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Democratic primary

So what happens with CD18 now?

Mar 29th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

This story is a very basic explainer about Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s just-announced Mayoral campaign. There’s only so much it can tell us as she has not yet talked about what her top campaign priorities are, and most of the rest we already know, but this bit at the end is worth discussing.

Do people line up for Jackson Lee’s seat in Congress?

The congresswoman does not need to resign to run for mayor, and if she does not win, she can keep her post in Congress. Still, will people line up to succeed her in the storied 18th District if she wins?

One such candidate, former At-Large City Councilmember Carroll Robinson, wasted no time Monday in announcing he was considering a run for Jackson Lee’s seat. Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is term-limited, also lives in the 18th District, although residency is not a requirement for congressional elections.

I discussed this in my previous post, so I will briefly reiterate that Rep. Jackson Lee does not have to resign to run as noted in this story, but logistically it may be sensible for her to do so. She doesn’t have a limited legislative calendar like Whitmire does (and Mayor Turner did before them) and she has longer and more arduous travel to endure if she wants to multitask while campaigning. I don’t know what she will do, and I certainly won’t be surprised if she remains in office through the election, but there is a clear argument that she would be better off stepping down.

Let’s assume that she remains in office. If she wins outright in November, or if she fails to make a runoff, it’s easy enough for her, because the filing period for the 2024 primaries is November 11 (after the election) through December 11. Where it gets tricky is if she makes the runoff, which per usual is the second Saturday of December. That would be December 9 this year, meaning she would just have enough time to re-file for CD18 if she falls short. That sure wouldn’t leave much time to recover and rebound from what would surely be a tough loss, and it could be very awkward if in the meantime a flood of credible contenders have filed for CD18, but she could attempt to go back to Congress if she fails to become Mayor.

If she does win, either in November or the runoff, then there would need to be two elections to succeed her: A special election to serve out the remainder of her term, and a Democratic primary to determine a nominee for the November 2024 election. Both would likely draw large crowds, with some but not full overlap. It is certainly possible to have a situation where the special election winner is not the Democratic nominee for November. If the same person manages to win both, they may have to win four races – the special, the primary, and a runoff for each – to get there. (They would have to win in November as well, but CD18 is strongly Democratic – SJL got 71% last year – so it would be the least competitive race by far of them all.) It would be exhausting and a little confusing since the special election runoff would likely occur after the primary but before the primary runoff. We had a four-race situation to replace Garnet Coleman in HD147 after he stepped down; in 2016 we managed to replace Mayor Turner in HD139 in only three races, as now-Rep. Jarvis Johnson won the primary in the runoff but took the special election on the first try. (Again, not counting the November election; both districts are strongly Dem and both Rep. Johnson and Rep. Jolanda Jones were unopposed in their Novembers.)

Note that everything I wrote about above would also apply to SD15 and Sen. John Whitmire. I wrote about this in January, when Whitmire drew a two-year term for this cycle, meaning that there will be a general election for SD15 next year. If he had drawn a four-year term then there would still be a special election to replace him in 2024 if needed, but the primary election for that seat would have been in 2026. Them’s the breaks. If we get a Whitmire-Jackson Lee runoff, we might have a situation in which both candidates would be thinking about what their Plan B is, assuming they hadn’t already made any definitive statements about that. Isn’t this fun?

As for the potential candidates to run in CD18, all I’ll say for now is that the list will include a lot more people than the opportunistic Carroll Robinson. Mayor Tuner has been cited as a possible candidate for US Senate in 2024, which I don’t believe, and I’ve heard his name mentioned as a possible candidate for SD15, a prospect I find marginally more credible. I feel roughly the same about him as a CD18 candidate. The likely suspects here, for either of these offices, will include current State Reps and Senators and HISD/HCC Trustees and City Council members, various other former officeholders and candidates, and quite possibly a current Mayoral candidate or two. It’s difficult to see, always in motion is the future. Ask me again in six months.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is in for Mayor

Mar 28th, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
21 comments

Okay then. The Quorum Report was first on the scene.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee

Sources: In a closed-door event over the weekend, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee told pastors she is running for mayor of Houston
The chatter is getting louder out of H-Town, where sources this morning indicate that Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee on Saturday told attendees at a closed-door event that she is indeed running for mayor.

Some of those who went to the Ministers United for Houston’s Future event on Saturday have said that when she was speaking onstage, Rep. Jackson Lee confirmed her plans to enter the crowded field to succeed Mayor Sylvester Turner, who of course is term-limited.

As you know that field already includes Sen. John Whitmire, Chris Hollins, Amanda Edwards, Gilbert Garcia, Robert Gallegos, Lee Caplan, and others.

Developing…

It has developed.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a mainstay in Houston politics for more than three decades, is running for mayor.

Speaking to the City Cathedral Church on Sunday, the congresswoman told parishioners she intends to run in the November election to succeed Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is term-limited.

“Sheila Jackson Lee wants to come home to be your mayor, for the city of Houston,” the congresswoman said in the video, streamed online and first shared on social media by Urban Reform, an online advocacy group. “I will not be able to do it without each and everyone of you.”

Jackson Lee has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

Rumors have swirled for years that Jackson Lee may be interested in City Hall’s top job. The political chatter had reached a fever pitch in recent weeks and months, as polls tested her viability.

Jackson Lee immediately becomes a front-runner in the race, and her entry likely scrambles the calculus for other mayoral contenders. The field now includes seven Democrats. While municipal elections are nonpartisan, each of those candidates is working to assemble winning coalitions from overlapping voter bases.

They include state Sen. John Whitmire; former Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins; former City Councilmember Amanda Edwards; attorney Lee Kaplan; Councilmember Robert Gallegos, and former Metro Chair Gilbert Garcia.

Whitmire enjoys a $10 million war chest and decades in the Texas Legislature, qualities that made him an early front-runner. Jackson Lee’s long tenure in the House, a more visible role, put her at a similar advantage, according to political analysts. She is a prolific presence at political events, community gatherings and news conferences, and she has a well-documented knack for getting to the front of the crowd to greet the president after a State of the Union address.

“I think that’s her stock and trade, in terms of being able to work the community and speak out on issues,” said Michael Adams, a professor of political science at Texas Southern University. “If you were to rank the order of Black elected officials in terms of visibility or electability, Sheila Jackson Lee is probably the most visible and recognizable member of Congress out of all of the congressional delegation in Harris County… She’s well recognized.”

Familiarity in a partisan role, though, cuts both ways: Just as Jackson Lee has proven popular in her district, Houstonians outside its boundaries, especially those who do not share her political leanings, may know her only in a negative light.

“She’s been out there for a long time,” Adams said. “Since she’s been an elected official for a lengthy time, she will have scar tissue; that comes with the territory.”

[…]

The question is whether Jackson Lee will be able to expand on her voter base to win a runoff, according to Jeronimo Cortina, a professor of political science at the University of Houston.

“You core base is always going to support you, but you have to start making inroads with other voters,” he said.

Whitmire has assembled the most institutional support to date, collecting endorsements from influential labor groups and elected officials, including Rep. Sylvia Garcia, Jackson Lee’s colleague in the House. A recent poll testing Jackson Lee’s prospects asked several direct questions about how she would compare to Whitmire, according to recipients of the poll.

That last link is to my February 1o post about CM Robert Gallegos entering the race, in which I noted that I had been the recipient of a poll call about the Mayor’s race, and I asked who paid for the poll. It would be more accurate to say “according to one person who asked about the source of the poll” or words to that effect, but whatever. At least they included the link.

I have a lot of thoughts about this, so let’s get to it.

– In general, I tend to agree with the consensus that Rep. Jackson Lee becomes a top tier candidate, on the strength of her name ID and years of serving a large portion of the city of Houston in Congress. I think things get complicated when the field is this big, and there will be a lot of overlap in each candidate’s base of support. Clearly, though, it’s easy to see what her path to a runoff looks like.

– It should be noted that Rep. Jackson Lee has never been a huge fundraiser, mostly because she hasn’t had to be. Indeed, as of December 31, 2022, her federal campaign account had $300K in it, which is quite a bit less than those of the four earliest entrants – Whitmire, Hollins, Edwards, and Kaplan. I don’t think she’ll have any trouble raising money – she has connections out the wazoo, and plenty of colleagues who I’m sure will write her a check. Her name ID means she needs a pile of money less than other candidates, because most of them have to introduce themselves to the electorate, which she won’t have to do. But if she wants to run TV ads and employ a field team, she’s gonna need at least a million bucks, probably two or three million. Best get started soon.

– Many times in 2015, I said that there’s only so much room for qualified and well-funded candidates in a Mayoral race. I said that at the time in the ultimately mistaken belief that someone would look at the field and their own prospects and drop out before the filing date. I’ll say it again this year, because the field is now even bigger and there’s an obvious need for a good Democrat to move over to the Controller’s race. The first current Mayoral candidate to make that move becomes in my opinion the favorite in that race, and if they’re young enough to run for Mayor again in (gulp) 2031 – or maybe 2027 – then they could be the frontrunner at that time. We’ll see how wrong I am in this belief this time.

– This is where I say again that in general polling for city races is dicey and should be taken with skepticism. This is mostly because it is hard to identify the likely electorate, as turnout can vary wildly and 30% turnout is quite high, so polls of “registered voters” will include responses from a lot of people who won’t actually vote.

– As noted before, I expect we will have a new high in city election turnout this fall thanks to the increase in registered voters since 2015. That would be an incremental increase, but would still represent maybe 40-50K more voters than the last open Mayoral race, and quite possibly a lot more “new” city election voters. There is a scenario in which interest in the city elections is higher than usual, and the overall increase in local election participation since 2016 combines to make it a more significant step increase, say to the 350-400K level. I don’t know how likely that is, but it is the range of possible outcomes. If that does happen, who knows what the effect might be on the races themselves. See my point above about how hard it will be to poll this election.

– The Trib accurately notes that Jackson Lee, like Whitmire, does not need to resign to run for this office. Mayor Turner remained in the State House in 2015 when he got elected. That’s true, but Turner then and Whitmire now could reasonably expect to be done with their legislative gigs as of Memorial Day, giving them the entire summer and fall to campaign fulltime. Congress doesn’t work that way, and it’s also a much longer trip from DC to Houston than it is from Austin to Houston. Jackson Lee will have to face a choice they didn’t, which is to largely abandon her current gig, which will open her up to attacks about missed votes and the like, or step down in the near future and give herself the time to fully commit to the campaign. This could go either way, but it’s not clear to me that she will remain in office while she runs.

– If she does step down, or if she wins and then resigns from Congress next January, the field to succeed her in CD18 will be at least as big as the Mayoral field is now. This is my Congressional district, and the thought of having to do interviews with all those candidates, both for a special election and a 2024 primary, is giving me palpitations. I’m going to go lie down now.

That’s what I think for now. I’m sure there will be plenty more to say. What do you think? Does this change anything for you? Leave a comment and let me know. The Texas Signal has more.

More Senate 2024 talk

Mar 23rd, 2023
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Make of this what you will.

Not Ted Cruz

Texas Democratic voters will head to the polls in less than a year to decide which candidate they’d like to see challenge Sen. Ted Cruz in his reelection bid, but at the moment the field remains empty because no one has jumped into the race yet.

[…]

The guessing game is already underway about who will run in the Democratic primary. According to recent reporting from The Dallas Morning News, sources said Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL player, is asking donors about potentially getting into the race. He flipped a competitive Congressional seat in 2018 and defeated a Republican incumbent in his Dallas-area district. If Allred runs for Senate, he would follow the path forged by O’Rourke where a Texas Congressman sought a seat in the upper chamber.

Ed Espinoza, a Texas Democratic analyst, said Allred’s name is coming up a lot in conversations he’s having right now.

“He could be a very strong candidate,” Espinoza said, “and the fact that he is in Congress already means he has access to federal money, federal PACs and such that could buy in his race. You saw that with Beto O’Rourke in 2018 as well, so [Allred] is one candidate who could be very competitive.”

Espinoza said there are also rumblings in Democratic circles about whether Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner may have his eye on this office.

“Sylvester Turner is at the end of his term of mayor. He’s termed out in Houston later this year,” he said. “Not only has he represented the biggest city in Texas, one of the biggest cities in America, but he also is suddenly about to have time on his hands — not a bad launching pad for someone looking to run statewide in Texas.”

Questions remain, Espinoza said, about whether one of the Castro brothers might also enter the Senate race. Julián Castro served as secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, while his twin Joaquin Castro is a Democratic Congressman representing San Antonio.

“Either of those two would be strong candidates if they decide to run now,” Espinoza said. “The thing about the Castros, they’re very popular. They’re very well known, and they’re very accomplished in the state. They’re also mentioned every time a statewide race comes up, and it’s not always what they choose to do. So will this time be different? We shall see.”

None of these men responded when KXAN reached out inquiring about their future plans.

Sources connected to local Democratic politics also threw out a few other names who may be in the mix, including former State Sen. Wendy Davis and former 2020 Senate candidate MJ Hegar.

We are familiar with this conversation. I don’t know if this is further evidence that Rep. Allred is moving down a path towards a Senate run, or just another insider saying “hey, I’d like to see this guy run” out loud and hoping to manifest it into existence. (Believe me, I understand the impulse.) Though nobody mentioned here is in the Legislature, the post-session timeline for whatever may happen next makes some sense, as things do tend to flow with the legislative calendar.

I don’t have anything to add about the Castro Brothers or Mayor Turner that I haven’t said already. The addition of Wendy Davis (now a Senior Advisor to Planned Parenthood Texas VotesO and MJ Hegar to the discourse strikes me more as a “well, who else is out there” item than anything real. I don’t see either of them as likely to mount another campaign at this time, for a range of reasons. I suppose sooner or later we all turn into John Sharp. I will note that there are other names that have been floated in other stories, and the one actual declared candidate out there is John Love, who maybe needs to hire someone to whisper his name to more of the people who get quoted or used as sources for this type of story. Check back later and we’ll see what other names might crop up.

Texas Two-Step (TM)

Aug 8th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

What a tale.

After two years experimenting with an old Persian family technique using grains and raisins, Ali Ansari finally nailed his new vodka recipe. He poured $4 million into building a distillery outside of Houston and branded his drink DASH, hoping it would evoke a slow-sipping spirit — “one dash at a time,” he explained.

But when it came time to name a new productline, it occurred to him that DASH, which he had thought of as sleek and modern, wasn’t exactly right. “It doesn’t really present Texas,” he said.

Ansari had started several businesses since immigrating nearly 30 years ago to attend school. One thing he’d learned was when it comes to brand loyalty, Texans love Texas. As a guiding spirit, Austin-based Tito’s Vodka built a multi-billion-dollar empire off its folksy Lone Star roots.

Brainstorming possible names with friends, he hit on a perfect fit. “I used to go dancing with my girlfriend at this old club, Wild West, on Gessner Street,” he said. “We would do the Texas Two Step.”

The words conjured pearl-snapped couples gliding across boot-smoothed dance floors on warm summer nights. People having Texas fun — and, between dances, perhaps enjoying a new and unique adult beverage. Ansari filed an application to trademark Texas Two Step Vodka.

But he was dismayed to learn that a rich and powerful entity already claimed to have locked up the legal right to the famous dance name. It demanded Ansari immediately drop his plans to use the words for his product. When it lost its Two Step case at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, it continued to pursue Ansari into federal court.

It was the State of Texas.

Specifically, it was the Texas Lottery Commission that sued him, having trademarked “Texas Two-Step” in 2001 for one of its games. I will admit that as a non-gambling person I had no idea about that, but I will say that if you google “Texas Two Step”, the first results are indeed the Texas Lottery Commission. If Google says it, it must be true.

The funny thing to me is that “Texas Two-Step” was also the name used to describe the primary election process used by Texas Democrats through the year 2008. That was my first year as a precinct chair, and for my troubles I got to lead the caucus part of that – after the vote, there was a caucus in each precinct, which through a process too convoluted to describe eventually led to the number of delegates each Presidential candidate wound up with. You may recall that Hillary Clinton wound up with more delegates than her share of the vote would have provided if it had been based solely on vote totals. Anyway, that was scrapped for something simpler and more sane in 2012, and it is little more than a bit of dusty history now.

Except that as far as I know, the TLC didn’t sue anyone over the use of that name. Maybe because the Dems had used that name prior to the TLC trademarking it, maybe because there wasn’t any money at stake, maybe for some other reason, I don’t know. I’m just saying, maybe the state of Texas could cool its jets here a little and give Mr. Ansari a break. As he said in the story, it’s not like an association with vodka is going to sully the good name of a scratch-off game. Go read the rest and see what you think.

Cuellar officially wins CD28 runoff

Jun 23rd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

All over now.

Rep. Henry Cuellar

A recount has confirmed U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, as the winner of his hard-fought primary runoff, according to the Texas Democratic Party.

The recount wrapped up Tuesday, and Cuellar picked up eight votes, defeating progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros by 289 votes overall, the party said.

“As I said on election night, ‘the margin will hold’- and it has not only held but grown,” Cuellar said in a statement earlier Tuesday. “I am proud to be your Democratic nominee for the 28th District of Texas.”

Cisneros conceded in a statement, saying she will “keep fighting to create a more progressive and accountable Democratic Party this year and work to turn Texas blue in November.”

Cuellar’s Democratic primary runoff was one of two in South Texas that had gone to recounts. In the other runoff, for the open seat in the 15th Congressional District, Michelle Vallejo remained the winner after a recount wrapped up last week.

Cuellar led Cisneros by 177 votes after election night nearly a month ago. His lead grew to 281 votes by the time the final ballots were counted.

Cuellar had repeatedly declared victory, starting on election night, and dismissed the notion that a recount would change the outcome.

See here for the previous update, and here for the TDP statement. Not much to add, so let’s get on with it for November.

Recount updates

Jun 19th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

We have a winner in CD15.

Today, after Wednesday’s manual recount of the votes in the CD-15 primary runoff election, the Texas Democratic Party announced that Michelle Vallejo has secured enough votes to earn the Democratic nomination for U.S. Congress from the 15th Congressional District.

“The Texas Democratic Party is fully behind our nominee, Michelle Vallejo, and we’re going to put in the hard work required to send her to Washington D.C. to represent South Texas,” said Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa. “We congratulate Michelle and her team for the work they put into this campaign to show voters that Democrats are fighting for them – and thank Ruben Ramirez and his campaign for their dedication to this community as well.”

See here for the background. Vallejo had already declared victory, while Ramirez said he would until the state officially canvasses the results next week before issuing a statement. I suspect that a concession will be forthcoming soon. In the end, Vallejo added seven votes to her total, while Ramirez picked up two, making the final margin 35 votes.

Meanwhile, in CD28, we’re still waiting.

A recount was underway Thursday in a Texas primary race between Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar and progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros following their tight runoff in May.

Before the recount, Cuellar had been leading Cisneros by 187 votes, or 0.4 percentage points, out of 45,429 ballots counted as of last week, according to an Associated Press count. The AP will not declare a winner until the recount is completed.

It was not clear Thursday when the recount would be finished.

I don’t expect anything different. I’ll let you know when I see a further update.

Here come the recounts

Jun 7th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

As expected.

Progressive candidate Jessica Cisneros announced Monday she will request a recount in the hard-fought Democratic primary runoff against U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, after she finished 281 votes behind him.

Another Democrat in a key South Texas congressional race, Ruben Ramirez, also said Monday he will ask for a recount. He finished 30 votes behind Michelle Vallejo for the open seat in the 15th District.

The recount announcements came shortly after the Texas Democratic Party certified its primary runoff results, confirming the margins for Cuellar and Vallejo that counties finalized last week.

“Our community isn’t done fighting, we are filing for a recount,” Cisneros said in a statement. “With just under 0.6 percent of the vote symbolizing such stark differences for the future in South Texas, I owe it to our community to see this through to the end.”

[…]

The recounts mean it will be at least weeks before an undisputed winner emerges in each runoff. Any runoff candidate can request a recount as long as their margin is less than 10% of the number of votes received by their opponent. The deadline to request a recount is 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Both Cuellar and Vallejo have claimed victory, and I do not expect these recounts to change that. They’ll just take time off the clock. Both Cisneros and Ramirez have the right to request these recounts, and I’d do the same in their position. The elections are close enough that you can imagine there being some possibility of the result being in question. I’m not them, and all I care about is November, so I’d prefer we not go down this path. That’s not my call, so here we are. I hope this doesn’t take too long.

Cuellar claims victory in CD28

Jun 5th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

He has a bigger lead now than he did on Election Night.

Rep. Henry Cuellar

With every vote counted in a fiercely contested South Texas Democratic primary runoff, longtime congressman Henry Cuellar was 281 votes ahead of progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros.

Cuellar declared victory last week, after coming in 177 votes ahead of Cisneros on Election Day. The remaining uncounted ballots expanded his lead by another 104 votes, final results from each county in the district showed.

“As I said on election night, the margin will hold — and it has not only held but grown,” Cuellar said in a statement.

Cuellar called for those who voted against him in the runoff to back him in the general election, when Republicans hope Cassy Garcia, a former staffer for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, will flip the long blue district.

“While we may differ on certain positions, we share a common ground on many issues to improve our communities and strengthen families,” Cuellar said.

The final tally is still well within the bounds of a possible recount, however. Texas law allows candidates to request one if the vote difference is less than 10 percent of the leading candidate’s vote total; Cuellar finished with 22,895 votes.

Cisernos’s campaign, which did not immediately comment on the final tally, spent the last week raising money for a “recount fund” and telling supporters that “a recount is looking more and more likely.”

Cuellar’s lead is considerably larger than Michelle Vallajo’s in CD15, though as noted both races are subject to recount. On that subject, among the thousands of emails I get each day are several from Cisneros asking for donations to her “recount fund”, which is silly since her campaign would not have to pay for a recount due to the closeness of the election. Such appeals do work, though, so here we are. As I said with CD15, either ask for a recount (which is Cisneros’ right under the law) or don’t, but either way it’s time to wrap this up and move on to November. Whatever you think of Cuellar (and as you know, I’ve never liked him), he’s always a strong performer in November and should be in decent shape to win even in a non-favorable environment. Big picture, y’all. The San Antonio Report has more.

Vallejo claims victory in CD15 runoff

Jun 2nd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Her opponent demurs, but it probably doesn’t matter.

Michelle Vallejo

Michelle Vallejo declared victory Wednesday in the Democratic primary runoff for the national battleground 15th Congressional District in South Texas.

Her declaration came eight days after election night, when she emerged with a 23-vote margin over opponent Ruben Ramirez. Her margin grew to 33 votes as the largest counties in the district began to report their final unofficial results Wednesday.

But Ramirez was not ready to concede. His campaign said in a statement that “it is essential that every voter has their say before a final call is made.” The statement suggested the campaign still saw a path to victory.

“South Texas politics has a long tradition of upset victories,” the statement said.

Counties have until the end of day on Thursday to report their final numbers to the state, and even then, candidates can still request recounts. Since election night, counties have been counting mail-in ballots that were postmarked in the 11th-hour, military and overseas ballots that were due Tuesday and provisional ballots.

It was one of two key Democratic runoffs in South Texas that were unsettled coming out of election night. The other is the runoff for the 28th Congressional District, where the moderate nine-term U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, faced progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros. He led by 177 votes after election night, but as most counties reported their final unofficial results Wednesday, his margin widened to at least 192 votes.

[…]

Candidates can request recounts if their margin is less than 10% of the number of votes their opponent received. Ramirez and Cisneros are currently well within that range.

See here for some background. I would expect both Ramirez and Cisneros to request recounts – the races are close, the recounts won’t cost them because they’re close – though as discussed many times I don’t expect that to make any difference. I’d like to get these settled quickly because they’re the two of the closest districts in the state, with CD15 redrawn to be 51-48 Trump in 2020, and we have our work cut out for us. Let’s get to the November part of the race, we don’t have time to lose.

We won’t know the official status of the two super close runoffs until next week

May 27th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

The CD28 race is not done with us.

Jessica Cisneros, the progressive immigration attorney trailing longtime Laredo congressman Henry Cuellar by 177 votes in a blockbuster South Texas runoff, said Thursday that ballots are still being counted and a final tally likely will not be available until after Memorial Day.

“We are within reach to go on and win this thing,” Cisneros said. “There’s still a lot up in the air right now.”

Cisneros said her campaign has been told by elections offices that there are still “hundreds” of uncounted mail-in and provisional ballots across the district and that many will not be counted until after the holiday weekend.

Her campaign has also urged voters who mailed in ballots to check whether they were rejected and has set up a call for those whose were. Cisneros said the hotline has been “ringing nonstop all day since yesterday when we put out that call.”

“Because the race is so, so close and the margin is very close, we need to make sure that everyone who casted a ballot gets their ballot counted,” she said.

Cuellar declared victory Tuesday night in the race, which drew national attention and millions of dollars in political contributions.

“The votes are in, the margin will hold,” Cuellar tweeted at the time. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Cisneros’ claims that hundreds of ballots are still out.

I’d like to hear the status of the vote counting from election officials rather than one of the candidates, but I can believe that there are still mail votes being counted. I don’t know if it’s still possible to do something about a rejected mail ballot at this point. I’m sure the lawyers will sort that one out.

Meanwhile, in CD15:

It’s been a nail-biting race for the congressional District 15 runoff election between Democrats Ruben Ramirez and Michelle Vallejo.

More than 24 hours after polls closed, it’s unclear who will face off against Republican Monica De La Cruz in November.

Both Ramirez and Vallejo have sent statements saying it’s too soon to consider a virtual winner.

For now, election departments in counties within District 15 have to count mail-in ballots, votes from abroad and provisional ballots.

“In 15, without question, we’re going to have to wait until at least next week to have a good idea about who the winner is,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.

As noted before, the vote will be canvassed on Wednesday, and the official final result will be posted on Thursday. That may not be the end of it, of course.

On that subject:

In the 15th District, Vallejo came out of election night with a 23-vote lead, and both she and Ramirez agreed it was too close to call. At least two counties — Hidalgo and Jim Wells — have since updated their results, changing her lead to 27 votes. But like in Cuellar’s race, a final resolution likely will not come into focus until early next week.

[…]

A timeline is now playing out at the county level where outstanding ballots can still be counted. Mail ballots that were postmarked by 7 p.m. Tuesday could still be counted by 5 p.m. Wednesday. The deadline for military and overseas ballots is Tuesday, May 31, a day later than usual due to Memorial Day. And then counties have until Thursday to finalize their results and report them to the state.

A candidate can request a recount if their margin is less than 10% of the votes received by their opponent. Both Cisneros and Ramirez are well within that, though candidates typically wait until all the outstanding ballots are counted before deciding whether to pursue a recount.

Not much to do now except have patience.

A few remaining threads from the runoffs

May 26th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

It was, as noted, a smooth and easy night in Harris County, despite the folderol from earlier in the day.

Harris County election drama in the courts did not prevent voting officials from what could be a record speedy count.

At midnight, only two of the 520 ballots boxes used for Tuesday’s election were outstanding, meaning the vast majority were in the hands of officials who were rapidly counting them.

“I will be a happy girl if we get everything in by 1 a.m.,” said Isabel Longoria, Harris County elections administrator. “This is what happens with a well executed plan.”

By 11:30 250 Democratic and 246 Republican polling sites had turned in their ballots, while about 20 more were on site and awaiting a procedural check before officials signed off on the receipt. Each party had 260 locations, which they shared, meaning election counters at NRG Arena had 189 of the needed 520 ballot boxes.

About 150 cars snaked through the NRG parking lot earlier in the night, Longoria said, moving “slow and steady.”

On the official count, five ballot boxes were listed as outstanding at 11:45 p.m., which quickly ticked down.

See here for the background. Still no word from SCOTx as far as I know. It sure would be nice if this “easy night, returns posted in a timely fashion” became the new narrative.

There are still a couple of unresolved elections. CD15 is way too close to call.

With all precincts reporting on Tuesday night, Democratic primary candidate for Congressional District 15 Michelle Vallejo led the race ahead of Ruben Ramirez by only 23 votes. Of the 12,063 total votes reported on Wednesday morning, Vallejo received 6,043 votes and Ramirez received 6,020 votes district-wide.

Hilda Salinas, assistant director of the Hidalgo County Elections Department, said that the race was too close to call on Wednesday morning, with a final result expected on Thursday, June 2.

“We still have to wait for all the out of county ballots and mail-in ballots to come in,” Salinas said. “The Ballot Board will be meeting on Wednesday to finalize everything so that everything can be canvassed on Thursday.”

The canvassing process is the final step before certification of results, and it includes a careful tally of all ballots.

“As per Texas election code, there’s certain ballots that still have time to come in and be counted by our ballot board,” Salinas added.

Both campaigns declined to comment on Wednesday morning on whether a call for a recount could occur over the next week.

Vallejo issued a statement late Tuesday night: “Though the race is too close to call, we are heartened by the clear path to victory.”

A statement from the Ramirez campaign Wednesday morning stated, “Our campaign trusts in the democratic process and integrity of this election. We know that our election workers are doing all they can to get us a result, and we thank them for their tireless work.”

We’ll see what happens. CD15 is the closest district based on the new map and the 2020 returns, and it’s a big target for Republicans, with their candidate already rolling in cash. It would be nice to get this resolved quickly so the nominee can move forward.

And of course, there’s CD28, which is almost as close.

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, the last anti-abortion Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, boldly declared victory just before midnight in his nail-biter primary runoff race. But his progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, refused to concede, as the race was separated by less than 200 votes with all counties reporting their votes.

“This election is still too close to call, and we are still waiting for every ballot and eligible vote to be counted,” she said in a tweet, shortly after Cuellar declared himself the winner.

Just before midnight in Texas, Cuellar led Cisneros by a mere 177 votes.

At the time he declared victory, no major news organization had called the race.

“Tonight, the 28th Congressional District spoke, and we witnessed our great Democratic system at work,” he said in a statement. “The results are in, all the votes have been tallied — I am honored to have once again been re-elected as the Democratic Nominee for Congress.”

With such a narrow margin, it is likely the race may not be decided for days. Mail-in votes from domestic voters can still be counted if they were postmarked by Tuesday and are received by counties by 5 p.m. Wednesday. The race is also within the margin that Cisneros can request a recount.

I’m ready for this race to be over. Just tell me who won so we can move on with our lives. I fully expect there will be a recount, however.

Runoff results: Around the state

May 25th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

After the primary, I rounded up the Democratic runoffs we’d have in May. I’m going to use that post to round up the results from last night, as best as I can tell as of when I gave up the ghost and went to bed. I started filling this in around 10 PM.

Statewide Dem

Lite Guv – Mike Collier vs Michelle Beckley.
AG – Rochelle Garza vs Joe Jaworski.
Comptroller – Janet Dudding vs Angel Vega.
Land Commissioner – Sandragrace Martinez vs Jay Kleberg.

Garza and Dudding were both up 61-39 as of 9:30 PM, with Garza being declared the winner. Collier (54.8 – 45.2) and Kleberg (52.2 – 47.8) were leading but it was too soon to say with them. Kleberg was up 62-38 in Harris County, and Collier was up 60-40, so that bodes well for them.

Congressional Dem

CD01 – JJ Jefferson vs Victor Dunn.
CD15 – Ruben Ramirez vs Michelle Vallejo.
CD21 – Claudia Zapata vs Ricardo Villarreal.
CD24 – Jan McDowell vs Derrik Gay.
CD28 – Rep. Henry Cuellar vs Jessica Cisneros.
CD30 – Jasmine Crockett vs Jane Hope Hamilton.

Jefferson (75%), Zapata (62%), and Crockett (75%) all had huge leads and were on their way to victory. Henry Cuellar (52.75 – 47.25) had a smaller lead but looked to be in pretty good shape. The other two races were ridiculously close – Ramirez was up by 78 votes, McDowell up by 20 votes. You’ll want to check them again today, and don’t be surprised if they wind up in recount territory.

SBOE Dem

SBOE1 – Melissa Ortega vs Laura Marquez.
SBOE2 – Victor Perez vs Pete Garcia.

Ortega (58%) and Perez (56%) looked to be in good shape.

State Senate Dem

SD27 – Morgan LaMantia vs Sara Stapleton-Barrera. LaMantia was at 57% and appeared to be in good shape.

State House Dems

HD22 – Joseph Trahan vs Christian Hayes.
HD37 – Ruben Cortez vs Luis Villarreal
HD70 – Cassandra Hernandez vs Mihaela Plesa.
HD76 – Suleman Lalani vs Vanesia Johnson.
HD100 – Sandra Crenshaw vs Venton Jones.
HD114 – Alexandra Guio vs John Bryant.

Lalani (64%), Jones (70%), and Bryant (62%) looked to be headed to victory. Lalani would be the first Muslim to serve in the Lege. Jones is openly gay and HIV positive and was the subject of a bizarre homophobic rant by his opponent, so his win is especially sweet. Bryant, who is 75 and served in Congress 30 years ago, wins one for the old white guys.

As of 10 PM, the other races were too close to call, with Hayes (50.86%), Villarreal (52.44%), and Plesa (52.91%) holding the advantage.

Republicans

Ken Paxton easily beat George P. Bush, which launched multiple (likely written in advance) eulogies to the “Bush dynasty” in Texas. Good riddance, if P is what that had fallen to. Dawn Buckingham (Land Commissioner) and Wayne Christian (RR Commissioner) were also cruising to victory.

UPDATE: All of the Dem statewide candidates that were leading when I signed off won. Michelle Vallejo (50.1%) edged ahead in CD15, while Jan McDowell (51.15%) increased her lead. It got super tight towards the end, but yes, Henry Cuellar (50.2%) once again came out ahead. All of the state office candidates that were leading last night were still ahead this morning.

On the importance of the Democratic AG runoff

May 18th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

We have two good choices in this race. Whoever wins, we need to fully support them in November.

Rochelle Garza

Rochelle Garza locked hands with her mother and marched through Dallas at a reproductive rights rally this month to let voters know she could lead the fight for abortion care.

“Our mothers fought before and won. Now, it’s our turn to continue the fight and win for OUR daughters and everyone’s access to abortion care,” Garza wrote to her base on Twitter after the rally.

Reproductive care has always been central to Garza’s campaign as she vies to be the Democratic nominee for the Texas attorney general race in November. But with the recent leak of a U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting that the constitutional protection on abortion established in Roe v. Wade might soon come to an end, both Garza and Joe Jaworski, her opponent for the Democratic nomination in a May 24 primary runoff, are pitching themselves as the last line of defense for access to reproductive care in Texas.

“Really the last stand for reproductive rights are the attorney general of each state,” Garza told The Texas Tribune in an interview. “So now more than ever, having an attorney general in the state of Texas is going to be critical to protecting reproductive rights.”

Garza is a former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer from Brownsville. Jaworski is the former mayor of Galveston. Early voting began Monday and ends Friday.

The winner will face the victor of the Republican primary runoff in the general election — either Ken Paxton, the incumbent attorney general, or Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush. Paxton is the frontrunner in that race, clinching twice as many votes as Bush in the primaries and the support of former President Donald Trump.

[…]

Joe Jaworski

Although they have never faced off in the ballot, Garza and Paxton have been on opposite sides of an abortion case. Garza made a name for herself in 2017 when she sued the Trump administration, seeking access to an abortion for an undocumented teenager held in detention. After a federal appeals court ruled in Garza’s favor, Paxton filed a brief in response, arguing that immigrants have no constitutional right to abortion. Garza also testified in 2018 against the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, who ruled against the case as an appellate court judge.

The teen was able to obtain an abortion while the case was being litigated. The case was later dismissed after the federal government adopted a new policy under which it would not interfere with immigrant minors’ access to abortion.

“Having this nuanced understanding of what it takes to build a case like that and to fight for someone who the government believes is not powerful — that’s what I bring to this race and bring to this position,” Garza said.

Garza was nine weeks pregnant when the state’s controversial ban on abortions after about six weeks into a pregnancy went into effect in September. She was worried at the time about her limited reproductive health care options.

Garza, who balanced her newborn daughter in her arms as she spoke to the Tribune, is now arguing she’s the right choice to defend reproductive rights in the state.

She also stands a clear favorite among national and state abortion rights advocacy groups, garnering endorsements from EMILY’s List, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood Texas Votes and Avow.

Both Jaworski and Garza have stated they would defend reproductive rights as Texas’ next attorney general, who can play a major role in the fight over abortion law in courts. The state’s top lawyer also determines how an abortion ban can be regulated and enforced.

But Jaworski has presented himself as the most experienced candidate. While Garza’s run for attorney general will be her first political race, Jaworski is an established local politician. He served three terms on the Galveston City Council and one term as mayor.

And while Garza’s reproductive rights bona fides stand on her well-known 2017 case, Jaworski points to his experience as a trial attorney for over 31 years. Jaworski has said he would use federal and state court channels to initiate litigation to preserve reproductive rights under both the U.S. and the Texas constitutions.

We can’t go wrong with either of these two, so make your best choice and then support the winner. I will let Paxton’s own runoff opponent remind you of what’s at stake here:

Who am I to disagree with that assessment? Someone be sure to grab a screenshot of that tweet for future reference.

Early voting for the May 24 primary runoffs starts tomorrow

May 15th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

You know the drill. Primary runoffs are on, with early voting going on this week, Monday to Friday May 16 to May 20. Because it’s a runoff, you only get those five days. Voting happens from 7 AM to 7 PM each day, and you can find your EV locations here with the PDF here. As with the May special election it’s a smaller list of EV locations – it looks to me like there’s a handful more, but definitely fewer than it was for March and will be for November. Look to see if your favorite place is in use before you head out.

I’ve talked about the Chron’s lack of endorsements in the three judicial races they skipped for March till I’m blue in the face, for all the good it did me. The Chron chose instead to just re-run their original endorsements instead of considering the other races, which is not what I would have had them do. You can find all the judicial Q&As and interviews I did for the primary here, plus the ones I did for Janet Dudding, Staci Childs, and Coretta Mallet-Fontenot. The Erik Manning spreadsheet is still there, too.

We still have no idea how mail ballots went in the May election. Maybe if we’re good and we eat all our vegetables someone will report on that for this election. If you are a mail voter or know someone who is, please let us know if the experience was any different this time around versus in March. These were our chances to get it (more) right. It sure would be nice to know if that was successful. In the meantime, go vote.

Endorsement watch: Still in reruns

May 13th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

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

Duncan Klussman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Staci Childs

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

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

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

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

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

Endorsement watch: Reruns

May 11th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

The Chron re-endorses Lesley Briones for Commissioners Court Precinct 4 in the Democratic primary runoff.

Lesley Briones

The crowded Democratic race for Harris County Precinct 4 commissioner has narrowed, but the runoff remains competitive. Because of new precinct boundary lines, which include most of western Harris County before reaching into the West University area and curving back up and around Interstate 10, Republican and incumbent Jack Cagle will face the Democratic runoff winner with perhaps less of an edge than usual for incumbents.

Our pick for the spot, Lesley Briones, secured 34 percent of the vote, impressive in a field with three other candidates that got vote shares in the double digits. She will face challenger Ben Chou, who got 25 percent of the vote. At least one internal poll now shows him neck and neck with Briones in the lead-up to the runoff.

We wrote in February that the choice before voters was a tough one. That hasn’t changed. Neither has our endorsement.

Yes, I can confirm that the Chron endorsed Briones for March. That’s fine, and it’s fine if they want to remind us of who they have already recommended as we approach early voting for the primary runoffs – as I noted before, all of their March endorsees who were in Democratic races that went to runoff made it to that runoff, so they have no races on our side to revisit. They had at least one on the Republican side and made a new choice for County Judge. All I’m asking is that in addition to however many ICYMI pieces they go back and revisit the three judicial races that they ignored in March and make a choice now. I swear, it is not too much to ask.

BTW, my interview with Lesley Briones from the primary is here and my interview with Ben Chou is here. All my interviews from March plus judicial Q&As can be found here, and you can add the interviews with Janet Dudding for Comptroller, and Staci Childs and Coretta Mallet-Fontenot for SBOE4, plus a judicial Q&A with Beverly Armstrong for the 208th Criminal District Court.

Is there anything to say about Jolanda Jones’ win in the HD147 special election?

May 10th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

First, here are the facts.

Jolanda Jones

Democrat Jolanda Jones edged out her opponent Danielle Keys Bess in a special election on Saturday to finish the term of former state Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston.

According to unofficial returns, Jones got 52% of the vote, with 48% going to Keys Bess. They were separated by a difference of 202 votes, which means the election is eligible for a recount if Keys Bess petitions for one. Keys Bess did not respond to a request for comment.

Jones is a former member of the Houston City Council and Houston ISD board. Keys Bess is a real estate agent with a background in political campaigns.

Coleman resigned in February after announcing last year that he would not seek reelection due to health reasons. His Houston-area district favors Democrats in November.

A win for Jones means she would hold the seat through the end of this year, but the Legislature is not set to meet again until January.

Jones and Keys Bess are also candidates in the May 24 primary runoff for the next full term in the seat, which begins in January. Jones got 42% of the vote in the crowded March primary, while Keys Bess received 20%.

As the story notes, both candidates got some endorsements from various elected officials. What was potentially of interest was how Jones won. Campos explains.

Commentary is kind of surprised that former H-Town city council member and HISD Trustee Jolanda Jones only squeaked by in the special election this past Saturday with a 52% to 48% win. She won by 202 votes over Danielle Keys Bess.

Jones won mail ballot voting by 364 votes. Bess won in person voting by 162 votes.

[…]

Mail ballots for the runoff have already been sent to voters so Jones will probably maintain that advantage. Early voting in person begins next Monday and only lasts for five days.

I am curious to know why mail ballot voters who for the most part are 65 and older would support Jones. Just like I would like to know why in person voters would favor Bess. Could it be that momentum was swaying toward Bess toward the end?

A lot of folks said this race was supposed to be a slam dunk for Jones. It wasn’t.

Here’s a chart for the votes by type each candidate got:


Candidate  Mail  Early  E-Day
=============================
Jones       845    769    691
Bess        481    817    805

Does it matter? Mail votes count as much as any other kind. When a race has this shape it can look like one candidate has late momentum, which I get and am subject to myself, but I feel it’s an illusion. You could argue that if there has been more time to vote, maybe Bess would have eventually caught up to Jones. You could also argue that if Bess had done better in mail voting, she wouldn’t have needed more time. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

For what it’s worth, Jones dominated mail voting in the March primary, too. She had 56% of the mail vote, and she led in both the early and e-day voting, though by smaller percentages each time. Looks to me like this is a successful strategy so far.

The March primary had 11,800 voters, the May 7 special election had 4,400 voters; I’d guess the runoff will be in between the two. Jones won in each, in the same way. Unless there is something to suggest that the May 7 election actually took a turn late in the race, I’d say she’s in solid shape for May 24. We’ll know soon enough. The Chron has more.

Two judges sanctioned by Judicial Conduct Commission

May 9th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Not a good look, and really bad timing for one of them.

A pair of Harris County civil court judges have been sanctioned for behavior in their courtrooms, with one judge allowing the shackling of attorneys and another erupting into fits of rage during a trial.

The reprimand applies to Judge Barbara Stalder in the 280th Family Protective Order Court for holding an attorney in contempt during a February 2020 hearing and then ordering the bailiff to shackle him to a chair in the jury box, according to State Commission on Judicial Conduct documents. A week later, the judge did the same with another attorney.

The commission also ordered that Judge Clinton “Chip” Wells in the 312th Family District Court be admonished and undergo two hours of education on how to appropriately conduct himself for courtroom outbursts of anger aimed at lawyer Teresa Waldrop during an April 2019 divorce trial.

Stalder could not be reached Friday as the commission’s ruling from April 20 was made public. Wells acknowledged that his actions were wrong.

“I made a mistake and I’m not hiding from that,” said Wells, who is facing Waldrop in the Democratic runoff election. “My behavior was not acceptable.”

You can read on for the details – as I said, it’s not a good look for either of them. Stalder was defeated in the March primary, so her situation is short-term no matter how you look at it. Wells is in the May primary runoff, and as it happens Waldrop is his opponent. I know from previous correspondence that she has pursued this matter for some time – the precipitating event was in April of 2019, so you can do the math.

I received judicial Q&A responses from Wells and Waldrop, so consult those if you still need to know more. I know these procedures take time, and I know that the State Commission on Judicial Conduct tends to release their orders in groups on a regular rather than ad hoc basis, but it would have been nice to have known all this before we voted in March, especially given the Chron’s grievous lack of endorsements in non-criminal court races. You don’t have to hold this against either Judge Wells or Judge Stalder if you don’t want to – it would be perfectly defensible to conclude that their merits outweighed these incidents, or that they were still better than their opponents, or that this was just one bad day on the job, or whatever. Obviously, fair minds may disagree on that. All I’m saying is that I’d have preferred to have had as full a picture as possible before I voted. Given that Stalder lost her primary and that Waldrop led Wells 46-28 in March, perhaps it wouldn’t have made any difference. It still would have been nice.

TDP officially applies for early primary status

May 8th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

They’ll have a lot of competition.

More than a dozen states and at least one territory are applying to be among the first to vote for Democrats’ next presidential nominee — with the biggest pile-up coming out of the Midwest, where states are jockeying to take Iowa’s long-held early spot.

Fifteen state parties and counting, plus Puerto Rico, have submitted letters of intent to the Democratic National Committee ahead of a Friday deadline to be considered as a 2024 early state, according to a POLITICO tally. The process — the first major reimagining of the early-state presidential order in years — is being run through the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which will hear pitches from different states in late June and recommend a new early-state lineup to the full DNC by July.

The roster of states looking to go early hails from all over the country, including New Jersey, Washington, Colorado and Georgia. But a particularly intense competition is brewing in the Midwest, where Iowa — whose lack of diversity and messy caucus process drew Democratic ire in 2020, sparking the new look at the calendar — has been forced to reapply for its traditional slot. It is under pressure from five other states seeking to be the regional representative in the early-state lineup, depending on how broadly the DNC defines the region: Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

The shakeup is part of a broader move by forces in the Democratic Party that want to eliminate caucuses and give more influence to voters of color. While Democrats moved Nevada and South Carolina forward on the calendar in 2008 to increase the racial diversity of the voters who get an early say on presidential nominations, the party voted this spring to fully reopen the nominating process, including the first two spots occupied for a half-century by Iowa and New Hampshire.

“Nothing is locked in,” said Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and a member of the rules committee. “There are no sacred cows here.”

The sixteen state and territory Democratic Party organizations applying for early-state status in the next Democratic presidential primary: Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas and Washington.

See here for the background, and here for the TDP’s statement on the matter. As I said before, I’m fine with where we are now in the primary process. Mostly, I don’t want to move the primaries any earlier, and I definitely don’t want to separate the Presidential primary from the rest of the races. It’s far from clear we could get the Lege to move the primary date up anyway, so this may just be an academic exercise. We’ll see what happens.

Interview with Janet Dudding

May 2nd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Janet Dudding

When I first made plans to do interviews for the Democratic primary runoffs, I thought I’d interview both candidates in the races I picked, as my mission in doing these interviews is to help voters like myself figure out the best choices. But as I sometimes do in other contexts, I consider it a better use of my time and yours to curate who I interview. That was a deciding factor for the Comptroller runoff, where it was clear to me that Janet Dudding was the stronger candidate, and so I chose to just interview her. Dudding is a CPA who relocated to College Station with her family following Hurricane Katrina. She worked for the city of College Station and for Texas A&M before retiring and getting more involved in politics. She was a candidate for HD14 in 2020 and is currently president of the Texas Democratic Women of the Brazos Valley. Here’s what we talked about:

As before, you can see a full list of my interviews and a whole lot more info about the Democratic candidates on the Erik Manning spreadsheet. It was my intent to do more runoff interviews, but life caught up to me and I just didn’t have the time. I’ll have more for November.

Interview with Staci Childs

Apr 26th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Staci Childs

As noted, I have done interviews with the two candidates in the Democratic primary runoff for SBOE4. This is a 72% Biden district that has no Republican candidate for November, so the winner of the runoff will be the next SBOE member. Staci Childs is another classroom teacher, one of the HISD Teacher of the Year winners for 2019. She is also a lawyer and the creator of GirlTalk University, a now nationally recognized program designed to instill confidence and high academic achievement in girls. Here’s what we talked about:

As before, you can see a full list of my interviews and a whole lot more info about the Democratic candidates on the Erik Manning spreadsheet.

Where are the endorsements?

Apr 26th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

As you know, early voting has begun for the May 7 election, which includes two Constitutional amendments and the special election for HCC District 2. As of last night when I drafted this, I see no endorsements in any of these elections on the Chron’s opinion page. Are these elections not worth it to them, or have they just not gotten around to them yet? I sure hope it’s the latter, and that they will rectify that quickly. I don’t know what they’re waiting for.

Seventeen days after that election will be the primary runoffs. A quick check of the Erik Manning spreadsheet confirms for me that in all of the Democratic primary runoffs for which the Chron issued a March endorsement, their preferred candidate is still running. In ballot order:

CD38 – Duncan Klussman
Lt. Governor – Mike Collier
Attorney General – Joe Jaworski
Comptroller – Janet Dudding
Land Commissioner – Jay Kleberg
SBOE4 – Staci Childs
HD147 – Danielle Bess
185th Criminal Court – Judge Jason Luong
208th Criminal Court – Kim McTorry
Commissioners Court Precinct 4 – Lesley Briones

You may or may not agree with these, but those are who the Chron picked. They have no races to revisit among them. They do, however, have three more races to consider, which were among those they skipped in Round One:

312th Family Court – Judge Chip Wells vs Teresa Waldrop
County Civil Court at Law #4 – MK Singh vs Treasea Treviño
Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1 Place 2 – Steve Duble vs Sonia Lopez

The links are to my judicial Q&As for those who submitted responses. You can find all the Q&A and interview links from the primary here. More recently I interviewed Staci Childs and Coretta Mallet-Fontenot in SBOE4; I will have an interview with Janet Dudding on Monday. There’s no need to rush if the Chron wants to circle back to these races they ignored originally – they can wait till after the May 7 election, but not too long since early voting there will begin on May 16. It’s only three runoff races (*), plus those two Constitutional amendments and that one HCC race. C’mon, Chron editorial board, you can do this.

(*) There may be some Republican runoffs for them to revisit as well. I didn’t check and am obviously not as interested. I doubt most Republican runoff voters are either, so whatever. The HD147 special election is between the same two candidates as in the primary runoff, so we can assume the endorsement for one carries over to the other.

Interview with Coretta Mallet-Fontenot

Apr 25th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Coretta Mallet-Fontenot

I said during the primary season that I would revisit some races for the primary runoffs, and that time has come. I won’t have a whole lot of these, but one I had my eye on from the beginning was the primary in SBOE district 4, which is being vacated by incumbent Lawrence Allen for a run at HD26. There were a multitude of candidates for this position, which had been held by Rep. Alma Allen before Lawrence Allen’s tenure, and two good ones emerged for the runoff. First up on my interview slate is Coretta Mallet-Fontenot, a 23-year educator in Houston ISD and Houston Federation of Teachers Executive Council Member. We talked about teachers, standardized tests, textbooks, the current obsession by Republicans with “critical race theory”, and more. You can hear it all here:

As before, you can see a full list of my interviews and a whole lot more info about the Democratic candidates on the Erik Manning spreadsheet.

I’m not sure I want us to be an early Presidential primary state

Apr 22nd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

We’re pretty early already. I’m fine with that.

The Texas Democratic Party is planning to apply to be one of the first states to vote on the 2024 presidential nomination.

The Democratic National Committee recently decided to allow new states to bid for the coveted status, which has long belonged to places like Iowa and New Hampshire. But after complaints throughout the 2020 primary — and Iowa’s disastrous caucus — the national party is looking to overhaul the calendar to kick off the nominating process in states that better reflect the diversity of the broader electorate.

The Texas party had been considering a bid and was planning to meet Wednesday with the DNC to go over the process, according to a state party spokesperson, Angelica Luna Kaufman. She said later Wednesday that the party had decided it would submit an application.

“Because Texas has such a vibrant and diverse population, we believe candidates that would emerge from our primary would better represent and be better prepared to face the country’s growing dynamic and diverse population,” Luna Kaufman said. “The candidates that would come out of an earlier Texas primary would be quite a force. And a force is exactly what it’s going to take to win in 2024.”

However, it could be a tricky process and starts out with uncertain odds. Moving up the primary date would ultimately be up to the Legislature, where Republicans are in charge.

States have until May 6 to submit a letter of interest to the DNC and then until June 3 to submit an application. The DNC could finalize the new calendar by the end of the summer.

In 2020, Iowa had its contest on Feb. 3, followed by New Hampshire on Feb. 11, Nevada on Feb. 22 and South Carolina on Feb. 29.

Our primary is right after South Carolina, and as the story noted it was pretty important in 2020. In 2008 too, as there wasn’t a clear leader going in and then all of a sudden we were the center of attention for a couple of weeks. I don’t want our primary to be any earlier in the year – to be honest, this is as much a selfish desire on my part as anything, as the Christmas holiday works really well for me to do a ton of candidate interviews, and moving this up would ruin that. Nor do I want a split primary, where we do a separate Presidential vote before we do the rest of the races. I seriously doubt the Lege is interested in doing anything to accommodate Democratic Presidential hopefuls, but even on its own merits I’d expect there to be a lot of reluctance. We can debate it all we want, in the end I think this will be an academic exercise. And that’s fine by me.

Judicial Q&A: Beverly Armstrong

Mar 28th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

(Note: As I have done in past elections, I am running a series of Q&As for judicial candidates in contested Democratic primaries. This was intended to help introduce the candidates and their experiences to those who plan to vote in March, and I have extended it for the May runoffs. I am running these responses in the order that I receive them from the candidates. Much more information about Democratic primary candidates, including links to the interviews and judicial Q&As, can be found on Erik Manning’s spreadsheet.

Beverly Armstrong

1. Who are you and what are you running for?

I am Beverly Armstrong. I am running for Judge of the 208th Criminal District Court. I have been a resident of Harris County for more than 30 years. I moved here after graduating from Prairie View A&M University with a BS degree in Civil Engineering. I attended the part time program at South Texas College of Law in downtown Houston while working full time. When I’m not serving as a public servant, I serve on the communion steward and finance committees at my church, Jones United Methodist Church. My husband and I started our family here and have raised two children who attended schools in Harris County.

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

The 208th Criminal District Court hears all levels of felony cases. This includes State Jail Felonies, 1st through 3rd degree felonies and capital felony cases.

3. Why are you running for this particular bench?

I’m running for this bench because too many habitual, violent offenders were being released on low (lowered) bonds by this court And because this court was not holding trials to bring justice to the accused and for the accuser.

4. What are your qualifications for this job?

I have been a licensed attorney for 25 years. I’ve been a prosecutor for 15 years. I started my prosecution career in Polk County. I spent 3 years in the Galveston County District Attorneys Office where I served as Court Chief in the 212th and 10th Criminal District Courts and Chief of the Child Abuse Division. I was asked to return to Polk County to serve as the First Assistant Criminal District Attorney, where I currently serve. Over the course of my criminal law career, I have handled more than 2000 cases from misdemeanor thefts to murder. I have been the led attorney handling cases from grand jury to trial for numerous felony cases including aggravated robbery, child sexual assault and murders. I supervise a staff of secretaries, investigators and prosecutors. I’ve prepared numerous appellate briefs and I have successfully argued before the 9th court of appeals. Additionally, I served as a faculty advisor at the Prosecutor Trials Skills Course held by the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

5. Why is this race important?

This court handles the most serious criminal cases in the county. It’s imperative that the most qualified candidate is seated for this court. Additionally, the judge of this court needs a proven track record of implementing tools to help promote fairness and justice for all parties in the courtroom.

6. Why should people vote for you in May?

People should vote for me because experience matters. I am the most experienced candidate in this race. I am ready to handle any types of case that is on the docket on day one. I am the only candidate that has handled every type of case this court hears. I have a proven record of fighting against the release of repeat violent offenders while demonstrating compassion for non violent offenders who need a second chance. I have worked with agencies to find mental health programs, parenting skills programs and drug rehabilitation programs to give offenders the tools needed to become successful members of our community as opposed to repeat offenders. I will show up ready to work. I will respect the attorneys time and the time of the community before my court. I will bring fairness, integrity and experience to the courtroom. I am committed to the protection of the community in the courtroom and outside of the courtroom.

Amanda Edwards to run for Mayor

Mar 24th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

The field is now at three.

Amanda Edwards

Amanda Edwards, a former at-large member of Houston City Council and candidate for U.S. Senate, announced Wednesday she is running for mayor of Houston in 2023.

Edwards’ return to politics comes two years after her fifth-place finish in the 2020 Democratic Senate primary. She previously had served a single term as one of Houston’s five citywide council members, before passing up a second term to run for Senate.

With Edwards’ announcement, there now are three major candidates vying next year to succeed Mayor Sylvester Turner, who cannot run again due to term limits. Edwards, who would be the first Black woman to lead Houston city government, said her experience at City Hall sets her apart from the other two candidates, former Harris County clerk Chris Hollins and state Sen. John Whitmire, both of whom, like Edwards, are Democrats and attorneys.

“There are complicated issues that are facing the next mayor. The easy stuff, that was done many years ago,” Edwards said. “It’s the hard stuff that’s left, and you’ve got to have somebody at the helm on Day One that is ready to lead and knows how to navigate the city and all of its challenges and opportunities that may be in front of us.”

During her four-year tenure on Houston City Council, Edwards served as vice chair of the council’s Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee and helped direct a task force focused on boosting the city’s tech and startup economy.

She proposed amendments to the annual city budget — one of the few levers of power for council members under Houston’s strong-mayor form of government — that sought to speed up the permitting process, expand internet access for low-income communities and improve conditions for women- and minority-owned businesses.

As mayor, Edwards said she would focus on “cultivating opportunity for everyone,” including businesses owned by women and minorities, who she said face “great disparities when they’re trying to access traditional forms of capital” to grow their businesses.

I thought Edwards would be an obvious contender for Mayor back when she was a Council member, for a variety of reasons – she was young and had a strong showing in her first election, did well raising money, would be term-limited at the same time as Mayor Turner, had plenty of opportunity to make things happen on Council, and so on. She chose a different path, declining to run for re-election before entering the Democratic primary for US Senate in 2020, where she raised a respectable but not impressive amount of money and finished a disappointing fifth place in that large field. Even when she was a candidate for Senate I still thought she might wind up running for Mayor. And so here we are. (You can also see what a genius I was at predicting the future.)

Whatever route she took to get here, she’s here now. As I’ve said many times, we’ll have a better handle on how her candidacy, or anyone’s, is doing when we see the first batch of campaign finance reports. Money isn’t everything, but at least early on it’s a decent proxy for how much interest there is in a particular contender, and where that interest is coming from. Right now we have three candidates with varied backgrounds and experiences, and they’re out there introducing themselves to the wider audience that they’ll need to appeal to. It’s likely that field will grow, so making a good impression now while there’s less competition is of great value. There’s a lot happening right now, and we should all rank the 2022 election ahead of the 2023 one, but do keep an eye on these people, as one of them could be our next Mayor. Edwards’ intro video is here. I wish her luck. The Trib and the Texas Signal have more.

Not just Beto for marijuana legalization

Mar 21st, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

The two Democrats in the runoff for Attorney General are also on board.

As the May 24 runoff approaches, both Democrats in the runoff for Texas Attorney General have doubled down on their promises to legalize cannabis in the state.

Rochelle Garza and Joe Jaworski made it clear in the runup to the primary that they’re in favor of legalization, and in the past few days both have taken to Twitter make sure voters know where they stand.

Garza, a Brownsville lawyer and former staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas, finished first in the primary, but didn’t secure the majority needed to avoid a runoff with Jaworski, a former Galveston mayor and grandson of Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski.

“It’s time to legalize the sale and use of recreational cannabis in Texas,” Garza tweeted Saturday. “Nearly 70% of Texans support legalization, and they deserve an Attorney General who will work with them to advance our priorities.”

On Tuesday, Jaworksi tweeted that legalizing cannabis is an important element of criminal justice reform, throwing in the hashtag #legalizecannabis to leave no doubt where he stands.

“How many young lives, principally lives of color, are we going to put in private prisons so ppl can make a profit from their incarceration?” he asked. “We can’t have that — that is a sick society.”

See here for some background. The AG doesn’t play a direct role in the legislation process, so while their positions are appreciated they’re not necessarily needed. That said, Ken Paxton is another big opponent of marijuana – you know, because he’s such an upstanding and law-abiding citizen himself – and even in the absence of legalization I’m sure there are things that the state’s top law enforcement officer could do from an executive policy position to improve things. There’s only one way to find out, and while pot legalization has got to be pretty far down on the list of good reasons to vote Paxton’s sorry ass out of office, it is on there, and we should be sure to point it out.

Precinct analysis: Beto’s range in the 2022 primaries

Mar 15th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

When you get 91.34% of the vote in an election, as Beto did in the Democratic primary for Governor, there’s usually not a whole lot of interesting data beneath the surface. But you never know until you look, so I went and got the numbers for the Dem gubernatorial primary by county and sorted them by Beto’s percentage. Here are some highlights from that:


County      Diaz%  Cooper%   Beto%   Voters
===========================================
Maverick   16.40%   10.48%  60.71%    6,653
Frio        8.14%    6.87%  71.72%    2,518
Dimmit     10.41%    7.97%  71.98%    1,845
Duval       8.18%    6.73%  75.62%    1,858
Webb        8.55%    5.29%  77.02%   17,675
Jim Wells   8.23%    6.57%  78.71%    3,866
Cameron     6.99%    4.71%  81.46%   19,705
Hidalgo     6.44%    3.87%  81.68%   37,309
Jefferson   2.35%   12.72%  83.33%   12,637
El Paso     2.93%    2.14%  91.61%   37,017
Fort Bend   2.64%    3.69%  92.02%   39,613
Harris      2.10%    3.22%  92.83%  157,880
Nueces      2.63%    2.52%  93.17%   13,426
Dallas      1.98%    3.14%  93.53%  126,203
Tarrant     2.18%    3.03%  93.77%   73,413
Bexar       2.30%    1.38%  94.13%   94,334
Montgomery  2.25%    1.87%  94.13%   10,585
Travis      2.98%    0.85%  95.00%  108,831
Denton      1.85%    2.01%  95.09%   27,340
Collin      1.77%    1.36%  95.48%   36,368

I limited myself to counties where at least a thousand votes had been cast, though obviously I didn’t include all of them. Maverick was easily Joy Diaz’s best county, while Jefferson (where he’s from) was Michael Cooper’s best. I didn’t include the other two candidates in this table because they weren’t interesting, but Inno Barrientez had his best showing in Frio County, with 8.02% of the vote.

You might look at some of these places and think that this is a sign of weakness on Beto’s part, since the low-scoring places are mostly heavily Latino. I would invite you to consider how he did in these counties in 2018 before you arrive at such a conclusion.


County    Beto 18  Beto 22
==========================
Maverick   22.13%   61.71%
Frio       23.84%   71.72%
Dimmit     29.07%   71.98%
Duval      41.58%   75.62%
Webb       41.65%   77.02%
Jim Wells  40.24%   78.71%
Cameron    46.77%   81.46%
Hidalgo    50.50%   81.68%

Sema Hernandez got over 60% in Maverick, almost 60% in Frio, and over 50% in Dimmit. She won a plurality in Duval, Webb, and Jim Wells, and had over 40% in Cameron and Hidalgo. I largely pooh-poohed the “Beto underperformed in the Latino counties!” hot takes in March of 2018 and I stand by that, but however you felt about those numbers then, it’s very different now.

He really crushed it in the big counties, with Collin the winner as Most Beto-est County Of Them All. You could do this same sort of comparison with 2018 as well if you wanted – Beto got 65.5% in Collin in 2018, 57.7% in Dallas, and 59.1% in Harris – but all we’re really saying is he got a lot more votes from basically the same size electorate. However you slice it, that much remains.

Meet the new judge of County Civil Court at Law #4

Mar 14th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

So far, this is the only public announcement I have seen:

There was an item (#281 if you search) on the March 8 Commissioners Court agenda to discuss and possibly take action on this vacancy, which had stretched on for awhile. While the County Civil Court at Law #4 website still showed Lesley Briones as Judge as of the weekend, I assume that will be updated soon. This appointment is for the rest of the year only, as the position will be filled for the next four years in the November election. As noted before, Manpreet Monica Singh and Treasea Treviño are in the runoff to be the nominee for that bench. For now, congrats to Judge Ayala, who I’m sure will do an excellent job in the interim. And I’m glad Commissioners Court finally got around to this.

It’s officially Garza and Jaworski in the AG runoff

Mar 11th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Glad that’s settled.

Rochelle Garza

Civil rights lawyer Lee Merritt suspended his campaign for the Democratic nomination for Texas attorney general on Thursday, clearing the way for top vote-getter Rochelle Garza to face Joe Jaworski in a May runoff election.

More than a week after election day, Merritt, who was less than 4,000 votes behind Jaworski for second place, conceded that he had failed to garner enough votes to make the runoff and endorsed Garza.

“She has demonstrated that she can run a campaign that can energize our base, that reflects the diversity of our party,” Merritt said in a press conference in Houston. “She and I had a conversation yesterday about my plans to join her on the campaign trail to encourage young progressive voters to get engaged in the process.”

Merritt said he was still within a “razor thin margin” of Jaworski but wanted to help consolidate support for Garza so she could focus on winning the general election in November.

“When I got into the race, Rochelle Garza wasn’t in it,” he said. “She represents a young, progressive, forward-thinking advocate that I wouldn’t have joined the race if I thought she was in it. So even if we were to come out ahead, I would encourage the parties to get behind Rochelle Garza and focus on actually flipping that office.”

[…]

In a statement on Thursday, Jaworski said he enjoyed a cordial relationship with Merritt on the campaign trail and wished him well in his law practice.

“I’m looking forward to a robust runoff campaign with Ms. Garza, so that Texas voters can choose the best candidate to defeat Ken Paxton in November,” he said.

In a statement after Merritt’s concession, Garza touted the endorsements from two of her primary opponents — last week, fourth-place finisher Mike Fields also asked his fellow candidates to forgo a runoff and allow Garza to focus on the general election — and made a pitch to Merritt’s supporters.

“To Mr. Merritt’s supporters, I am committed to continuing to fight for our civil rights and to earn your support in this runoff election,” she said. “People of color are the majority of the population of our state, and I look forward to working together with Mr. Merritt to ensure we have representation at the state level and do the hard work of turning out the vote in Texas.”

See here for the background. Both Garza and Jaworski are terrific candidates and either would deserve to be elected in a landslide this fall. As I said before, the advantage to their being a runoff instead of a concession from Jaworski is that this race and these candidates will continue to be in the news, rather than it being all Paxton-Bush. Jaworski has been an okay fundraiser so far, now it’s Garza’s turn to show she can do that, too. Vote for who you like in May, and then support the hell out of the winner.

The story of course notes the absentee ballot tabulation screwup in Harris County and the fact that it left this race in a bit of limbo. The gap between Jaworski and Merritt was indeed thin, but Jaworski’s drew far more support than Merritt in the initial count of absentee ballots in Harris County, and anyone could have surmised that the odds greatly favored him maintaining his overall lead as the other ballots were added into the count. And yet…

Prior to the revelation about the missing ballots, Jaworski and civil rights attorney Lee Merritt had been separated by about 1,400 votes. But with the new Harris County totals, Jaworski picked up about 2,600 votes, and Merritt gained just under 1,000 — not enough to close the gap.

Yes, well it would be difficult for Merritt to close the gap when Jaworski was increasing his lead due to getting way more votes from these ballots. I know math is hard, but it’s pretty simple to just say “the gap grew larger” or “Merritt fell further behind” or some other thing that expressed this basic fact. Good grief.

Precinct analysis: Final 2022 primary vote totals from those counties of interest

Mar 10th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

At the end of early voting, I posted some totals from various counties around the state. I noted at the time it was an imprecise comparison since I included final 2018 turnout numbers as the comparison point for 2022 and said I’d update that table when voting was over. Well, voting is over, so let’s return to that table and see what we can see.


County       2018 Dem   2018 GOP  2022 Dem  2022 GOP
====================================================
Bell            7,282     18,149     9,089    20,912
Bexar          81,408     67,977    94,334    87,277
Brazoria       10,085     24,376    11,331    30,541
Brazos          5,131     12,365     4,611    16,430
Cameron        14,123      4,003    19,705    10,504
Collin         34,669     66,078    36,368    79,431
Comal           4,150     17,662     4,847    23,874
Dallas        123,671     80,583   126,203    86,551
Denton         27,025     49,474    27,340    68,104
El Paso        54,184     12,096    37,017    18,240
Ellis           4,243     15,906     5,376    18,536
Fort Bend      29,322     34,707    39,613    45,582
Hays           11,397     11,881    12,972    15,475
Hidalgo        37,739      7,050    37,309    15,042
Johnson         2,618     12,280     2,485    17,085
Lubbock         5,900     21,964     5,599    27,552
Maverick        6,300        111     6,653       623
Montgomery      9,701     48,921    10,585    71,451
Nueces         12,345     12,553    13,426    18,871
Smith           4,704     22,826     6,362    27,668
Starr           6,729         15     3,410     1,089
Tarrant        71,876    105,317    73,410   129,628
Travis        113,070     39,177   108,831    46,416
Webb           21,137      1,426    17,675     2,963
Williamson     25,681     35,675    26,067    47,431

The first thing you might notice is that the final numbers for Starr and Maverick counties are less than the final EV totals I had. How can that be? I double-checked the final EV totals on the SOS webpage, and they are now as they were then, 6,895 for Maverick and 5,188 for Starr. I may not know much, but I know that election totals go up, not down. How do I explain this?

I went and looked at the Starr County Elections page to see what I could find. What I found is that the turnout numbers they presented for the Democratic and Republican primaries are indeed different than what the SOS reported for the gubernatorial races, by a fair amount. While there were 3,410 votes cast in the Governor’s race on the Democratic side in Starr, and 1,089 on the Republican side, total turnout for Democrats was given as 6,456, with 1,444 as the total for Republicans. You can see if you scroll through that some races, like the CD28 Dem primary, got a lot more votes than the gubernatorial primary. I figured maybe the action was a bit heavier downballot, and that seemed to be true on the Dem side in that there were a lot more votes cast in the eight Justice of the Peace races. There were still undervotes, which were easier to comprehend as they were a lot closer to the “total votes” figures for each race, but if you added up all the votes in those eight JP precincts, you get the 6,456 and 1,444 figures cited.

Make of that what you will. The transition from the “actual total turnout regardless of who voted in what race” to the “total that actually voted in this race” was jarring, in this case because the undervote rate was so low. I have no idea what it might have been in 2018, so I can’t draw any conclusions. As for Maverick County, I couldn’t find a report from their website, just what the SOS had. Insert shrug emoji here.

Anyway. I didn’t have an agenda for this post, just an intention to keep the promise made before. I’ve got some other posts about primary voting in the works and will run those in the coming days.

Four file for the HCC special election

Mar 9th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Monday was the filing deadline.

On Saturday, May 7, 2022, Houston Community College System (“HCC”) will hold a special election to fill a vacancy for the HCC Board of Trustees position in geographic district II for the unexpired term through December 31, 2025.

The following candidates filed an Application for a Place on the Ballot for the May 7, 2022 HCC Special Trustee Election (Listed by last name alphabetical and in accordance with the candidate’s name as it will appear on the ballot):

Kathy “Lynch” Gunter

Terrance Hall

Charlene Ward Johnson

Y. Jayne “Baby Jane” McCullough

See here and here for the background. Kathy Lynch-Gunter (I have no idea why her name is listed as above) ran for this position in 2019, losing to the now-resigned Rhonda Skillern-Jones in the runoff. Google tells me that Terrance Hall was at one point a candidate for Houston City Council District B in 2011, but he ran into some trouble, and must not have filed because I don’t see his name in the election results. “Baby Jane” McCullough ran for HISD District II in 2015, as Youlette Jayne “Baby Jane” McCullough, running as an opponent to then-HISD Trustee Skillern-Jones, and finished third in a four-person field. Charlene Ward Johnson, who as far as I can tell has not run for office before, has a website up, and was the first one to send a press release announcing her candidacy to a list of recipients that included me. Now you know everything I know about these candidates.

I do plan to do interviews for this race, probably sometime in April. In the meantime, Monday was also the filing deadline for the HD147 special election, which as noted has far lower stakes as it is just to fill the unexpired term for outgoing Rep. Garnet Coleman. As expected, the only people to file for this were the two candidates in the primary runoff for HD147, Jolanda Jones and Danielle Bess. That means that the special election winner could then go on to lose the primary runoff and not actually get to serve while the Lege is in session, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I’ve already done interviews with these candidates, so you can find them and give them a listen if you haven’t already.

The Dem runoff for AG is not fully settled

Mar 6th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

First place in the Democratic primary for Attorney General went to Rochelle Garza. Second place is still somewhat of a question.

Rochelle Garza

Two days after election day in the March primary, the Democratic race for attorney general is still not settled.

By Tuesday night, it was clear that Rochelle Garza, a former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer from Brownsville, was the clear front-runner in the race, but she did not garner enough support to avoid a May runoff. Joe Jaworski, an attorney and former Galveston mayor, was in a tight battle with civil rights lawyer Lee Merritt for second place, with Jaworski in the lead but only a few thousand votes separating the two.

Early Wednesday morning, Garza celebrated her showing, thanking voters for their support. She did not mention the runoff and instead turned her sights to Republican incumbent Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is headed into his own runoff against Land Commissioner George P. Bush.

“I got in this race to fight for Texas families, protect voting & reproductive rights and hold corporations and bad actors to account when they take advantage of Texans,” Garza said in a statement. “Indicted Ken Paxton is the most corrupt Attorney General in the country and our campaign is ready to defeat him this November.”

Merritt said Wednesday afternoon that the “race is not over” and was waiting for all the votes to be counted. He said the delayed results showed “flaws in our election system” that led to mistrust, confusion and people being discouraged from voting.

“Our campaign is eagerly watching and waiting along with the rest of the state and the country to see the results of this election,” he said in a statement.

By Thursday, the secretary of state’s website said all polling locations in the state had reported. But some mail-in ballots and provisional ballots can still be tabulated. Jaworski still held a slim lead over Merritt.

On Thursday, Jaworski tweeted cheerily that he was still in second place and was “exhibiting Olympian patience” in waiting for final results.

“Let’s get another cup of coffee while we wait,” he said. “Onward!”

Meanwhile, Mike Fields, who placed a distant fourth, congratulated Garza and said she was “the preferred choice of the majority of Democratic primary voters,” garnering more than twice the votes of her nearest competitor. He then asked Jaworski and Merritt to forgo a runoff and allow Garza to focus her attention on winning the general election in November.

First, Garza received 432,212 votes out of just over one million cast. Jaworski is second with 196,463, while Merritt has 195,045. That’s a difference of 1,418 votes, and 0.14 percentage points. It’s a small margin, but I think it’s highly unlikely that any combination of provisional ballots, overseas ballots, and mail ballots that can still be corrected for incorrect voter ID information could put Merritt ahead. There may not be enough votes left in play for it to be mathematically possible, and even if there is he’d have to win such an overwhelming number of them that it’s virtually impossible. This is why so few elections are truly in doubt once the Election Day votes are counted. There just isn’t enough slack for the difference to be made up.

As for Fields’ suggestion that Jaworski and Merritt drop out so Garza can begin her general election campaign, there is an argument for that. She needs to raise a bunch of money, and it would be better to have most of it for November. Of course, money spent on organizing and voter outreach now, for the runoff, is still a good investment. One could also argue that she’ll get more attention over the next two months as the frontrunner in the runoff than she would as the nominee, especially with Paxton himself in a runoff. I’m agnostic on the question, but it doesn’t really matter since neither Jaworski nor Merritt seems inclined to take that advice.

But as noted, one can make a reasonable case for Garza’s path to be cleared. This is much more of a stretch.

State Rep. Michelle Beckley forced a runoff in the Democratic race for lieutenant governor — and now she’s calling on her opponent, Houston accountant Mike Collier, to end his campaign.

“He doesn’t inspire the base,” Beckley, of Carrollton, said in an interview Thursday. “He should drop out.”

Collier was the 2018 Democratic nominee for the post and came within 5 points of unseating Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that year. He earned about 42 percent of the vote in Tuesday night’s election, followed by Beckley at 30 percent.

A third candidate, Houston educator Carla Brailey, came in just behind at 28 percent, according to unofficial results. Patrick, who is seeking his third term in Texas’ No. 2 spot, sailed to victory in the Republican primary.

Collier says he has no intention of dropping out, and the two will face off in a May runoff election.

“Our campaign is building a diverse coalition around the issues that matter to Texans — protecting our individual rights, fully funding our public education system, fixing the damn grid, expanding Medicaid — and working together to defeat Dan Patrick,” Collier said.

[…]

Collier has two statewide elections under his belt: the lieutenant governor’s race four years ago and a bid for state comptroller before that. His campaign has a massive funding advantage, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in the lead-up to the primary.

As of Feb. 22, his campaign had about $120,000 on hand to Beckley’s $9,000. Collier has raised nearly $2 million since announcing his run last year, though his campaign is bogged down by about $450,000 in outstanding loans — a holdover from the 2018 race that he’d given to himself.

For Collier, the lead-up to the May runoff will focus on digital campaigns and travel across the state, starting with a visit to North Texas on Monday. His campaign also announced a number of new endorsements on Thursday, including three members of Congress — Reps. Veronica Escobar, Lizzie Fletcher and Lloyd Doggett — and a slate of Houston-area politicians who had previously endorsed Brailey.

Seems a bit presumptuous to me. Collier is reasonably well known among Dems, he did quite respectably well in 2018, he’s done decently in fundraising, and well, he got the most votes this past Tuesday. Maybe he’s not “inspiring”, whatever that may mean, but if so I’d say it’s on Beckley to demonstrate that she’s more so than he is. That’s what the runoff is for.

Initial post-election wrapup

Mar 3rd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
11 comments

Just a few updates and observations to add onto what I posted yesterday morning. Any deeper thoughts, if I have them, will come later.

– Cheri Thomas and William Demond won their races for the 14th Court of Appeals. I didn’t mention them yesterday, just too much to cover.

– Also didn’t mention any of the SBOE races, four of which are headed to runoffs on the Dems side, including SBOE4 in Harris County. Those were all open or (with SBOE11) Republican-held seats. The three incumbents were all winners in their races – Marisa Perez-Diaz (SBOE3) and Aicha Davis (SBOE13) were unopposed, while Rebecca Bell-Metereau (SBOE5) easily dispatched two challengers.

– All of the district court judges who were leading as of yesterday morning are still leading today.

– Harold Dutton also held on in HD142, but the final result was much closer once the Tuesday votes were counted. He ultimately prevailed with less than 51% of the vote.

– Cam Campbell took and held onto the lead in HD132 (he had trailed by four votes initially), defeating Chase West 52.8 to 47.2, about 300 votes.

– Titus Benton was still leading in SD17, though his lead shrunk from 484 in early voting to 275.

– I touched on this in the runoff roundup post, but the perception that Jessica Cisneros was leading Rep. Henry Cuellar was totally a function of the order in which the counties reported their results. I say this because if you click on the race details for the CD28 primary on the SOS election returns page, you see that Cuellar led by more than 1,500 votes in early voting; he stretched that to about a 2,400 vote lead in the end, though it was just barely not enough to get to 50%. But because Bexar County was first out of the gate and thus first to be picked up by the SOS, and Cisneros ran strongly there, it looked like she was about to blow him out. There are a couple of tweets from Tuesday night that did not age well because of that.

– Statewide, the Dem gubernatorial primary will be a bit short of 1.1 million votes, up a tiny bit from 2018, while the GOP primary for Governor is over 1.9 million votes, comfortably ahead of the 1.55 million from 2018. More Republicans overall turned out on Tuesday than Dems statewide. In Harris County, it looks like the turnout numbers were at 157K for Dems and 180K for Republicans, with about 43% of the vote in each case being cast on Tuesday. Dems were down about 10K votes from 2018, Rs up about 24K. In a year where Republicans are supposed to have the wind at their backs and certainly had a lot more money in the primaries, I’m not sure that’s so impressive. That said, March is not November. Don’t go drawing broad inferences from any of this.

– At the risk of violating my own warning, I will note that the CD15 primary, in a district that is now slightly lean R and with the overall GOP turnout advantage and clear evidence of more GOP primary participation in South Texas, the Dem candidates combined for 32,517 votes while the Republicans and their million-dollar candidate combined for 29,715 votes. Does that mean anything? Voting in one party’s primary, because that’s where one or more local races of interest to you are, doesn’t mean anything for November, as any number of Democratic lawyers with Republican voting histories from a decade or more ago can attest. Still, I feel like if there had been more votes cast in that Republican primary that someone would make a big deal out of it, so since that didn’t happen I am noting it for the record. Like I said, it may mean absolutely nothing, and November is still a long way away, but it is what happened so there you have it.

– In Fort Bend, County Judge KP George won his own primary with about the same 70% of the vote as Judge Hidalgo did here. Longtime County Commissioner Grady Prestage defeated two challengers but just barely cleared fifty percent to avoid a runoff. The other commissioner, first termer Ken DeMerchant, didn’t do nearly as well. He got just 14.3% of the vote, and will watch as Dexter McCoy and Neeta Sane will battle in May. I confess, I wasn’t paying close attention to this race and I don’t have an ear to the ground in Fort Bend, so I don’t know what was the cause of this shocking (to me, anyway) result. Sitting County Commissioners, even first timers, just don’t fare that poorly in elections. Community Impact suggests redistricting might not have done him any favors, but still. If you have some insight, please leave a comment.

– As was the case in Harris, a couple of incumbent judges in Fort Bend lost in their primaries. I don’t know any of the players there, and my overall opinion of our system of choosing judges hasn’t changed from the last tiresome time we had this conversation.

This came in later in the day, so I thought I’d add it at the end instead of shoehorning it into the beginning.

Harris County election officials are still counting ballots Wednesday morning for the Tuesday Primary Election. Despite the Texas Secretary of State John B. Scott saying officials will not finish counting ballots by the deadline, Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria said she’s confident counting votes will be done.

“It’s going to take a couple of days to finish the entire process as we’ve always seen,” Longoria said. “I don’t have concerns about counting the election ballots for this election.”

[…]

Harris County Voting Director Beth Stevens said the paper ballot system slows down the process for both voters and election workers.

“We’re working with paper here, what we know is we have hundreds of thousands of ballots processed accurately and securely here in our central counting station and we’re working with 2.5 million registered voters,” Stevens said.

In addition to voter registration identification mishaps, and mail-in ballot rejections, Harris County election officials also said damaged ballots have become an issue in the counting process. According to Stevens, damaged ballots have to be duplicated before being scanned by electronic tabulators and counted in at the central polling location. Officials said this could take some time.

“There was a negative attempt to make Harris County look bad in this moment and it’s completely unnecessary because we are processing as appropriate,” Stevens said. “Voters can be sure that paper ballots and electronic media that go with that is the most safe and secure ballot in the country.”

And this.

More than 1,600 ballots in Harris County were not read properly by the county’s new voting machines because of human error, the elections administration office said, resulting in a slower tabulation process for Tuesday’s primaries.

The new system requires voters to take paper ballots with their selections from a voting machine and feed it into a counting machine. Voters did this incorrectly in some cases, said elections office spokeswoman Leah Shah, making the ballots unreadable. Instead, those ballots were re-scanned at the county’s election headquarters, an extra time-consuming step.

Shah said Harris County’s long primary ballot required voters to feed two sheets of paper instead of the usual one, increasing the chance of error if they are inserted the wrong way or inadvertently creased or wrinkled. The 1,629 incorrectly scanned ballots represent less than 1 percent of the nearly 500,000 primary ballots cast.

“These are margins of error that are already accounted for, built in to how we process the ballot,” Shah said. “But we also understand the importance of having the paper trail and having that extra layer of security and backup.”

Voter Sara Cress, who ran the county’s popular elections social media accounts in 2020, said the first page of her ballot became wrinkled in her hand as she filled out the second page. When she attempted to feed the scuffed sheet into the counting machine, it would not take.

“I tried it twice, and then two poll workers tried it over and over again, and it just was giving errors,” Cress said.

[…]

Shah said new requirements under SB1, the voting bill passed by the Legislature last year, placed additional strain on county elections staff. She said 30 percent of the 24,000 mail ballots received have been flagged for rejection because they fail to meet the law’s ID requirements.

Elections staff have been calling those voters, who mostly are over 65, to inform them of the March 7 deadline by which they must provide the correct information or their ballots will not be counted.

The issue with the printers is one reason why the new voting machines were rolled out last year, when they could be tested in a lower-turnout environment. Fewer initial disruptions, but perhaps not enough actual testing to work through all the problems. Going to need a lot more voter education, and more stress testing on those machines. The fiasco with the mail ballots, which is 100% on the Republicans, is putting a lot of pressure on the elections staff. None of this had to happen like this. I mean, if we’re going to talk voter education, not to mention training for county election workers, that was a complete failure on the state’s part. It’s easy to dump on the Secretary of State here, and they do deserve some blame, but they too were put in a no-win spot by the Republicans.

As far as the rest goes, the early voting totals were up at about 7:20 or so on Tuesday night. Initial results came in slowly, as you could tell from my posts yesterday, but almost all of the voting centers had reported by 1 PM yesterday. I do believe there will be some improvement with the printers before November. At least we have two more chances to work out the kinks before then, with the primary runoffs, the May special election, and possibly May special election runoffs. Here’s hoping.

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