidential-year primary, where I think we might see 2008-level turnout. That said, there are always advantages to getting in early – among other things, you can start fundraising right away – and whether we like it or not, the 2020 campaign is already underway. Take all the time you need to decide, but don’t take any longer than that.

2. Of the three, Litton or anyone else in CD02 will likely have the toughest race. Dan Crenshaw has star potential, and he doesn’t yet have any Trump stink on him. He also had the biggest margin of victory in 2018. On the other hand, he will have to start making tough choices about Trump and the Trump agenda, and with CD07 in Democratic hands, CD02 is (along with County Commissioner Precinct 3) the top target for Team Blue in 2020. In addition, no one has to be convinced now that CD02 is worth targeting. It will be on the national radar from the beginning, which will help.

3. That “key for Democratic optimism” paragraph about CD10 is the key for 2020. The Harris County part of the district is fast-growing, and offers a lot of opportunity to find, register, and turn out new Dem voters that year. Looking at the 2016 and 2018 election returns, there were 21K more voters this year in the Harris part of CD10 than there were two years ago. Turnout was 69% in there in 2016, and 59% in 2018, though that meant 6K more voters thanks to the larger voter pool. I feel like if you can get the Dem number in Harris County above 40%, you can win this district. You’ll still need a strong showing in Travis, and there’s room for growth as noted in Bastrop and Waller, but if you get to 40% in Harris I feel like this one is in reach.

4. As noted before, Pete Olson may or may not make it to the ballot in 2020. Generally speaking, having an open seat makes it more winnable for the opposing party. That may be less true in the Trump era, but an open seat will definitely push this up a notch on the national radar. If Kulkarni runs again, my advice is “keep doing what you’re doing”. If it’s someone else, my advice is “do what Sri Kulkarni did, and do more of it”.

Normally, this is the time when I say things like “I want to get through 2019 before I start thinking about 2020”. This is the world we live in now. 2019 is important, but given that everyone who wants to run in 2020 will have to file for office before 2019 is over, we really do have to be thinking about it now.