Dan Patrick

We finally have a reason for the timid police response in Uvalde

Mar 21st, 2023

It was because the shooter was using an AR-15, and the cops didn’t want to get slaughtered.

Almost a year after Texas’ deadliest school shooting killed 19 children and two teachers, there is still confusion among investigators, law enforcement leaders and politicians over how nearly 400 law enforcement officers could have performed so poorly. People have blamed cowardice or poor leadership or a lack of sufficient training for why police waited more than an hour to breach the classroom and subdue an amateur 18-year-old adversary.

But in their own words, during and after their botched response, the officers pointed to another reason: They were unwilling to confront the rifle on the other side of the door.

A Texas Tribune investigation, based on police body cameras, emergency communications and interviews with investigators that have not been made public, found officers had concluded that immediately confronting the gunman would be too dangerous. Even though some officers were armed with the same rifle, they opted to wait for the arrival of a Border Patrol SWAT team, with more protective body armor, stronger shields and more tactical training — even though the unit was based more than 60 miles away.

“You knew that it was definitely an AR,” Uvalde Police Department Sgt. Donald Page said in an interview with investigators after the school shooting. “There was no way of going in. … We had no choice but to wait and try to get something that had better coverage where we could actually stand up to him.”

“We weren’t equipped to make entry into that room without several casualties,” Uvalde Police Department Detective Louis Landry said in a separate investigative interview. He added, “Once we found out it was a rifle he was using, it was a different game plan we would have had to come up with. It wasn’t just going in guns blazing, the Old West style, and take him out.”

Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was fired in August after state officials cast him as the incident commander and blamed him for the delay in confronting the gunman, told investigators the day after the shooting he chose to focus on evacuating the school over breaching the classroom because of the type of firearm the gunman used.

“We’re gonna get scrutinized (for) why we didn’t go in there,” Arredondo said. “I know the firepower he had, based on what shells I saw, the holes in the wall in the room next to his. … The preservation of life, everything around (the gunman), was a priority.”

None of the officers quoted in this story agreed to be interviewed by the Tribune.

That hesitation to confront the gun allowed the gunman to terrorize students and teachers in two classrooms for more than an hour without interference from police. It delayed medical care for more than two dozen gunshot victims, including three who were still alive when the Border Patrol team finally ended the shooting but who later died.

Mass shooting protocols adopted by law enforcement nationwide call on officers to stop the attacker as soon as possible. But police in other mass shootings — including at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida — also hesitated to confront gunmen armed with AR-15-style rifles.

Even if the law enforcement response had been flawless and police had immediately stopped the gunman, the death toll in Uvalde still would have been significant. Investigators concluded most victims were killed in the minutes before police arrived.

But in the aftermath of the shooting, there has been little grappling with the role the gun played. Texas Republicans, who control every lever of state government, have talked about school safety, mental health and police training — but not gun control.

There’s more, so go read the rest. That includes a note that the House committee report on the law enforcement response to the Uvalde massacre didn’t include any of these quotes from the officers present, and it also includes a deeply stupid and offensive quote from the deeply stupid and offensive Sen. Bob Hall. While the news of the cops’ hesitation to run into AR-15 fire is something we hadn’t heard before, the rest of this isn’t new at all. Mostly, we know what we’re not going to get from this Legislature and our state leaders. It’s just a matter of what we do about that.

Look, if we banned AR-15s and anything like them today and then began an aggressive program to buy them back and/or confiscate them, there would still be AR-15s and other guns like them out there. But there would be fewer of them, and that would lower the risk. If even the so-called “good guys with a gun” don’t want anything to do with a bad guy with an AR-15, then I don’t know what else we could do that might have the same effect. Like I said, it’s up to us. Daily Kos has more.

So will the Lege pay off Paxton’s whistleblowers or not?

Feb 19th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

It’s maybe a bit more complicated than I thought at first.

Always a crook

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan says he is against using taxpayer money to pay Attorney General Ken Paxton’s $3.3 million settlement agreement in a whistleblower lawsuit filed by four former employees.

In an interview with CBS DFW on Wednesday, Phelan said it would not be “a proper use of taxpayer dollars” and that he does not anticipate that the $3.3 million cost will be included in the House budget.

“Mr. Paxton is going to have to come to the Texas House,” Phelan said. “He’s going to have to appear before the appropriations committee and make a case to that committee as to why that is a proper use of taxpayer dollars, and then he’s going to have to sell it to 76 members of the Texas House. That is his job, not mine.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Texas Senate, has so far remained silent on the issue. Patrick’s office did not respond to an American-Statesman request for comment Thursday.

[…]

In a statement released Friday, Paxton said he agreed to the settlement to limit the cost of continuing the litigation.

“After over two years of litigating with four ex-staffers who accused me in October 2020 of ‘potential’ wrongdoing, I have reached a settlement agreement to put this issue to rest,” Paxton wrote. “I have chosen this path to save taxpayer dollars and ensure my third term as Attorney General is unburdened by unnecessary distractions. This settlement achieves these goals. I look forward to serving the people of Texas for the next four years free from this unfortunate sideshow.”

The whistleblowers filed the lawsuit against the Office of the Attorney General, not Paxton personally, so the Legislature will have to decide whether or not to appropriate public money to pay the bill.

See here for the background and my well-earned skepticism that the Republican legislature would ever hold Ken Paxton accountable for anything, and here for the original story. Before we get into the details, there’s this to consider.

Attorneys for four former employees who accused Attorney General Ken Paxton of corruption urged lawmakers on Friday not to oppose their $3.3 million settlement — which must be approved by the Legislature because it’s being paid out with taxpayer money.

The attorneys for Blake Brickman, David Maxwell, Mark Penley and Ryan Vassar — all former top deputies to Paxton in the attorney general’s office — said their clients “courageously reported what they believed to be corruption and put the investigation in the hands of law enforcement where it belongs” and were now asking lawmakers to back their efforts to report wrongdoing.

Rejecting the settlement could discourage others from coming forth to report wrongdoing in state agencies in the future, they said.

“No Texas legislator should oppose these whistleblowers’ hard-fought claim for compensation to which they are entitled under the Texas Whistleblower Act,” the attorneys wrote. “State employees cannot be expected to report government corruption in the future if they know the Legislature won’t back their rights under the statute it passed for the very purpose of protecting them.”

[…]

The settlement agreement was announced last Friday and would include the $3.3 million payments to the four employees who were fired and lost wages after reporting what they believed to be Paxton’s crimes. It would also include an apology from Paxton, the retraction of a news release that called the former deputies “rogue employees” and a statement that neither side admits fault in the case.

But the proposed settlement has garnered some opposition from the public and lawmakers because it would be paid out of state funds. Budget writers in the Senate, like Dallas Democrat Royce West, have also expressed skepticism about the agreement.

Under the Texas Whistleblower Act, plaintiffs are allowed to sue the employing agency where the retaliation happened, but not a specific employee in their personal capacity. That is why the payment would be paid out of state funds and not Paxton’s personal funds.

In their statement, the attorneys told lawmakers that the former employees had unfairly lost their jobs and been smeared by Paxton in news stories for reporting what they believed to be serious crimes.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court of Texas, which had been considering a Paxton appeal to the whistleblower suit, put the case on hold to give the parties time to finalize the agreement. The parties have until April 3 to figure out whether lawmakers will agree to the settlement and must notify the court about any changes in the proceedings.

While I could be persuaded that some number of Republican legislators might be a bit low on patience with Paxton, the four whistleblowers will be much more compelling to them. They were all conservative Republicans in good standing themselves, and agreeing to a settlement does sweep this contentious and embarrassing matter under the rug. If they have to take it to court and eventually win, the price tag will be much higher, and as before the state would be on the hook for it. As far as that goes, from a risk management perspective, approving the settlement makes sense.

That said, I don’t see why the Lege has to appropriate an extra $3.3 million to the AG’s office to pay it off. I do think they are well within bounds to appropriate whatever they would have without this, and tell Paxton to figure out his budget on his own. If that means he has to make some uncomfortable choices, that’s his problem and the consequences of his own actions. I think Speaker Phelan has the right idea here, but it wouldn’t hurt to spell it out to the members who might think that they have to explicitly cover this cost. The budget for the AG’s office will have more than enough funds to cover this check. Ken Paxton can do the work to make it happen. That’s the best way forwawrd.

Three stories on Uvalde and gun control

Feb 19th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

First, a story about locks and why an obsession with locking school doors is not really going to improve safety.

In the aftermath of school shootings like the one in Uvalde, what can get overlooked is basic: Schools need doors that work and don’t require special knowledge or keys to secure; they need locks that can be accessed from inside classrooms; and a system for accessing master keys swiftly when minutes matter.

The day of the Robb Elementary School shooting, a teacher had propped open the west exterior door of the school’s west building—added to the school campus 23 years ago—to get food from a colleague, when she saw the shooter heading toward the building. She slammed the door shut, according to the teacher’s attorney, Don Flanary. The door should have kept the shooter out—or at least delayed his entry. It didn’t. Contrary to school policy, all three of the west building’s exterior doors were unlocked that day.

The west building’s exterior doors weren’t the only problem on May 24. Several of the classroom doors had problems latching, including room 111—the classroom through which the shooter “most likely” entered, per the Texas House of Representatives investigation report. KENS5 further reported that the door’s bolt didn’t fit its frame. In addition, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said that the strike plate that allows the door to latch was damaged.

Whatever the cause, securing the door required extra effort to ensure the latch engaged. Room 111 was not the only classroom whose door had problems. The fourth-grade teacher in room 109 testified in the Texas House report that she also “slammed [her] door shut because otherwise the lock would not [otherwise] latch.”

According to the Texas House report, Arnulfo Reyes, the teacher in Room 111, had alerted school administrators multiple times about the issue with the door prior to May 24. Yet a work order was never issued nor was there documentation of Reyes’ complaint in Robb Elementary maintenance records.

[…]

Part of the reason doors were propped open or left unlocked was because of a key shortage. The manufacturer had discontinued production of the door locks used at Robb; the school district had acquired a supply of key blanks, but those were gone by May 2022, Uvalde CISD Maintenance & Operations Director Rodney Harrison said in the Texas House report. Because of the key shortage, substitute teachers were told to use magnets and other methods to get around the locks in violation of school district policy.

Reading this story, and because I have a cybersecurity mindset, reminded me of two things. One is that there’s always a tradeoff between security and ease of use. Think about passwords. People use simple passwords and reuse the same password on multiple systems and fail to enable two-factor authentication because it’s easier that way, and because there’s a big price to pay for forgetting a password and getting locked out of an account or application that you really need. Finding shortcuts and conveniences and workarounds is human nature. You can spend a ton of money on fancy security systems – the story talks about how much money school districts have had to spend, usually via bond issuances that can be hard to convince voters to support, to meet new state requirements for physical security in schools. But if these systems don’t take the human factor into account, a lot of that money is wasted.

And two, no single security measure is ever sufficient on its own. This is why effective cybersecurity for an enterprise network is all about multiple layered, redundant, overlapping defense mechanisms. We expect there to be gaps and failures and weaknesses, which is why there are backups in place. You can “harden” schools all you want, but you can’t make them safe until you address the gun problem, and that’s something our Legislature just won’t do as things stand now.

It has become a mournful pattern. Following mass shootings, lawmakers in many states have taken stock of what happened and voted to approve gun control legislation to try to prevent additional bloodshed.

In Colorado, the Legislature passed universal background checks in 2013 after a shooter at an Aurora movie theater killed 12 people. After 58 people were shot dead during a 2017 concert in Las Vegas, the Nevada Legislature passed a red flag law that allows a judge to order that weapons be taken from people who are deemed a threat. And in Florida in 2018, then-Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill that raised the minimum age to buy a firearm to 21 after a teenager with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire at a Parkland high school, killing 17 people.

But not in Texas.

In the past six decades, the state has experienced at least 19 mass shootings that have killed a total of nearly 200 people and wounded more than 230 others. Yet state leaders have repeatedly batted away measures that would limit access to guns, opting instead to ease restrictions on publicly carrying them while making it harder for local governments to regulate them.

As the state Legislature convenes for the first time since the Uvalde school shooting last May, lawmakers have once again filed a slate of gun control bills. If history is an indicator, and top legislative leaders predict it will be, they are unlikely to pass.

An analysis by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune of hundreds of bills filed in the Texas Legislature over nearly the past six decades found that at least two dozen measures would have prevented people from legally obtaining the weapons, including assault rifles and large-capacity magazines, used in seven of the state’s mass shootings.

At least five bills would have required that people seeking to obtain a gun undergo a background check. Such a check would have kept the man involved in a 2019 shooting spree in Midland and Odessa from legally purchasing the weapon because he had been deemed to have a mental illness.

Seven bills would have banned the sale or possession of the semi-automatic rifle that a shooter used to kill dozens of people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019.

And at least two bills would have raised the legal age to own or purchase an assault weapon from 18 to 21 years old, which would have made it illegal for the Uvalde shooter to buy the semi-automatic assault rifles.

A state House committee that investigated the Uvalde massacre found that the shooter had tried to get at least two people to buy a gun for him before he turned 18 but was unsuccessful. Immediately after his birthday, he purchased two AR-15-style rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition, which he used to kill 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.

“If that law had been 21, I guarantee you he would have continued to be frustrated and not be able to obtain that weapon,” said state Rep. Joe Moody, a Democrat from El Paso who served as vice chair of the House committee.

It’s funny, in a bitterly ironic and painful way, that the first line of argument advanced by the legislative gun-huggers and the paid shills they listen to is that this one specific gun control law would not have stopped that one particular mass shooter, so therefore all gun control laws are useless. Yet there they are in the Lege going back to the same “harden the schools” well, time and time again. It takes a comprehensive approach, but the Republicans just won’t allow it.

Despite that, the work continues.

As a new legislative session kicks into gear, [Rep. Tracy] King is working on a bill that would increase the age limit to buy semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. The Uvalde gunman had tried to get at least two people to buy him firearms before he turned 18. Days after his 18th birthday, he purchased two AR-15-style rifles before invading the school and targeting students and teachers. In August, Uvalde residents and relatives of the shooting victims protested at the Capitol, calling on lawmakers to raise the age limit to buy the kind of firearms the Robb Elementary gunman used.

“In this particular case, that guy had tried to buy a gun,” said King, who previously wouldn’t support the legislation he plans to champion for his constituents. “It sure might have made a difference.”

Still, King’s legislation is a bold proposal in the state that leads the nation in gun sales and whose lawmakers have steadily loosened firearm restrictions amid eight mass shootings in 13 years. And it’s coming from a Democrat who previously voted to allow people to carry a handgun without training or a license. King hasn’t yet filed his bill, though other lawmakers have filed similar pieces of legislation this year.

Gov. Greg Abbott has dismissed the idea of raising the age limit as unconstitutional. In December, Texas dropped a fight to protect an existing state law that required people who carry handguns without licenses to be 21 or older after a federal district judge said it violates people’s Second Amendment rights. And Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan has said a proposal such as King’s lacks the votes to pass the lower chamber. But Phelan also said that “will not prevent a bill from being discussed and being debated.”

King knows he faces an uphill battle. But he’s also committed to trying, after spending nearly eight months helping folks — some of whom he knew before the tragedy — grapple with a staggering amount of loss.

“We have to go in it with our eyes open,” he said during a recent interview in his Texas Capitol office. “It’ll be a challenge. It’ll be a difficult conversation for a lot of people.”

King isn’t the only lawmaker who represents Uvalde and is pushing to limit access to semi-automatic rifles. State Sen. Roland Gutierre, a San Antonio Democrat whose district includes Uvalde, has already filed a bill in the Senate that would address the same issue.

Gutierrez has publicly criticized the law enforcement response, Texas’ loose gun laws and officials who have withheld information about the investigations into the shooting. Gutierrez has also filed legislation that would create robust mass shooting response training for all public safety entities and improve radio communication between certain agencies.

“I’m for Tracy’s bill, I’m for my bill, I’m for anybody’s bill if a Republican wants to come up and have a bill that raises the age limit on long guns right now to 21,” Gutierrez said. “We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. We’re regulating guns for what I would argue are minors, just like we do alcohol, just like we do cigarettes in Texas.”

I greatly respect what Sen. Gutierrez has been doing, and I’m glad to have Rep. King on board. I’ve also seen this movie before and I know how it ends. You know what my prescription for this problem is. If Gutierrez and King can change a few minds along the way, that will help. We have a long way to go.

Where we are on the agenda

Feb 16th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Greg Abbott targets transgender college sports ban.

Gov. Greg Abbott wants to ban transgender college students from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity, adding momentum to a Republican proposal that’s condemned by LGBTQ advocates and progressive groups.

“This next session, we will pass a law prohibiting biological men to compete against women in college sports,” Abbott said in a Saturday interview at the Young America’s Foundation “Freedom Conference” in Dallas.

The Republican governor said he believes “women, and only women, should be competing [against each other] in college or high school sports.”

Transgender K-12 student athletes are already prohibited from competing on teams that don’t associate with their sex at birth, under a measure passed by Republican lawmakers in 2021. The author of that bill, state Rep. Valoree Swanson of Spring, is proposing extending the restriction this session to the college level.

State Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, has introduced a similar measure in the upper chamber.

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has already said he supports the college ban in the Texas Senate, which he oversees. On Monday, he listed it among his 30 top priorities for the session.

I’ll get back to this in a minute, but just as a reminder, there are very few transgender women who compete in NCAA athletics and fewer of them have actually won anything, this would force transgender men who are taking testosterone and thus would have a real competitive advantage over assigned-female-at-birth athletes (go google Mack Beggs to see what I mean), and it would put Texas in conflict with the NCAA. But first, the Dan Patrick agenda.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced a list Monday of 30 wide-ranging bills that he has designated his legislative priorities, including providing property tax relief and increasing natural gas plants to improve the reliability of the state’s power grid. He also detailed more specifically his plans to push a socially conservative agenda that would ban certain books in schools, restrict transgender student athlete participation in collegiate sports and end gender-transition treatment for young people.

In a statement announcing his priority bills, Patrick said he believed Texans largely supported his proposals because they “largely reflect the policies supported by the conservative majority of Texans.”

You can read on, but basically this session will be a nightmare for the LGBTQ community.

“I think most Texans want to live in a free and fair state, where the government is not attacking us, our families or our kids,” said Brian Klosterboer, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “The Texas Senate in recent years has been obsessed with bullying LGBTQ youth, especially those who are transgender. In the last couple of years, transgender youth in Texas have been under constant attack from the government.”

Texas lawmakers proposed dozens of LGBTQ restrictions in the 2021 legislative session, and this year’s tally has already reached 72, according to a bill tracker put together by the advocacy group Equality Texas.

Klosterboer said the proposals are not only harmful but unconstitutional — and the ACLU and other civil rights groups would stop them from taking effect if they advanced.

[…]

Johnathan Gooch, spokesman for Equality Texas, said lawmakers should pay attention to how even just debating these bills can have a grave impact on LGBTQ youths’ mental health.

A 2022 Trevor Project study found that 47 percent of LGBTQ youth considered suicide that year and 16 percent had attempted it.

“If our lawmakers were truly interested in protecting youth, then they need to find ways to protect LGBTQ young people because the campaigns they’ve been running against them have been really harmful and really painful for everyone,” he said.

They’re not interested, and I don’t have much faith that the courts will stop them. I wish I felt differently. I keep saying it, nothing is going to change until we change who we elect to state office.

Speaking of the NCAA:

The Texas NAACP is calling on professional sports and the National Collegiate Athletic Association to boycott Texas over Gov. Greg Abbott’s attempt to end diversity hiring programs on college campuses and in state government.

“The governor’s initiative will do enormous harm and take the state backwards,” NAACP president Gary Bledsoe said Tuesday.

Bledsoe and Black leaders in the Texas Legislature said they are sending letters to the NCAA, as well as the NBA, NFL and MLB, to request their help. More specifically, Bledsoe called for not awarding any additional all-star games, Super Bowls or other championship events in Texas.

The NCAA in particular has several major events planned in Texas, including the men’s basketball Final Four in Houston in April and the women’s basketball Final Four in Dallas. In 2024, Houston is scheduled to host the College Football Playoff championship and San Antonio is the host city for the 2025 NCAA men’s basketball Final Four. The MLB All-Star Game in 2024 is scheduled for Globe Life Field in Arlington.

The financial hit from losing those events could be massive — a 2017 report, for instance, showed that when San Antonio hosted the NCAA Final Four in 2018, it was set to generate $234 million in total economic impact because of the tens of thousands of visitors.

See here for the background. There was a brief moment, mostly in 2017, when the NCAA and some sports leagues attempted to stand up for LGBTQ rights and voting rights by moving certain events out of certain states. That moment didn’t last, and I’m not optimistic about it coming back. When the national attention is focused elsewhere, it’s really hard to get it to turn your direction. But at least this is a pressure point that can be acted on right now. It’s worth the effort, but it’s going to take some big numbers.

Even the Republicans know their election contests are losers

Feb 8th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

This Chron story is about Dan Patrick telling a group of local Republicans that the 2022 election should be re-done in Harris County, because he has nothing better to say or do with his time. His claims, which the story notes he does not try to verify, aren’t worth the effort to copy and paste, but this tidbit caught my eye:

Without citing any examples of disenfranchised voters, the petition asks the court to declare the elections office made mistakes substantial enough to affect the outcome of the election.

According to Mealer’s petition, “there is no dispute that there were several dozens of polling locations who at some point in the day, ran out of paper and turned voters away.”

Tatum has maintained that while paper supplies ran low at some locations, the county has not been able to confirm whether any voters were turned away as a result.

Republican judicial candidate Erin Lunceford filed an election contest lawsuit in December after losing Harris County’s 189th judicial district court race to Democrat Tamika Craft.

In an email obtained by Craft’s attorneys and posted on the Harris County District Clerk’s website, Harris County Republican Party Chair Cindy Siegel gave candidates the party’s estimate of disenfranchised voters. Siegel’s email was sent on Jan 3, three days before the deadline to file election contest lawsuits.

“Based upon information to date we believe there were approximately 2,600 or more estimated voters turned away due to running out of ballot paper or machines not working for a period of time,” Siegel wrote.

It’s unclear whether that estimate would be enough to flip even the narrowest margins, as in Lunceford’s race, which Craft won by 2,743 votes out of more than 1 million ballots cast, or 0.26 percent of the vote.

The margins are far wider in some other races candidates are contesting. District Clerk candidate Chris Daniel lost by 25,640 votes, while County Clerk candidate Stan Stanart lost by 34,448 votes.

The election contests will be heard by Judge David Peeples of Bexar County. A trial date has not been set yet.

Emphasis mine, and see here for the previous entry. Note that as yet, not a single person has been identified as someone who showed up at a voting center on Election Day, was actually unable to cast a ballot while there because of paper issues, left before the problem was resolved, was unable to go to any of the 750 other voting locations in the county, and ultimately did not cast a ballot. Maybe such people exist and Republicans have been successful at keeping them all quiet until the lawsuits are heard, who can say. At this point, three months out, they seem as plausible as Bigfoot sightings, but let’s take Cindy Siegel at her word and assume the existence of 2600 actual people who were actually unable to cast a ballot on Election Day.

And if we do assume that statement to be a fact, then it is still the case that every single one of those Republican losers are still losers, with most of them still losing by more than a full percentage point, which is well above the standard for recounts that the loser doesn’t have to pay for. And that assumes that literally every one of those 2600 non-voters would have voted for the Republican candidate. Which would be so outlandishly unlikely as to appear to be its own conspiracy. I know that the Republicans are claiming that these problems took place at mostly Republican locations – another claim that is dubious at best and seemingly contradicted by news reporting on Election Day – but even the most partisan locations aren’t unanimous. In all likelihood, these votes would more or less split fifty-fifty, as a microcosm of the larger election, but let’s go ahead and assume the “friendly turf” claim as well. Suppose these votes split 80-20 for the Republicans, which would be plausible for an exclusive sample of such locations. That would mean that the Republicans netted about 1600 votes, which I need not point out is even farther away from closing the gap. If the margin is 60-40, the net gain is about 500 votes. Even under the most ludicrously generous assumptions, the math just plain doesn’t work.

And whatever else you may think about Dan Patrick, he’s not an idiot. He knows this. He also knows that his audience doesn’t care, and he knows that if he keeps repeating the lie, some people who don’t pay close attention will just think that the election was a mess and we don’t really know who won and maybe these “election integrity” laws that the Republicans keep passing have some merit. Winning takes many forms, after all. The Trib, which reported Patrick’s remarks but didn’t fact check them, and Campos, who called the Trib story “lazyarse reporting”, have more.

Now we have a gambling bill filed by a Republican Senator

Feb 7th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Maybe this is the gambling expansion bill that those who want gambling expansion have been waiting for.

Sen. Lois Kolkhorst

Advocates for legalizing online sports betting in Texas debuted new bills Monday that take a narrower approach than they did in 2021 — and feature a new author in the state Senate who is a Republican.

The involvement of Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, who is carrying the legislation, is notable because she is an ally of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is seen as the biggest hurdle to expanding gambling in Texas. The previous sports-betting bill filed in the last legislative session was carried by Democrat and got virtually no traction in the GOP-led Senate.

Like it was in 2021, this year’s legislation is backed by the Texas Sports Betting Alliance, a coalition of pro sports teams in the state, racetracks and betting platforms. Members include heavy hitters such as the Dallas Cowboys, the Dallas Mavericks, the Houston Astros, the San Antonio Spurs, the PGA Tour and DraftKings. Former Gov. Rick Perry is also working with the alliance on the issue this year.

The legislation would ask voters to decide in a November election whether they want to legalize what the alliance calls “mobile sports betting,” or wagering on games online. That is most commonly done through phone applications like DraftKings.

The major difference from the 2021 bills is that the latest legislation does not legalize in-person sports betting, which would allow bets to be taken at the facility where a team plays. This change was largely expected as the alliance prepared for this session with branding that emphasized “mobile sports betting” and protecting Texans’ data.

“I introduced SB 715 and SJR 39 because Texas needs to bring security and safety into the world of mobile sports betting,” Kolkhorst said in a statement. “It makes sense to reign in all of the illegal offshore betting and keep sports wagering funds here in Texas.”

Like the 2021 legislation, the latest sports-betting bills would put a 10% tax on its revenue.

While Kolkhorst is carrying the legislation in the Senate, state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, is authoring it in the House. The 2021 House author, Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, did not seek reelection. Leach joint-authored Huberty’s proposal.

State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, carried the legislation in the Senate last time. He has signed on as a joint author to the most recent bill from Kolkhorst.

The Sports Betting Alliance is one of two major camps pushing to expanding gambling in Texas this session. The other is a group led by the gaming empire Las Vegas Sands, which wants to legalize casinos in addition to sports betting.

See here for the background. As I said then, if Sen. Kolkhorst is filing a bill like this she is almost certainly doing it with the consent of Dan Patrick. Doesn’t mean Patrick will support it himself, but it seems likely to me that he’ll let it proceed on its own, which is surely more than any previous attempt has gotten. Whether it makes it through or not, he can say it’s what his caucus wanted.

That other story came out over the weekend, and it’s about an alliance between casino interests and horserace tracks, which honestly feels like a throwback to the Joe Straus days to me. I didn’t write about it because I didn’t think it moved the needle at all, and I still don’t. If anything, it could be the death knell for the Kolkhorst bill, even though its bill (filed by Republican Rep. Charlie Geren in the House) makes mention of sports betting. My guess is that the casinos would like sports betting to take place at their house, preferably only at their house, and that will be the source of some (maybe lots of) friction. Until there’s a Republican Senate version of that bill, I don’t see Patrick backing off on his traditional opposition to that form of expanded gambling.

Of course on the other hand you have Greg Abbott and Dade Phelan expressing their interest in “destination-style” resort casinos. Which could coexist with sports betting as in the Kolkhorst bill, or it could become a huge obstacle if as mentioned the casinos insist that all sports betting should take place at casinos. Maybe everyone gets on the same page and it’s enough to even overcome Dan Patrick. Or maybe the casinos get into a cage match with DraftKings et al and in the end it’s the same bloody and expensive failure these efforts have always been. I will continue to lean towards failure until proven otherwise, but I will admit that’s a shakier proposition now than it has usually been.

Not quite the same old gambling story

Jan 29th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

This Trib story about the state of gambling expansion in the Lege is not the usual formula. It has a lot of the usual elements, but for the first time there’s some hint of maybe something could happen. Maybe.

Photo by Joel Kramer via Flickr creative commons

Gambling legalization advocates in Texas are going all in again this legislative session, confident that they have built more support since their efforts came up far short in 2021.

The push is still an uphill battle, however, as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who oversees the Senate, continues to pour cold water on the idea. But supporters have found promising signs elsewhere, and they have returned to the Capitol with an army of well-connected lobbyists after doling out millions of dollars in campaign contributions during the 2022 election.

There are two main camps pushing for expanded gambling in Texas — and right now, they appear to be operating on parallel tracks. The first is a continuation of a lavishly funded and high-profile effort initiated by the late Sheldon Adelson and his gaming empire Las Vegas Sands to legalize casinos, specifically high-quality “destination resorts” in the state’s largest cities. The other lane is the Texas Sports Betting Alliance, a coalition of professional sports teams in the state and betting platforms that is exclusively focused on legalizing mobile sports betting.

Gambling is largely illegal in Texas with exceptions including the lottery, horse and greyhound racing and bingo. Texas has three tribal casinos, which are allowed to operate under federal law.

The Sports Betting Alliance already made a splash in the lead-up to this session by hiring former Gov. Rick Perry as a spokesperson.

“What’s changed [since 2021], I think, is the continuing education of the general public that this is not an expansion of gambling,” Perry said in an interview, suggesting that Texans already participate in this sort of gambling in other states or illegally. “It’s going on, it’s gonna continue to go on and the state of Texas needs to regulate it and make sure that its citizens’ information is protected.”

[…]

Given the stiff headwinds to getting any expansion in gambling passed, sports betting and casino advocates may be competing against each other, rather than working in tandem.

The Sports Betting Alliance is officially neutral on legalizing casinos, but the Sands team has welcomed collaboration, noting its proposal would additionally legalize sports betting.

Advocates for sports betting see their cause as a standalone issue that is more palatable for lawmakers. Perry said there is a “clear delineation” between what the Sports Betting Alliance is pushing for compared with legalized casinos.

“The other issues that are out there, they’ll have to stand or fall on their own,” Perry said. “I don’t think these will be tied together in any point in time.”

It is unclear if Patrick, the highest-ranking hurdle to expanded gambling, sees a similar distinction between the causes and could be more amenable to sports betting. His top political strategist, Allen Blakemore, recently signed up to lobby for the Sports Betting Alliance through the end of the year. And Patrick is close with Perry, once calling him “one of my best friends in life.”

Neither Patrick’s office nor Blakemore responded to requests for comment.

In the December TV interview, Patrick said no one had mentioned expanded gambling to him and no Republicans had filed bills on it yet. But advocates are making the case to Senate Republicans, and at least one of them, Sen. Lois Kolkhorst of Brenham, is giving thought to the sports-betting push.

“It’s true that Senator Kolkhorst is studying legislation to regulate ongoing app-based sports betting in Texas but she doesn’t comment on pending legislation,” Kolkhorst’s chief of staff, Chris Steinbach, said in a text message. “She will have more to say once a bill were to be filed.”

Neither Perry nor Blakemore as lobbyists impresses me. If hiring the right lobbyists was the key, this would have happened a long time ago. If there’s one thing the gambling interests know how to do, it’s hire lobbyists.

What does make me raise my eyebrows and go “hmmm” is the possibility that Sen. Kolkhorst could file a pro-gambling bill. That would at least contradict Dan Patrick’s statement about there being no Republican-filed bills; note that for these purposes, what he really means is a Senate Republican-filed bill. He doesn’t really care if House GOPers file these bills. Kolkhorst is a big Patrick ally, and I just don’t think she’d waste her time on a bill that she knows going in won’t get a committee hearing. If she does file a bill, it will be after she’s had some conversations, and assurances, from Patrick about its future.

Now, note that we don’t actually have Kolkhorst saying she’ll file a bill, nor do we know what might be in that hypothetical bill. We have chatter from the lobbyists that she’s thinking about it. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s more than we’ve seen before. I do think that whoever sourced that info to the Trib wouldn’t have done so without Kolkhorst knowing about it. It would be an extreme rookie mistake for a lobbyist to drop a name like that and have it vehemently denied and maybe get that legislator mad at you.

The dynamic of the two main interests competing against each other, and thus possibly decreasing the already slim chances that something could get voted on, is something we’ve seen before. Back when the discussion was about casinos and slot machines, we had the horse racing interests pushing for casinos at their racetracks, while the casinos were pushing for, you know, casinos. Here, the sports betting interests don’t need for there to be casinos for them to operate – as we know from those tedious Mattress Mack stories, where he drives to Louisiana to place one of his ridiculous bets on his phone, an app is all they need – but you can of course also bet on sporting events at casinos, and that’s what those folks would want. And “destination-style” casinos are what Abbott and Phelan have said they’d be interested in. You can have both but you don’t need both, and they’re both incentivized to say “hey, if you only want to support just one, support us!”

Two more points. One is that these interests have already spent a crap-ton of money, mostly on Republicans since that’s who they really need to convince, and will spend a lot more before all is said and done. I don’t know how much that has actually gotten them – the old adage about “if you can’t take their money and drink their liquor and screw their women and vote against ’em anyway you don’t belong in the Lege” still applies – but it’s what they do. You can feel however you want about expanded gambling – as you know, I’m adamantly ambivalent about it – but if you’re a Democrat and you support gambling, you should keep that in mind. And two, the usual opponents of expanded gambling are quoted at the end of the story like they’re not worried, they’ve seen this all before and they say they’re not seeing anything new. I tend to believe them – the “gambling expansion will fail” position has been correct for a long time – but to be fair, they could well want to project that same calm and confidence even if the tide was turning. So draw your own conclusions.

The next round of voter suppression bills are coming

Jan 27th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Brace yourselves.

Texas Republicans spent most of the 2021 legislative session focusing on election security — and this year, it’s a top priority for them again.

GOP leaders are discussing a range of election security measures, from higher penalties for voter fraud to broader power for the attorney general to prosecute election crimes. Many of them target Harris County, which Republicans have spent the past two years chastising for back-to-back elections blunders.

“Harris County is the big problem,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who plans to file close to a dozen election bills this legislative session. “You’ve got the nation’s third-largest county that has had multiple problems with multiple election officers, to the point where one had to resign, and the problem is that it’s too big a piece of the electorate to ignore.”

Harris County Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum did not respond directly to the criticism, but said the office supports any legislation that increases voter registration and access to voting.

“Right now, we are focused on implementing new systems to promote the efficiency with which our office runs elections,” Tatum said in a statement.

[…]

Bettencourt said he’s considering a bill that would raise the charges for some voting-related misdemeanors, such as failing to provide election supplies.

He also questioned the existence of — and the accountability measures for — the election administrator position in Harris County. [Isabel] Longoria was the first, appointed under a newly created office in late 2020; Tatum was named as her replacement last July.

“That’s somebody that’s supposed to have better acumen and better results than elected officials, but the reverse has been proven to be true in Harris County,” Bettencourt said. “One of the things we’re going to have to explore is: Why aren’t the elected tax assessor-collector and the elected county clerk — which are, quite frankly, both Democrats — why are they not running the election, where there’s some public accountability?”

I’ve said this multiple times before, but as a reminder for the slow kids in the class, many counties have election administrators, including many Republican counties like Tarrant and Lubbock. Ed Emmett first proposed the idea for Harris County. There were problems with elections back when the County Clerk – specifically, Stan Stanart – was in charge of running them. This is nothing but a pretext.

Beyond Harris County, lawmakers are looking at a slate of statewide elections reforms, starting with returning the penalty for illegal voting to a felony instead of a misdemeanor. The Legislature lowered the punishment when it passed Senate Bill 1, but top Republicans — including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — have pushed to return it to the stiffer penalty.

Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan, whose chamber amended the bill to include the lower penalty, rejected the idea when it was first floated during a series of 2021 special sessions.

“This important legislation made its way through the House after several thoughtful amendments were adopted,” he said. “Now is not the time to re-litigate.”

[…]

State Rep. Jacey Jetton, a Richmond Republican, said he’s exploring legislation to facilitate [the mail ballot] process, such as enabling election officials to check all identification numbers associated with an individual at the Texas Department of Public Safety. He also wants to review the system’s new online mail ballot tracker and ensure it’s working properly.

Republicans have also introduced bills to further investigate election fraud, to limit the state’s early voting period from two weeks to one, and to set earlier deadlines for handing in mail ballots. And some of them are hoping to give Attorney General Ken Paxton stronger authority to prosecute election crimes, after the state’s highest criminal appeals court ruled in 2021 that he could not unilaterally take on such cases.

Currently, Paxton can only get involved if invited by a district or county attorney, according to the court’s ruling. The decision led to an outcry from top Republicans, including Abbott and Patrick, who called for the case to be reheared.

Paxton encouraged his supporters to launch a pressure campaign and flood the court with calls and emails demanding, unsuccessfully, that they reverse the decision. The move prompted a complaint to the State Bar accusing Paxton of professional misconduct for attempting to interfere in a pending case before the court.

Much of this is also covered in this Trib story. I don’t know if Speaker Phelan will be persuaded or arm-twisted into changing his mind about making whatever minor infractions into felonies, but I hope he holds out. I commend Rep. Jetton for his interest in reducing the number of mail ballot rejections, though I have a hard time believing anyone can get such a bill through the Lege. As for Paxton’s continued desire to be Supreme Prosecutor, the CCA’s ruling was made on constitutional grounds. I feel confident saying that a constitutional amendment to allow this will not pass.

Anything else, however, is fair game and just a matter of whether the Republicans want it to pass or not. They have the votes and they have the will, and there’s basically nothing Dems can do to stop them. They’ll fight and they’ll make noise and they’ll employ the rules and pick up the occasional small-bore victory, but in the end they have no power. You know the mantra: Nothing will change until that changes.

And yes, it really is all about voter suppression, even if Texas Republicans are better than their Wisconsin colleagues at keeping the quiet part to themselves. It’s certainly possible that these laws aren’t as good at actually suppressing the vote as they’re intended to, but that’s beside the point. If they keep making it harder to vote, and they keep making it costlier to make an honest mistake in voting, and that cost is almost entirely borne by Democratic-leaning voters of color, it’s suppressive. The debate is about the extent, not the existence.

Precinct analysis: Inside and out of the city

Jan 17th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Most years we don’t get the data to differentiate between votes cast by residents of Houston and votes cast by Harris County non-Houston residents. There needs to be a citywide referendum of the ballot in order to get at this data. Fortunately, we had that this year, so we can take a look at how the races of interest shaped up. The usual caveat applies here, which is that this data is not exact. There are multiple precincts that are partially in Houston and partially not in Houston. Many of them have a tiny number of Houston-specific votes in them, with a much larger contingent of non-Houston votes. Counting these as Houston precincts means you wind up with a lot more total votes in Houston than were cast in the referenda elections, and gives you a distorted picture of the candidate percentages. I filter out precincts with ten or fewer votes cast in the Houston proposition elections, which is arbitrary and still yields more total votes than in the prop races themselves, but it’s close enough for these purposes. So with all that preamble, here’s the data:


Candidates    Houston   Not Hou    Hou%    Not%
===============================================
Beto          317,736   277,917  63.43%  46.22%
Abbott        175,533   314,728  35.04%  52.34%

Collier       312,803   273,337  62.81%  45.64%
Patrick       171,319   312,803  34.40%  51.84%

Garza         312,022   272,513  62.83%  45.61%
Paxton        170,642   309,499  34.36%  51.80%

Dudding       294,958   255,993  59.69%  43.03%
Hegar         185,671   324,329  37.58%  54.52%

Kleberg       296,878   257,563  60.34%  43.45%
Buckingham    184,006   323,967  37.41%  54.65%

Hays          308,304   269,169  62.61%  45.36%
Miller        184,139   324,228  37.39%  54.64%

Warford       290,364   251,323  59.02%  42.41%
Christian     181,355   319,465  36.86%  53.91%

To be clear about what this data shows, Beto won the city of Houston by a margin of 317,736 to 175,533, or 63.43% to 35.04%, while Greg Abbott carried the non-Houston parts of the county 314,728 to 277,917. This is about 493K ballots cast for those two candidates, which doesn’t count third party and write-in candidates or undervotes; I didn’t tally them all up but we’d be at around 510K total ballots defined as being “Houston”. In actuality, there were 486K total ballots cast, including undervotes, in the city prop races. Like I said, this is plenty good enough for these purposes.

As noted, I don’t have a whole lot of data for this from previous elections, but what I do have can be found in these posts:

2008
2012
2018

There were city propositions in 2010, for red light cameras and ReNew Houston, but I didn’t do the same city-versus-not-city comparisons that year, almost certainly because 2010 was such a miserable year and I just didn’t want to spend any more time thinking about it than I had to.

Looking back at those earlier years, Beto fell short of the top performers in Houston, which in 2008 and 2012 was Adrian Garcia and which in 2018 was himself, but he did better in non-Houston Harris County. That’s consistent with what I’ve said before about how Democrats have overall grown their vote in the former strong Republican areas, while falling short on turnout – this year, at least – in the strong Democratic areas. Note how even the lowest scorers this year exceeded Obama’s performance in non-Houston by three or four points in 2008 and four or five points in 2012, while doing about as well in Houston. As I’ve said, Harris County is more Democratic now. This is another way of illustrating that.

Here’s the same breakdown for the countywide races:


Candidates    Houston   Not Hou    Hou%    Not%
===============================================
Hidalgo       294,968   257,935  59.79%  43.39%
Mealer        198,286   336,434  40.19%  56.59%

Burgess       290,267   255,860  60.14%  43.81%
Daniel        192,368   328,119  39.86%  56.19%

Hudspeth      293,030   256,624  60.84%  44.00%
Stanart       188,573   326,633  39.16%  56.00%

Wyatt         293,352   256,862  60.86%  44.00%
Scott         188,623   326,849  39.14%  56.00%

No third party candidates here, just a write-in who got a handful of votes for County Judge, so the percentages mostly add up to 100. More or less the same story here, with the distinction between Houston and not-Houston being smaller than in prior years. There won’t be any citywide propositions in 2024, not if we have them this coming November, but I’ll try to use the precinct data I have here to analyze that election. In what should be a stronger Democratic year, I’ll be very interested to see how things change. As always, let me know if you have any questions.

Two out of three state leaders open to expanded gambling

Jan 13th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

As we know, two out of three ain’t bad, but it also ain’t enough.

Photo by Joel Kramer via Flickr creative commons

House Speaker Dade Phelan on Thursday left the door open to legalizing sports betting and casino gambling in Texas, the latest sign that opposition may be softening among state Republican lawmakers, though the proposal still faces major hurdles in the Senate.

Phelan, the Beaumont Republican who leads the Texas House, told reporters in a roundtable interview he believes voters would approve a referendum on expanded gaming options. With limited exceptions, most forms of gambling are prohibited by the Texas Constitution, which can only be amended if two-thirds of lawmakers in both chambers agree to put the matter to a statewide vote.

Echoing Gov. Greg Abbott, who voiced support last fall for expanding gambling options, Phelan said he doesn’t want to “walk into every convenience store and see … slot machines.”

“I want to see destination-style casinos that are high-quality and that create jobs, and that improve the lifestyles of those communities,” Phelan said.

[…]

This session, the gambling industry has hired an army of lobbyists to push for casino and sports betting legalization. Last month, however, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he isn’t expecting the issues to go anywhere.

“I don’t see any movement on that right now,” Patrick said in an interview with KXAN-TV in Austin.

Patrick, a Houston Republican who has overseen the Texas Senate since 2015, said that doesn’t mean things can’t change during the 140-day legislative session, which kicked off Tuesday.

He said there is “a lot of talk out there” about gambling, but he hasn’t seen any Senate Republicans file a bill on the issue yet. State Sen. Carol Alvarado, a Houston Democrat, has filed legislation to open the state to casinos and sports betting, however.

See here for some background. I’m not saying Dan Patrick can’t change his mind on this. I have no idea what Dan Patrick will do. I’m just saying that until he says he’s changed his mind, nothing has changed. That’s really all there is to it. Reform Austin has more.

It’s going to be a brutal legislative session for LGBTQ folks in Texas

Jan 10th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I really wish this weren’t the case, but it is. It’s going to be bad.

Two bills that would ban classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in Texas public schools before certain grade levels are poised to receive top Republican backing in this year’s legislative session. But critics warn that the legislation could further marginalize LGBTQ students and families while exposing teachers to potential legal threats.

The two bills — authored by Reps. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, and Jared Patterson, R-Frisco — closely resemble legislation out of Florida that critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law. House Bill 631 and House Bill 1155 are among a flurry of anti-LGBTQ legislation awaiting lawmakers when they return to the Capitol on Tuesday.

Florida’s law prohibits schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade. Both Texas bills mirror such a ban. Toth’s HB 631 would expand the restriction until fifth grade. Patterson’s HB 1155 would extend it to eighth grade.

Their proposals would also prohibit lessons on sexuality and gender identity at any grade level if they are “not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” Patterson’s bill doesn’t define what is appropriate for various age groups. Toth’s bill requires the lessons to align with state standards but doesn’t specify which standards.

Like Florida’s law, the two Texas bills don’t explicitly ban the use of the word “gay” in schools. The bills’ authors also maintain that the legislation would protect “parental rights” by allowing parents to more directly control what their children learn in school, including the existence of different sexual orientations and gender identities.

“Parental rights are paramount to the safety and well-being of a child,” Patterson said in a Jan. 3 tweet introducing his bill. “Therefore, I filed HB 1155 to ensure no school teaches radical gender ideology to any child from K-8th grade, and where parents must review and sign off on any health-related services.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has signaled that he would support passing a Texas version of the Florida law — even before these bills were filed.

“I will make this law a top priority in the next session,” he said in a campaign email last April.

Critics of the legislation argue that the bills’ vague nature would suppress discussion related to LGBTQ issues and representation.

“The reality is that everybody has a gender identity and sexual orientation; avoiding those conversations is incredibly difficult,” Adri Pérez, an organizing director with Texas Freedom Network, told The Texas Tribune. “What it becomes is a tool to be leveraged specifically against LGBTQIA+ people, because what stands out is not the people who fit in but the people who are being specifically targeted and attacked as being different.”

[…]

Chloe Kempf and Brian Klosterboer, attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said the bills could pose explicit risks to teachers and school districts in the form of lawsuits from parents who believe they’re not following the law.

Toth’s bill outlines a mechanism for parents to sue school districts for violating his proposals, which includes the parental notification portion of that bill. Experts say that part of these bills could require teachers to potentially out their students, and parents could sue districts if teachers don’t comply. School districts would be saddled with the cost of those lawsuits, experts say.

More broadly, Kempf said, the bills would pose risks to schools and educators in the form of potential ultra vires claims, which enable citizens to sue public officials who violate state laws. Although it’s not clear if these types of lawsuits would be successful, Klosterboer said, the larger impact is more confusion and headaches for schools.

“When a law is vague, it allows for discriminatory and targeted enforcement. And it also creates a very hostile and chilling atmosphere where people … go out of their way to self-censor,” Kempf said.

The bills’ vague language could also present challenges for schools trying to protect teachers from potential lawsuits.

“[Schools] might not even know what to tell teachers and staff how to actually protect themselves and protect the school district,” Klosterboer said.

Klosterboer added that it seems “very likely” that if Gov. Greg Abbott signs one of the bills into law, it would invite legal challenges.

[…]

Ultimately, LGBTQ advocates argue that these legislative actions are just another attack on an already marginalized population. As of last week, Texas Republican lawmakers have already filed 35 anti-LGBTQ bills for the 2023 session, far outnumbering the number of such bills that were filed ahead of the 2021 session, according to [Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas].

“The legislation is meant to stigmatize LGBTQ people, isolate LGBTQ kids, and make teachers fearful of providing safe and inclusive classrooms,” he said.

There is ongoing litigation over Florida’s “don’t say gay” law. It will eventually be decided by SCOTUS. So yeah, that’s going great, too.

I would like to say something encouraging here. For sure, plenty of smart and passionate and dedicated people will do everything they can to fight these terrible bills, and you should do everything you can to help them. But the reality is that the Republicans have the numbers. They can pass whatever bills they want. This is what they want to do, and they believe they have a mandate after the 2022 election. They’re not going to stop until they’re voted out. Again, I wish I could tell you something else, but I can’t. It’s going to be a very rough six months. The Observer has more.

The only pre-session gambling expansion story you need

Jan 3rd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Just re-run a version of this for the foreseeable future.

Photo by Joel Kramer via Flickr creative commons

Although casino giants and sports betting groups are making a big push in Texas, the head of the state Senate said he isn’t seeing much progress on the issue going into 2023.

“I don’t see any movement on that right now,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in an interview with KXAN-TV in Austin.

Patrick, a Houston Republican who has overseen the Texas Senate since 2015, said that doesn’t mean things can’t change during the legislative session that begins Jan. 10.

He said there is “a lot of talk out there” about gambling but that he hasn’t seen any Republican in the Senate file a bill on the issue yet. Republicans hold a strong majority and control the Senate’s agenda.

[…]

State Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, has filed legislation to open the state to casinos and sports betting. Under her proposed Senate Joint Resolution No. 17, up to four “destination resorts” in metro areas with at least 2 million people would be allowed, in addition to limited casinos at horse and dog tracks, plus authorization for Native American tribes to operate casino games and slot machines.

In 2021, Patrick similarly doused expectations for expanded gambling in Texas, but even more forcefully.

“It’s not even an issue that’s going to see the light of day this session,” Patrick told Lubbock-based talk radio host Chad Hasty about sports betting legislation in 2021.

Every session, we get a breathless story about how much the gambling lobby will be spending on their hundreds of lobbyists to persuade the Lege to pass a joint resolution for a constitutional amendment to allow some form of expanded gambling. And then we get the same basic story the next session, because the one constant has been Dan Patrick, and even before him the general – and sufficient – Republican opposition to this idea. Never mind that Patrick wasn’t forceful about it this session – nothing has changed from his perspective since the last time, and none of those Republican Senators are going to file anything because they’re all Patrick’s puppets. Never mind that Greg Abbott has, in his typically mealy-mouthed fashion, expressed “openness” to the “idea” of some form of expanded gambling. Abbott’s a wuss who isn’t going to get into a fight with Patrick over this. All he’s saying here is that if Dan Patrick changes his mind and decides to allow something to come to a vote, he won’t oppose it. Nothing has changed, nothing to see here. File this story away for 2025, because it will be as relevant then as it is now.

Eventually, one of two things will change. Either Dan Patrick will decide that he’s okay with some more gambling, or someone else will become Lite Guv, and then we can find out what that person thinks. Until then, try to remain calm. And see if you can get one of those gambling lobbyist gigs. They have to be a great job, as there’s no expectation of success and they’ll be hiring again next time around.

Precinct analysis: The not-as-good statewide races

Jan 2nd, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

PREVIOUSLY
Beto versus Abbott
Beto versus the spread
Hidalgo versus Mealer
Better statewide races

The difference between these statewide races and the ones we have already looked at, including the Governor’s race, is very simple: These Republican candidates did better than the ones we have seen, and the Democrats did less well. The Dems in the first four races we analyzed all topped 53% of the vote in Harris County. The high score with these three is Jay Kleberg’s 51.11%. Luke Warford, who had a Green opponent as well as a Libertarian opponent, fell short of a majority in Harris County, getting 49.95% for a plurality. Let’s see how this breaks down.

Comptroller


Dist    Hegar  Dudding     Lib
==============================
HD126  36,931   21,555   1,269
HD127  40,053   24,746   1,441
HD128  32,350   12,795   1,014
HD129  38,119   24,936   1,559
HD130  46,320   18,701   1,229
HD131   6,114   24,275     906
HD132  36,340   23,387   1,259
HD133  35,123   24,187   1,043
HD134  32,915   46,611   1,330
HD135  17,107   22,475   1,135
HD137   8,263   12,428     646
HD138  32,580   23,012   1,269
HD139  12,325   30,301   1,174
HD140   5,761   12,183   1,066
HD141   4,586   20,094     815
HD142   8,957   24,548     997
HD143   8,538   14,611   1,218
HD144  11,734   13,368   1,167
HD145  13,855   29,642   1,839
HD146   9,031   32,118     953
HD147   9,676   35,412   1,338
HD148  16,203   19,567   1,251
HD149  12,278   18,681     882
HD150  34,841   21,318   1,294
							
CC1    72,584  195,779   6,893
CC2    97,146   99,729   7,605
CC3   225,304  134,394   7,641
CC4   114,966  121,049   5,955
							
JP1    65,832  117,292   5,140
JP2    22,125   28,127   2,055
JP3    35,715   40,576   2,117
JP4   173,366  120,182   6,806
JP5   146,733  136,478   6,730
JP6     5,130   16,223   1,342
JP7    12,325   64,437   1,904
JP8    48,774   27,636   2,000

Dist   Hegar% Dudding%    Lib%
==============================
HD126  61.80%   36.07%   2.12%
HD127  60.47%   37.36%   2.18%
HD128  70.08%   27.72%   2.20%
HD129  58.99%   38.59%   2.41%
HD130  69.92%   28.23%   1.86%
HD131  19.54%   77.57%   2.90%
HD132  59.59%   38.35%   2.06%
HD133  58.20%   40.08%   1.73%
HD134  40.71%   57.65%   1.64%
HD135  42.01%   55.20%   2.79%
HD137  38.73%   58.25%   3.03%
HD138  57.30%   40.47%   2.23%
HD139  28.14%   69.18%   2.68%
HD140  30.31%   64.09%   5.61%
HD141  17.99%   78.82%   3.20%
HD142  25.96%   71.15%   2.89%
HD143  35.04%   59.96%   5.00%
HD144  44.67%   50.89%   4.44%
HD145  30.56%   65.38%   4.06%
HD146  21.45%   76.29%   2.26%
HD147  20.84%   76.28%   2.88%
HD148  43.77%   52.85%   3.38%
HD149  38.56%   58.67%   2.77%
HD150  60.64%   37.11%   2.25%
			
CC1    26.37%   71.13%   2.50%
CC2    47.51%   48.77%   3.72%
CC3    61.33%   36.59%   2.08%
CC4    47.51%   50.03%   2.46%
			
JP1    34.97%   62.30%   2.73%
JP2    42.30%   53.77%   3.93%
JP3    45.55%   51.75%   2.70%
JP4    57.72%   40.01%   2.27%
JP5    50.61%   47.07%   2.32%
JP6    22.60%   71.48%   5.91%
JP7    15.67%   81.91%   2.42%
JP8    62.20%   35.25%   2.55%

Land Commissioner


Dist     Buck  Kleberg     Grn   W-I
====================================
HD126  36,849   21,629   1,070     1
HD127  40,131   24,789   1,092     0
HD128  32,446   12,873     706     9
HD129  38,169   25,015   1,149     3
HD130  46,145   18,886     963     5
HD131   6,081   24,219     829     1
HD132  36,155   23,542   1,053     2
HD133  34,565   24,654     915     2
HD134  31,902   47,475   1,190     6
HD135  17,116   22,492     963     1
HD137   8,141   12,532     562     2
HD138  32,324   23,310     968     2
HD139  12,258   30,317   1,025     1
HD140   5,859   12,433     613     3
HD141   4,635   20,039     691     3
HD142   8,984   24,532     839     4
HD143   8,646   14,845     732     5
HD144  11,869   13,567     682     4
HD145  13,820   30,044   1,276     3
HD146   8,914   32,076     990     0
HD147   9,684   35,282   1,243     1
HD148  16,142   19,762     959     2
HD149  12,314   18,717     714     0
HD150  34,884   21,411   1,016     3
								
CC1    71,640  196,243   6,241    17
CC2    97,762  100,816   4,930    24
CC3   224,673  135,288   6,151    14
CC4   113,958  122,094   4,918     8
								
JP1    64,874  118,648   3,973    11
JP2    22,268   28,432   1,306     7
JP3    35,847   40,620   1,612     8
JP4   173,174  120,696   5,428    13
JP5   145,487  137,664   5,652    10
JP6     5,253   16,428     881     4
JP7    12,214   64,137   2,011     2
JP8    48,916   27,816   1,377     8

Dist    Buck% Kleberg%    Grn%  W-I%
====================================
HD126  61.88%   36.32%   1.80% 0.00%
HD127  60.79%   37.55%   1.65% 0.00%
HD128  70.48%   27.96%   1.53% 0.02%
HD129  59.33%   38.88%   1.79% 0.00%
HD130  69.92%   28.62%   1.46% 0.01%
HD131  19.53%   77.80%   2.66% 0.00%
HD132  59.51%   38.75%   1.73% 0.00%
HD133  57.48%   41.00%   1.52% 0.00%
HD134  39.59%   58.92%   1.48% 0.01%
HD135  42.19%   55.44%   2.37% 0.00%
HD137  38.33%   59.01%   2.65% 0.01%
HD138  57.11%   41.18%   1.71% 0.00%
HD139  28.11%   69.53%   2.35% 0.00%
HD140  30.99%   65.76%   3.24% 0.02%
HD141  18.27%   78.99%   2.72% 0.01%
HD142  26.15%   71.40%   2.44% 0.01%
HD143  35.69%   61.27%   3.02% 0.02%
HD144  45.44%   51.94%   2.61% 0.02%
HD145  30.61%   66.55%   2.83% 0.01%
HD146  21.23%   76.41%   2.36% 0.00%
HD147  20.96%   76.35%   2.69% 0.00%
HD148  43.79%   53.61%   2.60% 0.01%
HD149  38.79%   58.96%   2.25% 0.00%
HD150  60.86%   37.36%   1.77% 0.01%
				
CC1    26.13%   71.58%   2.28% 0.01%
CC2    48.03%   49.53%   2.42% 0.01%
CC3    61.36%   36.95%   1.68% 0.00%
CC4    47.29%   50.67%   2.04% 0.00%
				
JP1    34.60%   63.28%   2.12% 0.01%
JP2    42.81%   54.66%   2.51% 0.01%
JP3    45.91%   52.02%   2.06% 0.01%
JP4    57.86%   40.32%   1.81% 0.00%
JP5    50.37%   47.67%   1.96% 0.00%
JP6    23.28%   72.80%   3.90% 0.02%
JP7    15.59%   81.84%   2.57% 0.00%
JP8    62.62%   35.61%   1.76% 0.01%

Railroad Commissioner


Dist    Chris  Warford     Lib     Grn
======================================
HD126  36,287   21,192   1,384     648
HD127  39,533   24,297   1,535     651
HD128  32,057   12,551     995     399
HD129  37,473   24,455   1,607     766
HD130  45,640   18,396   1,369     597
HD131   5,986   23,853     942     400
HD132  35,684   22,981   1,395     627
HD133  34,391   23,900   1,215     616
HD134  31,677   46,420   1,533     844
HD135  16,804   21,988   1,227     559
HD137   8,017   12,261     612     350
HD138  31,928   22,708   1,350     641
HD139  12,044   29,784   1,169     555
HD140   5,685   11,976     991     277
HD141   4,527   19,765     784     332
HD142   8,851   24,073   1,025     411
HD143   8,457   14,290   1,159     373
HD144  11,679   13,015   1,125     328
HD145  13,535   29,065   1,855     677
HD146   8,716   31,720     927     581
HD147   9,406   34,678   1,363     730
HD148  15,938   19,168   1,217     514
HD149  12,101   18,269     925     429
HD150  34,404   20,882   1,366     623
								
CC1   70,449   192,875   7,107   3,563
CC2   95,951    97,604   7,402   2,627
CC3  221,887   132,181   8,202   3,726
CC4  112,533   119,027   6,359   3,012
								
JP1   63,938   115,819   5,264   2,359
JP2   21,846    27,531   2,021     648
JP3   35,348    39,739   2,132     865
JP4  170,806   118,025   7,219   3,145
JP5  143,838   134,221   7,231   3,484
JP6    5,019    15,850   1,277     447
JP7   11,907    63,400   1,926   1,109
JP8   48,118    27,102   2,000     871

Dist   Chris% Warford%    Lib%    Grn%
======================================
HD126  60.98%   35.61%   2.33%   1.09%
HD127  59.88%   36.80%   2.33%   0.99%
HD128  69.69%   27.28%   2.16%   0.87%
HD129  58.28%   38.03%   2.50%   1.19%
HD130  69.15%   27.87%   2.07%   0.90%
HD131  19.20%   76.50%   3.02%   1.28%
HD132  58.80%   37.87%   2.30%   1.03%
HD133  57.20%   39.75%   2.02%   1.02%
HD134  39.36%   57.68%   1.90%   1.05%
HD135  41.41%   54.19%   3.02%   1.38%
HD137  37.74%   57.73%   2.88%   1.65%
HD138  56.38%   40.10%   2.38%   1.13%
HD139  27.65%   68.39%   2.68%   1.27%
HD140  30.03%   63.27%   5.24%   1.46%
HD141  17.82%   77.79%   3.09%   1.31%
HD142  25.76%   70.06%   2.98%   1.20%
HD143  34.83%   58.86%   4.77%   1.54%
HD144  44.67%   49.78%   4.30%   1.25%
HD145  29.99%   64.40%   4.11%   1.50%
HD146  20.78%   75.62%   2.21%   1.39%
HD147  20.37%   75.10%   2.95%   1.58%
HD148  43.27%   52.03%   3.30%   1.40%
HD149  38.14%   57.59%   2.92%   1.35%
HD150  60.07%   36.46%   2.38%   1.09%
				
CC1    25.71%   70.39%   2.59%   1.30%
CC2    47.13%   47.94%   3.64%   1.29%
CC3    60.63%   36.12%   2.24%   1.02%
CC4    46.71%   49.40%   2.64%   1.25%
				
JP1    34.12%   61.81%   2.81%   1.26%
JP2    41.97%   52.90%   3.88%   1.25%
JP3    45.27%   50.89%   2.73%   1.11%
JP4    57.09%   39.45%   2.41%   1.05%
JP5    49.81%   46.48%   2.50%   1.21%
JP6    22.21%   70.15%   5.65%   1.98%
JP7    15.20%   80.93%   2.46%   1.42%
JP8    61.62%   34.71%   2.56%   1.12%

Not too surprisingly, what we see in all three of these races is…more votes for the Republican candidate and fewer votes for the Democrat across the precincts, with a couple of exceptions here and there. The effect was generally stronger in the Republican districts than in the Democratic ones, with HDs 133 and 134 being the most notable.

The total number of votes in these elections is comparable – the number declines gently as you go down the ballot, but more undervoting does not explain the shifts in percentages. In a few cases you can see a greater number of third-party votes, which can explain a part of a Democratic vote decline, but again the overall effect is too small to be generally explanatory. The only logical conclusion is that across the board, some number of people who votes for Beto and Collier and Garza and Hays also voted for Glenn Hegar and Dawn Buckingham and Wayne Christian.

The question then is why. To me, the most likely explanation is that the most visible Republicans, the ones most likely to loudly and visibly stake out unpopular and divisive positions – and yes, this means “unpopular”, or at least “less popular” with Republicans, with opposing marijuana reform and expanded gambling and rape/incest exceptions for abortion – are losing votes that their lower profile/less visibly extreme colleagues are not losing.

This makes sense to me, but as it agrees with my priors, I’d like to check it. I’m pretty sure I’ve expressed this sentiment before, but if I had the power and the funds I’d order a study, to try to identify these voters and ask them why they did what they did. Not out of disbelief or derision but curiosity, to get a better understanding. Maybe other Democratic candidates could get them with the right message, and if they were the right candidates. Maybe they just didn’t know enough about the Dems in these races to be in a position to consider them. Maybe a strategy that attempts to maximize Democratic turnout overall – we have already discussed how Dems fell short in this election on that front – would make them less likely to cross over, even for Republicans they don’t approve of. We can speculate all week, but there’s only one way to find out. I really wish I could make that happen.

One more thing to note is that despite the lesser Democratic performance, these candidates all still carried the three Commissioner Court precincts that are now Democratic. I’ll be paying closer attention to these precincts, because this isn’t always the case going forward. In the meantime, let me know what you think.

Precinct analysis: The better statewide races

Dec 30th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

PREVIOUSLY
Beto versus Abbott
Beto versus the spread
Hidalgo versus Mealer

As noted before, Greg Abbott got 490K votes in Harris County, far less than the 559K he received in 2018 running against Lupe Valdez. Of the other six races for statewide executive offices, three were similar in nature to the Governor’s race and three were friendlier to Republicans. This post is about the first three, and those are the races for Lite Guv, Attorney General, and Ag Commissioner. For those of you whose memories stretch back as far as 2018, yes those were the three best races for Dems after the Beto-Cruz race for Senate as well. Let’s look at the numbers.

Lieutenant Governor


Dist  Patrick  Collier     Lib
==============================
HD126  35,244   23,460   1,482
HD127  38,578   26,405   1,691
HD128  31,548   13,748   1,148
HD129  36,347   26,966   1,802
HD130  44,307   20,934   1,434
HD131   5,886   24,670     933
HD132  34,417   25,498   1,374
HD133  31,931   27,421   1,396
HD134  28,262   51,502   1,828
HD135  16,373   23,514   1,050
HD137   7,690   13,164     650
HD138  30,328   25,534   1,383
HD139  11,536   31,304   1,246
HD140   5,850   12,681     647
HD141   4,494   20,290     851
HD142   8,641   25,030   1,043
HD143   8,469   15,270     804
HD144  11,551   14,029     854
HD145  12,368   32,031   1,449
HD146   8,285   33,018   1,148
HD147   8,809   36,618   1,383
HD148  15,383   20,840   1,065
HD149  11,923   19,315     824
HD150  33,548   22,898   1,431

CC1    65,573  204,223   7,632
CC2    94,272  105,549   6,218
CC3   214,555  146,441   8,815
CC4   107,368  129,927   6,251
							
JP1    58,698  126,202   5,083
JP2    21,608   29,498   1,599
JP3    34,975   41,776   2,126
JP4   166,204  128,604   7,578
JP5   137,161  147,432   7,185
JP6     4,941   17,062     885
JP7    11,370   65,643   2,250
JP8    46,811   29,923   2,210

Dist Patrick% Collier%    Lib%
==============================
HD126  58.56%   38.98%   2.46%
HD127  57.86%   39.60%   2.54%
HD128  67.93%   29.60%   2.47%
HD129  55.82%   41.41%   2.77%
HD130  66.45%   31.40%   2.15%
HD131  18.69%   78.34%   2.96%
HD132  56.16%   41.60%   2.24%
HD133  52.56%   45.14%   2.30%
HD134  34.64%   63.12%   2.24%
HD135  40.00%   57.44%   2.56%
HD137  35.76%   61.22%   3.02%
HD138  52.98%   44.60%   2.42%
HD139  26.17%   71.01%   2.83%
HD140  30.50%   66.12%   3.37%
HD141  17.53%   79.15%   3.32%
HD142  24.89%   72.10%   3.00%
HD143  34.51%   62.22%   3.28%
HD144  43.70%   53.07%   3.23%
HD145  26.98%   69.86%   3.16%
HD146  19.52%   77.78%   2.70%
HD147  18.82%   78.23%   2.95%
HD148  41.25%   55.89%   2.86%
HD149  37.19%   60.24%   2.57%
HD150  57.96%   39.56%   2.47%

CC1    23.64%   73.61%   2.75%
CC2    45.75%   51.23%   3.02%
CC3    58.02%   39.60%   2.38%
CC4    44.09%   53.35%   2.57%
			
JP1    30.90%   66.43%   2.68%
JP2    41.00%   55.97%   3.03%
JP3    44.34%   52.96%   2.70%
JP4    54.96%   42.53%   2.51%
JP5    47.01%   50.53%   2.46%
JP6    21.59%   74.55%   3.87%
JP7    14.34%   82.82%   2.84%
JP8    59.30%   37.90%   2.80%

Attorney General


Dist   Paxton    Garza     Lib
==============================
HD126  35,146   23,166   1,681
HD127  38,480   26,208   1,817
HD128  31,566   13,692   1,110
HD129  36,386   26,643   1,914
HD130  44,397   20,427   1,713
HD131   5,857   24,875     694
HD132  34,454   25,125   1,539
HD133  31,901   26,700   1,898
HD134  28,201   50,706   2,371
HD135  16,314   23,615     964
HD137   7,704   13,091     643
HD138  30,154   25,204   1,732
HD139  11,438   31,372   1,145
HD140   5,605   13,078     466
HD141   4,487   20,489     610
HD142   8,580   25,228     859
HD143   8,346   15,595     594
HD144  11,375   14,337     662
HD145  12,220   32,097   1,425
HD146   8,320   32,991     999
HD147   8,731   36,766   1,206
HD148  15,221   20,981   1,035
HD149  11,876   19,423     706
HD150  33,382   22,726   1,595
							
CC1    65,204  204,223   7,257
CC2    93,611  106,606   5,426
CC3   214,042  144,575  10,162
CC4   107,284  129,131   6,533
							
JP1    58,125  125,740   5,522
JP2    21,364   29,906   1,317
JP3    34,843   42,072   1,833
JP4   165,760  127,783   8,087
JP5   136,969  146,132   7,898
JP6     4,815   17,369     687
JP7    11,411   65,835   1,804
JP8    46,854   29,698   2,230

Dist  Paxton%   Garza%    Lib%
==============================
HD126  58.58%   38.61%   2.80%
HD127  57.86%   39.41%   2.73%
HD128  68.08%   29.53%   2.39%
HD129  56.03%   41.03%   2.95%
HD130  66.73%   30.70%   2.57%
HD131  18.64%   79.15%   2.21%
HD132  56.37%   41.11%   2.52%
HD133  52.73%   44.13%   3.14%
HD134  34.70%   62.39%   2.92%
HD135  39.89%   57.75%   2.36%
HD137  35.94%   61.06%   3.00%
HD138  52.82%   44.15%   3.03%
HD139  26.02%   71.37%   2.60%
HD140  29.27%   68.30%   2.43%
HD141  17.54%   80.08%   2.38%
HD142  24.75%   72.77%   2.48%
HD143  34.02%   63.56%   2.42%
HD144  43.13%   54.36%   2.51%
HD145  26.72%   70.17%   3.12%
HD146  19.66%   77.97%   2.36%
HD147  18.69%   78.72%   2.58%
HD148  40.88%   56.34%   2.78%
HD149  37.11%   60.69%   2.21%
HD150  57.85%   39.38%   2.76%
			
CC1    23.57%   73.81%   2.62%
CC2    45.52%   51.84%   2.64%
CC3    58.04%   39.20%   2.76%
CC4    44.16%   53.15%   2.69%
			
JP1    30.69%   66.39%   2.92%
JP2    40.63%   56.87%   2.50%
JP3    44.25%   53.43%   2.33%
JP4    54.95%   42.36%   2.68%
JP5    47.07%   50.22%   2.71%
JP6    21.05%   75.94%   3.00%
JP7    14.44%   83.28%   2.28%
JP8    59.47%   37.70%   2.83%

Dan Patrick (481K votes) and Ken Paxton (480K) were the two low scorers among Republicans. Mike Collier and Rochelle Garza both had leads against them of just over 100K votes, right in line with Beto’s lead against Abbott. That’s not as robust as what Dems did in 2018 as we know, but I can’t blame Collier and Garza for that. They were still top scorers, it was mostly that the environment wasn’t as good for them.

Overall, it looks like Collier and Garza did about as well percentage-wise as Beto did. Collier actually did a tiny bit better in HD133, and both did better in HD134. In some cases, like HD132 and HD138, Collier and Garza were about equal with Beto but Patrick and Paxton were a point or two behind Abbott. That looks to me to be the effect of the larger Libertarian vote in those races – there were about 29K Lib votes in these two races, while there were about 16K third party and write-in votes for Governor. At least in those cases, you can make the claim that the Libertarian received votes that might have otherwise gone to the Republican.

In the Ag Commissioner race, Sid Miller got 507K votes to top Abbott’s total, but he was aided by not having any third party candidates. Susan Hays did pretty well compared to the other Dems in that straight up two-way race:

Ag Commissioner


Dist   Miller     Hays
======================
HD126  36,872   22,678
HD127  40,060   25,992
HD128  32,447   13,641
HD129  38,091   26,236
HD130  46,273   19,792
HD131   6,091   25,170
HD132  36,189   24,576
HD133  34,548   25,581
HD134  31,793   48,687
HD135  17,174   23,491
HD137   8,207   13,090
HD138  32,276   24,389
HD139  12,291   31,372
HD140   5,904   13,079
HD141   4,667   20,779
HD142   9,047   25,391
HD143   8,631   15,710
HD144  11,849   14,344
HD145  13,871   31,301
HD146   8,922   33,114
HD147   9,761   36,482
HD148  16,238   20,657
HD149  12,270   19,513
HD150  34,895   22,408
						
CC1    71,746  202,649
CC2    97,753  106,167
CC3   224,670  141,583
CC4   114,198  127,074
						
JP1    64,850  122,675
JP2    22,256   29,898
JP3    35,923   42,332
JP4   173,381  126,119
JP5   145,619  143,496
JP6     5,243   17,412
JP7    12,266   66,242
JP8    48,829   29,299

Dist  Miller%    Hays% 
=======================
HD126  61.92%   38.08%
HD127  60.65%   39.35%
HD128  70.40%   29.60%
HD129  59.21%   40.79%
HD130  70.04%   29.96%
HD131  19.48%   80.52%
HD132  59.56%   40.44%
HD133  57.46%   42.54%
HD134  39.50%   60.50%
HD135  42.23%   57.77%
HD137  38.54%   61.46%
HD138  56.96%   43.04%
HD139  28.15%   71.85%
HD140  31.10%   68.90%
HD141  18.34%   81.66%
HD142  26.27%   73.73%
HD143  35.46%   64.54%
HD144  45.24%   54.76%
HD145  30.71%   69.29%
HD146  21.22%   78.78%
HD147  21.11%   78.89%
HD148  44.01%   55.99%
HD149  38.61%   61.39%
HD150  60.90%   39.10%
		
CC1    26.15%   73.85%
CC2    47.94%   52.06%
CC3    61.34%   38.66%
CC4    47.33%   52.67%
		
JP1    34.58%   65.42%
JP2    42.67%   57.33%
JP3    45.91%   54.09%
JP4    57.89%   42.11%
JP5    50.37%   49.63%
JP6    23.14%   76.86%
JP7    15.62%   84.38%
JP8    62.50%   37.50%

Miller was definitely a slight notch up from the first three. How much of that is the lack of a third choice versus some other consideration I couldn’t say, but you can see it in the numbers.

I’ll get into it a bit more in the next post when we look at the higher-scoring Republicans, but my sense is that these three Dems, plus Beto, received some crossovers. Beto and Collier and Garza had enough money to at least run some ads, while Hays was still running against perhaps the highest-profile (read: got the most negative news for his ridiculous actions) incumbent after those three. We have definitely seen races like this, certainly in elections going back to 2016 – Hillary versus Trump, Biden versus Trump, Beto and the Lite Guv/AG/Ag Commish triumvirate this year and 2018. We saw it with Bill White in 2010, too – as I’ve observed in the past, White received something like 300K votes from people who otherwise voted Republican. That’s a lot! Democrats can persuade at least some Republicans to vote for their statewide candidates, but only under some conditions. If we can get the baseline vote to be closer, that could be enough to push some people over the top. We’re still working on the first part of that equation.

Like I said, I’ll get into that a bit more in the next post. Looking at what I’ve written here, I need to do a post about third party votes, too. Let me know what you think.

Will we finally close the “dead suspect” loophole?

Dec 28th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The short answer is no we won’t, but it will be worth the effort anyway.

Rep. Joe Moody

In November, state Representative Joe Moody, an El Paso Democrat who served on a committee that investigated the Uvalde killings, filed House Bill 30, a multifaceted measure that would close what’s called the “dead suspect loophole.” Under current law, Texas cops and prosecutors may withhold from the public many records stemming from investigations that did not result in a conviction. This statute arguably protects the reputations of innocent Texans, but it also casts a veil of secrecy over cases where there’s no conviction because the suspect is deceased—including when cops kill someone during an arrest, or a person dies in jail, or a school shooter’s rampage ends, as happened at Robb Elementary, with his own demise. Moody’s bill would specifically open up many cases where the lack of a conviction resulted from a suspect’s death.

Since May, state police have withheld records such as video and audio recordings from the Uvalde scene on the premise that the local district attorney is still investigating—a standard reason that agencies hold back much detailed information. Under the dead suspect loophole, however, those records can plausibly be kept secret forever. HB 30 would head this off.

“I certainly respect the investigatory process, but at some point you turn the corner and the public deserves to scrutinize the records, and that is at the heart of the Public Information Act,” Moody told the Observer. “The government doesn’t get to decide what is good for us to know and what is bad for us to know.”

In June, GOP Speaker of the House Dade Phelan tweeted support for closing the dead suspect loophole in Uvalde’s wake, and a spokesperson confirmed in early December that the speaker continues to support such a policy though he is “not yet familiar with the specifics of legislation that has been filed.”

In its present form, HB 30 would also expand public access to information about police misconduct in general and to videos of jail deaths or shootings by police, along with creating a public database of reports related to such shootings, among other provisions.

Next year’s legislative session, to begin in January, will mark the fourth time that Moody has tried to close the dead suspect loophole. In past sessions, discussion of his bills centered on prominent cases in which Texans were shot on their porches, tased in the back of squad cars, or left to perish in jails. Moody nearly succeeded in closing the loophole in 2019—with help from a contingent of small-government Republicans open to criminal justice reform—but he was derailed by a last-minute, scorched-earth campaign from the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT), the state’s largest police union, in a fight that left the El Paso lawmaker and the lobbying powerhouse as bitter adversaries.

Transparency advocates hope that Uvalde will make the difference this time around, but they won’t be getting any help from CLEAT. “Just like it has been in the past, this is a George Soros-funded fishing expedition that seeks to tear down our profession by false innuendo,” said CLEAT spokesperson Jennifer Szimanski, homing in on parts of the bill dealing with police personnel files. “We’ll definitely be fighting this piece of legislation.”

Szimanski—who also said of the bill: “This is ‘defund the police’”—added that there was likely no path for her group and Moody to discuss any compromise because “the author of this bill has not contacted us since 2019.”

Moody countered that his bill is “properly tailored” to only target information in police personnel files necessary to shed light on misconduct and specific incidents including ones involving dead suspects. “This is a serious policy. It’s not political grandstanding, but the people of that organization are completely disingenuous,” he said of CLEAT, adding that he has not received backing from George Soros, the Hungarian-American billionaire—often used as a bogeyman by the political right—who’s funded criminal justice reform efforts in recent years.

In addition to overcoming CLEAT, Moody would also need acquiescence from archconservative Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who controls the state Senate, and freshly reelected Governor Greg Abbott, who wields the veto pen and may harbor presidential ambitions. Neither responded to requests for comment for this article.

See here and here for some background. As I’ve said before on things like marijuana reform and expanded gambling, nothing will happen unless Dan Patrick changes his mind. We had our chance to do something about that, but we failed. Rep. Moody may be able to get a bill through the House again, but it will never make it through the Senate. It’s still worth the effort because of the stakes involved, but this is a long-term project. There’s no other way.

The rest of the story is about the history of this loophole, which has only existed since the late 90s – things were actually much better before then. Worth your time to read, I had no idea about it. For what it’s worth, Rep. Moody will surely have at least one cranky and pissed off ally in the Senate, and maybe that will have some effect.

Texas state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, lambasted the emergency response to the Robb Elementary School shooting as “the worst response to a mass shooting in our nation’s history” during a congressional hearing Thursday.

“It was system failure, it was cowardice,” Gutierrez said. He joined family members and supporters of the victims in calling for stronger federal action to prevent gun violence.

Gutierrez, a Democrat, made the remarks during a hearing of the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security that was focused on bipartisan legislative solutions to gun violence. But bipartisanship was hardly present as Democrats continued to point out what they called common-sense gun policy and Republicans accused them of trying to take away constitutional gun rights.

[…]

Congress passed a bipartisan law spearheaded by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting — the first major gun safety law in decades. The law increased funding for mental health resources, barred convicted violent domestic partners from buying guns, created grants for states implementing red flag laws and set money for state crisis intervention programs.

But Gutierrez criticized the bipartisan gun law as lacking basic provisions that would have stopped the massacre. He was angered that the Senate stripped a provision raising the minimum age to buy assault weapons to 21.

“The fact is in Texas you got to be 21 to buy a handgun, 21 to buy a beer, 21 to buy a pack of cigarettes, but you can be 18 and buy an AR-15, and that’s what happened here because this governor allowed it,” Gutierrez told reporters during a recess in the hearing. “It’s time for change, not just in Texas but throughout this country.”

As we know, Sen. Gutierrez plans to be a pain in the Senate’s ass about Uvalde and gun control. I’m sure he’d be persuaded to add this item to his list.

Kirk Watson again elected Mayor of Austin

Dec 15th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Party like it’s 1997, y’all.

Kirk Watson

In a tight race, Austin voters picked a familiar face Tuesday night to guide the capital city over the next two years as the region deals with skyrocketing housing costs and explosive growth.

In a contest between two Austin Democrats, former state Sen. Kirk Watson narrowly prevailed over state Rep. Celia Israel and retook the seat he last held more than two decades ago.

“I’m as grateful today as I was 25 years ago to be entrusted with this job,” Watson said at a watch party in Austin’s Rosedale neighborhood. “It means a lot to me to know that Austinites in every part of this city still want the kind of leadership that I’ve tried to deliver both as mayor and as your state senator.”

Miles away at a watch party in North Austin, Israel conceded to Watson — while ruefully acknowledging Austin’s growing unaffordability, the race’s defining issue.

“Our campaign was founded on a very simple idea: The people who built this city and who continue to build this city, who dress our wounds, who teach our kids, who drive our buses, who answer our 911 calls … they deserve the respect and the compassion that a progressive city can give them,” Israel said.

The race to lead Texas’ fourth-largest city was a squeaker. Israel beat Watson in Travis County, which contains almost all of Austin, by 17 votes. But Watson built a lead of 881 votes in Williamson County and 22 votes in Hays County, according to unofficial election night tallies — delivering him the mayor’s seat.

[…]

On top of the city’s housing crisis, Watson will have to deal with the state’s Republican leadership, which has grown increasingly hostile to Austin and Texas’ bluer urban areas.

Within the past two years, Austin cut the city’s police spending in the wake of George Floyd protests and rolled back a ban on homeless encampments in public areas — moves that Republican lawmakers in the Texas Legislature later rebuked by passing new laws reining in those measures and restricting other major Texas cities from following in Austin’s steps.

During the campaign, Watson pitched himself as a veteran of the Legislature who could build a working relationship with state GOP leaders — or at least avoid their unfriendly gaze.

“When we choose to work together, we will heal old divides and solve old problems,” Watson said Tuesday night. “When we choose to work together, Austin’s future will get brighter and brighter and brighter, I promise.”

Congratulations to Mayor-elect Watson, who at least should have a pretty good idea of what he’s getting into. I liked both candidates but might have had a preference for Celia Israel, as I tend to see the big city Mayors as potential future statewide candidates (we need to get them from somewhere), which was Watson himself in 2002. Maybe she’ll give that some thought for next go-round anyway. As for dealing with the Lege, I’m pretty sure not having to put up with Dan Patrick’s bullshit was a proximate cause of Watson’s departure for UH a couple of years ago in the first place. Speaking as a resident of a city with a former Legislator as its Mayor and another who hopes to succeed him, I hope that sentiment works for you, but I’d keep my expectations very, very modest. The Austin Chronicle has more.

Abbott bans TikTok on state-issued devices

Dec 9th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Honestly, I’m fine with this.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday a ban of the popular app TikTok from all government-issued devices.

In a news release, the Republican said the Chinese government could use the app to access critical U.S. infrastructure and information.

“TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices — including when, where, and how they conduct internet activity — and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government,” Abbott told state agency heads in a letter Wednesday.

TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance.

On Wednesday, Abbott also sent a letter to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan telling them “the Executive Branch will stand ready to assist in the codification and implementation of any cybersecurity reforms that may be deemed necessary.”

Abbott’s directive comes the same day as the state of Indiana filed a lawsuit against TikTok.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, also a Republican, claimed the app exposes minors to mature content and that it has deceived its “users about China’s access to their data,” The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Indiana’s lawsuit is the first against the app filed by a U.S. state. But a growing list of Republican governors have banned the app from government-issued devices. This week, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan issued his directive and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster blocked the app from government electronics. Late last month, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem did the same.

From a cybersecurity perspective, there are valid reasons to assess TikTok as a higher-risk application. Indeed, as the story notes, the FBI raised national security concerns about it. It is also not unreasonable to declare that TikTok has limited value in the workplace and thus does not belong on workplace phones and computers. I’d make an exception for people whose jobs make use of social media – if the state of Texas doesn’t have any employees with that kind of job description, they really should – but banning it for others makes sense. One could also reasonably assess it differently – there’s always judgment in these matters. Speaking as someone whose workplace also blocks TikTok, I don’t see this as outside the mainstream.

Of greater interest to me is the note about implementing cybersecurity reforms. Given the recent ransomware attacks on state networks, as well as on various municipal governments, I’d say it’s long overdue. As with anything Greg Abbott says, the devil is in the details and I’ll believe it when I see it, but if this is a serious effort and it comes with the proper allocation of resources, it’s all to the good. The Trib and the Chron have more.

Time once again for the biennial paean to the gambling lobby

Nov 30th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Such a weird tradition we observe.

Photo by Joel Kramer via Flickr creative commons

Even before Gov. Greg Abbott declared in October that he’s willing to consider expanded gaming options in Texas, that industry was trying to improve its odds in the state by doling out massive campaign donations and building an army of lobbyists in preparation for the legislative session that begins in January.

More than 300 lobbyists are now registered in Texas to work on gambling issues, according to state records, led by Las Vegas Sands, which added another just last week and now has 72 — the most lobbyists in Texas for any single group or business.

They are hardly alone. A newly created Sports Betting Alliance, BetMGM, Caesar’s, Boyd Gaming and Landry’s Entertainment, along with sports gaming companies like FanDuel and DraftKings, have all loaded up in what many in the gaming industry see as their best chance in decades to do business in Texas.

One reason for that is Abbott’s newfound willingness to listen to gambling options in Texas. In October, he told Hearst Newspapers through a spokeswoman that he’s prepared to listen to proposals.

“We don’t want slot machines at every corner store, we don’t want Texans to be losing money that they need for everyday expenses, and we don’t want any type of crime that could be associated with gaming,” said Renae Eze, Abbott’s press secretary. “But, if there is a way to create a very professional entertainment option for Texans, Gov. Abbott would take a look at it.”

While far from an all-out green light, it’s a world away from where Abbott has been in the past. In 2015, Abbott said he “wholeheartedly” supported the state’s strict laws against expanding gaming, essentially icing any attempts to pursue casinos or online sports betting options that have proliferated in other states over the past four years.

[…]

But Abbott hasn’t been the only stumbling block in Texas. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Houston-area Republican who oversees the state Senate, made clear in 2021 that expanded gaming was not going to see “the light of day.” He said then it just didn’t have the votes in a body dominated by Republicans.

As the leader of the Senate, Patrick has wide power to stop legislation from getting to the floor of the chamber to be debated or voted on.

But the industry continues to direct campaign donations to Patrick and others in Texas to improve their chances when the Legislature meets.

I’ve done many of these before, as you can infer from the title, so I don’t care to belabor this. The smart bet continues to be for nothing of substance to happen. This is partly because of Dan Patrick, and partly because I don’t think there’s enough Republican support to get the two-thirds majority in each chamber that a Constitutional amendment requires. As you know, I’m generally ambivalent about all this – I have no problem with allowing adults who want to gamble the legal opportunity to do so, but I also have no love for the Big Gambling business and lobby – but the news that Patrick’s campaign keeps getting fat with gambling money despite his rigid opposition to them – I guess they think they can eventually soften him up – inclines me to root for another expensive and humiliating defeat for them. At least then I’d get to write the same blog post in two years’ time, and what could be more important than my need for content?

On comparing counties from 2018 to 2022

Nov 19th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I started with this.

Voters in counties across Texas chose GOP leaders over Democrats at a higher rate than they did four years ago, a Dallas Morning News analysis shows.

The findings, based on data as of noon on Wednesday, reflect that an overwhelming number of counties — 205 out of 254 — favored Republicans. Those counties turned more Republican by an average of 2.87 percentage points, the data showed.

The analysis also showed urban areas are shifting toward Democrats, part of a continuing trend across the country.

All five North Texas counties experiencing population growth saw an uptick in the percentage of votes for Democrats, the analysis showed.

Collin County, a Republican stronghold anchored by suburban women, shifted its share of votes to Democrats by 4.45 percentage points compared to 2018, according to the analysis.

Tarrant County, another GOP-dominated region that has seen an increasing number of Democratic votes, increased support for Democrats by 3.04 percentage points; Dallas County, by 3.23 percentage points; Denton by 3.53; and Rockwall by 3.5, the analysis showed.

Political experts who reviewed The Dallas Morning News’ findings weren’t surprised by the shift. Though slow-moving, the changes can make an impact over the next decade, they said.

“We shouldn’t delude ourselves in any way that the Democrats are about to take over,” said James Riddlesperger, a professor of political science at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. “At the same time, election coalitions are dynamic and what we’re seeing is the competitiveness of the two political parties in this area is becoming more apparent.”

This Trib story has more of the same. And it set me off to do the thing I usually do, which is put a bunch of numbers into a spreadsheet and then try to make something interesting happen with them. If you were to do the same – copy county-by-county election results for the Governor’s races from 2018 and 2022 into Excel – you’d see what these stories say, which is that Beto generally did better than Lupe Valdez in the large urban and suburban counties, and generally did worse elsewhere. You’d also notice that the reverse is true, which is that Abbott did worse where Beto did better and vice versa. You might think this means something about maybe Dems closing the gap in some places, and maybe that’s true, but if so then you have to contend with the fact that the likes of Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton did better overall than they had done four years ago, and as such there’s a limit to this kind of analysis.

I got to that point and I just didn’t feel like putting more time into it. I’ll spend plenty of time looking at district-level numbers, to see how the assumptions of the 2021 redistricting have held up so far and where opportunities and dangers for 2024 might lurk. Much of that data won’t be available until after the next Legislative session begins, though some county data should be there after the votes are canvassed. But statewide, I think we already know what we might want to know, at least at a macro level. We Dems didn’t build on 2018. There’s nothing to suggest that the trends we saw over the last decade have reversed, but there was nothing to see this year to suggest that we have moved the ball any farther than it would have moved on its own. So I’m going to put my effort into places where I hope to find things to work for in the next election or two. I promise I’ll throw numbers at you in those posts.

DMN\UT-Tyler: Abbott 50, Beto 44 (LV) – Abbott 47, Beto 44 (RV)

Nov 1st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Pick your preference.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott holds a 6 percentage point lead over Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke as the race to the Nov. 8 election grinds toward the finish line, a poll released Sunday by the University of Texas at Tyler shows.

The poll of 973 likely voters contacted randomly Oct. 17-24 shows Abbott ahead 50% to O’Rourke’s 44%. When the field is expanded to registered voters, 1,330 of whom were contacted, Abbott’s lead shrinks to just 3 points.

The results differ from a recent poll by the University of Texas Politics project that showed the incumbent with a strong 11-point edge, and with one conducted by Beacon Research that was commissioned by the Democratic Policy Institute that showed just a 3-point difference in Abbott’s favor. But UT-Tyler’s findings are in line with several non-aligned polls conducted in late summer. The margin of error for the “likely voters” breakout is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Moving down the ballot, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was leading Democratic challenger Mike Collier 44%-35% among likely voters and Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton was ahead of Democrat Rochelle Garza 42%-38%. Like Abbott, Patrick and Paxton are seeking third terms.

The poll’s data is here. I appreciate the fact that they gave us both a likely voter and registered voter result – this pollster has done that in the past, but it wasn’t always presented in a way that made it clear. I also appreciate that this story mentioned other polls and where this one fit in rather than rely on the ridiculous language of this candidate or that losing or gaining ground when comparing one isolated poll result to another, different, poll result. Having context is always better than not having context.

These numbers look reasonable enough. Both Beto and Abbott get about the same amount of support from their own voters, with independents split evenly. Beto does well among Black (78-16) and Latino (59-36) voters while Abbott crushes with white voters (63-31). Of interest in the AG race, one possible reason for Rochelle Garza to be the top performer, is that she is at 47-33 among indies, a significant difference from the Governor’s race. That’s of a small sample of a single poll, so don’t put any actual weight on it, but I’ll file it away for later if it becomes relevant. Even with their LV sample, there were a lot of “don’t know” responses in the Lite Gov and AG races, so who knows what that means. I don’t know if we’re expecting any more poll data at this point – now that we have actual votes, polling becomes of less value – but for what it’s worth, this is where we are.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that in their September poll, which was of registered voters, Abbott was leading 47-38.

UT/Texas Politics Project: Abbott 54, Beto 43

Oct 22nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Not great.

With in-person early voting set to begin in Texas on October 24, the latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll finds Gov. Greg Abbott leading Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke in the gubernatorial race, 54%-43%, among Texans likely to vote in the 2022 election. While more than half of Republican voters say immigration and border security is the most important issue area informing their vote, Democratic voters’ attention is divided among a list of several issues, topped by abortion.

The poll surveyed 1,200 self-declared registered voters using the internet from October 7-17 and has a margin of error of +/- 2.83 for the full sample. From among this overall sample, likely voters were defined as those respondents who indicated that they have voted in every election in the past 2-3 years; or those respondents who rated their likelihood to vote in the November elections on a 10-point scale as a 9 or a 10. This likely voter screen yielded a pool of 883 likely voters, with a margin of error of +/- 3.3% for the full likely voter sample.

Beyond the two major party candidates, Green Party Candidate Delilah Barrios and the Libertarian Party’s Mark Tippets each earned 1% support while 2% preferred an unspecified “someone else.”

[…]

The results among likely voters found Republican candidates maintaining wide leads in the five other major races for statewide office. In all of the trial ballots, including for governor, undecided, but likely, voters were asked whom they would choose if forced to make a decision. All results for the trial ballots report the results of the initial question combined with this “forced” response. (The poll summary reports the share of voters who expressed no preference in the initial question in each race.)

Lt. Governor. Incumbent Dan Patrick led Democratic challenger Mike Collier, 51%-36%, in their rematch of the 2018 race.

Attorney General. Incumbent Republican Ken Paxton leads Democrat Rochelle Garza 51%-37%.

Comptroller of Public Accounts. Two-term incumbent Republican Glenn Hegar leads Democrat Janet Dudding 47%-35%.

Agriculture Commissioner. Incumbent Sid Miller leads Democrat Susan Hayes 51%-39%.

Land Commissioner. Republican State Senator Dawn Buckingham leads Democrat Jay Kleberg 47%-36%.

The generic ballots for the U.S. House of Representatives and the Texas legislature also revealed continuing advantages for Republican candidates: Republicans lead 53%-44% in the generic ballot for the U.S. House of Representatives, and 53%-42% for the Texas legislature.

This is upsetting mostly because the August poll had Abbott up by only five and had shown a slight but steady drift towards Beto over time. The one caveat here is that the previous polls were of the full registered voters sample, and this is of “likely voters”, which is about three-fourths of the original. It’s not a direct comparison as a result, though of course the pollsters will have done what they think is best to reflect the electorate accurately. If they provided numbers for the full sample in October, I didn’t see them.

The October poll data is here and the August data is here. The underlying atmosphere has not changed in any significant way. Biden’s approval was 40-52 in August and it’s 39-52 in October (the approval numbers are still based on the full sample in each case). Abbott went from 46-44 to 47-44. Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton were actually slightly worse in October, going from 38-37 to 37-39 for Patrick and from 37-38 to 36-39 for Paxton. Either a lot of people changed their minds or that likely voter screen is a big difference maker.

I’ve put my faith in the “the screen is too tight” beliefs before without much success, so I don’t want to go overboard here. If these numbers are accurate, they don’t bode well for Harris County either, suggesting Beto might end up with 52 to 54 percent. At the high end, as I’ve said before, I’d still feel pretty confident about Harris County Dems. Less than that, and I would expect Republicans to win at least some races. Maybe this year is another inflection point, and maybe the dip in the gap between Harris and the state that we saw in 2020 following years of games will not be a one off. No way to know until we start to see some real numbers.

The poll also includes this demographic breakdown in the vote:

White/Anglo: Abbott 64%, O’Rourke 32%
Hispanic: O’Rourke 48%, Abbott 48%
Black: O’Rourke 86%, Abbott 11%

Those are the strongest numbers Beto has had for Black voters in awhile. They’re not great for white voters – compare to the Marist poll, for example, which had Abbott leading Beto by a much smaller 57-37 margin among those voters – and this is another poll that has Beto with no advantage among Hispanic voters; note that was also true in the Marist poll. We saw a great disparity in Hispanic preferences in the 2020 polls, and in the end the ones that showed a smaller lead for Dems were more accurate. I don’t know what else to say here.

I will add that we saw one more poll result released yesterday, from the Democratic AG’s Association (DAGA), which claimed Rochelle Garza was trailing Ken Paxton by two points, 48-46. That linked poll memo is the entire thing – no Beto/Abbott numbers, no Biden approval numbers, no crosstabs, nothing – and it’s basically an internal poll, so maintain a higher level of skepticism for this one. I will note the following from the memo:

The survey was conducted between October 12th-16th using live calls to landlines, SMS text-to-web and live calls to cell phones, and an online panel. The sample includes 879 registered voters and is weighted to reflect a likely 2022 Texas general electorate. The margin of error is +/- 3.24% at a 95% confidence interval.

The results of the survey show that when asked who they’ll vote for as Attorney General and Texas undecided voters are allocated to a candidate, Paxton is only ahead by 2 points, within the margin of error for the survey, landing at 48% Paxton, 46% Garza, with 6% of voters say they’re voting for Libertarian Mark Ash in the AG race.

Another “likely voter” result, though with less detail. They also seemingly pushed the initial non-respondents into picking a side, which I had initially frowned at but I guess if the UT/TPP folks can do it, they can too.

Endorsement watch: Of course it’s Collier

Oct 10th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The Chron writes one of the longest and most effusive endorsements I’ve ever seen for Democratic Lt. Governor candidate Mike Collier.

Mike Collier

Mike Collier won’t just promise to lower your property tax bill, he’ll tell you how he’s going to do it. And if you don’t quite understand all the math and jargony tax code talk, the affable certified public accountant and longtime consultant for investors in the energy industry will make it real simple with a few water bottles or any other props within his grasp.

That’s what he did during his screening with the editorial board last week. When our furrowed brows apparently belied some confusion about the particular loophole he claims is the holy grail to Texas tax relief, the candidate for lieutenant governor grabbed one water bottle that represented a skyscraper in a thriving, highly developed part of town that’s worth $500 million, and another bottle that represented a skyscraper in a run-down, lower-end part of town a few miles away that’s worth $200 million.

“This is full of people paying high rents and is very valuable property,” he says lifting one water bottle. “This is very different,” he says lifting the other, “It’s in a part of town where the values are not nearly as high, it’s only half full and it’s less valuable.”

You’d think the corporate owners of the more expensive property would have to pay more taxes, as homeowners do when our houses are appraised higher. But no. The owner just gets his lawyers to go down to the appraisal district and argue that both skyscrapers should be taxed at a similar level.

Astonishingly, they’ll likely get away with it, just like many other owners of large commercial and industrial properties across the state who each year deprive the state coffers of billions — Collier estimates it’s at least $7.5 billion. Homeowners have to make that up in our tax bills. Why? Because of a simple loophole that lawmakers could fix if they wanted but won’t: the state of Texas doesn’t define what a “comparable” property is.

So the rich guys get to claim it’s whatever they say it is and the apraisal districts often don’t have the time or high-power lawyers to fight them. Collier says he first started studying the problem around 2011 when he saw lawmakers cutting public education by $5 billion and yet his property taxes kept going up.

“I smelled a rat,” he told us.

Collier says he’d pass a few simple tweaks to close the loophole: define “comparable” by such things as location, age, utility. Pass a mandatory sales price disclosure, like most states have. And require everybody to pay their own legal fees in litigation rather than only losers paying.

That isn’t the only way Collier plans to get ordinary Texans some tax relief, but it’s one his favorite ways and one of our favorite reasons for endorsing the Democrat perhaps more enthusiastically than any other candidate on the ballot.

It goes on from there and you should read it. What’s amazing is how much of this very long endorsement is about Collier and his ideas and plans, and how relatively little is about Dan Patrick, despite how easy it would be to write a couple thousand words about why no decent person should think about voting for Dan Patrick. Being good enough and exciting enough to overcome the urge to trash Dan Patrick – that’s really saying something. Let’s hope enough people are listening.

In other endorsements, the Chron recommended Democrat Jon Haire in CD36, partly because Haire is a mensch and partly because incumbent Rep. Brian Babin is an insurrectionist. They also endorse State Rep. Christina Morales for re-election in HD145. As a constituent of hers, I concur.

CCA tells Paxton again that he’s not the supreme prosecutor

Sep 30th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Good, but this isn’t over. It just means that the fight will have shifted.

Best mugshot ever

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s last-ditch attempt to regain the power of his office to unilaterally prosecute election cases was rejected by the state’s highest criminal court Wednesday.

The Court of Criminal Appeals instead upheld its previous ruling that says that the attorney general must get permission from local county prosecutors to pursue cases on issues like voter fraud. Paxton had been fighting to overturn that ruling as the issue of prosecuting election fraud has become fraught in recent years. Paxton sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and has aggressively pursued individual cases of fraud, outraging some voting rights advocates who see the punishments as too harsh for people who made honest mistakes.

Last December, eight of the nine members on the all-GOP court struck down a law that previously allowed Paxton’s office to take on those cases without local consent. The court said the law violated the separation-of-powers clause in the Texas Constitution.

In the aftermath, Paxton, joined by Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, led a political push to get the court to reconsider its decision, warning that it would allow cases of fraud to go unpunished. His office filed a motion asking the Court of Criminal Appeals to rehear the case, vacate its previous opinion and affirm an appellate court’s judgment, which was in his favor.

The court’s decision Wednesday came with no explanation, though one judge wrote a concurring opinion.

“I still agree with our original decision handed down in December, when we recognized that the specific powers given to the Attorney General by the Texas Constitution do not include the ability to initiate criminal proceedings—even in cases involving alleged violations of the Election Code,” Judge Scott Walker wrote.

Two judges dissented in the case.

See here and here for the background. It’s good that the CCA was able to withstand the political pressure to change their ruling to something that sated Paxton’s blood lust, but that pressure isn’t going to just dissipate on its own. The usual suspects are now agitating for the Legislature to step in and change the law. As far as I can tell, the CCA made its ruling not on statutory grounds but on Constitutional grounds (*), and as such it would take a Constitutional amendment to change this. Which is good news because the Lege won’t have a two-thirds Republican majority in both chambers, which would be needed for this to happen. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try it anyway, and if it comes back through the courts again on those grounds, who knows what could happen. You know what the solution to this is, I don’t have to tell you. The Chron has more.

(*) Noted in some of the coverage of this is that the same ruling means that Paxton couldn’t unilaterally decide to pursue prosecutions of any abortion “crimes” he likes, either. The Lege is sure to work on bills that would allow DAs from other counties to prosecute such charges in the event that the DA of the county in question chooses not to, so that may not make much difference. That same logic might also apply to whatever “vote fraud” charges these guys want to include, too.

Hispanic Policy Foundation: Abbott 51, Beto 44

Sep 28th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

One more poll to look at.

There’s an old adage that says the more things change, the more they stay the same. And according to our new poll, that applies to politics in Texas as well, as support for Republicans remains strong across the board heading into the November elections.

“Texas Decides” is a joint effort between the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation (THPF) and TEGNA Texas stations WFAA, KHOU, KENS and KVUE. It draws on a survey of 1,172 likely Texas voters that was taken between September 6, 2022, and September 15, 2022. It has a confidence interval of +/- 2.9%. The report reviewed the vote intention for the November 2022 Texas elections.

The election will be held November 8. Early voting starts October 24.

Part 1 of this poll, released here, takes a look at the major statewide races across Texas in the coming election. Parts 2 and 3, which will be released later this week, will respectively focus on the Hispanic population’s opinions of the candidates and on culture war issues.

The poll found that Republican incumbent Greg Abbott leads Democrat Beto O’Rourke by seven points (51% to 44%) among likely voters. Among most likely (almost certain) voters, the lead grows to 10 points (53% to 43%). Just 1% of voters in both categories (likely/most likely) says they’ll vote for Libertarian Mark Tippetts and Green Party candidate Delilah Barrios.

“Gov. Abbott’s strength among rural and Anglo voters continues to bolster his intransigent structural support in the 2022 race for Texas Governor,” THPF CEO Jason Villalba says of the poll’s results. “While O’Rourke has shown himself to be a worthy and hard-working adversary, unless there is a marked shift in the composition of the November electorate, Governor Abbott will remain the political and thought leader of Texas politics. Only new voters will be able to shift the tide.”

Perhaps the poll’s most significant finding in the gubernatorial race is the fact that voters seem hardened in their choices, with little room for movement come November. In fact, 95% of all likely voters who say they’ll vote for Abbott tell us they are “certain” about their vote choice. On the other side, 94% of all likely voters who will back O’Rourke say they are “certain” about that choice.

And when you break down support among race, Abbott holds a nearly two-to-one advantage over O’Rourke among white voters, with the incumbent being a 63% choice to his challenger’s 33%. O’Rourke has a strong advantage with Black voters, however, up 79% to Abbott’s 16%. The support margin is closer among Hispanic voters, with 53% intending to vote for O’Rourke and 39% for Abbott.

Poll data is here. In April, this pollster had the race at 50-42 for Abbott. Since I made such a big deal about it the last time I blogged about a poll, this one has a partisan split of 43 GOP, 41 Dem, 14 Indie, 2 “other”. Other results from this poll:

Dan Patrick 48, Mike Collier 42
Ken Paxton 47, Rochelle Garza 42
Dawn Buckingham 46, Jay Kleberg 38
Sid Miller 48, Susan Hays 41
Wayne Christian 44, Luke Warford 37

No love for the Comptroller’s race, I guess. As I have said before, I don’t care for the distinction between “likely” voters and “super duper extra likely” voters, but you do you. This poll shows very little change between April and now, which is to say pre-Dobbs and post-Dobbs, so either not much has changed in the Texas landscape since then, or something has changed but pollsters other than the UT/Texas Politics Project aren’t picking it up. I’m just going to leave it there.

Spectrum News/Siena College: Abbott 50, Beto 43

Sep 23rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

A new pollster enters the chat.

Less than two months from Election Day, Republican Governor Greg Abbott has a seven-point, 50-43%, lead over Democratic challenger, former Congressman, Beto O’Rourke. In the race for Lieutenant Governor, incumbent Republican Dan Patrick is up by nine points, 49-40%, over Democratic challenger Mike Collier. In the race for state Attorney General, incumbent Republican Ken Paxton has a five-point advantage, 47-42%, over Democratic challenger Rochelle Garza according to a new Spectrum News/Siena College (SCRI) poll of likely Texas voters released today.

Abbott has a 47-46% favorability rating, while O’Rourke has a negative 39-52% favorability rating. Patrick has a negative 33-36% favorability rating, compared to Collier’s 13-12% favorability rating. Paxton has a negative 29-41% favorability rating while Garza, like Collier is unknown to about threequarters of Texas likely voters, and has a 13-12% favorability rating.

“Governor Abbott, who won a landslide thirteen-point race against Democratic challenger Lupe Valdez four years ago, has a seven-point lead with over six weeks until Election Day. Abbott has the support of 95% of Republicans and O’Rourke has the support of 93% of Democrats, while independents tilt toward Abbott by one point,” said Don Levy, SCRI’s Director. “White voters favor Abbott by over two-to-one, 64-31%, while Black voters prefer O’Rourke 79-10% and a majority of Latinos, 58-36%, plan to vote for O’Rourke.”

The crosstabs are here. The headline on the Chron story for this refers to Abbott’s lead “widening”, which I object to on the grounds that there’s no earlier Spectrum/Siena poll to compare this one to. I don’t like comparing one pollster’s poll to another’s because they all do slightly different things. Nobody asks me these about these things, so here we are.

Now, if we want to do comparisons to other polls, I will note that this one actually has solid numbers for Beto in terms of support from Dems, as well as from Black and Latino voters. Compare to the DMN/UT-Tyler poll from earlier this week that had Beto only winning Dems by a 77-12 margin, and multiple polls saying that Abbott is getting upward of 15% of Black voters. Why is the overall result not so great if these subsamples are so good? My guess would be that this sample’s partisan distribution is a bit weird – 27% Dem, 34% GOP, 32% Indie/Other (the remaining 8% are a mystery). The DMN/UT-Tyler poll had those distributed as 33-40-27, and in general I expect the Dem share to be higher than the Indie share.

Having written that, I decided I had to go back through earlier poll results to do a comparison. With one exception, my expectation matched the data:

UT-TPP: Dem 42, GOP 48, Indie 10

Echelon: Dem 35, GOP 43, Indie 20

UH/Hobby Center: Dem 41, GOP 46, Indie/unsure 13

Quinnipiac: Dem 24, GOP 30, Indie 36, Other 10

I went back as far as June. Not all of the recent results I’ve blogged about included partisan breakdown data that I could find. Color me surprised at some of the ranges here. You can make of all this what you will, it’s what I noticed.

DMN/UT-Tyler: Abbott 47, Beto 38

Sep 20th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Insert shrug emoji here, and insert link to the unreadable DMN story here. I’ll give you the main results of interest and then a few comments after that.

Abbott 47, Beto 38
Patrick 39, Collier 28
Paxton 37, Garza 30
State House GOP 50, Dem 48

The August poll had Abbott up 46-39. As I said in other posts while resisting the urge to attribute “momentum” to Beto, I find the claim that a one point shift for each candidate represents a “gain” for Abbott to be a bit tendentious. Like with other polls, the subsample that I tend to look at when considering these results is the partisan subsamples. Here, Beto wins Democrats by a lethargic 77-12, with Abbott at 85-8 among Republicans. It was 81-12 for Beto in August, with Abbott at the same level among Rs. I find the claim that more than ten percent of people who would credibly self-ID as Democrats support Greg Abbott to be implausible. I’ll just leave it at that.

I know that the Lite Guv and AG races are lower profile, but as I’ve said before, poll results this late in the cycle that can’t give me a better idea of how many people will vote for “the Republican” versus “the Democrat” are not ones I put much weight in. It is possible to do better than that. It’s especially humorous to me given the near-100% response rate for the Texas House race. The conjunction of these things doesn’t make much sense to me.

One last thing, in their suite of issues questions, this poll finds slightly less support overall for abortion rights, as approval for overturning Roe v Wade went from 42-49 in August to 46-46 in September, while the question on abortion being mostly or completely illegal versus mostly or completely legal went from 44-55 in August to 49-50 in September. This stands at odds with other recent polling. Which doesn’t mean it’s wrong, just that I will cast a skeptical eye at it. The claim I saw in the snippet of the story I could read that this had to do with Abbott doing a lot of advertising strikes me as not very likely. Polls can be weird, which is why we try to look at them in bunches where possible.

UPDATE: I missed on first reading that this was a poll of registered voters, not “likely” voters, which is what all of the other recent polls have been. That explains the lower response numbers in the Lt. Governor and AG races. With their likely voter screen, this poll has Abbott up 50-39. My stated concerns about the likelihood of so many self-described Democrats saying they will vote for Greg Abbott remain.

UT/Texas Politics Project poll: Abbott 45, Beto 40

Sep 15th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Feels kind of familiar.

Gov. Greg Abbott leads his Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke by 5 percentage points, according to a new poll from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

The survey found that Abbott received 45% of support among registered voters, while 40% supported O’Rourke and 4% supported third-party candidates. Three percent of respondents named “Someone else” as their choice, and 8% said they have not thought about the race enough to have an opinion.

The result is almost identical to the margin from when the pollsters last surveyed the race in June, finding Abbott ahead of O’Rourke 45% to 39%.

The latest survey also gave Republican incumbents single-digit leads in two other statewide races. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick led Democrat Mike Collier by 7 points, and Attorney General Ken Paxton registered a 5-point advantage over Democrat Rochelle Garza. More voters remain undecided in those contests than in the gubernatorial election — 20% in the lieutenant governor’s race and 21% in the attorney general one.

See here for the previous UT/TPP poll, and here for the pollsters’ report. The Lite Guv and AG numbers are 39-32 for Patrick and 38-33 for Paxton, and I just don’t give much weight to results that have such high numbers of non-responses. Joe Biden clocks in with a 40-52 approval rating, up from 35-55 in June. Abbott was at 46-44, up from 43-46 in June.

You may look at this and conclude that there’s been no noticeable boost in Democratic fortunes since the Dobbs ruling. Based just on post-Dobbs polls (minus that Echelon poll) that may be correct. I will note, however, that Abbott has slowly been losing ground to Beto in this particular poll over time:

February: Abbott 47-37
April: Abbott 48-37
June: Abbott 45-39
August: Abbott 45-40

I will also note that this poll, like previous ones, has generic US House/Texas House questions. If you look in the crosstabs for this poll (questions 21 and 22), those numbers are 47-43 and 46-43 in favor of Republicans, respectively. It was 46-41 GOP for both in June, and 48-39 (Congress) and 47-39 (The Lege) for the GOP in April. So while maybe not a sharp turn, there has been a gradual bend all along.

UH-TSU Texas Trends poll: Abbott 49-Beto 42, and Hidalgo 52-Mealer 42

Sep 10th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

From their webpage, scroll down to Report 1 and Report 2:

In the race for governor, Republican Greg Abbott leads Democrat Beto O’Rourke by 7% among likely voters, 49% to 42%, with 7% undecided and 1% intending to vote for Libertarian Mark Tippetts and 1% for the Green Party’s Delilah Barrios.

Abbott holds a 29% (61% to 32%) lead over O’Rourke among white voters while O’Rourke holds a 57% (72% to 15%) lead over Abbott among Black voters, a 15% (53% to 38%) lead among Latino voters and a 9% (48% to 39%) lead among those voters with a mixed or other ethnic/racial identity.

Abbott and O’Rourke are deadlocked at 45% among women voters, while Abbott enjoys an 18% (55% to 37%) lead over O’Rourke among men.

In the race for lieutenant governor, Republican Dan Patrick leads Democrat Mike Collier by 6% among likely voters, 49% to 43%, with 8% undecided.

Patrick holds a 26% (60% to 34%) lead over Collier among white voters while Collier holds a 63% (78% to 15%) lead over Patrick among Black voters, a 14% (51% to 37%) lead among Latino voters and a 5% (44% to 39%) lead among those voters with a mixed or other ethnic/racial identity.

Collier holds a narrow 1% lead over Patrick among women voters (46% to 45%) while Patrick enjoys a 15% (54% to 39%) lead over Collier among men.

In the race for attorney general, Republican Ken Paxton leads Democrat Rochelle Mercedes Garza by 3% among likely voters, 45% to 42%, with 10% undecided and 3% intending to vote for Libertarian Mark Ash.

Paxton holds a 23% (56% to 33%) lead over Garza among white voters while Garza holds a 61% (75% to 14%) lead over Paxton among Black voters, a 16% (51% to 35%) lead among Latino voters, and a 15% (45% to 30%) lead among those voters with a mixed or other ethnic/racial identity.

Garza holds a 5% lead over Paxton among women voters (45% to 40%) while Paxton enjoys a 13% (51% to 38%) lead over Garza among men.

In addition to the statewide election analysis of likely voters, the 2022 Texas Trends survey looks at the race for county judge in Harris County, the nation’s third largest county and Texas’ largest, with a population of more than 4.5 million residents.

While the non-election related reports we will subsequently release focus on all Harris County adults aged 18 years and older, this county-specific election report is based on the analysis of a sample population of 195 likely voters, with a confidence interval of +/- 7.0%. Given the small size of this population, caution should be used in interpreting the results due to the comparatively large margin of errors surrounding all of the estimates.

This county-specific election study is presented as the second report in the overall series, and it includes the preferences for candidates running for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general in addition to county judge.

The vote intention in the race for Harris County judge is 52% for Democrat Lina Hidalgo and 42% for Republican Alexandra del Moral Mealer, with 6% undecided.

This 10 percentage point lead by Hidalgo is notably higher than the 1 percentage point lead she garnered in the Hobby School election survey released in July.

Del Moral Mealer holds a 19 percentage point advantage over Hidalgo among white voters, 58% to 39%.

Hidalgo holds a 71 percentage point advantage over del Moral Mealer among Black voters, 79% to 8%, and a 44 percentage point advantage among Latino voters, 69% to 25%.

Hidalgo enjoys a 14 percentage point lead over del Moral Mealer among women, 53% to 39%, but only a 2 percentage point lead among men, 50% to 48%.

Del Moral Mealer enjoys a 16 percentage point lead over Hidalgo, 56% to 40%, among the combined Silent Generation/Baby Boomers cohort, and Hidalgo a comparable 16 percentage point lead over del Moral Mealer among Generation X, 54% to 38%.

Hidalgo is the overwhelming favorite of the combined Millennials/Generation Z cohort, with a 40 percentage point lead in vote intention over del Moral Mealer, 67% to 27%.

That’s a lot to take in, but it’s all there on their site. Note that while this poll references the UH/Hobby poll from July that had Abbott up 49-44 and had Judge Hidalgo only up by one point, 48-47, this one is different in two ways. One is just simply that this poll is a collaboration between UH and TSU whereas the previous one was all UH. I don’t think that makes any real difference, but there it is anyway. The other is that the July poll of Harris County was (I assume, anyway) a separate sample of 321 voters, while this one is (again, I presume) a subsample of 195 likely voters from the larger all-state population of 1,312. I don’t know why they chose to do it this way, and I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s how I read it.

The full data for the statewide report is here, and for the Harris County subsample here. My observations, bullet-point-style:

– The July poll was also post-Dobbs, so at least as far as these surveys go there’s not been any change in the overall environment since then. Insert anodyne statement about individual data points and move on.

– In the July poll, Beto was down five overall and led in Harris County by nine; in this poll Beto is down seven overall and leads in Harris County by 13 (it was 51-42 in July and it’s 53-40 in September, as you can see in the second report). Again, if there were a live feed of me as I typed up this post, you would have seen me shrug right there. Beto beat Cruz in Harris County by a 58-41 margin in 2018, and he’s within range of that in this poll, though as noted one with a higher-than-usual margin of error. All I’m saying here is that historically there’s been a relationship between the statewide percentage for a Dem candidate and that same candidate in Harris County. As such, in general if Beto is doing better in Harris I’d expect him to be doing better across the state. But we’ll see.

– That July poll had Mealer leading Hidlago among Latino voters by three points. This one has Hidalgo up among those same voters by 44. I feel very confident saying that it cannot be the case that both of those figures were accurate. Maybe they’re both off, but if one is right then the other is extremely wrong.

– I didn’t post the generational numbers for the statewide races, but overall Hidalgo did much better than the others. Of course, this is a subsample of a subsample, so be super duper cautious in drawing any conclusions from this. For what it’s worth, in the three statewide races the Dems were around 55% for the Millennial/Gen Z cohort and the Republicans were in the 30-35 range.

– The main reason Rochelle Garza is closer to Ken Paxton than Beto and Collier are to Abbott and Patrick is that Paxton has less support overall, clocking in at 45%. Most likely, this is just a number of Abbott/Patrick voters moving into the “don’t know” pile in this race. Maybe they’re really not sure how they’re voting, and maybe they’re Republicans who don’t want to admit, even in a webpanel, that they’re voting for Paxton. I do think Garza has a chance to be the top Dem performer, but I don’t think you can necessarily conclude that from this poll, as her level of support is in line with Beto and Collier. She did do best in Harris County, leading Paxton 54-36 in that sample, compared to 53-40 for each of the other two Dems.

– This is not the first poll I’ve seen this cycle that had Abbott getting about 15% of Black voters, which is about five points better than I’d normally expect. I don’t know if this is sample weirdness or if there’s something there, like the Trump bump among Latinos was visible in some 2020 polls, though not all.

– Finally, as far as Latino voters go, imagine me shrugging again. Some of what we saw in 2020 was low-propensity voters turning out, but not all of it. I genuinely have no idea what to expect.

Republicans for Collier

Sep 7th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Two of them, anyway.

Mike Collier

Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, one of Texas’ most prominent Republican local leaders, is backing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s Democratic challenger.

“The one person who I’ll support statewide that will get me a little in trouble: Mike Collier for lieutenant governor,” Whitley said on Y’all-itics, a WFAA politics podcast.

Whitley and Patrick have frequently clashed, and on the podcast Whitley slammed Patrick for waging “war on local elected officials.”

Just days after Whitley made the endorsement that crossed party lines, an out-going Republican state senator from Amarillo has followed suit. Kel Seliger plans to vote for Collier in November, a spokesperson for Seliger told The Texas Tribune. Seliger is one of the most senior Republicans in the upper chamber, but has also famously been at odds with Patrick. Neither Whitley nor Seliger are running for reelection.

At the center of Whitley’s disdain for Patrick is a bill shepherded by the lieutenant governor in 2019 meant to slow the growth of Texans’ property tax bills. The bill requires many cities, counties and other taxing units to hold an election if they wish to raise 3.5% more property tax revenue than the previous year, not counting the growth added by new construction.

But Whitley said the bill put Tarrant County in a tight position because property taxes are a major source of revenue for local governments. Meanwhile, Whitley said Tarrant County jails are housing more than 700 inmates that should be in state custody without additional funding from the state. The COVID-19 pandemic and the inability to make jail transfers contributed to state inmates being held in county jails, Community Impact reported.

“We’re paying 20 million plus a year because the state is not paying anything and yet they’re sitting down there talking about all the cash that they’ve got,” Whitley said.

For Seliger, his vote against Patrick this November comes after years of tensions with the lieutenant governor. Seliger is rare among Republicans in the upper chamber for his occasional willingness to go against Patrick. He has said he’s been punished for voting against a pair of the lieutenant governor’s top priorities in 2017, a bill aimed at restricting local governments’ abilities to raise property taxes and a program that would have subsidized private school tuition and home-schooling expenses. In the following session, Patrick stripped Seliger of his title as chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee. During a 2021 redistricting session, Seliger also voiced concern that Patrick was drawing his district to favor Seliger’s competitor.

[…]

Whitley said he is backing Collier because of Collier’s experience controlling budgets. Collier, an accountant and auditor from the Houston area, is a self-described “numbers guy.” Collier also worked as a landman for Exxon, which Whitley said indicated the Democratic nominee understood the oil business.

“And I just think he’s someone who understands local control. And that’s what I’m looking for,” added Whitley, who as county judge is the county’s top elected official and administrator. “We do everything. We’re the front door for basically all the federal and the state services that the state and the federal government passed laws for us to do.”

This is all nice to see, as is Dan Patrick’s little temper tantrum in response. I’ve said before (many, many times) that nothing will change until Texas’ government changes, and the fastest way for that to happen is for enough people to change how they’ve been voting. I generally don’t believe that endorsements move a lot of votes, but they can move a few, and they can also signal that something is in the air. We’ll know soon enough if this makes any difference – if nothing else, we’ll see what if any effect there is in the precinct data – but I’ll say this much: If Dan Patrick’s political demise can be traced even in part to a fight over local control and bad blood over redistricting, there’s not enough sugar in the world to emulate how sweet that would be. The Chron has more.

UPDATE: And today, outgoing Sen. Eddie Lucio endorses Dan Patrick. I am so glad we are seeing the last of that jackass.

More on the Gillespie County elections office resignations

Aug 31st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

From Votebeat, how this mess got started.

Last November’s sleepy constitutional amendment election nearly came to blows in Gillespie County, a central Texas county known for its vineyards. A volunteer poll watcher, whose aggressive behavior had rankled election workers all day, attempted to force his way into a secure ballot vault.

The burly man was repeatedly blocked by a county elections staffer. Shouting ensued. “You can’t go in there,” the staffer, Terry Hamilton, insisted to the man, who towered over Hamilton. “We can see anything we want!” the poll watcher and his fellow election integrity activists yelled, according to an election worker who witnessed the scene. They accused Hamilton and Elections Administrator Anissa Herrera of a variety of violations of the state elections code, which they quoted, line by line.

“Oh Lord, they can cite chapter and verse,” recalled Sue Bentch, a Fredericksburg election judge who saw the confrontation that night. “But you know, just as the devil can cite scripture for its own purposes it seemed to me that it was often cited out of context and misinterpreted.”

“Finally, I called the sheriff’s officer,” said Bentch. The officer barred the activists from the vault. “Poor Terry was coming to fisticuffs.”

Previous elections had been no better. In 2020, a poll watcher called the cops on Herrera and filmed election employees in a dark parking lot. The same year, Herrera received a clutch of obscene, often racist, emails. And in 2019, a group of activists filed suit after Fredericksburg voters overwhelmingly rejected an obscure public-health ballot measure. That election, the activists argued, had been irrevocably tainted by fraud.

Three years of these hostilities were clearly enough for Herrera, who resigned this month.

The rest of the office staff — one full-time employee and one part-time employee — also departed, leaving the elections office completely vacant.

Recent media coverage of the exodus attributed it to threats of the type that have become common since the 2020 presidential election. In fact, Votebeat’s review of court documents, emails, and social media postings show Herrera and others struggling to combat fringe election conspiracy theories in Gillespie County long before former President Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to question the integrity of the 2020 vote.

In Gillespie County in 2019, the fringe was focused on fluoride.

See here for the background, and go read the rest, there’s a lot more. This is a reminder that shitty paranoid conspiracy theories existed well before The Former Guy, but as with most other bad things, he amplified and intensified them, in this case with some generous assistance from the Gillespie County Republican Party. I have no idea what a good way forward for Gillespie County is, but it’s not my problem to solve. I feel bad for the people of good faith who are trying to solve it. The problem is a lot bigger than they are.

Libertarians will remain on the ballot

Aug 28th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Too bad, Republicans.

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday rejected a Republican effort to remove a host of Libertarian candidates from the November ballot, saying the GOP did not bring their challenge soon enough.

In a unanimous opinion, the all-GOP court did not weigh in on the merits of the challenge but said the challenge came too late in the election cycle. The Libertarian Party nominated the candidates in April, the court said, and the GOP waited until earlier this month to challenge their candidacies.

On Aug. 8, a group of Republican candidates asked the Supreme Court to remove 23 Libertarians from the ballot, saying they did not meet eligibility requirements. The Republicans included Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and others in congressional and state legislative races.

State law requires Libertarian candidates to pay filing fees or gather petition signatures, the amount of each depending on the office sought. The Libertarian Party has been challenging that law in federal court, arguing it is unfair because the fees do not go toward their nomination process like they do for Democrats and Republicans.

Republicans also tried and failed to kick a group of Libertarian candidates off the ballot in 2020. In that case, the state Supreme Court said the GOP waited until after the deadline to challenge candidate eligibility. This time, the Republicans filed their challenge before that deadline but apparently still did not satisfy the court’s preference to deal with election challenges as soon as the alleged issues arise.

In its opinion Friday, the court suggested the “emergency timeframe” argued by the GOP “is entirely the product of avoidable delay in bringing the matter to the courts.”

See here for the background, and here for the Court’s opinion. Basically, SCOTx is saying that the GOP should have filed their challenge in or closer to April, when the Libertarians nominated their no-fee-paying candidates, and that claiming something is an emergency doesn’t make it one. They did not rule on the merits, as noted, so the question of whether this kind of challenge could be successful – so far, we haven’t seen a successful challenge, but in the prior cases that was due to timing and technical matters, so there’s still no precedent – remains unanswered. Maybe in 2024, if the federal lawsuit the Ls have filed doesn’t make it moot. The Chron has more.

All of Gillespie County’s elections staff resigns

Aug 17th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Who could blame them?

Citing threats and even stalking, all three employees at the Gillespie County elections office have resigned from their positions, leaving the office empty with less than three months before the primary election in November.

The Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post first reported the wave of resignations last Wednesday, after staff say they received numerous threats and in some cases, even stalking. Now former Gillespie County Elections Administrator Anissa Herrera told the Standard that after the 2020 election she was threatened, stalked and called out on social media.

“The year 2020 was when I got the death threats,” Herrera told the Post. “It was enough that I reached out to our county attorney, and it was suggested that I forward it to FPD (Fredericksburg Police Department) and the sheriff’s office.”

[…]

Josh Blank, director of research at the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, says that with the threats election workers are facing — coupled with an already difficult job — it is more surprising that additional election workers have not yet resigned.

“You’re asking people to do more work under greater scrutiny, and now, threats of physical violence. So it’s not so surprising that this sort of, you know, election workers has decided to resign.” Blank said.

Gillespie County voter Victoria McClurd says that she was both shocked and not shocked that resignations occurred.

“If they’ve been receiving death threats, then I would too, because we’ve gotten to a point where the threats are not benign,” McClurd said. “[In] the last election I was going to be a poll person, and they were talking to us about what to do if someone comes in and is violent. That’s not what happens in a civilized society.”

Sam Taylor, the assistant secretary of state for communications, said the state is already working with Gillespie County officials to help them move forward and prepare for the upcoming election.

“We have already committed to sending trainers from our office to ensure that the County will have the tools and resources they need to conduct a successful election in November,” he said in an email statement.

As we know, it’s not just in Gillespie County that election workers are being terrorized. These folks were just the highest profile to date to say screw it, my life and my family’s life aren’t worth this shit. Note that Gillespie County voted 79% for The Former Guy in 2020. At the risk of trying to impute rational thought on these idiots, what exactly do you think was going on there?

Obviously, the bulk of the blame here lies with our felonious ex-president, but it certainly doesn’t stop there. Every statewide elected Republican that has ever dabbled with election conspiracies, unsubstantiated claims about voter “fraud”, casting suspicion on mail ballots or ballots cast in Democratic counties, they all share the blame for this. State Rep. Kyle Biederman, who “represents” Gillespie County, is one of the worst offenders out there. If they would like for their own elections to be handled in a smooth and competent manner, now would be a good time to say something to push back on the paranoia and rage that they’ve been stoking. Greg Abbott could ask the Texas Rangers to step in and investigate the threats made against Anissa Herrera and her colleagues. Ken Paxton could personally vow to prosecute whoever gets arrested to the fullest extent of the law. Dan Patrick could promise to pass a law that would offer more protection to election workers and provide harsher penalties for making these kinds of threats. That won’t undo their damage but it ought to make the jackals doing the threatening think twice about it. It would also be the right thing to do, and might help turn the temperature down a bit.

This is a five-alarm fire. For once, the arsonists have a chance to try to atone for their sins. What are they going to do about it?

UPDATE: From the Express News, as carried by the Chron:

Gillespie County Judge Mark Stroeher told the Standard-Radio Post that the entire staff resigned for similar reasons, leaving the county in a dire situation for the upcoming November election.

He said that the county has “some people who are pretty fanatical and radical about things” and drove out Herrera and the staff. Stroeher said that the job became more difficult than it probably should be “because of some individuals who are continuing to question how they are doing things,” according to the Standard-Radio Post.

“Elections are getting so nasty and it’s getting dangerous,” Stroeher said to the Standard-Radio Post.

Stroeher told the outlet that he will be contacting the Texas secretary of state for guidance about holding the November elections.

“It’s unfortunate because we have candidates that need to be elected, and we have voters who want their voices to be heard by the ballots,” Stroeher said. “I don’t know how we’re going to hold an election when everybody in the election department has resigned.”

And what have you been doing to combat that fanaticism and radicalism you mention, Judge Stroeher? This is your responsibility, too.

DMN/UT-Tyler: Abbott 46, Beto 39

Aug 15th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Here we go again with the DMN/UT-Tyler poll, which if nothing else always provides something to talk about. The unreadable DMN story is here. The Chron has a story with a semi-ridiculous headline about how Abbott has slightly increased his lead in the race. This is semi-ridiculous because the topline result is 46-39 in his favor, exactly what it was in the DMN/UT-Tyler poll from May. The comparison they are making is to polls from July, so if you want to go there it’s up from a five point lead in the UH Hobby Center poll, up from a six point lead in the UT Politics Project poll, but down from an eight point lead in the CBS News poll. This is why I prefer to compare between polls of the same type, and why I specify when comparing to other polls. It’s also why I preferred to stay away from “Beto is gaining” narratives in July, because as I said all it takes is one poll that shows a slightly bigger lead for Abbott and it all gets blown up.

Anyway. The poll data is here and I’ll give you the highlights with a few comments.


Abbott    46
Beto      39
Other     13
DK         1

Patrick   36
Collier   28
Other     15
DK        21

Paxton    34
Garza     32
Other     15
DK        18

Dem       48
GOP       50

“Other” is the sum of named Libertarian and Green candidates (one of each in the Governor’s race, just one in the other two) plus the “Other” response. For obvious historic reasons, I don’t expect any of these numbers to be that high in November; this is mostly people not committing to an answer at this time for whatever the reason. The fourth listing is for the generic “which party are you voting for in the US House race” question. Note that this was 49-48 for Republicans in May, and 52-45 for Republicans in February.

The main thing I’ll say about these individual results is that Beto gets only 81-12 support among Dems, with Abbott getting 85-8 among Republicans. Somehow, this poll reports 21% of Black voters supporting Abbott, which at least would explain the overall Dem numbers. Let’s just say I don’t find that particularly credible and move on. Beto has taken the lead among independents in this poll at 34-31; it was 36-29 among indies for Abbott in February and a bizarre 16-6 for Abbott in May – as I noted in the earlier post, that reporting seemed to be screwed up. Both Mike Collier (20-19) and Rochelle Garza (24-19) lead among indies as well. Neither was tested in May as they were still in primary runoffs.

Next is the approvals questions:


Name       Approve  Disap  None
===============================
Biden           41     56     3
Abbott          47     49     4
Beto            43     43    13
Patrick         41     39    20
Paxton          41     40    19

For Beto, the question is asked as whether you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of him. President Biden was at 39-58 in May, so this is an improvement. Abbott was at 46-50 in May, Beto was 42-44, Paxton basically the same at 42-41. Dan Patrick had a strange 50-41 approval result in May – this is more in line with other results and overall expectations.

Two issue questions about abortion:

Do you approve or disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to decide abortion policy?


Strong approve        31
Somewhat approve      11
Somewhat disapprove   10
Strong disapprove     39

Should abortion be illegal in all cases, illegal in most cases, legal in most cases, or legal in all cases?


All illegal     31
Mostly illegal  13
Mostly legal    30
All legal       25

I’ve copied the exact wording. Abortion polling is complex and highly dependent on how questions are worded. The one thing that is totally clear is that there is little support for the current law, which basically allows for no exceptions.

We’ll see if we get more results soon. August and September is usually a busy time for such data. As always, take any individual result with skepticism, not because they are untrustworthy but because they are each just one data point.

Dan Patrick

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