An interesting take on the Houston City Council At Large #4 runoff, for which early voting ended yesterday.
Salinas ran on a decidedly progressive platform for voters dissatisfied with status quo politics — advocating for legal action to fight against the Republican-controlled state government and calling for multimodal transportation options. Boykins, by contrast, positioned himself as a pragmatic moderate operating outside partisanship.
“Everybody — Democrats, Republicans, gay, straight, black, white, Hispanic, Pakistani and Asian — they all came and said, ‘Dwight, we’re with you,'” he said.
Boykins emphasized his willingness to work with Mayor John Whitmire and his experience representing District D in South Central Houston on the city council. He received about 20% of the vote.
The moderate versus progressive dynamic is familiar, but the election itself is unusual.
It’s the first city election in which a candidate, Boykins, acknowledged using ChatGPT to write his priority platform after Salinas accused him of plagiarizing hers. To date, the platforms have remained almost identical.
More importantly, it’s an off-year for local elections. The citywide, at-large city council seat is only on the ballot because Letitia Plummer is stepping down for a bid to replace Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Plummer declined to make an endorsement in the race to fill her position.
“It’s hard to get people to vote in a period when it’s not a traditional election cycle,” said political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus with the University of Houston.
He argued emotion could play a role in who turns out to vote — specifically, negative emotions.
“Anger is a tremendous motivator in politics,” he said. “That is not uncommon in most elections. It’s a little different and unusual to have it in a city election where typically the issues aren’t quite so firebrand.”
Political scientist Mark Jones with Rice University said the national context is important.
“The anger and desire to actively be pushing back against the Trump administration that exists among many Harris County Democrats, particularly the most active ones, should work in Salinas’ favor more than Boykins’,” Jones said.
One of those national issues is playing out at the local level — through the Houston Police Department’s coordination with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to Mayor John Whitmire’s administration, officers, under state law, must notify federal officials when they encounter someone with an immigration warrant.
Plummer, who currently occupies the at-large seat, has advocated for a change in city policy intended to curtail that collaboration — without much success.
Asked about the coordination on Houston Public Media’s Hello Houston talk show, Boykins deferred to the administration.
“You need to follow the law,” he said. “That’s just the bottom line with that, and I’m okay with that.”
Salinas wanted the city to do more.
“Where the law is wrong, we need to fight back and bring litigation,” she said.
Jones said some voters are looking for that fight.
“That could work to her favor,” Jones said. “If what she’s able to do is mobilize progressive anti-Trump Democrats to turn out and vote for her as a way of signaling their disapproval of the Trump administration and the Whitmire administration’s ICE policies.”
For what it’s worth, I have always thought that the CD18 special election both boosted turnout and helped Boykins in November. I can’t say how much, but I believe it was something. Whatever it was, that dynamic isn’t here in the runoff, because CD18 will be decided in January. (That’s because of a difference in federal versus state law – there are many reasons to be mad at Greg Abbott, but he didn’t go out of his way to do anything nefarious this time.) I’ve gotten plenty of mailers from the Salinas campaign, more than I have on behalf of Boykins. We’ll see how much it all matters.
Final EV totals are here. So far, 25,903 people have cast a ballot, which is more than I thought we’d get when we started. For comparison, there were 103,784 votes cast early in the November election – please note that in all cases I’m just counting the Harris County part of Houston – but that was a regular election, with the state ballot propositions in addition to CD18 to bring people out. Slightly less than half the vote was cast early in November; I’m going to guess it’s more the other way around this time. My WAG for this one is some 40-45K. Not a lot, obviously, but it is what it is. There is also the HCC District 2 runoff in progress, with Renee Jefferson Patterson aiming to hold off Kathy Lynch Gunter. Have you voted yet?
On a side note, Saturday is also Runoff Day for the SD09 special election. The only real news I’ve seen involves how many voting locations there will be on Saturday, in which Tarrant County is doing its usual thing. If anger and a desire to fight back is the driver there, then we could be in for a bice surprise. Anyone out there have a view on this one?