Off the Kuff Rotating Header Image

Election 2015

Who might run for Mayor in 2023?

Jan 10th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
14 comments

Mayor Sylvester Turner

So Election 2019 is (modulo District B) safely in the books, and Sylvester Turner is in office for his second and final term. In years past at this time I’d be taking a look ahead at the next city election – who’s termed out, who could be vulnerable, who might be priming for a run, etc – but with the next election not until 2023 that seems like a stretch. We can start thinking about who might throw their hat into the ring for Mayor, however. The field in 2015 was quite large, and I’d expect something similar in 2023. Houston Mayor is a prime gig, and it doesn’t come open very often.

I’m going to run down a list of names that seem like potential contenders. I want to stress that this list is entirely the product of my imagination. I have no inside knowledge of anyone’s intentions, and I make no warranty on any of these claims. I’m just thinking out loud. So with that in mind…

Chris Brown – He’s the current City Controller, he’s won twice citywide (which among other things means he’ll be term-limited and thus would need to run for something else, if he wants to stay in city elected office), he’s a strong fundraiser, he’s got a long history in city politics. Annise Parker and Kathy Whitmire were both Controllers before they were Mayors. He does have a bit of baggage, and his win over Orlando Sanchez was not by much, but if there’s one person on this list who would surprise me by not running, it would be Chris Brown.

State Sen. Carol Alvarado – Served three terms as Council member in District I and was Bill White’s Mayor Pro Tem before winning election to the Lege in 2008, and continues to be involved with city issues as a legislator. If she has statewide ambitions – and as a young Senator looking at a Democratic-trending state, she should – Mayor of Houston would enable her to run from a bigger base. Legislators have been elected Mayor in various cities recently, including Dee Margo (El Paso), Eric Johnson (Dallas), and of course Mayor Turner. As an incumbent, she’d be in a strong position to build up a campaign treasury in advance of running, as Turner did in 2015. The main negative here is the old story of Latinos having a hard time winning citywide elections, but someone is going to break through, and being a veteran establishment Democratic elected official is a good way to get there.

Amanda Edwards – OK, sure, she’s running for US Senate now, but so are multiple other viable candidates, only one of whom can survive the primary, never mind the uphill battle that would follow. While she would certainly prefer to be well into her first term in Washington, it’s hardly crazy or insulting to say she might be available for this race. She was an At Large Council member, one who I thought would have been in a decent position to run for Mayor this year anyway before she changed course, with a strong fundraising history. Running statewide, especially for a federal office, is a great way to vastly expand your donor base. She may well be done with city politics regardless of what happens this year, but I’d be remiss if I left her off this list.

State Rep. Sarah Davis and State Rep. Jim Murphy – Both are incumbent Republican State Reps, and I’m lumping them together here. Davis has a decent chance of losing this year, and while Murphy will be a favorite to win in 2020, he may find himself in the House minority, and decide it’s not to his liking. Houston is a Democratic city, but as establishment, business-friendly, moderate-by-modern-GOP-standards Republicans, you could imagine one of them at least making it to a runoff in the way Bill King did in 2015, and if things broke right, they could win. As with everyone else on this list they can raise plenty of money, and if Texas is still run by Republicans in 2023 they could argue that they’re better positioned to defend our local autonomy better than any Dem running.

Abbie Kamin – I know, she was just elected to District C, and incumbent Council members don’t have a strong track record in Mayoral races (Dwight Boykins, Steve Costello, Peter Brown, Orlando Sanchez, Chris Bell, Helen Huey, Gracie Saenz…you get the point), but in both the November and December races her performance was impressive, she was one of the best fundraisers of the cycle, and having District C as your base is a pretty good jumping off point, especially in a multi-candidate field where the goal is to make it to round 2. Like I said, this is just me thinking out loud.

Orlando Sanchez – Yeah, him again. You just know he’s going to keep running for things. He has name recognition, he did better than expected in losing to Chris Brown, and hey, the third time was the charm for Sylvester Turner. Why not Orlando?

The field – Not every Mayoral contender is visible from a distance. Every recent competitive race has featured at least one wealthy non-politician type, some more successful than others (Bob Lanier, Bill White, Rob Mosbacher, Gene Locke, Ben Hall, Bill King, that guy from 2019). I’ll be surprised if 2023 is an exception, but I have no idea who that person may be at this time. Similarly, every competitive race has had at least one strong black candidate, and if Amanda Edwards sits it out, someone else will step up. One or more people that no one is thinking of now will be on the radar in 2023. Ask me again in a couple of years and we’ll see who that might be.

That’s my list. Who would you add?

DMN profile of Amanda Edwards

Jan 8th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Second in the series, focusing on now-former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards.

Amanda Edwards

On the day of her last Houston City Council meeting, outgoing at-large member Amanda Edwards wasn’t in the mood for goodbyes.

“In my mind it’s not really closing a door,” Edwards said as she drove a reporter past homes damaged by 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. “It’s kind of remodeling and expanding. I’m completely ready to turn my next position on its head in terms of what people have grown accustomed to thinking it is.”

After just one term on the council, Edwards is running for Senate against incumbent Republican John Cornyn, a bodacious move that reflects her considerable confidence and the changing perceptions of what it takes to win a high-profile post.

[…]

Edwards, 37, was born in Houston to Isabella and Eugene Edwards.

Her parents were health care providers; Eugene was a pharmacist and Isabella is a retired physical therapist.

Eugene Edwards was diagnosed with cancer when Amanda was 10 years old, and he died when she was 17.

The questions Edwards had about his treatment helped shaped her views on health care.

From her father “skunking” her in table tennis and both parents stressing education, Edwards developed a competitive spirit.

She boasts about her skills in basketball, ping-pong and volleyball.

“Just ask the mayor,” she said, alluding to a basketball game between the council and staff and the mayor’s staff, in which she starred.

Edwards has degrees from Emory University and Harvard Law School. At Emory in Atlanta, she worked in six neighborhood community development corporations.

After college, she served as board president of Project Row Houses in Houston, where she helped redevelop homes as living art pieces.

She said she ran for council in 2015 to promote servant leadership. She won easily.

“I knew that a lot of things I felt strongly about were issues of leadership, like how to appropriately invest in under-resourced areas alongside the will of the community,” she said.

Edwards touts her work in bringing venture capital to Houston, as well as her push to develop neighborhoods without harmful gentrification.

She’s campaigned heavily on her work to help neighborhoods mend after Hurricane Harvey. Edwards and her community partners canvassed affected homes to determine what victims needed and how to improve the allocation of aid.

Here’s the interview I did with Amanda Edwards in 2015, when she first ran for Council. I included the bits from this story about her time on Council because I would not have known it off the top of my head. That’s partly because this was behind-the-scenes stuff, and partly because in our system here in Houston, Council members usually only make news if they’ve done something dumb or they’ve gotten into a fight with the Mayor. It’s good to be reminded that they do a lot of things we don’t easily see.

As for her candidacy, I guess I’ve been a skeptic. I doubted the reports that she was thinking about running, and I have my doubts she can break out in this field. I’ve long believed that she had a path to being Mayor in 2023, which may be affecting my perception. Edwards says in this story that people have underestimated her for her whole life, and I may be doing exactly that. I look forward to seeing her Q4 finance report, that’s for sure. Having said all this, I do think she’ll be a compelling candidate in November if she makes it through the primary, and whatever happens in March I fully expect we’ll be hearing plenty from Amanda Edwards.

(Previously: Chris Bell.)

2019 runoff early voting wrapup

Dec 11th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Here are your final totals:


Date     Mail   Early   Total
=============================
Nov19  13,015  88,822 101,837
Dec19  18,935  96,269 115,204

The Day Ten EV Runoff file is here, and the final file from November is here. Keir’s thread is here, with a bit of bonus content about the runoff voters who didn’t vote in November – yes, they exist. In the end, there were 152,764 total November early votes cast – there were two more days of early voting, and as usual they were the busiest.

Projecting final turnout is a little tricky, because don’t have many comparable data points. Only 2015 and 2009 had Mayoral runoffs in the modern early voting era. In 2015, 44.58% of votes cast on Election Day, while in 2009 that figure was 56.28%. I strongly suspect that 2015 is the more accurate model, and I’d bet the under on that. I’m guessing we’re headed for final turnout in the 175-200K range. Just my guess, but with a mostly hardcore voter crowd and no romantic attachment to Election Day itself, I fully expect most of the voting to be over. Have you voted yet?

Precinct analysis: 2019 Controller

Dec 7th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Back to the precinct data. This one’s easy, as there are only two candidates.


Dist Sanchez   Brown
====================
A      8,771   7,059
B      4,507  10,779
C     17,652  21,540
D      7,391  15,225
E     14,505  10,672
F      4,798   4,559
G     18,093  13,451
H      7,174   6,579
I      6,089   4,834
J      3,482   3,213
K      7,286  10,680
		
A     55.41%  44.59%
B     29.48%  70.52%
C     45.04%  54.96%
D     32.68%  67.32%
E     57.61%  42.39%
F     51.28%  48.72%
G     57.36%  42.64%
H     52.16%  47.84%
I     55.74%  44.26%
J     52.01%  47.99%
K     40.55%  59.45%

You have to hand it to Orlando Sanchez. He’s been around forever – he was first elected to City Council, in At Large #3, in 1995, the year Griff Griffin started running for office, but he had run unsuccessfully for District C in 1993. He ran for Mayor in 2001 after serving his three terms on Council and nearly won, then ran again in 2003 and didn’t do quite as well. No worries, he jumped at an opportunity to run for County Treasurer in 2006, and was on the county’s payroll till the end of last year. Why not run for office again? Man needs a job, you know. He won everywhere except the three African-American districts and District C, a pretty fine showing for a nondescript Latino Republican, but it wasn’t quite enough. In a county that’s a bright shade of blue and a city where the next elections are in 2023, is this the last we’ll hear of him? I kind of don’t think so. One of the first things he did after losing last year was cheerlead for the TEA to take over HISD, which makes me wonder if he might angle for a spot on the Board of Managers. Water finds its level, and Orlando Sanchez finds opportunities, is what I’m saying. Don’t count him out just yet.

As for Chris Brown, here’s how he did in the 2015 runoff against Bill Frazer. As you can see, better in the Republican districts and District C, less well in the Democratic districts. It’s still a win this way, but he didn’t exactly build on his success from four years ago. Campos thinks he should have done better, and that he failed to get a leg up for a potential future run for Mayor. I think there’s something to that, but I also think no one will remember these numbers even one year from now. If Mayor is next on his agenda, then the most important numbers he’ll need are fundraising numbers. A little more visibility wouldn’t hurt, either. I have to think some of what happened this year is due to Orlando Sanchez’s name recognition, but it shouldn’t have taken that much on Chris Brown’s part to overcome that. It’s not like he’s some no-name generic, after all. A win is a win, and in the end that’s what matters. But probably no other potential future Mayoral candidate is quaking in their boots right now.

Day Six 2019 Runoff EV Report: One day more

Dec 7th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

We’ve completed a five day early voting week, with a bonus day from before the week included. The Day Six EV Runoff file is here, and the final file from November is here. 


Date     Mail   Early   Total
=============================
Nov19   6,799  52,718  59,517
Dec19  14,902  56,079  70,981

And here’s the Friday Keir Murray report.

Over seven thousand mail ballots came in on Thursday, which more than doubled the total at that time. About half of all mail ballots have now been returned. Only about a quarter of mail ballots had been returned after six days in the November election, though do keep in mind that “six days” in the December context covers a week and a half. Remember also that the December ballots are all Houston, while the November totals were all of Harris County. That said, more votes are cast early in off year runoffs than in odd year November elections – 55% of all ballots were early in the 2015 runoff, for example. And there are only ten total days of early voting here, as opposed to twelve in November. We’ll take our guesses about final turnout later. For now, things are chugging along.

Chron overview of the At Large #2 runoff

Dec 1st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

This one’s a rerun.

CM David Robinson

City Councilman David W. Robinson and the Rev. Willie R. Davis last faced off for the At-Large 2 seat in 2015, with Robinson winning by 10 percentage points and taking on his second term.

Four years later, the two are at it again.

This time, Robinson is hoping his experience and record from six years on council will be enough to win voters’ support, while Davis says his decades-long connections to the community make him a better candidate.

[…]

Bringing community reinvestment — meaning having residents benefit from the businesses and organizations that profit within their neighborhoods — is one of Davis’ main priorities, along with addressing the displacement of black Americans caused by gentrification.

“I’m for development, but it needs to be equal development,” he said.

He emphasized that if elected, he would aim to serve all communities, something he said is not possible if council members are serving special interests.

Well, as I recall, Davis was an opponent of HERO in 2015, so when he says he would serve “all communities”, he doesn’t actually mean he would serve “all communities”. These things do matter. As was the case in 2015, Davis hasn’t raised much money, and incumbent CM Robinson beat him pretty much everywhere, so I don’t expect it will matter much what Davis meant by that statement. There is a misleading and illegal mailer out there that lumps Davis (and Eric Dick, who largely paid for it) in with other Democratic candidates and claims that various African-American legislators have endorsed him. Confusion and misdirection are the main strategic moves that Davis has, so be prepared to make sure other people don’t get fooled by it.

The quiet runoff

Nov 30th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

Have you been enjoying this little break from the Mayor’s race? Break’s over, but then we’re now into early voting, so we don’t have much longer to go.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

After a colorful first round defined by biting attack ads, mudslinging debates and policy disputes over crime and city finances, the temperature of the Houston mayoral runoff has noticeably cooled heading into Wednesday’s start of early voting.

Since the Nov. 5 election, when Sylvester Turner and Tony Buzbee finished atop the 12-candidate field, there have been few of the day-to-day sparks that marked the final weeks of the first stage. Buzbee, who spent millions to maintain a regular presence on television, just recently began running ads after a post-election hiatus. Turner has touted support from elected Democratic allies and largely ignored Buzbee.

Nor, after partaking in scores of forums and three televised debates, do the candidates have plans to engage in any more square offs.

The sleepy tone of the runoff marks a divergence from the 2015 contest, too, when Turner and his runoff opponent, Bill King, participated in more robust policy discussions and jousted in a pair of debates leading up to a razor-thin outcome in December.

“It has definitely been more quiet,” said Renée Cross, senior director of the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. “I don’t think we can pinpoint it to one thing, but I think there are a variety of factors going on that didn’t occur in 2015.”

For one, Cross said, the 2020 presidential election appears to be eating up far more attention than the 2016 contest was four years ago.

“I’ve said this all along, the national election has just overshadowed everything, politically speaking,” she said, adding that the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Trump has only further diverted the attention of Houstonians.

Also dampening enthusiasm for this year’s runoff, Cross and Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said, is the perception among some voters that it’ll be difficult for Buzbee to overcome Turner’s first-round advantage. According to unofficial returns, Turner received 47 percent of the vote, Buzbee 28 percent.

“After Turner came so close to 50 percent and defeated Buzbee by close to a 20-point margin, the conventional wisdom is there’s no realistic way for Buzbee to catch Turner, unless Turner were to commit some type of egregious gaffe between now and Election Day,” Jones said.

I think both profs are largely right. That said, if Buzbee had been carpet-bombing the airwaves like he said he was going to, then we’d be having a very different conversation right now. I don’t know what’s going on in Buzbee’s head, but if I were on his campaign staff I’d very much want to ask him why he chose the past three weeks to stop setting his money on fire.

Buzbee of course has the harder job here. Turner just needs to make sure his people return to the polls. He’ll likely pick up some Boykins and maybe Lovell supporters as well, not that that were that many of them. Buzbee needs to not only convince his own supporters to get back out there for him, he needs to persuade King voters and anyone else who didn’t vote for Turner in round one. That’s a tall order, and he doesn’t have much room for error. Yes, he can try to turn out people who didn’t vote in November – there are always a few of them who make it out for the runoff – but that’s easier said than done. He has a lot of ground to make up, and not much time left to do it. The main question in my mind at this point is how the low-key-so-far nature of the runoff will affect the other races. As far as that goes, the members more likely to align with Turner need a boost from him, but a dud from Buzbee might help as well. I couldn’t say at this point where any of the other citywide races may stand.

Day One Runoff 2019 EV totals: Wait, there was early voting?

Nov 29th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Did you vote on that bonus early voting day on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving? Nine thousand four hundred and ninety people did – you can see the day one EV report here. For comparison, the final November 2019 EV totals are here, the final November 2015 EV totals are here, and the final December runoff EV totals from 2015 are here. I’ll wait till the Monday numbers come in before I start making a table for daily comparisons, as there were basically no mail ballots returned for this haul.

You may have noticed that the day one in person vote for the runoff was higher than the day one in person vote from November. The overall vote was greater in November because of mail ballots, but more people showed up at the polls on Wednesday than on October 21. That’s a little weird, because the November election included the rest of Harris County, while the runoff is Houston/HISD/HCC/Bellaire only. The same thing happened in 2015, though, so maybe it’s not that weird. Runoff voters are more hardcore, and there are fewer EV days available in the runoff. If nothing else, it showed that the extra day was indeed useful, even if all it did was shift people from Monday. I’ll be tracking the early vote through the runoff as usual.

Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #5

Nov 27th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
8 comments

Our last At Large race, and another one with many candidates. There wasn’t a clear division among the nine contestants here, so I’m presenting them all. 


Dist Batteau  Garcia Flowers    Dick  Rivera  Bonton  Alcorn   Woods McNeese
============================================================================
A        654     955   1,232   4,224   1,676     952   2,526     835   1,333
B      1,421     826   1,905   1,206   1,567   2,973   1,068   1,328   1,674
C      1,459   1,502   2,782   7,167   2,769   1,377  14,491   1,852   2,147
D      3,661   1,076   3,588   1,910   1,901   2,385   2,528   1,733   2,130
E      1,275   1,271   1,498   7,117   2,865   1,311   3,966   1,233   1,774
F        553     599     865   1,997   1,165     848   1,172     646     809
G      1,107     939   1,693   7,974   1,821   1,199   9,274   1,237   2,754
H        577   1,718   1,449   1,635   2,459     843   2,574     789     703
I        654   1,661   1,173   1,251   2,277     639   1,369     573     570
J        371     447     585   1,415     865     474   1,034     434     468
K      1,440     910   2,056   2,523   1,729   1,755   3,012   1,250   1,611
									
A      4.55%   6.64%   8.56%  29.36%  11.65%   6.62%  17.56%   5.80%   9.27%
B     10.17%   5.91%  13.64%   8.63%  11.22%  21.28%   7.65%   9.51%  11.98%
C      4.10%   4.23%   7.83%  20.16%   7.79%   3.87%  40.77%   5.21%   6.04%
D     17.51%   5.15%  17.16%   9.13%   9.09%  11.40%  12.09%   8.29%  10.19%
E      5.71%   5.70%   6.71%  31.90%  12.84%   5.88%  17.78%   5.53%   7.95%
F      6.39%   6.92%  10.00%  23.08%  13.46%   9.80%  13.54%   7.46%   9.35%
G      3.95%   3.35%   6.05%  28.48%   6.50%   4.28%  33.12%   4.42%   9.84%
H      4.53%  13.48%  11.37%  12.83%  19.29%   6.61%  20.19%   6.19%   5.52%
I      6.43%  16.34%  11.54%  12.30%  22.40%   6.29%  13.47%   5.64%   5.61%
J      6.09%   7.34%   9.60%  23.22%  14.20%   7.78%  16.97%   7.12%   7.68%
K      8.84%   5.59%  12.62%  15.49%  10.62%  10.78%  18.49%   7.68%   9.89%

Here again in our hypothetical ranked-choice election world – which by the way would take a change to state law, so if this is something you really want to see happen, I suggest you contact your State Rep and State Senator – of the nine candidates present I’d list no more than two. Of the remaining seven, I only have the barest idea about the two perennials, one of whom is now in the runoff. Having a lot of candidates run is not at all the same as having many good choices.

Sallie Alcorn led in Districts C (by a large margin), G, and H. Her strength in those districts gives her a clear path to victory if she can consolidate the Democratic vote. Like the other Dems in the runoff she has collected the establishment endorsements, and she is running against an actual Republican elected official. Some Dem activists are not on board, however, in part because she has collected some endorsements from conservative groups like the Houston Realty Business Coalition, and in part because of some hard feelings from the GLBT Political Caucus endorsing her over Ashton Woods. I have no idea how much to make of that.

You don’t need me to tell you about Eric Dick, but I will anyway. This is his fourth run for city office – he ran for At Large #2 in 2011, for Mayor in 2013, for At Large #2 again in 2015, and now this. He was elected to the HCDE in Precinct 4 in 2016, and has been adjacent to some scandals. He littered the town with his yard signs in 2011, hilariously and dishonestly claiming that all the ones that had been illegally placed on utility poles were the work of overzealous volunteers, and made crude sexual jokes about Mayor Annise Parker. After his initial campaign, ads for his law firm became a fixture on the back page of the Houston Press (RIP), and just the other day I saw a brief ad for his firm – not his campaign, because he’d have to report those expenditures – on TV. In other words, whether you ever wanted to or not, you have probably heard of Eric Dick. He led the way in Districts A, E, F, and J, and I have no doubt that helped him. His name and the fact that despite being an actual elected Republican official he’s not closely identified with the Republican Party are his two best assets in the runoff.

Beyond that, what is there to say? Michele Bonton carried District B, perennial candidate Brad Batteau carried D, with Catherine Flowers right behind him, and Sonia Rivera carried I. None of them raised any money, and one presumes their voters are gettable. Alcorn has funding and endorsements, including the Chron – my interview with her is here in case you want to give it a spin – and Dick has himself. We’ll see what happens.

Chron overview of the District H runoff

Nov 25th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

This one’s in my back yard.

CM Karla Cisneros

Strolling through Independence Heights one recent cloudy afternoon, Councilwoman Karla Cisneros encountered reminders of the issues facing her district: a stray dog roaming from home to home, illegally dumped trash blocking a drainage ditch, a constituent still patching up damage from Tropical Storm Imelda.

Flooding and the stray animal population are among several issues Cisneros wants to continue tackling on city council if voters award her another term. Standing in her way is Isabel Longoria, a 31-year-old former legislative aide and city planning commissioner who has mounted a spirited campaign against the first-term incumbent.

In the first round, Cisneros secured 38 percent of the vote — enough to lead the four-candidate field, but short of the majority needed for an outright win. Longoria finished second, with 27 percent, and faces Cisneros in a December runoff.

While in office, Cisneros, who chairs city council’s economic development subcommittee on education, has focused much of her attention on education and workforce development.

“We need to be growing our own, because we have a huge population of young people who could be doing these jobs,” Cisneros said on the recent block walking session. “And if we don’t, then they’re not going to be contributing. They’re going to be a burden. And there’s no reason that they shouldn’t be what our city is built on.”

Longoria, meanwhile, has cast herself as the more progressive candidate and claims to be more in touch with district activists. She does not hide her wonkish approach to politics, running in the vein of presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren as the one with the plans to turn her ideas into policy.

At the core of Longoria’s pitch for change is her argument that Cisneros has not been adequately proactive about key issues in District H, an L-shaped area that takes in Independence Heights, Near Northside, East End and Woodland Heights. Longoria contends that Cisneros, a former school teacher and HISD board trustee, has focused her attention too squarely on education and workforce development to the detriment of other topics.

“I’m not one who backs down from confrontation,” Longoria said. “I think confrontation is a warrior fighting for their community. And I don’t think Karla has that same warrior spirit. I think she’s a teacher, and that’s great. But we can’t teach our way out of this problem.”

Cisneros, 65, sees things differently, arguing that she deserves another term based on her record over four years.

Here’s the thing: They’re both good. There are current members of Council that I will be happy to see the end of, but CM Cisneros is not on that list. You can read the story for the arguments for and against her, but she’s a perfectly decent Council member. Longoria is a wonk after my own heart, and there’s no question in my mind she’ll be terrific. I said in an earlier post that I hadn’t noticed a lot of Cisneros yard signs in the blocks around where I live – my dog likes going on long walks, so I see all the houses sooner or later – but that is no longer the case. She’s winning the yard sign race at this point. Looking at the official canvass, Cisneros got 52% in Precinct 0003, and 46% in Precinct 0004. In 2015 she got 53% in 0003, and 62% in 0004, so about the same in one part of the neighborhood and some slippage in the other. I don’t know what if anything that may mean for this year, but there you have it.

Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #3

Nov 24th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Another At Large race, another incumbent in a runoff. Here’s At Large #3:


Dist  JCGonz  Kubosh  Marcel Janaeya
====================================
A      2,944   7,730   1,698   2,395
B      2,405   5,417   2,293   4,802
C      5,452  17,022   3,402   9,584
D      3,554   8,903   3,052   6,250
E      3,840  14,064   2,335   2,889
F      2,195   3,618   1,404   1,676
G      3,646  18,141   2,756   3,630
H      4,452   4,664   1,168   2,820
I      4,283   3,336     984   1,867
J      1,543   2,777     826   1,170
K      3,092   6,989   2,287   4,567
				
A     19.94%  52.35%  11.50%  16.22%
B     16.12%  36.31%  15.37%  32.19%
C     15.38%  48.00%   9.59%  27.03%
D     16.33%  40.92%  14.03%  28.72%
E     16.60%  60.81%  10.10%  12.49%
F     24.68%  40.68%  15.79%  18.85%
G     12.94%  64.39%   9.78%  12.88%
H     33.97%  35.59%   8.91%  21.52%
I     40.91%  31.86%   9.40%  17.83%
J     24.43%  43.97%  13.08%  18.52%
K     18.26%  41.27%  13.50%  26.97%

Here’s what the 2015 data looked like. Incumbent Michael Kubosh cruised to an easy win against three white male candidates, with over 60% of the vote. This year he fell short of an outright win; he was over fifty percent after early voting, but could not keep up that pace. This time he had three non-Anglo opponents, and you can see that it had an effect on his numbers. He’s still a strong performer and a heavy favorite to prevail in December, but he did decline from four years ago.

Janaeya Carmouche gets the chance to try again against Kubosh. She’ll benefit from the turnout that Mayor Turner will generate, and she’s the Democrat in this race, but she has no money, she has a 50K vote deficit to make up, and she trailed Kubosh in the three African-American districts. It’s going to take a lot for her to win.

I don’t know what to say about Marcel McClinton. He got a lot of hype for his candidacy – I was called by two different out of town reporters who were supposedly writing about him; I say “supposedly” because I never saw either of the stories that I was talking to them about – but it translated to nothing. He raised little money, he got no major endorsements, and whatever campaign he did have was invisible to me. Being a candidate is hard, especially citywide, and he’s just out of high school, so I don’t intend to be harsh. I’m just kind of puzzled.

Jose Carlos Gonzalez finished two points behind Janaeya Carmouche. I know even less about him. He got the numbers he got. I don’t have anything to add to that.

Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #2

Nov 23rd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Welcome to At Large #2, the second of three At Large races in which an incumbent is in the runoff.


Dist  DavidR   Davis   Griff  DeToto   Honey
============================================
A      4,570   3,995   1,643   3,575     809
B      5,779   5,416     958   1,921     391
C     16,691   6,446   3,568   7,649   1,551
D      8,588   7,122   1,634   3,300     621
E      7,221   7,447   2,335   4,077   1,700
F      2,947   2,422     853   2,061     503
G      9,561   9,072   3,057   4,983   1,399
H      4,558   2,048   1,018   4,657     595
I      3,207   1,900     822   3,892     425
J      2,164   1,600     622   1,462     352
K      7,089   4,668   1,381   2,971     617
					
A     31.32%  27.38%  11.26%  24.50%   5.54%
B     39.95%  37.44%   6.62%  13.28%   2.70%
C     46.49%  17.95%   9.94%  21.30%   4.32%
D     40.39%  33.49%   7.68%  15.52%   2.92%
E     31.70%  32.69%  10.25%  17.90%   7.46%
F     33.54%  27.57%   9.71%  23.46%   5.73%
G     34.06%  32.32%  10.89%  17.75%   4.98%
H     35.40%  15.91%   7.91%  36.17%   4.62%
I     31.30%  18.54%   8.02%  37.99%   4.15%
J     34.90%  25.81%  10.03%  23.58%   5.68%
K     42.38%  27.91%   8.26%  17.76%   3.69%

Here’s the 2015 precinct analysis for comparison. Incumbent David Robinson had about a 20K vote and ten percentage point lead over Willie Davis in both years, though his own percentage of the vote increased from 32 to 38. Robinson arguably had a tougher field in 2015, with Eric Dick and Andrew Burks also on the ballot. Dick did better in the Republican districts than Davis did, and Burks did better in Districts B and D, but Davis was still able to come in second. But as in 2015, Robinson was better than Davis nearly everywhere – Davis nipped him only in District E this year – and as such it’s hard to see Davis’ path to victory. Robinson has a big cash advantage, and he’s the Democrat in this race. Mike Knox may lose. David Robinson is highly unlikely to lose.

By the way, despite his lukewarm showing in November of 2015, Robinson scored a solid nine-point win in the runoff. It might be a more interesting race if there were no corresponding Mayoral race, but given that there is I expect Robinson to cruise.

Is this the end of Griff as a factor in these multi-candidate races? He failed to crack ten percent, which is weaker than I’d have expected. He got almost 13 percent in 2015, and actually finished third in the At Large #1 pileup. We were four thousand votes away from a Mike Knox-Griff Griffin runoff. I get a little dizzy every time I think about that.

More to come. Let me know what you think.

Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #1

Nov 22nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
13 comments

I’m going to take a look at the five At Large Council races as well, since all of them have interesting things to say about what happened. First up is At Large #1, where incumbent Mike Knox will face first time candidate Raj Salhotra in December.


Dist    Knox Provost     Raj     YNF    Bmon
============================================
A      7,587   1,465   2,482   2,730   1,108
B      1,952   5,515   1,856   3,485   2,473
C     14,652   2,129  15,043   4,713   1,547
D      3,148   7,214   3,719   4,185   4,266
E     13,721   1,711   3,257   3,140   1,942
F      3,405   1,116   1,522   2,119   1,004
G     18,030   1,836   5,034   2,845   1,585
H      2,869   1,352   3,578   5,080     847
I      1,982   1,323   2,329   4,381     781
J      2,300     685   1,487   1,393     631
K      4,237   3,285   4,396   2,985   2,798
					
A     49.36%   9.53%  16.15%  17.76%   7.21%
B     12.77%  36.09%  12.15%  22.81%  16.18%
C     38.47%   5.59%  39.50%  12.38%   4.06%
D     13.97%  32.02%  16.51%  18.57%  18.93%
E     57.72%   7.20%  13.70%  13.21%   8.17%
F     37.15%  12.18%  16.60%  23.12%  10.95%
G     61.47%   6.26%  17.16%   9.70%   5.40%
H     20.90%   9.85%  26.07%  37.01%   6.17%
I     18.36%  12.25%  21.57%  40.58%   7.23%
J     35.41%  10.54%  22.89%  21.44%   9.71%
K     23.94%  18.56%  24.83%  16.86%  15.81%

A couple of big-picture items before we get into the district numbers. Knox got 36.51% of the Harris County vote in 2019. He was the only Republican candidate in the race this year. He got 24.75% in 2015, but Griff Griffin was also in that race, and the two of them combined for 37.65% of the vote. The two Republican Mayoral candidates (Buzbee and King) combined for 42.79% of the vote this year. This is all very fuzzy and I wouldn’t put too much stock in it, I’m just trying to get a (very) rough idea of the overall Republican vote in the city.

At Large races are notorious for having a high undervote rate, largely because the candidates are usually not well known to most voters. In this case, At Large #1 had the lowest undervote rate of any of the At Large races, at 17.65%. The others ranged from 21.05% to 23.00%. By contrast, the Mayor’s race had an undervote rate of 1.59%. One possible reason for this is that four of the five At Large #1 contestants had been in at least one race before, and the fifth raised enough money to do some mailers.

Mike Knox showed strength where you’d expect him to, in Districts A, E, and G, and he did pretty well in C, F, and J. If he can repeat that kind of performance in the runoff, he can win. Like Tony Buzbee, he would have preferred for there to be runoffs in E and G as well, but unlike Buzbee he doesn’t have a ton of money to throw around to generate turnout for himself. The risk for him is that Buzbee will go down with a whimper and drag him and the other Republican runoff candidates as well.

Raj Salhotra carried Districts C and K, both by small amounts. He did pretty well for a first time candidate, but he has his work cut out for him. He has about a 29K deficit to overcome, and he has to win a lot of votes in districts like B and D despite having Georgia Provost and Larry Blackmon endorse Knox in the runoff. Honestly, I’d probably put whatever money he has into mailers and robocalls tying Knox to Buzbee and Trump, and hope for the best. Getting those Democrats who have been endorsing Mayor Turner to speak up on his behalf would help, too.

I admit, I expected Georgia Provost to be Salhotra’s main competition for the second runoff slot. She’s run before, she made the runoff in 2015, and she starts with a base of support. But she doesn’t raise money, and while she obviously does well in the African-American districts, she doesn’t do much more than just split that vote with the other African-American candidate on the ballot. In fact, she did better in 2015 with Chris Oliver also in the race than she did this year with Larry Blackmon, who is just a perennial candidate. You could muster up an argument that Blackmon cost her a shot at the runoff, as her total plus his would have outscored Salhotra, but the presence of Oliver in 2015 didn’t hold her back.

I was a little surprised to see Yolanda Navarro Flores do as well as she did. She was last on a ballot in 2013, and had not won races other than for HCC Trustee. She entered late and raised no money, but as you can see she did very well in H and I, she outpaced Provost everywhere except B, D, and K, and outpaced Salhotra everywhere except C, E, G, and K. An earlier entry and some actual fundraising, and she could still be in this race.

I’ll be looking at the rest of the races over the next few days. Let me know what you think.

HERO 2.0

Nov 22nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
8 comments

I’ve been waiting for this, though in reading this story I’d argue we should wait just a little bit more.

Houston’s two mayoral candidates say they support expanded anti-discrimination protections for the LGBTQ community, but would leave it to voters to pursue a revived version of the measure that was roundly defeated at the ballot box four years ago.

Outside groups, meanwhile, already are readying for a redux of the high-profile and vitriolic fight over the so-called HERO measure.

Mayor Sylvester Turner supported the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance in 2015 but has not advocated for revisiting it during his first term. On Tuesday, he acknowledged that “community-driven efforts are underway” and that he is working with his LGBTQ advisory board to find “opportunities to do more public education,” though he did not say he would advocate for a ballot measure in 2021.

He previously has said that groups need to focus on outreach and grass-roots campaigning.

“It’s important to educate people, because if you put something up, let’s say right now, and it goes down again, it just sets us back,” Turner said in August. “So, let’s educate, let’s continue to work with the LGBTQ Advisory Committee which I put in place, and let’s work with other organizations, and then we can move forward.”

[…]

Harrison Guy, chair of the mayor’s LGBTQ advisory board, said the 2015 defeat forced advocates to overhaul their approach to organizing, particularly in a city as diverse and geographically spread-out as Houston.

“It was a pretty big mountain to climb when we were honest about why HERO wasn’t a success,” he said Tuesday.

Since then, he said, groups have focused on in-person outreach to “soften hearts,” and readied for a potential, 2021 rematch.

“It’s tedious, slow and strategic, which isn’t sexy,” Guy said.

He said he is fine with Turner taking a backseat on the issue.

“The fight cannot belong to one group or one person,” Guy said. “It can’t belong to the mayor. The coalition needs to be really broad and really big.”

[Former Mayor Annise] Parker agreed with the grass-roots tactic, but warned that “if the mayor doesn’t want it to move, it’s not going to move.”

Tony Buzbee was quoted in the story saying he supported a watered-down HERO that would “[prohibit] discrimination by employers and housing providers, but would oppose expanding the measure to apply to places of public accommodation, including public restrooms”. Of course, he has also said that he would support a HERO that included public accommodation, and he has promised Steve Hotze that he would oppose any effort to pass a new HERO, so you can’t believe a word he says.

As I said, I have been waiting for this, I fully support this, and I agree that this is the right approach to trying again. My one hesitation is in putting HERO 2.0 on the 2021 ballot. There are no city elections in 2021, just HISD and HCC Trustee races, and who even knows how much anyone will care about the HISD races at that time. That means that basically all of the turnout for such an election will come from the campaigns for this measure, and we saw what happened with that in 2015. My suggestion would be to wait and have it in 2022, when at least the baseline will be higher, overall more Democratic, and will include more young voters. It’s true that plenty of Democratic voters voted to repeal HERO in 2015, but that’s a problem that the new outreach strategy needs to solve. If that hasn’t been successful then we could hold the vote on a Sunday afternoon in July and it won’t make any difference. Engage with the Democratic base, move the needle with voters who should be on our side since they very much support politicians who support what’s in HERO, and then schedule the election at a time when many of these people would be voting anyway.

(You may ask “why not go all the way turnout-wise and do it in 2020?” One, that may not be enough time for the engagement project to work, and two, the 2020 election is not two full years after the 2018 election, when Prop B passed, so by charter it’s too soon. Right idea, but not feasible under the conditions we have.)

Anyway. I’ll want to know a lot more about the engagement strategy – who the public faces of it are, what the funding model is, what the message will be, etc etc etc – but it’s a step in the right direction. And whether we do this in 2021 or wait till 2022 as I would prefer, there’s no time to lose. Campos has more.

Precinct analysis: 2019 Mayor’s race

Nov 21st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
15 comments

I know you’ve been waiting for this. I have the draft canvass, I’ve been doing the Excel things, so let’s get down to it.


Dist  Lovell    King  Turner  Buzbee Boykins  Others
====================================================
A        217   3,002   6,481   7,061     646     727
B        114     523  13,274   1,211   1,778     846
C        888   7,259  22,661  12,619   1,536   1,015
D        181   1,127  16,608   2,650   4,095   1,007
E        224   6,134   7,452  14,920     890     727
F        122   1,216   4,773   3,610     517     691
G        366   9,436  11,316  14,493     602     619
H        310   1,573   7,721   3,824   1,167   1,181
I        203   1,086   5,829   3,176     955   1,061
J        117     876   3,402   2,367     392     449
K        204   1,647  12,383   3,739   1,669     698
						
A      1.20%  16.55%  35.74%  38.94%   3.56%   4.01%
B      0.64%   2.95%  74.80%   6.82%  10.02%   4.77%
C      1.93%  15.79%  49.29%  27.45%   3.34%   2.21%
D      0.71%   4.39%  64.70%  10.32%  15.95%   3.92%
E      0.74%  20.21%  24.56%  49.16%   2.93%   2.40%
F      1.12%  11.13%  43.67%  33.03%   4.73%   6.32%
G      0.99%  25.62%  30.72%  39.35%   1.63%   1.68%
H      1.97%   9.97%  48.94%  24.24%   7.40%   7.49%
I      1.65%   8.82%  47.35%  25.80%   7.76%   8.62%
J      1.54%  11.52%  44.75%  31.13%   5.16%   5.91%
K      1.00%   8.10%  60.88%  18.38%   8.21%   3.43%

I combined all the remaining candidates into the Others column. I should note that Sue Lovell actually received one vote fewer than Victoria Romero, so I suppose there’s an argument for changing whose totals get displayed and whose get aggregated, but we all know who Lovell is and we have no idea who Romero is, so here we are. Looking at this, you have to wonder how it is that Sue Lovell thought it was a good idea to enter the race. Whatever it was she was hoping to accomplish, she didn’t.

Next, there’s Dwight Boykins, the guy that ran as the champion of the firefighters. Remember how much noise there was over the Battle Royale between Mayor Turner and the firefighters, whose proxy in this race was Dwight Boykins? Turner outscored Boykins four to one in Boykins’ own district, and nearly eight to one overall. Not much of a fight, was it? The firefighters have now settled on Tony Buzbee for the runoff, while the rest of labor has lined up behind Mayor Turner. As above, whatever the firefighters hoped to accomplish this election, you have to say they didn’t.

Is this finally the end of Bill King? After getting 66K votes in November of 2015, he fell short of 34K in 2019. Of course, in 2015 he was the default Republican choice, having benefited from Oliver Pennington’s premature exit from that race. Here, he was completely overshadowed by Buzbee’s flash, cash, and trash. He couldn’t even beat Turner in the three Republican Council districts. I feel like there’s more I should be saying here, but honestly these numbers speak for themselves.

As for Buzbee, he did lead the pack in Districts A, E, and G, though he didn’t beat Turner by much in A or G. As noted before, there are no runoffs in E or G, so Buzbee is on his own to get those voters out again in December. Buzbee trails Turner by about 45K votes, while King trailed him by about 19K in 2015. I have no idea how Buzbee makes up that deficit, and if he’s really going to spend whatever it takes, I haven’t seen evidence of it yet. He ran a lot of ads during live sporting events in Round One, so we’ll see if he’s on the air during this weekend’s football games.

That leaves Turner, who did what the polls suggested he would do. He did what he needed to do where he needed to do it, with a much stronger showing in District C than he had four years ago. He’s got Democrats united behind him, and he should have sufficient funds to get his voters out again. If he wants to think big, he should be pondering how he can help some of those Dems in At Large runoffs get across the finish line as well. I’ll be looking at those races in the coming days. The one setback is the delay of the District B runoff, but there is still a runoff in HISD II, which covers a lot of the same turf, so that may mitigate the effect. Let me know what you think.

Get ready for more Buzbee ads

Nov 8th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
6 comments

Keep that remote handy.

Self-funding millionaire lawyer Tony Buzbee on Wednesday said he would spend whatever it takes to unseat Sylvester Turner and predicted a “full-on slugfest” during the five-week runoff to decide Houston’s mayoral race.

The runoff will test the effectiveness of Turner’s strategy to portray Buzbee as an acolyte of President Trump — whom Buzbee once supported — against the challenger’s own blueprint of casting himself as a nonpartisan outsider with the chops to improve on Turner’s record handling flood control, infrastructure and crime.

After full election results were published Wednesday morning, Turner wasted no time framing the runoff as a choice between his political record and “a Donald Trump imitator” who Turner said “will say anything, do anything or spend anything to get elected.”

Buzbee, speaking to reporters hours later, said he would not allow Turner to make the election “a referendum on Donald Trump,” promising to instead focus on matters of policy while predicting a “full-on slugfest” up until the Dec. 14 runoff.

[…]

To defeat Turner, political observers said, Buzbee will need to broaden his support beyond the base of voters he assembled in the first round. That includes making inroads with left-leaning voters who did not support Turner, a longtime Democrat, along with winning the support of those who cast ballots for Bill King, who competed with Buzbee for conservative support but struggled to match his rival’s self-financed $10 million campaign war chest.

“I think he’ll pick up the majority of the Bill King supporters and he’ll pick up some other folks who were just not happy with the mayor for some reason,” said Nancy Sims, a local political analyst who is not affiliated with either campaign. “It’s a tough path to victory, but in 2015 we saw King come in in a similar position.”

For what it’s worth, Turner led King by about 19K votes, in a higher-turnout election, in 2015. He led Buzbee by about 24K votes this time, and as noted drew more votes than Buzbee and King combined. Every election is different and nothing is ever guaranteed, but Turner is clearly in a stronger position this time.

I don’t know how Buzbee plans to spend his money in the runoff. I’m not sure Buzbee knows how he’s going to spend it. I figure we’re going to face another barrage of TV ads, but who can say beyond that. Buzbee did spend a ton of money earlier in the year on polling. I know this because I was on the receiving end of what seemed like dozens of poll calls, some live and some robo, from the Buzbee campaign. (They never identified themselves, of course, but you could tell from the questions they were asking.) I haven’t gotten one of them in awhile, so I guess it’s on to other things. Whatever the case, when you have more money than brains you find ways to spend.

“Mayor Turner’s biggest enemy in the runoff is not Tony Buzbee, but complacency,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “But I don’t know if it’s a major problem, because he has such a strong and sophisticated campaign machine.”

Potentially boosting Turner’s chances, Rottinghaus and Sims said, are a host of city council runoffs in districts that went heavily to Turner in the first leg of the election.

Turner won a majority of the vote in districts B and D, and a plurality of the vote in C, F, H and J, all of which will be decided by runoffs. Across the six districts combined, Turner received 55 percent of the vote, to Buzbee’s 21 percent share.

Buzbee’s strongest districts, E and G, were decided without runoffs Tuesday. He won a plurality of the vote in District A, the lone remaining runoff district, receiving 39 percent to Turner’s 36 percent.

“I think the city council races that are in runoffs are going to determine a lot of voter turnout,” Sims said. “And very clearly, the city council district races that have runoffs favor Turner.”

I made that same observation. I don’t have the draft canvass yet, but when I do I’ll be sure to quantify this.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Buzbee acknowledged the need to scoop up support from voters who backed King and Boykins, who finished in fourth place and was backed by the firefighters union. Buzbee said he is “looking for (Boykins’) support,” along with the backing of the firefighters.

“I’m going to be seeking that endorsement, and I certainly would welcome that endorsement,” Buzbee said.

Marty Lancton, president of the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association, made clear in a statement Wednesday that the firefighters union would get involved in city runoffs, though he declined to say more about how the union would approach the mayor’s race.

“Making City Hall accountable and fixing the fire department remain our priorities,” Lancton said. “We’ll find a way forward to help do that. Our political work is not done in 2019.”

Boykins and King did not respond to phone and text inquiries about their endorsement plans. Lovell said she would not endorse Turner, and “beyond that I haven’t had conversations with anyone else.”

Honestly, I have no idea how much these endorsements matter. Better to have them than not for sure, but I think it takes a specific set of circumstances for them to make much difference. The interesting bit here is the firefighters, who were so gung ho about beating Turner in the general and now seem all “meh” in the runoff. Are they abashed that their endorsed candidate barely got five percent of the vote, or are they just not into Buzbee? (“Both” is an acceptable answer to that question.) The firefighters do have a number of their endorsed Council candidates in runoffs, so they have plenty to do and much to gain whether or not they get involved in the Mayoral runoff. But after months of hearing about their feud with the Mayor and all the rest of the Prop B stuff, it’s quite remarkable that it will seemingly end on such a low-key note.

Initial thoughts on Election 2019

Nov 7th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

All bullet points, all the time…

– Here’s my opening statement on the election returns debacle. We have more information about this now, but we still need more before we can go anywhere else with it.

– All incumbents want to win without runoffs, but for an incumbent that was forced into a runoff, Mayor Turner did pretty darned well. Including Fort Bend, he got about 12K more votes than Buzbee and King combined, and missed by about 2K outscoring Buzbee plus King plus Boykins. Suffice to say, he’s in a strong position for the runoffs.

– We are going to have a cubic buttload of runoffs. In addition to the Mayor, there are seven district Council runoffs, all five At Large Council races, two HISD races, two HCC races, and HD148. We might have had pretty decent overall turnout without the Mayor’s race included, but with it at the top it will be a lot like a November election. I’ll put the initial over/under at about 175K, which is roughly the 2009 Mayoral election runoff total.

– Among those Council runoffs are districts B and D, which along with HISD II and IV and HCC 2 will favor Turner. There are no runoffs in E or G, which would have favored Buzbee, and the runoff in A is almost certain to be a serene, low-money affair. Districts C and J went for King in the 2015 runoffs, but the runoffs in those districts involve only Democratic candidates. Turner has a lot more wind at his back than Buzbee does.

– For a more visual representation of the above, see this Mike Morris tweet. Nearly all of those Buzbee areas are in districts A, E, and G.

– In a sense, the main event in November is the At Large runoffs, all five of which feature a Republican and a Democrat. A Council that includes Mike Knox, Willie Davis, Michael Kubosh, Anthony Dolcefino, and Eric Dick is a Council that (including the members in A, E, and G) is fully half Republican, and could thus throw a lot of sand into the gears of the second Turner administration (or really grease the wheels of a Buzbee administration, if you want to extend the metaphor). Yes, I know, Council doesn’t really work like that, but the difference between that Council and one that includes three or more of Raj Salhotra, David Robinson, Janaeya Carmouche, Letitia Plummer, and Sallie Alcorn, is likely to be quite large. You want to have an effect on the direction Houston takes over the next four years, there you have it.

– Council could have been even more Republican, but at the district level it looks to remain at least as Democratic and possibly a little more so than it is now. Districts C and J may have gone for King in 2015 as noted, but Democrats Abbie Kamin and Shelley Kennedy are the choices in C (Greg Meyers and Mary Jane Smith finished just behind Kennedy), while Ed Pollard and Sandra Rodriguez are the contenders in J. (Yes, Pollard is considerably more conservative than most Dems, especially on LGBT issues. He’ll be the next Dwight Boykins in that regard if he wins.) District F has been (with a two-year break from 2013 to 2015) Republican going back to the 90s, but Tiffany Thomas is in pole position. She will no doubt benefit from the Mayoral runoff.

– I should note that in District C, the four candidates who were on a Greater Heights Democratic Club candidate forum I moderated in September – Kamin, Kennedy, Candelario Cervantez, and Amanda Wolfe; Kendra Yarbrough Camarena was also in the forum but switched to the HD148 race – combined for 55% of the vote in C. That’s a nice chunk of your HD134, CD02 and CD07 turf, and another illustration of how Donald Trump has helped kill the Republican Party in Harris County.

– Speaking of HD148, 69% of the vote there went to the Democratic candidates. Jessica Farrar got 68% in 2018, and she was on the high end.

– Remember when I said this about HD148 candidate Adrian Garcia? “It’s certainly possible some people will think he’s the County Commissioner, but whether they’d be happy to vote for him or confused as to why he’d be running for another office is a question I can’t answer.” I would say now the answer is “happy to vote for him”, because with all due respect I cannot see how he finishes third in that field if he was differently named. Low profile special elections are just weird.

– To be fair, name recognition also surely helped Dolcefino and Dick, neither of whom had much money. One had a famous name, and one has been a candidate multiple times, while littering the streets with his yard signs, so there is that.

– I’m just about out of steam here, but let me say this again: We. Must. Defeat. Dave. Wilson. Tell everyone you know to make sure they vote for Monica Flores Richart in the HCC 1 runoff. We cannot screw that up.

– If you still need more, go read Stace, Nonsequiteuse, and Chris Hooks.

So what do we think final 2019 turnout will be?

Nov 4th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

Let’s take the numbers we have so far and try to hone in a bit more exactly on what to expect tomorrow, shall we? I’m going to go back a little farther into the past and establish some patterns.

2019
2015
2013
2011
2009
2007


Year    Early    Mail   Total   Mailed
======================================
2019  137,460  15,304  152,764   26,824
2015  164,104  29,859  193,963   43,280
2013   87,944  21,426  109,370   30,572
2011   49,669   8,676   58,345   15,264
2009   71,368   9,148   80,516   20,987
2007   43,420   6,844   50,264   13,870

Year    Early    Final   Early%
===============================
2015  193,963  421,460    46.0%
2013  109,370  260,437    42.0%
2011   58,345  164,971    35.4%
2009   80,516  257,312    31.3%
2007   50,264  193,945    25.9%

Couple of points to note up front. One is that the early vote totals I report above are the totals as of the end of the early voting period. Mail ballots continue to arrive, however, so the mail ballot results you see on the election return pages on the County Clerk website are a bit higher. I’m basing the calculations here on those as-of-Friday results, for consistency’s sake.

Second, note that while early voting in even year races is now a large majority of the total vote – in 2018, for example, about 71% of all votes were cast before Election Day – in municipal elections, it remains the case that most voters take their time and do their business on Tuesday. The early vote share has steadily increased over time, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we’re at least at 50-50 now, but the bottom line is that there are very likely still a lot more votes to be cast.

Note also the increase in mail ballots over time, both in terms of mail ballots sent out and mail ballots returned. The HCDP has made a priority of this since Lane Lewis was elected Chair in 2012 and continuing under Lillie Schechter, and you can see that reflected in the totals beginning in 2013. I’m not exactly sure why the numbers took a dip this year, but they remain well above what they were prior to 2013.

All this is a long preamble to the main question, which is what to expect tomorrow. Here are three scenarios for you:

2019 at 45% early = 339,476 in Harris County, 231,862 in Houston.
2019 at 50% early = 305,428 in Harris County, 208,676 in Houston.
2019 at 55% early = 277,753 in Harris County, 189,705 in Houston.

The second number in each of those lines represents the fact that the numbers we have are for all of Harris County, while per Keir Murray about 68% of this year’s turnout is from the city of Houston. I used his figure in projecting the Houston numbers. Sixty-eight percent of Harris County votes coming from Houston is a bit higher than it was in 2015 and 2013, which were in the 64-65% range, but it’s well within historic norms, where the city vote percent has topped 70% in some years.

My best guess is that we’re headed for something like the middle scenario. I see no reason why the trend of an increasing early vote share wouldn’t continue, so I’d expect it to notch up a couple more points. For what it’s worth, in the 2017 election, when there were no city of Houston races, about 41.3% of the vote was cast early. That race doesn’t fit this pattern so I’m not taking it into consideration, but I figured someone reading this would be wondering about it, so there you have it.

Beyond that, I expect the Mayor’s race to go to a runoff, with Turner getting in the low to mid-forties and Buzbee getting in the mid to upper-twenties. There is a 100% certainty that I will keep the remote close at hand to avoid being subjected to any further Buzbee commercials when I’m just trying to watch a football game. I expect the Metro referendum to pass. I have no idea what else to expect. Feel free to leave your guesses in the comments.

A wrapup for early voting

Nov 3rd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Here’s the Chron story on the end of early voting.

Early voting ended Friday with a late surge in turnout among Harris County voters, surpassing voter participation in some prior mayoral election years but falling short of totals seen during the last city election in 2015.

Through 12 days of early voting, more than 152,000 voters cast ballots ahead of the Tuesday election, with about 137,000 voting in person and some 15,000 returning mail ballots. The total represents about 6.5 percent of Harris County’s more than 2.3 million registered voters, far less than the 9.4 percent early voting turnout in 2015 but slightly more than the 5.6 percent turnout in 2013.

Harris County was on track to fall slightly short of 2013 turnout before Friday’s influx of more than 34,000 voters. The final day turnout was roughly double this year’s prior single-day high and accounted for more than one-fifth of overall early voting turnout.

The overall standard turnout rate comes despite a Houston mayoral race that has seen a record $16 million spent between the 12 candidates, according to Rice University political scientist Mark Jones, and several months of vigorous campaigning by Tony Buzbee and Bill King, the top two challengers to Mayor Sylvester Turner.

“For all the money spent, all the bluster, all the hype — that has done nothing to increase turnout,” said Houston Democratic strategist Keir Murray. “We’re seeing a very typical, low-interest municipal election with the great majority of voters being people who always vote.”

[…]

Harris County’s unremarkable turnout reflects the same relatively low voter participation seen in mayoral elections earlier this year in Dallas and San Antonio, Aiyer added. In Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, just 11.5 percent of registered voters turned out for the May election, which included a mayoral contest.

“I think there was a faulty assumption coming off of 2018 that we would have really high turnout,” Aiyer said. “And I think that’s just not borne out by the data at the municipal level statewide.”

The underlying early voting data also show that candidates are drawing few new voters to the polls. Through Thursday, 93 percent of Houston voters in Harris County had participated in at least two of the last three general elections, with 75 percent voting in all three, according to data from the Texas Democratic Party shared by Murray. Just 2 percent did not vote in any of the last three elections.

See here for the final data, and here for Keir’s Saturday Twitter thread on who did the voting. At this point, I think the odds are in favor of betting the under on my 200K to 220K projection for Houston. The 2009 Mayor’s race (178K in Harris County) and 2013 Mayor’s race (174K in Harris County) are looking like better comps. It’s possible that Election Day turnout will be higher than expected – the four-year cycle may be altering previous patterns, and the Astros’ playoff run may have distracted people – but probably not. I’ll run through some scenarios tomorrow and come up with concrete numbers to throw around.

In the meantime, the new college campus EV locations got positive reviews.

The University of Houston’s Student Center was bustling over the weekend with pre-Halloween festivities, at least one lively pep rally, sorority and fraternity events, and, for the first time, early voting.

“It’s been a fair turnout, and people who have voted are very appreciative that the voting is happening here,” Bruce Davis, an alternative election judge for Harris County, said Monday.

Numbers at UH’s polling station — like those at two other new early-voting locations in the county — were modest, and Davis said there were still kinks to be worked out.

This year, the Harris County Clerk’s Office introduced three new early polling locations — at UH, Texas Southern University and Houston Community College’s West Loop campus — in hopes of reaching at least 50,000 more voters, mostly students, according to Michael Winn, administrator of elections for the Harris County Clerk’s office, which oversees elections. The target includes 40,000 new voters at UH alone. The office is now led by Democrat Diane Trautman, who unseated Republican incumbent Stan Stanart last year and has backed countywide election centers to encourage higher turnout.

As of Wednesday evening, the early-voting totals were 750 at UH, 452 at TSU and 796 at HCC’s West Loop campus. But officials were not worried. According to Winn, it’s all a part of the process as people adjust to their new polling locations. In the meantime, officials are keeping a watchful eye ahead of next year’s primary and presidential elections.

“We just want to begin to lay the foundation for those locations to already be in place so people will be accustomed to going to those locations and utilizing the facilities,” Winn said.

In the end, the HCC location got 1,262 early votes, UH got 1,125, and TSU got 750. It’s a decent start for brand new locations. I agree that 2020 is both the priority and the bigger test.

Final 2019 EV totals: With a bit of bonus poll-analyzing

Nov 2nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Early voting for the 2019 election is officially over. Let’s look at those numbers one last time:


Year    Early    Mail   Total   Mailed
======================================
2019  137,460  15,304  152,764   26,824
2015  164,104  29,859  193,963   43,280
2013   87,944  21,426  109,370   30,572

The 2019 Day Twelve file is here, the final 2015 file is here, and the final 2013 file is here. The daily voter rosters are here.

Keir Murray used those voter rosters to break down who has voted so far.

This led to a response from poli sci prof Mark Jones:

Here’s the poll in question. The Friday turnout was over 33K, more than twice what Thursday’s was and over twenty percent of the entire amount, so the roster figures may be a bit different now. Turner’s path to avoiding a runoff has always been narrow, but it’s there. I’ll have some more thoughts about where we stand on Monday, but for now, please enjoy these numbers.

Day Eleven 2019 EV totals: One day to go

Nov 1st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Hope everyone had a good Halloween. How many of y’all spent it voting?


Year    Early    Mail   Total   Mailed
======================================
2019  103,945  14,280  118,225   26,820
2015  128,611  27,952  156,563   43,280
2013   68,803  20,491   89,294   30,572

EarlyVoting

The 2019 Day Eleven file is here, the final 2015 file is here, and the final 2013 file is here. The daily voter rosters are here.

The in person totals this week have been roughly 10K, 10K, 12K, and 15K. Today will be the high point as always, but the upward slope has already begun. In the Extremely Anecdotal Data Department, I had four people ask me yesterday for some guidance on this year’s ballot. I get these questions every odd numbered year, but usually earlier in the process. If you want to take that as a sign that people are waiting longer than usual to vote this year, I won’t stop you. Have you voted yet? Are you still figuring it out in some races? Leave a comment and let us know.

Day Ten 2019 EV totals: Congrats to the Nats

Oct 31st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Sorry, Astros fans. Try to remember that it was a good season regardless of what happened in the last seven games. And as they used to say in Brooklyn, wait till next year.


Year    Early    Mail   Total   Mailed
======================================
2019   88,822  13,015 101,837   26,792
2015  107,086  26,608 133,594   43,280
2013   61,391  19,350  80,741   30,572

EarlyVoting

The 2019 Day Ten file is here, the final 2015 file is here, and the final 2013 file is here. The daily voter rosters are here.

I mean, it’s not like 2019 has been slow. It’s up about 25% from 2013, which was a year with 174K ballots cast. If we just go by that metric, we’d get somewhere between 215K and 220K total turnout this year, which is about 15K more than I projected by other means. This method is subject to variance based on how many people vote early versus on Election Day, and this feels to me like a year where maybe a few more people than usual may be taking their time to vote. I don’t know that, I’m just supposing it based on things like people’s attention being elsewhere and the negative tone of the main campaigns. If you want to look at 2019 as a percentage of 2015, it’s down about 25% from 2015, which projects out to between 200K and 205K, or almost exactly what my original guess was. So who knows? Put them together and assume a range of 200K to 220K. Impress your friends by telling them that’s the spectrum for turnout you expect. Until we get more data, that’s as good a guess as anything.

Day Nine 2019 EV totals: The “all everyone cares about is the World Series” edition

Oct 30th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

You know the drill, so let’s do the thing:


Year    Early    Mail   Total   Mailed
======================================
2019   76,613  11,356  87,969   26,740
2015   89,599  24,768 114,367   42,938
2013   54,071  17,987  72,058   30,549

EarlyVoting

The 2019 Day Nine file is here, the final 2015 file is here, and the final 2013 file is here. The daily voter rosters are here.

No one’s really paying any attention to this, right? Everyone’s just thinking about the Astros. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Day Eight 2019 EV totals: The uptick has begun

Oct 29th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Week Two early voting turnout is always higher than Week One. In part, that has been because of extended hours beginning on the second Monday. This year the hours are the same, but we got a step up anyway.


Year    Early    Mail   Total   Mailed
======================================
2019   66,255   9,699  75,954   26,139
2015   73,905  23,650  97,555   42,938
2013   45,571  16,076  61,647   30,548

EarlyVoting

The 2019 Day Eight file is here, the final 2015 file is here, and the final 2013 file is here. The daily voter rosters are here.

For comparison, there were 10,318 in person votes on Monday, and 2,900 returned mail ballots. In 2015, those numbers were 12,897 and 2,509. Given the disparity in mail ballots sent out to voters, that’s an impressive amount for this year, though as you can see the total percentage of mail ballots returned is still far behind 2015. Usually, there’s a small increase with in person votes on the second Tuesday and Wednesday, and bigger steps up on Thursday and Friday. We’ll see about the mail ballots.

Day Seven 2019 EV totals: It’s been a week

Oct 28th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

And I’ve been too busy to post these on a daily basis, much less do anything with them. I apologize for that, but can’t make any promises that next week will be better. Stay strong.


Year    Early    Mail   Total   Mailed
======================================
2019   55,937   6,799  62,736   26,105
2015   61,008  21,141  82,149   42,938
2013   37,928  14,342  52,270   30,544

EarlyVoting

The 2019 Day Seven file is here, the final 2015 file is here, and the final 2013 file is here. The daily voter rosters are here.

With a full week of early voting in the books, I’m willing to do a little back-of-the-envelope guesswork on final turnout. In 2015, 421K people turned out in Harris County, while in 2013 the figure was 260K. In each case, that means roughly 20% of the final total vote had been cast as of Sunday. That’s Harris County overall – in 2015, the share of the total vote in the city of Houston was 64%, and in 2013 it was 65%. Projecting from there, we get a final Harris County total turnout of about 313K for this year, and about 203K for the city of Houston. That’s on the low end of what I would have suggested for Houston a couple of weeks ago, but not crazy given what we’ve been seeing. All of this is subject to change – maybe the next week of early voting will be busier, or maybe it will drop off – but for now put the over/under in the Mayor’s race at about 200K. Ask me again on Friday and I’ll let you know if I still feel that way.

Day Five 2019 EV totals: Steady as she goes

Oct 26th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

There are two Monday through Friday periods in Early Voting, and we just finished the first of them. Let’s check in on the numbers.


Year    Early    Mail   Total   Mailed
======================================
2019   44,244   6,790  51,043   26,105
2015   48,027  21,141  69,168   42,938
2013   28,303  14,342  42,645   30,544

EarlyVoting

The 2019 Day Three file is here, the final 2015 file is here, and the final 2013 file is here. The daily voter rosters are here, and I will try to do something with that over the weekend.

Friday was a relatively slow day – in order of business, it went Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday this week. By contrast, in 2015 the first Friday was the busiest day of that week by a lot, a step up from the rest. Possibly the inclement weather discouraged a few people – the weekend is supposed to be glorious, so we’ll see about that. Or maybe people were too occupied with the Astros to think about anything else. Who knows? All we can say is that 2015 is ahead of 2019, and the lead is growing. Saturday is usually a busy day. I’ll let you know tomorrow.

Day Three 2019 EV totals: It’s still early

Oct 24th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Sorry I skipped yesterday’s EV totals. I’m going to try to do this every day but that’s easier said than done. Let’s pick it up from here.


Year    Early    Mail   Total   Mailed
======================================
2019   26,206   6,050  32,256   22,142
2015   27,596  18,196  45,752   41,994
2013   15,595  12,033  27,628   29,538

EarlyVoting

The 2019 Day Three file is here, the final 2015 file is here, and the final 2013 file is here.

So as with Day One, the difference between this year and the two previous election years is the volume of mail ballots. The in person vote total is quite comparable to 2015, and well ahead of 2013, but thanks to three times as many mail ballots from 2015, and twice as many from 2013, the overall total is just slightly ahead of 2013 and well behind 2015. We’re getting close to a point where the number of mail ballots returned in 2015 will be greater than the number of mail ballots sent out from this year. I really don’t know what to make of that.

As it happens, the County Clerk’s office is now publishing the daily voter roster, broken down by vote type, so an enterprising soul could take a deeper look and try to arrive at some conclusions. It would help to get the daily roster from the earlier years as well, for comparison purposes. You’d have to make that request from the Clerk, but obviously you can do it. I’m hoping someone else will do this for me, but if I get desperate enough I may take a crack at it. Anyway, this is what we have now. Let me know what you think.

The Chron on Boykins and Lovell

Oct 22nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Time for more profiles of Mayoral candidates. Here’s the Chron piece on Dwight Boykins.

Dwight Boykins

“My goal is to use this position as mayor to let people know that there is hope,” [CM Dwight Boykins] said. “I’m trying to help the least and the last.”

His run was rumored long before he announced it in June after he had broken with Mayor Sylvester Turner, repeatedly criticizing and questioning his one-time ally’s ongoing feud with firefighters over pay parity issues. That outspokenness has won Boykins the union’s backing, and thousands of dollars in donations.

With Election Day less than a month away, Boykins does not pose a serious threat to Turner, who according to a recent poll leads his closest challenger, Houston lawyer Tony Buzbee, by 17 points. Boykins came in at fourth in the 12-person field, with 3.5 percent of the share of likely voters.

His “speak my mind” personality also has brought backlash: In July, he was criticized for telling teenage girls in a group of students at a youth advocacy summit to “keep their legs closed.” Boykins said he had been asked to “speak frankly” about the pitfalls for youth, including teen pregnancy.

In recent debates, though, Boykins’ voice largely has been drowned out as Buzbee, businessman Bill King and Turner increasingly trade barbs.

[…]

As mayor, Boykins wants to divert more money to parks and neighborhood programs, partner with outside groups for after-school tutoring programs, and increase police presence in the neighborhoods.

He also has promised to negotiate a contract between the city and its fire union within the first 60 days of his election, which he said would be financed in part by scrutinizing spending in other departments.

Yeah, I’m sure he’d like to do those things. Good luck figuring out how to pay for them, and as someone who’s been a part of multiple budget votes, I’m sure he knows that one can “scrutinize spending” all one wants, there won’t be any easy or significant savings to be found. Budget math aside, I said a long time ago that I would never support a candidate who opposed HERO, and Dwight Boykins voted against HERO on City Council. There’s not much else for me to say.

Next up is Sue Lovell.

Sue Lovell

Sue Lovell says Mayor Sylvester Turner got her fired by her largest consulting client, but that is not why she is running against him.

“I always wanted to run for mayor,” the former three-term at-large councilwoman said.

Lovell said she nearly ran in 2015, after then-mayor Annise Parker left office, but ultimately decided to pass.

This time around, she made the jump, saying she brings more credible experience at City Hall than any other candidate in the race.

During her six years on council, Lovell, 69, burnished a reputation as a candid and well-versed presence at City Hall, with a knack for gritty details and the bare knuckles to hold her own in a political fight. She forged those skills as an early and formative organizer with the Houston GLBT Political Caucus.

Those City Hall and progressive bona fides, perhaps, could have made Lovell a formidable challenge to Turner’s reelection chances. After a late entry into the race, however, Lovell is fighting for relevance in a contest that also features the 2015 runner-up, a self-funded lawyer spending millions on the campaign and an incumbent council member.

The only independent poll of likely voters last month found Lovell languishing with less than 1 percent of the vote. Her fundraising numbers similarly were dwarfed by the top four hopefuls, which has convinced debate hosts recently to leave her off the stage. She also has failed to garner the support of influential organizations with whom she has ties, including the Houston GLBT Political Caucus she once headed.

I have nothing but respect for Sue Lovell as a Council member, and unlike Boykins she’s on the right side of HERO. I can’t help but feel – and this is true of Boykins as well – that if it weren’t for the ridiculous firefighter pay parity fight, neither of them would be running for Mayor now. I can understand supporting Prop B, even if someone has carefully explained to you that there was no mechanism to pay for it, but that doesn’t mean I want such a person to be Mayor. Again, I’m not sure what else there is to say.

Day One 2019 EV totals: Let’s get this started

Oct 22nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

It’s that time again, time to track daily early vote totals. Let’s get right to it, shall we?


Year    Early    Mail   Total   Mailed
======================================
2019    7,973   5,407  13,380   20,148
2015    8,889  14,240  23,129   40,626
2013    5,028   8,560  13,588   28,620

EarlyVoting

The 2019 Day One file is here, the final 2015 file is here, and the final 2013 file is here.

The most striking thing here is the drop in mail ballots that have been sent out this year compared to the two previous election years. A small percentage of mail ballots have been returned so far as well (26.5% this year, 30.5% in 2015, 29.9% in 2013). Without knowing more about who has and has not been sent mail ballots, I can’t say who this might benefit. Turner had a plurality of the mail votes in 2015, with King in second place, for what that’s worth. Early in person voting is down modestly, but as I would expect overall participation to be down from 2015, which was an open Mayor’s race and had a much hotter ballot proposition to go along with it, that’s not a surprise. Honestly, my opinion now is what it was before – this has been a relative snoozer of an election, with mostly negative campaigning. Doesn’t sound like the making of a big number.

All that said, this may be a year where there’s more turnout at the back end than at the front end. Maybe more people are undecided about more races and are thus taking their time. Maybe the percentage of votes cast early will be slightly lower than it was in 2015. It’s too early to say. This is what we have. We’ll know more every subsequent day.

Early voting for the November 2019 election starts today

Oct 21st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

From the inbox.

Early Voting Starts Today

Monday, October 21 to Friday, November 1

Voting is so much more convenient this year, and you can experience that starting at 7AM on October 21, when Early Voting starts. To find a location near you, all you have to do is check out our Poll Finder Map at HarrisVotes.com, text VOTE to 1-833-937-0700 or message us on our Facebook page.

Better than a Google search, these easy-to-use tools give you a more accurate set of options and directions than you would by searching online on the day that you vote.

Before you go to the polls, don’t forget to do your homework— go to our Your Vote Counts dashboard to find out more about how this election impacts your community. You can also print your sample ballot and bring it with you to the polls.

You can also get help if you have accessibility or translation needs. By law, you’ll need to ask your election clerks for help first, and then we’ll get you started!

Start planning now to #VoteYOURWay, whenever and with whoever you want!

The early voting map is here, with all locations open from 7 AM to 7 PM except for Sunday the 27th, when they are open from 1 to 6 PM. There are six new locations, including the long-awaited ones on the UH and TSU campuses, and a couple of new addresses for previous locations, so check out the map and know where you want to go. Metro will offer free rides to the polls on Saturday the 26th and Election Day, November 5th.

I will of course track the early voting numbers as they come in. This year will be different because of the new locations, and perhaps because of the extended hours during the first week, but it’s always a worthwhile exercise to monitor the progress. For comparison purposes, here are the final daily EV totals from 2015, 2013, and 2009. For a bit of extra reading, here’s a thing I wrote in 2015 about who exactly votes in these elections. Happy voting, y’all.

Chron overview of City Controller race

Oct 18th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

It’s rerun season.

Chris Brown

It has attracted far less attention than the rowdy mayoral race, but the contest for the city’s second-highest office has intensified in recent weeks as Controller Chris Brown — the independently elected financial watchdog — finds himself battling to keep his seat against a familiar name on the ballot.

Orlando Sanchez, a former city councilman, mayoral candidate and Harris County treasurer, filed to challenge Brown in August with an hour to spare before the Aug. 19 deadline. He has pledged to conduct more audits and make the controller’s office more transparent. And, Sanchez alleges, Brown is too closely aligned with Mayor Sylvester Turner to serve as a check on his power.

“While it’s nice to have a cordial relationship with the mayor, I don’t think you need to act as an employee of the mayor,” said Sanchez, 61. “You are independently and in a sovereignly elected position that should answer all and any questions that the community has — the business community, the mayor’s office, the City Council.”

Brown, who served as deputy controller before his election in 2015, scoffed at Sanchez’s critiques. The controller’s office has conducted 39 audits during his tenure and prizes large-scale audits instead of smaller, more frequent ones, Brown said, adding that he has striven to distance himself from Turner on such issues as the mayor’s push to sidestep the voter-imposed revenue cap after Hurricane Harvey and his changing cost estimates for Proposition B, the voter-approved measure to link firefighters’ pay to that of similarly ranked police officers.

“I work for the taxpayer,” said Brown, 44. “If you look at my record over the last four years, whether that’s auditing, whether that’s going to the mat when the administration tried to raise taxes on taxpayers after Harvey, I went to the mat, I fought for the taxpayer and I won. From that standpoint, it’s vitally important for the controller to be independent.”

[…]

The race also has broken down along sharply partisan lines, despite both candidates’ insistence that the office should remain nonpartisan. Conservative support has coalesced behind Sanchez, a Republican who has raised about $45,000, with contributions from Republican congressional candidate Kathaleen Wall and state Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston. Democratic officials — including former city controllers Sylvia Garcia and Annise Parker — are lining up behind Brown, who last month endorsed Julián Castro for president. He had $274,000 cash on hand at last count, compared to Sanchez’s $24,000 war chest.

The Controller’s race gets less attention than the Mayor’s race for the same reason why most Council races get less attention: The office has far less power, and there’s far less spending in those elections. For what it’s worth, in the clearly partisan 2015 runoff, Brown not only defeated Republican Bill Frazer, he did so by a considerably wider margin than Mayor Turner had over Bill King. Orlando Sanchez basically coasted for a dozen years on the county’s off-year partisan lean, before running out of luck last year. I’m not too worried about this one.

KHOU/HPM poll: Turner 37, Buzbee 20, King 10

Sep 26th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
19 comments

We must be getting into the serious part of Houston Election Season, because we have our first public poll of the Mayor’s race.

Mayor Sylvester Turner leads trial lawyer and businessman Tony Buzbee by 17 points, according to a KHOU/Houston Public Media poll released Wednesday.

The survey of 516 registered likely voters found Turner well ahead of the 12-candidate field with 37 percent, followed by Buzbee at 19.6 percent and Bill King at 9.5 percent. The poll’s margin of error is 4.3 percent.

[…]

The poll shows Turner running far ahead of everyone else but with nowhere near enough support to win outright, said Bob Stein, a Rice University political science professor who conducted the poll from Sept. 3 to Sept. 15. Stein surveyed about two-thirds of respondents by cell phone and the rest by landline.

Councilman Dwight Boykins received 3.5 percent support in the poll, while 0.4 percent of voters said they likely would vote for former city councilwoman Sue Lovell.

Otherwise, 3.3 percent of respondents said they likely would support a candidate other than Turner, Buzbee, King, Boykins or Lovell. Another 21.5 percent were undecided, and 5.2 percent refused to respond.

Early voting starts Oct. 21, with election day on Nov. 5. If no candidate finishes with 50 percent plus one vote, the race will be decided in a December runoff between the top two finishers.

In a potential runoff matchup, the poll found Turner beating Buzbee 54.6 percent to 40.2 percent, and King by 56.8 to 34.1 percent.

The KHOU story is here and the Houston Public Media story is here, along with an interview with Bob Stein. Stein says he’s a little surprised that King is polling third; he attributes this to Buzbee spending a crap-ton of money so far. I’d say that’s mostly true, with the additional note that King has the charisma of a soggy corn flake, and basically has no issue to run on this year. Buzbee has no issues either, and even less of a clue, but he does have a lot of money, and that does help.

If you look back at the Mayoral polling from 2015, it was reasonably accurate to a first approximation. Adrian Garcia polled better than Bill King, but King finished ahead of him in the race. Steve Costello, Chris Bell, and Ben Hall were in the next tier, though in the end Hall finished above the other two. The polling on HERO was exactly wrong, and that may have been the result of skewed turnout assumptions, which in the end may have also helped King. Every election is different, and Turner is an incumbent this time, so be very careful in drawing conclusions. The point I’m making here is that the most recent polling examples we had were fairly decent snapshots of the race.

Another way to look at this: Thirty-seven percent of respondents named Sylvester Turner as their choice. Adding up the other numbers, a smidge more than thirty-six percent of respondents named someone else as their first choice. Make of that what you will.

One more thing:

The poll also found 58.5 percent of respondents support Metro’s $3.5 billion bond proposal, which would authorize the transit authority to move forward on a menu of projects that includes light rail extensions and the expanded use of bus rapid transit. Only 10.5 percent are opposed to the proposal, the survey found, while 31 percent were undecided.

This is where I point out that people who do not live in Houston will also be voting on the Metro referendum, so this poll is not fully representative. The city of Houston is generally between 65 and 70 percent of total turnout in Harris County in these odd-year elections, and here is where I note that the Metro service area excludes some parts of Harris County, mostly the city of Pasadena. If the Metro referendum is polling this well in the city, it’s likely headed towards passage, but there are non-city votes out there as well, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

Checking in on the Mayor’s race

Sep 4th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

Remember the Mayor’s race? Yeah, that.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

“The candidates have been running for months but were focused on fundraising and defining their message,” said Nancy Sims, a Houston political analyst. “Labor Day is when people tune into the election.”

The stretch-run of the race follows months of campaigning from Buzbee, a businessman and trial lawyer who announced his candidacy last October. King, also a businessman and lawyer, joined the race in February, then the field expanded in June with the candidacy of District D Councilman Dwight Boykins and, weeks later, former At-Large Councilwoman Sue Lovell.

Seven other lesser-known candidates also are running.

Despite vigorous campaigning from Turner’s opponents, the race has yet to reach its loudest pitch, in part because Turner only has appeared at campaign events without other mayoral candidates. Earlier this week, Buzbee and King criticized the mayor for not yet attending any candidate forums.

A Turner campaign spokesperson said he was not invited to the Wednesday forum or to a prior forum held in June by the Lake Houston Pachyderm Club, which Buzbee and King attended.

Even as the race heats up, mayoral candidates are battling with a bloated field of Democratic presidential candidates for the attention of Houston voters, who typically do not tune into city elections en masse until September.

“I think the challenge for the city candidates this year is that they are greatly overshadowed by the 2020 race,” Sims said. “They are struggling to get the attention they need for people to focus in on the city elections.”

Even without distractions, such as the Sept. 12 Democratic presidential debate in Houston, municipal candidates often struggle to drag voters to the polls: Just 27 percent of registered Houston voters turned out in the 2015 race, the first time since 2003 that turnout was more than 20 percent.

Still, the candidates are entering the critical part of the race with ample resources to draw out voters. Buzbee is self-funding his campaign and as of June 30 had contributed $7.5 million of his personal wealth. He had spent more than $2.3 million at the same point, and recently made a six-figure TV ad buy through the end of September.

“Tony Buzbee is a very unique candidate because of his ability to self-fund, so the normal rules and strategies regarding TV don’t really apply to him, because he effectively has a bottomless wallet,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University. “For other candidates who have to keep their powder dry, we’re unlikely to see major media buys until the first or second week of October.”

We’ve discussed this before, but as a reminder what drives turnout in city elections is a high profile referendum on the ballot. Contested Mayoral races are a factor too, but the addition of a referendum is the difference between 2003 (381K votes, Metro light rail referendum) or 2015 (286K votes, HERO repeal) and 2009 (181K, no referendum). Even without a contested Mayor’s race, a sufficiently hot ballot item can bring a lot of voters out – see, for example, 2005 (332K, anti-gay marriage Constitutional amendment). The Metro referendum this year isn’t nearly as controversial as the 2003 one was, and there may not be any astroturf opposition effort to it, but Metro will be pushing voters to the polls as well as the candidates are, and that should boost turnout a bit.

I would also push back against the notion that no one pays much attention to the Mayoral races before Labor Day, and I’d point to the last three open Mayoral elections as evidence. Bill White was running those white-background ads in 2003 early on in the year. Annise Parker, Gene Locke, and Peter Brown were releasing position papers and talking about ideas for traffic, crime, neighborhoods, economic development, and a whole lot of other things well before September. The pension issue, HERO, and the Adrian Garcia will-he-or-won’t-he tease dominated 2015. Maybe it was just the more engaged voters tuning in, but speaking as one of those engaged voters, there was a lot more happening in those past elections than there has been in this one.

Why might that be? Well, let me summarize the campaigns of the main Turner opponents so far.

Bill King: I’m a rich old guy who was once the Mayor of a town with fewer people than most HISD high schools, and I’m not Sylvester Turner.

Tony Buzbee: I’m a rich guy who’s buddies with Rick Perry, and I’m not Sylvester Turner.

Dwight Boykins: I’m not Sylvester Turner, and I supported Prop B.

Sue Lovell: I’m not Sylvester Turner, I supported Prop B, and unlike these other guys I also supported HERO.

I mean, you tell me why the excitement level has been set to “Meh”. I don’t see a whole lot changing from here, and it will be turned up to 11 in the runoff. Welcome to election season, y’all.

Bonus commentary on 2019 lineup

Aug 22nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
11 comments

There was a lot of last minute activity at Monday’s filing deadline, as there usually is. Probably more so this year, as approximately ten percent of Houston adults are running for office this November. The point here is that the news stories and other available sources at the time had a lot to do to keep up with it all, and those of us who follow them now recognize there were things we missed the first time around. So, after another review of the Erik Manning spreadsheet and the City of Houston 2019 election page, here are some semi-random observations about things I didn’t note or comment on the first time around. I’ll run this down race by race.

Mayor: Mostly, I’m going to point out the filers and non-filers that are worth mentioning for one reason or another. The usual reason is going to be because my reaction to the late filers was along the lines of “oh, Lord, not that person again”. Exhibit A is Kendall Baker, who has cluttered up multiple ballots since the 2007 special election in At Large #3. Most recently, he ran in HD137 as a Republican in 2016, and in District F in 2015. Baker wasn’t a late filer – he had a June finance report – but as I prefer to think pleasant thoughts I’d forgotten he was in the race. He was one of the anti-HERO loudmouths who has his own problems with inappropriate behavior.

District B: Willie D did not file, so we will have a maximum of one Geto Boy on Council.

District C: Kendra Yarbrough Camarena did not file. She instead filed for the special election in HD148. Erik is tracking those filings in his spreadsheet as well. Yarbrough Camarena appears to be the first official entrant in this race. And don’t worry about District C, there are still thirteen candidates for that office.

District D: Andrew Burks rises from the ash heap to run again. Can you still be a perennial candidate if you once won something? My ruling is Yes. Burks served one action-packed two year term in At Large #2 from 2011 to 2013 before being defeated by David Robinson. I was wondering about how the term limits charter amendment would apply to him, and I found the answer, in Article V, Section 6a: “Persons who served a single term prior to 2016 who are not serving in City elective office in 2015 and thus not subject to subsection (b), shall be eligible to serve one additional four-year term in the same City elective office.” So there you have it.

District F: Adekunle “Kay” Elegbede is listed as a Write-In Candidate. Obviously, this means he will not appear on the ballot, so what does it mean? Here’s the applicable state law. Basically, this means that any write in votes for this candidate will actually count (as opposed to write-ins for, say, “Mickey Mouse” or “Ben Hall”), and there’s no filing fee.

District J: Jim Bigham, who ran against Mike Laster in 2015 did not file. He did not have a finance report, so no big surprise.

District K: Republican Gerry Vander-Lyn, who ran in the special election that Martha Castex-Tatum won, and one other person filed. Neither will provide much of a challenge to Castex-Tatum, but their presence means that no one is unopposed this cycle.

At Large #1: Ugh. Yolanda Navarro Flores, defeated by Zeph Capo in 2013 from the HCC Board, is back. In addition to her ethical issues while on the HCC Board, she was also pals with Dave Wilson. ‘Nuff said.

At Large #2: Apparently, it really isn’t an election without Griff Griffin. I had honestly thought he’d gone away, but no. The funny/scary thing is that he could easily wind up in a runoff with CM Robinson.

At Large #4: Anthony Dolcefino also jumps out of District C into this race. There are now 11 candidates in AL4, so it’s not like he landed in that much smaller a pond.

At Large #5: I guess Eric Dick isn’t having any fun on the HCDE Board, because here he is. As per the Andrew Burks Rule, which I just created, I label him a perennial candidate as well. Note that HCDE Trustees are not subject to resign to run, so Dick may continue on in his current gig, as Roy Morales had done for most of the time when he was on the HCDE Board.

HISD II: Lots of people signed up for this one after all. The one name I recognize is Kathy Blueford-Daniels, who had run for City Council in District B previously. Here’s an interview I did with her back in 2011, and another from 2013. Rodrick Davison, the one person to post a June finance report, wound up not filing for the office

HISD IV: Reagan Flowers was a candidate for HCDE in Precinct 1 in 2012. I interviewed her at the time. I feel like she ran for something else since then, but if so I can’t find it.

← Earlier Posts