Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

First post-primary poll

Posted on March 10, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Rep. James Talarico

A PPP poll commissioned by Senate Majority PAC found “no meaningful difference in electability” between Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a general election matchup against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.

It’s notable to us that Senate Democrats are pushing this narrative, given Democrats have spent much of this year praying for Paxton to advance to the general. Conventional wisdom was that the attorney general’s scandals — Paxton was impeached in 2023 and his ex-wife has accused him of adultery — would make him more vulnerable than Cornyn to an upset.

The polling found Talarico leading Cornyn 44%-43% and Talarico leading Paxton 47%-45%. We’ll note these results are within the 4.1% margin of error and there’s a relatively small sample size of 576 Texas voters. The poll was conducted immediately after Tuesday’s primary from March 4-5.

Talarico has consistently said he views Paxton and Cornyn as equally vulnerable to a general election upset.

We don’t normally run polls like this. But PPP, to its credit, was accurate in its polling of the Texas Senate Democratic primary. The last PPP poll before the primary had Talarico leading Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) 48%-42%. Talarico ended up winning the election 52%-46%.

You can see the polling memo here but it doesn’t tell you much that the story didn’t say. We talked a lot about how the limited polling data we had during the primary showed James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett doing about as well against any of the Republicans; in other words, that neither Dem could claim to be “more electable” based on the data we had so far. They also trailed against all three of the Republicans that were included, and while the margins were small they were always there. This is the first poll I’ve seen that had a Democrat in the lead. That’s a big deal for obvious reasons, not the least of which being that Beto only led Cruz in one poll that I tracked back in 2018. We’ve already equaled that mark.

Now, in addition to this being just one result, it’s one that comes at a favorable time for Talarico, who’s still flush from his win last week, while Cornyn and Paxton are not only still fighting but also now engaged in Trump-endorsement-gate, which is the cause of more discourse. Republicans haven’t hit Talarico with anything substantive yet, and the fact that their primary is still contested almost certainly shaves a point or two off of each of their guys’ totals. Plus, you know, it’s just one result, and we don’t take any one result too seriously. I feel confident saying this will be a frequently-polled race, so we will see plenty more data points. I am hopeful we will soon see polling for other races, specifically Gina Hinojosa versus Greg Abbott, which may help us tell if Talarico is separating from the pack or if the wave we hope we’re getting is lifting other boats as well. For now, this is what we have. I doubt we’ll have to wait long for there to be more.

UPDATE: Later in the day, we got this:

Texas Public Opinion Research (TPOR) today released a new poll of Republican primary runoff voters ahead of the May 2026 Senate runoff between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton.

The survey of 781 likely Republican primary voters was conducted from March 7 to March 8, 2026 and has a margin of error of ±3.9 percentage points. The full topline is available here, and crosstabs are available upon request.

Key Findings

Paxton leads Cornyn 49% to 41% in the runoff — an eight-point advantage — with 11% undecided.

If Trump were to endorse Cornyn, Paxton would still lead 44% to 43%. A Trump endorsement of Paxton would widen his lead to 58% to 32%.

Wesley Hunt’s primary voters are breaking for Paxton. Among voters who supported Hunt in the primary, 48% now back Paxton, compared to 31% for Cornyn.

Paxton leads across key demographics, including men (53% to 39%), non-college-educated voters (52% to 36%), and voters under 65.

The takeaway: Ken Paxton enters the race with a clear advantage among the Republican primary runoff electorate. Hunt’s voters are breaking Paxton’s way, and even a Trump endorsement of Cornyn is not enough to put the incumbent in the lead over Paxton.

There’s more, so click over and see what else they have. Hard to see a path to victory for Cornyn if the Trump endorsement – which he still hasn’t made and may never make – isn’t enough to push him over the line. But who knows, maybe there’s room for Paxton to screw up some more.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Donald Trump, Election 2026, endorsements, Gina Hinojosa, Governor, Greg Abbott, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, polls, primaries, runoff, Senate, Texas | Leave a comment

No last minute reprieve for KP George

Posted on March 10, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Rough week for our guy KP.

Judge KP George

A Houston appeals court on Monday rejected Fort Bend County Judge KP George’s last-ditch attempt to remove the county’s top prosecutor from his money laundering case, clearing the way for his trial to begin Tuesday.

George’s trial on felony money laundering charges will move forward as scheduled before Fort Bend County Judge Maggie Jaramillo.

Special prosecutor Brian Wice described the effort as a “desperate 11th-hour Hail Mary.”

“We’re gratified but not at all surprised by how quickly the court of appeals rejected this defendant’s 11th-hour ploy to avoid answering to a Fort Bend County jury,” Wice said.

George filed the emergency requests Friday after the trial judge refused to remove Fort Bend County District Attorney Brian Middleton and his office from prosecuting the case.

The appeals court denied both petitions Monday, stating in brief rulings that George had not shown he was entitled to the extraordinary action he requested.

George had previously asked the court to step in and order the trial judge to hold a hearing on his claims that Middleton and his office should be removed from the case.

Fort Bend prosecutors opposed the request and argued George was trying to stall the trial.

Wice said in an interview Sunday that the appeal would not stop the case from moving forward.

Prosecutors also argued George could challenge the ruling through a normal appeal if he is convicted.

See here for the previous update, and here for the early morning story in the Chron about the appeal. The story doesn’t say which appeals court had this matter, but a little searching confirmed that it’s the 14th Court of Appeals. Their order was not published when I went looking, but you can find the relevant appellate documents, along with the order when it is published, here. And yes, that is the same Brian Wice who special-prosecuted Ken Paxton. Dude knows his way around cases like this. All this after KP finished last in his primary race. Tough stuff. I look forward to the start of the trial and will keep an eye on it.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged 14th Court of Appeals, Brian Middleton, Brian Wice, campaign finance reports, County Judge, Election 2026, Fort Bend County, Jared Woodfill, KP George, money laundering, Taral Patel, Texas | Leave a comment

The school district that didn’t get taken over

Posted on March 10, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Curious.

Texas declined Thursday to take over the Wichita Falls school district, which had been at risk of receiving the state’s most severe form of intervention over years of academic underperformance.

Kirby Middle School triggered the potential of a takeover. Under the state’s school accountability system, five consecutive years of unacceptable ratings at a single school allows the Texas Education Agency to replace a district’s locally elected school board with a state-selected board of managers or order the closure of the struggling campus.

The district near the Texas-Oklahoma border had already informally closed Kirby Middle School in 2024 and moved its students to Hirschi Middle School to provide them with better facilities. Facing continued pressure from the state to improve academic performance, the district adopted state math materials and outsourced operations at Hirschi to Third Future Schools, a charter school network that focuses on turning around struggling schools.

After TEA Commissioner Mike Morath visited the district last month, he and Wichita Falls ISD agreed to formally close the obsolete Kirby campus and permit Hirschi to continue its partnership with Third Future Schools. The TEA will appoint a conservator to monitor the district’s progress and advise the superintendent and school board.

“TEA will continue to tightly monitor the district’s progress through the appointment of a conservator and the other conditions that the district agreed to,” said Jake Kobersky, a spokesperson for the agency. “The district must continue to improve academic outcomes for students to prevent a campus closure or Board of Managers appointment in the future.”

The district went from 11 academically unacceptable campuses in the 2022-23 school year to five in 2024-25. Donny Lee, the superintendent of Wichita Falls, said he expects there to be no failing campuses when accountability ratings are released later this year.

With Third Future Schools in charge, students experience stricter learning environments with longer school days. They are lined up and walked to their next class, and if there’s a disruption, students are removed from the classroom, Lee said.

See here for a brief mention of WFISD’s fate as of December. Good for WFISD avoiding the takeover, even if they had to get into bed with Mike Miles’ charter school outfit to do so. Boy, having actual elected officials represent you and your views on your schools board – *fans self* – I miss that.

I do have questions about this arrangement. How long are they obligated to be yoked to Third Future? Like, if in a couple of years that school is still doing fine, do they have the option of saying “okay, we got this from here, thanks and here’s a nice parting gift”? At least under the takeover law, you know there’s an endpoint. Will they have any way to seek redress if Third Future turns out to be unable to deliver on their promise? What control, if any, do they have over how Third Future handles business at that school? Can they at some point say “let the kids get to class on their own”, or “loosen up on the discipline”, or whatever? What if Third Future is asking for above-and-beyond expenditures, or wants to go their own way on curriculum? How much of this is a true partnership, and how much of it is a takeover that’s just limited to that one school? I’m just curious.

On a side note, Fort Worth ISD’s generally well-regarded Superintendent Karen Molinar was given her walking papers by Mike Morath in advance of the formal takeover. She had a lot of political support, and for a minute or two it looked like there might be a chance she’d stay on; the Supers of the other taken-over districts have all been replaced by now. Whether that was ever a serious consideration or a fig leaf I couldn’t say. I will say again, good luck to you, Fort Worth ISD. I’m still waiting to see if the TEA has more than one model in mind for how to handle these takeovers or if it’s going to be Mike Miles clones all the way down.

Posted in School days | Tagged Donny Lee, Fort Worth ISD, Karen Molinar, Mike Miles, Mike Morath, Texas, Texas Education Agency, Third Future Schools, Wichita Falls ISD | Leave a comment

A followup on turnout and early voting preference

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Just a couple of followup items for things we discussed during early voting, now that we have more complete data. The first was about how much of the vote would be cast early, and whether Republicans were waiting until Election Day to really show up. Here’s what the numbers look like:


Statewide

         Early     E-Day      Total   Early%
============================================
GOP  1,370,502   795,242  2,165,744    63.3%
Dem  1,528,892   782,934  2,311,826    66.1%


Harris County

         Early     E-Day      Total   Early%
============================================
GOP    126,512    70,877    197,389    64.1%
Dem    222,352   141,471    363,826    61.1%

There were in fact more Republican primary votes cast on Election Day statewide than there were Democratic primary votes, but not by a lot. Democrats still cast about 150K more votes total than Republicans did. Because fewer Republicans voted early, their share of Election Day votes was higher than it was for Democrats, but in both cases a significant majority of the vote was cast before Election Day. This is consistent with the overall trend towards more early voting. I have a lightly-held theory that in elections like this one where there’s a lot of contested races and interest in at least one of those races, which is contributing to a higher level of turnout in early voting, a greater share of the vote will be cast early than for lower-interest elections. Basically, when people are more excited about voting they tend to do it as soon as they can. I may try to quantify that someday, or I may suggest it to a professional type, but that’s my subjective observation. It’s also something to keep in mind in the future, to avoid wildly overestimating total turnout based on an enthusiastic early showing.

Here now is a final look at each parties’ turnout in a number of interesting counties, based on this earlier look when we didn’t yet have complete early voting data.


County      2026 D   2026 R    2022 D   2022 R
==============================================
Bexar      191,097   94,199    50,516   47,167
Brazoria    29,828   31,518    11,480   31,122
Caldwell     3,505    3,527     1,439    3,601
Chambers     1,680    7,570       637    7,385
Collin      95,523  102,289    36,895   81,141
Comal       11,961   28,969     4,917   24,249
Dallas     277,363  102,269   129,584   88,210
Denton      82,491   87,005    27,516   68,442
El Paso     66,292   24,050    37,624   18,290
Ellis       18,649   24,735     5,496   18,811
Fort Bend   85,094   54,831    41,109   46,480
Galveston   24,425   33,103    11,341   31,309
Guadalupe   13,320   17,895     4,805   20,734
Hays        33,742   18,427    13,154   15,691
Hidalgo     61,480   18,809    43,059   15,306
Johnson      8,418   20,293     2,513   17,263
Kaufman     12,223   14,380     3,079   11,960
Liberty      2,778   10,038       988    8,255
Lubbock     15,520   29,818     5,663   28,014
McLennan    14,936   23,074     6,009   22,809
Medina       2,863    6,720     1,266    7,002
Midland      3,965   14,297     1,531   15,016
Montgomery  31,322   78,880    10,758   72,606
Rockwall     7,880   17,147     2,547   13,561
Tarrant    188,476  145,329    75,125  132,848
Travis     216,231   55,697   109,646   46,679
Waller       3,997    5,960     1,245    4,759
Williamson  64,725   52,100    26,335   48,156

The same observations as before apply here. Democratic turnout was up by a lot pretty much everywhere, even in places with minimal local Democratic presence. I don’t know which of these counties impressed me the most, but Comal, Ellis, Guadalupe, Johnson, Montgomery, and Rockwall all had me smiling and nodding my head. Obviously Tarrant and Bexar are superb, but they did have high-profile lower-tier races – for Congress, the Lege, and county offices – that pushed people to the polls beyond what Talarico and Crockett were doing. Big kudos also to Collin and Denton, which maybe we can credibly dream on as true swing counties this cycle. It’s a lot easier to imagine close statewide races if that is the case. And I included a number of high-growth, dark red counties in this roundup precisely because those places are where Republicans have run up the score in the past. Cutting down those margins is a must have.

On the flip side, Republicans did do very well in a couple of places – Bexar again, where there were three very busy Congressional races in addition to State House and local contests – they more or less kept up with population growth in some others, and they lost ground in absolute (Caldwell, Guadalupe, Medina, Midland) or population-adjusted (Brazoria for sure, likely Montgomery and Williamson) in others. Some of those hot Congressional races from Bexar spilled over into Medina (CD23) and Guadalupe (CD35), and I’d think Republicans are looking at some of these numbers and feeling a bit anxious about them. Fine by me.

Anyway. I don’t want to overreach. November will be different than March was. The runoffs won’t tell us much, either – barring a Paxton payoff scenario I expect Republicans to outdo Dems in the runoff because they’re the only ones that will have a hot statewide race on the ballot. I’ll be looking for the April and July finance reports to give some more signals about what’s happening. Do people like Katy Padilla Stout and Maureen Galindo raise more money? Do any of the lesser-heralded candidates from longer-shot districts raise more money, as we saw in 2018? That will tell me something. What do you think?

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Bexar County, Brazoria County, Caldwell County, CD21, CD23, CD35, Chambers County, Collin County, Comal County, Congress, Dallas County, Democratic primary, Denton County, Donald Trump, early voting, El Paso, Election 2018, Election 2022, Election 2026, Fort Bend County, Galveston, Guadalupe County, Harris County, Hays County, Hidalgo County, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, John Cornyn, Johnson County, Katy Padilla Stout, Kaufman County, Ken Paxton, Liberty County, Lubbock, Maureen Galindo, McLennan County, Medina County, Midland County, Montgomery County, primaries, Rockwall County, Senate, Tarrant County, Texas, Travis County, turnout, Waller County, Williamson County | Leave a comment

Mayor Whitmire finally says something about HPD and ICE

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Took him long enough.

Mayor John Whitmire

A day after a Chronicle report found Houston police officers in at least two instances arrested drivers and personally transported them to immigration agents, Mayor John Whitmire told Univision Houston the arrests violated department policies.

Whitmire, who hasn’t responded to requests from the Chronicle since Aug. 17, told Univision: “I’m disappointed. It was a violation of Houston Police Department policy, and it will be corrected.”

Representatives for the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Chronicle as of Friday afternoon. Officials with the Houston Police Department referred questions to the mayor’s office.

The mayor’s statement comes after legal experts said the two arrests, in July and August of last year, could risk violating the U.S. Constitution and internal department policies.

Details from police reports obtained by the Chronicle show a new level of cooperation with federal officials. Houston officers called federal authorities in more than 154 cases in 2025, an increase of more than 1,000% from prior years.

See here, here, and here for some background. Other cities have a clear policy about how their police can and cannot interact with ICE, while we have mostly lived in the murkiness of Mayor Whitmire’s reluctance to say anything on the issue. What he’s saying here is correct and good and I’m glad he’s saying it, but I’m also deeply annoyed it took him this long to do so. It’s just an abdication of leadership at the worst possible time. Maybe now he can say something about this, or about any of the vast array of atrocities ICE has been committing in this city and everywhere else. The best time would have been before they happened, but the second best time is right now.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, La Migra | Tagged Houston, Houston City Council, HPD, ICE, immigration, John Whitmire | Leave a comment

On deepfakes and accountability

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

I’ll be keeping an eye on this.

A class action lawsuit accusing X.AI of enabling the mass creation of sexualized deepfakes marks a new stage of liability in cases involving artificial intelligence.

Now, plaintiff lawyers are focusing on technology platforms themselves—not just users—which could put AI companies at risk for large-scale lawsuits.

And as lawsuits and regulatory actions mount, attorneys are watching who courts will hold accountable for AI-driven wrongdoings.

In the latest case, litigant Jane Doe from South Carolina filed a class action lawsuit against X.AI, claiming its AI chatbot Grok created and shared non-consensual sexualized deepfake images of women.

Attorney Sophia M. Rios of Berger Montague filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division.

“X.AI’s conduct is despicable and has harmed thousands of women and children who were digitally stripped and forced into sexual situations that they never consented to,” Rios claimed in an emailed statement. “This class action seeks relief for those harmed by X.AI’s monetization of image-based abuse and harassment.”

[…]

The lawsuit asserts products liability arising from design and manufacturing defects, negligence for failing to use standard safety measures, violations of California’s right-of-publicity laws, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, privacy violations under California law, and unfair business practices.

This legal approach is similar to a recent case in which Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York. She claims the Grok chatbot is “unreasonably dangerous as designed.”

“As deepfake litigation continues to grow, I see clear parallels to earlier accountability battles,” Mick S. Grewal, who represented 111 of Gymnastic Coach Larry Nassar’s survivors and secured a $500 million settlement with Michigan State University, said in a statement.

“These days, plaintiffs are shifting their focus from bad-acting individuals to AI systems themselves, as illustrated by recent lawsuits targeting the platforms used to cause harm,” Grewal said. “This marks a meaningful evolution in how courts could make AI-driven technology responsible for the harmful actions of humans.”

For many years, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 provided a nearly impenetrable defense for tech firms: They argued they were merely hosting content from users, not generating it, David Himelfarb, managing partner at Toronto-based Himelfarb Proszanski, said in an email.

“That defense is falling apart,” Himelfarb said.

When plaintiffs claim AI systems are “unreasonably dangerous as designed,” they are using products liability principles in a manner that courts have not encountered previously, Himelfarb said.

I for one welcome this development and will be rooting for the plaintiffs. There are other avenues that could be taken to impose some controls on these things and their owners, but there’s no reason why it has to be a one-or-the-other approach. Let’s try them all and see what works best.

Posted in Legal matters, Technology, science, and math | Tagged artificial intelligence, California, class action, deepfakes, Elon Musk, Grok, lawsuit, South Carolina, Twitter, X.AI | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for March 8

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

“Poppycock. She’s doing none of those things. She’s writing science fiction which will be used by a mathematical equation to alter the statistical likelihood of a computer program choosing some tokens rather than other tokens as its output. Saying that any of this is teaching a chatbot philosophy is like calling yourself a psychiatrist because you thought about Oedipus while jacking off.”

“Trump’s War on National Park Signs Is Even Dumber Than You Think”.

“Looksmaxxing Is Just Mar-a-Lago Face For Men“.

“Pretty consistently for the last few rounds of the dietary guidelines updates, Americans have been a little short on calcium, potassium, fiber and vitamin D. Protein was not and has never been in that list of things that we’re short of.”

“The place on Earth from which you can, in theory, see further than any other is between an unnamed Himalayan ridge near the Indian-Chinese border and Pik Dankova in Kyrgyzstan. It is just over 530km.” You can see all the views in the world here.

“I think it’s worth operating from the premise that we are seeing a step-change in what [AI] tools can be used for. But it does mean we should keep in mind that the experience of early adopters — the people who are most enthused by coding agents — is probably dissimilar to the normies. This thing can be revolutionary for coders and entrepreneurs, while still being nothing like the social revolution they imagine is in the offing. It feels very much like Neal Stephenson overestimating the social contagion of the Linux revolution circa 1999. It can be a lightning bolt within one sector of the economy, but still limited to people with a very specific set of tastes and preferences.”

“Bills introduced in recent weeks in the legislatures of at least four Democratic-led states would impose long-term consequences on new ICE employees by rendering them ineligible for jobs in law enforcement, public education, and, in their most expansive form, the entire state civil service.”

“In addition to its human horrors, the Trump administration’s assault on immigrants living in the U.S. is having a chilling effect on people traveling here from outside the country. International travel to the U.S. is in a certifiable freefall, with nine straight months of decline in foreign visitors versus the year before.”

A long list of reasons why Dr. Phil sucked, and still sucks.

“Idaho considers an ‘apocalyptic’ choice for disabled people and families”. Spoiler alert, it’s all about the Big Beautiful Medicaid cuts.

“Surprise, You Might Be Canadian And Not Even Know It!”

Lock him up.

“That we are discussing the ins-and-outs of which random gamblers get paid out during an illegal war in which already hundreds of school children have been bombed to death feels like the type of grotesque sideshow that is only possible because the U.S. government is only interested in regulating its perceived political enemies, and which only feels possible because much of the American economy feels held together by cope and the gobs of money being thrown into AI, data centers, and gambling.”

“Let’s be clear here: Meta Glasses are awful, both for our right to privacy and for our species’ ability to separate itself from a cycle of corporate media monopolies that have made us addicted to their toxic algorithms.”

“When FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen FBI agents and staff last week for their role in the classified documents investigation of Donald Trump, he targeted an elite counter espionage unit that investigates threats from foreign adversaries and specializes in Iran, according to more than a half dozen sources with knowledge of the firings.”

RIP, Len Garry, guitarist who was Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s bandmate in The Quarrymen.

“But less than 24 hours later, the DOJ changed its mind, filing what can only be described as a “whoopsie, we take it back” motion. Is there any explanation or legal justification for this? Of course not.”

RIP, Lou Holtz, Hall of Fame college football coach who won a national championship at Notre Dame.

“Speaker Mike Johnson already faces an almost daily attendance problem with his slim House majority, and the Texas elections on Tuesday might have made that dynamic worse.

“Ukraine is prepared to send military experts to the Middle East to help the U.S. and its partners counter Iranian drones, the country’s president said this week.”

Would you like to buy a lightly used triceratops skeleton? Reasonably priced, as far as these things go.

Might The Bride! cause Oscar problems for Jessie Buckley as Norbit is supposed to have done for Eddie Murphy?

RIP, Bernard LaFayette, civil rights activist who did the risky groundwork for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

When hand counts go wrong

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

There are supposed to be consequences for this. But will there be?

Calhoun County finished submitting its primary election results to the state Friday morning after county Republicans, who hand counted their primary ballots, missed a deadline in state law requiring them to submit early-voting and Election Day results to the county no later than 24 hours after polls closed, a county election official said.

Mary Ann Orta, the elections administrator in the South Texas county, which includes Victoria and Port Lavaca, and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office both confirmed the county GOP missed the deadline and its results were submitted to the state Friday morning. The results for county Democrats, who used electronic voting equipment to tabulate ballots, were submitted to the state not long after the polls closed on Tuesday night, Orta said.

In Texas, political parties decide at the county level how their primaries will be administered, and Calhoun Republicans chose to hand count ballots this year, including those cast early and at 11 Republican precincts on Election Day, a labor-intensive process.

In a text message responding to questions from Votebeat, Calhoun County GOP Chair Russell Cain said the party “would like to thank the Calhoun County Elections Office and the Texas Secretary of State for their continual support and guidance during the Republican Primary Handcount. We had about a hundred people devoted to this endeavor and appreciate their dedication and resilience throughout the counting process.”

He did not immediately respond to questions about exactly when workers completed counting, or about the missed deadline to report results. There were 3,153 ballots cast in the county’s GOP primary, according to data posted on the Texas secretary of state’s website Friday.

Failure to provide results by the 24-hour deadline is a class B misdemeanor, which carries fines of up to $2,000 and the potential for jail time. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment on how the law is enforced, or the potential legal implications of the party’s failure to meet the deadline. But Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the agency, referred Votebeat to a section of the Texas election code that says the canvassing authority — in this case, the county party chair and the party’s executive committee — can seek a court order to force the delivery of records and supervision of the counting process. However, local prosecutors generally have the authority to investigate and prosecute any election crimes or violations, according to the election code.

Orta did not have many answers Friday morning. She and her staff have been sleep-deprived since Tuesday, as they waited for all the information necessary to report results to the state.

“I’m exhausted and still trying to make heads or tails of everything we’ve got,” Orta said.

I did not have Calhoun County on my list of hand–counting miscreants. All of the others either managed to get their counts done in a sufficiently timely manner (how error-ridden they will prove to be remains unreported on) or had to abandon the effort. They still caused chaos and damage that may reverbate for some time, but no one in those counties is in legal jeopardy at this time. One must count that as a win, I suppose.

As to what may happen in Calhoun County, I have no idea. I haven’t gone looking for the hand count law, so I don’t know what its specifics are, or even who might be at risk of arrest and prosecution. One hopes it would be the party officials and not the local elections admins, since primaries are run by the parties, but give the state of elections law in Texas I’m not confident of that. The Calhoun County DA may well conclude that there’s nothing for them to do, and I feel even more confident that Ken Paxton is not going to try and bigfoot this one, since there are no Democrats for him to harass. So maybe no harm, no foul? I would not be surprised if everyone involved just decides to pretend this never happened.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Calhoun County, Election 2026, hand counting, primaries, Secretary of State, Texas, The Lege | 2 Comments

Whitmire “pay for play” accusation against Hollins goes nowhere

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

We’re just now hearing about it.

Chris Hollins

An investigation Mayor John Whitmire initiated into Controller Chris Hollins’ decision to solicit sponsorships for a city event was “not sustained” by the city’s Office of Inspector General, city records show.

Whitmire in October 2024 called a news conference to announce that he was asking investigators to probe the “unacceptable” sponsorships Hollins was inviting for his office’s annual investor conference, saying it was “the appearance of pay to play.”

A conference pamphlet listed sponsorships from $10,000 up to $100,000, with increasing perks, including a “private dinner with the controller” for top donors. Whitmire said at the time that he had gotten calls from banks who were concerned about being able to work with the city if they didn’t fork over money to sponsor the event.

A list of OIG cases and their outcomes the Houston Chronicle obtained through a public records request shows the mayor’s office referred the program for investigation the day after Whitmire’s news conference.

The case was quietly closed Oct. 16, the file shows, and listed as “not sustained.” Neither the mayor’s nor controller’s office has publicly noted it.

Whitmire’s office did not return a request for comment on the investigation’s results. His office and spokesperson have not returned any written requests or phone calls for comment from the Chronicle since Aug. 17.

Hollins, who had reacted to the mayor’s press conference by calling the issue “a huge nothing burger that is meant to distract from the mayor’s failed leadership,” said the OIG ruling was a “pretty obvious outcome.”

“The allegation was unserious at the onset, and it remained unserious throughout,” Hollins said Thursday.

[…]

“That is the nature of scandal these days,” [UH poli sci professor Brandon] Rottinghaus said. “People forget these corruption and scandal allegations fairly quickly, and the herd moves on.”

Hollins said he didn’t address the case’s closure publicly because his office was busy with more important matters.

“I said from the beginning this was a joke and an embarrassment, and so that’s how we thought about it,” Hollins said. “We never wanted to breathe any life into it because we knew it was dumb.”

See here for the background. I had forgotten this was a thing, which validates Hollins’ decision to let the sleeping dog lie. Hollins made his own request to the OIG to include the Mayor’s sponsorship requests for the State of the City address in its investigation, claiming the only difference between the two was where the funds were going. The story doesn’t say anything about that, so my guess is that the OIG never took it up. Which, also fair. I called this “the opening of the 2027 Mayoral race” at the time, but it seems clear that Hollins is running for re-election as Controller at this time. So in every way this ended up a total nothingburger.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Bank On Houston, Chris Hollins, Election 2027, ethics, Houston, Houston City Controller, Houston Forward, Inspector General, John Whitmire, Mayor, Robin Curtis | Leave a comment

The 1940 Air Terminal Museum has closed

Posted on March 8, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

This is a major bummer.

The 1940 Air Terminal Museum, a longstanding tribute to Houston’s aviation history, has closed because it was no longer economically sustainable, according to its president.

The museum is adjacent to Houston’s Hobby Airport. Karen Nicolaou, president and director of The Houston Aeronautical Heritage Society, the nonprofit that operates the museum, said she hopes the closure is temporary as a workable financial solution is sought.

“The museum has ceased operations at this time,” according a Facebook post. “Thank you to everyone who has contributed.”

[…]

The Houston Aeronautical Heritage Society nonprofit leases space in the old terminal building for the museum. She said the building is owned by Houston Airport System which reports to the city of Houston and the mayor’s office and it is governed by federal aviation regulations.

On March 6, 2019, the Houston Municipal Terminal Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places and is a recognized piece of history by the city of Houston.

As a nonprofit that leases the building, she said they face restrictions on where they can get their funding and how they use the space.

The final blow, Nicolaou said, was Facebook’s refusal to let the group pay to promote their raffle fundraiser on the platform because the company considered it gambling. The board of the nonprofit hosted a raffle for a 1928 Ford Model A in December 2025 and had held a raffle the previous year as well. The group also tried raising money through GoFundMe pages and other methods before the closure.

She said the raffle makes up over 50% of their budget and they’ve been doing the raffle for 10 years. The museum’s website lists major benefactors for the museum which include United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Texas Preservation Trust, The Strake Foundation, The Houston Endowment and others.

The general economic malaise didn’t help either. I’m annoyed that goddamn Facebook refused to promote their big fundraiser, for such a flimsy reason. I don’t know what can be done about that. There are still some possible ways forward, because this situation as it is now is unacceptable.

While the museum is closed for now, Nicolaou says its board has been in contact with the Texas Historical Commission about taking over operations. One issue is that the commission would want to take ownership of the building from Houston Airports, according to Nicolaou.

“That’s going to take coordination between the city, the airport system, and the Texas State Senate. There’s a lot of politics involved,” Nicolaou says.

Of course, she has a simple proposal for Houston Mayor John Whitmire that would move the process along.

“Mr. Mayor, sell the historical commission the building for a dollar and be done with it,” she says with a laugh.

In response to CultureMap’s request for comment, Mayor John Whitmire provided the following statement: “I’ve spoken with the Chair of the Texas Historical Commission about opportunities to support the museum’s operations in ways that enhance the public experience. We’re making progress, but discussions are in the early stages.”

Whether it’s operated by the City of Houston, the Texas Historical Commission, a university, or some other entity, Nicolaou hopes the public will be able to visit the museum again soon and for many years to come.

“We want a permanent solution. We’ve tried for one for years,” she says. “It belongs to the city. It belongs to the residents of the city of Houston. They should have it to go to for years.”

Yes they should, and one way or another some person or organization needs to step in and save the day. We have the capacity, we just need a volunteer. I really hope that happens, and soon.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged 1940 Air Terminal Museum, Facebook, Hobby Airport, Houston, Houston Aeronautical Heritage Society, John Whitmire, Karen Nicolaou, National Register of Historic Places, Texas Historical Commission | 1 Comment

Trib analysis of how Talarico beat Crockett

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Interesting stuff.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett

When U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett jumped into the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Texas, she was the immediate frontrunner.

Widely known and beloved by Democratic voters, Crockett had a record of strong fundraising in the U.S. House and a knack for going viral with her brassy quips aimed at Republican foes. Her lead opponent, state Rep. James Talarico of Austin, was on the rise but lesser known among voters outside of Central Texas. Former congressman and 2024 Senate Democratic nominee Colin Allred was a rerun, who dropped out of the race in the hours before she launched.

Early Wednesday, Crockett lost the nomination to Talarico by a decisive margin — the result of a fiercely competitive primary that overwhelmed the Dallas congresswoman’s starting assets and tested the power of political celebrity among Texas Democrats. Her loss reflected both the strength of Talarico’s campaign and her own team’s inability to scale in time for such an expensive and hotly contested statewide race.

From the start, four people familiar with her campaign said, Crockett’s team deprioritized the primary race, confident that her name recognition and reputation as a fighter in Congress would be impossible for Talarico to catch up with, and would carry her to the general election. So she embarked on a primary battle with a makeshift operation that lacked a campaign manager, a developed fundraising strategy and comprehensive infrastructure for a ground game.

“What happened with Jasmine was that name ID can only take you so far,” said Monique Alcala, the former executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. “You actually have to have a real campaign operation, and actually engage in measurable campaign tactics. I don’t think that we ever saw that come together throughout the entire time that she was running.”

Crockett still put up a strong showing at the ballot box, winning over a million votes — 46% of ballots cast — and ginning up enthusiasm among the Democratic base, particularly Black voters.

But she was unable to run up the score where she needed to in Texas’ biggest and most diverse cities. At the same time, Talarico trounced in his political home base in Central Texas, and with voters in heavily Latino counties — a crucial, swingy voting bloc in the general electorate.

Crockett’s relative lack of an apparatus made a difference, especially against a candidate who entered the race three months before she did and built up significant media, fundraising, volunteer and events operations, and whose political persona cultivated its own kind of gravitational pull.

“This was a close race, and so I don’t want to sound like she ran a bad campaign,” Democratic strategist Matt Angle said. “She just ran into a guy who ran a really good campaign. And it’s a really good sign for Democrats that James wasn’t just a personality that caught fire — he had a plan, and he carried it out.”

[…]

Though she barnstormed the state and met voters at the polls during the 11-day early voting period, her campaign up until that point had largely been made up of appearances at churches, local businesses and events hosted by other groups, like unions and Black sororities.

The Crockett team member said the congresswoman wanted to meet Texans where they were outside of political settings, instead of bringing them to her events.

Crockett planned to get around the state more after she secured the nomination and while Republicans were duking it out in a runoff election, said a Democratic strategist who spoke to her directly about the matter.

“To her own admittance, Congresswoman Crockett wanted to launch and run a campaign that was different,” said [Democratic strategist Dallas] Jones, noting her emphasis on in-person politicking at smaller venues like bars and churches over standard campaign rallies and events. “It was a very untraditional campaign in how it was ran and in many ways experimental.”

“If that is the case,” he added, “then we would now say the experiment did not work.”

Crockett’s ground game also paled in comparison to Talarico’s, who has said he saw his bid as the “underdog” campaign.

Crockett largely relied on organizations that endorsed her, such as Jolt Action and Texas Organizing Project, for get-out-the-vote tactics like door-to-door canvassing, in place of a robust in-house operation to turn out her voters.

The Crockett team member said that her campaign invested in Black voter turnout through blockwalking, virtual town halls, robocalls, Black radio stations and efforts on digital platforms to target infrequent Black Democratic voters.

In contrast, Talarico brought tens of thousands of Texans out to rallies and events his campaign put on around the state after he launched his bid in September. His campaign recruited 28,000 volunteers, contacted voters in all 254 counties in Texas and hosted more than 560 voter mobilization in 75 cities throughout the race, according to a Saturday news release. In the four days before election day, his campaign and its volunteers blitzed 40 cities with 130 events.

He also had a clear-cut plan to win Latino voters in particular, running ads and social media content in Spanish, campaigning with Tejano music star Bobby Pulido in South Texas and closing his campaign with an ad featuring Latino influencer Carlos Eduardo Espina.

“He won because he showed up in communities, he ran advertising in those communities, he had an amazing field team,” Rocha said on social media Wednesday. “It’s grassroots organizing combined with paid advertising in digital, TV, radio around sporting events, and a robust Latino advertising campaign.”

Further into the campaign, Crockett suffered from relatively lackluster fundraising. She raised $8.6 million over the course of her bid, more than half of which she transferred from her House committee — a total haul dwarfed by Talarico’s more than $20 million take.

That drove a major spending deficit on advertising. Crockett spent $4.8 million on advertising, which would have been an impressive spend for a Democratic primary candidate in Texas, if not for Talarico.

Starting in January, Talarico’s campaign and his super PAC collectively unleashed $25.9 million on ads through election day, outspending Crockett and her super PAC nearly five-to-one. Talarico and his super PAC together raised more than $27.2 million through the start of the year.

Crockett’s team member recalled wondering how long Talarico could maintain his spending momentum. But as he continued to flood the airwaves, Crockett’s internal polling began to show Talarico narrowing the name recognition gap and winning some of her supporters, particularly white women, to his side.

“The fact that he did stay up at that level every week — you see the buy come in at a million dollars a week — all of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Okay, this is gonna make a big difference,’” the team member said.

Meanwhile, Crockett’s only broadcast spot, the biggest avenue for campaigns to get their message out, came five days into early voting, according to media tracking firm AdImpact. The super PAC in her corner fizzled, dropping just under $600,000 on ads supporting her and opposing Talarico.

Over the course of his campaign, Talarico invested $5.7 million in digital fundraising, hiring Aisle 518, a firm whose clients have included California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, to build out the operation.

There’s more, so read the rest. There was also this Politico story that was more focused on Rep. Crockett and her choices in the campaign, which is fine as far as it goes but is somewhat less interesting to me because any losing campaign can be picked apart afterwards. The main thing I took out of this article was how strong a campaign Talarico apparently ran. He contacted a huge swath of voters everywhere in the state, with an emphasis on reaching out to Latino voters, he raised a ton of money and ran effective ads on TV and online, he worked with firms that have worked with some of the more successful national Democrats around – I mean, what’s not to love? Running in a general election is different, and he will be the focus of a ferocious and well-funded attack network, which he didn’t face in the primary – we’ll see how he responds when one of those attacks slithers over from the wingnut fever swamps to the mainstream press – but if the primary was a test of how he campaigns, he passed with flying colors. I don’t know what more you could have asked of him.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2026, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, Senate, Texas | 2 Comments

Lawsuit filed over Comptroller’s anti-minority business program shenanigans

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

Four business owners and a trade association sued the state of Texas on Monday, seeking to reverse acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock’s emergency rules altering a state program intended to give additional exposure to economically disadvantaged groups in government contracting.

During an afternoon news conference in Austin, the business owners said they are suing because they all lost out on government contracts after Hancock stripped their Historically Underutilized Business Program certification in December.

“In this country, the legislature passes the laws, not the comptroller, and Texas is no different,” Alphonso David, president & CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum, and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, wrote in a statement. “The HUB case highlights a fundamental American principle — members of the executive branch cannot rewrite laws passed by the state legislature. They cannot deny citizens of their legal rights without a court order, legislative approval, or due process.

“Acting Comptroller Hancock took a program created by statute and rewrote it without any legal authority. His actions are baseless and unlawful and must be reversed.”

The plaintiffs are seeking a temporary injunction to block Hancock’s emergency rules, as well as reinstatement to the HUB program while the lawsuit plays out in a Travis County district court.

They are ultimately seeking a court order to restore the program to its original form, arguing that Hancock overstepped his statutory authority, deprived them of state contracts without due process and violated the Texas Constitution.

[…]

The program was created through bipartisan legislation during the 1990s, intended to give minority- and women-owned businesses a leg up when seeking state contracts. The program does not set quotas for the contracting of HUB-certified businesses, but sets goals that state agencies generally strive to meet.

HUB businesses received 3,634 contracts totaling more than $4 billion in 2024, according to the Comptroller’s Office.

Republicans filed several bills aimed at killing the HUB program entirely last year in the Legislature. They all died without making progress in either chamber.

In October, Hancock announced that his office would not issue new or renewed certifications under the program while it was reviewed, pushing the program into the national battle over government initiatives perceived to be “diversity, equity and inclusion.” The Comptroller’s Office then cited emergency powers to restructure the program in December, removing all women and minority business and limiting eligibility to only service-disabled veteran business owners.

“Businesses deserve a level playing field where government contracts are earned by performance and best value — not race or sex quotas,” Hancock, who is running in a competitive GOP primary for comptroller, wrote on social media at the time.

That change shrank the program from more than 15,000 participants to just under 500. HUB certified business owners said at the time that the change risked undercutting their business strategy and would hurt their bottom line.

State Sen. Royce West, a Dallas Democrat who co-authored the 1999 bill that codified the program into state law, said the Legislature, not the comptroller, is empowered to change the program.

“The Legislature voted. The answer was no,” West said. “The Comptroller doesn’t get to override that decision because he disagrees with it — that’s not his role under the Texas Constitution, and these business owners deserve to have that principle upheld in court.”

This is the first lawsuit challenging Hancock’s changes to the program.

I don’t think I had written about this change before, because honestly it’s hard to keep up with all the BS. I’m trying to come up with something to say other than “this sure seems clear-cut”, because what Sen. West says makes total sense, but it’s hard. This is how it’s supposed to work, right? Even in Texas, in the Year of Our Lord 2026? I guess we’ll find out.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Comptroller, HHSC, Historically Underutilized Business Program, Kelly Hancock, lawsuit, Marc Williams, National Association of Minority Contractors, Royce West, Stephanie Muth, Texas, Texas Facilities Commission, The Lege, Travis County, TxDOT, Will McKerall | Leave a comment

Camp Mystic ordered to not touch flood-damaged cabins

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Basically, an order to preserve evidence while litigation proceeds.

Camp Mystic cannot alter its property by the Guadalupe River where 27 girls and the camp’s executive director died last summer, so that evidence can be preserved while a lawsuit proceeds, a judge in Austin ruled Wednesday.

The camp cannot demolish, repair or reconstruct a number of cabins where campers slept when a massive flood struck on July 4, Travis County District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble said.

The camp also cannot modify its grounds or its office building, recreation hall or commissary — all points of interest in the wrongful death case filed by the parents of camper Cile Steward, whose body still has not been found.

But the court order, which will be finalized in the coming days, doesn’t block Camp Mystic from reopening its neighboring Cypress Lake camp site, where cabins didn’t flood, this summer. The judge asked attorneys to bring back a map showing a clear line drawn between the Guadalupe portion where children died and the Cypress Lake portion, which the camp is seeking to reopen.

“For us, it’s incredibly vindicating to have this order ruled in our favor as it relates to maintaining the evidence and trying to really get down to the bottom of what happened to our children,” said CiCi Steward, Cile’s mother.

Mikal Watts, the lawyer representing Camp Mystic and its owners and directors, the Eastland family, also praised the judge’s decision.

“She did the right thing: She agreed that the evidence at the Guadalupe River should be preserved,” he said.

See here for some background. This was the first hearing in any of the lawsuits against Camp Mystic, and that was one reason why I wanted to note this. Seems like this particular motion was not really contested, but as these plaintiffs want to shut the camp down until the litigation is resolved, I don’t imagine it will continue like that.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Camp Mystic, Cile Steward, Dick Eastland, flooding, Guadalupe River, Kerr County, lawsuit, Mikal Watts, Texas | Leave a comment

The Trump-Cornyn-Paxton endorsement psychodrama

Posted on March 6, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

First, there was this.

Big John Cornyn

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he will soon make an endorsement in the heated Texas Senate Republican primary, as Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton head toward a runoff election in May.

Trump also expressed his desire for the non-endorsed candidate to concede.

“The Republican Primary Race for the United States Senate in the Great State of Texas, a State I LOVE and won 3 times in Record Numbers (the HIGHEST vote ever recorded, by far!!!), cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer. IT MUST STOP NOW!” Trump wrote on his social media platform.

“I will be making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE! Is that fair? We must win in November!!!” Trump wrote.

The president’s post came hours after Senate Republican leadership urged Trump to back Cornyn, a four-term Republican senator, over Paxton, a conservative firebrand who has become popular among Trump’s MAGA base despite being involved in several scandals.

They are, perhaps, a little worried about this race, and for sure worried about all the money that will be incinerated in the runoff. It’s a little hard to imagine Ken Paxton just rolling over, however, and as such we next got this.

Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday said not even President Donald Trump could push him out of the Texas Senate contest, telling a right-wing cable news show that he still plans to stay in the GOP primary runoff against Sen. John Cornyn even if he does not earn Trump’s endorsement.

“I’m staying in this race,” Paxton told Real America’s Voice. “I owe it to the people of Texas. I’ve spent a year of my life campaigning against John Cornyn because John has not represented the people of Texas well. He’s been against Trump in both of his elections, said he shouldn’t run last time. The people of Texas, at least the Republicans, would like something different.”

[…]

But even the hint of suggestion that Trump would force out Paxton—a MAGA darling who has litigated right-wing culture war issues and helped aid in Trump’s failed quest to overturn the 2020 election—enraged some of Trump’s biggest supporters, who said it was wrong for Trump to deny GOP voters the chance to choose their own candidates.

“This is wrong and the people of Texas should be able to vote for WHOEVER THEY WANT!!! NOT the candidate Trump demands,” former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote Wednesday in a post on X. “People are furious over this and if Trump does this, it could actually be the real reason Texas Senate seat flips blue. Stealing people’s opportunity to elect their leaders by force will definitely piss off voters and will lead to even more sitting it out.”

Objectively and separating this all from the Trump stuff, it is weird to ask someone who got over 40% of the vote and trailed the leader by one point to drop out of the runoff. You can argue that Paxton underperformed, but you can also argue that nearly sixty percent of voters wanted not-John Cornyn. Seems like having the runoff is the way to settle it at this point. (*)

And then we settled on this.

Attorney General Ken Paxton said Thursday he would consider dropping out of the U.S. Senate race if Senate GOP leaders agreed to abolish the filibuster and pass a priority piece of legislation for President Donald Trump.

Paxton made the statement in a social media post that also criticized his opponent in Texas’ Senate Republican primary, incumbent John Cornyn, for being against scrapping the filibuster to pass the bill, known as the SAVE America ACT. It would require people to provide proof of citizenship — such as a birth certificate or passport — when they register to vote and present photo identification at the polls, among other new election-related rules.

Cornyn is a supporter of the legislation, though he and other Senate Republicans have long bristled at talk of abolishing the filibuster, a parliamentary tool that, in practice, requires support from 60 senators in the 100-member chamber to bring a bill up for a vote. CNN reported last month that Cornyn would not say whether he backed ending the filibuster to pass the proposal, which the Senate’s 53 Republicans cannot pass amid unified opposition from Democrats.

“I repeat what I have consistently said: I support the bill and have encouraged Senate Republicans to get it done,” Cornyn said in response to Paxton’s post, without addressing his position on the filibuster.

Paxton’s offer to drop out appears designed to make a political point, more than anything else, by drawing attention to Cornyn’s reluctance to get rid of the filibuster. But it marks the first time he has raised the prospect of leaving the race amid intense lobbying by Senate GOP leaders for Trump to endorse Cornyn.

It could mean Paxton is feeling some pressure, or it could mean he’s just being a troll. He’s good at that. By the time this runs in the morning there could have been another two or three twists in the story, much like the Tony Gonzales saga. They’re all gonna do what they’re gonna do, we just have to do our thing and roll with it.

(*) Yes, yes, instant runoff voting, but that isn’t a thing here.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Donald Trump, Election 2026, endorsements, filibuster, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, primaries, runoff, Senate, Texas, voter suppression | 4 Comments

House ethics panel investigating Rep. Gonzales (who ended up dropping his re-election bid)

Posted on March 6, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Yes, they waited till after the primary.

Rep. Tony Gonzales

The House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales to investigate affair allegations with his former aide.

The committee announced a panel Wednesday, a day after Gonzales advanced to a May primary runoff, that will determine whether Gonzales “engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office” and “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges.”

Gonzales’ former aide, Regina Santos-Aviles, died by suicide last year after setting herself on fire. Rumors of an affair between the representative and Santos-Aviles circulated since September, but in November, Gonzales addressed the allegations at The Texas Tribune Festival saying they were “completely untruthful.” The story drew renewed attention on Feb. 17, the eve of early voting, when the San Antonio Express-News reported that Santos-Aviles had acknowledged the affair to another staffer in a text message.

Texts later shared by Santos-Aviles’ widower showed Gonzales begging the staffer for a “sexy pic” and asking her to share her “favorite position,” despite Santos-Aviles’ refusal and assertion that Gonzales’ messages were “going too far.”

Reports also found that Santos-Aviles received a raise and bonus the same year she allegedly had an affair with Gonzales, and ended the year with thousands more in earnings than her colleagues in similar roles.

[…]

The timing of the ethics review is another blow to Gonzales who is still fighting for a tough reelection battle against gun rights activist Brandon Herrera, who came within 400 votes of beating him during the last election.

The Office of Congressional Conduct, an independent, nonpartisan body overseeing the House of Representatives, has also been investigating Gonzales for months, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

Gonzales has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and told CNN on Feb. 24 he wouldn’t resign from his term, which ends January 2027, and continued pushing forward with his campaign.

See here and here for some background. It sure sounds like there’s plenty for the panel to investigate, so I look forward to seeing what they find. I don’t know how he wins the runoff with all this hanging over his head, but he is still Trump’s candidate, and it’s not like Brandon Herrera is anyone of any merit. Weirder things have happened. But yeah, this investigation – these two investigations – will do Rep. Gonzales no favors. TPR has more.

UPDATE: Confession is good for the soul.

U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, admitted Wednesday to having an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide, after initially denying the allegation.

Speaking on conservative talk show host Joe Pags’ show the day after he was forced into a runoff in his primary, Gonzales called the affair a “mistake” and a “lapse in judgment.”

“I take full responsibility for those actions,” Gonzales said. “Since then, I have reconciled with my wife, Angel. I’ve asked God to forgive me, which he has. And my faith is as strong as ever.”

Gonzales is now subject to an investigation from the House Ethics Committee, announced Wednesday, to look into whether he “engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office” and “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges.”

The third-term representative said he looks forward to the committee’s probe.

“I appreciate the opportunity to provide all the facts and all the details that lead to exactly what occurred in the entire situation,” he said.

And timing is everything. Good luck with that. Talking Points Memo has more.

UPDATE: When it rains, it pours.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and the chamber’s Republican leadership on Thursday asked Rep. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio to drop his reelection bid which is headed for a May 26 runoff against gun activist Brandon Herrera.

The call from the GOP leaders comes a day after Gonzales admitted to having an affair with an aide who later died by setting herself on fire — despite having previously denied the relationship months earlier.

In a statement, GOP leadership said they had urged the House Ethics Committee , a congressional watchdog, to “act expeditiously” and that Gonzales “said he will fully cooperate with the investigation.” House rules prohibit members from having a sexual relationship or engaging in unwelcome sexual advances with their staffers.

“We have encouraged him to address these very serious allegations directly with his constituents and his colleagues,” the statement said. “In the meantime, Leadership has asked Congressman Gonzales to withdraw from his race for re-election.”

[…]

Johnson’s call for Gonzales to end his campaign came after days of skirting questions about the scandal, often telling reporters he wanted the investigative process to run its course.

Notably, he did not ask the congressman to step down from his seat. The GOP is holding onto a razor thin lead in the U.S. House — a majority that could be imperiled in November’s midterm elections.

Notably but unsurprisingly. I mean, principles are nice and all, but let’s not go crazy here.

UPDATE: And in the end, once the ball got rolling, this was where it was going.

Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, dropped out of his primary runoff Thursday, heeding calls from House Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP members to end his reelection bid amid revelations that he had an affair with an aide who died by suicide.

“After deep reflection and with the support of my loving family, I have decided not to seek re-election while serving out the rest of this Congress with the same commitment I’ve always had to my district,” Gonzales said in a statement posted on social media. “Through the rest of my term, I will continue fighting for my constituents, for whom I am eternally grateful.”

[…]

The situation has a recent analogue in Texas political history. In 2022, then-Rep. Van Taylor, R-Plano, was headed to a runoff after finishing with 49% of the vote in his primary. But the next day, he withdrew from the race, admitting to an affair that had been revealed in Breitbart News the day before the primary. Second-place finisher Keith Self became the nominee and has represented the district since 2023.

Democrats have been eyeing the 23rd District, which is majority-Hispanic and voted for Trump by a 15-point margin in 2024, especially as the scandal around Gonzales has intensified. But they see an opportunity to pick up the seat regardless, as signs abound of Latino voters souring on Trump and the Republican Party after shifting dramatically to the right in 2024.

Herrera, backed by the hard-right House Freedom Caucus’ political arm, has a history of controversial behavior and edgy humor. In 2024, Jewish Insider reported that he had included Nazi imagery, songs and jokes on his YouTube channel. And the outlet also reported he was a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which promotes Lost Cause ideology.

Good riddance, but Brandon Herrera really sucks, so this is no victory. At least, not yet. Give a few bucks to Katy Padilla Stout, who really needs to be named in all of these stories, and maybe we can do something about that.

Posted in Scandalized!, Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Brandon Herrera, CD23, Congress, Donald Trump, Election 2026, ethics, Katy Padilla Stout, Office of Congressional Ethics, primaries, Regina Santos-Aviles, runoff, Texas, Tony Gonzales, Van Taylor | 1 Comment

Fifth Circuit allows drag ban enforcement

Posted on March 6, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

It’s what they do.

Obviously a pervert

Texas can enforce a 2023 law that restricts some public drag shows, a federal appeals court reaffirmed in a new ruling on Wednesday.

Senate Bill 12 prohibits drag performers from dancing suggestively or wearing certain prosthetics on public property or in front of children. The law would fine business owners $10,000 for hosting such performances, while those who violate the law could be hit with a Class A misdemeanor.

In September 2023, U.S. District Judge David Hittner declared the law unconstitutional, saying that it “impermissibly infringes on the First Amendment” and that it is “not unreasonable” to think it could affect activities like live theater or dancing. More than two years later in November, a three-judge panel in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unblocked the law and returned the case to the district court.

On Wednesday, the appeals court withdrew its November opinion and reissued a largely identical ruling, denying the plaintiff’s request for a rehearing in the process. SB 12 will now take effect on March 18, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, who represented several of the plaintiffs.

As part of the ruling, the panel found that most of the plaintiffs — a drag performer, a drag production company and pride groups — failed to show that they intended to conduct a “sexually oriented performance,” and therefore, could not be harmed by the law. The ruling suggests that the federal judges don’t believe all drag shows are sexually explicit.

Critics of the ban have previously raised concerns that Republican lawmakers were portraying all drag performances as inherently sexual or obscene.

And while the law doesn’t have language explicitly referencing drag performances, SB 12’s original version specifically included them. Republican leaders have also made it clear that drag shows are the target.

[…]

The plaintiffs and the ACLU of Texas, which represents them, underscored that Wednesday’s rehearing denial maintained that family-friendly drag shows would still be legal, and said they intend to continue fighting the law.

“The law’s vague and sweeping provisions still create a harmful chilling effect for drag artists and those who support them, while also threatening many types of performing arts cherished here in Texas, from theater to ballet to professional wrestling,” ACLU Texas attorney Brian Klosterboer said in a statement. “Because this law remains unconstitutional, we look forward to continuing this case before the district court and encourage anyone who is impacted by the law to reach out to us. Drag in Texas is here to stay.”

See here for the previous update. My interpretation from then, that this should in theory limit enforcement, still stands. The case is back in district court (I think; that was what happened with the November ruling), so there could still be a favorable ruling for the remaining plaintiffs – the Fifth Circuit removed most of the plaintiffs on the grounds that the law didn’t apply to them. I guess where the rubber would meet the road is when a drag show or performer is busted under this law, if that happens before this lands up at SCOTUS. I will also renew my call for the next Democratic President to do to the lawless and corrupt Fifth Circuit what they will no doubt pledge to do to SCOTUS.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Abilene, ACLU of Texas, Attorney General, Bexar County, drag shows, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, gay rights, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Montgomery County, Senate, Taylor County, Texas, The Lege, The Woodlands, transgender rights, Travis County | 1 Comment

Initial thoughts on the 2026 primaries

Posted on March 5, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

We don’t have full turnout numbers yet, but as of Wednesday some 363,826 votes were cast in the Democratic primary for Senate in Harris County, while there were 197,389 votes cast on the Republican side. About 140K votes were cast on Tuesday for Dems, and about 70K for Republicans – so much for the thesis that they prefer to turn up on Election Day, at least in Harris County. This easily makes 2026 the second highest turnout for a Dem primary, trailing only 2008 and its 411K votes.

Statewide, it depends on your source, the Texas Tribune tracker or the SOS Election Night page. Dems tallied 2,311,826 votes in the Senate so far in the former, and 2,311,564 in the latter, in both cases with still a few more votes to count, mostly provisionals at this point. On the Republican side the numbers are 2,163,582 and 2,165,744. I’m not sure why the gap is larger there.

Remember Greg Abbott’s threat to spend a ton of money to turn Harris County “dark red” this year? Well, he might want to shore up his support in the Republican Party first, as the candidates he endorsed had at best a mixed bag of results. In addition to Kelly Hancock getting squashed in the Comptroller’s race, Briscoe Cain trailed Alex Mealer in CD09, and John Lujan, for whom CD35 was drawn, underperformed against the Trump-backed Carlos de la Cruz, whose main qualification appears to be that he’s the brother of Rep. Monica de la Cruz. And my favorite result of the night, Abbott-backed Marty Lancton lost his hold on second place in the primary for Harris County Judge and fell behind Warren Howell to finish out of the runoff. Great job, Greg! Keep bringing that energy to these races!

Rep. Hubert Vo not only faces a runoff against challenger (and Chron-endorsed) Darlene Breaux in HD149, he fell behind her in total votes, albeit by a tiny margin, 3,743-3,734. That doesn’t bode well for him in May.

Abbie Kamin’s victory over Audrie Lawton Evans for Harris County Attorney was by just over one percentage point, 50.55% to 49.45%, which translates to just over three thousand votes out of over 310K cast in that race. Two strong candidates, only one could win. Congrats to Abbie Kamin, condolences and best wishes to Audrie Lawton Evans.

Darrell Jordan finished just ahead of Alex Maldonado for District Clerk by an even smaller margin, 18.93% to 18.81%, a mere 365 votes out of almost 316K cast. Latino candidates overall did better on Tuesday than in early voting – County Judge third-place candidate Matt Salazar went from 14% in early voting to 16% overall. I still don’t understand that, but there it is.

As noted yesterday, one incumbent Democratic judge lost their primary (Jim Kovach), but I forgot to mention that one other (Brian Warren) is in a runoff. Justic of the Peace Sharon Burney is also in a runoff; she trailed Melanie Miles on Tuesday. Other incumbent judges all won, and one former judge (Ramona Franklin, sigh) made a successful comeback.

As the Trib notes and as I mentioned yesterday, Rep. Dan Crenshaw lost badly to the terrible Steve Toth in CD02. Rep. Tony Gonzales is in a runoff with Brandon Herrera in CD23. Two incumbent Dems – Reps. Al Green in CD18 and Julie Johnson in CD33, both running in new districts because of redistricting – are in runoffs and were trailing on Tuesday, so a total of as many as four current members of Congress could be ousted before November. Add the new member (Frederick Haynes) in CD30, who will succeed Jasmine Crockett, and that’s a lot of turnover already.

Kamala Harris made a late endorsement of Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Senate primary. She has now endorsed Rep. James Talarico, and sent a fundraising email for him as well.

Oh, and it looks like Donald Trump may be getting ready to endorse Sen. Cornyn in the runoff. Maybe, who knows with that guy. I’m sure Team Paxton will be magnanimous about it if that happens.

Congratulations to Emerson College for nailing the Dem Senate race in their most recent poll:

The polling in this Texas Senate race has been wack. Maybe the highest ever standard deviation I’ve seen for a contest, even higher than NY Mayor last year. Someone is gonna be really wrong https://fiftyplusone.news/polls/senate/democratic-primary/texas

— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) 8:10 AM – 3 March 2026

On the other hand, UT-Tyler, what in the world were you doing?

I’ll have more when I get my hands on a fuller data set. In the meantime, here are various takeaways and roundups from TPM, the Trib, Daily Kos, The Downballot, the Texas Observer, Mother Jones, Lone Star Left, and Marc Campos.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Abbie Kamin, Al Green, Alex Maldonado, Audrie Lawton, Brandon Herrera, Briscoe Cain, CD02, CD09, CD18, CD23, CD30, CD33, CD35, Christian Menefee, Colin Allred, Comptroller, Congress, Dan Crenshaw, Darlene Breaux, Darrell Jordan, Democratic primary, District Clerk, Don Huffines, Election 2026, endorsements, Frederick Haynes, Greg Abbott, Harris County, Harris County Attorney, Harris County Judge, HD149, Hubert Vo, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, John Lujan, judicial races, Julie Johnson, Justice of the Peace, Kelly Hancock, Marty Lancton, Melanie Miles, polls, primaries, runoff, Senate, Sharon Burney, Steve Toth, Texas, The Lege, Tony Gonzales, turnout | 1 Comment

A few followup items from Tuesday

Posted on March 5, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

This is officially my favorite story from the primaries.

One tough Grandma

Texas congressional candidate Vince Shlomi, known as the “ShamWow guy,” is suing the Republican Party of Texas, accusing it of “rigging” the primary after he says the party removed his nickname from the ballot.

Shlomi announced the lawsuit Tuesday on X, alleging the party was helping incumbent U.S. Rep. John Carter by omitting his recognizable moniker from the GOP ticket.

“Rigged election by these rhinos,” Shlomi wrote on X, attaching the court filing to his social media post.

The filing also names RPT chairman Abraham George as a respondent in the case.

“It’s a product name, people know it, I thought, why not—a couple weeks before, they pull it, I would’ve said, ‘Vote, Shlomi,’ I have to re-do it, I am going to have to rebrand myself now,” Shlomi told the American-Statesman. “I am definitely going to have a difficult time now.”

Shlomi claims George approved his application to appear on the ballot under the nickname “ShamWow,” certifying its use in the March 3 Republican primary.

However, in response to what Shlomi describes as “a challenge” by the National Republican Congressional Committee — which he alleges was sent in coordination with Carter — the party reversed its decision and disallowed the nickname.

Shlomi argues the party violated Texas election code by making the change.

In the filing, Shlomi also asserts that the RPT is not “uniformly and fairly” enforcing its position against other candidates who were not “challenged by the NRCC.” He cites gubernatorial candidate Pete “Doc” Chambers as an example.

The lawsuit references a Jan. 9 letter from RPT general counsel Rachel Hooper notifying of the nickname’s removal.

Shlomi claims the letter was not addressed to him but instead to the NRCC. He says he did not see the correspondence and would not have had an opportunity to challenge the decision even if he had.

Yes, being listed as “ShamWow” on the ballot would definitely have been the difference-maker. Congratulations, Vince Shlomi, you are the Grandma Strayhorn of 2026.

Here’s a headline that will grab your attention: Six data-driven reasons Texas could actually go blue in 2026.

Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in Texas since 1994. But every cycle, we are inundated with pieces asking if this will be the year Texas turns blue. The answer, for 32 years, has been no. I wrote my own version for The Economist back in 2019, calling the state Democrats’ “white whale” for 2020. From 2020 to 2024, the state only drifted further toward Republicans, who win the state on average by 12 percentage points.

But this year, Democrats might have a real shot at winning a statewide election in the Lone Star State.

On Tuesday, March 3, Democratic primary voters picked state House Rep. James Talarico over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett to become their party’s nominee for the November election to the U.S. Senate. On the Republican side, no candidate won above 50%, so incumbent John Cornyn and Ken Paxton are headed to a May 26th runoff election.

I have compiled six data-driven reasons Texas could actually go blue in 2026. They have to do with concerns over Ken Paxton’s electability, Talarico’s support among independent voters, Democratic enthusiasm, and a few other factors. Add them up, and it’s easy to see how Talarico could pull off a win (though it would not be easy to do).

Here are six data-driven reasons Texas could actually go blue in 2026.

Read on for the rest, it’s worth your time. And in the interests of keeping it real, we have this:

I guess the one comfort for Democrats is that he might be. A D+6 WAR puts you in the territory of Blake Masters.

Paxton doesn’t quite *look* like Blake Masters, but he does have a lot more scandal behind him.

— Lakshya Jain (@lxeagle17) 8:07 PM – 3 March 2026

We’ll see how everyone feels after May 26.

There were a couple of big upsets in Dallas and Tarrant Counties that I didn’t see at first but want to note here. In Tarrant County, veteran State Rep. Chris Turner was defeated.

Incumbent Chris Turner has lost his bid for reelection in House District 101 to challenger Junior Ezeonu, a member of the Grand Prairie City Council.

With 100% of the precincts reporting, Ezeonu had 52.67% vote to Turner’s 47.33%. Ezeonu declared victory Wednesday morning.

“We did it, guys! We won!” he said in a post on X. “Thank you to everyone who believed in our campaign, volunteered your time, donated your money, voted, and told a friend to vote as well. This victory is your victory, and I thank you for your support. God bless you all.”

[…]

Ezeonu, 26, is a political consultant who has been on the Grand Prairie City Council since 2021. He told the Star-Telegram that his top three priorities if elected would be to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, fund public schools, and make homeownership affordable.

In a Wednesday morning statement, Turner said the outcome was not what he and his supporters had hoped for.

“Sometimes you leave it all out on the field and still come up short,” he said. “The voters have spoken and I respect what they said. I congratulate Rep.-elect Junior Ezeonu on his victory and wish him well as he prepares to take on the responsibility of representing 200,000 of our neighbors in Southeast Tarrant County.”

Rep. Turner has been a member of the Democratic caucus leadership, and as far as I know was one of the good guys. I interviewed him in 2020 about the redistricting process that was to come and what Dems would be doing about it. Here’s his full statement and concession. Congratulations to Rep.-elect Ezeonu, and thanks and best wishes to Rep. Turner.

A more shocking result came in Dallas.

Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot conceded Wednesday in the Democratic primary to former felony court judge Amber Givens, a shocking upset for the two-term chief prosecutor.

In a statement, Creuzot thanked supporters, voters and his family, and congratulated Givens on her victory.

“While the outcome was not what we had hoped for, I am proud of the work my team accomplished and the important conversations we advanced about justice, accountability, and public safety in Dallas County,” he said.

Givens, who resigned from the 282nd District Court in December to challenge Creuzot, had been widely viewed as the underdog in the race.

Creuzot raised far more campaign money, collecting about $420,000 in contributions compared with roughly $20,000 for Givens. And he had the backing of Democrats locally and across the state.

Givens also faced scrutiny last year after the State Commission on Judicial Conduct issued two sanctions, which she is appealing. A trial on the charges was held last week before a Special Court of Review at the state Supreme Court, but it could be several weeks before the three-judge panel issues a decision.

Big primary turnout full of voters who have little or no Democratic primary voting history can have unpredictable results, that’s just the nature of the thing. Creuzot was well respected, and DA-elect Givens (Republicans did not field a candidate) has some baggage. I don’t know enough to comment beyond what I’ve read in the two links presented here. I hope for the best.

One more thing for this post, and I’ll have some other observations and number stuff in a different post, and it has to do with the Dem primary for CD35, a seat I firmly believe we can win, in which a candidate I had not heard of before came out in the lead.

Democrats originally wrote off this district, which under new boundaries would have supported Trump by more than 10 percentage points in 2024.

One of their largest PACs published a report saying it’s out of reach for this election cycle, and efforts to recruit a high-profile candidate fell short.

But House Democrats’ campaign arm has since named the race a top battleground for 2026, and national party leaders are excited about longtime Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy Johnny Garcia, who got to attend a recent Democratic National Committee fundraiser as a guest of DNC Chair Ken Martin.When the final votes were counted, however, Garcia was headed to a runoff in May.

Maureen Galindo, a family, marriage and sex therapist who ran unsuccessfully for a San Antonio City Council seat in 2025, was in first place with 29.2% of the vote. Garcia had 27.02%.

Despite raising little money, Galindo waged a spirited campaign after developers planned to raze her apartment complex to build a Minor League Baseball stadium.

“This runoff is simple,” she said in a statement Tuesday night. “Do we send a Democrat to Congress who understands and responds to the needs of the people of District 35? Or one who was bought to puppet a corporate-owned America?”

Leading up to Tuesday, a number of local Democratic groups had rallied behind Marine Corps veteran and former federal employee John Lira, who was taking 20.76% in a four-way race.

In an interview at his watch party at the Deco Ballroom, Lira credited Galindo for getting her message out in an overall low-information election.

“She’s basically been a one-person show with a social media following, and seems to be surging,” Lira said as the early results were coming in. “We’ll see where the final dust settles. But she’s over-performed so far. So that’s significant.”

Leaders at the Blue Dog Action PAC, which is helping Garcia, have already said they plan to keep spending to get him through the runoff.

Congratulations to Maureen Galindo, whom I did not include in the January campaign finance report roundup because she had raised a grand total of $4K. She’ll be in the April roundup, and we’ll see if she has more money raised by then. I still think Johnny Garcia is likely to be the stronger competitor – stories like this add more than a little credence to that belief – but you have to respect someone who can do what she did with so little in resources.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Amber Givens, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, CD23, CD35, Chris Turner, Congress, Dallas County, Democratic primary, District Attorney, Election 2026, Harris County, HD101, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, John Cornyn, John Creuzot, John Lira, Johnny Garcia, Junior Ezeonu, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Maureen Galindo, polls, primaries, Republican Party, runoff, Senate, Texas, The Lege, Vince Shlomi | 2 Comments

Lawsuit filed over Muslim schools’ exclusion from voucher program

Posted on March 5, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Yet another seemingly clear-cut First Amendment violation. It’s like it’s a habit around here.

A Houston-area parent is suing state officials, accusing them of religious discrimination for barring Islamic schools from participating in Texas’ private school voucher program.

The plaintiff, Mehdi Cherkaoui, alleges the state has “systematically targeted Islamic schools for exclusion” from the $1 billion tuition support program, preventing Muslim families from applying and using the state money at a school of their choice.

His suit appears to be the first legal challenge to the voucher program that Republican lawmakers pitched last year as a way to help families afford private education, including at religious schools.

Hearst Newspapers reported in early February that no Islamic institutions had been approved for the program even as families began applying to the program. Three Islamic schools had previously been approved but were later removed from the state’s map of approved campuses.

The continued freeze on at least two dozen Islamic schools started in December, when acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock, whose office oversees the program, sought legal approval to block what he says are foreign terrorism-linked schools from accessing the program.

Program leaders have confirmed an ongoing “due-diligence review” of some schools but have not provided details on how the review is being conducted or evidence for why specific schools have been blocked. Hancock confirmed at an event over the weekend that the review remains ongoing.

As the story notes, all this is happening in the wake of some aggressively anti-Mulsim rhetoric and activity from Republicans, so it’s hard to see this as anything but an extension of that. Comptroller Hancock is welcome to testify why it’s not under oath if he wishes. This seems obvious to me, but you know what can happen when this eventually and inevitably makes contact with the Fifth Circuit. So keep your expectations modest.

I note also that Mr. Cherkaoui is seeking to get voucher funds for his two children who are already enrolled in a Muslim private school. He is allowed to do that, as I am sure many parents of children now attending Christian and other fancy private schools. I just wanted to note that this was one of the many arguments people like me made against this whole wasteful scheme in the first place, that the biggest beneficiaries of it will be people who already had their kids in private schools and/or always intended to send them there. I can’t wait to see what that data looks like when we have it. That has nothing to do with the merit of this suit, just with the merit of this dumb law. The Trib has more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Comptroller, Greg Abbott, Houston, Kelly Hancock, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Mehdi Cherkaoui, Mike Morath, Texas, Texas Education Agency, vouchers | Leave a comment

Texas blog roundup for the week of March 3

Posted on March 5, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance congratulates the winners of the primary elections and is ready for November as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Off the Kuff looked at the most recent pre-primary polls of the Democratic race for US Senate.

SocraticGadfly asked rhetorically what HAVE Texas Republicans accomplished in the past 25 years?

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said Republican Houston Councilmember Julian Ramirez left his Republican Party & himself off his list of top election security threats in Harris County.

=======================

Saraí Bejarano explains why they are fighting to protect Hispanic Serving Institutions in Texas.

The Texas Observer talks to Sen. Sarah Eckhardt about how to put the Comptroller’s office back on a good path.

Tom Palladino and Linda Mais urge better support for caregivers.

Deceleration has a kickass “Smash Fascism” playlist for you.

The TSTA Blog wonders how the State Board of Education would handle the social studies curriculum standards post-Trump.

The Barbed Wire analyzed 300 Texas accounts on a white supremacist dating site.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged blog roundup, TPA | Leave a comment

2026 primary results: Statewide

Posted on March 4, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

We have to start with this:

The Texas Supreme Court suspended a district court’s decision Tuesday to extend voting by two hours in Dallas County and ordered that any votes cast by people who got in line after 7 p.m. be separated.

Voting was extended until 9 p.m. in Dallas County after the Dallas County Democratic Party asked for an extension on Tuesday due to confusion over precinct-specific voting locations and issues with the county’s elections website.

Kardal Coleman, Dallas County Democratic Party Chair, filed an emergency petition Tuesday, saying voter confusion was so severe that the county election department’s website crashed. Coleman asked that polls be kept open until 9 p.m. to allow voters time to get to their assigned precinct location.

After the district court judge’s decision, voters were allowed to get in line until 9 p.m., but those who got in line after 7 p.m. were going to be casting provisional ballots, according to former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred.

The Texas Supreme Court issued a statement Tuesday night saying voting should occur only as permitted by the Texas Election Code and that votes cast by voters who were not in line at 7 p.m. should be separated.

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s camp issued a statement Tuesday afternoon saying Dallas County Republicans and the Williamson County GOP implemented precinct-specific voting locations on Election Day that were an “effort to suppress the vote” and that state law forced Democrats to “follow suit against our will.”

“This effort to suppress the vote, to confuse and inconvenience voters, is having its intended effect as people are being turned away from the polls,” Crockett said. “We are monitoring the situation and working with our local county party to explore all solutions, including an extension of election day voting hours.”

During a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Crockett said there were issues with the Dallas County Elections website staying online and providing accurate data, which made it difficult for voters to verify their precinct location.

Texas Rep. James Talarico, who is running in the primary race against Crockett, issued a statement saying he was “deeply concerned about the reports of voters being turned away from the polls” and also called for an extension of voting hours.

Crockett said voters in the counties are accustomed to countywide voting, which allows them to cast ballots at any voting location in the county during early voting and on Election Day, not just at their assigned precinct.

[…]

Kendall Scudder, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said Republicans in Dallas and Williamson counties refused to agree to a joint primary, which he said led to confusion and voters showing up at the wrong voting locations on Election Day.

“Let’s be clear about what happened here. Both counties have spent a million dollars trying to get the word out about this change — a million dollars of taxpayer money that didn’t need to be spent. Democrats pushed for a joint election,” Scudder said. “As it has been for eight years, it would have been cheaper, simpler, and more accessible for every voter in the county. Republicans said no.”

This is of course related to the stupid hand-counting scheme that the Dallas County Republicans are embarking on. It’s dumb dumbness all the way down. Most likely, the total number of votes cast in the extended period will be fairly small, and most of them will probably get cured, so the net effect of the SCOTx ruling will probably be minimal. Note all of the qualifiers in that sentence, and note that all of this could have been avoided. Voting in El Paso was also extended by an hour due to some technical difficulties.

On to the results. The Trib has an excellent statewide ballot tracker, which I will use to sum things up:

– As of about 10:30 PM, James Talarico led Jasmine Crockett 52-47, a margin of about 70K votes. At the time of this writing, only early results were in from Dallas (where Crockett led 61-38) and Harris (where she led 53.5-45.5). I’ll update this in the morning, but this is too close to call. (Update: Talarico has been declared the winner, though it doesn’t appear that Crockett has conceded yet. Talarico was up by about 160K votes, with more still to be counted.)

– On the Republican side, John Cornyn had a slight lead on Ken Paxton, but with Wesley Hunt and a bunch of no-names collecting almost 17% of the vote, those two are headed for a runoff. Good, let them beat each other up and set a bunch of money on fire for three more months. I’m actually impressed Cornyn was leading Paxton in early votes, but that could change by morning.

– Gina Hinojosa and Sarah Eckhardt (Comptroller) were cruising to easy wins. Vikki Goodwin and Nathan Johnson were right around 49% in their races for Lite Guv and AG, so maybe they’re in a runoff and maybe they squeak by. Benjamin Flores was up 55-45 for Land Commissioner. Maggie Ellis and Kristen Hawkins won their primaries for State Supreme Court. (Update: Flores won, Goodwin and Johnson are in runoffs with Marcos Vélez and Joe Jaworski, respectively.)

– Don Huffines is a turd, but him wiping the floor with Greg Abbott’s hand-picked Comptroller Kelly Hancock is grimly funny. All that and Taylor Rehmet is now the Senator in SD09. Someone give Abbott one of those Magic Erasers to get the “L” off of his forehead. Sid Miller may have finally worn out his welcome as Ag Commissioner, but he was only trailing by seven points as I write this, so he’s not fully dead yet. Mayes Middleton and Chip Roy will fight it out for AG in May.

– I could save this for the Harris County results, but Steve Toth, who is also a turd, is kicking Dan Crenshaw’s behind in CD02. Remember when Crenshaw became a national name who got to go be chummy on “Saturday Night Live” because Pete Davidson made a dumb joke about his eye? Those were the days. Everyone, get to know Shaun Finnie. Dan, you know you don’t have to be gracious about this, especially not after Ted Cruz stabbed you in the back, right? Just think about it, that’s all I’m saying.

– Bobby Pulido easily won in CD15, while Colin Allred and Julie Johnson will go to overtime in CD33.

– The other Congressional race of interest is of course in CD23, where scandal-ridden Rep. Tony Gonzales had a slight lead over gun nut Brandon Herrera. The two will face off in May; Gonzales barely beat Herrera in a primary runoff in 2024. Katy Padilla Stout was on track to face the winner.

– One local result of interest, former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg easily won the Dem primary for Bexar County Judge, ousting incumbent Peter Sakai. I expect he’ll win easily in November as well. Nirenberg briefly flirted with running for Governor. Maybe another cycle.

– And finally, a result from outside Texas of interest:

Democrat Alex Holladay won a Republican-held seat in the Arkansas state House on Tuesday night, marking the ninth time Democrats have flipped a district from red to blue in a special election since the start of Donald Trump’s second term.

Holladay, a healthcare administrator, defeated businessman Bo Renshaw to capture the 70th District outside of Little Rock, a swingy constituency he had come close to winning in 2024.

In that race, state Rep. Carlton Wing held off Holladay by a slender 51-49 margin, just the latest in a series of difficult elections for the incumbent. With the possibility of another tough battle looming, Wing accepted an appointment to become head of Arkansas PBS last September, triggering a race to replace him.

Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, however, wasn’t eager to hold a special election and originally scheduled it for June 9—more than eight months after Wing’s departure, and, notably, after the legislature’s annual session is set to conclude.

But Arkansas Democrats sued, saying that Sanders’ long delay violated state law. A judge agreed and ordered the election be moved up to March 3, the same day as the state’s regularly scheduled primary.

If Sanders was worried about the GOP’s chances of holding Wing’s seat, she was right to be. The 70th District was the rare constituency that moved to the left in 2024.

Trump carried it 51-47 in 2020, according to data uploaded to Dave’s Redistricting App by the Voting and Election Science Team, but calculations from The Downballot show that Kamala Harris won it 50-48 four years later.

Alex Holladay becomes the second Dem to flip a Republican-held legislative seat in 2026, following Taylor Rehmet. Congratulations to him.

UPDATE: Jasmine Crockett has conceded in the Senate race. I’m glad we have that wrapped up, and I wish her all the best with whatever comes next.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Ag Commissioner, Alex Holladay, Arkansas, Attorney General, Bexar County, Bobby Pulido, Brandon Herrera, CD02, CD15, CD23, CD33, Chip Roy, Colin Allred, Comptroller, Congress, County Judge, Dallas County, Dan Crenshaw, Democratic primary, Don Huffines, El Paso, Election 2026, Gina Hinojosa, Governor, hand counting, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, Joe Jaworski, John Cornyn, Julie Johnson, Katy Padilla Stout, Kelly Hancock, Ken Paxton, Kristen Hawkins, Land Commissioner, Lite Gov, Maggie Ellis, Marcos Vélez, Mayes Middleton, Nathan Johnson, Nathan Sheets, Peter Sakai, primaries, Ron Nirenberg, runoff, Sarah Eckhardt, SD09, Senate, Sid Miller, Steve Toth, Supreme Court, Taylor Rehmet, Texas, Tony Gonzales, Vikki Goodwin, Wesley Hunt, Williamson County | Leave a comment

2026 primary results: Harris County

Posted on March 4, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Going to bullet point this one, with updates to come later, as most Election Day votes are still out as I write this:

– Christian Menefee and Al Green appear headed to a runoff in CD18. Menefee had a sizeable lead in Harris County, but CD18 now extends into Fort Bend, and Green led there by enough to hold Menefee under 50% as of early voting. Amanda Edwards still took in about seven percent of the vote, despite suspending her campaign. Rep. Sylvia Garcia was over 56% in CD29, Leticia Gutierrez was at almost 52% in CD09, and Melissa McDonough was on her way to a second try in CD38.

– Alex Mealer and Briscoe Cain will run it off for CD09 on the Republican side. Mealer, like Don Huffines, was the Trump-endorsed candidate while Cain, like Kelly Hancock, was Abbott-endorsed. Make of that what you will. Someone named Jon Bonck fell just short of 50% for the Republican nomination in CD38, and will be in the runoff with someone named Shelly DeZavallos. And Dan Crenshaw, we already discussed.

– Annise Parker was just under 50% for County Judge; she may pull it out, or she may have to run it off against Letitia Plummer, who was at 37%. How it is that 14% of early voters supported Matt Salazar is a mystery to me. Orlando Sanchez (26%) and Marty Lancton (22%) were early leaders on the Republican side, but the third and fourth place candidates were right at 20%, so who knows. No consensus there, that’s for sure. (Update: Parker and Plummer will run it off.)

– Abbie Kamin had a tiny lead over Audrie Lawton Evans for Harris County Attorney – I’m talking 50.08% to 49.92%, a difference of about 300 votes. That will go down to the wire. (Update: Kamin won Election Day and was at just over 51%. There are still some votes out so I don’t want to call this yet, but Kamin is in strong position to win a real squeaker.)

– Former county court judge Darrell Jordan was leading the pack for District Clerk. Jose “Alex” Maldonado and Pernell Davis were the next two in line, so I expect two of those three to be in the runoff. (Update: It’s Jordan and Maldonado in May.)

– Far as I could tell, only one incumbent judge was losing their primary, Jim Kovach for County Civil Court at Law #2. Leah Shapiro of the 315th Juvenile Court was at 53.6%, the rest all looked to be in strong position to win. Sarah Beth Landau looked to be headed to a win for Chief Justice of the 14th Court of Appeals, while William Demond and Michael Adams-Hurta appeared headed to a runoff for the other 14th Court slot.

– Rep. Hubert Vo in HD149 is headed for a runoff with Darlene Breaux. Reps. Mary Ann Perez (HD144) and Charlene Ward Johnson (HD139) were winning their races. Staci Childs and Lawrence Allen were headed to a runoff in HD131. And sigh, unless he falters in Election Day voting, Rep. Harold Dutton appears to have won again in HD142, with a not-awe-inspiring-but-still-enough 52% of the vote.

– The biggest surprise of the night was Traci Gibson walloping Mike Doyle in the race for HCDP Chair. Some people I greatly respect were at best ambivalent about this race. Gibson will be sworn in at the June CEC meeing. I wish her all the best and I hope she has a transition team already in place. I voted for Mike Doyle and I thank him for his service.

– And the biggest LOL of the night is turncoat Fort Bend County Judge KP George coming in last in the Republican primary for that office. You have to have been torpedoed real good to sink that quickly and efficiently.

– I will take this opportunity to toot my own horn: I was re-elected as Precinct Chair in Precinct 0003. I’ve been Precinct Chair since 2008, this was the first time I had an opponent. I did some actual campaigning, and I will say since the voters in this tiny little race are literally my neighbors, it was immensely gratifying to have people cheerfully say they would vote for me. More than one who I didn’t get to talk to either told me in person or texted my wife after voting that they voted for me. Gotta say, it was a nice feeling. Thank you to everyone who voted in that last race on your ballot for me.

I will post updates as I can in the morning.

UPDATE: Warren Howell, whoever he is, appears to have snuck past Marty Lancton into the runoff for Harris County Judge. Lancton was endorsed by Greg Abbott. That sound you hear is me giggling like a little girl.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged 14th Court of Appeals, Abbie Kamin, Al Green, Alex Maldonado, Amanda Edwards, Annise Parker, Audrie Lawton, CD09, CD18, CD29, CD38, Charlene Ward Johnson, Christian Menefee, Congress, County Judge, Darlene Breaux, Darrell Jordan, Democratic primary, District Clerk, Election 2026, Fort Bend County, Harold Dutton, Harris County, Harris County Attorney, Harris County Judge, HCDP, HD131, HD139, HD142, HD144, HD149, Hubert Vo, Jim Kovach, Jon Bonck, judicial races, KP George, Lawrence Allen, Leticia Gutierrez, Letitia Plummer, Marty Lancton, Mary Ann Perez, Matt Salazar, Melissa McDonough, Michael Adams-Hurta, Mike Doyle, Orlando Sanchez, Pernell Davis, primaries, runoff, Sarah Beth Landau, Shelly DeZavallos, Staci Childs, Sylvia Garcia, Texas, The Lege, Traci Gibson, Warren Howell, William Demond | 5 Comments

On Republican meddling in the Democratic Senate primary

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

I have three things to say about this.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett

The Democratic primary for U.S. Senate is closing with a fierce debate that has animated it from the start: Who would Republicans rather face in November?

The leading candidates, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas and state Rep. James Talarico of Austin, have each pitched voters on the idea that they are a better bet for November. Crockett has vowed to turn out new voters to finally flip the state, while Talarico has advocated a broader strategy that includes reaching out to Republicans.

Some Republicans have signaled they would rather face Crockett — and Talarico’s side wants voters to know it.

A pro-Talarico super PAC is running ads online in the final days of Tuesday’s primary warning that Republicans are “boosting” Crockett and “spending thousands of dollars to make sure that Jasmine Crockett gets elected.” The ads link to a report about how a conservative group has sent out texts highlighting Crockett’s hard line against ICE and how Gov. Greg Abbott has featured her prominently in ads.

Crockett has scoffed at the GOP meddling narrative, questioning why Republicans would be so clear about a preference, and has urged Democrats to tune out the GOP messaging.

“They love to kind of stir us up and have us decide to play off their rhetoric,” she told CNN last week, drawing a parallel to Republicans who egged on Democrats in the 2024 election to abandon President Joe Biden. “Democrats need to focus on the prize.”

Rep. James Talarico

Talarico has denounced the GOP interference in the Democratic primary.

“I would tell every Republican elected official to stay out of our business and stay out of our primary,” Talarico told a Dallas TV reporter last week when asked about Abbott’s ads featuring Crockett.

The back and forth over GOP meddling gets at a broader debate in the primary about who is better positioned to win a Senate election for Texas Democrats for the first time since 1988. The party is optimistic given the national political environment and the potential that Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has a history of scandals, could emerge as the GOP nominee as he takes on longtime incumbent John Cornyn.

Cornyn has called Crockett’s candidacy a “gift” and warned that Talarico could be “dangerous” as his party’s nominee.

Paxton said Monday he does not have a preference between Crockett and Talarico. “They’re both so liberal,” Paxton told Dallas radio host Mark Davis.

Independent polling has painted an inconclusive picture about which Democratic candidate would be more competitive in November. A University of Houston survey in late January tested an array of potential general election matchups between Crockett or Talarico and GOP candidates — and showed no one had a decisive advantage.

1. That last point above is key. We don’t have much general election polling, but what we do have has not shown any difference in how either Dem candidate performs against any of the possible Republicans. Now, none of this is remotely conclusive – there just aren’t enough data points so far. It may be that over time there could be an effect. That’s the same as saying that over the course of the rest of the election season, a sustained multi-million dollar attack on one candidate or the other could affect their standing in the race. Both candidates can interpret the Republican rhetoric and ad buys in whatever way they think will be favorable to themselves. In the short term, which is to say the outcome of this primary, I don’t think it adds up to much.

2. If the goal was to drive Republican voters over to the Democratic primary to help tilt the scales for Crockett, again at this time there’s little evidence to suggest there’s much to it. As of the waning days of early voting, the percentage of Dem primary voters with an all-Republican primary voting history remains low, similar to what we normally see in ordinary primary years. Given the number of Democrats voting, it would take an enormous Republican crossover surge to move the needle. That might be a hard sell when they have their own Senate race to sort out, not to mention a bunch of Congressional and other contested primaries.

3. Whatever happens, and for whatever the reason it happens, once we know who the candidate is it’s our job to support them 100%, regardless of whether they were our first choice or not. We do not have the luxury of marinating in post-primary grievances. Fight to win in November or GTFO.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2026, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, polls, primaries, Senate, Texas | 5 Comments

From the “FAFO: South Texas” files

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Not one but two articles from Politico, on back-to-back days, about some Republicans getting all nervous about Trump and his anti-immigrant rampage. First up:

Home builders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They’re cautioning that Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too.

Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives made an electability argument, raising concerns to GOP leaders that support among Hispanic voters is eroding, particularly in regions that swung to Trump in 2024.

Hill Republicans have held separate meetings with White House officials to share their own electoral concerns.

This story is based on eight interviews with home builders, lawmakers and others familiar with the meetings.

“I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week.

He urged the administration and lawmakers to ease up on enforcement at construction sites, warning that employees are afraid to go to work.

The construction industry is one of the latest and clearest examples of how the president’s mass deportation agenda continues to clash with his economic goals of bringing down prices and political aims of keeping control of Congress. Even the president’s allies fear disruptions to labor-heavy industries will undermine the gains with Latino voters Republicans have made in recent years, in large part because of Trump’s economic agenda.

And here’s the followup:

Backlash to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is putting vulnerable Republicans in a tough spot, forcing them to shift their tone to appease frustrated Hispanic voters — or risk losing key battleground seats.

It’s a delicate pivot for Republicans in South Texas, who spent years taking a hardline approach on immigration and flipped historically blue districts in the process.

Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz, representing a majority-Hispanic district, has gone from calling for mass deportations to focusing on the “worst of the worst.” In lieu of expediting removals, she wants to create new visa categories for undocumented workers to fill jobs in construction and agriculture. And instead of slamming the Biden White House for its “border failure,” she’s setting up private meetings at the Trump White House to plead for temperance in immigration enforcement.

Rep. Tony Gonzales, whose district shares hundreds of miles with Mexico, wants his party to talk more about the border, and said he plans to “continue to advocate that the Republican Party needs to focus on convicted criminal illegal aliens” amid broad outrage over deportations of undocumented people with no proven risk to public safety.

Like other Republicans, they are trying to slowly distance themselves from the massive immigration crackdown that has quickly become political kryptonite for the GOP — but without being seen as disloyal to the president or undercutting their previous positions.

“President Trump made a promise, and he’s kept that promise by securing the border. That was stage one,” De La Cruz said in an interview. “Now we’re at stage two, which is having a conversation of true immigration reform.”

[…]

The immigration crackdown has wreaked havoc for the area’s business community. Greg LaMantia, who runs a major beer wholesaler in the region, said his company’s sales are down as a result of the raids. “You have people that are legal that are scared to death to get caught up in this fiasco and deported,” said LaMantia, who voted for Trump and has donated recently to both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. “It’s caused sales to go down, no doubt about it. It’s chaos.”

Daniel Guerrero, CEO of the McAllen-based South Texas Builders Association, said rampant ICE activity has sent a shiver through the construction industry, leading to massive delays. He said ICE is notorious for following concrete trucks to job sites, then apprehending workers as they begin pouring a foundation, leaving half-poured concrete slabs.

“The sentiment is pretty clear across the table, that nobody really expected this magnitude of enforcement,” said Guerrero, who voted for Trump and De La Cruz in 2024.

[…]

But De La Cruz’s shift in messaging has simultaneously earned skepticism from some industry leaders and frustration with the base, underscoring the political tightrope she must walk until November.

Guerrero, the construction nonprofit leader, said he sensed political opportunism in De La Cruz’s newfound interest in helping his industry.

“People feel abandoned because you never showed face, and now that there’s an actual crisis, you want to show face?” Guerrero said. “It’s like, dude, it’s a little too late, man.”

The MAGA base, meanwhile, doesn’t love the shift, either. Patricio County GOP Chair Rex Warner thinks De La Cruz has become too soft on deportations. “I align with some of it, but very little,” he said.

Some of us were less gullible about how trustworthy Donald Trump was than you were, Daniel. And good luck squaring that circle, Monica. I try to maintain some level of skepticism about these stories, for the simple reason that I don’t want to get overinvested and miss the bigger picture. I do know I’d rather be us than them at this point, and I see no reason to believe that Trump will do anything substantive to address these concerns. He’ll make some rhetorical gestures, and do some quiet backing down, but this is who he is.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged CD15, construction, Donald Trump, economy, Election 2024, Election 2026, immigration, Latino voting, Monica de la Cruz-Hernandez, South Texas Builders Association, Texas | Leave a comment

Today is Primary Day

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

From the inbox:

Today is Election Day for the March 3, 2026, Primary Elections, when Texas voters will decide which Republican and Democratic candidates advance to the November general election. Texas is an open primary state, so voters do not have to register with a political party; however, each voter can only participate in one party’s primary.

“Voters have one final opportunity to participate in the primary election process, unless a primary runoff is required,” said Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth. “What voters decide at the ballot box will determine this election and the future of Texas.”

Approximately 47% of Harris County voters are in new congressional districts following the Texas Legislature’s 2025 redistricting. Voters can visit the Harris County Voter Registrar’s website to view their voter registration certificate and the federal, state, and county offices associated with their address.

On Election Day, voters may cast their ballot at any of the more than 270 vote centers open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. For personalized sample ballots and vote centers, visit HarrisVotes.com .

What to Expect at the Polls

When you arrive at a vote center, you will be asked which party’s primary you want to vote in. Poll workers will then guide you to the correct voting area, Republican or Democratic, and give you an access code for the voting machines.

Voters should verify their access code and confirm they are in the correct primary before voting. Voters may bring a personalized sample ballot and any written notes to assist them while voting. You can find sample ballots and nearby vote centers at HarrisVotes.com.

Texas Required Photo IDs

TX Driver’s License

TX Personal ID

TX Handgun License

TX Election ID Certificate

U.S. Military ID (with photo)

U.S. Citizenship Certificate (with photo)

U.S. Passport (book or card)

Texas law prohibits the use of wireless communication devices in voting areas. However, voters may bring written notes or sample ballots to the vote centers.

Mail Ballot Drop-Off

Voters can hand-deliver their mail ballot on Election Day at 1019 Congress St. in downtown Houston between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. A valid photo ID is required.

Voters who choose to vote in person instead must surrender their mail ballot at a vote center. If the voter does not have their mail ballot, they may still vote in person, but must vote a provisional ballot per the Texas Election Code.

For more information and real-time updates, follow @HarrisVotes or visit HarrisVotes.com.

The interactive map to find a convenient vote center is here and a PSD listing of each location is here. I don’t know how busy it’s going to get, but you have plenty of options for where to go. I will have results for you in the morning. Happy voting, y’all.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2026, Election Day, Harris County, Harris County Clerk, primaries, Teneshia Hudspeth, Texas | 1 Comment

A statewide comparison

Posted on March 2, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

I mentioned this yesterday, so here it is. I decided to look at the most recent early voting turnout numbers I could find for the counties, and then compare them to the final turnout numbers from the 2022 election. I’ll get into the reasons for that and some notes about the data on the other side, but let’s see the numbers first.


County         Dem      GOP    2022 D   2022 R
==============================================
Bexar      123,730   59,547    50,516   47,167
Brazoria    13,974   18,106    11,480   31,122
Caldwell     1,383    1,332     1,439    3,601
Chambers       650    3,650       637    7,385
Collin      49,176   53,091    36,895   81,141
Comal        4,712   10,497     4,917   24,249
Dallas     149,332   51,778   129,584   88,210
Denton      43,901   47,414    27,516   68,442
El Paso     31,830   11,054    37,624   18,290
Ellis        9,939   13,575     5,496   18,811
Fort Bend   42,865   30,822    41,109   46,480
Galveston   13,219   18,809    11,341   31,309
Guadalupe    5,007    8,049     4,805   20,734
Hays        17,224    7,988    13,154   15,691
Hidalgo     40,077    7,771    43,059   15,306
Johnson      4,371    7,119     2,513   17,263
Kaufman      3,640    4,055     3,079   11,960
Liberty      1,048    5,078       988    8,255
Lubbock      8,786   14,730     5,663   28,014
McLennan     6,829   10,905     6,009   22,809
Medina       1,222    2,024     1,266    7,002
Midland      1,508    4,824     1,531   15,016
Montgomery  15,407   42,614    10,758   72,606
Rockwall     3,674    8,288     2,547   13,561
Tarrant    122,184   91,684    75,125  132,848
Travis     103,309   27,138   109,646   46,679
Waller       1,755    2,340     1,245    4,759
Williamson  38,221   29,229    26,335   48,156

For the most part, the EV data comes from the Day Ten county-by-county data provided by Derek Ryan – here’s the Republican report, here’s the Democratic report. I used this data because I started working on this post on Saturday, and that’s what was available at the time. There are two exceptions, and in both cases I have the final EV data: Bexar County, which I found in a news story that came up as I was googling their elections department, and Tarrant County, which I got from Chris Tackett. You should read his analysis of the Tarrant County data, he has a lot of good details there.

I picked counties that were of interest to me, including suburban and exurban ones around the big urban counties, the big urbans themselves, and a few others. I did this in part because I wanted to see what turnout for both parties looked like in counties where there likely were few to no local Democratic primaries of interest, where the Senate race and all things Trump were almost certainly the big drivers. I did not include Harris County because I’ve already covered this for Harris. I included all of the counties that border Harris instead.

I googled “[insert] County Elections” to get the 2022 data. Ideally, I wanted to get the total number of ballots cast for each primary in each county, because the EV totals we have reflect total ballots cast and not votes in a particular race. That wasn’t always possible. Some counties just didn’t have that data, including Travis County as well as some of the smaller counties. Where I couldn’t find it, I used the Contest Details for the Governor’s race in 2022, which gave county-by-county numbers. But those are votes cast, not ballots cast, so it’s a slight undercount. Similarly, some counties that use the Clarity reporting system only gave total turnout as a combination of the two primaries, so again I went by votes cast in the Governor’s race for that county’s turnout number. The difference is likely to be small, but if you have the actual total-ballots-cast figures, you’ll know they’re not the same.

I did this for two reasons. One was to see what the Democratic energy looked like outside of Harris County. That was easy enough, as in every county here the Democratic vote with two days of voting to go has either already surpassed the final total from 2022 or is trivially close to it. In some cases, the Democratic total is far and away higher than in 2022, with more voting still to come. Look at Bexar and Tarrant (the two counties where I have the final EV totals, not the Thursday EV totals), but also look at Ellis and Johnson and Rockwall and Lubbock. The first three are fairly high-growth suburban/exurban counties that have helped boost GOP margins, and the latter is one of my white whales as the most Republican urban area. Just getting more people to vote in a Democratic primary in places like those should help grow the presence of the local Democratic Party and encourage more Democrats to run for lower offices – school boards, City Council, and so on – which in turn will help build a bench.

One year is far from a trend, and Dems have done fine in years where the primary participation rate was low – 2012 and 2018 come to mind for that. But I’m often reminded of some work former Republican consultant Royal Masset did over the years for the Quorum Report, in which he tracked the rise of the Republican Party in Texas by noting the growth in Republican primary turnout, overall and in some key counties. Fort Bend and Williamson used to be seen as Republican juggernauts, as were Collin and Denton and Tarrant. If we can plant some seeds in the next wave of places that people are moving to, we will be much better off down the line.

The other reason to do this is the flip side of the first reason, to see what is happening to Republicans. It’s important to note that in part to their own big money and high profile Senate race, Republican turnout overall for this primary has been pretty good. Harris County Republicans are doing well, and Bexar County, which also features some slugfests at the Congressional and legislative level, has overperformed from 2022. Some other counties seem to be on track to at least match, if not exceed their 2022 turnout when all the votes are counted. But in some of these counties, you have to wonder what’s going on. In some counties, the two-days-to-go tally is less than half of the 2022 final total. Look at Caldwell, Chambers, Comal, Guadalupe, Johnson, Kaufman, Medina, McLennan, Midland – either they’re all committed to Election Day turnout, or there’s some kind of problem for them to worry about. Republicans have won in the past in part because they have run up the score in counties like these – the cumulative effect of them has more than compensated for the blue shifts in the I-35 corridor and Harris County. As good as the excess of Democratic energy is for us, a lack of energy on the Republican side would be disastrous for them. I’ll be very interested to see what the final totals look like.

So there you have it. What will you be looking for in tomorrow’s results?

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Bexar County, Brazoria County, Caldwell County, Chambers County, Collin County, Comal County, Dallas County, Democratic primary, Denton County, Donald Trump, early voting, El Paso, Election 2012, Election 2018, Election 2020, Election 2022, Election 2024, Election 2026, Fort Bend County, Galveston, Guadalupe County, Harris County, Hays County, Hidalgo County, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, John Cornyn, Johnson County, Kaufman County, Ken Paxton, Liberty County, Lubbock, McLennan County, Medina County, Midland County, Montgomery County, primaries, Rockwall County, Senate, Tarrant County, Texas, Travis County, turnout, Waller County, Williamson County | 1 Comment

Measles in El Paso

Posted on March 2, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Great. Just great.

Seventeen measles cases have been reported in El Paso, including 13 at the Camp East Montana Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, health officials said Thursday.

The four community cases in El Paso aren’t connected to the cases at Camp East Montana, city spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta said.

The cases at the ICE detention center are outside the city’s jurisdiction and reported through federal authorities, the El Paso Department of Public Health said in a news release. City health officials are coordinating with federal partners and have provided testing support and vaccines for prevention efforts, the release states.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said the measles outbreak at ICE’s largest detention facility is no surprise.

“This public health crisis is a direct result of the manner in which Acquisition Logistics operates the facility: an explicit effort to maximize profits at the expense of federal standards for services such as medical attention,” she said. “Such an inexperienced, incompetent private prison corporation does not share our community’s interests or those of the detainees. For these reasons and more, I continue my calls for Camp East Montana to be shut down and Acquisition Logistics to be investigated.”

Earlier this month, two cases of tuberculosis and 18 cases of COVID-19 were identified at the ICE detention facility, which is located on Fort Bliss.

The ICE Health Services Corps quarantined all people suspected of having contact with people with measles, and ceased all movement within Camp East Montana to control further spread of the disease, Lauren Bis, deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement to El Paso Matters.

“Medical staff is continuing to monitor the detainees’ conditions and will take appropriate and active steps to prevent further infection. All detainees are being provided with proper medical care,” the statement said.

There is of course no reason to believe a word of that statement. The best I’d hope for is that the spread can be contained. We haven’t done a good job of that lately.

The U.S. has officially surpassed 1,000 cases of measles in 2026. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest disease tally reveals that, as of February 26, 1,136 people have confirmed measles infections. What that means is that, in just two months, the national total is already nearing half of all the 2,281 confirmed cases reported in 2025.

Measles is a vaccine-preventable viral disease that is both extremely contagious and potentially deadly. The U.S. was declared measles-free in 2000, but experts say that achievement is all but certain to be reversed. The rate of infections this year is accelerating at a much faster pace than even during the outbreak that began in West Texas in 2025. The spike has alarmed public health experts, many of whom blame the disease’s resurgence on declining rates of vaccination against measles.

“Hitting 1,000 [cases] in February is unprecedented, but it’s not because there’s something new about the virus or disease like when there’s new strains of flu. It’s unprecedented because of how preventable it is,” says Amy Winter, a demographer and epidemiologist at the College of Public Health at the University of Georgia. “This is 100 percent a reflection of the recent declines in vaccination rates.”

The CDC’s numbers are likely an undercount, and there are likely many more cases in the U.S. going undetected or unreported. Most of the confirmed cases—90 percent—are linked to upsurges across more than a dozen states, with a relentless outbreak in South Carolina fueling the majority of infections this year. On February 27 South Carolina’s public health department reported 985 total cases since the fall of 2025; 919 of those cases were in people who did not receive the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

Last year 11 percent of people who caught measles were hospitalized.

And adding to the challenge is that because we had done such a good job up until recently of preventing measles, we don’t have much experience in treating it.

As U.S. hospitals face an increasing risk of encountering measles, and pressure to immediately spot it, health care workers face an unusual barrier: Many don’t know what it looks like.

“There’s a word, ‘morbilliform’ — it means measles-like, and there are lots of viruses that can cause a rash that looks like a measles rash in children,” said Theresa Flynn, a pediatrician in Raleigh and the president of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. In 30 years in health care, she’s never seen a measles case, she said.

[…]

Infectious disease experts and doctors said federal policies have left health care workers to lean on their own experience or guidance from their state public health systems to fight a disease that many are preparing to see for the first time and that initially may behave like the common cold.

“As measles becomes more common, all of us are leveling up in our ability to recognize and immediately respond to suspected measles,” Flynn said.

[…]

Most U.S. clinics and hospitals have never experienced measles cases, said Patsy Stinchfield, a former president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a nurse practitioner. She called CMS’ Immediate Jeopardy penalty for Mission “extreme,” given the virus can be so difficult to identify.

“In the middle of winter right now, measles looks like every other viral respiratory infection that kids come in with,” Stinchfield said.

The CDC has been less communicative in the past year with clinics about their response to outbreaks, said health workers and infectious disease experts. This disconnect began soon after Trump took office, according to a KFF Health News investigation finding that health officials in West Texas were unable to talk with CDC scientists as measles surged last February and March.

“We certainly do not feel the support or guidance from the CDC right now,” said Brigette Fogleman, a pediatrician at Asheville Children’s Medical Center, where staff members have come up with their own method of staving off the virus: screening patients over the phone and in their cars before a visit.

In response to questions about how the CDC is supporting health care organizations during the measles resurgence, spokesperson Andrew Nixon said that “state and local health departments have the lead in investigating measles cases and outbreaks” and that the CDC provides support “as requested.” He pointed to numerous guides and simulation tools the agency has developed as the virus has spread.

Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, acknowledged that diagnosing measles is a major challenge, emphasizing that coordination among public health agencies is critical in overcoming that challenge.

Stinchfield attributed the spread of measles to CDC leaders’ lack of communication to clinics and to the public — no ads on buses, no social media campaigns, no sense of urgency. “When you are at the highest level of measles cases in 30 years, we should be seeing lots more from our federal government,” Stinchfield said. “And I think it’s harming kids and causing an inordinate amount of work and expense that really doesn’t belong in health care right now.”

I’m sure the CDC under the brain worm guy will handle this as well as DHS under the puppy murderer lady will handle the outbreak at Camp East Montana. And on that happy note, I’m going to lie down on the couch and watch some mindless television.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Camp East Montana, Centers for Disease Control, coronavirus, Donald Trump, El Paso, ICE, measles, National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, RFK Jr, South Carolina, Texas, tuberculosis, vaccinations | Leave a comment

Commissioners Court moves to abolish Treasurer’s office

Posted on March 2, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Wow.

Carla Wyatt

Harris County commissioners unanimously voted Thursday to strip County Treasurer Carla Wyatt’s office of a key responsibility and pursue abolishing the office entirely during the next legislative session.

It’s the first step in a long process that could require approval from a majority of voters both statewide and within Harris County. Commissioners voted 4-0 to add abolishing the office to the county’s legislative agenda, the items the county will ask lawmakers to support during the next legislative session in January 2027.

The move came after treasurer’s office staff approved for payment two fraudulent checks totaling nearly $53,000, according to a county document obtained by the Houston Chronicle. Fraudsters intercepted and altered two checks, one for $24,328 and another for $27,530, intended for county vendors. A county financial system that alerts officials of potential problems flagged the payments, but the treasurer’s office approved them anyway, the document shows.

Commissioners unanimously approved transferring that alert system and the employees tasked with overseeing it from the treasurer’s office to the Office of Management and Budget.

While the funds have since been recovered, it’s the latest in a series of mistakes that have shaken commissioners’ faith in Wyatt, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the fraud incident late Thursday.

[…]

Wyatt, who is running for re-election in 2026 and is unopposed in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, also is the only candidate in the race for treasurer who has not submitted her Jan. 15 campaign finance report. Wyatt did not respond to a request for comment earlier this week regarding the missing report.

The treasurer’s office also has not uploaded monthly distribution or treasurer’s reports to its website since early 2025. Although not required by law, reports were published on the office’s website each month from 2017 through 2024. The treasurer’s office did not respond to questions about the reports.

Some officials consider the treasurer’s office obsolete, and it has been abolished in 10 counties, including Galveston County, which shuttered the office in 2023. Critics of the county treasurer, such as Republican Galveston County Judge Mark Henry, argue the office is an antiquated position that has long outlived its usefulness.

“In the 1830s, people were trading with gold, silver and probably even Confederate money for that matter. They did not have the systems we have today,” Henry previously told the Chronicle. “It’s generally an unnecessary office because we don’t do things the way we did 250 years ago.”

Henry said the office’s responsibilities were easily assigned to other Galveston County officials, such as the county clerk.

The amendment that abolished Galveston County’s treasurer required approval from a majority of voters within the county and statewide to pass. Nine other counties, including Bexar County, have abolished their treasurers, but only some included language requiring majority approval from county voters and statewide.

See here, here, and here for the background. Politically speaking, I doubt this happens – at least at this time – if Carla Wyatt had drawn a primary challenger. With there being no good outcome in November, at least from a Democratic perspective, I imagine this was an easy call.

There have long been debates about the need for a Treasurer’s office. The state used to have such an office – Ann Richards was State Treasurer before she was Governor – but it was abolished in 1996 by Democrat Martha Whitehead, who campaigned on a promise to do exactly that if elected. Harris County Democratic candidate Richard Garcia campaigned on abolishing the office when he ran in 2006. This is an unusual set of circumstances that led to where we are today.

It’s not that a Treasurer was never useful, it’s mostly that its purpose, like that of a county surveyor, has come and gone. Simply put, there was more for a Treasurer to do in a financially analog world, since one of their duties is writing and depositing checks. The office of Harris County Treasurer had some of its other duties removed by Commissioners Court in the 90s thanks in part to bad blood between then-Treasurer (and always-doofus) Don Sumners and then-Commissioner Steve Radack. I wrote in that post about how longtime Treasurer Jack Cato, who ousted Sumners in a primary, never made the news; that became a running gag about Orlando Sanchez while he was Treasurer (that and his magazine subscription budget). I suppose Carla Wyatt has provided evidence for the thesis that the less one knows about what the Treasurer is up to, the better. We’ll see how this proceeds and whether Judge Hidalgo, who was not there for this vote, opposes the action. Houston Public Media has more.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Ann Richards, Carla Wyatt, Commissioners Court, Constitution, constitutional amendments, Don Sumners, Election 2006, Election 2026, Galveston, Harris County, Harris County Treasurer, Jack Cato, Lina Hidalgo, Mark Henry, Martha Whitehead, Orlando Sanchez, Richard Garcia | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for March 1

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

“Whatever one thinks about cryptocurrency, the federal government must update antiquated security procedures to protect its digital asset stockpile.”

“The federal prosecutor’s office in Minnesota has been gutted by a wave of career officials resigning or retiring over objections to Trump administration directives. Because of the turmoil, 12-time convicted felon Cory Allen McKay caught a break.” That’s “law and order” under Trump, baby.

“We Have Learned Nothing About Amplifying Morons”.

“If your union membership depends on global logistics, and you boost a candidate promising sweeping, economy-crushing tariffs while surrounding himself with rabid anti-union people, don’t be surprised when the fallout lands on your own members.”

“It happened at the perfect time when Netflix was saying yes to so many things. The industry’s just not like that anymore.”

“I was like a karate kicking cowardly lion. And I remember I was like 14 or 15 and I was like, ‘I don’t know a lot about the world, but this is a bad idea and it should not be made.’”

“Way back in 2011, the Girl Scouts navigated trans inclusion with little uproar or backlash. How they did it offers a road map out of the mess we face today.”

“Russia continues to bomb Ukraine’s fossil-fueled power plants, leaving much of the nation shivering during a brutal winter. But Ukraine’s new emphasis on developing decentralized power — from solar panels to wind turbines — is advancing an unexpected green energy transition.”

Sparky 2028.

Everything you wanted to know about Nazgul the wolfdog but were afraid to ask.

“Some time before I was born, America’s finest comedic minds decided it would be really funny if we all pretended that there was no greater idea than the notion that all people had inalienable rights, and that there could be no cause more noble than any effort to protect those rights for others. I, perhaps the biggest Bozo in the United States, totally missed that they were kidding.”

“Okay so by now, you know Epstein trafficked children. A lot of them. You know he collected scientists and princes and Harvard professors like they pokémon. You know he had an island. But what I didn’t know and what I’ve been piecing together over the last few weeks while reading hundreds of his emails (and taking breaks because of my gag reflux) is how involved he was in the online machinery that’s been radicalizing young men for over a decade. The same guy running a child sex trafficking operation was also deeply embedded in the networks that built 4chan’s /pol/, that funded gamer culture, that turned male loneliness into a political weapon. Epstein wasn’t just a predator with a plane. He was also extremely online. And his fingerprints are all over the infrastructure that taught a generation of isolated young men that women were the enemy.”

“How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM”.

I for one would rather party with Flavor Flav than attend the State of the Union. And I too am glad that Flavor Flav exists.

RIP, Robert Carradine, actor best known for Revenge of the Nerds and Lizzie McGuire.

“The lesson isn’t that athletes should avoid recognition by political figures or avoid politics altogether. It’s about understanding The Game. When lawmakers bask in their championship glow, they gain more than the winners do. Power loves being in the vicinity of victory. It absorbs the thrill and the innocence – the easy patriotism – and redistributes it in a propagandized manner.”

You want some State of the Union fact checks? There you go.

RIP, Katherine Short, social worker and daughter of Martin Short.

Naming a snowplow Abolish ICE? You’re beautiful, Chicago.

RIP, Rev. Raymond Earl Judd, Jr, chaplain emeritus at Trinity University, and a real mensch. Rest in peace, Rev. Judd.

RIP, Sondra Lee, Broadway actor, dancer, director, and more who originated the roles of Tiger Lily in Peter Pan and Minnie Faye in Hello, Dolly!.

RIP, Oliver “Power” Grant, co-founder and producer of Wu Tang Clan.

“Trump’s tariffs likely cost you hundreds of dollars. Will you get a refund?” (Spoiler: Almost certainly no, and if you did it would be “pennies on the dollar”.)

“Having this job gives you magic Santa Claus powers to bring joy to people. And you can’t use your Santa Claus powers all the time, to bring joy to everybody. But occasionally, you can go full Santa Claus.”

RIP, Bruce Froemming, longtime MLB umpire.

“The Epstein of it all aside, it’s worth asking, as some doctors are: Is his body of work worth engaging with? Outlive, which spent 131 weeks on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list, has allowed Attia to evangelize widely about how to “extend your lifespan by a decade and your healthspan possibly by two,” as he puts it, via a research-backed plan that revolves around frequent and extensive medical testing and optimizing exercise, diet, sleep, and emotional health. But what I found when I dug into the nearly 500-page tome is that we never should have listened to Attia in the first place.”

“The Millers are part of a new surge of American nurses, doctors, and other health care workers moving to Canada, and specifically British Columbia, where more than 1,000 U.S.-trained nurses have been approved to work since April. As the Trump administration enacts increasingly authoritarian policies and decimates funding for public health, insurance, and medical research, many nurses have felt the draw of Canada’s progressive politics, friendly reputation, and universal health care system.”

“Donald Trump Got Exactly What He Wanted Out of the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team”.

“It’s official. I can eat more hot dogs than any tech journalist on Earth. At least, that’s what ChatGPT and Google have been telling anyone who asks. I found a way to make AI tell you lies – and I’m not the only one.”

RIP, Neil Sedaka, singer and songwriter whose hits included “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”, “Calendar Girl”, and “Love Will Keep Us Together”, member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 3 Comments

A history of early voting turnout in the primaries

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Early voting is over. We’ve already discussed the final EV totals, but there was something of note that I didn’t mention yesterday that I want to comment on today:


Year          Mail    Early     Total
=====================================
2018 Dem    22,695   70,152    92,847
2018 GOP    24,500   61,425    85,925
  
2022 Dem    17,810   82,631   100,441
2022 GOP    11,064   97,941   109,005

2026 Dem     8,894  211,390   220,284
2026 GOP     4,891  121,622   126,513

The decline in mail ballots from the past years to this year is kind of shocking. We know that the Republicans have made it harder to vote by mail, and we saw the effect that had in the first elections following that change. I don’t know if the people affected by this have adjusted, with a greater number of them deciding it’s better and easier to just vote in person if possible, or if there are now a significant number of people who don’t vote anymore. Note that the biggest dropoff was on the Republican side. Someone would need to dig into the voter rosters from the past years to see what has happened with the mail voters from then, but if there is a preventative effect, I have to think the Republicans have gotten the worse of it.

(Note: There was a small correction to the number of Democratic mail-in ballots, which was reflected in a later report that was sent out on Saturday.)

The big remaining question is, what might this early voting turnout mean for Tuesday? In previous early vote updates, I’ve noted Derek Ryan’s observation that Republicans now have more of a preference for Election Day voting, thanks to Donald Trump and his delusions (not how Derek put it, but this is my blog, so). If that is true, if Republicans are more likely to wait for Tuesday to cast their vote, then we can expect the Democratic to shrink by some amount in the end. Similarly, if some number of Democrats have shifted their behavior towards early voting, because of enthusiasm or whatever other reason, we might expect to see a smaller turnout from them on Tuesday. But first we have to know what we’re dealing with. So I went back and looked at final totals for all primaries since 2010, to see if there were any obvious patterns. Here’s what I got:


Dem
Year    Early    E-Day    Total   Early%
========================================
2010   40,963   60,300  101,263   40.45%
2012   38,911   37,575   76,486   50.87%
2014   31,688   22,100   53,788   58.91%
2016   87,605  139,675  227,280   38.48%
2018   92,847   75,135  167,982   55.27%
2020  145,158  183,338  328,496   44.19%
2022  100,441   67,687  168,128   59.74%
2024  105,913   72,195  178,108   59.46%  

GOP
Year    Early    E-Day    Total   Early%
========================================
2010   64,141   95,680  159,821   40.13%
2012   79,507   84,473  163,980   48.49%
2014   77,768   61,935  139,703   55.67%
2016  134,827  194,941  329,768   40.89%
2018   85,925   70,462  156,387   54.94%
2020  107,587   88,136  195,723   54.97%
2022  109,005   80,181  189,186   57.68%
2024  109,921   93,693  203,614   53.98%

Other than the surge in E-Day voting for both parties in 2016, and in 2020 for Dems, the early voting share has been pretty consistent over this span. I can explain 2016 and 2020 by noting they were both competitive Presidential years for the former, and for Dems for the latter, as in those races hadn’t been decided by the time Texas voted. You could maybe argue that the Republican share of early voting dipped from 2022 to 2024, but it’s basically the same as the previous Presidential year of 2020, so I wouldn’t take that too seriously.

That doesn’t mean that this year won’t be different. It wouldn’t surprise me if Republicans vote more, if only as just a share of the total vote, on Tuesday than Dems do. It wouldn’t surprise me if a greater share of Dems voted early this year than one would project from past performance; indeed, if something closer to 70% of Dems have already voted, it wouldn’t shock me. But this is what we have seen in the past. It’s more consistency than a trend. And if anything, having a competitive race where the outcome is not clear, as is the case in both Senate primaries, makes it more likely that Tuesday will be busier than expected, not less busy. There’s only one way to find out.

So that’s where we stand today. If we assume about 60% of the Democratic vote has been cast, which would be in line with what we saw in 2024, 2022, and 2014, then Dems should end up in the range of 330K total votes, which would just outdo 2020 for second place overall. If it’s more like 65% of the vote is already in, then Dems might fall a bit short of 300K. If Dems turn out on Tuesday as they did in 2020 – and note that 2020 had the highest early vote participation before this year – then Dems will approach 400K total, just short of the 2008 record of 410K. Voting in 2020 was happening at the very start of the pandemic, so I wouldn’t consider that to be in any way representative, though note that Republicans had the usual pattern for themselves that year. Bottom line, I think a wide range of possible outcomes is in play.

A couple of links to wrap this up. Trump was in Corpus Christi on Friday attempting to fire up Republican voters, who would seem to need the nudge. He’s also been endorsing candidates not endorsed by Greg Abbott, so that’s a bit of drama to look for after Tuesday. Rep. Jasmine Crockett threw a reporter from The Atlantic out of a rally in Lubbock recently, apparently because she objected to a profile the reporter had written of her in 2025. And finally, here’s a presentation from the Harris County Clerk called “Prepping for the Primary”, which mostly contains entry-level info that most of us here will know well, but there are some interesting bits about accommodations for voters who need assistance and about working elections, for which one can get paid $17/hour. Read through it, it’s all good to know.

I will have a look at voting in other counties tomorrow. Have you voted yet?

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged absentee ballots, Democratic primary, Donald Trump, early voting, Election 2008, Election 2010, Election 2012, Election 2014, Election 2016, Election 2018, Election 2020, Election 2022, Election 2024, Election 2026, endorsements, Harris County, Harris County Clerk, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, John Cornyn, Kamala Harris, Ken Paxton, polls, primaries, runoff, Senate, Teneshia Hudspeth, Texas, turnout | 2 Comments

Board of Managers approves HISD school closures

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

They wasted no time.

Houston ISD’s Board of Managers voted Thursday to close 12 schools next school year, despite emotional pushback from parents and public officials who begged for more time and warned the move would destabilize communities and harm students.

The vote came two weeks after state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles proposed the closure plan and marks the most sweeping round of school closures in HISD in over a decade as the board continued nearly three years of voting in lockstep with the administration.

Miles said the district had to close eight campuses and relocate four others because enrollment fell short of projections and aging facilities — despite the district’s previous public commitment not to close any schools in the fall.

In a room packed with families and public officials, dozens of people pleaded with HISD’s state-appointed leadership to delay the vote and gather more community input, raising concerns about transportation, special education services and other aspects of the plan.

“When you close a school serving special education students, you are not reassigning them. You are destabilizing it,” said Aubrie Barr, an HISD student whose sibling is autistic and attends pre-K at Ross Elementary. “You are asking children who struggle with changes to absorb the biggest challenge possible. My brother is not a statistic. He is not an efficiency problem.”

Several noted that the vote was happening under the state takeover, with unelected leadership, and asked board members to still listen to people’s concerns even though they don’t answer to voters.

HISD held parents-only meetings over the last two weeks and did not publicly post the times or dates. HISD’s Chief of Staff Monica Zdrojewski said about 700 families attended 25 campus-based meetings.

“To be clear, these are not public meetings,” HISD’s press office told the Houston Chronicle after multiple requests to attend. “These are closed meetings for members of the school community directly impacted by the closures.”

Several elected officials and their staff had trouble finding and joining the sessions.

Elected HISD Trustee Dani Hernandez said the meetings over the last two weeks “were not community meetings.” Hernandez said she was denied entrance to a meeting and had to make calls to get in, even though her child was zoned for the school slated to close.

[…]

At the meeting Thursday, Miles said he had “resisted” closing schools for three years, which drew interjections from the audience who pointed out it was the district’s responsibility to maintain schools. Miles pointed to the district’s efforts to fix heating issues every winter, starting repair efforts at 4:30 a.m.

“There’s over 40 schools facility-wise that could possibly be closed,” Miles said. “If we did it just by the numbers, just by the data, but we’re not doing that.”

Parents and community members said they felt blindsided by the sudden announcement — a frustration many repeated during the meeting Thursday.

“The first communication that we had with the district about our co-location with Cage was in a school meeting yesterday evening,” said Kelsey Gilmore-Innis, who has two children at Lantrip Elementary School. “The speed of this is alarming. It is suspicious, and is what you do when you are doing something shady.”

See here and here for the background. The issue is not the closures themselves. As we’ve noted before, this has been a long time coming, thanks to a variety of factors, some of which – like HISD’s declining enrollment – have been exacerbated since the takeover. Objectively, closing or combining some schools makes sense.

The issue, as always, is with the complete lack of communication and engagement. Never mind the sudden announcement, after having previously announced that there were no imminent closures, or the lightning speed with which HISD went from announcement to ratification. The lack of parent engagement sessions, which not only were not open to the public but at which an actual parent and elected official was initially denied entry to is just bonkers. To borrow from Linus Van Pelt, of all the Mike Mileses in the world, he’s the Mike Milesiest.

I wish I knew what else to say, because this is all just so goddamn frustrating. I’ll close with this video from the Chron in which some of the elected Trustees had their say prior to the Board vote.

Houston ISD’s board trustees, a group of eight elected representatives, plead with the state-appointed Board of Managers to halt the vote on the proposed closure of 12 schools in Houston, including 8 in Northeast Houston.

[image or embed]

— Chron.com (@chron.com) February 26, 2026 at 9:35 PM

I cannot wait to get this guy out of our city.

Posted in School days | Tagged Board of Managers, Dani Hernandez, HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Houston, Michael McDonough, Mike Miles, New Education System, Placido Gomez, Savant Moore, schools | Leave a comment

The Eastland County hand-counting situation

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

The other one to keep an eye on.

Eastland County Republicans voted last fall to ditch electronic voting equipment and instead hand count all of their primary ballots. They’ll be using paper poll books to check in voters, and expect voters to hand mark their choices on paper ballots rather than using a ballot-marking device. And instead of having a joint primary with the Democrats, as they’ve done for years, Republicans have chosen to split everything: staff, equipment and materials. Democrats in the county are still planning to use the electronic voting equipment to cast and to tabulate their ballots.

Hand counting is no small endeavor. Election officials and voting experts have warned that hand counting large numbers of ballots is expensive, labor-intensive, slower to produce results, and more prone to human error than machine tabulation. But some Republicans across Texas have backed the method in recent years as President Donald Trump and others have pushed unsupported claims about the reliability of voting machines.

In Texas, political parties decide at the county level how their primaries will be administered. Other county Republican parties, including Dallas, considered hand-counting, but ultimately decided against it, worried about cost, finding enough workers, and a state law that requires results to be reported within 24 hours. Failing to do so could result in a misdemeanor charge.

The only two counties planning to hand count this year are Eastland and Gillespie. In 2024, Gillespie Republicans hand counted more than 8,000 ballots. That endeavour took nearly 24 hours and led to errors in tallies that officials later had to fix. Gillespie Republicans this month scaled back their plans and said they will only hand count ballots cast on Election Day because, officials said, they weren’t able to recruit enough workers to count ballots cast during early voting, which ends Friday.

Eastland’s plan, meanwhile, has created major logistical problems, Temi Nichols, the county’s elections administrator, said.

Eastland County has used the state’s countywide polling place program — which allows voters to cast ballots at any polling place in the county on Election Day — since at least 2013. In addition, the local political parties had for years agreed to host joint primaries. Both of these methods allowed the county to save money by staffing and equipping fewer polling locations that all voters could use.

But Republicans’ decision to hand count and hold a separate primary from Democrats means that won’t be the case this year, since both political parties have to agree in order for the county to use countywide polling places. Voters casting primary ballots must do so at their local precincts. In addition, the county is struggling to comply with federal accessibility laws requiring that each polling location has at least one accessible voting machine available for voters who need it. That hasn’t been an issue in the past because both parties used the machines for all voters.

But Nichols said the county only has enough accessible voting equipment for the Democratic sites and three of the nine Republican precincts. Her attempts to attain more from neighboring counties or by leasing them from the manufacturer have so far been unsuccessful. As of Tuesday, Nichols told Votebeat she was continuing to seek help from the state and the manufacturer in an attempt to comply.

“I’m just trying to help both parties have an election. I don’t want to be in national news because Eastland County didn’t do this right,” Nichols said.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office declined to comment on whether the lack of such equipment would be a violation of the law by the county or the party. The state plans to dispatch election inspectors to Eastland to monitor the election, Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the office, said. The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

For her part, [Eastland County GOP Chair Robin] Hayes told Votebeat she’s aware there aren’t enough voting machines to have one available for disabled voters at all of the Republican precincts. When asked if she was concerned about potential legal challenges, she said, “Well, the Lord will have to prevail. It’s not intentional,” and added that voters who need assistance can request it from an election worker or any person the voter chooses.

“This country has too many laws anyway,” she said.

[…]

Nichols has been stressing over the Republicans’ hand-count plans for weeks. She has watched hours of online training by the Texas Secretary of State’s Office on how to conduct the hand count and what state law requires.

Appointed to the job last summer, this will be the first major election she and her deputy, Donna Fagan, will help the local parties run.

“If this doesn’t work on election night at midnight, am I supposed to step in and save the day? I really don’t know if I can do that,” Nichols said.

[David] Hullum, the county judge, also expressed concern. If there are issues he said, “Everyone is going to look at the county for answers, not the Republican party … We’re going to end up getting blamed for the whole deal.”

See here for more about the scaled-back plans in Gillespie County, and here for the same in Dallas County, where the hand counting is forcing Democrats there to use precinct voting instead of voting centers on Election Day. Eastland is small enough, and the number of Democratic voters is small enough (it was less than 100 at the time this story was written) that Dems there were able to run their primary separately. But there will be a non-trivial number of Republicans voting – in 2022, 3,164 ballots were cast in the Governor’s race, so that’s going to take a lot of people power. And the GOP Chair there is…let’s just say not the most reality-based person you’ll ever hear about. I have a lot of sympathy for the elections admin there, I sure hope they escape any damage if this is a total cluster. I wish those folks and County Judge Hullum all the best.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged Dallas County, Democratic primary, early voting, Eastland County, Election 2026, electronic voting machines, hand counting, primaries, Republican Party, Robin Hayes, Secretary of State, Texas, The Lege, voting centers | 2 Comments

Final 2026 early voting report: That was something

Posted on February 28, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Yesterday, the last day for early voting, was huge: Over 77K votes cast, with 51K of them being on the Democratic side. I didn’t get the report until almost midnight last night, and so didn’t finish this post until this morning. Good job getting out there, y’all. We’ll see what the statewide numbers look like in the next day or two.

Here are the final daily EV reports for the 2022 and 2018 primaries. And here are the final turnout numbers:

2022 turnout:

Dem = 168,128
GOP = 189,186

2018 turnout:

Dem = 167,982
GOP = 156,387

Here’s the Day Eleven EV report for this year, and the comparisons:


Year          Mail    Early     Total
=====================================
2018 Dem    22,695   70,152    92,847
2018 GOP    24,500   61,425    85,925
  
2022 Dem    17,810   82,631   100,441
2022 GOP    11,064   97,941   109,005

2026 Dem     8,943  211,390   220,333
2026 GOP     4,891  121,622   126,513

I’ll have a post on past early vote history for primaries tomorrow, but here’s a preview: Democrats’ early vote total is higher than their final vote total in any 21st century primary except for 2008, 2016, and 2020, and they came close to 2016. It is their highest early vote total ever. Dems should set at least a new second-best final total when all is said and done, with an outside chance of topping the 410K who voted in 2008. For Republicans, this was actually their second best early vote total, falling short only to 2016. They too will probably end up with their second-best final total – they need a bit less than 80K votes to pass 2024, but 2016’s final total of 329K is almost certainly out of reach.

You’ll see those details tomorrow. For today, two notes to close on. One is that Jasmine Crockett got a couple of high-profile late endorsements, from Kamala Harris, who also recorded a robocall for her, and from Cardi B, who endorsed her on Instagram. Clearly, the Crockett-Talarico race has driven a bunch of this turnout. This should help a bit more.

And two, in terms of the polling, for which we got those two other results noted below that favor Talarico, see this note from G. Elliott Morris:

The Texas Senate primaries are wide open — and don’t trust anyone who tells you otherwise. On the Republican side, Ken Paxton — a far-right attorney general with corruption problems, both personally and professionally — is leading Sen. John Cornyn in the polls by about 3 points, with Rep. Wesley Hunt pulling 20%. The race is almost certainly headed to a runoff, and Paxton looks favored there since Hunt’s entry ate into Cornyn’s support.
On the Democratic side, it’s state Rep. James Talarico vs. U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and the 50+1 polling average has them essentially tied.

But here’s the thing: Historically, primary polls in statewide races miss by about 13 points on margin, and the leader in the polls ends up losing roughly one in five times. With the low-quality polling we’re getting in this race — small samples, long field dates, and partisan-sponsored surveys that disagree wildly — it’s wise to expect a surprise.

And this is why I have expressed not so much skepticism as caution when I post about the primary poll results. The UT/Texas Tribune polls had a major belly flop a few years ago when their primary numbers were way off, so much so that the pollsters wrote an article explaining what had happened. I’ll have to hunt through the archives for it. It’s just hard to model who the electorate is because of turnout variations, and in a year like this where there are so many new voters, at least on the Dem side, it’s that much harder. Just be prepared for anything to happen.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged absentee ballots, Democratic primary, early voting, Election 2008, Election 2016, Election 2018, Election 2020, Election 2022, Election 2024, Election 2026, endorsements, Harris County, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett, John Cornyn, Kamala Harris, Ken Paxton, polls, primaries, runoff, Senate, Texas, turnout | Comments Off

Appeals court denies Paxton’s attempt to block Harris County Immigrant Legal Services Fund

Posted on February 28, 2026 by Charles Kuffner

Another L for our boy Kenny.

Still a crook any way you look

The Fifteenth Court of Appeals on Tuesday struck down Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s effort to halt Harris County’s legal fund to defend undocumented immigrants in court.

While the letter appears to be a legal win for Harris County, justices concluded that the opinion won’t prevent the state from continuing to argue that the county’s Immigrant Legal Services Fund is a violation of the state’s constitution.

The state appealed the ruling after a Harris County judge in December rejected Paxton’s attempt to shutter the program. In its appeal, the state argued the legal defense fund constitutes unconstitutional grants of public funds to private entities and serves no public purpose.

Harris County attorneys fought that notion and argued that the program — which was approved by the Harris County Commissioners Court in 2021 on a party-line vote — strengthens the economy and keeps families together.

The justices’ letter on Tuesday asserts the program has operated for nearly five years with no apparent objection or controversy.

“The state has yet to produce proof that, despite several years in operation, the program has resulted in any actual harm to residents of Harris County or the state,” according to the letter.

Harris County Attorney Jonathan Fombonne on Tuesday said the county has a clear authority to continue operating the program.

“This is an important win for Harris County and the families who rely on this program,” Fombonne said. “The court recognized that the attorney general’s claims don’t match the facts. This program has operated responsibly for years and continues to serve a legitimate public purpose.”

[…]

The justices’ letter says that under the gift clause, the county can not make a ‘no-strings-attached’ payment of public funds to private legal service providers — “but that does not appear to be the case here.”

The county’s contracts require providers to document client eligibility, and providers have to submit monthly invoices detailing services rendered, according to the letter.

See here and here for the background, and here for a copy of the opinion. Not much to add to the story here, just another reminder that a lot of these lawsuits Paxton has been filing lately have been glorified press releases where the main purpose is the headline, for the titillation of Republican primary voters, backed up by little to no evidence. It’s performance over substance, which honestly is as on-brand for the likes of Ken Paxton as it gets. He also lost at the district court level in Bexar County recently (*), so it’s just non-stop Loser Time for him over here. Isn’t that nice?

(*) He did get a small win from the 15th Court in the Bexar County case, but that was mostly because the district court there had made a more expansive ruling for the plaintiffs.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged 15th Court of Appeals, Bexar County, deportation, Harris County, immigration, Jonathan Fombonne, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Texas | Comments Off

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