As of a little after 10 PM when I draft this, I have no idea who will win the Democratic runoff for Harris County Judge. Letitia Plummer had a lead of 0.36%, which is to say 247 votes, with early voting and two of 157 voting centers reporting. She won early voting in person, with Annise Parker leading by a slightly smaller amount in mail ballots, so it will all come down to who had the better day yesterday. Whatever one thinks of the limited polling we saw, I assume Plummer benefited from the active CD18 race. I’ll post an update in the morning.
Orlando Sanchez had no trouble on his side, beating the dude who wasn’t Marty Lancton by a sizeable amount. The other countywide race of interest was Harris County District Clerk, and Darrell Jordan was running away with that. In Fort Bend County, Dexter McCoy won the runoff for County Judge and will face the appointed Daniel Wong.
The other races of interest were for the State House, where Staci Childs was winning in HD131 over Lawrence Allen, and in HD149 where Darlene Breaux had a 60-40 lead over longtime incumbent Rep. Hubert Vo. Congratulations to all the winners.
UPDATE: In the end, Letitia Plummer won the day on Tuesday and thus won the runoff by a little more than 51-49.
The Democratic tallies were a marked reversal from March, which saw Parker, a former Houston mayor, come within four points of avoiding a runoff and securing the nomination outright.
Political experts and Parker herself pointed to turnout driven by a runoff between U.S. Reps. Christian Menefee and Al Green in the 18th Congressional District and voter fatigue elsewhere in the county as factors in the upset.
“While I didn’t think my opponent could beat me, low turnout absolutely could,” Parker said earlier Tuesday evening during brief remarks to news media at Birdie’s Den, where her supporters gathered to watch the results roll in.
Plummer’s performance also bucked two polls published by the Hobby School of Public Affairs ahead of the election. Both pegged Parker as having a comfortable double-digit lead.
Plummer said Tuesday night that her campaign had “surpassed every single expectation.”
“We have done the work, we have met the people where they are, we have listened to what they want, we are giving what they need and we’re giving them hope,” she told supporters at the Cactus Cove bar in Timbergrove.
On the turnout front, I can’t say what it was like in CD18 relative to the rest of Harris County just yet. What I can say is that the 72,258 votes cast in CD18 in March represented 21.56% of the 335,123 votes cast in the County Judge race. In the runoff, the 37,231 votes cast in CD18 represented 32.96% of the 112,968 votes cast in the County Judge race. I’m sure that had some effect. Whatever the case, congratulations to Letitia Plummer on her hard-earned victory. Let’s get behind her and keep Orlando Sanchez in the private sector where he belongs. For what it’s worth, if age was a factor in the Dem runoff, as at least one of the quoted experts suggested, then it ought to be a factor in November as well.
“Plummer’s performance also bucked two polls published by the Hobby School of Public Affairs ahead of the election. Both pegged Parker as having a comfortable double-digit lead.”
That’s a major strike out there. When you miss that badly, I doubt it’s just a single factor, such as turnout.
This is a repeat of the Dec. 9, 1989 election in which Sheila Jackson Lee was first elected to Houston City Council. The election overlapped with a special election to replace the late Congressman Mickey Leland. Lionel Castillo, a former city controller, had led the first round and was widely expected to win the at-large city council position, but the heavy African-American turnout in the CD 18 contest boosted Jackson Lee to victory.