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Kay Granger

Vote No and take the dough

Jan 27th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
20 comments

It’s as Republican as insurrection and hydroxychloroquine.

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

The states respond to Paxton

Dec 11th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

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

Best mugshot ever

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once again with female Congressional candidates

Aug 9th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

This is another post that was drafted in the Before Times, specifically right after the March primary. I went through the runoffs and assessed all of the races that could or would contain a female candidate or incumbent against a male opponent or open seat with a retiring male incumbent, mixed in the likelihood of said female candidate winning, and presented a range of possibilities for the number of female members of Congress in Texas in 2021, a number that now stands at six. That’s six female members of Congress out of 36 total – five Democrats (out of 13 total) and one Republican (out of 23). With the lineups for November settled, let’s do a quick review, then you can click on to see what I had written originally.

First of all, the next member of Congress in CD24 will be a woman, either Democrat Candace Valenzuela or Republican Beth Van Duyne. It would be nice to say that this means the number of women in Congress from Texas will go up, but Rep. Lizzie Fletcher could lose her race to Wesley Hunt, which would leave us at six as before. I think as things stand right now Fletcher is a clear favorite to win, but we have to allow for the possibility.

Other than Van Duyne, the only Republican running in a competitive district is Genevieve Collins in CD32 against Rep. Colin Allred, who like his fellow freshman Fletcher is the favorite to win but could lose if things go poorly from here. CD24 is one of the more Dem-leaning seats that are currently held by Republicans, but since it’s Republican-held I’d say it has slightly better odds of staying red than CD07 or CD32 have of flipping to red. Republicans can add up to two women to their caucus, and they can subtract one from the Democratic caucus, but I think the single most likely outcome is that Rep. Kay Granger remains the only Republican woman in Congress, and Rep. Lizzie Fletcher gets another term.

If that’s the case, then Dems will add at least one woman to their caucus, but given the bigger picture it’s nearly impossible to imagine that it would be one and only one. I can’t envision a scenario in which Candace Valenzuela wins but Gina Ortiz Jones does not. Wendy Davis is a notch behind those two, and then a little further behind we have Sima Ladjevardian, Lulu Seikaly, Julie Oliver, and Donna Imam. A gain of two Democratic women feels like the single most likely possibility, followed very closely by a gain of three. Four or more is more remote, but not at all out of the question.

That’s the nickel summary. More recently, The 19th wrote about this from a national perspective, with a focus on Republican efforts to recruit more and better female candidates for Congress. They all pretty neatly avoid the Donald Trump-shaped elephant in the room, but that’s their problem. Read on for my original post, which included all of the candidates who are now out of the race or who are running for seats that are not competitive.

(more…)

2020 primary results: Senate and Congress

Mar 4th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

In the US Senate primary, MJ Heger is clearly headed to the runoff. It’s less clear who’s in second place, in part because the statewide results are so out of date on both the Trib and SOS pages. As of this draft, these pages show Royce West trailing Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez by three points, with 64,041 votes cast for him. However, as of the same time, the Dallas County election results show West with 58,873 votes, just in Dallas. Suffice it to say, the statewide results are not up to date. My guess is that West finishes second, but check back later.

For Congress:

– Sima Ladjevardian was close to 50% in CD02 after early voting, but slipped back a bit from there and will be in the runoff with Elisa Cardnell.

– Mike Siegel was leading in CD10 as far as I could tell, but it’s not clear who he’ll face in the runoff.

– Sri Kulkarni appears to be over 50% in CD22. I very much hope that race ended last night.

– Wendy Davis (CD21) and Gina Ortiz Jones (CD23) were winning easily, and Julie Oliver (CD25) was also headed to victory. Kim Olson and Candace Valenzuela were basically tied in CD24 and will face off in May, as will Sean McCaffity and Lulu Seikaly in CD03. Christine Eady Mann and Donna Imam made the cut in CD31. Elizabeth Hernandez appeared to be leading Laura Jones in CD08.

– Henry Cuellar seems to have held on in CD28, and on the Republican side Kay Granger was doing the same in CD12. So Republicans will still have at least one female member of Congress from Texas.

– Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green won easily against their challengers.

– Pete Sessions will be in the runoff in CD17, and Troy Nehls gets to face Kathaleen Wall and her millions of dollars in CD22. I pity everyone who will have to suffer through the TV commercials.

One more of these to go.

UPDATE: The Chron says it’s Mike Siegel and Pritesh Gandhi in the CD10 runoff, with Shannon Hutcheson finishing third. That’s a rare failure for a female candidate in any Dem primary from this year.

Will Kay Granger get KO’ed?

Nov 17th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Rep. Henry Cuellar isn’t the only longtime Texas Congressperson facing a serious primary challenge.

Rep. Kay Granger

It’s the question on the minds of Republicans from Washington to Cowtown: Is one of Texas’ most powerful U.S. House members in political trouble?

Enough people think so that many in the GOP political class are bracing for Fort Worth to serve as the setting of the next nationalized battle between the party’s establishment and rebellious conservative factions.

U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, is running for reelection in her Fort Worth district. But at least one well-funded primary challenger has emerged: Chris Putnam, who shot out of the gate this fall with a burst of cash and accusations that Granger is not sufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump.

Unseating Granger would undoubtedly be a tall task — she’s a 12-term member of Congress who has been a force in Fort Worth politics since before she was mayor in the early 1990s.

“I sure as hell wouldn’t want to run against her,” said state Rep. Charlie Geren, a Fort Worth resident and brother of the man Granger replaced in Congress.

But Granger, who is the only Republican woman representing Texas at the federal level and the most senior Republican woman in the House, has never faced a competitive Congressional race, leaving state and national Republicans to wonder how she will respond.

“Sometimes, sitting congresspeople have knuckleheads who run against them in primaries, who have no chance,” said former Tarrant County GOP Chairman Tim O’Hare, who lives outside the district but is supporting Putnam. “This is certainly not one of those. He certainly has a chance. He is far more popular among conservatives than she is.”

The story notes a few factors that may lead to Granger’s electoral demise:

– Insufficient Trumpiness. Granger, first elected in 1996, is a “moderate” in the sense that she’s not a barking lunatic who spews unhinged conspiracy theories on Fox News and lower-rung media outlets. In a Republican primary, that’s not a compliment.

– Lack of recent experience with competitive campaigns, thanks to a red district and few primary challenges. The last contested primary she faced was 2012, which she won with 80%. Before that there was 2010, which she won with 70%, and 2002, where she won with 87%. She’s neither a seasoned campaigner nor one who has had to do much of it – she’s currently seeking out campaign staff, which is not a great place to be when one has a viable challenger four months out from the election.

– No major financial advantage. Granger has a senior leadership position in the GOP caucus, and a part of that is kicking into the national committees to help out other Republicans. That has left her cash on hand lower than you’d expect for someone like her, and enabled her challenger to mostly achieve parity with her. She’s got some heavy hitters ponying up for her now, and in the end should have all the resources she needs, but she has to get there from here.

– Not mentioned in the story but inescapable in this context, she’s a woman running in a Republican primary with a male opponent. That’s not a recipe for success in the modern GOP.

I have no dog in this fight, and I have no particular insight as to what Tarrant County GOP primary voters may do. I will be watching this result on Primary Day.

Rep. Mac Thornberry to retire

Oct 1st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

Six down.

Rep. Mac Thornberry

U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, announced Monday that he will not seek reelection in 2020, making him the sixth GOP congressman from Texas to say he’s retiring in recent weeks.

“It has been a great honor for me to represent the people of the 13th District of Texas for the last 25 years,” he said in a statement.

“We are reminded, however, that ‘for everything there is a season,’ and I believe that the time has come for a change. Therefore, I will not be a candidate for reelection in the 2020 election.”

Thornberry joins five other Texas Republicans in Congress who are not running for reelection — U.S. Reps. Kenny Marchant, Pete Olson, Mike Conaway, Will Hurd and Bill Flores. But Thornberry’s exit is somewhat different from other Republicans’ shocking retirements over the summer. The last remaining Texas Republican from the class of 1994 and the dean of the GOP delegation, Thornberry was expected by many to retire soon. He will turn over his post leading the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee in January 2021, thanks to Republican term limits for committee chairmanships.

We did hear about this possibility before, with the end of his term on the House Armed Services Committee as the likely reason. CD13 is one of the reddest districts in the country – I mean, Trump got 79.5% in 2016, Ted Cruz got 79.2% in 2018 – so this has nothing to do with re-election fears, as is the case with some of his soon-to-be-ex-colleagues. I don’t know how he felt about Trump – Thornberry was among the quieter members of the GOP Congressional caucus – but I wouldn’t expect him to have to deal with that much on the trail, and being in the minority plus losing his plum committee assignment sure seems like good reasons to hit the road to me.

By the way, looking back at the 1994 election results sure is a trip down memory lane. There are now three members of Congress from that year who will (barring anything wildly unexpected) be there in 2021: Lloyd Doggett, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Eddie Berniece Johnson. Doggett and SJL were also members of the class of 1994, with Doggett succeeding Jake Pickle, who retired, and SJL ousting Craig Washington in the primary. EBJ is the sole member who was there before 1994, having arrived in the 1992 election. Four other members – Sam Johnson, Joe Barton, Lamar Smith, and Gene Green – stepped down in 2018. Of the incumbents who are expected to be on the 2020 ballot, only eleven – Doggett, SJL, EBJ plus eight more – were there prior to the 2011 redistricting: Louie Gohmert, Kevin Brady, Al Green, Mike McCaul, Kay Granger, Michael Burgess, Henry Cuellar, and John Carter. Of them, McCaul and Carter had close shaves in 2018, with McCaul already facing strong competition for 2020, while Cuellar does and Granger may face strong primary challenges. Change can be slow in Texas, but it does happen.

What if he does it anyway?

Jan 18th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

That’s my question.

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

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

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

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

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

One more in CD32

Sep 19th, 2017
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Meet Lillian Salerno, the third major candidate to take a crack at Rep. Pete Sessions in CD32.

Lillian Salerno

Lillian Salerno, who served as President Barack Obama’s deputy undersecretary of rural development for the Department of Agriculture, [officially launched] her candidacy for Congress on Tuesday at Randall Park in Dallas.

“I have the ability to bring people together, find common ground and make sure the vulnerable are protected,” Salerno told The Dallas Morning News. “If you’re going to beat Pete Sessions, the people of the district have to believe that they’ve got somebody who’s got their back.

Salerno, 56, was born at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas and raised in East Dallas. She moved back to the city this year after serving under Obama from 2012-2017. She’s a small businesswoman who led a company that developed retractable needles to protect health care workers from being stuck and infected by diseases like HIV.

Salerno, who has had a long career in politics, said that it was time to run for public office and that Sessions’ policies on health care and other issues made Congressional District 32 the right fit. “Sometimes you just do it,” she said. “The people are so much better than the politicians. … I knew I would get back to Texas.”

Salerno joins a crowded field for the Democratic nomination, including civil rights lawyer and former NFL player Colin Allred and nonprofit executive and Hillary Clinton campaign senior adviser Ed Meier.

Salerno’s webpage is here and her campaign Facebook page is here. The Dallas Observer has done some good Q&As with Meier and Allred, so I look forward to them doing the same with Salerno. In the meantime, if you want to get to know her a little better, I found this Washington Post op-ed she wrote while vying for a Democratic seat on the Federal Trade Commission, entitled “Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies.” Read it and see what you think.

On a side note, I am encouraged by the number of women who are running high profile campaigns for Congress in Texas. The two frontrunners in CD16 to succeed Beto O’Rourke are women, and races in CDs 06, 07, 23, 31, 36, and now 32 have leading female contenders as well. There are thirty-six members of Congress from Texas, of whom three – three! – are women. The last time a woman was elected to Congress in Texas was 1996, when Kay Granger won in CD12. Sheila Jackson Lee was elected in 1994, and Eddie Bernice Johnson in 1992. I hope we can all agree that this is maybe just a teeny bit out of whack. Before someone posts the usual tiresome comment, I’m not saying that anyone deserves a vote for being female, nor am I saying that we “have to” elect some number of women to anything. I am saying that 1) women are grossly underrepresented in Congress, both nationally and in Texas; 2) one good way to do something about this is for quality women to run for Congress and for people of good will to give them a fair hearing; and 3) at least the first part of #2 is happening this year, of which I approve. Whatever happens in this cycle, we need for that to continue to happen in 2020 and beyond.

Where are the ladies?

Jul 13th, 2015
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Not in Congress, where only three of the 36 members Texas sends to the House are of the female persuasion.

Week after week at the U.S. Capitol, the Republican congressional delegation from Texas gathers for a ritual Thursday lunch. And year after year, U.S. Rep. Kay Granger of Fort Worth has been the lone woman sitting at the table.

“I keep ’em under control most of the time, but not all the time. I do my best,” Granger said with a laugh of her 24 male GOP colleagues.

“It just is puzzling,” she added about the disparity. “And I talk to young women all the time and say their voices need to be heard.”

The Democratic side of the state’s congressional roster is little better, with two women, Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Dallas and Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston, among 11. In total, that means Texas has three women serving in a 36-member House delegation, plus two male senators.

And its been nearly 20 years since the last new woman from Texas — Granger — entered Congress, if you set aside ex-Rep. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs’ largely ceremonial two-month stint in late 2006.

Republicans and Democrats tend to agree that electing women is good for party, country and Congress, and there is tangible evidence that both parties invest in trying to elect more of them. But actually doing so, particularly in Texas, has proved easier said than done.

About one-fifth of Congress is female, with 84 women serving in the U.S. House of Representatives and 20 in the Senate. The partisan breakdown leans heavily in the Democratic column. As a dominant state in national politics, Texas’ dearth of females is a top concern for those who want to see women advance.

[…]

Nearly every state and national political operative interviewed for this story pointed to one major culprit: the congressional map.

The Republican-dominated Texas Legislature re-drew the state’s congressional districts after the 2010 census aiming to secure as many Republican seats as possible. But the new districts also protected incumbents. With little turnover comes fewer opportunities.

“There are members of Congress in the delegation, I’m sure, that have a very strong base in their district … and their constituents are happy with them,” Jackson Lee said. “But [female representation] is something that we have to put on the minds of Texans.”

Other Democrats are more blunt, arguing that any incumbent protection is going to favor men.

But there have been open-seat races in recent years, thanks in most part to Texas picking up four seats in the last census. And it’s not that women are getting beat. They aren’t even running.

Since the new lines were drawn, there have been at least a half-dozen open primary races where women either did not run or ran disorganized and underfunded campaigns.

In contrast, the mid-1990s marked the high point for women in Texas politics.

Here’s a look at the female candidates for Congress in 2012, the first election after the last round of redistricting.


Democratic primary

Dist  Name                  Result
==================================
01    Shirley McKellar        100%
04    VaLinda Hathcox         100%
05    Linda Mrosko             39% *
06    Brianna Flores           32%
07    Lissa Squiers            40% +
10    Tawana Cadien            57%
14    Linda Dailey             17%
21    Candace Duval            61%
22    Kesha Rogers             51%
25    Elaine Henderson        100%
27    Rose Meza Harrison       31% *
30    Barbara Mallory Caraway  18% #
32    Katherine McGovern       84%
33    Chrysta Castaneda         2%
33    Katherine Hicks          13%
34    Denise Saenz Blanchard   13% +
35    Maria Luisa Alvarado      6%
35    Sylvia Romo              21%


Republican primary

Dist  Name                  Result
==================================
13    Pamela Barlow            22% #
14    Felicia Harris           19% +
15    Rebecca Cervera          20% 
22    Barbara Carlson          24% #
25    Dianne Costa              9%
34    Jessica Puente Bradshaw  35% *
34    Adele Garza              36% +
35    Susan Narvaiz            52%
36    Lois Dickson Myers        3%

* = Won runoff
+ = Lost runoff
# = Challenged incumbent

A lot more Democratic challengers, which is consistent with the overall higher rate of female incumbency among Democratic women in Congress. Of course, Democratic candidates have a lot more targets to aim for, and in most cases these races are unwinnable. I don’t have any presciptions here – plenty has been written about how to encourage women to actually jump into races – but I do agree that a lack of competitive seats plus a lack of turnover among established incumbents does nothing to help. In other words, I don’t expect anything to change any time soon.

Where are all the ladies?

May 30th, 2014
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Christy Hoppe of the DMN notices something missing on the Republican side of the 2014 ballot.

Rep. Kay Granger

The Texas Republican Party has a girl problem.

A glance down the list of GOP nominees set after Tuesday’s runoffs makes it look as if U.S. Rep. Kay Granger of Fort Worth has signed up for shop class.

She is the lone woman among the 50 congressional, statewide and top judicial Republican candidates.

In a year when the marquee races for governor and lieutenant governor will feature Democrats Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte, the Grand Old Party looks like it’s going stag.

Candidate Lisa Fritsch warned during the primaries of “the party of all these men and the same old recycled candidates.”

And Fritsch is a staunch conservative who was challenging Greg Abbott for the nomination for governor.

State party chairman Steve Munisteri said he’s noticed.

“I would tell you I’ve had discussions with elected officials and party leaders about this very issue,” he said Tuesday. “Frankly, it is a concern.”

He said he is placing women in high-profile jobs and hoping to recruit more women to run for office.

The story has gone national, but it should be noted that Rep. Granger isn’t quite as lonely as Hoppe says. There is one more Republican lady among the statewide and Congressional candidates – there is also Susan Narvaiz, who is running for CD35 against Rep. Lloyd Doggett. And it’s not like there were a bunch of viable female candidates that filed but couldn’t make it through the primaries. The only serious contender for a statewide office on the R side was Debra Medina, who finished third for Comptroller with 19% of the vote despite that crappy Trib poll that I’m still not tired of mocking that showed her leading, and the only serious contender for a Congressional seat was Katrina Pierson, who was defeated easily by Rep. Pete Sessions despite having Ted Cruz as her overlord. The lack of Republican ladies on the ballot was a problem that one could see coming from a good ways away.

To be fair, there’s not an overabundance of ladies on the Democratic side, but there are three women running statewide. Two of them you’ve probably heard of, plus Justice Gina Benavides of the 13th Court of Appeals, who is running for Supreme Court. There are also two Congressional incumbents – Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Eddie Berniece Johnson – plus two more Congressional candidates, Shirley McKellar and Tawana Cadien. That’s two Democratic incumbents to one Republican incumbent even though Republican incumbents overall outnumber Dems in this group by more than three to one, and seven Democratic candidates to two for the GOP. I’d have liked for there to be more female candidates on our ballot – I did vote for Maxey Scherr in the Senate primary, after all – but given the historic nature of the Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte candidacies – the first time ever that a party has nominated women for both of the top two slots – it’s still something we Ds can be proud of. Better luck next time, Republicans.

Steve Brown confirms he’s in for RRC

Nov 9th, 2013
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

It’s official.

Steve Brown

Late Thursday, Steve Brown, the former chairman of the Fort Bend County Democrats, announced his candidacy to join the three-member Railroad Commission, the powerful agency that regulates the oil and gas industry, pipelines and natural gas utilities. He is vying for the seat now held by Barry Smitherman, who is running for Texas attorney general.

Brown said that, if elected, he would look for ways to keep Texas’ oil and gas sector growing while managing its less desirable impacts. “It’s important that we do all that we can to continue the abundant growth of our energy industry, as it is the engine of our state’s economy,” he said in a statement. “It’s equally important that this agency has the resources to quickly respond to everyday Texans’ concerns about safety, private property rights, and the environment.”

According to his Facebook page, Brown has worked on campaigns and in legislative offices of several public officials, including U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Houston; state Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston; and former U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

Brown said he wants to transform the commission into a “functional, twenty-first century state agency,” likely alluding to the agency’s decades-old computer and software systems that have strained its capabilities. The Legislature recently gave the agency permission to use millions of dollars in fees to begin an upgrade.

His website is here. Stace was first with the news, though we had a preview two weeks ago, and a hint before that. The filing period officially opens today, so expect to hear a bunch of candidate announcements over the next 30 days. Texas on the Potomac lists a few Democratic challengers to Republican members of Congress; note that Smokey Joe Barton is in CD06, so either they got the district wrong or the Dem in question is running against Kay Granger. I’ll be keeping an eye on all the filings going forward. One person who apparently will not be running, much to the disappointment of some observers, is wingnut “historian” David Barton. I’m sure there will be plenty of crazy to go around in other races. Please leave any reports or rumors of interesting candidacies that you know of in the comments.

We should expect boring Congressional races for the foreseeable future

Nov 28th, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

That’s my takeaway after reading this.

CD32

For Pete Sessions, election night ended with yet another resounding send-off to Washington.

He won a ninth term, with 58 percent of the vote. But an analysis by The Dallas Morning News raises questions about how long the swath of Dallas and Collin counties that makes up Sessions’ 32nd Congressional District will remain safely Republican.

And more broadly, the 32nd is a microcosm of the challenges Republicans face maintaining control in congressional and legislative districts as the Hispanic population, which favors Democrats, continues to grow.

The district’s Hispanic-origin population will grow from 25.6 percent to 29.7 percent by 2016 and will only continue in years to come, according to population projections from Esri, a leading provider of demographic software and data. The percentage of registered voters in the district with Spanish surnames grew from 7.3 percent of eligible voters in 2002 to 8.8 percent in 2010.

Experts said that while changes are coming, Sessions should be safe for the next few elections.

“The big takeaway, looking at the last couple of elections in Texas, is that things are changing demographically — and that certainly has political implications,” SMU political scientist Matthew Wilson said. “But the partisan levels of those implications aren’t rising as quickly as the Democrats had hoped for.

“Change is slow, and looking at 2014 or 2016 as a tipping point might be getting ahead of the game a little bit.”

There were two competitive Congressional races this year, CD23 in which Rep.-elect Pete Gallego ousted freshman Rep. Quico Canseco, and CD14, in which Nick Lampson fell short in a race to succeed Ron Paul. The latter was basically only competitive because of Lampson, who represented a chunk of the new CD14 in his first years of service in Congress. Barring anything unusual, Rep.-elect Randy Weber will likely have a smooth ride in 2014. Only CD23 is likely to be seriously contested again.

I base this on a review of the 2008 results for the current districts and the actual results from this election. To put it mildly, there were no surprises.


Dist  Obama  Houston  Dem Candidate   Pct
=========================================
05     37.3     42.0         Mrosko  33.2
06     42.2     43.7        Sanders  39.2
07     40.4     39.1         Cargas  36.4
10     42.6     43.2         Cadien  36.2
14     42.1     47.5        Lampson  44.6
17     40.9     44.1           None   0.0
21     42.2     40.2          Duval  35.4
24     40.5     39.9           Rusk  36.0
25     42.7     43.5      Henderson  37.4
27     40.1     45.8       Harrison  39.2
31     42.5     42.4          Wyman  35.0
32     43.8     43.8       McGovern  39.4


Dist McCain W'wright  GOP Candidate   Pct
=========================================
15     41.8     37.3    Brueggemann  36.8
20     40.6     37.7           Rosa  33.4
23     49.3     45.0        Canseco  45.5
28     41.0     35.3        Hayward  29.7

These are all of the districts in which you could squint and see something potentially competitive based on either the Presidential number or the Sam Houston/Dale Wainwright number. Needless to say, that isn’t how it played out. Some of this is likely due to Obama’s reduced national margin from 2008, which is to say his decline among Anglo voters, some of it is likely due to the absence of resources at the state level, and some of it is likely due to the candidates themselves having little to no resources. Be that as it may, there’s nothing here to suggest there were any missed opportunities or any emerging hotspots. It’s CD23 all the way down.

There are two caveats to this. One is that we will not have the same Congressional districts in 2014. These were interim districts, to be used until the San Antonio court acts on the DC court’s denial of preclearance to fix the issues that the DC court identified. What the next map may look like and how this all may be affected by the upcoming SCOTUS review of Section 5 remains to be seen.

The other is that just because there won’t be competitive elections in November doesn’t mean there won’t be any in March. We saw one incumbent Congressman get bounced, thanks in part to some big external donors, but even if that group doesn’t play in 2014, the following members of Congress are, shall we say, less likely than some of their colleagues to make it to the next round of redistricting:

Sam Johnson, 82 years old.
Ralph Hall, 89 years old.
Kay Granger, 69 years old.
Rubén Hinojosa, 72 years old.
Eddie Bernice Johnson, 77 years old.
John Carter, 71 years old.

If nothing else, we’re likely to see a few spirited primaries in the coming years. Whether we get more than that or not remains to be seen.

Plans from an alternate universe: The Alonzo plan

Jun 15th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Here’s my third entry in the the Redistricting Plans From An Alternate Universe series. So far, we’ve seen the Veasey-West proposal and the Gallegos plan and Uresti amendment. Today I have what I consider to be the most interesting map I’ve seen. It was submitted by State Rep. Robert Alonzo during the House Redistricting committee meeting, and it’s Plan C142 on your scorecard. Let’s look at some pictures, starting with Alonzo’s home turf, the Metroplex:

Alonzo Plan C142 DFW

Alonzo, like his neighbor to the west Marc Veasey, goes for two new Democratic districts in the Metroplex, one Latino and one African-American. Unlike Veasey, he does this by drawing a Republican out of a seat, in this case Rep. Kay Granger, whose CD12 would not be recognizable to her. His districts also appear to be more compact than Veasey’s. Now let’s look at Central Texas:

Alonzo Plan C142 Central Texas

District 10 moves west, and may or may not contain Mike McCaul’s home precinct; off the top of my head, I just don’t know. It has about the same electoral profile as the current CD10. Once again, Lloyd Doggett gets restored to a Travis-centric district. CD34, about which you’ll see more in the next picture, wends its way south and takes up a chunk of Bexar County. CD27 comprises a fair amount of the old CD10, as well as some of the current CD14 – it goes down to the coast and also picks up most of northern Brazoria County. CD22 shifts northwest to swipe Austin and Waller Counties from the old CD10. Now let’s look south from here, starting with the Bexar County area:

Alonzo Plan C142 Bexar County

CD28, which once had a small piece of Bexar and included counties like Guadalupe and Wilson, shifts south and west, while CD23 goes south. Continuing south, here’s what we see:

Alonzo Plan C142 South Texas

I guess it’s fajita strips forever, but they do get a new district, CD33, in the bargain. Finally, let’s look at the Harris County area:

Alonzo Plan C142 Harris County

It’s so different I almost don’t know where to begin. Pete Olson would have to move, as Clear Lake is no longer in CD22. So would Ron Paul, as Matagorda County is now in CD27. John Culberson gets banished to the northwest corner of the county, which would make him safe for the decade and would remove his influence over the Universities light rail line. CD36 is new, and may be the single most interesting district I’ve seen proposed by someone with skin in the game. To see why, let’s look at the electoral numbers:


Safe R

Dist    Obama   Houston
=======================
01      30.65     36.37
02      29.72     35.54
03      37.68     37.02
04      33.10     35.39
05      28.83     38.38
06      35.42     36.76
07      30.96     31.84
08      25.90     30.11
11      22.40     28.07
13      22.87     28.50
17      34.69     39.78
19      27.87     31.94
21      32.53     31.71
22      36.25     36.00
24      37.05     36.92
26      31.42     32.66
27      34.08     38.66


Likely R

Dist    Obama   Houston
=======================
10      44.82     42.96
14      42.06     49.08
31      42.57     42.57
32      42.11     42.09


Lean D

Dist    Obama   Houston
=======================
36      51.92     52.53


Safe D

Dist    Obama   Houston
=======================
09      71.37     70.78
12      68.37     68.81
15      56.61     60.86
16      64.15     66.29
18      73.44     72.95
20      58.63     58.60
23      59.00     60.86
25      71.96     69.07
28      58.48     62.64
29      60.80     66.47
30      71.51     72.23
33      58.42     62.35
34      59.18     61.31
35      64.07     65.29

Yes, that’s a genuine swing district. Every Democrat won it in 2008, every Democrat other than Bill White lost it in 2010; the high D score on the statewide ticket was Bill Moody’s 45.58%, with David Porter’s 51.66% being the low R score. I’m sure a couple of countywide Ds did better, but I don’t have those numbers, and I doubt they would have won it anyway. In a more normal non-Presidential year, it would likely be a slightly lean-D district, but it’s not out of the question that you could see it flip back and forth every other year. What’s even more curious to me is that it’s not drawn as a Hispanic opportunity district; the SSVR there is 23.4%. I’d love to know what motivated Alonzo to draw this particular seat. With all four of the new districts going to the Ds, plus the two takeaways (Granger and Canseco; Farenthold might have to move to get into the new CD27), Alonzo’s plan would make the split 21-15 in favor of the Rs. Well, it would have, if it hadn’t gotten voted down along predictably partisan lines, along with Veasey’s plan and a bunch of other Democratic-drawn maps. Still, you can see a full spreadsheet from 2008 here and from 2010 here. What do you think of Alonzo’s plan?

House Redistricting committee approves modified Congressional map

Jun 10th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

Even quicker than the Senate committee.

The Texas House Redistricting Committee approved a new version of the Congressional map that makes a few tweaks, mainly in North and South Texas. But the overall goal remains the same: Maintain and expand Republican power in Washington.

The map was approved on an 11-5 party line vote in the committee, sending it to the full House. The map looks very much like the one that sailed out of the Senate Monday. But this new version would slightly reduce Hispanic voting strength in the district represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Francisco “Quico” Canseco, who faces a potentially stiff re-match in 2012 from former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, a Democrat.

The author of the map, Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, said the change was a response to “concerns of the San Antonio Hispanic community” and is meant to shore up Latino voting strength in the district held by Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio. It does that by taking Latinos from surrounding districts, including District 23 held by Canseco and a newly proposed District 35.

State Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, said the changes were designed to protect Canseco, easily the most vulnerable Republican in the Congressional delegation.

“They switched some Hispanic and Anglo voters around to make the district safer for Canseco, and make it easier for Anglo voters to control the district,” Veasey said.

The House version of the map would also switch around some precincts in Tarrant and Denton Counties, changes that Veasey said would help shore up the re-election prospects of U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth.

Postcards has more. I guess I was expecting them to hold a public hearing with testimony or something before they actually voted. Silly me. The new plan is C149. Here’s what the partisan numbers look like now, with comparisons to the original plan and the one that the Senate approved:


         C125    C130   C149    C125    C130    C149
Dist    Obama   Obama  Obama Houston Houston Houston
====================================================
01      30.40   30.47   30.47  37.01   36.39   36.39
02      35.39   35.86   35.86  38.14   36.65   36.65
03      37.37   37.37   37.37  36.79   36.79   36.79
04      29.28   29.28   29.28  37.55   37.55   37.55
05      37.31   37.28   37.21  42.07   42.05   42.01
07      39.32   39.08   39.08  38.10   37.83   37.83
08      25.43   26.08   26.14  28.59   29.40   29.44
11      23.42   23.13   23.13  28.44   28.29   28.29
13      22.24   22.24   22.24  27.48   27.48   27.48
14      34.30   41.96   41.96  39.69   47.31   47.31
19      27.94   27.94   27.94  32.32   32.32   32.32
22      35.80   37.65   37.65  36.92   38.32   38.32
26      39.44   39.33   39.33  39.64   39.64   39.55

06      41.67   41.67   42.51  44.29   44.28   45.44
10      43.81   42.77   42.59  44.14   43.41   43.23
12      42.50   42.50   43.53  43.10   43.10   44.13
17      40.71   40.94   40.94  43.98   44.08   44.08
21      42.51   42.67   42.25  40.48   40.61   40.26
24      40.55   40.54   40.54  39.91   39.91   39.91
25      42.40   42.83   42.73  43.63   43.95   43.54
27      40.78   40.31   40.12  46.28   45.85   45.75
31      42.61   42.61   42.54  42.47   42.47   42.40
32      43.79   43.79   43.80  43.63   43.63   43.67
33      42.64   42.64   41.74  43.90   43.90   42.96
36      41.02   29.58   29.58  47.46   39.30   39.30

23      47.19   47.19   47.14  49.27   49.27   49.18

15      59.15   58.43   56.36  61.90   61.19   58.91
20      58.40   58.47   58.40  58.15   58.34   58.71
34      59.11   60.29   60.52  62.85   63.87   64.10

09      76.42   76.49   76.49  76.77   76.85   76.85
16      66.44   66.44   66.44  68.68   68.68   68.68
18      79.48   79.24   79.57  78.71   78.47   78.73
28      60.40   60.91   62.09  63.33   63.82   65.12
29      65.18   65.40   64.63  70.09   70.29   69.70
30      81.87   81.89   81.89  82.08   82.10   82.10
35      60.70   60.61   61.59  61.16   60.98   61.47

Doesn’t look like Granger got much help to me. Joe Barton’s district also got a little bluer, while Blake Farenthold and Ruben Hinojosa’s got a touch redder. Quico Canseco’s CD23 got just a pinch redder – now only Linda Yanez achieved a majority there for the Dems; Susan Strawn fell short by a handful of votes – but it remains the case that every downballot Dem other than Jim Jordan got at least a plurality. CD23’s SSVR dropped a bit, from 53.65% to 53.40%, while CD20’s Charlie Gonzalez saw his go up from 50.8% to 53.64%. You can see all of the district data here, and of course Greg liveblogged the committee hearing, with salient analysis about how it all ties into the forthcoming litigation. On to the full House from here.