Royce West

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

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

Always a crook

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, the crypto lovers here are still all in

Nov 27th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I mean, at least they’re consistent.

The crypto community in Austin was buzzing.

Hundreds of investors, legislators, professionals and enthusiasts packed the halls of the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center at the University of Texas on Nov. 17-18 for the Texas Blockchain Summit. For two days, there were discussions on everything from bitcoin mining to cryptocurrency regulations to blockchain innovations. But one thing was on everyone’s minds: the spectacular collapse earlier this month of major crypto exchange FTX and its billionaire CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who was once the industry’s face in Washington and a Democratic megadonor who gave $1 million to Beto O’Rourke.

So when Lee Bratcher, president of nonprofit trade association Texas Blockchain Council, took the stage to open the summit on Thursday, he was quick to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

“The obstacles we face as an industry have just expanded significantly as a result of FTX’s incompetence and potentially fraudulent activity,” he said. “It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.”

Other community members who spoke to The Texas Tribune echoed the sentiment. For them, FTX’s implosion has been a huge setback for the industry, especially one that just experienced a market meltdown following the fall of another high-profile crypto venture in May. But while these events have burned and likely turned away many retail investors, the members say they will continue investing in the space because of their belief in the technology and philosophy behind crypto and blockchain. And Texas politicians attending the conference also remain bullish on an industry that the state has strongly courted.

[…]

Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who is a Bitcoin investor and a leading advocate for crypto, also reaffirmed his unwavering enthusiasm for the industry during his event at the summit on Friday. “I want Texas to be an oasis for Bitcoin and crypto,” he said.

Later on the same day, a bipartisan panel of state legislators — including Sens. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, and Royce West, D-Dallas, as well as Reps. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, and John H. Bucy III, D-Austin — similarly expressed their support for strengthening crypto’s presence in Texas. FTX’s bankruptcy, they said, should be viewed more as a lesson rather than a reason for doing away with the industry.

“Any conversation I’ve had in response to FTX, it’s been what do we do to make sure we’re not like them,” Bucy said. “It’s how do we have commonsense policies to protect people without stopping progress.” Bucy is vice chair to the executive committee of the Texas House’s Innovation & Technology Caucus. Capriglione is the committee chair.

“This is the oil boom of this generation,” Bucy added.

[…]

In Texas’ upcoming legislative session, Bratcher said the Texas Blockchain Council will be talking with its legislative partners to see if they want to enact stronger consumer protections. Meanwhile, ATX DAO members are soldiering on with their current work by looking for state legislators to champion a bill that would legalize decentralized autonomous organizations — entities without a central authority that depend on blockchain-based contracts that self-execute when preset conditions are met.

I wonder if Beto got that contribution in actual money or one of FTX’s shitcoins. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Let’s just say I’m not convinced by Rep. Bucy or his colleagues and leave it at that. As for decentralized autonomous organizations, I don’t have a kneejerk reaction based on the five seconds of reading I’ve done so far. I strongly suspect that those things are coming whether we like it or not. I also strongly suspect that whatever the right kind of laws are to govern them, we’re not going to get them in the first attempt. The lawyers who will be working in that space are going to get a lot of business in the near future. Beyond all that, we’ll see if anyone’s enthusiasm for this stuff dims at all when the next crypto failure occurs. Oh, and to Democratic candidates in Texas, please do have some standards for the currency in which your contributions are received. And be very careful about where you store anything that isn’t a US dollar.

Initial Senate and SBOE maps approved by committee

Sep 29th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Still a lot of changes likely to come.

A panel of lawmakers on Tuesday advanced draft maps of the Texas Senate and State Board of Education, sending both to the full upper chamber for further debate.

The maps, both authored by state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who leads the Senate Special Redistricting Committee, will likely see further changes before the Legislature sends them to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk for the signature. The initial drafts of both maps have so far attempted to strengthen Republican majorities by protecting incumbents and creating more GOP-friendly districts.

Senate Bill 4, the draft of the Senate’s 31 district map, was tweaked by lawmakers before the chamber’s redistricting committee approved it along a 12-2 vote.

One of the more notable changes, offered in amendments by Huffman, involved Senate District 10, which is represented by state Sen. Beverly Powell, D-Burleson. In the latest draft, the district — which is currently contained in Tarrant County and voted for President Joe Biden during the 2020 general election — was redrawn to include parts of the more conservative Parker and Johnson counties as well as other GOP-leaning surrounding areas in the state. The Senate’s first draft would have included parts of Tarrant County along with Parker and Johnson counties.

After that first draft was released, Powell argued that the proposed map would be “a direct assault on the voting rights of minority citizens in Senate District 10 and, if adopted, it would be an act of intentional discrimination.” At the time, Powell said the latest census data showed that her district’s population was already “nearly ideal” — but on Tuesday, Huffman said that neighboring districts had to also be accounted for before emphasizing that her proposals had been “drafted blind to racial data.”

Another change before Tuesday’s vote involved Senate Districts 22 and 23, which are represented by state Sens. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, and Royce West, D-Dallas, respectively. The amendment, authored by West but laid out by state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, would swap several precincts between the two districts, including some in Tarrant County from Senate District 22 to 23. Zaffirini said the move would keep both districts within the acceptable population deviation.

See here for the background on the Senate maps. You can see the initial map here and the committee substitute map that was approved here, with more data on the plan here. SD10, which as noted goes from having some of Tarrant plus all of Parker and Johnson to having some of Tarrant, some of Parker, all of Johnson and all of a few smaller counties west of there, is the main difference. As noted, the House still gets to have input – by tradition, each chamber gets first crack at its own map – so expect further changes.

In addition, there may be some complaints from unexpected places.

Montgomery County commissioners urged the Texas Legislature to reconsider the proposed redrawing of state congressional maps that would dilute the county’s conservative representation by adding a third senate district.

County Judge Mark Keough said he traveled to Austin last week to express the county’s “disapproval” of the redistricting plan.

[…]

Currently, Keough explained, Montgomery County has two senate districts. However, the proposed changes would add a third district that would divide Magnolia and extend Harris County districts into Montgomery County.

“We are deeply concerned about this as we move forward,” Keough said.

The story keeps talking about the Congressional map while these MoCo folks are whining about the Senate map; it’s annoying and confusing. The current Senate map has SDs 03 and 04 in Montgomery, while the new maps move SD03 out and move pieces of SDs 07 and 17 in, to bolster those incumbents from the ravages of a bluer Harris County. Their complaints had no effect on the committee, but there’s still time for them to make a case to the rest of the Lege.

Back to the Trib story:

The committee unanimously approved the draft of the State Board of Education map on Tuesday, without amendments. The board is a 15-member, majority Republican body that determines what millions of public school students in the state are taught in classrooms. Nine Republicans and six Democrats currently sit on the board.

The current version of that map did not make any changes to the racial breakdown of the board’s 15 districts — based on eligible voters, Hispanic residents make up a majority in three of those districts, 10 districts with white majorities and two have no majority.

See here for the background on the SBOE map, whose demographic breakdown makes no sense to me, but here we are. Maybe this time it will be part of the inevitable litigation.

The next voter registration project

Jun 10th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Necessary, but not sufficient.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Texas Democrats’ takeaways from the 2020 election are clear: to take back our state from Texas Republicans, Democrats need to register more voters. With Republicans’ increasing extremism and relentless attacks on Texans this spring, the stakes have never been higher in the fight for Texas’ future.

Today, in a press conference with Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas Senate Democratic Caucus Chair Carol Alvarado, State Sen. Royce West, Texas House Democratic Dean Senfronia Thompson, Texas Legislative Black Caucus Chair Nicole Collier, Mexican American Legislative Caucus Chair Rafael Anchía, House Democratic Caucus Chair Chris Turner, and Texas Democratic Party Chief Strategy Officer Luke Warford, Texas Democrats unveiled Project Texas, our comprehensive plan to register Texas Democrats and take back our state in the 2022 elections. The full recording of the press conference is available here, and you can read more about the plan here.

There are more than 2 million eligible Texans who would likely vote Democratic — but are not yet registered. With Project Texas, Texas Democrats will work to register as many of these voters as possible, because we believe that every eligible Texan should be able to register and vote, safely and conveniently. Texas Democrats have consulted with partners across the state and beyond to create a plan to get Texas Democrats registered — both using proven approaches, and testing out innovative ways to encourage Texans to fill out their forms and get registered.

Project Texas includes two phases. First, Texas Democrats will test out six approaches to voter registration through our 2021 pilot program, and identify which tactics work best. Then, we will scale up the most effective methods to do a massive voter registration push in 2022.

Of the 2 million unregistered likely Democratic voters in Texas, more than half are Latino, ⅕ are Black and ¼ are 25 years of age or younger. Outreach to young Texans and Latino and Black communities will be a foundational part of our Project Texas programming. Every Democrat we register gives Texans a better shot at tipping the scales and putting Democrats in power in 2022.

I agree that voter registration is an evergreen project – there are many people moving here, many people turning 18, many new citizens, and still many people who were never registered in the first place; we also have to remember the people who move to new addresses, and who fell off the voter rolls for one reason or another. There will never come a time when we can say “okay, we’re done here”. I doubt there will ever be a time when we’ll be able to just coast and let voter registration be a background task.

But as much as voter registration matters, it’s clearly not enough. For one thing, Republicans were registering voters in the 2020 cycle as well. I have no idea how many they might have signed up and how many of them subsequently turned out, but we don’t have this field to ourselves any more. Once people are registered, we have to turn them out, and we have to make sure the people we’re turning out are going to vote for our candidates. Lots of first-time Republicans showed up in 2020 as well, after all. We also need to be paying some more attention to our already-registered but less-frequent voters.

On the assumption that something like SB7 is eventually going to pass, the next part of this process is going to have to be to make sure all of our voters know what the new requirements and restrictions are. We’ve mostly managed to deal with the voter ID hurdle, and now there are going to be many more such obstacles. I hope we have a plan to make sure everyone knows what they will need to do to cast a ballot that counts in 2022 and beyond. For sure, whatever law we end up with will be litigated, but we can’t count on the courts to save us. We need to be prepared to live and vote in the world that is being foisted on us.

None of this is revolutionary, and I assume the TDP folks have their plans in place. I’m putting this out there in part to let you know about it and in part to make sure we’re all cognizant of how the ground is shifting. We have made a lot of progress in the last four years, as I hope my precinct analysis posts have shown, but there’s more to do and the conditions under which we do them are changing. We have to keep up with, and get ahead of, those changes.

The House is working on the omnibus voter suppression bill.

May 31st, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

They started last night, and who knows when they may finish. If it comes to a vote, I expect this Trib story will be updated to reflect it. One of the justifications given by Republicans for banning all-night voting hours is that “nothing good happens after midnight”. In this one specific instance, I would agree.

If it doesn’t come to a vote, you can thank Democrats and their ability to wield the rulebook.

.
sb7 appears to be in trouble in the texas house, per house democratic source who says multiple fatal points of order have been identified : https://bit.ly/3uzIrcg #txlege

— quorumreport (@quorumreport) 9:15 PM – 29 May 2021

.
Here we go:
#Sb7 language now on the Texas House floor, Democrats immediately call points of order on the resolution that would allow for additional language that wasn’t in either the House or Senate versions of the bill #txlege

— scottbraddock (@scottbraddock) 7:41 PM – 30 May 2021

.
I’m going to put this in a separate Tweet: House Democrats are not preparing to let #SB7 pass. That rumor is in error according to everything I know. The plan is to kill it tonight.

— glennwsmith (@glennwsmith) 7:46 PM – 30 May 2021

Hoping for the best. We should know by the time we wake up. I’ll add an update when we do.

Meanwhile, there was another dose of poison in SB7 that I hadn’t mentioned before:

Despite no evidence of substantial voter fraud in Texas, Republicans are preparing to pass sweeping voting legislation with new provisions that make it easier to overturn an election in which fraudulent votes are suspected and to lower the standard for proving fraud in criminal court.

The burden of proof for voter fraud charges in Texas is “clear and convincing evidence.” The bill would change that standard to “preponderance of the evidence.”

A related measure would allow a judge to overturn an election if the total number of ballots found to be fraudulent exceeds the margin of victory. In such cases, a judge could “declare the election void without attempting to determine how individual voters voted.”

“If you don’t have to show that they would have made a difference, then even ‘illegal votes’ or ‘fraudulent votes’ for your side get factored into that equation,” said Tommy Buser-Clancy, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “This is just a perpetuation of the Big Lie, and as we’ve seen throughout the nation, this is a further weakening of the institutional strength of our democracy.”

The new provisions are last-minute additions to Senate Bill 7, legislation that has drawn the ire of Democratic and civil rights groups that have called it voter suppression since its first draft. The final version of the bill hadn’t been posted online as of early Friday evening — and was not made available to the public — but the Houston Chronicle obtained a copy.

Nothing says “election integrity” like making it easier for the loser of an election to get a judge to throw out the result of that election.

And nothing is certain but death, taxes, and litigation over this abomination of a bill if it passes.

If the bill passes the state House of Representatives and is signed by Gov. Greg Abbott—both of which are expected—the Texas chapter of the NAACP will immediately file a lawsuit against it, chapter President Gary Bledsoe said at a news conference Sunday afternoon, the Dallas Morning News reports.

The bill would ban drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, both of which were used extensively last year in and around Houston, according to the New York Times. Among its many restrictions, the bill would limit voting by mail for people with a disability, add new ID requirements for mail-in voting, and make it a felony for election officials to send mail-in ballots to voters who did not request them. And it would set limits on early-voting hours, such as requiring polls to open at 1 p.m., not 9 a.m., on Sundays—which could impact popular “Souls to the Polls” held by many Black churches, the Morning News notes.

As it happens, early voting hours in Harris County were 1 PM to 6 PM for Sundays, at least before 2020. I imagine that was more out of tradition than anything else, and there may have been some issues with getting enough poll workers for the Sunday-morning-go-to-church hours, but that is a surmountable challenge and there’s no real reason beyond that. As Sen. Royce West noted during the debate over SB7, we can now buy booze on Sundays starting at 10 AM. Why can’t we vote earlier than 1 PM? (Spoiler alert: We all know the reason for that.)

Anyway. As I sign off, the status of SB7 in the House is unknown. Look for an update below if you didn’t stay up all night following the action live or on Twitter. Daily Kos has more.

UPDATE: Well, this was dramatic.

The sweeping overhaul of Texas elections and voter access was poised from the beginning of the session to pass into law. It had the backing of Republican leaders in both chambers of the Legislature. It had support from the governor.

Democrats who opposed the bill, chiding it as a naked attempt of voter suppression, were simply outnumbered.

But on Sunday night, with an hour left for the Legislature to give final approval to the bill, Democrats staged a walkout, preventing a vote on the legislation before a fatal deadline.

“Leave the chamber discreetly. Do not go to the gallery. Leave the building,” Grand Prairie state Rep. Chris Turner, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a text message to other Democrats obtained by The Texas Tribune.

Senate Bill 7, a Republican priority bill, is an expansive piece of legislation that would alter nearly the entire voting process. It would create new limitations to early voting hours, ratchet up voting-by-mail restrictions and curb local voting options like drive-thru voting.

Democrats had argued the bill would make it harder for people of color to vote in Texas. Republicans called the bill an “election integrity” measure — necessary to safeguard Texas elections from fraudulent votes, even though there is virtually no evidence of widespread fraud.

Debate on Senate Bill 7 had extended over several hours Sunday as the Texas House neared a midnight cutoff to give final approval to legislation before it could head to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk to be signed into law.

In between their speeches opposing the bill, Democrats seemed to be trickling off the floor throughout the night, a number of their desks appearing empty. During an earlier vote to adopt a resolution allowing last-minute additions to the bill, just 35 of 67 Democrats appeared to cast votes. Around 10:30 p.m., the remaining Democrats were seen walking out of the chamber.

Their absence left the House without a quorum — which requires two-thirds of the 150 House members to be present — needed to take a vote.

By 11:15 p.m. about 30 Democrats could be seen arriving at a Baptist church about 2 miles away from the Capitol in East Austin.

The location for Democrats’ reunion appeared to be a nod at a last-minute addition to the expansive bill that set a new restriction on early voting hours on Sundays, limiting voting from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. Over the last two days, Democrats had derided the addition — dropped in during behind-closed-door negotiations — raising concerns that change would hamper “souls to the polls” efforts meant to turn out voters, particularly Black voters, after church services.

Standing outside the church, Democrats said the walkout came only after it appeared Democrats’ plan to run out the clock on the House floor with speeches wasn’t going to work because Republicans had the votes to use a procedural move to cut off debate and force a final vote on the legislation.

“We saw that coming,” said state Rep. Nicole Collier, a Fort Worth Democrat and chair of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus. “We’ve used all the tools in our toolbox to fight this bill. And tonight we pulled out that last one.”

With about an hour left before the midnight deadline, House Speaker Dade Phelan acknowledged the lost quorum and adjourned until 10 a.m. Monday morning. Midnight was the cutoff for the House and Senate to sign off on the final versions of bills that have been negotiated during conference committees.

A couple of things to note here. One is that this is almost certainly a temporary victory. There’s going to be at least one special session already for redistricting, and so this will be on that session’s agenda or there will be another special session, possibly right away, just for this. We know that this is a top Republican priority and they are not going to just accept defeat, in the same way that they are not accepting Trump’s loss in 2020. They have the power to try again and they have the numbers to make it happen.

But the only reason the Republicans are in this position in the first place is because it took them so long to produce the final version of SB7. They had to suspend their own rules in the Senate to bring the bill to the floor for a vote there on Saturday because they were running out of time. The quorum break happened at 10:30 last night – I actually saw a tweet or two to that effect before I went to bed – which meant they were down to the last 90 minutes of available time. You wait till the last minute, things can happen, you know?

I had been wondering why this obvious priority of theirs had been seemingly stuck in conference committee for so long. Surely the Democratic amendments that had watered down some of the more stringent provisions that were later reinstated didn’t have enough supporters in the committee to make this difficult. My thinking was that the Republicans were sitting on this bill, which by now was as bad as the original SB7 that had begun to draw strong criticism from the business world, precisely because they wanted to sneak it through over the holiday weekend, when fewer people would be paying attention. It’s the explanation that makes the most sense to me, because they had to know that the Democrats would do everything they could to make them miss the deadline. Why risk that if you didn’t have to? They had full control over the schedule. Cover of darkness is the best explanation. And it deservedly blew up in their faces.

As noted, they’ll get their second shot at this. But now there’s time for everyone to pay attention again, and for the activists to get businesses and other organizations engaged. The Republicans will get their bill but the Democrats bought themselves some time, and gave their base a big feel-good moment. That’s a trade I’ll take.

The propagandist’s advantage

Apr 14th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

26 comments

Discouraging, but we have to address the world as it is.

Democratic state Sen. Royce West of Dallas was making a point.

The number of prosecutions for voter fraud cases in the state of Texas is low. In its 15 years of existence, the Texas Attorney General’s Election Integrity Unit has prosecuted a few dozen cases in which offenders received jail time, but none of them involving widespread fraud.

And though his colleague, Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, was talking about another voter fraud indictment in his home county of Gregg, that was one case in one county in a state of 254 counties and 30 million people.

But Hughes had a ready retort: “How much fraud is OK?”

“How much fraud is OK?” he repeated. “I want to know.”

Game, set and match. Hughes pushed forward with his bill, an omnibus piece of legislation he says will reduce voter fraud and opponents say will suppress the votes of marginalized communities.

The argument is a familiar one to followers of voting legislation over the last two decades, as Republicans in statehouses across the country have moved to stiffen voting regulations, arguing that such changes are necessary to combat voter fraud.

And it’s an effective point. It puts the proposal’s opponents in the unenviable position of having to defend the low level of fraud cases that happen as a normal part of any large election system. Who wants to be pro-fraud?

“The difficulty for Democrats is that it’s kind of hard to sell the argument that you won’t eliminate 100% of fraud but that even a small number of cases isn’t a big deal,” said Patrick Miller, a political scientist at the University of Kansas who researched arguments over voter fraud bills. “For the public, even one case can legitimize the view that fraud is rampant and impacts the outcome.”

“In their over 20 years of this being an issue… Democrats have never come up with an effective counterargument,” Miller said.

That’s because Americans by and large do not trust the government’s handling of elections and perceive that there’s more voter fraud than actually exists, he said.

[…]

But Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, said the idea should be flipped on its head.

“Just because occasionally there’s a bank error doesn’t mean we should shut down ATMs. We have to make it better,” Rottinghaus said.

To do that, lawmakers would dedicate more resources and people to elections, like some of the state’s major counties have done. Instead those counties, Harris in particular, are being attacked for the new voting options they offered.

There are a lot of ways to respond to grandiose but wrong claims that “any amount of fraud is too much”. Professor Rottinghaus is on the right track, and one can expand that example in a limitless number of ways. Credit card fraud should never happen, but the fact that it does happen doesn’t mean we should all shred our Visas and MasterCards. Amazon screws up deliveries all the time. To put this in my professional bailiwick, computer viruses happen all the time, but no one is arguing that we should shut down the Internet until we can ensure they never happen again.

Indeed [puts on cybersecurity hat], the assumption in the enterprise IT world is that it’s a matter of when your network is successfully attacked, not if. While there are all kinds of protections and controls in place – which still have to balance out the need of your staff to actually do their business; again, no one is shutting down the Internet any time soon – there’s a premium on detecting viruses and other bad things when they happen, and quickly limiting the damage that they do. A stance that only having zero cyber-incidents is acceptable is not only completely unrealistic, it’s damaging and unproductive. There’s far more bang for the buck by assuming that some bad things are going to happen but we’ll catch them when they do because we’ve invested in that.

There’s also the fact that what the Hughes bill and the House bill aim to stop are things that carry little to no risk for election security. Limiting mail drop boxes and curtailing early voting hours and restricting the number of voting machines at voting locations will do a good job of making it harder to vote, but can’t and won’t do anything to make voting more secure because none of those things were insecure to begin with. Most of the actual “fraudulent” activity that the state has attempted to prosecute in recent years has involved the kind of behavior that could just as easily be classified as inadvertent mistakes, the equivalent of overstaying at a parking meter by five minutes, and most of what these bills aim to criminalize further is more of the same. Even if one were to accept that there’s a huge electoral crime wave going on, this would be like the police cracking down on jaywalkers.

Enhancing penalties for existing offenses, even the serious ones, is unlikely to matter as well. From a criminal justice perspective, our “tuff-on-crime” spree from the 80s and 90s has left us today with thousands of people serving decades-long sentences for pot possession and shoplifting. Our profligate use of the death penalty did precious little to curtail the murder rate back then, too. The main effect, then and now, is to more harshly punish a lot of people who weren’t doing anything we needed to be afraid of.

Finally, and this cannot be stressed enough, this entire premise about “fraud” is built on a foundation of lies. None of it is true. Our elections are quite reasonably secure, and the most fanatical “fraud” hunters on the planet cannot provide any shred of evidence to the contrary. Their arguments largely boil down to “Do we need for someone to find proof of Bigfoot’s existence before we pass all these anti-Bigfoot laws that everyone knows will have negative effects on our political opponents?” The rationale falls apart under the barest of scrutiny, but someone once said that if you’re explaining you’re losing, so there’s that.

The Republicans want to pass these laws because they have the power to pass them, and because they think passing them will be to their benefit. The rest is just pretext. The fact that the likes of Dan Patrick freak out whenever they get any pushback tells you more than anything I could ever say.

So how did Paxton’s budget grilling go?

Feb 14th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Meh.

Best mugshot ever

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton violated his budget authority when he transferred $40 million of taxpayer money to cover pay raises for some members of his staff without approval of the Legislature or the governor, triggering an angry response from lawmakers on Wednesday.

“You know that I am not pleased,” Senate Finance chair Jane Nelson told Paxton during a meeting about the state budget. “We have an appropriations process for a reason. And if every agency did what yours did, General Paxton, we wouldn’t have a budget. We wouldn’t even need a budget.”

According to state budget officials, Paxton’s office in February 2020 moved money without authority for various expense items, including $8.5 million that was supposed to go to data center services. Some of that money was moved from capital project funds that are not supposed to be used for pay raises. That was a violation of Paxton’s budget transfer authority, according to officials with the state’s Legislative Budget Board. The money funded raises for 1,884 employees in the child support division.

Nelson, a Republican from Flower Mound, made clear to Paxton it is the Legislature’s authority to consider pay raises from the various state agencies as part of the budget process, and it is not up to agency heads to make that call.

“I wish we had done that one differently,” Paxton conceded.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, also pressed Paxton on the move, seeking assurances that it won’t happen again.

“After knowing more about that situation I would say I’ve instructed my staff to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” Paxton said.

See here for some background. That’s some truly harsh language there, I don’t know how he managed to withstand it. I’m all sweaty just reading the transcript. What about the money he wants to spend on fancy outside lawyers for that Google lawsuit?

But that request triggered questions from State Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, who pointed out that Paxton has more than 4,000 employees on his staff, including over 700 lawyers.

“Then you have talented lawyers who are capable of handling these big cases, correct?” Huffman asked.

Paxton replied: “If Google is going to have the very best lawyers that know anti-trust, we wanted to be able to compete on the same playing field.”

I guess when you drive off all the best attorneys on your own staff, you have to get creative. I’ll believe that the Senate is holding him accountable when I see what they do with this budget line item.

On a more serious note:

The U.S. Supreme Court was wrong when it refused to allow Texas to sue other states relating to the Nov. 3 that resulted in Joe Biden being elected president, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Wednesday.

Paxton, defending the lawsuit before the Texas Senate, said the U.S. Supreme Court Justices were wrong when they refused to hear his case arguing that other states had violated the Constitution because of the way they conducted their elections. The Supreme Court ruled in early December that Texas did not have the standing to challenge the election results in four battleground states — a conclusion that legal experts across the country had foreseen.

“Our only place to be heard was in the U.S. Supreme Court,” Paxton told the Senate Finance Committee as he defended his proposed budget for the next two years. “I do not think that their jurisprudence is right that they can just have this discretion to not hear your case.”

Under questioning from State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, Paxton said his suit was never about finding election fraud. Instead, he said he was concerned Texas voters were being disenfranchised because other states did not follow federal rules for conducting elections.

“We have no way to go back and even verify whether these elections were credible and whether they were done in a way that wasn’t fraudulent,” Paxton said.

It was President Donald Trump’s lawyers who drafted the lawsuit, the New York Times reported, and Trump’s team turned to Paxton only after Louisiana Attorney General Jeffrey M. Landry, a Republican, declined to take the case. The Times also reported that members of Paxton’s staff argued against filing the suit, and Paxton’s top litigator, Kyle Hawkins, refused to put his name on it.

Hawkins has since resigned.

See here for some background. Sorry, but the smoke pouring out of my ears keeps setting off the fire alarms in our house, so I’m not able to say any more about this. Let me leave you with this as a palate cleanser, and as a song to play on repeat when the FBI finally arrests his sorry ass.

.
Sea shanties might be over but @KenPaxtonTX’s various legal woes are not. One could argue this is a sequel to Angela Paxton’s famous ballad, Pistol Packin Momma, but this song is called Paxton’s Privateers. I am mortified and very proud

— what’s eating gilbert grace (@gracegilker) 12:10 PM – 10 February 2021

Found that here.

Introducing the George Floyd Act

Aug 16th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Coming this spring to the Legislature.

Black lawmakers at the Texas Legislature unveiled on Thursday the George Floyd Act, a sweeping police reform proposal that would ban chokeholds across the state and require law enforcement officers to intervene or render aid if another officer is using excessive force while on the job.

The legislation, spearheaded by members of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, is named after Floyd, a Black man killed in Minneapolis police custody. Floyd died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes until and after he lost consciousness.

His death in May set off protests across the country and renewed debate over police brutality and racial inequity. And at the Legislature, which is set to meet again in January 2021 for a regular session, Floyd’s death has sparked new calls for policing and criminal justice reforms — including proposals that have failed at the Texas Capitol in recent years, often after opposition from police unions.

“We acknowledge that the road to justice in Texas — particularly for Black and brown people in Texas — has been fraught with dead ends, dead ends of white supremacy, racial hatred and bigotry,” state Rep. Harold Dutton, a Houston Democrat who chairs the caucus, said as he kicked off a virtual press conference, which included Floyd’s youngest brother, Rodney Floyd. “These dead ends have to go — and particularly the dead ends that relate specifically to law enforcement.”

The bill would also address qualified immunity, which shields government officials from litigation, by allowing civil lawsuits at the state level “for deprivation of rights under color of law,” according to a caucus summary of the legislation. Another provision would end arrests for fine-only offenses like theft under $100, a version of which died dramatically in 2019 after union opposition.

“Those police officers who do wrong by unlawfully harming our families or our constituents, who violate the constitutional rights of others, will be held accountable and legally liable for their actions,” said state Rep. Shawn Thierry, D-Houston.

It’s unclear if the outcry sparked by Floyd’s death will provide enough momentum in 2021 to push past resistance from law enforcement and unions. It’s also unknown whether the legislation will win Gov. Greg Abbott’s support, which would be crucial in turning it into law.

Abbott has previously said he is committed to working with Floyd’s family on legislation, and has even floated the possibility of a George Floyd Act at the Legislature. While he has not offered specifics on what proposals he would support, Abbott has emphasized a proposal that has also been pushed by police union officials: strengthening law enforcement training before officers are allowed to go on patrol.

It’s still too early to pre-file bills, since after all we don’t know for sure who will be serving in the next session, but it’s never too early to announce them. The Chron adds some details.

Groups including the Texas NAACP, Mothers Against Police Brutality, ACLU of Texas, Texas Coalition of Black Democrats, Black Lives Matter Houston and Texas Organizing Project have already thrown their support behind the bill.

Gov. Greg Abbott has publicly condemned Floyd’s death and promised to work with state legislators to pass reforms, though he did not discuss specifics. State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, and state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, who plan to carry the legislation, said Thursday they had not yet spoken with Abbott about it.

“It would be a great signal if he made this an emergency item and that we pass this in the first 90 days of the Legislature,” said state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas. “Hopefully he will partner with us on this legislation.”

The 19-member caucus that introduced the bill Thursday includes a single Republican, Rep. James White of Hillister.

While some local police and sheriff’s departments have implemented some tenets of the bill, such as requirements for officers to attempt de-escalation before using force, none of them are required for all 2,000 police agencies in Texas.

Further, the bill would require officers to demonstrate that they use lethal force only when in “imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death” or when “no other lesser level of force could have worked” and their actions present no risk to bystanders, according to a draft of the law that the caucus released Thursday. The use of force must stop as soon as the threat diminishes.

The bill states that “all force must be proportionate to the circumstance and the seriousness of the offense … and must be accompanied by (an) attempt to de-escalate.”

[…]

Charley Wilkison, the executive director of CLEAT, one of the largest law enforcement union in the state, said his organization is open to many of the concepts in the proposed bill, including banning chokeholds and ending arrests for fine-only offenses.

Other areas may require a more nuanced conversation, such as qualified immunity, as Wilkison said he believes it allows enough latitude — “It’s ‘qualified’; it’s not blanket” — under current law for citizens to sue officers for misconduct. Wilkison said he agrees with setting a statewide use-of-force policy, as long as officers retain discretion.

“If we’re allowed to be in the chain of communication, we’ll share and do our due diligence to take honest action in the Legislature,” Wilkison said.

As both stories note, some of what is in this proposed bill had been in the Sandra Bland Act originally. I don’t know that Abbott will care enough to make this bill an emergency item, but I do expect that he’ll support some form of this, and I do expect that something will pass. It’s mostly a question of how much of the bill as filed makes it to the finish line, and whether anything that is less desirable makes it in along the way. The potential for messiness, heated debate, and at least one idiot member of the Freedom Caucus saying something deeply stupid and offensive is quite high. But in the end I do expect something to pass, and we’ll feel good about what we do get. The question is how good, and how much more there will be to do in a future session. Reform Austin has more.

July 2020 campaign finance reports: Congress

Jul 24th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Congratulations, everyone. Not only have we made it to the other side of another quarterly reporting period, we have also successfully navigated the primary runoffs. My next quarterly finance report post for Congress will thus be shorter, as this is the last time the folks who did not win their runoffs will be listed. So let’s get on with it already. The January 2019 roundup is here, which closed out the 2017-18 election cycle, the April 2019 report is here, the July 2019 report is here, the October 2019 report is here, the January 2020 report is here, and the April 2020 report is here. For comparison, the January 2018 report is here, the April 2018 report is here, and the July 2018 report is here. The FEC summary page for Congress is here and for the Senate is here.

MJ Hegar – Senate
Royce West – Senate

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Colin Allred – CD32

Hank Gilbert – CD01
Sima Ladjevardian – CD02
Lulu Seikaly – CD03
Sean McCaffity – CD03
Stephen Daniel – CD06
Elizabeth Hernandez – CD08
Mike Siegel – CD10
Pritesh Gandhi – CD10
Adrienne Bell – CD14
Rick Kennedy – CD17
David Jaramillo – CD17
Wendy Davis – CD21
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Candace Valenzuela – CD24
Kim Olson – CD24
Julie Oliver – CD25
Carol Ianuzzi – CD26
Donna Imam – CD31
Christine Eady Mann – CD31


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   Hegar         6,605,966  5,751,355        0    902,092
Sen   West          1,867,804  1,689,538  258,103    178,265

07    Fletcher      4,384,162    978,573        0  3,453,656
32    Allred        3,801,649    924,378        0  2,980,715  

01    Gilbert         245,146     96,526   50,000    148,619
02    Ladjevardian  1,674,680  1,129,634   50,000    545,046
03    Seikaly         409,531    370,312    3,000     39,219
03    McCaffity       507,661    441,938        0     65,723
06    Daniel          328,097    243,191        0     84,906
08    Hernandez
10    Siegel          917,771    756,306        0    164,956
10    Gandhi        1,276,854  1,200,742        0     76,112
14    Bell            103,734     81,576        0     11,247
17    Kennedy          97,859     87,125   11,953     12,161
17    Jaramillo        21,246     17,942        0      3,303
21    Davis         4,467,270  1,536,995        0  2,930,275
22    Kulkarni      2,530,971  1,352,948        0  1,205,791
23    Jones         4,133,598  1,215,227        0  3,009,888
24    Valenzuela    1,119,403  1,008,739        0    110,664
24    Olson         1,667,400  1,417,247   20,000    250,153
25    Oliver          681,850    591,851    2,644     89,999
26    Ianuzzi          84,645     66,691   46,050     17,954
31    Mann            372,445    353,802   44,500     20,080
31    Imam            449,274    407,175        0     42,099

First things first, any worries about fundraising capacity in these brutally awful times have been assuaged. The totals speak for themselves, but let’s go into some detail anyway. Basically, the candidate in nearly every race of interest is ahead of their 2018 pace, often by a lot. Let me put this in another table to quantify:


Dist  Year     Candidate     Raised       Cash
==============================================
02    2018        Litton    843,045    407,674
02    2020  Ladjevardian  1,674,680    545,046

03    2018         Burch    153,559     19,109
03    2020       Seikaly    409,531     39,219

06    2018       Sanchez    358,960     67,772
06    2020        Daniel    328,097     84,906

10    2018        Siegel    171,955     46,852
10    2020        Siegel    917,771    164,956

21    2018        Kopser  1,594,724    364,365
21    2020         Davis  4,467,270  2,930,275

22    2018      Kulkarni    405,169     89,434
22    2020      Kulkarni  2,530,971  1,205,791

23    2018   Ortiz Jones  2,256,366  1,150,851
23    2020   Ortiz Jones  4,133,598  3,009,888

24    2018      McDowell     61,324     28,091
24    2020    Valenzuela  1,119,403    110,664

25    2018        Oliver    199,047     78,145
25    2020        Oliver    681,850     89,999

31    2020         Hegar  1,618,359    867,266
31    2020          Imam    449,274     42,099

With the exception of CD31, where no one has come close to MJ Hegar (who as the US Senate nominee may help boost turnout in this district anyway), and CD06, where Stephen Daniel is a pinch behind Jana Sanchez in fundraising (but also a pinch ahead in cash on hand), each nominee is substantially better off this time around. Todd Litton, Joe Kopser, and the original version of Gina Ortiz Jones were all strong fundraisers, and they’ve all been blown out of the water this year. Mike Siegel, Sri Kulkarni, and Julie Oliver have all greatly outpaced themselves. I will maintain that we might have won CD24 in 2018 if we’d had a candidate who could raise money; that’s very much not a problem this year. Lulu Seikaly is well ahead of Lori Burch, who was herself quite a pleasant surprise in CD03.

There are still things to address. Seikaly, Siegel, and Valenzuela all needed to spend a bunch of money in the extended runoffs, and thus need to build up cash with less time to do it. Given their records so far, I’m not too worried about it. Both Jana Sanchez and 2018 Julie Oliver had May runoffs to win, so their modest cash on hand totals were understandable, but Stephen Daniel and 2020 Julie Oliver were both March winners, so I don’t understand why they’ve been spending as much as they have at this point. I hope that isn’t a problem. Donna Imam is not going to approach Hegar’s fundraising prowess, but she alone among the crowd in CD31 seemed to have some capacity for the task, so maybe she’ll at least make up some ground.

The big difference is that there isn’t a juggernaut Senate campaign, which was a boost to downballot candidates in 2018, this time around. On the other hand, we do have a Presidential campaign, which is already airing ads, and we have the DNC airing ads, and we have the DCCC, which has added CD02 to its already-long target list (though they may have dropped CD31 by now). Point being, there will be plenty of other money invested that will help with these races, directly or indirectly.

So overall, a pretty rosy picture, and the financial resources to support the notion that a whole lot of seats are actually in play. Remember how I spent much of the 2018 cycle talking about how there never used to be any Congressional money raised in Texas, outside of CD23? The world is in flames, but that one small part of the Before Times, I don’t miss.

Last but not least, a brief shoutout to Hank Gilbert, playing the part of Dayna Steele in this cycle – a great candidate and a swell human being in an absolute no-hope district against a terrible incumbent who is raising a surprising amount of money. If doing good and being good were all it took, Hank would be in the top tier of next year’s freshman class. Maybe someday we’ll live in that world. Godspeed, Hank.

Some brief runoff thoughts

Jul 16th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

You know the drill here…

– The Election Night Results page at the SOS shows 955,735 votes total in the Democratic Senate runoff. That number is likely to increase a bit over the next few days, as we’ll see shortly. It means about 300K votes were cast on Tuesday, a bit more than thirty percent of the overall total. This turnout is the highest of any Democratic primary runoff since 1990, back when Dems were the dominant party.

– That turnout was fueled in part by the Senate runoff, and in part by a burning anger at the botched pandemic response and zealous attempts by the Republicans to curtail mail voting. Some national folks commented on this, and how it maybe lends credence to the whole “Texas is in play” narrative, and not just at the Presidential level. We’ll keep checking on the polls going forward to see how far that carries us.

– As there were no statewide Republican runoffs, a direct turnout comparison is tricky. The early voting total for Republicans was 421K, not too shabby all things considered. So maybe they got to 600K or a bit higher.

– Let’s talk mail ballots for a minute. Texas Elects has a terrific overview, but let’s focus on this:

Absentee ballots are counted by a subset of election officials known as the Early Voting Ballot Board (EVBB). Well, in many counties, there are two EVBBs for primary and runoff elections. County political party chairs are the presiding judges, and there are at least two other members. A separate Signature Verification Committee with as many as 12 members may also be created, and larger committees are possible. If you’re interested in the minutiae of all this, the Secretary of State’s 2020 EVBB handbook (pdf) has it in spades.

Counties with a population of 100,000 were able to convene their Early Voting Ballot Boards as early as July 4 (likely July 6 because of the holiday) to begin the process of qualifying and scanning mail ballots. Counties with populations under 100,000 were able to convene their EVBBs as early as last Friday.

An absentee ballot may only be accepted if:

The carrier envelope was “properly executed”

The voter’s signatures on the ballot application and carrier envelope were not signed by someone else, unless it was a lawful witness

The ballot application states a legal ground for voting by mail (In other words, one of the pre-printed boxes is checked or otherwise marked and the voter hasn’t hand-written some other reason, like coronavirus)

The voter is registered to vote

The ballot was sent to the applicable address; and

If required, a statement of residence was included and properly completed.

It also has to be received by the county election official by no later than 7 p.m. on Election Day, with exceptions for certain overseas civilians and military voters.

When the EVBB accepts the ballot, the voter’s name is entered on the poll list and the ballot is separated from the envelope. The ballots cannot be counted until polls closed on Friday, the end of the early voting period, in counties with 100K or more residents, and until polls open tomorrow (Tuesday) in all other counties.

This is an easily overwhelmed process. All of this requires human intervention. Absentee ballots arriving by 7 p.m. on Election Day are supposed to be counted and included in election night results. There is reason to believe that a significant number of absentee ballots will arrive very late in the process. For example, as of Friday, Harris Co. had received more than 70K absentee ballots, and another 74K had not yet been returned.

Mail ballots received on Election Day are still treated as “early voting” and will be included within the early vote canvass. In close races, we will be noting who is ahead among absentee ballots, as that may provide an advantage as more votes are counted. Or not.

All of this is to put perspective on why we may not have definitive results on Election night. All of this may be magnified in November, and not just in Texas.

That’s why the final vote totals may creep up a bit, and also something to think about for the fall. You may want to ask your local elections administrator what you can do to help.

– More along those same lines.

As dress rehearsals go, Tuesday’s Texas primary runoff elections weren’t bad, but for some voters and poll workers, they revealed problems that need to be fixed before November’s big show.

With much lower turnout than primary or general elections, the first in-person election day during the coronavirus pandemic saw voters reporting heavily sanitized polling places, an ample supply of gloves, finger cots or pencils to mark up their ballots, and socially distanced lines. With a tiny ballot in many places, some were in and out of polling places in minutes.

But some Texans who sought to vote by mail — and submitted their applications on time — indicated they never received their ballots. Some opted instead to vote in person. Others went uncounted. It’s unknown how many were affected.

Other voters sent in their mail-in ballots only to have them returned unopened. Some of those reached county elections offices after a second attempt, while others still appeared lost on election night. It’s also unknown how many were affected.

In some counties, previously advertised polling places were shuttered at the last minute for lack of workers, some fearing the pandemic or reluctant to risk exposure to voters who were not required to wear masks. Others walked off the job Tuesday morning after discovering some of their fellow poll workers wouldn’t be donning masks.

And throughout the night, the Texas secretary of state’s portal for reporting election night returns was either broken or incorrect, first displaying garbled numbers in various races on the ballot and later showing discrepancies with county reports.

“I would say a number of the problems we saw in this election are red flags that, left unaddressed, could result in massive problems in November,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, in a statement.

At least the SOS website got fixed in relatively short order. The rest of it, yeah. No one should have to do this to cast a ballot.

– Looks like there will be a fight over the CD23 Republican result. Good luck sorting that one out, fellas.

– The SD14 special election runoff needs to be scheduled. I expect it to be in the end of August or so. My condolences to everyone in that district who will have to see two perfectly good Democrats rip each other up for the next six weeks or so.

– Beyond that, I don’t have any deep insights at this time. We’ve got a good slate of candidates, and as of Wednesday we’ll start seeing June finance reports for everyone. Eyes on the prize in November, y’all.

2020 primary runoff results: Statewide

Jul 15th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

14 comments

It was a tight race all night, but it looks like MJ Hegar will win.

MJ Hegar

MJ Hegar was holding a 5-percentage-point lead over Royce West on Tuesday night in the Democratic primary runoff for U.S. Senate, according to unofficial results.

With 71% of polling locations reporting, Hegar was ahead of West, 52.4% to 47.6%. Hegar is the former Air Force helicopter pilot endorsed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and West is the longtime state senator from Dallas.

Speaking to reporters shortly after 10 p.m., Hegar said she was not declaring victory yet but felt “very confident.”

West and his campaign, meanwhile, said the runoff was still too close to call and that they expected it to come down to about 10,000 votes.

With about three-fourths of the precincts reporting, Hegar was leading by 40K votes. I don’t think there’s enough time, or enough outstanding ballots, for West to make up the ground. For what it’s worth, West had about a 3K vote lead in Harris County after early voting, but Hegar whittled away at that on Election Day, and very slowly stretched her lead out over the state. There was some bad blood in this race towards the end, and West picked up a number of endorsements from elected officials, while John Cornyn ran some ads stoking the fire. I expect people will mostly forget about all that in November, but for now there’s some healing to do.

In the Railroad Commissioner race, Chrysta Castaneda led everywhere I looked in early voting by a wide amount, and then kept adding to it. She was easily over 60% as Election Day results were coming in. I called that race on Twitter pretty much right away.

We’ve talked about the potential pickup of the Senate seat, as that is one extra reason for the Biden campaign to invest in Texas. The polling we’ve had in the Senate race doesn’t suggest a top tier opportunity, but it’s not like John Cornyn is anywhere near fifty percent, nor is he appreciably ahead of Trump in his level of support. Basically, if Joe Biden can win Texas, or maybe even if he can just come really close to winning Texas, MJ Hegar/Royce West can win that race as well.

The thing is, that also holds true for the RRC race and the statewide judicial races. I can make the argument that Biden will run ahead of other Dems (mostly because there will still be some Republican crossover at the Presidential level but not downballot, as was the case in 2016), and I can also make the argument that Trump will run ahead of other Republicans (mostly because I think there will be more vote-for-Trump-only people than vote-for-Biden-only people, and maybe because the third party vote will be bigger downballot than at the top, as it usually is in Presidential years), but the same basic calculus holds. If Biden wins Texas, the odds are good he will have company. If he falls short, even by less than a point, the odds are no one else makes it across. The national folks have very little reason to care about these races, but the rest of us should.

CBS News/YouGov: Trump 46, Biden 45

Jul 14th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Maybe a tad bit of a letdown after yesterday’s result, but still quite solid.

The coronavirus outbreak is reshaping the presidential race in three key Sun Belt states. Joe Biden is now leading President Trump by six points in Florida, and the two are tied in Arizona and competitive in Texas, where Biden is down by just a point to Mr. Trump. Biden has made gains in part because most say their state’s efforts to contain the virus are going badly — and the more concerned voters are about risks from the outbreak, the more likely they are to support Biden.

In all three states, most voters say their state reopened too soon, and those who say this feel their state went too fast under pressure from the Trump administration. Most also say the president is doing a bad job handling the outbreak. He may be paying a price for that, at least in the short term.

This is helping Biden not only to post bigger gains with groups that already trend Democratic — like women and younger voters — but also to cut into Mr. Trump’s margins with seniors. Seniors who are very concerned about coronavirus back Biden in large numbers.

Though embattled in three states he won in 2016, the president remains bolstered by enthusiastic support from his base; by the belief that his policies are a little more likely to help the economy recover than hinder it; and by the fact that the economy still outranks coronavirus as a top issue, in part because Republicans express much less concern about the virus, while both parties agree on the importance of the economy.

[…]

The former vice president has a six-point edge in Florida. Mr. Trump has a one-point edge in Texas and they are tied in Arizona.

Currently, all three states appear competitive because Biden has expanded his support among demographic groups that backed Hillary Clinton in 2016.

In each state, Biden is doing better with women than Clinton did four years ago. In Florida, in particular, Biden leads among women by double-digits; Clinton won women in Florida by four points. Biden has narrowed the gap with white women, in particular, though Mr. Trump still has the advantage. This is boosted by strong support for Biden among white women with a college degree, a group Clinton lost in Florida.

Biden is also making some inroads with seniors, who have voted Republican in stronger numbers in these states in recent years, and could be crucial in Florida. There, Mr. Trump currently has an 8-point lead among seniors, but that’s just half of his margin among them four years ago.

Biden leads among Hispanic voters in all three states. He is currently getting the support of about six in 10 Hispanics in Texas and Florida, similar to the vote share Clinton received in 2016. In Arizona, seven in 10 Hispanic voters back Biden, a bit higher than Clinton’s share.

You can see the poll data for Texas here, and as before here is the FiveThirtyEight page for Texas. This is the first CBS/YouGov poll for Texas that I see – the earlier YouGov polls you see on the 538 page are UT/Texas Tribune polls.

The main difference between this poll and yesterday’s poll is simply this: Trump does a lot better among independents in this sample than in the UT-Tyler/DMN sample. Here, Trump leads among indies 43-41, and they are roughly as large a subgroup as Dems and Republicans (they were a much smaller group in the other poll). Here, Biden is even stronger among Dem voters, leading 92-4, while Trump is nearly as strong among Republicans, leading 89-4. Why the difference? Who knows? It could be question wording, it could be the pollsters’ definitions, it could be how they’re modeling the electorate, and it could be dumb luck. This is why I try not to worry too much about subsample differences. They are what they are, and you’ll drive yourself crazy if you try to make too much sense of them.

There was a Senate poll included as well, and it has Royce West doing slightly better than MJ Hegar against John Cornyn. West trails 43-37, while Hegar trails 44-36. There are three other choices – “Someone else”, “Don’t know”, and “I wouldn’t vote”, and the only difference here is that the “Someone else” number is 3 in the Hegar/Cornyn race and it’s 4 in West/Cornyn, so I think the actual gap between the candidates would be closer to 7 in each case if we went to a third significant digit. Cornyn only gets 6% of Dems versus Hegar and 5% versus West in this poll, which is another big difference from yesterday’s poll and a counterpoint to the hypothesis that Cornyn might outperform Trump in November. Again, the main idea to hold onto is that it’s too early to form any strong conclusions.

Our twelve-poll average in the Presidential race is now Trump 46.0, Biden 44.7. I’m sure there will be plenty more poll results coming.

The progressives and the runoffs

Jul 14th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

May as well check in on this.

Sara Stapleton Barrera

Judging from March, the ideological left wing of the Democratic Party in Texas should be inconsolable.

After months of high hopes, the faction ran into a centrist buzz saw in the March 3 primary. Joe Biden practically locked up the Democratic presidential nomination, and progressive candidates experienced electoral drubbings.

Among the fallen: presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros, U.S. Senate hopeful Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, and Audia Jones, a candidate for Harris County District attorney endorsed by Sanders.

But rather than licking their political wounds, leading progressive candidates still in the fight say they’re invigorated — and eager to use the coronavirus pandemic, fights over voting by mail and calls for police reform to score some late victories in the July runoffs.

“Every time we have a progressive run, we get a little bit closer,” said Sara Stapleton-Barrera, who is in a runoff against state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville. “I feel like we’re slowly winning the war, but we have to get through some of these battles first.”

Perhaps the most energy is coming from Austin, where two runoffs have the attention of progressives. José Garza is competing in the nationally watched Democratic primary runoff for Travis County district attorney. Mike Siegel is vying for his party’s nomination in the 10th Congressional District’s Democratic primary runoff.

Garza’s race is where the focus on police reform is arguably the clearest. Even before the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police prompted protests nationwide, Garza was challenging incumbent Margaret Moore from the left, arguing she was too harsh in her prosecution of nonviolent offenders. He earned the most votes in March and has promised to bring all police shootings and more police misconduct cases before a grand jury. He has also pledged not to accept campaign contributions from police unions.

Moore, meanwhile, has accused him of being inexperienced with the local criminal justice system and running a campaign focused on national issues instead of local ones.

In the 10th Congressional District, Siegel is running on a platform that includes supporting “Medicare for All” and the Green New Deal. Siegel will face Dr. Pritesh Gandhi, who has cited his medical experience while pitching Medicare Extra, a proposal that does not go as far as Medicare for All and leaves some private insurance in place.

“I think this is the exact moment in history when progressives are in a place to lead, and it’s because the times have caught up the policies we’re fighting for,” Siegel said. “This is the time to run as a progressive. I feel really good not just about my chances, but the movement overall.”

[…]

Another runoff that has drawn the attention of some national progressives is the one for the 24th Congressional District, where Kim Olson and Candace Valenzuela are competing to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell. The seat is a national Democratic target.

Valenzuela has endorsements like the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Warren, but the runoff has not as sharply split along ideological lines as much as it has on issues of experience and racial identity. Valenzuela, a former Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board member, and her allies are hammering Olson over her time as human resources director for the Dallas Independent School District. Valenzuela and her supporters are also touting that she would be the first Afro-Latina to serve in Congress. Olson is white.

But the divide might be clearest in South Texas, where the winner of the state Senate runoff between Lucio and Barrera will be the overwhelming favorite to win the seat in November.

I’ve said repeatedly that beating Eddie Lucio in SD27 will do more for progressives than beating Henry Cuellar in CD28 ever could have done, because of the relative sizes of the two legislative bodies and the outsized influence Lucio has in the 12-member (for now) Dem Senate caucus. Lucio is terrible, and I’m delighted that that particular race has finally gotten the attention it needs. I think one reason why maybe it didn’t get as much attention earlier is because Sara Stapleton Barrera isn’t necessarily “the” progressive candidate in that race. If Ruben Cortez had finished second, people would be rallying behind him now. This race is much more about Eddie Lucio, and I’d say it’s only now that we’re down to one candidate against him that the race has been viewed through that lens.

As for CD10, I mostly shrug my shoulders. I think Medicare For All is a fine goal to work towards, but Medicare For Those Who Want To Buy Into It is much more easily achieved in the short term, with far less disruption to the existing system and far less resistance from people whose employer-based (possibly collectively-bargained) plan is just fine for them. If we’re lucky enough to have a Democratic Senate in 2021, I think what can get passed by that Senate is what we’re going to get. Will having more pro-Medicare For All members of Congress affect that outcome? Maybe. It’s hard to say. I like Mike Siegel and would vote to give him a second chance to topple Mike McCaul if I lived in CD10, but I think either Siegel or Pritesh Gandhi will be a fine addition to Congress and a major upgrade over the incumbent. Same in CD24, with Kim Olson and Candace Valenzuela, each a good candidate with different strengths and appeals but no major differences on policy.

The race that definitely has the potential to have a big effect is the Travis County DA race, where the ideological lines are clear and the ability for the upstart to make a difference if they win is great, though not unbound. Please feel free to set a good example for the rest of us, Travis County.

As for whether this is another step in a long march towards more liberal candidates and officeholders, I’d say yes, and that we’ve already been on that march for a long time. Ideological sorting is a thing that has been happening for a few decades now. You can see the effect just in recent years – the Democratic waves of 2006 and 2008 included a lot of candidates whose politics included “fiscal responsibility”, support from the NRA, opposition to same-sex marriage, immigration restrictionism, and a host of other views that were very much not shared with the class of 2018. The Democratic Party is a big tent, which means there will always be room for vicious family fights over various issues. Having some number of Never Trumpers inside that tent will just make it all more exciting. It’s fine, and I’d rather be dynamic than stagnant. And every primary and primary runoff, the main emotion many of us will feel will be “thank prime that’s over, now let’s please get on to the general election”. Same as it ever was.

UT-Tyler/DMN: Biden 48, Trump 43

Jul 13th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Holy mackeral.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has built a 5-point lead over President Donald Trump in Texas, as unease over Trump’s handling of coronavirus mounts, a new Dallas Morning News-University of Texas Tyler poll has found.

If the general election were held today, Biden would carry Texas, with 46% of the vote to Trump’s 41%. 14% were undecided or named someone else.

Biden’s lead, which comes after he and Trump were tied 43%-43% in The News and UT-Tyler’s April survey, is significant, if barely: The poll, conducted June 29-July 7, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.24 percentage points.

The story behind Biden’s slight bulge is the softening of the Republican incumbent’s support among independents and “weak partisans,” said Kenneth Bryant Jr., a UT-Tyler political scientist who helped design the poll. “While President Trump has and still enjoys near universal approval from Republicans, and overwhelming disfavor from Democrats, he has lost considerable ground among the folks in the middle, who may ultimately decide who wins Texas in November,” Bryant said.

Up to now, though, the Biden campaign has done little to demonstrate it’ll make a major effort before the Nov. 3 general election in Texas. The state hasn’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter carried the state in 1976.

The poll, the fourth of six tracking the 2020 election and current events by The News and the UT-Tyler Center for Public Opinion, also showed some movement, though not enough to be significant, by long-time Dallas state Sen. Royce West in Tuesday’s runoff for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

Purple Heart winner and political neophyte MJ Hegar of Round Rock, who has a big financial edge as well as late-hour help in the form of a TV ad blitz by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and EMILY’s List, leads West, 32% to 20%, among Democrats and independents who lean Democratic, the poll found.

Since April, when Hegar led West, 32% to 16%, he’s closed the deficit with Hegar among women and college-educated voters to single digits. For Democratic voters, the poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 3.27 percentage points.

Neither Democrat gained much traction from the April survey as their party’s November standard bearer against three-term GOP incumbent Sen. John Cornyn: If the general election were held today, Cornyn would win a plurality of 37% against Hegar’s 26%, with 31% undecided, the latest poll found. Against West, Cornyn’s plurality would be slightly larger: 37% to West’s 25%, with 32% undecided.

The numbers in the headline of this post are different than the numbers cited in the story because the poll presented two results, one for registered voters and one for likely voters. Among registered voters (sample size 1,909), Biden leads 46-41. Among likely voters (sample size 1,677), it’s Biden 48-43 over Trump, as the headline notes. You can see both listed on the FiveThirtyEight page for Texas, though only the RV sample is given on the UT-Tyler PoliSci homepage.

As noted, in the April poll, Biden and Trump were tied at 43. (They finally have the RV sample for that poll published.) The funny thing is, if you look at the breakdown in each sample, the reason for the shift isn’t quite as pollster Kenneth Bryant puts it. In April, Biden led among Dems 84-6 and among indies 43-28, while Trump led among Republicans 87-5. In June, Biden led among Dems in the RV sample 87-4 and among indies 44-28, while Trump led among Republicans 87-9. In other words, Biden did a smidge better among Dems and Trump slipped a tiny bit among Republicans while indies were static. In the LV sample, however, Biden’s lead among indies jumped to 53-29, while the other numbers were the same. Indies were a bigger portion of the RV sample than the LV sample, so the larger shift was muted a bit by the larger partisan subgroups. My point here is that Biden’s advantage came from a bit of movement in all three subsamples.

As for the Senate race, I wouldn’t put too much stock in the numbers for now, as there are a lot of undecided voters in these samples – 33-34% of Dems in the RV sample, 24% of Republicans, and 41 or 43% of indies, with Hegar being the former numbers. (I went with the RV numbers here instead of the LV numbers because the LV numbers in the Hegar-Cornyn race are messed up.) That said, Cornyn draws more Dem support (13%) than Trump does without giving up more Republican support, so it’s not unreasonable to think Cornyn could run ahead of Trump. It’s too early to say on that score, but we’ll keep an eye on this once we have a single opponent for Cornyn. Hegar’s lead over West among Dem voters is a bit less now, but primary runoff polling is super tricky, so let’s not spend too much time on that, either.

One more number of interest, for the question “If the general election were today, would you vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate for the Texas State House?” – Democratic 52, Republican 48 in the RV sample, 52-47 in the LV sample. This is one point up for Dems and down for Republicans since April. Other polls generally don’t ask this kind of question so it’s hard to evaluate it as is, but there you have it anyway.

Finally, the approval numbers, which I’ll take from the RV sample. General approval:

Trump – 42 approve, 50 disapprove (42% disapprove strongly)
Greg Abbott – 54 approve, 31 disapprove
Dan Patrick – 37 approve, 37 disapprove

“Handling coronavirus” approval:

Trump – 38 approve, 52 disapprove (44% disapprove strongly)
Abbott – 48 approve, 40 disapprove
“Local leaders” (Mayors and County Judges) – 62 approve, 23 disapprove

Still good numbers for Greg Abbott, though softer on coronavirus. Clearly, everyone knows who’s doing the real work, though.

Believe it or not, there’s another poll out there, not quite as good for Biden but still strong. I’ll have that for tomorrow. And the eleven-poll average, using RV numbers from this poll to be consistent, is Trump 46.0, Biden 44.6, for a 1.4 point difference between the two. Pretty amazing, no?

2020 Primary Runoff Early Voting, Final Totals: Democrats carry the day

Jul 12th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

8 comments

Today’s going to be a numbers-heavy post. Let’s start with Texas Elects, giving us a penultimate day summary:

Early voting in person ended today (Friday) for the July 14 primary runoff and special elections.

Through yesterday (Thursday), 532K people have voted in the Democratic runoff statewide – 193K by mail and 339K in person – which is already the fourth highest total since 1990. The number of voters will almost certainly eclipse the 2014 total today (Friday) and should easily pass the 2002 total on Election Day. The highest number of Democratic runoff voters since 1990 was in 1994, when 747K people voted in the runoff statewide.

Nearly 349K people have voted in the Republican runoff in those counties and portions of counties with runoff races – 97K by mail and 251K in person. Despite the lack of a statewide race, the number of Republican runoff votes cast is already the fifth highest in state history, trailing only the past four election cycles. Turnout is on pace to eclipse all but the 2014 (1.36M) and 2012 (1.11M) totals.

Statewide Democratic turnout through yesterday was 3.25% of all registered voters, and Republican turnout was 2.13% of all registered voters, not just those in areas with runoff races. Combined turnout for all of 2018 was 5.7%, and it was 4.0% in 2016.

The reference to 2014 is surely a mistake, as there were only 201K votes cast in the Senate runoff between David Alameel and Keisha Rogers that year. There were 434K votes in the 2018 gubernatorial runoff between Andrew White and Lupe Valdez, but 2020 was already past that total as of Thursday. I’ve looked at some other years but am just not sure what that third “highest since 1990” total may be.

I can tell you where we are as of Friday statewide:


Election     Mail      Early      Total   Mail %
================================================
D primary 114,886    886,336  1,001,222    11.5%
R primary  91,415    987,744  1,079,159     8.5%

D runoff  199,657    447,470    647,127    30.9%
R runoff   99,939    311,222    411,161    24.3%

We have now topped the 2002 Senate runoff between Ron Kirk and Victor Morales (620K), and I have no doubt we will blow past the 1994 level on Tuesday. That’s not too shabby. Data on the Secretary of State website only goes back to 1992, so I don’t know what the 1990 primary runoffs looked like, but 1990 was the last year of Democratic statewide dominance in Texas. That’s not a bad harbinger to echo.

How much does any of this mean, though? Erica Greider thinks Republicans should be worried.

“I think we’re seeing the ramifications of having failed Republican leadership, and no one is seeing it more than those of us here in Texas,” said Billy Begala, a spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party.

Begala made his remarks Friday morning, the last day of early voting in advance of Tuesday’s primary runoff elections.

“It didn’t have to be this bad,” he said of the resurgence of COVID-19 in Texas. “It really didn’t.”

[…]

The coronavirus has complicated elections administration. Democratic officials have been urging Texans to vote by mail, if they’re eligible. And Texans who’ve gone to the polls in person have noticed unusual precautions, in most of the state’s major counties. In Harris County, for example, voters have been provided with rubber finger cots and disinfectant wipes as well as the traditional “I voted” stickers.

Still, turnout — which is typically abysmal for runoff elections in Texas — has been higher than expected through the early voting period. As of Thursday, some 900,000 voters had cast ballots across the state, a majority of them in the Democratic primary runoff.

“The key takeaway is that if we’re able to make voters feel safe, and of course be safe, then it’s a very positive experience for them,” Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins said Friday.

The turnout through the early-voting period, he continued, raises the prospect that Harris County will see higher turnout in November than the 60 to 62 percent that’s typical in presidential election years.

“If I were a betting man I’d put money on 65 for sure, and I might take some odds on 70,” Hollins said.

Voter registration, similarly, has continued apace, despite the challenges presented by the pandemic. Since March, nearly 149,000 voters have been added to the rolls in Texas, bringing the statewide electorate to a record 16.4 million people.

I haven’t seen an official number for Harris County voter registration yet – we’ll know it for sure when we get election night returns – but I’ve heard 2.4 million at this time. At 62% turnout, about what we usually get in Presidential years, that’s a bit short of 1.5 million votes in Harris County. 65% is 1.56 million, 70% is approaching 1.7 million. That’s going to be more Democratic votes than it is Republican votes. It’s just a matter of how many.

Still, Republicans should be nervous about surging July turnout given that Democrats don’t have a marquee name on the ballot like former congressman Beto O’Rourke, who excited Democrats nationwide in his near-miss U.S. Senate bid in 2018.

“I don’t know that here in Texas we have one specific candidate or officeholder who is the standard-bearer for the party,” Begala acknowledged.

Perhaps voters are simply fed up with the incumbents, who happen to be Republicans, for the most part.

“I think it’s that when voters look around right now, when Texans look around right now, they see a pandemic, they see horrific racial injustice, they see record unemployment,” said Amanda Sherman, the communications director for Hegar. “Voting is a way for them to do something about it.”

I’m not sure that the high runoff turnout matters that much for November, but it does show that even in the pandemic Dems are turning out. There’s evidence from around the country that relentless Republican efforts to make voting harder have resulted in hardier and more persistent voters, especially Black voters. Maybe we’re seeing some of that here.

What you’re really here for is the final EV report from Harris County. Here it is:


Election     Mail    Early    Total   Mail %
============================================
D primary  22,785  116,748  139,533    16.3%
R primary  22,801   82,108  104,909    21.7%

D runoff   45,176   65,979  111,105    40.7%
R runoff   25,425   17,783   43,208    58.8%

The Friday runoff EV file is here, and the final EV turnout report from March is here. 18,526 Democrats showed up to vote in person on Friday. That’s more than the entire early voting in person population for the Republicans, who didn’t have a statewide race but did have a couple of countywide races. And as noted, Republicans were far more reliant on a rate basis on mail ballots than Dems were, though Dems returned far more mail ballots. You can draw your own conclusions.

I promised you more data about the early voting population, at least through Wednesday. I’m a man of my word, so here’s what I found when I examined age and gender data for the primary runoff.

Among the mail voters, there were 16 people born prior to 1920, with the oldest being born in 1915. Another 10 were born in 1920. In other words, 26 people who are at least 100 years old had voted as of Wednesday.

The daily voter rosters do not include year of birth or gender, only the full March roster does. As such, I only have that data for the people who had also voted in March. Of 41,739 total mail voters who had voted in March, 40,195 are 65 or older. The remaining 1,544 are under 65.

23,373 of the 65 or older mail voters are female, including 15 of the 16 pre-1920-birth voters and eight of the ten born in 1920. 58.1% of mail voters are listed as female. 16,230 are listed as male, for 40.4% of over-65 mail voters.

868 of the 1,544 under-65 mail voters are female (56.2%), 641 are male (41.5%).

(For some voters, the value in the Gender field is null, which may be a data glitch, or may be a stated preference of the voter. Because the number is so small, and because as far as I know there is no other option for this field that is allowed by state law, I suspect this is just a data error.)

I did not extend this to the in person early voters – I promise, I’ll circle back when I get the full voter roster for the runoff. But Keir Murray posted some facts about the voting data through Thursday:

Let’s look at early voting in Harris County for the July 14th runoff, starting with Dems. 90K+ ballots have been cast so far, representing about 17% of the state’s total. For perspective, there were 57K total runoff votes in 2018 and 30K in 2016. #txlege

1/6

— Keir Murray (@houtopia) 1:39 PM – 10 July 2020

Click over to see the rest of the thread. Keir also notes that the statewide mix of Dem primary runoff voters is more Black than Latino, which is the reverse of what it was in March. Maybe that will boost Royce West in the Senate race, we’ll see. I will have election night returns for you on Wednesday. If you haven’t voted yet, Tuesday is your last chance.

PPP: Biden 48, Trump 46

Jul 4th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

And here’s poll number two, which is technically about the Texas Senate race but I’m counting it as a Presidential poll for consistency.

MJ Hegar

Public Policy Polling’s newest Texas survey finds that John Cornyn has basically no profile in Texas. Only 27% of voters have a favorable opinion of him to 34% with an unfavorable one and a 39% plurality don’t have any opinion about him one way or the other. The numbers when it comes to his job approval are similar-29% approve, 33% disapprove, and 38% have no opinion.

Cornyn’s lack of a profile with Texans make him susceptible to the overall political winds in the state, and those are blowing the wrong way for Republicans right now. Only 46% of voters approve of the job Donald Trump is doing to 51% who disapprove, and Joe Biden leads him by 2 points at 48-46.

Cornyn starts out with the lead over likely general election opponent MJ Hegar 42-35. But when you dig into the undecideds (23% of the electorate) for Senate, 59% of them are voting for Biden to only 25% who are voting for Trump. In an era where ticket splitting is less and less of a thing, those people are likely to end up voting the same party for Senate as President. If the undecideds broke that way, Hegar would have the slightest of leads over Cornyn. This is likely to be a highly competitive race.

Our first Hegar-Cornyn poll of 2020 bears a strong resemblance to our first Beto O’Rourke- Ted Cruz poll of 2018. In that poll Cruz lead 45-37, an 8 point lead similar to Cornyn’s starting out point. We pinpointed then that the race might end up close because Cruz had just a 38% favorability rating- and that’s a lot better than the 27% Cornyn starts out with here.

After O’Rourke won the nomination and became better known over the course of the year, he was able to build the race into a tossup. Hegar (who currently has just 34% name recognition) is likely to do the same in the months ahead if she wins the nomination.

PPP surveyed 729 Texas voters on June 24th and 25th on behalf of EMILY’s List. The survey was conducted half by calls to landlines and half by texts to cell phones, and the margin of error is +/-3.6%. Full toplines here.

See here for the other Thursday poll, and here for the poll data. The fact that it was commissioned by Emily’s List answers my question about why they polled MJ Hegar and not also Royce West. This result is pretty consistent with that Fox poll that had Cornyn up on both Dems by ten points, but with a larger share of the “undecided” vote being Dems. If I had to guess, West would probably have done about as well against Cornyn in this poll, as was the case with the Fox poll. It’s clear that the biggest threat to Cornyn is Donald Trump’s sagging fortunes in Texas. The better Biden does, the worse off Cornyn is. Also, too, Trump’s approval rating (46 approve, 51 disapprove) is pretty lousy, and another example of him being stuck at that level in his “vote for” support. Keep keeping an eye on that. Oh, and with these two polls in the books, the average over the ten total polls is Trump 46.3, Biden 44.5, now a bit less than a two-point gap. Carry on.

Three runoff stories

Jul 3rd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Just a sample from three high-profile and highly-contested Democratic primary runoff races.

TX-SEN: MJ Hegar versus Royce West

MJ Hegar

No two issues have impacted the Texas primary runoffs like the coronavirus pandemic and the protests surrounding George Floyd’s death, but as early voting begins Monday, the latter is looming especially large at the top of the ticket.

In the Democratic runoff to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, state Sen. Royce West of Dallas is hoping to harness the energy of the moment to pull past MJ Hegar on her seemingly well-paved road to the nomination. The former Air Force helicopter pilot has the backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, but West is increasingly seeking to train his party’s attention on the opportunity his candidacy represents, especially now.

“Democrats have got to decide whether they want to continue to be a victim of history or make history,” West said in an interview. With his election as Texas’ first Black senator, he added, Democrats can go the latter route.

Sen. Royce West

West said the “stars have aligned” for him in the runoff, playing to his profile as not only a Black man but also a seasoned legislator who has focused on criminal justice reform, authoring a 2015 state law that aimed to expand the use of body cameras by police in Texas, for example. And he has taken heart in recent primaries elsewhere, most notably in Kentucky, in which candidates of color have ridden the momentum of growing calls for racial justice.

To be sure, Hegar, who is white, has also increased her focus on issues of race and policing, and on Monday, she is holding a virtual news conference with the family of Javier Ambler, a Black man who died last year in the custody of Williamson County sheriff’s deputes. West and then Hegar called for the resignation of the sheriff, Robert Chody, after the circumstances of Ambler’s death came to light earlier this month.

Asked in an interview how she stacks up against West when it comes to meeting the moment, Hegar reiterated her tight focus on the general election.

“I think that you know me well enough to know that I’m running against John Cornyn,” she said, reciting her contrasts with Cornyn. She did argue her November-focused bid means she is already running a “coordinated campaign that is lifting up” down-ballot candidates, including candidates of color.

It should be noted that since this story was written, Amy McGrath has pulled ahead of Charles Booker in that Kentucky Senate primary. You can make whatever you want of the parallels, but the state of that race has changed since original publication. I’m mostly interested at this point in the candidates’ finance reports. Hegar has consistently been the better fundraiser – and I continue to be a little perplexed how a 26-year incumbent like Royce West has had such a hard time raising money (*) – though she’s not exactly performing at Beto levels. Still, with a Presidential race at the top of the ticket, just having enough to get her name out there is probably enough. Hegar is closer to achieving that level of resources than West is, and there’s more promise of national money for her at this time.

(*) – Yes, I’m aware of the claims made that the DSCC has pressured donors to avoid West. This story notes that the person who made those claims has not provided the names of any such donors, so color me a bit skeptical. Certainly not out of the question that this could have happened, but right now the evidence is thin.

CD24: Kim Olson versus Candace Valenzuela

Democratic voters in North Texas’ 24th Congressional District next month will select the candidate — retired Air Force Col. Kim Olson or former school board member Candace Valenzuela — they want to challenge Republican Beth Van Duyne in one of the fall’s most highly anticipated congressional contests.

The decision between Olson and Valenzuela is punishing for many Democrats who see both women as capable of beating Van Duyne, the former Irving mayor endorsed by President Donald Trump. The ultimate goal, Democrats sandwiched between Dallas and Fort Worth have said all year, is flipping the seat that has been occupied by Rep. Kenny Marchant for eight terms.

Marchant is one of several Texas Republicans retiring from Congress this year as the state becomes more competitive for Democrats. Marchant easily won his seat 16 years ago but beat his Democratic opponent in 2018 by just three percentage points. Local and national Democrats see the seat as theirs for the taking and a key component of keeping their majority in the U.S. House.

“We all feel like we’ve been in a holding pattern and we’re waiting for the choice to be made,” said Angie Hetisimer, a Tarrant County precinct chair and member of Indivisible Grapevine, which works to help elect progressive candidates. “I think for me and most of the people I talk to, we just want 24 to flip. Luckily we have two fantastic candidates.”

Given there is little light between Olson and Valenzuela on policy — both fluctuate between moderate and progressive on different questions but would be reliable votes for the Democratic agenda in Washington — the election is largely framed as a decision between Olson’s extensive résumé and Valenzuela’s biography. Olson was one of America’s first female fighter pilots. If elected, Valenzuela would be the first Afro-Latina member of Congress.

Olson was the first prominent candidate in this race and has been the bigger fundraiser, but Valenzuela has also done well in that department and has run a strong campaign. This is a top target for the DCCC, and in my view is the second-most flippable seat in Texas, following only CD23. If we can’t win this one, especially against a xenophobe like Van Duyne, it’s a big miss. I’m fine with either candidate, I just hope everyone involved is able to move on and keep their eye on the prize after July 14.

CD10: Mike Siegel versus Pritesh Gandhi

Democrats in one of Texas’ most expansive battleground congressional districts are choosing between a civil rights attorney embracing the party’s most liberal proposals and a doctor who argues those policies are too radical.

Mike Siegel, the 2018 nominee in Texas’ 10th Congressional District, finished first in this year’s March Democratic primary — about 11 percentage points ahead of Pritesh Gandhi, a primary care physician making his first run for office. Siegel came about 6 points short of winning the primary outright, pitting him against Gandhi in a runoff.

The winner will face U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, who has represented the district since 2005. His political territory stretches from Austin to the Houston suburbs, covering all of five counties and parts of four others.

Beyond the ideological skirmish, the primary is also serving as a case study in whether the coronavirus pandemic will boost political candidates who work in the medical field. The virus has supercharged the public’s interest in health care and led to national TV appearances for Gandhi, but also stripped him of valuable campaign time as he works a grueling schedule that includes swabbing patients for COVID-19 and caring for those who exhibit symptoms.

It also has reinforced Gandhi’s pitch for sending more people to Congress who work in the health care field.

“People, I think, understand the importance of having a diversity of professional experience in Washington. And if that wasn’t clear before, it’s increasingly clear now,” Gandhi said. “I think that people, when they get to the voting booth, are going to want a leader who has experience and a track record in science and in health.”

Siegel was the 2018 candidate and he ran a good campaign, though he fell a bit short in a district that Beto carried by a whisker. Gandhi has been the stronger fundraiser – indeed, both Gandhi and third-place finisher Candace Hutchison outraised Siegel through April – but as with CD24, I expect whoever the nominee is to do just fine in this department. I know more people who are supporting Siegel in this one, and I do tend to lean towards giving a competent candidate who did a good job the first time around another shot at it, but as with the other races here I’m fine with either choice. I’m ready to get to the November part of this campaign.

What should Joe Biden do in Texas?

Jun 30th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

11 comments

“Win” would be my preferred answer, but it’s more complicated than that.

No matter how frequently it happens, it’s always a bit startling.

Ever since February 2019, polls have been coming out indicating that former Vice President Joe Biden is competitive with — sometimes even leading — President Donald Trump in Texas. A June 3 poll by Quinnipiac University gave Trump a 1-percentage-point lead in the state. A recent FiveThirtyEight roundup of “key battleground state” polls taken since May 1 shows Trump up by an average of 1.5 points here.

And every time a survey is released, the same questions arise: Is 2020 the year deep red Texas flips to the Democrats? Is Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in trouble as well?

But for many in politics, the consideration is slightly different: The state is clearly more competitive. But even if Biden can compete here, how seriously will he choose to?

The answer to that question is more complicated. For Biden and his allied groups, making a run for Texas is no simple task and there are strategic considerations beyond looking at the polls. The most immediate objectives for national Democrats in 2020 are to recapture the White House and Senate majority. And Texas is far from necessary for either.

Recent polls have suggested Biden might hold an even stronger position in other states that Trump won in 2016 — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and even Georgia. And because of its vast size, numerous media markets and massive population, Texas is more expensive to compete in. The paths to victory for Biden are so great in number, it’s hard for many political operatives to imagine a scenario where Texas would flip where it would be anything other than icing on the cake in a much broader national victory.

In other words, the cost of seriously trying to win Texas would almost certainly be high, while there’s a decent chance that the reward would ultimately prove inconsequential.

Below the surface, however, the presidential race in Texas still matters — an underperformance by Trump compared to recent history has the potential to reset Texas politics for the next decade. The central question in the political class every time one of these polls is released five months out from Election Day is: What kind of down-ballot damage could Republicans potentially suffer if Biden has coattails?

You know the polling situation; as of the most recent poll, where Biden led Trump by one point, Trump led in Texas by an average of 2.0 points. That’s a smidge less than the Ted Cruz margin of victory over Beto in 2018, and as disappointed as we all were with that result, we saw the effect downballot. I for one would not mind an encore of that kind of performance. What it all comes down to is two competing factors from Biden’s perspective. One is that he doesn’t need to win Texas to take the Presidency. If Texas is truly winnable for him, then he’s pretty much assured to have enough electoral votes to have won. I mean, if Texas is flipping, then surely Arizona and Florida and North Carolina and maybe even Georgia have gone blue, and the rout is on. Texas is an insanely expensive state to compete in, with something like 27 media markets for ad buys. The bang for your buck is much bigger in the old faithfuls like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Boring, but no one wants to take anything for granted.

On the other hand, that same downballot effect is a real thing for Biden to consider. There’s a Senate race here, which is likely going to be roughly as competitive as the Presidential race is. It sure would be nice to have another Dem in the Senate, and that makes Texas a twofer for Biden, which isn’t true for Florida or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. (North Carolina and Arizona and Georgia and Iowa, on the other hand…) Plus, there are multiple Congressional seats available for pickup, one of which offers the chance to defenestrate Ted Cruz minion Chip Roy. Even the battle for the Texas State House is important, as that would give the Dems some leverage in drawing the next Congressional map. One would hope that Joe Biden learned the lesson of 2010 well enough to consider the advantage of flipping the State House here.

So of course I want Biden to compete here, as seriously as possible. I want Dems to win as many races as possible, and I can’t think of anything that would be a bigger psychological blow to the Republicans, both nationally and here, than seeing Texas go Democratic in a Presidential election. It would sure be a hell of a momentum boost headed into 2022, which for us is an even bigger election. (Another advantage for Biden: The possibility of throwing out the single biggest cause of ridiculous anti-Democratic lawsuits, AG Ken Paxton.) If he has to raise more money to afford it, then get on that. I understand the cost/benefit analysis, but I’m not going to claim to be impartial here. You have a real shot here, Joe Biden. Don’t throw it away.

Early voting for primary runoffs starts tomorrow

Jun 28th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Remember the runoffs? It’s time we settle who our nominees are.

Who can vote in the runoffs?

Texas has open primaries, meaning you don’t have to be a registered member of either party to cast a ballot in a primary runoff. You can check your voter registration status here. But you can only vote in one party’s primary, and which one might depend on how you voted in the first round of the primaries in March. People who voted in the March 3 primary are only able to vote in that same party’s runoff election, as they have affiliated themselves with that given party for that calendar year. Those who did not participate in the March primary are able to vote in either primary runoff election.

What’s different this year?

The primaries were originally scheduled for May, but Abbott delayed them until July because of the coronavirus. Abbott also doubled the length of the early voting period for the July primary runoff elections in a move to aimed at easing crowds at the polls during the pandemic. Early voting runs from Monday through July 10.

“It is necessary to increase the number of days in which polling locations will be open during the early voting period, such that election officials can implement appropriate social distancing and safe hygiene practices,” Abbott wrote in a May proclamation.

For Harris County, the early voting map of locations with wait times is here. Please take advantage of a less-busy location if you can. The traditional PDF with the map and hours is here. Please note the new and changed locations. Please also note that there is no voting on Friday, July 3 and Saturday, July 4, due to the holiday. Voting hours are extended on Sunday, July 5 (10 to 7, instead of the usual 1 to 6) and on the last day, Friday, July 10 (7 AM to 10 PM). All other days are 7 AM to 7 PM. We should be able to get in and out safely, and you will need to bring a mask. See here for the Harris County Clerk’s SAFE principles.

My Runoff Reminder series will remind you who’s running: Statewide, Congress, SBOE and State Senate, State House, select county races, and select judicial races. Links to interviews and Q&As are in there as well.

The Chron re-ran a bunch of its endorsements on Friday:

Mike Siegel, CD10
Chrysta Castañeda, Railroad Commissioner
Michelle Palmer, SBOE6
Akilah Bacy, HD138
Rep. Harold Dutton, HD142
Rep. Anna Eastman, HD148

They had endorsed Royce West for Senate in March, and they reran that endorsement on Saturday. (UPDATE: They reran their endorsement of Michael Moore for Commissioners Court, Precinct 3, this morning.)

Also on the ballot for this election: the special election in SD14 to succeed Kirk Watson. I have interviews with the two candidates of interest, Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, and former Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt. Please give them a listen if you live in this district. I expect this will go to a runoff, which I hope will not need to endure a delay like the May elections did.

All the elections for July 14 are important, but just as important is that this will serve in many ways as a dry run for November, both in terms of handling a higher volume of mail ballots and also in terms of making the in person voting process as safe as it can be in this pandemic. I was on a conference call a week or so ago with a national group, the Voter Protection Corps, which presented a report for policymakers with concrete steps to protect in-person voting and meet the equal access to voting requirements enshrined in federal law and the U.S. Constitution. Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins was one of the presenters in that call. You can see a summary of the call with highlights from the report here. I will be voting in person for this election, but however you do it please take the steps you need to in order to be safe.

Fox: Biden 45, Trump 44

Jun 27th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

14 comments

Man, if we keep getting polls that show Joe Biden leading in Texas, we just might have to rethink where this state is politically.

Texas is a tossup, as Democrat Joe Biden tops President Donald Trump by a percentage point, 45-44 percent, in a new Fox News survey of Texas registered voters.

Ten percent are up for grabs, and this small subgroup of voters is more likely to disapprove than approve of Trump’s job performance by 52-34 percent.

The good news for Trump: he bests Biden by 51-45 percent among those “extremely” motivated to vote in the election.

Trump corralled the Lone Star State by 9 points in 2016 (52 percent vs. Hillary Clinton’s 43 percent), and it has been in the Republican column in every presidential election since 1980.

Texas voters trust Trump over Biden on the economy (by 14 points) and immigration (+4), while they think Biden would do a better job on race relations (+10 points) and coronavirus (+3).

There’s a 24-point gender gap on the head-to-head matchup, as men pick Trump by 12 points and women go for Biden by 12.

Trump is preferred by Baby Boomers (+12 points) and Gen Xers (+7), while Millennials go big for Biden (+29).

[…]

Republican Sen. John Cornyn leads both of his potential Democratic candidates in hypothetical matchups, although he garners less than the 62 percent he received in his 2014 reelection.

MJ Hegar and Royce West were the top two finishers in the March 3 Democratic primary. Neither received a majority of the vote so there is a July 14 runoff.

The three-term incumbent leads both Hegar and West by a 10-point margin. About one in six voters is undecided/uncommitted in each matchup.

You can see the full poll data here. Yes, I know, Fox News, but their Presidential polls are well-regarded, with an A- rating on FiveThirtyEight. This is now the fourth poll out of eight since the March primary in which Biden has been tied (two results) or in the lead (two results), which is not too shabby. In the four polls where Biden has trailed, he’s trailed by one, two, five, and six. The polling average now stands at 46.5 for Trump to 44.5 for Biden. I know every time I see G. Elliott Morris or Nate Cohn or Nate Silver post something on Twitter about how well Biden is polling right now, someone always comes along with a (not accurate) claim about how Hillary Clinton was polling just as well at this point in 2016. Well, you can see the poll results I have from 2016 on my sidebar. Hillary Clinton was not polling this well in Texas in 2016, not in June, not at any point.

As for the Senate race, the main difference between how John Cornyn is doing against MJ Hegar and Royce West and how Trump is doing against Biden is that Hegar and West do not have quite the same level of Democratic support as Biden does. Cornyn gets 86% of Republican support versus each candidate (the crosstabs break it down by gender as well as party), which is right there with Trump’s 87-88%, but Hegar (80% Dem men, 74% Dem women) and West (85% Dem men, 75% Dem women) lag well behind Biden, who is at 91-92%. Most of the undecided vote in the Senate race is Democratic, which strongly suggests both Hegar and West are doing a bit better than this poll suggests. I’d expect whoever wins the runoff to get a boost, and we’ll start to see poll numbers in the Senate race more closely match the Presidential race. It won’t surprise me if Cornyn outperforms Trump by a bit. Which is to say, it won’t surprise me if there are still a few Republicans who don’t vote for Trump but do generally vote R otherwise. My takeaway from the 2018 election is that most of those Republicans went much more Democratic in the midterm, and I expect the same this year. There’s still a bit of softness on the GOP side for Trump, and who knows, if things continue to deteriorate we could see more of that. I’m sure there will be plenty more polls between now and November to support or refute that hypothesis.

PPP/PT: Trump 48, Biden 46

Jun 24th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Time for another poll.

Today, Progress Texas released statewide Texas voter poll results, showing Democrats are within striking distance in both the Presidential and U.S. Senate races in Texas.

What does this mean? Texas voters are fed up with Texas Republicans’ lack of action on the COVID-19 health care crisis, mass unemployment, and systemic racism that communities face every day. Now is the time to organize, continue to rally for change, and vote.

Key takeaways

Joe Biden comes within 2 points of Donald Trump with 46%.

In the poll, Texas voters were asked who they would vote for in the Presidential race this fall. Joe Biden came within the margin of error against Donald Trump with 46/48, respectively. A small percentage of voters (6%) were unsure.

45% of Texas voters would vote for the Democratic candidate in the U.S. Senate election.

The generic ballot for the U.S. Senate race (if a Texas voter were to vote today) is Republican 47% and Democratic 45%, also within the poll’s margin of error, and supports previous polls showing that a majority of Texans either don’t know or don’t like Republican John Cornyn.

As an additional frame of reference, then-Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke was polling 5 points behind in June of 2018 and went on to lose by 2 points. Texas Democrats are currently ahead of their 2018 pace.

Only 48% of Texas voters approve of Donald Trump’s job performance.

Donald Trump’s approval/disapproval rating amongst polled Texas voters is 48/46. Nationally, a slim percentage of Americans approve of Trump amidst his responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. His approval nationally now stands at 41%, similar to the 39% approval rating he received the last time the question was asked in a poll two weeks ago.

Poll data is here. There was a different PPP poll done less than three weeks ago for the TDP, which had the race tied at 48. These results aren’t all that different, and the polling average now stands at Trump 46.9 to Biden 44.4, with seven polls counted. The approval number is also of interest, and I have a separate post in the works to discuss that aspect of the polls we have so far.

As for the Senate numbers, it’s just a generic R versus D result. Nice to see a generic D get polled at 45%, but I would not make any direct comparisons to 2018 polling at this time. When we have a nominee and can do “Cornyn versus MJ” or “Cornyn versus Royce” questions, then we can see how they stack up to Beto and Ted.

Runoff reminder: Statewide

Jun 3rd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

As I said in the interview posts for SD14, I’m going to revisit the runoff races of interest ahead of early voting. It’s been awhile since we’ve really paid attention to a lot of these folks, what limited news there has been for them has likely fallen under your radar, and it’s time to get back into thinking about who we want to vote for. So with that, I’ll kick things off with the two statewide runoffs and go from there. This will be a mostly freestyle kind of thing, with whatever I can find, on an as-I-can-do-it schedule. Enjoy!

Senate

MJ Hegar

The Senate runoff features MJ Hegar and State Sen. Royce West, who led the field of about a million candidates in March. The Texas Signal had a nice brief overview of what has been happening since then. Hegar has been the much stronger fundraiser of the two, though it will be interesting to see how everyone has been doing in Q2 given the pandemic and the economy. She has a lead in one runoff poll – polling overall has been scant in this race – though neither Hegar nor West has gained enough traction to differentiate themselves in head-to-head matchups with Big John Cornyn.

All of the top candidates that have endorsed in the runoff have endorsed West, citing policy differences and Hegar’s less reliable attendance at primary candidate forums. Hegar has a lot of national backing, from the DSCC and EMILY’s List to former Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren. There is an online debate scheduled for this Saturday, June 6, in case you haven’t had the opportunity to hear from the candidates before now.

Sen. Royce West

The November race has been on the fringes of the national radar. Nationally, Democrats have four strong pickup opportunities, in Colorado, Nevada, Maine, and North Carolina, with a second tier that includes the two Georgia races and Iowa. (There’s also the Doug Jones-held seat in Alabama, which is widely considered a lost cause for Dems.) The Texas race is usually lumped in with longer-shot races like the ones in Kansas and South Carolina, though Presidential-level polling in Texas shows a fairly tight race. It’s not clear to me how Cornyn will run compared to Trump statewide, but the better Biden does the better either Hegar or West will do. If polling between Biden and Trump remains tight, that increases the odds that the eventual nominee will raise more money and get support from national groups. Assume this same dynamic will play out, with less money, in other statewide contests.

Railroad Commissioner

Chrysta Castañeda

There’s not much news out there about the Railroad Commissioner race. That’s just the nature of the beast here – the RRC is fairly low profile and little understood by normal people, and just doesn’t have the opportunity to make much news. I couldn’t find any recent stories featuring candidates Chrysta Castañeda or Roberto Alonzo, but I did find this Star-Telegram profile of the four primary candidates, for which Alonzo and Castañeda were the first two. Neither candidate had raised much money as of the January finance report, but perhaps that will change for the July and 30-day-runoff reports.

The one relevant news item I found in searching for these two candidates was this KVUE story about the RRC meeting to suspend some operating rules, which drew a critical response from Castañeda. Both candidates participated in an online debate hosted by 2020 Democratic Candidate Debates. I’m not aware of any other similar events at this time. I did an interview with Castañeda for the primary – I didn’t reach out to Alonzo because he didn’t have any campaign presence at the time I was doing interviews.

Roberto Alonzo

As with the Senate race, I see this one to be about as competitive as the Presidential race is. There are two points of interest to note here. One is that the Republican incumbent, Ryan Sitton, was ousted in the GOP primary by some dude who raised no money. Sitton himself had about $2 million cash on hand, which isn’t a huge amount for a statewide race but ain’t nothing, either. The other is that low-profile statewide races like the RRC tend to draw a higher third-part vote – the Libertarian and Green candidates in 2016 combined for over 8.5% of the vote, though that was a stranger than usual race, with Libertarian Mark Miller receiving some newspaper endorsements. Undervotes are also an issue – the RRC race in 2018 drew about 150K fewer votes than the Senate race, and in 2016 it drew 200K fewer votes than the Presidential race. My point here is that Dems may be leaving some votes on the table, which a strong candidate and/or a strong coordinated campaign may mitigate. Let’s not lose a winnable race because we didn’t vote all the way down.

I’ll have a look at Congressional runoffs next. Let me know what you think.

More runoff debates

May 18th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

In case you had not seen this, as I myself had not before Sunday.

Watch Democratic Candidate Debates Here!

Every Tuesday and Thursday in May, join us for our debate series:

Debate Schedule:
Tuesday, May 5 – Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner
Thursday, May 7 – Texas State House District 138
Tuesday, May 12 – Texas State House District 142
Thursday, May 14 – Texas State House District 148
Tuesday, May 19 – US Congressional District 10
Thursday, May 21 – Texas State Board of Education Position 6
Tuesday, May 26 – Texas Railroad Commission
Thursday, May 28 – United States Senate

Video of past debates are on the page, so for example if you want to hear Anna Eastman and Penny Shaw, go here. In some cases, one of the candidates in the runoff has declined or not responded, but in most cases you can hear both candidates. Early voting begins June 29, so remind yourself of who’s on your ballot and start making up your mind.

Hegar and West to debate

May 16th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

I know it hasn’t gotten much attention lately, but the primary runoffs are coming up, and the biggest choice you’ll have to make is in the Senate race. You’ll get to hear from the candidates in an online debate on June 2.

MJ Hegar

The Democrats in the runoff race to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn are set to face off in a debate next month, the Texas Democratic party announced on Monday.

The first debate in the runoff between former Air Force pilot MJ Hegar and longtime state Sen. Royce West is set for June 2 at 7 p.m. The debate will air on Nexstar stations across the state, including Houston’s KIAH and San Antonio’s KSAT, and will be streamed online.

“To take back our state, Democrats must get our vision for the future to as many Texans as possible and showcase our candidates on as many platforms as possible,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement. “There is no Texas race bigger than the U.S. Senate race. MJ Hegar and Royce West represent the best of what Texas has to offer. This debate presents an opportunity for them to discuss our ideas and solutions to the challenges Texans face every single day.”

[…]

The runoff election, which was initially set for later this month, was pushed back until July 14 because of the coronavirus outbreak.

The Texas Signal adds a bit more:

Sen. Royce West

Texas Democrats announced today that they will be hosting a virtual Senate primary debate featuring candidates MJ Hegar and Royce West. This is the only debate scheduled, thus far, ahead of the July 14 runoff election.

In a Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler poll from April, Hegar holds a double-digit lead over West. More than 40 percent of potential Democratic Primary voters still remain undecided.

[…]

According to KXAN, the host of the June debate, the event will consist of questions from moderators, other state journalists, and viewers. Viewers can submit questions using the hashtag #txsendebate on social media and email at [email protected]

The debate will be held on June 2, at 7 p.m. CST.

Here’s that KXAN story, which among other things shows where you can watch. In Houston, it will be on KIAH, the CW station, and also on their website. Click over to see where you can watch.

On a side note, I’m not paying a whole lot of attention to who is endorsing whom in the runoff. Both candidates are fine by me, but if this matters to you, then go check that out. Early voting now begins in June 29, so let’s start getting back in the zone.

UT-Tyler/DMN: Trump 43, Biden 43

May 5th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

New day, new poll.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden are in a dead heat in the race for Texas, signaling that the Lone Star State is evolving into a presidential battleground.

A new Dallas Morning News/University of Texas at Tyler poll shows that Trump and Biden are backed by 43% of poll respondents, with 5% opting for “other” candidates and only 9% undecided. Trump’s overall approval rating was 45%.

A February survey had Trump with a one-point lead over Biden, with 11% choosing neither.

The poll of 1,183 registered voters was conducted April 18-27 with a margin of error of +/- 2.85 percentage points. The survey asked additional questions of 447 registered voters who indicated they voted in the Democratic primary, with a margin of error of +/- 4.64%.

[…]

The poll also revealed that the coronavirus pandemic has had a pronounced impact on Texas politics, with state and local leaders trusted more than President Trump. The president’s handling of the crisis is approved by 43% of respondents, while 44% disapproved. Respondents were evenly split — 45% to 45% — on whether they trusted Trump to keep them safe.

Meanwhile, the fight over the coronavirus is obscuring the U.S. Senate race. In the Democratic primary, Air Force combat veteran MJ Hegar of Round Rock has a 32% to 16% lead over state Sen. Royce West of Dallas. But just as in other surveys, there’s a large group of undecided voters.

Incumbent Republican John Cornyn leads both Democrats by double digits in head-to-head matchups.

Elsewhere, poll respondents favored Democrats over Republicans in the rumble for the Texas House, a body the GOP has controlled since 2003.

And for the upcoming runoff elections, most voters feel comfortable voting at polling places, but the majority of respondents also favored having the option to vote by mail.

There were actually two UT-Tyler polls published in February, one of which was conducted in late January and one of which was just before the primary (scroll down, it’s the third poll cited). They publish registered voter and likely voter samples for each poll, which can make the reporting on them, especially comparison reporting, a bit tricky.

As is usually the case, the DMN story is out ahead of the poll data being published on the UT-Tyler Center for Opinion Research page, so there’s only so much I can tell you that isn’t in the article. The numbers for both Biden and Trump are down a bit from those earlier polls, which may just be a fluke of the sample or may indicate a higher level of uncertainty at this weird time. I wouldn’t spend too much time thinking about it – it’s just one result, as we like to say – but it’s worth noting in case we see more like it.

The primary runoff poll between MJ Hegar and Royce West is also the first we’ve seen so far, as is this:

For the general election, Republican Cornyn leads Hegar and West by similar margins. The longtime incumbent is ahead of Hegar 37% to 24% and West 35% to 24%. For both head-to-head matchups, 34% of voters were undecided.

[…]

Perhaps the most competitive contests on November’s general election ballot will be for the Texas House. Republicans hold a nine-seat majority, which Democrats hope to topple.

As it did in February, the survey found that most respondents slighted trusted Democrats over Republicans to lead the House.

Those are large undecided numbers in the Senate race, and the lack of support for either Hegar or West is reflected in the fact that even most Democrats had no opinion. (The full poll data is not available as of this writing, but there were a few tables in the DMN article, including one for this race.) I believe Cornyn is leading this race, and I believe he may outperform Trump in November, but if Biden is even with or leading Trump, and if the generic State House ballot leans Dem, that’s going to be a problem for him.

One more thing:

Eighty-five percent of those polled intended to vote in the runoff election. The poll found that 51% of Texans were comfortable with voting in person, while 33% were uncomfortable.

Only 17% wanted to vote in person on Election Day, and 35% didn’t mind voting in person at an early voting location.

The majority of those polled (37%) preferred to vote by mail. Most Texans, even those who wanted to vote in person, support an expansion of vote-by-mail in Texas.

The current law states that only residents over 65, voters who are ill, out of town or in prison can vote with an absentee or mail ballot.

The poll found that 58% of Texans would allow residents to vote by mail without giving an excuse, and 50% would allow the activity for all elections. On that question, 22% opposed mail-in ballot expansion and 20% were neutral. Of those opposed to expanding mail-in voting, 95% were worried about election fraud.

The partisan breakdown given for the question “Do you support Texas revising its election laws to allow any registered voter to mail in a ballot without an excuse?” was Dem 76% support, 5% oppose, Independent 57% support, 18% oppose, Republican 42% support, 41% oppose. (Note that the options included “Strongly Support”, “Support”, “Neutral”, “Oppose”, and “Strongly Oppose” – I combined the two “support” and “oppose” responses in my numbers.) I expect that whatever the actual level of Republican support is for these things, the Republican politicians who are fiercely opposing any expansion of vote by mail will not suffer for it. The rank and file will ultimately follow their leaders on this.

April 2020 campaign finance reports: Congress

Apr 27th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Hey, remember politics? You know, races and finance reports and stuff like that? Yeah, it’s still happening, weird as that may seem right now. As we are well into April, the Q1 Congressional finance reports for 2020 are in, and thankfully for me the number of candidates whose reports I need to review is much smaller. Let’s have a look. The January 2019 roundup is here, which closed out the 2017-18 election cycle, the April 2019 report is here, the July 2019 report is here, the October 2019 report is here, and the January 2020 report is here. For comparison, the January 2018 report is here and the April 2018 report is here. The FEC summary page for Congress is here and for the Senate is here.

MJ Hegar – Senate
Royce West – Senate

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Colin Allred – CD32

Hank Gilbert – CD01
Sima Ladjevardian – CD02
Sean McCaffity – CD03
Lulu Seikaly – CD03
Stephen Daniel – CD06
Elizabeth Hernandez – CD08
Mike Siegel – CD10
Pritesh Gandhi – CD10
Adrienne Bell – CD14
Rick Kennedy – CD17
David Jaramillo – CD17
Wendy Davis – CD21
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Kim Olson – CD24
Candace Valenzuela – CD24
Julie Oliver – CD25
Carol Ianuzzi – CD26
Christine Eady Mann – CD31
Donna Imam – CD31


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   Hegar         4,830,038  3,781,873        0  1,095,647
Sen   West          1,363,387  1,242,563  242,162    242,162

07    Fletcher      3,375,004    723,963        0  2,693,107
32    Allred        2,370,113    555,774        0  1,917,783  

01    Gilbert         190,941     44,804   50,000    146,136
02    Ladjevardian  1,133,296    930,810   50,000    202,485
03    McCaffity       387,506    313,098        0     74,407
03    Seikaly         252,591    232,038    3,000     20,552
06    Daniel          196,861    187,942    7,500      8,918
08    Hernandez
10    Siegel          664,291    542,317   10,000    125,464
10    Gandhi        1,011,877    948,927        0     62,949
14    Bell             84,724     71,740        0     16,061
17    Kennedy          65,908     59,041   11,953      8,294
17    Jaramillo        20,681     17,864        0      2,816
21    Davis         3,047,765  1,094,009        0  1,953,755
22    Kulkarni      1,564,263  1,226,088        0    365,942
23    Ortiz Jones   3,310,358  1,024,041    3,024  2,377,835
24    Olson         1,231,183  1,028,804   20,000    202,378
24    Valenzuela      647,105    506,708        0    140,397
25    Oliver          464,623    427,972    2,644     36,651
26    Ianuzzi          82,254     63,909   47,032     18,344
31    Mann            277,815    278,885   44,500        367
31    Imam            363,194    223,126  100,000    140,068

Some real separation in the Senate race, as MJ Hegar approaches five million total raised. She is in a much stronger position for the runoff than Royce West, though there’s still time for him to raise a few bucks. Hegar has a long way to go to be on par with John Cornyn, but she’s at least putting herself into “reasonably viable for a statewide candidate” range. For what it’s worth, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez and Amanda Edwards did eventually top a million dollars raised, and in the end they both spent nearly all of it. I still don’t know why Tzintzún Ramirez was unable to do better in this department, but that’s water under the bridge now.

As was the case in 2018, everyone in all of the interesting races is raising a ton of money. The two incumbents are doing what they should be doing. Six challenger candidates have now topped a million dollars raised, with Wendy Davis and Gina Ortiz Jones both over three million. Pritesh Gandhi and Kim Olson still have to make it through the July runoff, by which time their runoff opponents – Mike Siegel and Candace Valenzuela – may have also topped that mark. Of course, right now is kind of a lousy time to be raising money, so hold that thought for a minute. We’re at a point where it’s basically routine for everyone to pile up big money-raised numbers, so let me note that the thing that stands out here is the amount that some of these candidates have spent. It’s more than a little mind-boggling that four candidates so far have spent over a million bucks, and some people, even the big moneybags, have left themselves a bit bereft in the cash-on-hand department. I’m glad to see both CD31 candidates finally start to get on the board, but that’s quite the hole Christine Eady Mann left herself in cash-wise. I’m going to do a separate post with a direct comparison to April 2018 later, but let’s put a pin in that. We don’t know what the fundraising environment is going to be like over the next few months. Dems benefited from a lot of Congressional cash in 2018. We had every reason to believe the same thing would happen this year as of the last report, but that was in the Before Times. Now, who knows?

We can take a little peek at how the fundraising environment may be. Everyone had to report their totals as of February 22 as well, thanks to the March primary. So here’s a look at how the Raised totals varied from January to April:


Dist Candidate         Jan01      Feb22      Apr01
==================================================
Sen  Hegar         3,225,842  3,864,201  4,830,038
Sen  West            956,593  1,134,953  1,363,387

07   Fletcher      2,339,444  2,481,687  3,375,004
32   Allred        2,370,113  2,577,348  2,370,113

02   Ladjevardian    407,781    660,853  1,133,296
03   McCaffity       267,288    308,240    387,506
03   Seikaly         109,870    173,031    252,591
06   Daniel          148,655    179,330    196,861
10   Siegel          451,917    527,802    664,291
10   Gandhi          786,107    869,277  1,011,877
21   Davis         1,850,589  2,186,063  3,047,765
22   Kulkarni      1,149,783  1,246,943  1,564,263
23   Ortiz Jones   2,481,192  2,684,696  3,310,358
24   Olson           861,905    967,032  1,231,183
24   Valenzuela      333,007    442,351    647,105
25   Oliver          325,091    387,523    464,623
31   Mann            170,759    198,783    277,815

Donna Imam did not have a February 22 total when I went looking for these numbers, so I omitted her from this table. Honestly, it doesn’t look like there was much of a slowdown in March, which is what I had been afraid of. Hell, Wendy Davis raised nearly a million bucks just in the last five weeks of the period. With the primaries over, the federal contribution limits get reset, so I think Davis and at least a couple other candidates who emerged victorious reaped a benefit from becoming the official nominee. Certainly Sima Ladjevardian and Gina Ortiz Jones took in a decent haul in the latter half of the filing period. Julie Oliver and Stephen Daniel did not get such a boost, however. I don’t have much more to say about this, I was just curious about how this went. We’ll see what the next quarter brings. As always, let me know what you think.

So about that Senate race

Apr 17th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

I mostly agree with this.

MJ Hegar

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s re-election campaign should be his race to lose.

The coronavirus outbreak, by most measures, has given Cornyn an even bigger advantage as he runs for a fourth term. The Texas Republican is sitting on $12 million with ads already on TV as his challengers campaign online against each other in a runoff election that was delayed six weeks by the pandemic.

Democrats MJ Hegar and Royce West are competing for attention with the biggest public health crisis in a century as they prepare for the July 14 election. The winner will get less than four months of head-to-head campaigning against Cornyn.

The Democrats had hoped to ride the momentum from Beto O’Rourke’s narrow loss to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz two years ago.

Sen. Royce West

Instead, “Sen. Cornyn is outpacing the Democrats on name identification, fundraising, and base support,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political scientist. “Democrats are in a holding pattern, stalling their momentum when it was needed to ramp up support. Given where things are, it would take Beto-level enthusiasm to capture Texans’ attention, which is on anything but politics for the moment.”

But Cornyn’s opponents see an opening.

They are now doing all they can to tie Cornyn to the Trump administration’s slow response to the outbreak and to hammer him over health care, which their party believes is a winning issue for Democrats nationally — but especially against the Texas Republican, who played a crucial role in efforts to scrap the Affordable Care Act.

They say Cornyn has helped them make their case by tweeting pictures of Corona beer, saying it will be a “piece of cake” to beat the virus and blaming Chinese culture for COVID-19.

“I think we have more opportunity to show people the contrast of the type of leadership they can see from John Cornyn in a crisis, which is tweeting out pictures of beer in rocks glasses,” said MJ Hegar, a former Air Force pilot vying to challenge Cornyn. “Now more than ever, we’re seeing the importance that everyone have access to health care. We’re seeing how painful a health care model tied to your employment is when we have record unemployment numbers.”

Cornyn has the big advantages in fundraising and name ID as noted, and now is a lousy time for the two Dems remaining in the race to try to catch up on them. I mean, just look back at what I’ve been writing about for the past three or four weeks. There’s nothing to be said about most 2020 races right now, in part because everyone is focused on the pandemic, and in part because there’s not much the candidates themselves can do to make news, at least in a good way. The main potential for an equalizer is of course Donald Trump. His numbers have not been great in Texas, and if he slips into negative territory here – not just in approval ratings, but in actual head-to-head polling numbers – that will be a boost for the Dem and a drag on Cornyn. It’s too early to say what might happen, and at this point we have no idea how the 2020 election will be conducted and how that might affect things. Cornyn was always the favorite and he remains the favorite. The biggest risk to him is the one thing he cannot control, the virus and the President’s handling of it. We’ll see where we stand when things get back to something resembling normal.

Primary precinct analysis: Everyone did something in the Senate primary

Mar 16th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

MJ Hegar

So while we wait for actual precinct data from the primary, I thought I’d take a look at some county-level data from the non-Presidential races, as they have the county-by-county breakdown on the SOS election night pages. The US Senate primary, with its twelve candidates overall and five topping ten percent seemed like a good spot to do a deeper dive. The main problem is just presenting that much data, as my usual style of doing a table of numbers isn’t going to work well – it’ll be much too crowded and will be hard to spot the interesting bits. So what I thought I’d try was to focus on the counties with the most voters, and to see who did the best in them. I put everything in a spreadsheet, and sorted by total number of voters for each county. I settled on the top thirty to report on, which gave me a good geographic spread and included some big counties that don’t have many Democrats and some smaller counties where nearly everyone voted Democratic. From there, I pulled out the five top performers in each county, to see what story that could tell me.

Rather than try to present that in some form of table here, which would have taken a lot of tedious text formatting on my part, I just put the result into its own spreadsheet, which you can see here. For each of these counties, I reported the top five candidates and gave their vote totals and vote percentage. The top five performers change from one county to the next, so the five selected are listed above each county’s numbers. I think it makes sense, but have a look and let me know if it’s confusing. I’m now going to summarize what I found from this exercise.

MJ Hegar finished first 15 times and second seven times. Only in Webb and Maverick counties did she not finish in the top five. She was especially strong in the Central Texas area as expected, but also finished first in places like Harris, Collin, Denton, Fort Bend, and Montgomery. To me, her performance versus everyone else’s is the difference between having a campaign that has sufficient funding to actually do advertising and other voter outreach, and not having it.

Sen. Royce West

Royce West finished first five times and second four times. He finished outside the top five ten times, including in such large counties as Bexar and El Paso. He won big in Dallas and won Tarrant, but he trailed Hegar in Collin and Denton and finished fifth in Travis. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what his path to winning the runoff is.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez had five firsts (Bexar, El Paso, Cameron, Nueces, Brazos) and five seconds (Travis, Webb, Guadalupe, Maverick, Bastrop), but finished outside the top five ten times, including in places like Harris and Hidalgo where you’d think she’d have done better. She finished behind Sema Hernandez at least nine times, and behind Annie Garcia at least ten times. (I say “at least” because there were a few instances in which neither was in the top five, and I didn’t go back to see where they fell.) I thought Tzintzún Ramirez had the potential to be a force, and I still hope she runs for something in the future, but someone who can’t consistently top no-money, no-organization candidates like those two is not exactly encouraging. Tzintzún Ramirez was the Bernie candidate, and you have to ask what good that did her. Actually, if you’re a Bernie person, you really should ask why it is that the larger Bernie movement didn’t provide any noticeable fundraising support for her, and clearly didn’t give her much of a boost in the polls. If you want to see candidates like that actually win races, you really ought to think about those questions. She has endorsed Royce West in the runoff, but I’m not sure how much that will matter.

Did I mention that Annie Garcia, a candidate who had raised less than $22K as of February 12, finished fourth in this race, ahead of people who had run and won elections before like Chris Bell and Amanda Edwards? I have to think that being called “Annie ‘Mama’ Garcia” on the ballot probably helped her in places where people didn’t know that much about the slate. It also makes me wonder why she got to be “Mama” but Carole Keeton Strayhorn didn’t get to be “Grandma”. What exactly are the rules for that, anyway? Be that as it may, Garcia won Webb, Lubbock, and Maverick counties, while finishing second in El Paso, Williamson, Cameron, Hays, and Nueces. She finished in the money in 22 of the 30 counties, more than either West or Tzintzún Ramirez. If you had bet me that a month ago, you would have won my money.

Sema Hernandez won Hidalgo County and Chris Bell won Brazoria, so there are all your first place winners. Hernandez, for those few people who insisted her showing in 2018 made her a legitimate candidate this time around despite raising even less money than Garcia and failing to file any finance reports until Q3 this year, shows up in 18 of these 30 counties, but was mostly shut out of the top ten, finishing fifth in Harris, fifth in Bexar, and fourth in El Paso, failing to break ten percent in any of them. She did finish second in Brazoria County, while Bell was runnerup in Harris, Fort Bend, Galveston, and Lubbock. Amanda Edwards (Montgomery, Bell, Comal) and Michael Cooper (Jefferson) also had second place finishes. Edwards had ten third-place finishes, three fourths, and four fifths, while Cooper also finished fourth in Webb and Maverick, and fifth in Smith.

So that’s six candidates with at least one first place finish, and eight with at least one first or second place finish. Believe it or not, the other four candidates – go ahead, name them right now, I double dog dare you – also had at least one top five finish:

Victor Harris – Hidalgo County, third
Adrian Ocegueda – Cameron County, fifth
D.R. Hunter – Nueces County, fifth
Jack Daniel Foster – Maverick County, fifth

Let’s just say we’ll probably never have an election quite like this one again. I’ll have more of this analysis/trivia for you in the coming days. I’m still waiting for a canvass from Harris County.

Runoff roundup

Mar 7th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Here, as best as I can determine, are the runoffs of interest for May:

US Senate – MJ Hegar versus Royce West

CD02 – Sima Ladjevardian versus Elisa Cardnell
CD03 – Lulu Seikaly versus Sean McCaffity
CD10 – Mike Siegel versus Pritesh Gandhi
CD17 – Rick Kennedy versus David Jaramillo (D), Pete Sessions versus Renee Swann (R)
CD22 – Troy Nehls versus Kathaleen Wall (R)
CD23 – Tony Gonzales versus Raul Reyes (R)
CD24 – Kim Olson versus Candace Valenzuela
CD31 – Christine Eady Mann versus Donna Imam

Note that Wendy Davis (CD21), Sri Kulkarni (CD22), Gina Ortiz Jones (CD23), and on the Republican side Wesley Hunt (CD07) all won outright. I skipped a couple of Republican runoffs in safe D districts, because life is short.

Railroad Commissioner – Chrysta Castaneda versus Roberto Alonzo

SBOE5 – Robert Morrow versus Lani Popp (R, wackadoo versus what passes for normal)
SBOE6 – Michelle Palmer versus Kimberley McLeod

SD19 – Xochil Peña Rodriguez versus Roland Gutierrez
SD27 – Eddie Lucio versus Sara Stapleton-Barrera

Didn’t mention this yesterday, but Susan Criss prevailed in SD11.

HD02 – Dan Flynn versus Bryan Slaton (R)
HD25 – Ro’Vin Garrett versus Cody Vasut (R, this is Dennis Bonnen’s old seat)
HD26 – Suleman Lalani versus Sarah DeMerchant (D), Matt Morgan versus Jacey Jetton (R)
HD45 – Carrie Isaac versus Kent Wymore (R)
HD47 – Jennifer Fleck versus Don Zimmerman (R)
HD59 – Shelby Slawson versus JD Sheffield (R)
HD60 – Jon Francis versus Glenn Rogers (R)
HD67 – Tom Adair versus Lorenzo Sanchez
HD100 – Lorraine Birabil versus Jasmine Crockett
HD119 – Liz Campos versus Jennifer Ramos
HD138 – Akilah Bacy versus Jenifer Pool
HD142 – Harold Dutton versus Jerry Davis
HD148 – Anna Eastman versus Penny Shaw

Note that in that HD47 primary, one (1) vote separates second and third place, according to the Travis County Clerk. I assume there will be a recount, and even before then late-arriving mail ballots could change this. In the event of an actual tie, there will be a coin flip to determine who goes to the runoff. I’m rooting so hard for that outcome, you guys.

In the HD67 primary, 63 votes separate Lorenzo Sanchez and Rocio Gosewehr Hernandez, or 0.3 percentage points. I would expect a recount there as well, but with a far lesser chance of affecting the outcome.

Lorraine Birabil was the winner of the special election in HD100 to fill out the unexpired term of Eric Johnson, who is now Mayor of Dallas. Anna Eastman was the winner of the special election in HD148 to succeed Jessica Farrar.

14th Court of Appeals, Place 7 – Tamika Craft versus Cheri Thomas

164th District Court – Cheryl Elliott Thornton versus Alex Smoots-Thomas
339th Criminal Court – Te’iva Bell versus Candance White

County Commissioner, Precinct 3 – Diana Martinez Alexander versus Michael Moore

Moore was leading most of the night, but Alexander caught and passed him as final results came in. I don’t care to go through the various Constable and JP races, but the good Jerry Garcia was leading problematic incumbent Chris Diaz going into the Precinct 2 Constable runoff.

Whatever turnout there will be in the runoffs will be driven primarily by the Dem Senate race and the Congressional races on both sides. Won’t be much, but it ought to be a bit more than usual, and surely more on the D side if there were no Senate runoff.

It’s Hegar versus West for the Senate nomination

Mar 5th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The last undetermined race on the Dem side has an answer.

MJ Hegar

MJ Hegar and Royce West are advancing to a runoff for the Democratic nomination to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Hegar, the former Air Force helicopter pilot backed by national Democrats, clearly established herself as the leading vote recipient Tuesday night in the 12-way primary. However, it was not clear until Wednesday afternoon that West, the Dallas state senator, was the runner-up. With almost all polling locations reporting, Hegar had 22% of the vote and West 14.5%.

“I believe we are well-positioned to win the runoff,” West said in a statement thanking his competitors for their ideas and effort. “The runoff is a brand new day.”

West was closely followed in the results by progressive organizer Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, who got 13.2% and conceded late Wednesday afternoon.

Sen. Royce West

“This campaign was consistently underestimated,” Tzintzún Ramirez said in a statement. “I ran as a progressive, as a Latina, and as a working mom. We ran this campaign unapologetically, and we all have so much to be proud of for what we’ve accomplished.”

[…]

Hegar leaned hard on her background as a military hero and working mom, presenting herself as the “badass” best suited to go toe to toe with Cornyn. Along the way, she resisted some of the more liberal positions of her primary competitors.

West ran on his 27 years of experience in the Texas Senate, and he had the support of most of his Democratic colleagues in the Legislature. He has said Texas needs “an experienced leader to stand up to” President Donald Trump.

The SOS results page took a long time getting numbers from Dallas County, which is why this race took so long to clarify. West won big in his home county, and it seemed like there were other late-arriving returns that favored him – I watched throughout the day yesterday and saw what had once been a decent sized lead for Tzintzún Ramirez slowly drain away. Runoffs are low-turnout affairs, but if Dallas and the surrounding area comes out for West in May, he can win.

As for Tzintzún Ramirez, she conceded on Twitter late in the day Wednesday. She was a late entrant into a race that already had four experienced candidates, but she acquitted herself well and I hope to see her take another run at something. There’s an entire statewide slate to fill up in 2022, and the first election after redistricting always offers opportunities.

Overall, I think Hegar is the stronger candidate for November, and I hope to see her pick up her fundraising even more going forward. I hope the DSCC’s backing is more than just talk, because we’re going to need that in November, no matter how competitive the state may be at the Presidential level. But she has to win in May first, and West will be a formidable challenge. I hope they both hit the ground running for overtime. The Chron and the Dallas Observer have 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.

Six questions for today’s voting

Mar 3rd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

In some semblance of an order…

1. How will the early vote differ from the Tuesday vote? I’m mostly talking about the Presidential race here. We strongly suspect today will be a very big day at the ballot box, in part because people have been waiting, to see what the latest developments have been, before deciding, You know, so they don’t accidentally vote for a candidate who has dropped out, or one who seems unlikely to get any delegates. Bernie has the poll surge, Biden has the South Carolina surge, which has earned him a number of late endorsements. Which will have the greater effect?

2. Who finishes second in the Senate primary? Every single poll has MJ Hegar in the lead, sometimes by a few points, sometimes by a significant margin, with every other candidate in a pack after her. None of the other candidates has raised much money, and in each of the recent polls at least one of the no-money-at-all candidates has been up in the high single digits, ahead of at least one candidate who has an actual campaign. If I had to guess I’d say Royce West and Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez have the edge for the second runoff slot, but in a race with 12 candidates and where fifteen percent might be enough to finish second, who knows?

3. What surprises are out there? Here I’m mostly thinking of the Congressional primaries for the DCCC-targeted seats where there’s one candidate with a lot more money than the others: CD02, CD21, CD22, CD23, and CD24. Do the candidates with the most money win, or at least lead the pack, or does that matter less in a year where turnout is super high and voters may not know as much about the non-Presidential candidates?

4. Do we have to have the “insurgents versus establishment” debate again? There are a few races where that’s on the menu, at least in a high profile way. I’ll check back on that sometime after tomorrow, I don’t feel like it right now.

5. How random is the bottom of the ballot? We have a lot of judicial races in Harris County, and in the primaries where you don’t have a party label to give you some guidance, we have a lot of voters who know diddly squat about a lot of these candidates. Here in Harris County, we have a number of challengers to sitting District Court judges, some of whom are more serious than others (the same can be said about the incumbents). Some candidates have racked up the endorsements and have been very visible, others not so much. Will there be any correlation between those who worked at is and those who won? History says at best a weak link, but maybe this year will be different.

6. Will the Republicans succeed at their diversity effort? They’d sure like to say they were successful. Maybe that’s good enough.

Four more polls say Bernie is leading in Texas

Mar 3rd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

From Latino Decisions:

A new poll of Texas voters published Friday by Univision shows Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with a 6-point lead over his rivals in the crucial Super Tuesday state, particularly among Latino voters.

The poll, conducted by polling firm Latino Decisions for Univision and the University of Houston’s Center for Mexican American Studies, shows 26 percent of Texans support Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary, while former Vice President Joe Biden and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg are tied in second place with 20 percent support each.

A poll conducted by the same firm in September showed Sanders at 13 percent support.

No other candidate breaks the 15 percent threshold required to win delegates in the Texas primary taking place on Tuesday.

The poll also focused on Latino voters in Texas, a group that Sanders leads with 31 percent support, to Bloomberg’s 23 percent and Biden’s 19 percent.

[…]

According to the poll, President Trump and Sanders are in a dead heat in Texas in a general election match-up, with the support of 45 percent of respondents each.

Bloomberg comes in slightly ahead against Trump with 44 percent support to 43 percent.

Biden also matches up competitively with the president, with 43 percent support for Biden against 46 percent for Trump.

Warren, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) all trail Trump by a margin wider than the poll’s margin of error.

See here for the September Latino Decisions poll, and here for the poll data. Trump gets a pretty decent 52-48 approval rating, including 38% approval from Latinos and 19% approval from African-Americans, both of which seem high to me. Regardless of what I think, that goes along with overall better re-elect numbers in Texas for Trump, who trailed a generic Democrat 42-47 in September.

Also in this poll, way down on the last page of the data file, is a question for the Senate primary. MJ Hegar has 20%, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez and Royce West have 10%, Chris Bell and Michael Cooper have 8%, Amanda Edwards and Annie Garcia have 6%, and Sema Hernandez has 5%. There’s no head-to-head matchup, but on page 5, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn leads a generic Democrat 43-41.

From NBC News/Marist:

Bernie Sanders holds a double-digit lead over his closest Democratic rival in Texas, while he’s essentially tied with Joe Biden in North Carolina, according to a pair of NBC News/Marist polls of these two key Super Tuesday states taken before Biden’s convincing victory in South Carolina.

In Texas, which will award a total of 228 pledged delegates in the Democratic contest on March 3, Sanders gets the support of 34 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, and Biden gets 19 percent.

They’re followed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at 15 percent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., at 10 percent, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 8 percent and Sen. Amy Klobuchar at 3 percent.

[…]

“North Carolina is a tossup between Sanders and Biden for Super Tuesday,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted these surveys for NBC News.

But when it comes to Texas, Miringoff adds, “Sanders is positioned to carry the state, although nearly one in four likely voters is still on the fence.”

The polls were conducted Feb. 23-27, before Biden’s lopsided victory Saturday in the South Carolina primary.

[…]

Under the Democratic Party’s delegate-allocation rules, a candidate who doesn’t get at least 15 percent — statewide and in congressional or state Senate districts (for Texas) — doesn’t qualify for delegates to take to the Democratic convention in Milwaukee.

As in past primaries and polling, Sanders overperforms in these two states among likely Democratic primary voters under the age of 45, self-described progressives, and Latinos.

Biden, meanwhile, does the best among likely Democratic primary voters over 45, self-described moderates, and African Americans.

The poll data is here, and I’ll get back to that in a minute. I’m not aware of a previous NBC/Marist poll of Texas. Three things to keep in mind for this one: One, lots of people haven’t voted yet, so the situation remains fluid. Two, most of the people who have voted so far (see page 6) are 50 and over. And three, Pete Buttigieg and now Amy Klobuchar have suspended their campaigns, with the latter endorsing Biden, which means at least some of their voters will move on to another candidate. Note I am not making any statements about how any of these factors may affect things today, I am just noting them for the record. I think they combine to be more an element of chaos and unpredictability than any one direction.

As for the data, Trump gets a 46-44 approval rating among all adults, and a 49-44 rating among registered voters. (Have I mentioned that registering people to vote for this election is A Good Thing To Do?) He led both Sanders and Biden 49-45 among registered voters, which is basically a recapitulation of the approval rating. NBC/Marist also polled the Senate primary, and gave two numbers, for “Potential Dem primary voters” and “Likely Dem primary voters”. In the former, MJ Hegar led with 13%, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez and Annie Garcia each had 8%, Royce West had 7%, and no one else had more than 5%. Among the “likely” primary voters, Hegar was at 16%, with Tzintzún Ramirez at 9%, West at 8%, Garcia at 7%, and no one else above 5%.

From UT-Tyler/DMN:

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has roared into the lead in Texas in the Democratic presidential race, with Mike Bloomberg and Joe Biden locked in a battle for second, a new Dallas Morning News-University of Texas at Tyler poll has found.

Sanders, who trailed Biden among Hispanics in the same survey late last month, has vaulted to a 42% to 18% lead over the former vice president among Latino Democrats and Latino independents who lean Democratic, according to the poll. And unlike in previous UT Tyler polls, in which Sanders trailed Biden, he now leads among all Democrats, with 29%. Bloomberg has 21%, while Biden, in third, draws the support of 19%.

The margin of error for the latest poll, conducted Feb. 17-26, is plus or minus 4.05 percentage points for the 586 likely voters who indicated they would vote in the Democratic primary. For all 1,221 registered voters surveyed, it’s plus or minus 2.8 points.

In the earlier poll, Bloomberg was a distant fourth among Hispanics, with only 12% naming him as their first choice in the state’s Super Tuesday primary. But in the latest survey, the former New York City mayor is running second among Hispanics, with 20% support.

Among white voters, Sanders and Bloomberg overtook and now lead Biden. White Democrats and independents who lean Democratic broke 24% for Sanders, 23% for Bloomberg and 15% for Biden. In the earlier poll, Biden had 27%.

[…]

For Trump, the poll brings mixed messages from the Lone Star State. The all but certain Republican nominee leads in all six of the November matchups the poll tested — with Biden, Bloomberg and Sanders the most competitive Democrats.

All trailed the incumbent Republican by 1 percentage point, 44% to 45%, well within the margin of error, the poll found. Buttigieg was 4 percentage points behind Trump (41% to 45%); Klobuchar, 7 behind (38% to 45%); and Warren, 10 down (37% to 47%).

The UT-Tyler political science page is here, and as of Monday morning they didn’t have a link to the latest poll data. Their January poll was easily Biden’s best showing in Texas, so this would be a huge swing and a big blow to the foundation of the claim that Biden and Bernie are in a tight race. That said, this poll was conducted around the time of the Nevada caucus, and the story notes that Bernie got a big bump from that, and before the South Carolina primary. The head pollster notes in the story that (as with the NBC/Marist result), Bernie’s support mostly comes from younger voters who as of the time of the poll had not actually voted. In other words, today’s turnout really matters.

And yes, they polled the Senate race, too.

Barring a fluke, MJ Hegar has likely secured a spot in the Democratic runoff to challenge Republican incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. Her superior fundraising and competent campaign structure — compared to her primary rivals — has slowly but certainly given her an edge over the 11 other contenders in the contest.

While it’s easy to forecast Hegar as the front-runner, picking the candidate that will join her in the primary’s overtime period is a roll of the dice. An argument can be made for all of the other four major contenders, state Sen. Royce West of Dallas, Austin-based labor activist Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, former Houston council member Amanda Edwards and former U.S. Rep. Chris Bell of Houston, to make the expected runoff.

A new poll by The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler shows Hegar comfortably out front with 15% support. The rest are in a close fight for second place, with Bell, Tzintzún Ramirez and West at 7% each. Edwards, Houston lawyer Annie Garcia and Pasadena activist Sema Hernandez had 4% support.

Cornyn is expected to cruise to victory in the GOP primary over four challengers.

It’s as clear as it ever was.

Finally, from Emerson College:

A new Emerson College/Nexstar poll of Texas finds Senator Bernie Sanders leading with 31% of the vote. Former VP Joe Biden is next at 26% followed by former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg at 16%, Senator Elizabeth Warren at 14%, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 5%, Senator Amy Klobuchar at 4%, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard at 3%, and Businessman Tom Steyer at 2%.

Compared to the last Emerson College poll of Texas in August, Sanders gained 15 points, Biden dropped two points, Warren fell three points, Klobuchar is up four points, and Gabbard moved up two points. Bloomberg had not announced his candidacy at the time of the previous poll.

Sanders’ strength continues to be among younger voters, as he garners 46% support from voters under the age of 50. Warren follows him among those voters with 15%, Bloomberg is at 13% and Biden is at 12% among under 50 voters. Biden has strong support from voters 50 and over with 40% support. Following him is Bloomberg with 20%, Sanders with 14%, and Warren with 13%.

Sanders does best among Hispanic or Latino voters, with 48% support. Biden follows at 17%, Bloomberg is at 15%, and Warren is at 13% among Hispanics. Sanders holds a much smaller lead among white voters with 26%, followed by Biden with 24%, Bloomberg with 17%, and Warren with 15%. Biden performs the strongest with African-American voters at 43% support. Following him is Sanders at 19%, Bloomberg at 14%, and Warren at 11%.

[…]

The plurality of Texas Democratic primary voters (39%) are undecided on who they will vote for this week in the primary election for the Democratic US Senate nomination. Sixteen percent (16%) plan to support MJ Hegar, 11% support Royce West, 8% Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, 6% Chris Bell and 5% Cooper. All other candidates were under 5%.

The August Emerson poll was of all voters, while this one is of “very likely Democratic primary voters” only, so there are no head-to-heads or approval numbers. The writeup notes that Biden is leading among those who decided more recently, with 35% to Bernie’s 23%, so I refer you again to the likely size of the electorate voting today. As for the Senate poll, it’s in line with the other three. I came by this last poll via a Chron story with the headline “Day before election, many Texans still undecided on Democratic Senate primary, poll says”, and my first reaction was “WHICH POLL?!?!?”, which probably says more about me than anything else. If there are any more polls out there, it’s too late and I don’t want to know about them.

Royce West

Key takeaways

Calendar

Search

Categories

Archives

My linkage

Polling Texas 2020

Polling Texas 2018

Polling Texas 2016

Polling Texas 2014

Polling Texas 2012

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Tags

Blogroll

Utilities

Categories

Archives

Calendar

Pages

Meta