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September, 2018:

Differing views of likely voters

First we had this.

Rep. Beto O’Rourke

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, leads his Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke by 9 percentage points among likely voters, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University.

Released Tuesday, the survey found Cruz with 54 percent support and O’Rourke, an El Paso congressman, with 45 percent. Only 1 percent of those polled were undecided.

“The Texas U.S. Senate race between Sen. Ted Cruz and Congressman Beto O’Rourke, and Democratic hopes for an upset win there, have boosted talk of a Senate takeover,” Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said in a news release. “These numbers may calm that talk.”

It’s the first time Quinnipiac has released a likely voter survey in the Senate race. Quinnipiac previously polled registered voters three times, finding Cruz ahead by 6 points in August, 11 in May and 3 in April.

Quinnipiac also surveyed the governor’s race in the most recent poll and continued to find a much less competitive contest, with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott leading Democratic opponent Lupe Valdez by 19 points.

I started writing a post about how like everything else this is one result, the first one we’ve had of just likely voters, then I got distracted by all the hot takes about how this means The Race Is All Over And It Was Never Really Close and the shitshow in SD19, so I didn’t get it finished. And then I woke up the next morning and saw this.

U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, leads Republican incumbent Ted Cruz by 2 percentage points among likely voters, according to an Ipsos online poll released Wednesday in conjunction with Reuters and the University of Virginia. O’Rourke has been closing the gap over the last several months, but this is the first poll that puts him ahead of Cruz.

Forty-seven percent of likely voters told Reuters they would vote for O’Rourke, while 45 percent said they would cast their ballot for Cruz. Three percent said they would vote for “Other,” and 5 percent said “None.” The margin of error on that portion of the poll was 3.5 percentage points.

A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday put Cruz 9 percentage points ahead of O’Rourke among likely voters. That poll was based on phone interviews, while the Ipsos poll used an online survey. But it’s trying to predict who will show up on Election Day that shifts the numbers, said Ipsos Vice President Chris Jackson.

Ipsos is trying to gauge political enthusiasm on each side, said Jackson. The poll asked respondents to estimate the likelihood that they’d vote in the midterm elections on a scale from one to 10. “More Democrats are registering at the highest part of the scale, at the 10, than the Republicans,” Jackson said. And that’s what’s interesting, he said, because Republicans usually have the momentum advantage in Texas.

“It demonstrates how Democrats are mobilized,” said Jackson. “This election is going to be really competitive and its going be very hard fought.”

[…]

The poll also questioned voters about the Texas gubernatorial election and found that Gov. Greg Abbott leads his Democratic challenger, Lupe Valdez, by 9 percentage points among likely voters.

Well, well, well. Look, this too is just one result and we can’t really judge either of them until we see enough polls to get a feel for where these fit in. That said, this is 1) the first poll result of any kind showing Beto in the lead, 2) the first poll of any kind in at least a decade showing a Democrat with as much as 47% of the vote, and 3) an extremely satisfying quick corrective to all those hot takes from Tuesday.

So what do we make of all this? I think the DMN has it right:

Polling experts have long warned against putting too much weight in any one survey, particularly since different polls can take widely different approaches. Texas is also a special case, since the GOP’s longstanding dominance there means pollsters don’t usually pay it much attention.

Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of Five Thirty Eight, on Wednesday pretty well summed up the dynamic.

“Texas is a tough state to poll (lots of new residents, low turnout among certain voting groups, may be hard to reach Spanish-speaking voters),” he wrote on Twitter. “It’s probably a healthy sign that we’re seeing some disagreement.”

A closer look at the two surveys perhaps further proves the point. Both polls looked at likely voters, which is a key distinction from earlier surveys. The feelings of likely voters are supposed to give a better representation of Election Day results than those of registered voters. But that approach also means some assumptions have been made on who is likely to vote.

The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 807 likely voters earlier this month, tallying a margin of error of plus-minus 4.1 percentage points. It was conducted using live interviews over landlines and cell phones, which many experts say is the best way to approach the task. It had a sample that featured 35 percent Republicans, 26 percent Democrats and 33 percent independents.

The Ipsos poll, done in partnership with Reuters and the University of Virginia, surveyed nearly 1,000 voters earlier this month, garnering an error margin of plus-minus 3.5 percentage points.

It was conducted by way of online surveys. Its sample is also much different, reporting a significantly lower number of independents. So its breakdown is 47 percent Republicans, 43 percent Democrats and nine percent independents.

So live call versus online, and self-reported engagement levels versus whatever formula Quinnipiac used (they did not elaborate on that). Ipsos wound up with a sample that was slightly less Republican, which is consistent with the thesis that Dems are more engaged than usual. Who’s “right” and who’s “wrong” at this point is impossible to tell, though we may get a better feel for that as voting draws nearer. For now, be aware of the differences in methodology and look for any trends that emerge there. In the meantime and even though it’s mixing apples (registered voters) and oranges (likely voters), I’m updating the now-16 poll average to reflect 46.69 for Cruz, and 41.38 for Beto. Until we can say definitively otherwise, this is still a very close race. Washington Monthly and the Current have more.

Galveston, ten years after Ike

Overall things are better now, but not for everyone, and nothing can ever truly be the same as before.

Galveston has a long and storied history dealing with epic storms, and the destruction Hurricane Ike wrought was no different — a Category 2 storm that battered the island and the Texas Gulf Coast with 100 mile-per-hour winds and 17-foot storm surges, killing 43 people across the state and causing nearly $30 billion worth of damage, the third-costliest storm in U.S. history.

A decade later, post-Ike Galveston looks a bit different. Island landmarks like the Flagship Hotel and Balinese Room, which sat perched on piers overlooking the Gulf of Mexico off of Seawall Boulevard, have been demolished, casualties of the storm surge that leveled parts of the island.

University of Texas Medical Branch, the island’s main hospital and a huge employer, underwent $1 billion worth of updgrades to make it more resilient to major storms, but also ceased providing indigent care.

Galveston’s beaches were restored with 500,000 cubic meters of sand, and tourism rebounded after a sluggish few years in Ike’s wake. In 2007, Galveston raked in $7.5 million dollars in hotel tax revenue from June through August. By 2012, the island exceeded that total with $8.3 million in hotel receipts.

Eighty percent of the city’s homes and much of its critical infrastructure were damaged by Ike’s high winds and devastating flooding, forcing building code changes that led many residents on Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston’s West End to raise their homes on stilts. The city’s population has about 50,550 residents today, per 2016 U.S. Census estimates, still shy of the 57,000 from before the storm.

[…]

And yet a vast swath of vacant land dotted with palm trees on the north side of Galveston, where the Oleander Homes, a public housing complex, used to sit, serves to remind that the legacy of Ike did not reach its most vulnerable populations.

The 10 to 15-foot waves that laid waste to single-family and vacation homes also damaged the island’s four public housing developments — located in low-income neighborhoods with high percentages of people of color. Four months after the storm, the Galveston Housing Authority decided to demolish all four developments — 569 housing units — due to extensive damage to the buildings.

Under a state and federal government mandate, the city is required to rebuild every unit, but fewer than half of the units have been reconstructed — delayed by a toxic combination of bureaucratic red tape, racially-tinged public outcry, political inaction and the housing authority’s lack of financial capital to manage and maintain the new housing.

“It’s just tragic that a decade after the disaster when the money has been available for all of that time that most of the public housing has not yet been rebuilt,” said John Henneberger, co-director of the Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service, a statewide housing advocacy group.

There were serious concerns about UTMB’s ability to exist after Ike. It’s a major employer for the city, so the fact that it’s still there is a big deal. I’d still be very concerned about Galveston’s future – not to mention the future of much of the rest of the Gulf Coast – until some form of the Ike Dike gets built. After Harvey and Maria and Irma and Florence I have to wonder what else needs to happen to get that approved, but here we are anyway. I’m rooting for Galveston, but in a very real sense we’re all in the same boat with them.

Texas blog roundup for the week of September 17

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes that the federal response to Florence is better than it was for Harvey and especially for Maria as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

Interview with Meghan Scoggins

Meghan Scoggins

We move out to the west end of Fort Bend County, where the population is booming. HD28 covers this part of the county, and the number of votes cast in Presidential years here has increased by more than fifty percent since 2008. Democrat Meghan Scoggins is the first candidate of any party to run against six-term incumbent Rep. John Zerwas since 2010. Scoggins currently works in the non-profit space, having previously worked in legal services and with NASA on the International Space Station. She’s also been an advocate for consumer protection, having been a victim of identity theft, and for disability rights. Here’s what we talked about:

You can see all of my interviews for state offices so far as well as other information about the candidates on my 2018 Legislative Election page.

Flores defeats Gallego

I don’t even know what to say. This is a filthy result, one that can’t be repaired until 2020. I don’t know what happened, but it was a race we should not have lost. I don’t think one ugly loss invalidates everything else that’s been going on, but it sure is a turd in the punch bowl, and the reaction to it is going to be brutal. Now Dems are going to have to flip a Republican-held Senate seat just to stay even. Just terrible.

UPDATE: Something that occurred to me after I went to bed was that it was unusual for this runoff to be held on a Tuesday, as runoffs are almost always on Saturdays. The effect of having this on a Tuesday is that there were no weekend days for voting – early voting for this was Monday to Friday last week. It’s still a disgrace that Gallego lost, but if you wanted to engineer an election for low turnout, this is how you would do it.

Property tax revenue up, school funding down

Welcome to Texas.

An early projection has Texas decreasing state funding to public education, and largely using local taxes to fill the gap.

In its preliminary budget request ahead of next year’s legislative session, the Texas Education Agency projected a drop in the state’s general revenue for public education by more than $3.5 billion over the next couple of years, in part because the revenue from local property taxes is expected to skyrocket. General revenue only makes up part of the state’s education funding.

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath confirmed this projection in front of a state budget panel Wednesday morning as he laid out the state agency’s budget request through 2021.

The Foundation School Program, the main way of distributing state funds to Texas public schools, includes both state general revenue and local property tax revenue. Local property values are expected to grow by about 6.8 percent each year, and existing statute requires the state to use that money first before factoring in state funding.

Just a reminder, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are lots of things that could be done differently, but they all require legislative action, not to mention state leadership. There is one thing we can all do to facilitate this kind of necessary change, and that’s to vote for candidates who want to make that happen. Start with Mike Collier, who has plenty of ideas for how to fix this mess, but don’t stop there. We have a years-long record to tell us what we’re going to get if we have the same old same old in government next year. Vote to do something different or quit complaining when you don’t get it. The Chron editorial board has more.

Judicial Q&A: Julie Countiss

(Note: As I have done in past elections, I am running a series of Q&As for Democratic judicial candidates. This is intended to help introduce the candidates and their experiences to my readers. I am running these responses in the order that I receive them from the candidates. You can see other Q&As and further information about judicial candidates on my 2018 Judicial page.

Julie Countiss

1. Who are you and what are you running for?

I’m Assistant County Attorney Julie Countiss and I’m the Democratic nominee for First Court of Appeals,
Place Seven.

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

The First Court of Appeals hears criminal and civil cases on appeal from the trial courts in a 10-county district. The district is comprised of the following counties: Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Colorado, Fort Bend, Galveston, Grimes, Harris, Waller and Washington.

3. Why are you running for this particular bench?

The justice who has served on this bench for 17 years is not seeking re-election so it is an open seat. I saw an opportunity to run in a race without an incumbent. There is rarely ever an open seat on the First Court of Appeals. Usually, the justice who is stepping down leaves before the term expires so that the governor can appoint a like-minded replacement. The concern I have with a system of appointing rather than electing state court judges is the risk of elitism and politics infecting the process. Electing judges has its own pitfalls but it provides an opportunity to people who are willing to put themselves out there and do the hard work of campaigning and getting to know the voters and the precinct chairs and members of the bar. The doors to the courtroom are meant to be wide open for everyone and I am running to keep them open.

4. What are your qualifications for this job?

I have 16 years of experience and I was appointed Assistant County Attorney in 2014. I have the honor of serving the people of Harris County every day in complex federal and state court litigation. I am also in the Nuisance Abatement Group working with law enforcement to hold business owners accountable who profit from criminal enterprises like illicit spas where women are often trafficked. For the appellate courts, it’s important to elect candidates with solid trial court experience who understand the civil trial courts in particular. I won the State Bar of Texas Judicial Preference Poll for 1st Court of Appeals, Place 7 in 2018. My campaign has been endorsed by the GLBT Caucus of Houston, the Harris County Tejano Democrats, the Mexican American Bar Association of Houston, the Pasadena Bar Association, the Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation/AFL-CIO, and several former appellate court justices, including my Dad who served on the 7th Court of Appeals in Amarillo.

5. Why is this race important?

In 90% of cases, the First Court of Appeals is the last chance for parties to seek justice in both criminal and civil cases. The nine justices on the First Court of Appeals were all elected or appointed as Republicans. I’m seeking the place currently held by Justice Jennings who is not running for re-election. Justice Jennings switched parties in 2016 and is often the lone dissenter. The dissent rate is approximately 1% on the Court. There should be more diversity of experience and diversity of thinking on the Court of Appeals. I’m more likely to bring those qualities to the court than my opponent who is very vocal about his anti-equality political beliefs and his dedication to Dr. Steven Hotze and the Conservative Republicans of Harris County PAC.

I also believe the quality of justice in the First District could be greatly improved by making equal access to justice a bigger priority. The overwhelming cost, time commitment and complexity of the legal process can be a barrier for so many people. Important decisions are made in our courts every day that impact the lives of working families and those decisions can really hurt their pocketbooks, property rights, civil rights, health, custody and marital property rights and employment. This is especially true for those who can’t afford a quality attorney. I would like to see more funding for legal aid and more incentive for attorneys to provide pro bono representation to low income individuals at the appellate level.

6. Why should people vote for you in November?

I have more experience practicing law in the civil courts than my opponent. For the appellate courts, it’s important to elect candidates with civil litigation experience who understand the civil trial courts. The justices on the First Court of Appeals spend close to 70% of their time on complex civil appeals. I stay up-to-date on important appellate decisions that impact my practice areas. I maintain a robust motions and trial court practice — writing and arguing complicated and contentious legal issues frequently. I have the core values, integrity, experience and dedication to public service necessary to be an excellent justice.

There are reasons why “suspect addresses” may be legit

Real talk here.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Texas law requires voters to register where they live. At the same time, state law requires counties to take voters at their word that their voter registration applications are truthful.

Registrars who suspect an address may be invalid can send letters to voters asking them to confirm where the live. If residents re-submit the same address, however, registrars must process the application. Sam Taylor, spokesman for the Texas secretary of state, said the only other remedy registrars have is to refer cases to district attorneys for prosecution.

“The Texas Election Code does not grant any sort of additional investigative authority to a voter registrar in that situation,” Taylor said. “That’s where investigators and/or law enforcement get involved.”

Taylor said the secretary of state’s office has received complaints about the issue in the past, but said instances in which voters insist they live at an address that appears commercial are not a widespread problem.

“It does occur occasionally and we do occasionally hear frustrations from county voter registrars,” Taylor said.

See here for some background. Let’s state up front again that elected officials routinely game the “home address” requirement, with far less scrutiny. Let’s also state that the election process for many utility districts is a sham, again with far less attention and outcry than a few votes with PO box addresses. We could be a little more consistent about this sort of thing, is what I’m saying.

Having said all that, let’s talk about why some people might legitimately not want to put their residential address on their voter registration. Some people are dealing with stalkers and abusive exes, and thus do not want their home locations to be publicly searchable. Some people are homeless, or in transitional situations. Some people may be on temporary assignments out of state or out of the country. I have a friend from college who spent several years as a road-warrior employee for a company that provided software and training services for law firms. She literally lived in hotels or at friends’ houses year-round, and used her employer’s New York office as her mailing address. Some people live in Winnebagos and drive around the country.

I would argue that all these people have a right to vote that should not be challenged by some busybody party apparatchiks. It may be that some folks have dishonorable reasons for not using a “true” residential address on their registrations, but let’s keep some perspective here. Four thousand of them may sound like a lot, but there are 2.3 million registered voters in Harris County, so we’re talking less than 0.2% of the total. It’s basically a rounding error, even if you refuse to grant that there are any legitimate reasons for doing this. Maybe instead of obsessing over this tiny number of technical violations, we could grant ordinary voters the same deference we insist on giving elected officials when it comes to where they say they live.

(If instead we want to crack down on elected officials with dubious residential situations, I know who I’d start with. But we both know that’s not going to happen.)

It’s Runoff Day in SD19

This is an important election.

Pete Gallego

The aggressive drive by top Texas Republicans to flip a Democratic-friendly state Senate seat will culminate Tuesday as their candidate, Pete Flores, faces Democrat Pete Gallego in the final round of a special election.

The runoff for Senate District 19 will determine the successor to former state Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, who resigned earlier this year after 11 felony convictions. But the contest also has implications for the balance of power in the upper chamber, where the GOP is heading into the November elections with a tenuous hold on their supermajority.

As a result, GOP leaders have lined up behind Flores, a former state game warden who unsuccessfully challenged Uresti in 2016, and in some cases, activated their own campaign machinery to help him against Gallego. The Democrat is a former congressman from Alpine who previously represented the area for over two decades in the Texas House.

The GOP believes the all-hands-on-deck effort has put the seat within reach.

“We feel good about where we are,” Flores strategist Matt Mackowiak said. “If Republicans turn out on Tuesday, we will win and elect a conservative from SD-19 to the Texas Senate.”

Democrats have also mobilized, well aware of the GOP heavyweights on the other side and the anything-can-happen nature of special elections.

“This is a Democratic district, we expect it to perform like a Democratic district, but we cannot take anything for granted and that’s why we’re working hard,” said Manny Garcia, deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party.

See here for the previous update. This is, in a Presidential year, a 10-12 point Democratic district. Not insurmountable, but pretty solid. In a bad year like 2014 was, it’s basically 50-50. Gallego goes into this runoff as the favorite on the numbers, and he’s quite familiar with running in tight circumstances, but it is certainly possible he could lose. If that happens, that would be a big damper on any pro-“blue wave” story line for Texas. Dems collectively did just fine in Round One, outperforming the Presidential year baseline by a couple of points. And for all their big talk, Republicans did everything they could to win without having to run, which suggests that maybe the big talk is just that. As is always the case with special elections and runoffs, it’s all about who shows up. I’ll have the result tomorrow.

Interview with Sarah DeMerchant

Sarah DeMerchant

Back to the State House, and over to Fort Bend County, where there are three elections of interest this year. Fort Bend trended Democratic in 2016, and you can see that reflected in the State Rep districts. HD26 is the epicenter of Democratic growth in Fort Bend, and candidate Sarah De Merchant is back for a second attempt at taking it. DeMerchant has a degree in Computer Information Systems and a professional background in software development. She is involved in numerous community organizations and volunteered on the Wendy Davis and Barack Obama campaigns in past years. Here’s the interview:

You can see all of my interviews for state offices so far as well as other information about the candidates on my 2018 Legislative Election page.

CD23 “live poll”: Hurd 51, Ortiz Jones 43

Give this one a bit of side-eye.

Gina Ortiz Jones

Incumbent Republican Will Hurd is leading his Democratic challenger, Gina Ortiz Jones, in one of the country’s most competitive races in this year’s midterm elections, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.

The poll, which surveyed 495 people in the district by phone this week, shows Hurd with 51 percent  support compared with Ortiz Jones’ 43 percent. Seven percent of those surveyed were undecided, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.

The southwest Texas district that stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, long considered a “swing district,” is a prime target for Democrats who are looking to pick up House seats this November. Hurd, a former CIA officer, narrowly beat Democratic opponents in 2014 and 2016.

Ortiz Jones, a former Air Force intelligence officer, is hoping Democratic enthusiasm and opposition to President Donald Trump will propel her to victory in the district, which has garnered national attention and is on several “most competitive” lists.

Hurd, who is seen as a moderate Republican, has distanced himself from Trump on major issues like immigration and has criticized the president for his dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Here’s the full NYT writeup, which is worth reading. This is one of the districts The Upshot of the NYT is polling in real time, with the explanation “Our poll results are updated in real time, after every phone call. We hope to help you understand how polling works, and why it sometimes doesn’t.” Basically, when they get to 500 completed calls, they stop. That has raised some questions – which they openly acknowledge and discuss; you can follow Nate Cohn on Twitter for a lot of that – and if nothing else this is a pilot program. It’s ambitious and admirable, just (as they say with each result) not to be taken as the be-all and end-all.

In this case, I will note that in the three elections in CD23 this decade, the final numbers have been a lot closer than eight points, and no Republican has achieved a majority of the vote:

2016 – Hurd 48.29, Gallego 46.96
2014 – Hurd 49.78, Gallego 47.68
2012 – Gallego 50.31, Canseco 45.56

Even in the debacle of 2010, Quico Canseco only got 49.40% of the vote, though of course that was before this redistricting cycle. The idea that Will Hurd could get 51%, which would be a high water mark for Republicans in CD23, in a year like this seems unlikely to me. It’s very possible Hurd can win – he’s proven himself to be a strong candidate. It’s conceivable Hurd could top 50% – maybe he’s won enough people over, maybe Ortiz Jones isn’t so good on the campaign trail, who knows. I would be very, very surprised if he wins by as much as eight. We’ll see if there are any poll results out there for this district. In the meantime, The Upshot and Siena are working on CD07, while the DMN and the Times will be polling CD32, as well as statewide. Exciting times to come.

Bring back the Comets

Jenny Dial Creech would like to see one more professional sports team in Houston.

As [Tina] Thompson — the league’s first No. 1 overall draft pick — was inducted into the [Naismith Basketball] Hall of Fame, we were all reminded that the Comets set the bar for greatness in the WNBA.

“The Comets were the impact,” Thompson told ESPN earlier this year. “They made people stand up and watch. They made skeptics of the league and its ability to survive into believers. Houston set a tone. It created awareness and excitement, like a curiosity of, ‘What’s going on over there in that league? What is it that everybody’s talking about?’ Not just in the state of Texas, but also in other states and other cities, because they wanted to kind of know what the fuss was about.”

The Comets were widely supported, averaging more than 11,000 fans per game in their first five years. Cooper, Swoopes, Thompson and their teammates were stars.

Since 2008, a passionate group of Comets supporters has clamored for the return of their beloved team. It’s not that easy, of course.

There doesn’t seem to be a WNBA expansion plan. And though one team, the Liberty, is for sale, the hope in New York is that the new buyer will keep the franchise there.

But even though there isn’t a clear answer to get a team to Houston, the city should jump at any chance to get one.

We were season ticket holders for the Comets from 2001 through their last season. They may have averaged 11K per game in the first five seasons, but it definitely dwindled after that. (I can’t find season by season totals on the internet, so you’ll have to trust my memory on this.) I’d say part of that is that Houston fans can be fickle, and part of it is that the team just wasn’t as good after Cynthia Cooper retired. The team started out with a superstar trio (Cooper, Swoopes, Thompson), and never found another high-level player. There’s only so good that a basketball team can be with two stars and a bunch of mostly interchangeable spare parts. I don’t know what the WNBA’s plans are for expansion in the near to medium term, but if and when that becomes a thing, bringing a Houston franchise back to the league should be a priority. If you don’t remember the Comets or just want a refresher on their history and how damn good they were for those first four years, this Undefeated story from 2016 has you covered.

Weekend link dump for September 16

If you like manual transmissions, you will soon have one less option for buying such a car in the US.

Meet Kim Kierkegaardashian, the world’s most existentialist celebrity.

“As it turns out, it’s not easy to criminally prosecute old sex crimes, though victims may have an easier time finding justice in the civil courts”.

I’d never spent a minute of my life thinking about the relationship between JD Salinger and Joyce Maynard. I’ve long thought Salinger was vastly overrated as a writer, and I only knew the barest outline of their time together. After reading this, I’m definitely on Maynard’s side. She’s deserved better for a long time.

“Instead, my point is that transparency isn’t just a virtue for its own sake. Transparency often provides great benefits to the party that discloses information. Kavanaugh would have been better off if he’d not been ambushed in the middle of his confirmation hearing. And it was his own team’s fault that he did not know how he would be attacked in advance.”

Hillary Told the Truth.”

“Astronomers are studying the first batch of possible planets spotted by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which hunts for worlds around nearby bright stars.”

“Microsoft seeks confirmation that it will not be making prohibited in-kind contributions by offering a package of enhanced online account security protections at no additional charge on a nonpartisan basis to its election-sensitive customers, including but not limited to federal candidates and national party committees, as described above.”

“What happens to gadgets when you’re done with them? Too often, they explode.”

Good grief, Les Moonves is an asshole.

And as such, he deserves every last word that Linda Bloodworth-Thomason has to say to him.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell is an inspiration and a better person than most of us would be in her shoes.

“Judicial nominees famously conceal their views about legal controversies and precedent when they testify before the Senate, but what Kavanaugh has done all along is try to conceal the kind of person he is.”

“There are no Republicans left in Congress, that I know of, who know what is or isn’t credible oversight. Their ignorance prevents them from understanding the mess they have made. Oversight by Congress is a lost art. What Republicans have wrought is downright destruction. If Democrats re-take either chamber of Congress in November, they are obligated to resuscitate that function Republicans have allowed to atrophy in service to their president.”

“Identity in the early European Middle Ages was fluid, changeable, and could have many layers. Particularly in Germanic warrior cultures such as with the Alemanni, some identities were consciously sought out. You didn’t identify throughout your life with the same group you were born with, and you didn’t necessarily give up that identity when you chose another. Identities were used when needed, stored when not. In other words, a person could think of/ represent themselves as one thing in one social situation, another in a second, and yet another in a third.”

“Our biggest poverty problem is not among senior citizens. Our biggest poverty problem is, first, among children, and second, among working-age adults. That’s where our attention should be most heavily focused.”

” “I’m ecstatic he actually took the time to listen,” said the woman, a sexual assault survivor who declined to give her name because she’s still in the service. “I’m going to phone-bank my ass off for him. Because he didn’t have to do that.” ”

“Trump’s and Manafort’s legal interests may be more aligned than either of them have let on.”

Oh, hey, Paul Manafort. Please do tell us everything.

“How Little Has Changed Since Anita Hill Spoke Out Against Clarence Thomas”.

Southwest Key sues city over permit for child detention warehouse

Screw them.

The Austin-based nonprofit trying to open a shelter to house migrant children east of downtown sued the city of Houston Friday, alleging a discriminatory, baseless and politically motivated campaign to prevent it from opening the facility.

Southwest Key Programs alleges in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Houston, that the city is “manipulating” its permitting process, invalidating previously issued permits without due process and refusing to conduct inspections or issue new permits. The suit claims these actions are discriminatory based on some combination of the city’s opposition to federal immigration policies, interest in “political gain” or the race, color, national origin, ancestry, alienage or immigration status of the unaccompanied minors who would be housed there.

The lawsuit asks a court to grant Southwest Key monetary damages and declare that it can proceed with its plans to open the facility.

“The city of Houston has ignored its own regulations, and past practices, and has knowingly misrepresented the facts to the state of Texas to deny Southwest Key a license to open the facility,” Southwest Key said in a statement released Friday. “City officials bent the rules and broke the law for the sole purpose of advancing the mayor’s political agenda.”

[…]

“The city is only interested in the safety, security and well-being of children and will continue to enforce all building codes and regulations designed to accomplish that purpose,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a statement. “Southwest Key has repeatedly been asked to provide plans that meet existing building codes for the intended use of the facility at 419 Emancipation Street in Houston. They have failed to do so. Hopefully, they will realize that they are not exempt and must follow the rules like everyone else. We continue to wait for them to respond. In the meantime, we will review the pleading and respond accordingly.”

See here and here for the background, and here for the Mayor’s statement. I have no idea if Southwest Key’s claims have any validity, and to be honest I don’t care. Southwest Key can go fuck themselves.

Second look at Metro’s long range transit plan

Still a work in progress, but there’s beginning to be some focus.

Transit officials inched closer Wednesday to asking voters next year for up to $3 billion for two-way express bus service along many Houston freeways, along with a few more miles of light rail.

The first stop for a new transit vision, however, is additional communication with community groups before a more refined plan is approved by Metropolitan Transit Authority, which ultimately will need voter approval to build any of it.

“The target date is still November 2019,” Metro Chairwoman Carrin Patman said of a voter referendum.

During a Wednesday workshop discussing the regional transportation plan, dubbed MetroNEXT, Metro staff detailed a number of proposed projects, developed after months of public meetings during the past 18 months.

The consensus preferences from the meetings, Metro vice president of systems and capital planning Clint Harbert said, is “really taking what we do well and making these trips faster and more reliable.”

As a result, many of the projects rely on roads and freeways, rather than rail. Metro has spent most of the last two decades mired in light rail debates and construction.

Instead, the early draft of the plan – which still will undergo months of community input before it is approved next year – includes only 12 miles of light rail, extending the Red Line north to Tidwell and south to Hobby Airport and the Purple Line to Hobby Airport.

Meanwhile, more than 34 miles of bus rapid transit – using large buses along mostly lanes solely for bus use – would spread westward from downtown. One of the key lines follows much of the path of the proposed University Line, a long-dormant light rail project that has been one of Metro’s most contentious.

The major bus rapid transit corridor would connect Kashmere to downtown, then head west to Greenway Plaza and Westchase. It would have a key connection to the bus transit planned along Post Oak, now under construction.

See here for some background. This represents the least ambitious of the possible plans, and it’s a combination of what’s most doable and what’s least controversial. Nothing wrong with that, I just wish we lived in a world where those conditions allowed for something more expansive. Even at this level, I expect plenty of friction from the usual suspects. Getting the eventual referendum passed will take a lot of engagement. I look forward to doing an interview with Metro Chair Patman about the final version of this for that election.

Another Lopez brother gets banned from taekwondo

Steven Lopez this time.

Two-time Olympic taekwondo gold medalist Steven Lopez has been banned permanently from competition by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, based on the results of the agency’s investigation into Lopez’s sexual relationship with an underage female in 2000.

The relationship, according to a report compiled by SafeSport, involved a 14-year-old neighbor whose family was a friend of the Lopez family, and occurred at a time when the complainant was a taekwondo athlete and Lopez was establishing himself as one of the sport’s dominant figures, eventually winning five world titles along with the two Olympic gold medals.

Investigators said the relationship progressed over a four-year period, beginning when the complainant was 10, from what was described as grooming to sexual contact to oral sex, the latter occurring at a time when the complainant was 14 and Lopez 22.

The sexual relationship, SafeSport concluded, took place “in violation of the SafeSport Code, the criminal laws of the State of Texas and the standards expected of USA Taekwondo members.”

Lopez, who with his older brother and coach, Jean Lopez, has been named as a defendant in a federal court lawsuit filed in Colorado, declined to be interviewed by SafeSport regarding the allegations.

See here and here for some background on Jean Lopez. Steven Lopez had been suspended in May by SafeSport, and both he and his brother, along with SafeSport and USA Taekwondo and the US Olympic Committee, are defendants in a lawsuit over this whole sorry and deeply disturbing mess. All that matters at this point is finding some justice for the victims, and doing everything we can to make sure that this shit never, ever happens again. Deadspin has more.

The other Senate races that Republicans are worried about

They’re concerned about the State Senate, too.

Beverly Powell

Republican lawmakers in the Texas Senate were sitting pretty last year.

For years, the GOP had faced roadblocks to passing some conservative measures by the chamber’s two-thirds rule, which normally required the support of 21 members to get a bill to the floor. With 20 Republicans in the chamber, that left Republicans one short of moving out bills without the help of a single Democrat.

But then in 2015, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick led a successful move to lower the threshold from two-thirds to three-fifths. Suddenly, any measure with the backing of all of the chamber’s Republicans had all the support it needed. For that session and the ones that followed in 2017, the GOP effectively ran the Senate floor.

Now, with less than two months until Election Day, Republicans are finding that keeping that supermajority in the Texas Senate is no longer a sure thing.

Nathan Johnson

“We’re emphasizing the possibility of losses,” said Darl Easton, the Republican Party Chairman in Tarrant County, where state Sen. Konni Burton’s re-election bid as seen is a potential toss-up. “The more complacent you become, the more likely it is that you won’t win. We definitely have to keep the voters alert to the possibility of losing some seats. We’re not going to take anything for granted.”

“We are working and making sure we’re leaving no stone unturned,” added Missy Shorey, the Dallas County Republican Party Chairwoman, speaking of the party’s efforts in assisting state Sen. Don Huffines, R-Dallas. “People in Dallas certainly know there’s no chance that seat is going to flip. [Huffines] is working for every vote out there.”

The Senate is still poised to remain GOP-dominated during next year’s legislative session. What’s at stake for the chamber’s Republicans this election cycle is losing their three-fifths majority — the crucial threshold for bringing legislation to the Senate floor without any support from Democrats.

[…]

If at least two of [Konni Burton, Don Huffines, and Joan Huffman] lose their seats this election cycle, the political repercussions could be far-reaching: not only would it loosen Patrick’s stronghold over the upper chamber, Republican senators themselves would have to work across the aisle to get their bills passed.

Rita Lucido

“When you have to cross the aisle, you have to cross the river and that changes everything,” said Bill Miller, a veteran political consultant and lobbyist. “If [Dan Patrick] were to lose that three-fifths majority, his power would be diminished. That doesn’t mean he won’t be powerful, but he won’t be the most powerful person to ever hold the office — which is what he’s been up to this point.”

“If you haven’t had any power in a while and I give you power, it’s going to be tasty,” he added. “It’s a tasty morsel. If Democrats get back at the table, that will change how the Senate behaves.”

What’s also at risk is the ability to get conservative legislation to the governor. Without a Republican Senate supermajority, Easton said, measures important to hard-line conservatives might not get a hearing in the Texas House — let alone be brought up for debate on the Senate floor.

“Obviously, it’s going to be harder to get conservative stuff through the Senate if we don’t have the numbers, and if we don’t get it through the Senate then the House doesn’t even have to look at it,” Easton said. “It’s politics as usual. The stronger your base is, the more likely it is you’re going to get stuff through the House and eventually to the governor’s desk.”

Miller agreed, adding that Republicans in the Senate might have reason to worry.

“In recent cycles, Republicans have looked at every election cycle as just a reaffirmation of their dominance, and that has absolutely been the case,” he said. “This is the first time in memory where not only is that dominance in question, but there’s a high degree of confidence on the part of Democrats. So it’s a whole new world out there.”

There’s at least some polling evidence to suggest that both Powell and Johnson are in decent shape, though it’s one poll in each case and you know what we say about individual polls. I just want to observe that I wrote about the effect of Dems picking up two Senate seats last year, right after the filing deadline. Patrick could of course seek to eliminate the three-fifths rule in the same way that he eliminated the two-thirds rule; the Senate adopts the rules it abides by each session, and it only takes a majority vote to do so. All I know is that anything that clips Dan Patrick’s wings, even a little bit, is a good thing. Both Powell and Johnson have been endorsed by the DMN, for whatever that’s worth. These are all winnable races. It’s a matter of proving Dems can win in districts that weren’t drawn for them.

You know, there is a cheaper way to do this

Why are we still outsourcing inmates?

County commissioners next week will consider a proposal to outsource inmates to the Fort Bend County Jail, which would allow Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez to slow — but not stop — the flow of inmates to a private prison in Louisiana.

The deal would bring as many as several hundred inmates closer to their families and attorneys, but would cost Harris County more than twice as much as shipping prisoners to Jackson Parish, La. It would also fail to address the root causes of overcrowding at the Harris County Jail, one of the nation’s largest, and prolong an elaborate game of musical chairs as the sheriff searches for jails to take his inmates.

Harris County’s 10,162 inmates are already spread across five facilities in Texas and Louisiana. It currently outsources 724 inmates, more than twice as many as any other Texas county.

[…]

“If there’s a desire to bring inmates closer to Harris County, this is the best deal we’ve been able to find so far,” said Harris County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jason Spencer. “It doesn’t fully address the outsourcing issue, but it chips away at it.”

Harris County pays $29.33 per inmate, per day at Jackson Parish Correctional Center, with transport included. Fort Bend’s per diem is $55.00, and Harris County would also have to pay for transport. Spencer said the additional costs would push the county’s total monthly inmate outsourcing bill to around $1 million.

The jail had stopped farming out inmates in 2017 but a backlog in the courts following Harvey led to a surplus of people in the jail, and so here we are today. The monthly cost of doing so now is more than $500K, which will go up to about $1 million with the more expensive Fort Bend option. That may not be a choice as defense attorneys in Harris County have asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to bar sending inmates out of state. I know you know but I’m going to say anyway that if we had fewer inmates in the jail – and remember, the lion’s share of these inmates have not been convicted of any crime – we wouldn’t need to spend this money. It’s a choice we’re making, one we’ve been making for way too many years. At least we get to make another choice this November.

Endorsement watch: Crossing over

Nice.

Miguel Suazo

Former Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a Republican, has endorsed Democrat Miguel Suazo in his bid to replace current Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush. Patterson, a former political rival of Bush, cited what he called mismanagement of the Alamo and Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts.

Patterson isn’t the only Republican taking the unusual approach of withholding support from Bush. Three other former Republican primary opponents of Bush — Rick Range, Davey Edwards and David Watts — signed onto a letter with Patterson saying they would not be voting for Bush in November.

“There are things that are more important than your party,” Patterson said. “The Alamo is Texas.”

[…]

Patterson told The Texas Tribune he had spoken with Suazo and liked what he heard. He acknowledged that it is unlikely Bush loses in November; Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994. But he said there was a “very, very remote chance.”

“The statewide candidates in Texas in November, some of their fortunes may be dependent of the fortunes of Donald Trump,” Patterson said. “But that’s not the point. I don’t have any compulsion to always back the winner. My compulsion is to be true to my convictions.”

Suazo said he was “honored” to have Patterson’s endorsement, saying the former commissioner had put “Texas before Party.”

If you care to search the archives here, you will see that I have long had some affection for Jerry Patterson. There’s plenty I don’t agree with him on, but he always took the job of Land Commissioner seriously, and I respected him for that. He was also a rare member of the ruling class that was not himself a plutocrat; as a story about the financial disclosures of statewide officeholders revealed, his two sources of income as Land Commissioner were his salary for that job, and his military pension. I saw him express some approval of Miguel Suazo’s positions regarding the Alamo a couple months back, and I wondered at this time if that might culminate in an endorsement. I’m glad to see that it did. He’s right that in the end it probably won’t have much effect on the outcome, but it’s good to know that Patterson is still the kind of person I thought he was when he was in office. Thanks for that, Jerry.

And then later in the same day, we got this.

Bennett Ratliff, a Republican who preceded Matt Rinaldi as state representative for his Dallas County district, endorsed Rinaldi’s Democratic opponent, Julie Johnson.

“As a lifelong Republican, I have supported and worked for Republican candidates since before I was able to vote, I have voted Republican since I was able and served as a Republican elected official. I have supported the party, our nominees, and I have never endorsed a Democrat for office. But extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures,” Ratliff wrote in a message to supporters on Friday.

Ratliff represented House District 115 — which covers Irving, Coppell, Carrollton, Farmers Branch and Addison — in 2013 after defeating Rinaldi in the 2012 Republican primary. But Rinaldi won the seat from Ratliff in a rematch in 2014. Rinaldi once again beat back a challenge from Ratliff in 2016, before narrowly edging out his Democratic opponent.

Ratliff said the upcoming session would be a critical moment for Texas public schools and said Rinaldi was “in the pocket of a small group of wealthy donors” and had failed to advocate for Texas schoolchildren and local taxpayers.

“In addition to his complete ineffectiveness and lack of decorum in office, Representative Rinaldi voted 10 times against legislation to reform our school finance system, legislation that would have helped public schools and provided local tax relief,” Ratliff said. “As a result, I believe it’s time we change our representation, so we can refocus the priorities of our State Legislature.”

[…]

In his letter, Ratliff, a former Coppell school board member, said he believed Johnson would be a good advocate for Texas school students, teachers and local taxpayers.

“While we don’t agree on every issue facing our state, we both agree and understand that Republicans and Democrats must come together on the issue of public education for the future of our children,” Ratliff said. “I encourage my friends and neighbors to join me in voting for Julie Johnson.”

Johnson is endorsed by Texas Parent PAC, a bipartisan political action committee that advocates for high quality public education. Ratliff is on the PAC’s leadership board.

Johnson, a personal injury lawyer from Addison who was also endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood, said she has Republican support because many of the district’s constituents don’t feel represented by Rinaldi.

“Former Representative Ratliff’s support for my candidacy in House District 115 is proof of what we’ve been saying for months– Texans are tired of extremist partisan politics and want their elected officials to put people first, no matter what,” Johnson said in an email statement. “It’s time to focus on the issues that affect us the most, like fully funding our public schools and taking care of our teachers. I will work with anyone in the Texas House who has a good idea and I will vote down bills that are bad for Texans regardless of where they come from.”

Very nice. And the fact that Rinaldi is one of the worst members of the House makes it that much sweeter. Now if three makes a trend, we have a trend, because right after the primary, Lt. Governor candidate Scott Milder endorsed Mike Collier over Dan Patrick. How much difference these endorsements all make I couldn’t say, but I’d sure rather have them than not.

Crosswinds: Cruz 47, O’Rourke 44

It’s poll time again.

Rep. Beto O’Rourke

In a sign of just how crucial the millennial vote might be in the upcoming mid-term elections, a statewide poll released Tuesday shows Ted Cruz leading 47 percent to Beto O’Rourke’s 44 percent among likely Texas voters. Forty-nine percent of Texans between the age of 18-39 identify as supporting O’Rourke, while Cruz’s strongest support comes from voters ages 40 and above.

The Crosswind Texas Pulse Poll also hinted at some dissatisfaction toward Cruz from his own party: While the poll indicates an almost-equal party vote – with 81 percent Republicans favoring Cruz and 83 percent Democrats for his opponent – a surprising 15 percent of Republicans indicated their intent to vote for the Democrat. Forty-six percent of respondents who did not identify with either major party signaled their intent to vote for O’Rourke, versus 39 percent of non-affiliated or independent voters intending to pull the lever for Cruz.

Fifty-five percent of Hispanic voters and 57 percent of Black voters also expressed an intent to vote for O’Rourke, while 52 percent of white voters indicated their support for Cruz. However, 56 percent of voters who do not identify as white, Hispanic or Black also responded positively for Cruz. Only slightly more women overall support O’Rourke than Sen. Cruz, at 47 versus 42 percent.

“Texans are in for a nail-biter that has national implications,” said Crosswind CEO Thomas Graham. “O’Rourke is showing surprisingly strong support in traditionally red-state Texas, and Cruz has the edge in organization at this point, but clearly O’Rourke is gaining some ground.”

Meanwhile, Texans clearly favor incumbent Greg Abbott, who is holding steadily in his race against Lupe Valdez, although her 39 percent – to Abbott’s 52 percent – is likely to catch state GOP leaders by surprise. The poll results largely mirrored that of the senate race demographically and along party affiliations, although 45 percent of Texas women are showing more support for the current governor than for challenger Valdez’s 43 percent female support.

Perhaps most surprising is that in both races, a percentage of likely voters identifying as “conservative” seem ready to jump ship to non-conservative candidates: 14 percent for O’Rourke, and 16 percent for Valdez. Those identifying as “liberal” seem less inclined to go against those stated values, with just 3 percent for Cruz and 6 percent for Abbott.

The Crosswind Texas Pulse Poll, a periodic survey of Texans’ opinions on a variety of cultural, economic and political issues, was conducted by Crosswind Media & Public Relations from September 6-9, 2018. The survey included 800 likely voters in Texas. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.

Of the 800 likely voters surveyed, 39 percent identified Republican and 27 percent identified Democrat, with 34 percent unidentified.

And that brings our 14-poll average to 46.29 for Cruz, and 40.71 for Beto. According to RG Ratcliffe, pollster Crosswinds Media and Public Relations is “a national public relations firm based in Austin and leans Republican”. Maybe this result will finally get Chris Wilson to quit whining about how everyone is overestimating Beto’s numbers. Instead, you can add this to the reasons why Republicans are freaking out about Cruz.

Partisan statewide judicial elections upheld

I’d totally forgotten about this lawsuit.

A federal judge has rejected a race-based challenge to the way Texans fill seats on the state’s highest courts.

U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi handed the state of Texas a win Wednesday, writing that its current method for electing judges to the Texas Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals does not violate federal safeguards for voters of color.

The system does dilute the power of Hispanic voters, Ramos wrote. But it’s not clear that “race rather than partisanship” explains why Hispanic voters’ preferred candidates tend to lose at the polls.

Seven Hispanic voters and a community organization sued the state in 2016, arguing that Texas’ statewide judicial election system violates the federal Voting Rights Act because it weakens Hispanic voters’ political clout and keeps them from electing their preferred candidates. Both high courts have been entirely dominated by Republicans for more than two decades, and both courts remain overwhelmingly white.

[…]

The plaintiffs had proposed that Texas adopt a single-member district approach, carving up the state geographically to allow for Hispanic-majority voting districts. In her Wednesday ruling, Ramos conceded it would be possible to remedy the Hispanic voters’ “electoral disadvantage” by switching to single-member elections. But she declined to order that change because the voters had failed to prove that the obstacles they faced to electing their preferred candidates were “on account of race.”

See here, here, and here for the background. It was an interesting argument, though as commenter Mainstream pointed out in that middle update it would have been a challenge to draw districts to try to remedy the problem if the judge had found for the plaintiffs. At some point – maybe this year! – Democrats are going to break through at the statewide level, and that could easily scramble the arguments that would apply now. I don’t know if the plaintiffs intend to appeal, but it seems to me they’ve already faced the court most likely to be amenable to them. It’s not going to get any easier from here.

Henry Cuellar does his thing

And it’s annoying as usual.

Rep. Henry Cuellar

A new report has left many Democratic House insiders perplexed and frustrated with one of the most powerful Texas Democrats in Congress: U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.

Politico reported Tuesday that Cuellar had”invited supporters to a breakfast fundraiser” Tuesday morning for U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock. The invitation was “sent from a Cuellar political staffer,” according to the report.

“Although I was not a host of the event, I was honored to attend as I typically do for colleagues who visit my district,” Cuellar said in a statement. “Judge Carter is a dear friend and trusted colleague with whom I work on Appropriations. He is knowledgeable and supportive of issues important to South Texas. In today’s climate, more than ever, friendship is more powerful than partisanship.”

Cuellar, who has served in the U.S. House since 2005, has long had a reputation as one of the chamber’s most conservative Democrats. But in both party’s caucuses, actively helping a member of the other party is a highly frowned upon practice.

[…]

Like all other U.S. House members, Cuellar’s party leadership assigns him a set amount of money to raise for their campaign arm each cycle. The House GOP campaign arm has a similar practice. The committees then direct the money for various purposes, but the main one is television advertising in competitive House races around the country.

In 2017, the the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee assigned Cuellar dues that amounted to $200,000. According to records obtained by the Tribune, Cuellar had paid $400,000 to the committee this cycle as of July. Those dues will go to a massive pot of DCCC money that will, in part, fund ads to support Democratic House candidates – including possibly Hegar if she gains traction in the run up to Election Day.

Cuellar’s gonna Cuellar, he’s been that way since he ousted Ciro Rodriguez in a contentious primary back in 2008. And while Beto O’Rourke has faced some criticism for his ties to Rep. Will Hurd, there’s a world of difference between not lining up behind a fellow member of your party, and actively supporting the election efforts of a member of the other team.

Hegar’s thoughts on this are here. Like I said, Cuellar’s going to do his thing, and to be fair he does deserve credit for ponying up to the DCCC as he has done. Not all members of the caucus do that, including some who can easily afford it. That said, given the energy this year for taking on incumbents who have fallen short in one way or another, one can imagine a more spirited primary challenge for Cuellar in 2020. He’s not going to change who and what he is until he’s given a good reason to believe he needs to change.

Judicial Q&A: Gordon Goodman

(Note: As I have done in past elections, I am running a series of Q&As for Democratic judicial candidates. This is intended to help introduce the candidates and their experiences to my readers. I am running these responses in the order that I receive them from the candidates. You can see other Q&As and further information about judicial candidates on my 2018 Judicial page.

Gordon Goodman

1. Who are you and what are you running for?

Gordon Goodman
Candidate for 1st Court of Appeals, Place 2

2. What kind of cases does this court hear?

The 1st Court of Appeals hears both civil and criminal appeals from trial courts in 10 counties of Southeast Texas including Harris County.

3. Why are you running for this particular bench?

Many appeals only reach the courts of appeals level so this is where a large number of important questions for our region and state are addressed.

4. What are your qualifications for this job?

Prior Professional experience

  • NRG Energy, Inc.

Director of Governance and Enterprise Risk Management

  • Occidental Petroleum Corporation

Vice President-Planning & Control, Occidental Energy Marketing
Member, Occidental’s Risk Management Committee

  • E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co.

President, DuPont Power Marketing, Inc.
Senior Vice President, Conoco Global Power

  • Howell Corporation

President, Howell Power Systems, Inc.

Prior Board Memberships

  • College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Univ. of Houston

Dean’s Advisory Board (Former Chairman and Member)

  • Houston Area Urban League

Board of Directors (Former Member and Chairman of the Audit Committee)

  • Jesse H. Jones School of Business at Texas Southern University

Advisory Council (Former Member)

  • Blaffer Gallery, Univ. of Houston

Advisory Board (Former Chairman and Member)

Prior Professional Advisory Panels

  • Energy Oversight Committee, formed by GARP and API To implement the Energy Risk Professional (ERP) Certificate Program
  • Valuation Resource Group, panel formed by FASB to advise on issues arising under FAS 157 (Fair Value Measurements)
  • The Energy Trading Working Group, an advisory panel formed by the Emerging Issues Task Force at FASB to advise on FAS 133 issues

Professional Associations

  • The American Petroleum Institute’s (API’s) Risk Control Committee (Founding Chairman and Former Member)
  • The American Petroleum Institute’s (API’s) General Committee on Finance (Former Member)
  • Texas State, Pennsylvania, and Energy Bar Associations (Member)
  • The Bachelier Finance Society (Member)

Education

  • University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia, PA (1974-1977): J.D.
  • University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (1971-1974): Bachelor of Arts, Magna Cum Laude

5. Why is this race important?

The lack of diversity of opinion on the 1st and 14th Courts of Appeals is striking given the wonderful diversity that we see in this region of southeast Texas.  I am eager to provide a different point of view on the most important matters of the day and to insure that fairness and justice is available to all parties when they bring appeals to these courts.

6. Why should people vote for you in November?

In addition to my support for civil rights, voting rights, equal protection, and due process under the law, I also bring extensive knowledge and a deep understanding of finance, commerce, and the important business questions of our day and time.  By having this expertise on the 1st Court of Appeals, we can provide a useful forum for the largest and most significant commercial disputes that arise in southeast Texas.

Yes, Republicans really are worried about Ted Cruz

Their actions speak volumes.

Not Ted Cruz

With a string of polls showing GOP Sen. Ted Cruz’s lead slipping, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick showed up in Washington on July 25 to deliver an urgent plea to White House officials: Send President Donald Trump.

Patrick, who chaired Trump’s 2016 campaign in the state, made the case that a Trump visit was needed to boost turnout for Cruz and the rest of the Texas Republican ticket. The lieutenant governor soon got his wish: Trump announced on Twitter late last month that he was planning a blowout October rally for Cruz, his former GOP rival.

The previously unreported meeting comes as senior Republicans grow increasingly concerned about the senator’s prospects in the reliably red state, with some expressing fear that an underperformance could threaten GOP candidates running further down the ballot. Cruz’s Democratic opponent, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, has raised barrels of cash, closed the polling gap and emerged as a cause célèbre of liberals nationwide.

Trump’s rally is just the most public display of a Republican cavalry rushing to the senator’s aid. Cruz remains a favorite to win another term, and some senior GOP figures insist the concern is overblown. Yet the party — which has had a fraught relationship with the anti-establishment Texas senator over the years — is suddenly leaving little to chance. Behind the scenes, the White House, party leaders and a collection of conservative outside groups have begun plotting out a full-fledged effort to bolster Cruz.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who’s planning an October fundraiser for Cruz at Washington’s Capital Grille restaurant, said he had a simple directive to GOP givers.

“We’re not bluffing, this is real, and it is a serious threat,” Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said in an interview. “If Ted does his job and we do ours, I think we’ll be fine. But if we have donors sitting on the sidelines thinking that, ‘Well, this isn’t all that serious,’ or ‘I don’t need to be concerned,’ then that’s a problem.”

What caught my eye in this story was the timing of Dan Patrick’s schlep to DC to beg for help. Here’s what the five most recent polls looked like as of that July 25 date:

Cruz +9, Cruz +5, Cruz +8, Cruz +6, Cruz + 6 – Average Cruz lead = 6.8

And the five polls since then:

Cruz +2, Cruz +6, Cruz +4, Cruz +4, Cruz +1 – Average Cruz lead = 3.4

So at the time that Danno made his pilgrimage, Cruz had a solid if unspectacular lead in the publicly available polls. Since then, he’s had a much narrower, albeit still consistent, lead. On the (I hope) reasonable assumption that Patrick is not clairvoyant, it makes one wonder what he and his cronies were seeing in the polls back then that made them so worried. I mean, it could just be an abundance of caution, though that’s wildly inconsistent with Texas Republicans’ public braggadocio about their own prowess and the supposed conservatism of the state’s electorate. Since when do Texas GOPers need help from the outside to win elections? Especially in a year where the national party has about a thousand endangered Congressional seats to protect, not to mention a non-trivial number of governors, and they’d much rather be spending money to oust Democratic Senators, asking for the spigot to be tapped in support of Ted Cruz sure seems like a lot.

Unless, of course, their own data at the time was sounding an alarm for them, not just for Cruz but for however many downballot Republicans that could get left exposed by a low tide for the junior Senator. And if that was the case for them then – and maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, we just don’t know – then what is is saying now? Maybe the public data has caught up to where their own data was, and maybe things have shifted further. Again, we don’t know. That doesn’t stop us from speculating, as we wait for the next batch of poll results. My point here is simply to highlight that Republicans are aware of the political environment they’re in. It’s on us to prove they were right to be so concerned. Slate has more.

What’s a little toxic waste among friends?

No big deal, right?

On the plus side…

The criteria Texas uses to determine how much — and whether — to clean up abandoned industrial facilities, waste dumps and other polluted sites are so lax that they may allow residential homes to be built in areas that neighboring states wouldn’t even consider safe for factories or oil refineries.

That’s according to a report by the Texas Campaign for the Environment Fund set to be released on Tuesday that compares benchmarks for more than 80 different pollutants that Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Mississippi and Oklahoma use to determine whether a site is contaminated enough to warrant cleanup and how much pollution should be removed from the soil or water there before it can be re-developed.

The overarching conclusion of the report: Texas’ formulas are “substantially weaker” than those used by almost every nearby state, in part because it tolerates a greater risk of cancer. That means that some polluted Texas sites that would be eligible for cleanup in other states may not be eligible here — and if the state does decide to clean them up, it may not remove as much pollution as its neighbors.

While some neighboring states — namely Arkansas and Oklahoma — rely on federal criteria, Texas uses its own benchmarks. Overall, they are so weak that Texas allows “pollution concentrations on land designated for residential uses that Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi wouldn’t even restrict to industrial uses,” the report found.

For example, Texas’ cleanup rules say that the ground at residential properties should contain no more than 69 milligrams of the carcinogenic petrochemical benzene for every 1 kilogram of soil; Louisiana, meanwhile, only allows 3.1 milligrams of benzene per kilogram of soil — and that’s for sites intended for industrial use.

The report comes a year after heavy rains from Hurricane Harvey flooded many polluted sites in the Houston area, sparking concerns about contaminants leaching into homes and waterways. And statewide, rapid urban revitalization and population growth means many contaminated sites are being remediated and redeveloped for both commercial and residential use.

You can see that report here. This right here is the reason why uniform federal standards are needed for some things. I don’t know about you, but I would not want to find out some day that the house I bought in some spiffy new development in, say, 2019, turned out to be in the 21st century version of Love Canal. Maybe if we insist on keeping the feds at bay we could elect some state leaders who cared about this sort of thing? Just a suggestion.

Texas blog roundup for the week of September 10

The Texas Progressive Alliance observes that honesty is no longer a required attribute for Republican judicial nominees as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

Interview with Adrienne Bell

Adrienne Bell

CD14 covers Galveston and Jefferson counties, plus part of Brazoria. Those first two counties were the main component of what was once CD09, before Tom DeLay ripped up the map. Its heritage is Democratic – Nick Lampson represented that turf for four terms – but has since gotten away from those roots. Trying to get it back is Adrienne Bell, a native Houstonian and second grade teacher with HISD. A veteran organizer, Bell served as a Deputy Field Director with Battleground Texas, and on the Houston staff for the Obama 2012 election campaign. She and Colin Allred were the only two Texas Democrats in the first wave of endorsements from President Obama; she has since also been endorsed by Democracy for America. Here’s what we talked about:

You can see all of my interviews for Congress so far as well as other information about the candidates on my 2018 Congressional page.

Sri Kulkarni and Asian voters

Great story.

Sri Kulkarni

Despite its diversity, [CD22] has been a Republican stronghold going back to the days when it was held by former U.S. House Speaker Tom Delay. In 2016, Donald Trump won the district by 8 percentage points while the incumbent tea-party Republican Pete Olson won re-election by nearly 20 points. On paper, this is one of those seats that looks to be immune to a Democratic wave in November.

But Sri Preston Kulkarni, who quit his post in the Trump administration last year and moved back to Texas to challenge Olson, isn’t so sure.

For years, the Texas Democratic Party has bet its future on an imminent, but never-quite-materializing demographic destiny. Eventually, the thinking goes, the rapidly growing Latino population would exercise their political muscle, turning Texas blue. But that hasn’t happened. Meanwhile, Asian Americans are another rapidly growing, low-turnout demographic in the state. As a small, relatively conservative, highly fragmented voting bloc, they’ve attracted far less attention from Democratic operatives. But Asians have undergone a massive political realignment to the left and they could hold the key to Democratic gains in the diversifying purple suburbs of Texas. At least that’s Kulkarni’s bet.

“When I first started, I was told not to bother with the Asian-American vote because they don’t turn out,” Kulkarni told the Observer. “Well, I said, maybe that’s because you’re not reaching out to them.”

[…]

Kulkarni and a small team quickly assembled an intensive outreach program to target the various sub-communities within the district’s diverse Asian-American population. With the help of hundreds of volunteers — many of them in high school and college — Kulkarni has canvassed registered AAPI voters in the district with door-knocking and phone-banking in 13 different languages. Indians are the largest Asian community in the district — more than a third of the AAPI population — and the campaign has volunteers who speak the major Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Urdu, Telugu, Marathi and Gujarati.

Padma Srinivasam, a longtime Sugar Land resident who emigrated from South India, heard about Kulkarni’s campaign at one of Beto O’Rourke’s town halls in January and immediately joined his volunteer team. A native Tamil speaker, she is charged with calling many of the district’s Tamilians and introducing them to Kulkarni. People are more receptive, she says, not only when she pronounces their name properly but can switch back and forth between languages. “Language is not a barrier here for us,” Srinivasam said. “That’s how we do it, we reach out to all the people.”

Ashok Danda, a volunteer from Katy, helps coordinate outreach to the district’s Telugu speakers, including through a mass Whatsapp chat. “We all speak English, but when you add that little touch it really has an effect,” Danda said. He calls his friends, they call theirs, and soon, Danda is holding a fundraiser for 50 Telugu speakers in his living room.

Volunteers also speak Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese, which are, respectively, two other widely spoken languagesin the district. Kulkarni has made the rounds, too, in the district’s many religious centers — from the Ismaili jamatkhanas and Malayalee churches to the Hindu temples and Sikh gurdwaras — and reached out to younger Asians in professional groups like the South Asian Bar Association and the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.

“The diversity within the AAPI community necessitates what Sri’s campaign is doing. They’re just being super smart about it,” said Deborah Chen, the civic engagement programs director for the Organization of Chinese Americans-Greater Houston, a group dedicated to nonpartisan AAPI voter outreach. “That’s the inherent challenge for the AAPI community: It’s an American term. There’s no such thing as an Asian in Asia.”

Put simply, there’s no single way to communicate with “Asian” voters.

The Chron ran its own version of this story a couple of days later. This is the kind of strategy that makes you slap your forehead and say “Why didn’t anyone think of that before?” (And, sadly, Why aren’t we doing this better now?”) I wish Kulkarni had named names, because this kind of counter-productive “advice” should be a career-limiting move by whoever gave it. To be sure, this is labor intensive, and turning out non-habitual voters is often a difficult task, but Asian-American voters are increasingly Democratic and there’s a lot of room for growth. It makes all the sense in the world to do this, and we just may have the right parlay of candidate and political environment to make it work. Erica Greider has more.

The state of special education at HISD

Still a lot of work to be done.

Houston ISD’s quality of special education services remains in “grave” shape due to inadequate staffing, confusion among employees and a lack of accountability, according to a district-appointed committee reviewing the quality of programs provided to students with disabilities.

In a draft report expected to be presented to HISD trustees Thursday, members of the district’s Special Education Ad-Hoc Committee said the district needs to better address its many shortcomings and school board members should provide more oversight of efforts to improve delivery of special education services. The committee, comprised of district leaders, special education experts and HISD parents, has been meeting since February 2017, in response to a Houston Chronicle investigation that found a years-long pattern of Texas school districts — including HISD — denying access to special education services.

The committee’s 11-page draft report, which is expected to undergo some revisions before Thursday, echoes many of the findings documented earlier this year in a third-party review by American Institutes of Research. The nonprofit found HISD needed more staff members dedicated to special education, better clarity about delivering services to students and clearer systems for carrying out essential programs for students with disabilities, among other areas of improvement.

The committee is expected to issue several recommendations to HISD’s nine-member school board. They include ordering HISD administrators to issue a detailed response to the American Institutes of Research report and mandating regular reports to trustees about the district’s plans for improving special education services.

“It’s going to take years of persistence and commitment to special education to get the district to where we want it to be,” said HISD Trustee Anne Sung, who chaired the committee.

[…]

Kara DeRocha, an HISD parent and special education advocate who sat on the committee, said district leaders need a consistent, detailed and well-managed plan to satisfy long-frustrated families.

“The biggest problem in HISD has always been follow-through,” DeRocha said. “There are a lot of great plans that come out, but the devil is in the details and making sure they do what they said they’d do with fidelity.”

See here for all previous blogging on the topic. HISD had embraced the state’s artificial limits on special education in the past, and then-Superintendent Carranza set up the review of the district’s practices last January. The state is also working on a reform plan, but all these things will cost money. I agree with Kara DeRocha that the devil is in the details, but look at the budget appropriations first. It remains to be seen that the Lege will deal with this in an adequate manner.

On negative ads and name recognition

I confess, I’m amused by this.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is going after Democrat Beto O’Rourke for cursing during some of his campaign speeches.

The Cruz campaign released a digital ad on social media that shows O’Rourke cursing at various campaign events over the last year.

“So he’s showing up across Texas sharing his wit, his wisdom and his character,” an unidentified narrator says as clips of O’Rourke cursing are bleeped out.

The ad closes by saying O’Rourke is “showing the #@%* up.”

That’s…bad? Doesn’t that imply that Ted Cruz isn’t “showing the #@%* up”? I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to make of that, but then it seems that Ted Cruz isn’t very good at negative ads. Maybe if he had some accomplishments he could tout or something like that. I’m just spitballing here. What does it say about an incumbent when all his first moves out of the gate are to attack his opponent rather than brag about his record?

It’s clear that it’s going to be all mud from here on out, not just from Cruz but also from the big money outside agitators that prop him up as well. All of which leads to a bit of musing from RG Ratcliffe on the state of the race.

The increased attention that O’Rourke’s growing celebrity is drawing has some Democratic stalwarts worried that O’Rourke has not built a campaign that has the ability to quickly trade jab for jab. This may be problematic because poll after poll—which show the race for Senate is close—suggests that a large number of voters still do not know O’Rourke. This low voter ID allows Cruz and his allies to help define his opponent leading into Election Day.

You might want to put in a mouth guard to prevent injury as you grind your teeth at the quotes from unnamed “Democratic operatives”, but never mind that for now. My first inclination in times like these is always to look to the data, so I went through all the recent polls to see what I could find about Beto O’Rourke’s favorability and name recognition. Here’s what I got:

UT/Trib, June 25 – 16% Neutral, 24% Don’t Know

Quinnipiac, July 31 – 43% “Haven’t heard enough”

PPP, August 1 – “O’Rourke’s name recognition has grown since January as well as his favorability. In January, only 39% of voters had an opinion of him, and his favorability was 20% while 19% had an unfavorable opinion of him. Now 57% have an opinion of him with 31% having a favorable and 26% having an unfavorable opinion.”

NBC News, August 22 – 36% Unsure/Never heard among RVs

ECPS, Aug 27 – 27% Neutral, 11% Never heard

Not all polls asked about Beto’s favorability (though they nearly always asked about Cruz’s, and nearly everyone has an opinion on him), and those that did were not consistent in their question wording or their categorizations. Still, even with the variability, it’s clear that a decent number of people don’t have a firm opinion about Beto O’Rourke, and thus we get the pearl-clutching.

And to be fair, it’s a very reasonable point to make. If you don’t already have an opinion about a candidate – maybe even if you do – that means your perception is up for grabs. If you’re a politician with plenty of money – and while O’Rourke has greatly outraised Cruz, he still has lots of dough and his buddies in the conservative PAC business have bottomless coffers – you can have an effect on that. Thus the old adage about defining yourself before your opponent does it for you.

That said, I think it’s also worth contemplating how much effect negative ads, even competent ones, may have this year, especially on a high-charisma candidate like Beto O’Rourke. For one thing, as we have recently observed, not all candidates are vulnerable to negative information about them. For another, people who dislike Ted Cruz (of which there are many) and are undecided about Beto O’Rourke may be less likely to believe or be swayed by an attack on O’Rourke by Cruz. Most of all, in a year where so many people are highly motivated to deliver a message to Donald Trump, negative ads just may not mean much to them.

I’m not saying that Cruz’s barrage can’t or won’t have an effect. It probably will, though at this point it’s impossible to say how much of an effect it may have. I am saying that this is a weird year, with unusual dynamics, and it’s worth thinking this sort of thing through. I do hope Beto has a strategy for weathering the attacks, even if that strategy is “keep on keeping on”. We’re sure to get a lot more polling data over the next two months, so whatever effect there is, I’m sure we’ll see it.

Speed kills

Good long read from the Chron about our dangerous roads and highways. There’s too much to cover here, so I just want to focus on the why we all speed so much.

Houston drivers likely speed, at least in part, because they believe no one with authority is paying attention.

A Chronicle analysis of municipal court data shows that Houston-area law enforcement’s largest agencies are deploying fewer officers for road enforcement and ticketing fewer drivers, even as fatalities increased in the past two years and the area grows in population.

Houston police officers ticketed 41 percent fewer drivers in 2017 than they did in 2012, even as the number of vehicle miles traveled in Houston grew 23 percent.

That reflects a national trend of less traffic enforcement, according to Hersman, the former chairwoman of the NTSB. Federal statistics show that the share of people coming into contact with police through a traffic stop dropped about 11 percentage points from 2002 to 2011.

“We certainly understand what law enforcement is being asked to do and what they deal with, but the reality is fatalities are going up on our roadways,” Hersman said. “What we are seeing nationwide is law enforcement is not doing traffic enforcement.”

Harris County sheriff’s deputies, for example, issued 28 percent fewer speeding tickets in 2017 than they did in 2015, even though the county gained 100,000 people during that period. Houston police officers issued 16 percent fewer speeding tickets in 2017 than in 2015. Texas Department of Public Safety Troopers operating within the greater Houston region are the exception; they issued 11 percent more tickets for speeding than they did in 2015.

I mostly travel on I-10 these days, and I do see (usually unmarked) patrol cars on the shoulders, and occasionally a pulled-over vehicle getting cited. But this is the exception, and there’s nothing quite like the joy of being tailgated when you’re already doing over 70 on a road with a speed limit of 60. I don’t have any solutions to offer here – we could reduce speeding and the mayhem that accompanies it with higher levels of patrol, but of course that’s going to require more patrol officers, and that’s not in the cards. I just miss working in a part of town where I didn’t have to take highways to get to the office.

Early voting has begun for SD19 special election runoff

Don’t lose sight of this election.

Pete Gallego

A strong yet unsuccessful showing in 2016 against incumbent Carlos Uresti was enough to convince Pete Flores to take another shot at Uresti’s State Senate seat, this time in a special election to complete the former senator’s term.

With early voting beginning Monday for the Sept. 18 runoff, Flores faces Democrat and former Congressman Pete Gallego in Democratic-leaning District 19, which covers all or parts of 17 counties from Bexar to the Mexican border and the Big Bend country. But Flores was the top vote-getter in July’s first round of voting and is banking on his grassroots campaign to send him to Austin.

“Special elections are a different animal,” Flores said. “All assumptions get thrown out the window.”

[…]

When Flores challenged Uresti in 2016, he got 40 percent of the vote. “That’s a pretty good chunk of votes in Southwest Texas,” Flores said.

[…]

Ahead of the runoff, Gallego spoke with the Rivard Report at his Southside campaign office before block-walking with more than 20 volunteers and supporters, including Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar and County Democratic Chair Monica Alcantara.

“Opportunity means jobs, the economy, education,” he said. “It means making sure everyone has the opportunity to live out what I call the American dream.

“I also want to make sure we live up to promises made to the people to whom we owe a great deal of obligation – our seniors who built our country and made it what it is, and veterans who’ve done the same.”

Gallego is confident that Democrats will get out and vote on Sept. 18. He described District 19 as a “60/40 district,” with Democratic voters making up the majority.

“In an emergency special election, it may be a little tighter, but if at the end of the day we do what we need to do, we’ll win,” he said.

Flores did indeed get 40% in 2016 against the disgraced Carlos Uresti, though that was actually a bit below what other Republicans did in the district. He also got 34.35% in the July election, and while that was enough to lead the field, it was still a notch down from his 2016 performance. The four Dems in the race combined for 59.6%, to the three Republicans’ 39.4%, or right about where Gallego estimated the partisan ratio is. I’d call that a bit on the high end, as Dems won by about ten points pretty consistently in both 2012 and 2016. As such, the July performance for Dems was above the baseline by several points, more or less in line with other elections over the past year and a half. That said, special elections and runoffs are their own thing, and nothing should be taken for granted. Gallego got the Express News endorsement, and as far as I can tell is doing the kind of campaigning one needs to do in this kind of race. If you live in the district or know someone who does, you have till Friday to vote early, and Tuesday the 18th to vote at a precinct location. Don’t miss out.

Interview with Steven David

Steven David

We turn our attention this week to Congress. I covered a bunch of Congressional races in the primary season, and I won’t be revisiting them, but there are still a couple of races of interest in the area. First up is Steven David, whose CD08 covers a small part of northern Harris County and a much bigger part of Montgomery. David works for the city of Houston as a part of a business and efficiency team, tasked with reviewing processes and finding savings. He’s only the second Democrat to run against longtime incumbent Rep. Kevin Brady since Harris County was drawn into the district in 2011, and like many other Congressional candidates this cycle he was motivated by the attempt to kill off Obamacare. Here’s the interview:

You can see all of my interviews for Congress so far as well as other information about the candidates on my 2018 Congressional page.

Baptist Ministers Association apologizes for its role in overturning HERO

I’m very glad to see this.

The Baptists Ministers Association of Houston & Vicinity issued a joint statement with the Houston GLBT Political Caucus saying the two groups “are building a relationship that recognizes our common equal rights struggle.”

The joint statement follows a controversy earlier this year in which the Caucus faced criticism from some members for allegedly encouraging candidates to seek endorsements from the Baptists Ministers Association, which actively supported the repeal of HERO.

According to the joint statement, the Baptist Ministers Association “apologizes for the pain [its opposition to HERO] caused the LGBTQ community, and we both look forward to ongoing discussions to prevent this from happening again as we collectively fight for the equality of all Houstonians.”

“Though we may not agree on everything, we both realize that [there] is more that unites us than divides us,” said Pastor Max Miller, president of the Baptist Ministers Association. “We are looking forward to more discussions to continue to build on this relationship. Our apology is sincere.”

[…]

Monica Roberts, who chairs the Caucus’ Faith Outreach Task Force, said in the statement that as a black trans woman, she was “happy on behalf of the Houston transgender community to convey to [the Black Ministers Association] how harmful that anti-trans rhetoric was to our community and the trans community at large.”

“We have more in common than not, in terms of wanting a Houston we can all be proud of and in which everyone’s human rights and humanity is respected and protected,” Roberts added. “Trans Houstonians needed to hear an apology, and I am happy it was given. I am pleased that these conversations will continue so that we can continue the process of getting a much-needed nondiscrimination ordinance in Houston.”

The Caucus also apologized for “not directly engaging black and brown communities,” including the Black Ministers Association.

You can see a copy of the joint statement in the story. I don’t know what led to this rapprochement, but it’s great that it happened. Putting aside the fact that HERO was an equal rights ordinance for all of Houston, the fact of the matter is that a large portion of Houston’s LGBT community is people of color, a point that Monica Roberts makes all the time on her blog and on Facebook. There was too much common ground for there to be such antagonism. Kudos to all for this achievement.