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July 31st, 2012:

Election night returns

Jul 31st, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

For your convenience:

Statewide Democratic results

Looks good for Paul Sadler. Going to be a long night in CDs 23 and 33.

Statewide Republican results

Ted Cruz has a modest early lead. Wackjob John Devine is leading Supreme Court Justice David Medina. Steve Stockman is leading in CD36, and Donna Campbell is crushing Jeff Wentworth. The crazy flag is flying high.

Harris County Democratic results

Looking good for Gene Wu, Alan Rosen, and especially Erica Lee, who has over 70% in the disputed HCDE runoff.

Harris County GOP results

Louis Guthrie will get to oppose Sheriff Adrian Garcia.

I’ll post full results in the morning.

Runoff Day

Jul 31st, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

At long last, the 2012 primary season is about to be over in Texas, other than perhaps the HCDE race. To say the least, it’s been a long, strange trip, one that I hope goes down in the books as a bizarre aberration, never to be repeated or approximated. If you have not voted yet in Harris County, you can find all the information you will need here. PLEASE be aware that only a handful of locations will be open, and they are not guaranteed to have both primaries at them. Check your location before you head out and avoid any needlessly unpleasant surprises.

As far as turnout goes, recent runoff history suggests that most of the votes have already been cast:


Year      Mail  Mail %   Early  Early %   E-Day  E-Day %
========================================================
2006 D   2,920   21.3%   4,296    31.3%   6,510    47.4%
2006 R   5,432   51.6%   2,019    19.2%   3,077    29.2%

2008 D   4,568   47.4%   3,045    31.5%   2,056    21.3%
2008 R  11,373   28.0%  14,912    36.8%  14,262    35.2%

2010 D   5,885   38.7%   5,122    33.6%   4,218    27.8%
2010 R  12,220   28.4%  14,769    34.3%  16,025    37.3%

2012 D   7,304          11,715
2012 R  17,441          53,043

Final EV turnout numbers for this year are here. As there were no statewide Democratic primary runoffs in 2010, I had forgotten there were Harris County countywide runoffs that year. I have added in those numbers to my earlier post to complete the picture on that. My apologies for the oversight. Anyway, what we learn from this, other than the need for a good absentee ballot program, is that in each primary runoff of the past three cycles more than half the ballots were cast before Runoff Day. In fact, outside of the 2006 Democratic primary runoff, more than 60% of the ballots were cast before Runoff Day. Given that, don’t expect too much to be added to the vigorous early turnout so far. It could happen that the final total will be more than double what it is now for either primary, but history suggests otherwise.

Of course, we’ve never really had anything like the GOP Senate primary and runoff, so if there’s going to be another aberration, that would be where and why. I’m not dumb enough to try to guess who will win that race, but I will say that anyone who had made a prediction based on turnout level ought to be giving the matter more thought. It would also seem that Sarah Palin and Rick Perry are no longer BFFs. High school sure can be rough, can’t it?

The other GOP runoffs of interest to me are in SD25 and HD43. In the former, generally sane if occasionally eccentric Sen. Jeff Wentworth is trying to hang on against the decidedly crazy Donna Campbell, whose election would be another big step in the stupidification of the Senate, as well as a clean sweep for the teabaggers in the legislative primaries. HD43 is where turncoat Dem Rep. JM Lozano is hoping to not be yet another Latino Republican knocked off in a primary by a white guy. Expect some narrative-related punditry on that race no matter who wins.

On the Democratic side, obviously I’m rooting for Paul Sadler to carry the banner in the Senate race in the fall. Like EoW, I don’t know if a Cruz-Sadler matchup will be the definitive test of the myth/hypothesis that moderate Republicans may finally be willing to cross over and support a mainstream Dem over a nutty Republican – I’d argue that Bill White already provided some evidence to that, he just picked the wrong year to do it in – but if you want to start your speculation engines, Burka quoted a “nationally known Republican consultant” who said that “if Ted Cruz wins the Senate race, Texas will be a purple state in four years.” Campose says, why wait?

Why not accelerate things starting Wednesday morning?

A little over a million GOPers will cast votes in the GOP runoff tomorrow. In the 2008 General Election in the Lone Star State, eight million of us cast votes. That’s seven million voters that aren’t participating in the GOP mudfest. A lot of voters across the state have been turned off by the onslaught of negative ads that now have a mom blaming her kid’s suicide on Ted Cruz.

I think if Cruz wins he is damaged goods that Dems can seize upon over the next 99 days.

[…]

If Cruz does pull it off tomorrow we need to immediately paint him and the rest of the GOP ballot as too extreme for the Lone Star State and Harris County. Commentary has said it before that in order for Dems to grow here in Harris County we have to head northwest. Commentary is also partial to my client, State Board of Education, District 6 candidate Traci Jensen. Traci’s GOP opponent Donna Bahorich is State Senator Dan Patrick’s former district director and every bit as scary as Ted Cruz. The showcasing of Traci Jensen, Rep. Sadler, and Sheriff Adrian Garcia against extremist candidates in that part of the county will result in more Dem votes up and down the ballot countywide.

Sometimes unexpected opportunities just show up at your doorstep. If Cruz wins, an opportunity is at our doorstep.

If the Dems in charge just shrug it off and go on about business as usual and cede the state to Cruz, the Tea Baggers, and extremism, then a “shame on you” would be letting them off too lightly.

Well, it sure would be nice if Sadler had 45 million bucks to spend to remind everyone of all the awful things Dewhurst and Cruz have been saying about each other, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. But Campos is right, there’s no time like the present, and there’s no place like our own back yard to get started. What are we waiting for?

Beyond that, there are three Congressional runoffs that are big. It’s been clear for a few years now that the future of the Texas Democratic Party has been in the State House, and depending on how things go we could have as many as three former members of last year’s delegation on the November ballot (Joaquin Castro, who is already the CD20 nominee; Marc Veasey in CD33; Pete Gallego in CD23), with two of them all but guaranteed a win in November. I’d consider that a down payment on future state races. In addition, the woefully under-reported CD34 primary will determine whether or not the husband of a Republican judge will be the Democratic nominee for that newly created Congressional district. I have a hard time believing that, too, but here we are. There are numerous State House races of interest as well, with HD137 being the focal point for me. On the GOP side, seven House runoffs plus the Wentworth race feature Parent PAC candidates, so those are worth keeping an eye on, too. What races are you watching today?

The murder rate is the same as it was last year

Jul 31st, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

There’s no evidence to suggest otherwise at this time.

Though Houston is not in any danger of reclaiming the unenviable title of “murder capital of the United States,” murders in the city jumped 17 percent during the first six months of this year compared to the same period last year.

There were 105 murders from January through June, up from 90 in the same time frame in 2011. That pace is nowhere near the record-setting year of 1981, when there were a whopping 701 killings in the city.

Robberies, meanwhile, also spiked significantly in the first six months of this year – up 18 percent, police records show.

Authorities say the murder and robbery rates are below other years and believe that crime initiatives in targeted areas have started pulling the numbers back down in the last three months.

“From January through March, the number of murders jumped by 28.9 percent, but when the next three months were included, the increase dropped to 16.7 percent,” said Houston Police Capt. David Gott. “We can definitely see a downward trend here.”

Murders and violent crime began dropping dramatically in Houston and other large U.S. cities in the 1990s. That trend culminated last year when murders dropped to 198 in Houston, the lowest since 1965.

The story is based on a comparison of the first six months of 2011 to the first six months of 2012. But if there were 198 murders committed in Houston last year and 90 of them were in January through June, then there were 108 murders in the last six months of 2011, which is three more than were committed through June this year. Change the time period for comparison and you change the perception of the data. As an expert quoted in the story said, and as I suggested last year, a bump in the numbers this year doesn’t mean anything. We could still be in the midst of a long-term decrease in the murder rate, or we could be settled at the bottom of that decline. A small variation from one year to the next doesn’t really tell us anything.

HCDE runoff will be held

Jul 31st, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

So ruled a judge yesterday in the ongoing lawsuit filed by the HCDE to void the Democratic primary in Precinct 1 Position 6.

The Harris County Department of Education told a federal judge Monday it wants to proceed with the lawsuit as a growing number of parties sought to dismiss the case.

Erica Lee

Sarah Langlois, general counsel for the department of education, said the board’s motivation to continue the suit is the same as its reason for filing it: its trustees must be elected lawfully, lest their decisions be legally challenged later.

The department of education provides services to school districts in Harris County, from after-school programs to purchasing.

County attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the suit with U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal’s court on Monday, followed by a similar motion from the county Democratic Party. County Republic Party chairman Jared Woodfill, in an act of inadvertent bipartisanship that sent laughs through the courtroom, soon approached the bench and said he, too, wanted the suit dismissed; a lawyer for Democratic candidate Erica S. Lee echoed the sentiment.

Jarvis Johnson

Tuesday’s Position 6 trustee runoff election between Lee and former Houston city councilman Jarvis Johnson will proceed as scheduled using the correct boundary lines. The other flawed primary, between Republicans for the Position 4 seat, was a blowout, the outcome of which was unaffected by the error.

“I am pleased that the election that is in progress continues,” Lee said after the hearing.

Johnson called Lee’s position “disingenuous,” saying it would disenfranchise 1,400 voters who should have been able to vote in the May primary, but could not because the contest did not appear on their ballots.

“The 1,400 votes that could be counted would clearly favor me by making me the clear-cut winner. I believe I am the winner,” said Johnson, who got 49.5 percent of the vote in May to Lee’s 40.6 percent.

That’s what I’d argue if I were Jarvis Johnson, but let’s see what the numbers have to say. Johnson had 16,557 votes out of 33,459 cast in May (see here, page 21). Let’s take his figure of 1400 additional votes that should have been cast as accurate. There was a 13.60% undervote rate in that election, so we would expect 1210 actual ballots cast in that race, bringing the revised total to 34,669. Johnson would then need 17,335 votes for a clear majority, or 778 more than had actually had. That’s 64.3% of the 1210 extra ballots. I don’t have the statistical chops to calculate the odds of someone who received 49.5% of the first 33,459 votes collecting 64.3% of the next 1210 votes, but it seems unlikely to me. Unless you have some reason to believe that these votes came from a particularly Johnson-friendly set of precincts, it’s hardly a lock that he’d have won outright under a valid set of boundaries.

The lawsuit has not been dismissed; Judge Rosenthal will not rule on that until after all parties have submitted briefs on Friday and Monday. I prefer this to the settlement deal that had originally been proposed. What happens if someone files suit afterward is anyone’s guess; there’s no precedent for this that I know of. I hope we get a clear result, but at this point nothing will surprise me. Miya Shay and Houston Politics have more.

Keep Moving Houston Forward PAC poll on Metro and GMP

Jul 31st, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Yesterday I wrote about a poll commissioned by Houstonians for Responsible Growth on Metro and the General Mobility Program. That poll suggested that any changes to the GMP would be difficult for Metro to get, especially in the face of a negative campaign against it. Later in the day, I received the following in my inbox:

A telephone survey of 600 likely November voters recently conducted in the METRO service area shows that voters support a potential ballot measure ensuring continued mobility payments by METRO to local cities and the county, fixed at the 2014 level, by a margin of 67 percent to 24 percent.

The poll was commissioned by Keep Houston Moving Forward PAC, a group formed to pass a ballot measure this fall that will determine the future of the mobility payments.

METRO’s board is currently considering a number of options for the ballot measure; the option tested in this poll is a compromise put forward by METRO Chair Gilbert Garcia between those who want to discontinue the payments entirely and use the funds entirely for transit, and those who want the payments to continue without alteration.

“Voters in the METRO service area support safe and reliable public transit to relieve traffic congestion but are also concerned about the condition of their streets. The proposal we tested is a fair compromise that has strong voter support,” said Billy Briscoe, a spokesperson for Keep Houston Moving Forward PAC.

Here’s the poll memo that was included as an image in the email:

This is all the information I have on the poll. The HRG poll initially showed plurality support for capping the GMP payments in 2014, so this result is not a surprise. The higher level of support for that in this poll can be explained by differences in the sample, differences in how the question was phrased, random variation, or some combination of all three. The main thing it tells me is that it’s highly unlikely Metro will present an up-or-down vote on keeping the GMP as is or doing away with it. I mean, if even the PAC supporting Metro’s efforts didn’t poll the question – or did poll it but didn’t like the result enough to release it – that says a lot. At this point I’d guess the frontrunners are a cap-or-keep-as-is question or something more involved like the Spieler proposal. We’ll know more on Friday when the Metro board discusses the proposals that have been put before it. Houston Politics has more.