Hereare a couple of photo slide shows from the Annise Parker victory party on Saturday, from TPM and Hair Balls, the latter of which has some pix from the Gene Locke event as well. And BOR has a recording of a voice mail message President Obama left for Parker to congratulate her on her win. There’s a mighty nice thing to have.
We don’t have precinct data yet – at least, I don’t have it yet – but the Chron takes a stab at analyzing Parker’s support.
She was the policy wonk, a community activist who had won hard-fought elections for city council and controller and who had been a city official for a dozen years — and who, by the way, happened to be gay. Although she wasn’t a particularly exciting candidate, she ran a cohesive, focused campaign that relied on her years-long practice of grass-roots politics and her lengthy experience grappling with neighborhood issues at City Hall. She sought the endorsements of the same heavyweight political groups that swung in behind her opponent, but when the checks went the other way she countered with what turned out to be a more potent coalition of interest groups: liberals and progressives, feminists and gays, civic activists and moderate Republicans, particularly female Republicans.
In the end, Annise Parker’s name identification and years-long experience as candidate and elected official were too much for Gene Locke to overcome. What looked like a close race just a few days before Houstonians went to the polls turned out to be a relatively easy win for Parker, who got 53 percent of the vote to Locke’s 47 percent.
I suspect that when the precinct data becomes available, it will look a lot like it did in November, with Locke dominating Districts B and D, and Parker leading everywhere else.
I did not think Parker could win. I thought the Hotzes and the Downtown Bidness types who wanted to bring back a Louie Welch administration would be able to block her election. The garbage contained in their e-mails and flyers worked in 1985 and I’m sure they thought it would still work. For once, they were wrong. Boy, am I glad I underestimated Houston. I couldn’t be more pleased about how wrong I was.
P.S. Is it too early to discuss the impact of this election on the council enlargement (and consequent redistricting) that must be addressed in the next two years? Maybe we can put an end to packing liberal votes from Montrose, Downtown and Midtown into minority districts and put them in a district where they would matter. Maybe we can take C back from the Repugnants and return it to being a district that produces more people like Greanias.