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CD31

The filings I’m still looking for

Today is Filing Deadline Day. By the end of today, we’ll know who is and isn’t running for what. While we wait for that, let’s review the filings that have not yet happened, to see what mysteries may remain.

Congress: Most of the potentially competitive districts have Democratic candidates in them. The ones that remain are CDs 22, 26, 31, and 38, though I have been told there is a candidate lined up for that latter slot. Of the rest, CD22 would be the biggest miss if no one files. I have to think someone will, but we’ll know soon enough.

For open seats, CD15 has five candidates so far, none of whom are familiar to me. CD30 has six candidates, with State Rep. Jasmine Crockett receiving the endorsement of outgoing Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. CD34 has six, with current CD15 Rep. Vicente Gonzalez the presumed favorite. CD35 has three serious contenders – Austin City Council member Greg Casar, former San Antonio City Council Member Rebecca Viagran, and State Rep. Eddie Rodrigues – and one person you’ve not heard of. CD37 has Rep. Lloyd Doggett and former CD31 candidate Donna Imam, in addition to a couple of low-profile hopefuls, but it will not have former CD25 candidate Julie Oliver, who has said she will not run.

Democratic incumbents who have primary challengers include Rep. Lizzie Fletcher in CD07 (I’m still waiting to see if Centrell Reed makes some kind of announcement); Rep. Veronica Escobar in CD16 (I don’t get the sense her challenger is a serious one); and Rep. Henry Cuellar in CD28, who gets a rematch with Jessica Cisneros, who came close to beating him last year. The Svitek spreadsheet lists some dude as a potential challenger in CD18 against Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, but so far no filing. Reps. Al Green, Joaquin Castro, Sylvia Garcia, Colin Allred, and Marc Veasey do not appear to have any challengers as of this morning.

Statewide: Pretty much everyone who has said they are a candidate has filed. Frequent candidate Michael Cooper and someone named Innocencio Barrientez have filed for Governor, making it a four-candidate field. Two Harris County district court judges, Julia Maldonado and Robert Johnson, have filed for slots on the Supreme Court and CCA, respectively. The Svitek spreadsheet lists potential but not yet filed contenders for two other Supreme Court positions but has no listings for CCA. The one potential candidate who has not yet taken action is Carla Brailey, who may or may not file for Lt. Governor.

SBOE: As this is a post-redistricting year, all SBOE seats are on the ballot, as are all State Senate seats. Dems have four reasonable challenge opportunities: Michelle Palmer is running again in SBOE6, Jonathan Cocks switched from the Land Commissioner race to file in SBOE8, Alex Cornwallis is in SBOE12, and then there’s whatever is happening in SBOE11. The good news is that DC Caldwell has company in the primary, if he is actually allowed to run in it, as Luis Sifuentes is also running. I would advise voting for Sifuentes.

There are two open Democratic seats, plus one that I’m not sure about. Ruben Cortez in SBOE2 and Lawrence Allen in SBOE4 are running for HDs 37 and 26, respectively. There are two candidates in 2 and three candidates in 4, so far. Georgina Perez is the incumbent in SBOE1 but as yet has not filed. If she has announced that she’s not running, I have not seen it. There is a candidate named Melissa Ortega in the race.

In SBOE5, the district that was flipped by Rebecca Bell-Metereau in 2020 and was subsequently made more Democratic in redistricting, we have the one primary challenge to an incumbent so far, as a candidate named Juan Juarez has filed against Bell-Metereau. I’m old enough to remember Marisa Perez coming out of nowhere to oust Michael Soto in 2012, so anything can happen here. The aforementioned Perez (now Marisa Perez-Diaz) and Aicha Davis are unopposed so far.

Senate: Nothing much here that you don’t already know. Every incumbent except Eddie Lucio has filed for re-election, and none of them have primary opponents so far. Lucio’s SD27 has the three challengers we knew about, Sara Stapleton-Barrera, State Rep. Alex Dominguez, and Morgan LaMantia. A candidate named Misty Bishop had filed for SD07, was rejected, and has since re-filed for SD04; I’m going to guess that residency issues were at play. There are Dem challengers in SD09 (Gwenn Burud, who has run for this office before) and SD17 (Miguel Gonzalez), but no one yet for SDs 07 or 08.

House: Here’s the list of potentially competitive districts, for some value of the word “competitive”. Now here’s a list of districts on that list that do not yet have a filed candidate:

HD14
HD25
HD28
HD29
HD55
HD57
HD61
HD66
HD67
HD84
HD89
HD96
HD106
HD126
HD129
HD133
HD150

I’m told there’s someone lined up for HD133. We’ll see about the rest.

All of the open seats have at least one candidate in them so far except for HD22, the seat now held by Joe Deshotel. There’s a name listed on the Svitek spreadsheet, so I assume that will be sorted by the end of the day.

Reps. Ron Reynolds (HD27), Ana-Maria Ramos (HD102), and Carl Sherman (HD109) are incumbents who have not yet filed. No one else has filed yet in those districts as well. Svitek has a note saying that Rep. Ramos has confirmed she will file; there are no notes for the other two. There is the possibility of a last-minute retirement, with a possibly preferred successor coming in at the same time.

Here is a complete list of Democratic House incumbents who face a primary challenge: Rep. Richard Raymond (HD42) and Rep. Alma Allen (HD131). Both have faced and turned away such opponents in the past. If there was supposed to be a wave of primary opponents to incumbents who came back early from Washington, they have not shown up yet.

Rep. James Talarico has moved from HD52 to the open HD50 after HD52 was made into a lean-Republican district. Rep. Claudia Ordaz-Perez, the incumbent in HD76, will run in HD79 against Rep. Art Fierro after HD76 was relocated from El Paso to Fort Bend.

Harris County: Again, nothing new here. Erica Davis has not yet filed for County Judge. County Clerk Teneshia Hudpseth is the only non-judicial incumbent without a primary opponent so far.

Far as I can tell, all of the county judicial slots have at least one filing in them, except for a couple of Justice of the Peace positions. George Risner, the JP in Precinct 2, Place 2 (all JP Place 2 slots are on the ballot this year) has not yet filed, amid rumors that he is mulling a challenge to Commissioner Adrian Garcia. Incumbent Angela Rodriguez in JP precinct 6 has not yet filed. No Dem challengers yet in precincts 4 or 8.

Other judicial races: Sorry, I don’t have the bandwidth for this right now. I’ll review it after today.

And that’s all I’ve got. See you on the other side. As always, leave your hot gossip in the comments.

Filing update: Judge Hidalgo makes it official

She has filed for re-election, in case you had thought there was some other possibility.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo announced her 2022 re-election campaign Friday afternoon as she filed paperwork at the Harris County Democratic Party headquarters.

Although progress has been made during her tenure, Hidalgo said her desire is for the county to continue its momentum on various social issues.

“This community has given so much to us, but we have to do better to remain competitive,” Hidalgo said. “Over the past few years we have done that on flood control, on early childhood education, on putting politics behind people… there is so much left to do.”

The incumbent Harris County judge will run against Republican candidate and Humble ISD School Board president Martina Lemond Dixon, who announced her candidacy on Sept. 22.

There are other candidates out there. Indeed, if you search the filings, Martina Dixon doesn’t appear yet. To be fair, neither does Judge Hidalgo as of Friday, but that may be updated by the time you read this. In my previous update I mentioned Republicans Vidal Martinez and Alexandra Mealer. On Friday, I heard that perennial candidate AR Hassan has filed as well, in the Democratic primary. Let’s just say I’m not worried about Judge Hidalgo’s chances there. If it makes her start campaigning in earnest earlier, that’s fine by me.

I see a new entrant in the race for County Commissioner in Precinct 4, Alief ISD Board President Ann Williams, whose Twitter account is here and whose personal Facebook page is here. I don’t know anything about her besides what I can tell from those sources. Oh, Williams’ colleague on the board Lily Truong has filed in the Republican primary in HD149 against Rep. Hubert Vo.

I don’t usually pay too much attention to the JP and Constable races, but I couldn’t help but notice that there are three people with filings for Justice of the Peace in Precinct 1, Place 2, which is where I am and where incumbent David Patronella presides. All three – Sonia Lopez, Steve Duble, and Victor Lombrana – are Democrats, which makes me wonder if Judge Patronella is retiring and I missed an announcement. Anyone have any ideas?

In Congress, I still don’t see a Democrat running in CD38. Nor do I see any primary challengers for Reps. Fletcher, Green, Jackson Lee, or Garcia. All of which is fine by me, though given that we’re in a post-redistricting cycle and there’s still a week-plus to go, I would not think that’s the final word. The main news of which I am aware is that Donna Imam, who was the Democratic candidate for CD31 in 2020, has announced that she will run in the new CD37 this spring. That will pit her against Rep. Lloyd Doggett, and with all due respect, she will not win. But no one is entitled to a seat, so go forth and good luck.

We now have a couple of Dems listed on the Svitek spreadsheet for Comptroller. One is Tim Mahoney, who ran in 2018 and lost in the primary to Joi Chevalier. Another is Angel Vega, who is a resident of Fort Bend and works in the non-profit industry. The spreadsheet also lists former HD14 candidate from 2020 Janet Dudding, whose campaign webpage has not been updated if she is indeed running. Dudding is a CPA.

Finally, the other news of interest is that Sen. Larry Taylor will not run for re-election. As with pretty much everything else to do with the state Senate, this is almost certain to make it a worse place than it is today.

Taylor chairs the Senate Education Committee and has served in the Legislature since 2003, first as a member of the House. He is also chair of the Senate Republican Caucus.

His decision comes just under two weeks before the candidate filing deadline for the 2022 primary. Within minutes of Taylor announcing his retirement, state Rep. Mayes Middleton, R-Wallisville, announced he had filed for for the Senate seat.

[…]

After news of Taylor’s retirement broke, he told a reporter with the Galveston Daily News that part of his decision was due to Middleton’s interest in his seat. Taylor told the reporter that he tried to dissuade Middleton, but that he is “ready to go and wanting to spend a lot of money.”

Middleton, an oil-and-gas businessman, is the chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House, where he has been a member since 2019.

I mean, Larry Taylor is your basic cookie cutter Republican. I have nothing nice to say about him, but he doesn’t make me want to scream. Mayes Middleton is a rich guy who primaried out the Republican that had been in HD23 because he wasn’t sufficiently wingnutty. We all need another guy like that in the Senate like we need another hole in the head, but that’s what we’re gonna get.

The filing deadline is December 13, a week from Monday. I’ll check in again as we go.

UPDATE: I am reliably informed that Judge Patronella is running for the County Court bench that Lesley Briones is vacating to run for Commissioner. Also, there are even more Republicans than the ones I’ve listed here that are running for County Judge.

Precinct analysis: The new Congressional map

Previously: New State House map

We will now take a look at how the districts of interest in the new Congressional map have changed over the past decade. Same basic idea, looking at the closer districts from 2020 to see how they got there. You can find all of the data relating to the new Congressional map here, and the zoomable map here.

I’m not going to tally how many seats were won by each side in each year, for the simple reason that there just wasn’t any real movement like there was in the State House. You can browse the middle years, I’m just going to focus on 2012 and 2020.


Dist   Obama   Romney Obama%Romney%     Biden    Trump Biden% Trump%
====================================================================
03    67,799  153,969  30.1%  68.3%   152,288  204,514  41.9%  56.3%
07   101,379   82,810  54.1%  44.2%   179,334   96,259  64.2%  34.4%
10    73,300  150,282  32.1%  65.8%   134,799  198,754  39.7%  58.5%
12    73,392  141,316  33.6%  64.8%   130,111  188,548  40.1%  58.2%
15    82,049   64,589  55.3%  43.6%   109,172  115,719  48.1%  50.9%
21    87,795  195,130  30.5%  67.7%   164,243  246,188  39.4%  59.1%
22    64,502  149,023  29.8%  69.0%   138,243  191,927  41.2%  57.3%
23    85,081  107,169  43.7%  55.0%   134,574  155,579  45.8%  52.9%
24    87,716  206,535  29.4%  69.2%   168,176  216,381  43.0%  55.4%
26    60,849  148,265  28.6%  69.8%   144,834  212,009  40.0%  58.5%
28   103,701   66,693  60.1%  38.7%   131,699  114,156  52.8%  45.8%
31    63,054  139,030  30.5%  67.3%   132,158  201,379  38.8%  59.1%
34    95,897   42,597  68.5%  30.4%   116,930   85,231  57.2%  41.7%
38    70,264  186,032  27.0%  71.6%   143,904  208,709  40.2%  58.4%

I’m going to sort these into three groups. The first is the “don’t pay too much attention to the vote percentage gains” group. I explained what I mean by that, with the help of a sports analogy, here. I’d put districts 21, 23, and 31 as canonical examples of this, with districts 10, 12, and 31 being slightly less extreme. All of them saw a net decrease in the Republican margin of victory from 2012 to 2020, but the rate is so slow that there’s no reason to believe that any continuation of trends would make them competitive in this decade. (With the possible exception of 23, which is reasonably close to begin with but always finds a way to disappoint.) Maybe things will look different after the 2022 election – these districts do still include places with a lot of Democratic growth – but they’re not the top priorities.

The next group is, or should be, the top priorities, at least from an offensive perspective, because they did have real movement in a Democratic direction. I’d put CDs 24, 03, 22, 38, and 26 in this group, in that order. This of course assumes that trends we have seen since 2016 will continue more or less as before, which we won’t really know until 2022 and beyond, but those numbers do stand out. I know the DCCC is targeting both CD23 and CD24, at least so far in this cycle, but I’d make CD24 more likely to be truly competitive this year. CD03 now includes Hunt County while a big strip of Collin County was put into CD04, so it will take more than just turning Collin blue to make CD03 flippable, but it will help. CD38 is if nothing else the biggest non-Commissioners Court prize on the board for Harris County Democrats.

Finally, there are the districts Dems need to worry about. CD15 is already going to be a tough hold, and even if Dems manage to keep it in 2022, there’s no reason to think it will get any easier, and may well get harder. If that happens, then CD28 could well be in peril as well. As noted before, it’s more like a 10-12 point district downballot, and whatever you think of him Henry Cuellar has shown the ability to outperform that level. Who knows how long those things can last if the trends continue? CD34 is almost as blue now as CD38 is red, but it was also almost as blue as CD38 was red in 2012. Again, I don’t like that trend. The main difference here is that the 2020 election was the sole data point in the new direction, whereas the trending-blue districts have been doing so since 2016. But the numbers are what they are, and until we see evidence that the trend isn’t continuing, we have to be prepared for the possibility that it will. Don’t take any of this for granted.

The bottom line is that right now, only a couple of districts look competitive. That was the case in 2012 as well, and we saw what happened there after a couple of cycles. That said, the reason for the big change was only partly about changing demography – the Trump effect and efforts to register voters, by Dems at first and by Republicans later, all played roles as well. We can extrapolate from existing trends, but it’s hard to know how much that will continue, and it’s really hard to know what exogenous factors may arise. And for all of the movement that the 2011/2013 Congressional districts saw, in the end only three districts were held by the opposite party in 2020 than in 2012 – don’t forget, Dems won CD23 in 2012, but only held it that one term. As much as that map looked like it could be a disaster for the Republicans at the end of the decade, it mostly held to form for them. Would it be a big surprise if the same thing happens this decade? Obviously, I don’t want that to happen, but the GOP built itself some big cushions into this map. Overcoming all that isn’t going to be easy, if indeed it is possible. We have a lot of work to do.

More redistricting stuff

Just a roundup of some redistricting stories. We’ll start with the DMN.

The new map, part of a process of redrawing legislative boundaries every 10 years, makes significant changes in North Texas, where Democrats likely will gain a seat held by Republican Jeff Cason. The district would move to an area made up of mostly minority voters.

But the Republican proposal also adjusts the southern Denton County district represented by Democrat Michelle Beckley to make it more favorable for a GOP candidate. Beckley has opted to run for Congress in 2022 against Republican incumbent Beth Van Duyne in Congressional District 24.

Meanwhile, the North Dallas district represented by John Turner would move west and become a majority Hispanic district in Oak Cliff and Grand Prairie. Turner is retiring after his term ends, and had he stayed, he would have been paired with a Republican Morgan Meyer.

In North Texas, Republicans had the goal of protecting their incumbents who could be in trouble during the next decade. They made alterations that now have the Dallas County seats held by Republicans Angie Chen Button of Garland and Meyer, who lives in University Park. The new maps place them in areas won in 2020 by Donald Trump, but only at a 50% to 49% margin. Those districts will remain battlegrounds as Democrats try to make Dallas County a blue oasis.

Republicans bolstered their Tarrant County seats, except for the one held by Cason, which will become more Democratic. Cason also was one of only two Republicans who voted against House Speaker Dade Phelan in January. And they made the Collin County districts represented by GOP Reps. Matt Shaheen and Jeff Leach stronger for a Republican, but as with the case in Dallas County, the Collin County seats will remain targets for Democrats.

“Republicans did their best to cement their majority and, from a partisan gerrymandering standpoint, they played this very smart,” said David de la Fuente, a senior policy analysts for the center-left group called Third Way. “They didn’t go overly aggressive for new pickup opportunities for themselves because they know that a lot of this growth that’s happening in Texas is growth that could benefit the Democratic Party, so they tried to stop losses more than anything else.”

[…]

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Dallas Democrats who represents District 100, which includes parts of southern and eastern Dallas County, as well as West Dallas, is upset that her district is slated to incur a radical drop in its Black population. Under the new maps, the number of voting age Black residents District 100 will drop from 34.6% to 27%. The white voting age population would increase from 22% to nearly 37%. Crockett’s voting age Hispanic population drops from 41% to 29%.

“They have taken the voice away from African Americans in my district and that’s a clear violation of the Voting Rights Act,” Crockett said. “They are spitting on the legacy of HD 100. They went too far.”

Most of the Black population lost by Crockett will be moved to the nearby District 104 that is represented by Dallas Democrat Jessica González. Her new constituents would include residents from the historic Joppa neighborhood, a community built by freed slaves. District 104 has largely changed, González said. The district now extends to Mesquite and Garland.

While she would pick up Black population from districts represented by Crockett and Rose, González said the number of eligible voters with Hispanic surnames would drop from over 50% to about 48%. That could be a Voting Rights Act violation, analysts say.

Crockett and González were vocal participants of the quorum break by House Democrats to stall a controversial elections bill.

“I’m not too shocked that it ended up being me they targeted,” Crockett said. “I kind of wear it as a badge of honor…It is still a safe Democratic seat, but partisan gerrymandering is legal and when you slice and dice communities of interests, you end up with a problem.”

State Rep. Toni Rose, D-Dallas, would also have the Black population in her district sharply reduced, and she would lose Paul Quinn College. Rose’s district would see a drop in Black voting age population–from 34% to 26%. The Hispanic voting age population in the district would rise from 58% to 63%.

Black residents represented 25% of the growth in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Well, that answers my question about what Rep. Cason did to offend the redistricting gods. Gotta say, I was under the impression that doing what was done here to Rep. Crockett’s district was called “retrogression” and it was a no-no under the Voting Rights Act. It’s not clear to me if that slicing and dicing was done for strategic reasons or just out of spite. Wait for the lawsuits, I guess.

Here’s the Chronicle:

“The map gives Republicans a slight advantage,” said Ross Sherman of the advocacy group RepresentUs, which works with the Princeton Gerrymandering Project to grade redistricting proposals. “This seems to be a trend this cycle: another map producing safe seats and insulating politicians from their constituents.”

The Gerrymandering Project gave the proposed House map a “C” in fairness for its GOP advantages. It’s the highest grade a Texas map has received so far, after proposals for congressional and state Senate maps earned “F” grades.

[…]

Speaking in general about the maps, GOP strategist Brendan Steinhauser said the Republicans tried to “lock in the gains” they earned during the 2020 election, rather than “be too aggressive” and shift blue seats their way.

The House seats currently are divided almost equally between districts that favored Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. The current map includes 76 Trump-led districts and 74 Biden-led districts, but the new map shifts that support to 86 in favor of Trump and 64 in support of Biden.

Texas grew by roughly 4 million people over the past decade, a surge driven almost entirely by people of color, especially Latinos. Updating the political maps is required every 10 years, to account for such shifts.

Still, the proposed House map reduces the number of majority-minority districts by voting age population. Previously, 67 districts were majority-white; the new map proposes 72 districts that have mostly white voters.

Those numbers change dramatically when evaluating estimates for adult citizens. Using those figures, the House currently has 83 majority-white districts, compared with 89 under the new map. And while the current districts include 33 with Hispanic majorities and seven with Black majorities, those numbers would fall to 30 and four, respectively.

“These maps do nothing but preserve the status quo at the expense of Black and brown Texans,” said Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of the good-government group Common Cause Texas.

Same observation about the reduction of majority-minority districts. I mean, I get that the Voting Rights Act may as well be written on toilet paper with this Supreme Court, but it’s still theoretically the law of the land. The Republicans may have had more challenges with the State House districts because of the law that requires districts to be entirely within counties where possible, which prevented them from putting pieces of urban counties in the same district with rural counties, which was not the case for the Congress or State Senate maps. Again, I figure the lawyers will have a lot to say about all this when the dust settles.

Speaking of Congress:

In a strongly-worded letter, U.S. Reps Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green said they oppose the Republicans’ proposed redrawing of their districts and say they were not consulted before the map was released to the public.

The map “makes radical and unneeded changes to the two local congressional districts that include the majority of Black voters in Harris and Fort Bend counties,” the letter to the Texas Senate Redistricting committee states.

There are massive changes for Harris County in the congressional redistricting plan the Texas Senate released earlier this week. The county would still have nine members of Congress, but the district lines would be dramatically altered to improve the re-election chances of current Republicans and create a new congressional seat that appears to have been drafted to ensure another Republican would be elected to Congress.

The map would have a dramatic impact on the districts represented by Jackson Lee and Green, changing who represents 200,000 mostly Black residents.

Jackson Lee’s 18th Congressional District would not only lose the Third Ward, but also downtown Houston, the University of Houston and Texas Southern University — most of those areas would instead be shifted to the 29th Congressional District, represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia.

And the Republican map would put Jackson Lee’s home in Riverside Terrace into Green’s 9th Congressional District, meaning she would not even be able to vote for herself unless she moved. It would also put Jackson Lee’s main district office for the 18th in Green’s district, forcing her to move it.

“No other member of the large Texas delegation is so severely impacted by the proposed map,” the letter notes, pointing out at Jackson Lee’s 18th Congressional District has roots that tie back to Barbara Jordan, who in 1972 became the first Black woman to represent Texas in Congress.

I said before that Reps. Green and Jackson Lee would easily win the new districts as drawn, but what was done to them is clearly an insult. For Sen. Huffman to claim that no one got in touch with her about the maps she was drawing is disingenuous, especially when she knows what effect those maps are going to have. You have the power, you have the responsibility. Spare me the whining.

More from the Statesman:

Nonwhite residents accounted for about 95% of the population growth that gave Texas two additional seats in the U.S. House.

Despite that, the number of predominantly Hispanic congressional districts in Texas would fall from eight to seven, while majority Anglo districts would rise from 22 to 23, in the Republican-drawn map unveiled this week, said Gloria Leal with the League of United Latin American Citizens.

[…]

“Toss-up seats, which presented an opportunity for Hispanics to elect candidates of choice, were cut from 12 to one,” Leal said. “This blatant attempt to increase partisanship in districts not only results in the suppression of minority votes, but it eliminates the opportunity for Hispanics to elect a candidate of their choice in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.”

State Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston and chairwoman of the committee, said the map was drawn in a “color-blind way,” without taking into account the race of residents.

“We did not consider race in drawing the maps at all,” Huffman said. “Once we drew the maps, we provided them to our legal counsel … and we are advised that they were legally compliant” with the Voting Rights Act.

Michael Li, with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, testified that creating the map without regard to race is not enough to insulate it from legal challenges, particularly if lawmakers know about its adverse impact on nonwhite Texans.

Li said the proposed map raised several “red flags,” particularly in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where Black and Hispanic populations increased sharply in the past decade, yet no new districts were created to give nonwhite voters an opportunity to elect preferred candidates. At the same time, SB 6 would move a significant Latino population from a district held by U.S. Rep. Mark Veasy, D-Fort Worth, and into an Anglo majority district that includes seven rural counties, he said.

Li also questioned changes made to District 22 — centered on Fort Bend County, one of the most diverse suburban counties in America — where the voting age population would rise to 55% Anglo, up from the current 46%. Dismantling a district where rising numbers of Hispanic, Black and Asian voters were able to create voting coalitions “raises many red flags,” he said.

Have I mentioned that the lawyers are going to be busy? I don’t have much faith in the courts, but I believe in the lawyers.

Decision Desk:

Texas gained two Congressional districts through 2020 reapportionment. One district went into Austin, which the GOP previously divided between five Republican districts in 2010. All five ended up as marginal races by 2020. This new Democratic district releases pressure on the five seats allowing them to absorb Democratic voters from other parts of the state. The second new Congressional seat is roughly the successor to the old Seventh district in west Houston, with the new TX-07 traveling between Houston and her suburbs as a new, safe Democratic seat.

TX-03, TX-06, TX-07, TX-10, TX-21, TX-22, TX-23, TX-24, TX-25, TX31, and TX-32 were all potential competitive seats in 2020. TX-15, TX-28, and TX-34 became competitive because of newfound Republican strength among South Texas Hispanics. All but one of the districts are now uncompetitive. Republican Districts gain more Republican voters, and the few Democratic held seats become more Democratic. All of the former Republican suburban seats reach deep into the rural and exurban areas and drop Democratic suburbs. Former rural and exurban seats – TX-04, TX-05, TX-08, TX-13, and TX-36 – reach deeper into the suburbs to carve up Democratic areas. The result is  districts with obtuse borders where the Democrats gained the most voters, such as the north Dallas suburbs with the new TX-04.

In South Texas, past voting rights litigation prevents Republican map-makers from exploiting recent party gains. The resulting districts resemble the present lines and stretch northwards, but the most GOP-favoring Hispanic areas are now congregated in TX-15 which makes it a potential swing district. O’Rourke did win this seat by over 10%, so the district will not be competitive if the 2020 results end up as a one-off occurrence.

Texas mappers still found ways to cater to their protected incumbents. In TX-10, Senior Republican Michael McCaul gets a district that squiggles narrowly around Austin from his neighborhood west of the city to rural Texas. New TX-06 Republican Jake Ellzey’s district takes in more rural areas where he is better known and loses Arlington Republican voters who backed Susan Wright during the 2021 Special Election. TX-25 previously did not include Republican Roger Williams’ base in Weatherford, west of Fort Worth. Now it does.

Republicans also released their proposed Legislative and Board of Education district maps, which can be viewed here. Biden in 2020 and O’Rourke in 2018 won a majority or a near-majority of districts on the former maps for these bodies, so Republican mappers were even more desperate to gerrymander these lines. Both maps protect incumbents in a similar manner to the Congressional plan with the rural and exurban areas reaching into the suburbs. The legislative plans however go beyond incumbent protection and each attempt to carve up a marginally Democratic seat in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. 

The desire to protect incumbents may end up dooming State House Republicans in future years. County nesting requirements prevented the GOP from linking the Republican dominated rural areas to the suburbs. By giving former Biden-District Republicans seats Trump won, other, formerly safe Republican seats needed to take in Democratic voters. Even more districts than previously become marginal districts that could potentially swing heavily away from the GOP.

Voting rights litigation is a constant factor in Texas redistricting. For example, plaintiffs forced Texas Republicans to draw the new Dallas-based TX-33 into a Hispanic Democratic seat in 2010 (initial 2010 map here). This new Congressional gerrymander disadvantages minority communities across the state, especially since nearly all of Texas’s recent growth came from minority groups. The proposed TX-23 is only 60% Hispanic compared to the 80% or higher in other South Texas seats, limiting minority opportunity. TX-27 has several majority Hispanic counties, including the city of Corpus Christi, inside a seat where White voters historically pick the representative. TX-38 could be a second, overwhelmingly Hispanic seat in the Houston area. TX-18 was previously an African American district, but is here majority Hispanic, an example of regression. Fort Worth minority voters are distributed between four Districts and there could be a fourth minority seat in the region. A majority-minority coalition seat can be drawn in the suburbs north of Dallas. Expect this criticism and more to potentially be levied in future court cases.

I suspect he means that only CD15 is competitive, but CD23 is only Trump+7, which seems competitive enough to me. I also think that over time several others will become more competitive as well, if these districts are allowed to go into effect as is. I’m sure there will be changes, and then of course the lawsuits, though as we well know they will take years to resolve. What we eventually get here is what we’re going to have for awhile. The Current and the Trib have more.

First proposed Congressional map is out

It’s a thing.

Texas lawmakers on Monday released their first draft of a new congressional map for the next decade that includes two new districts in Austin and Houston — metropolitan areas with diverse populations tht fueled much of the state’s population growth over the past 10 years.

Republicans constructed this map with incumbent protection in mind — a strategy that focused on bolstering Republican seats that Democrats targeted over the last two election cycles rather than aggressively adding new seats that could flip from blue to red. However, the map does in fact strengthen Republican positioning overall, going from 22 to 25 districts that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. The number of districts that voted for Joe Biden would shrink by one, from 14 to 13.

Texas members of the House GOP delegation were closely involved in the drawing process and approved the map last week, according to two sources close to the Texas delegation.

While many incumbents appear safe in these maps, others were drawn into districts that overlap with one another — for example the proposed map pits Houston Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw against Democrat Rep. Sylvia Garcia. It also pits two Houston Democrats — Reps. Al Green and Sheila Jackson Lee — against each other.

The maps were proposed by state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, who leads the chamber’s redistricting committee.

[…]

Huffman’s first 38-district proposal would widen the gap between the parties, creating 25 districts that voted for Trump in 2020 and 13 that voted for Biden.

The racial makeup of the congressional maps is also expected to change as Texas added two new congressional seats based on last decade’s population growth, which was mostly driven by people of color. Based on eligible voters, the current map includes 22 districts with white majorities, eight with Hispanic majorities, one with a Black majority and five that have no majority. The newly proposed map includes 23 districts with white majorities, seven with Hispanic majorities, none with a Black majority and eight that have no majority.

Available data can be found here. Patrick Svitek has some numbers, which I’ll summarize briefly:

– Of the 14 districts carried by Biden in 2020, 12 were carried by him under this map. The exceptions are Republican-held CD24, which goes from Biden +5 to Trump +12, and Democratic-held CD15, which goes from Biden +2 to Trump +3. That may make CD15 the new CD23, which went from Trump +1 to Trump +7.

– Of the two new districts, CD37 in Travis County is deep, dark blue (Biden +53), while CD38 in Harris County is Trump +18. Let’s just say I don’t think it will remain that red over time.

– Regardless of what the story says, it seems clear to me that Reps. Crenshaw, Green, Jackson Lee, and Garcia would run in and win the same-numbered districts as they have now.

– Reps. Colin Allred and Lizzie Fletcher get much bluer districts. Maybe that makes them vulnerable to primary challenges, I don’t know. Rep. Henry Cuellar in CD28 gets a district that is less favorable for his 2020 primary challenger, Jessica Cisneros.

– Overall I think I agree with Michael Li:

This map uses the same strategy as the Senate and SBOE maps in that it shores up a Harris County incumbent (in this case Crenshaw) by extending his district into Montgomery County, and shores up some other incumbents (see in particular Reps. Williams in CD25 and Carter in CD31) by making their districts more rural. As the meme says, it’s a bold strategy, we’ll see how it works for them.

The Chron focuses on the Harris County piece of this, with the following observation:

A spokesman for Wesley Hunt, a Republican who ran against Fletcher in 2020, said the former Army helicopter pilot would run for the new District 38 seat if lawmakers were to adopt the initial map proposal.

Hunt had previously announced he was running in 2022 but had yet to settle on a district while awaiting the proposed map.

That sound you hear is me rolling my eyes, and yes I am rolling them hard enough for it to be audible. The Texas Signal has more.

Precinct analysis: Congress, part 1

Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts
Comparing 2012 and 2016
Statewide judicial
Other jurisdictions
Appellate courts, Part 1
Appellate courts, Part 2
Judicial averages
Other cities
District Attorney
County Attorney
Sheriff
Tax Assessor
County Clerk
HCDE
Fort Bend, part 1
Fort Bend, part 2
Fort Bend, part 3
Brazoria County
Harris County State Senate comparisons
State Senate districts 2020
State Senate district comparisons
State House districts 2020, part 1
State House districts 2020, part 2
Median districts
State House district changes by demography
State House district changes by county
SBOE

In addition to the SBOE data, we finally have 2020 election results for the Congressional districts as well. With the redistricting special session about to start, let’s look at where things were in the last election.


Dist   Biden    Trump  Biden%  Trump%
=====================================
01    83,221  218,689   27.2%   71.5%
02   170,430  174,980   48.6%   49.9%
03   209,859  214,359   48.6%   49.6%
04    84,582  258,314   24.3%   74.3%
05   107,494  172,395   37.9%   60.8%
06   164,746  175,101   47.8%   50.8%
07   170,060  143,176   53.6%   45.1%
08   109,291  274,224   28.1%   70.5%
09   178,908   54,944   75.7%   23.2%
10   203,937  210,734   48.4%   50.0%
11    58,585  235,797   19.7%   79.1%
12   140,683  224,490   37.9%   60.4%
13    54,001  219,885   19.4%   79.1%
14   124,630  185,961   39.5%   59.0%
15   119,785  115,317   50.4%   48.5%
16   160,809   77,473   66.4%   32.0%
17   137,632  172,338   43.5%   54.5%
18   189,823   57,669   75.7%   23.0%
19    71,238  195,512   26.3%   72.2%
20   177,167   96,672   63.7%   34.7%
21   220,439  232,935   47.8%   50.5%
22   206,114  210,011   48.8%   49.7%
23   146,619  151,914   48.5%   50.2%
24   180,609  161,671   51.9%   46.5%
25   177,801  216,143   44.3%   53.9%
26   185,956  248,196   42.1%   56.2%
27   104,511  170,800   37.4%   61.1%
28   125,628  115,109   51.6%   47.2%
29   106,229   52,937   65.9%   32.9%
30   212,373   50,270   79.8%   18.9%
31   191,113  202,934   47.4%   50.3%
32   187,919  151,944   54.4%   44.0%
33   117,340   41,209   73.0%   25.6%
34   106,837   98,533   51.5%   47.5%
35   188,138   84,796   67.6%   30.5%
36    82,872  221,600   26.9%   71.9%

Joe Biden carried 14 of the 36 Congressional districts, the 13 that Democratic candidates won plus CD24. He came close in a lot of others – within two points in CDs 02, 03, 10, 22, and 23, and within five in CDs 06, 21, and 31 – but the Congressional map gets the award for most effecting gerrymandering, as the Presidential results most closely matched the number of districts won.

Generally speaking, Biden did a little worse than Beto in 2018, which isn’t a big surprise given that Beto lost by two and a half points while Biden lost by five and a half. Among the competitive districts, Biden topped Beto in CDs 03 (48.6 to 47.9), 07 (53.6 to 53.3), and 24 (51.9 to 51.6), and fell short elsewhere. He lost the most ground compared to Beto in the Latino districts, which is a subject we have covered in much detail. I only focused on the closer districts in my 2018 analysis, but you can see the full 2018 data here. Biden’s numbers are far more comparable to Hillary Clinton’s in 2016 – I’ll get into that in more detail in a subsequent post.

As we have also seen elsewhere, Biden’s underperformance in the Latino districts – specifically, CDs 15, 28, and 34 – was generally not replicated by other candidates down the ballot. Again, I’ll get to this in more detail later, but with the exception of John Cornyn nipping MJ Hegar in CD15, Democrats other than Biden generally carried those districts by five to ten points, still closer than in 2016 but not as dire looking as they were at the top. Interestingly, where Biden really overperformed compared to the rest of the Democratic ticket was with the judicial races – Republicans carried all but one of the statewide judicial races in CD07, for example. We discussed that way back when in the earlier analyses, but it’s been awhile so this is a reminder. That’s also not too surprising given the wider spread in the judicial races than the Presidential race, and it’s also a place where one can be optimistic (we still have room to grow!) or pessimistic (we’re farther away than we thought!) as one sees fit.

I don’t have a lot more to say here that I haven’t already said in one or more ways before. The main thing to think about is that redistricting is necessarily different for the Congressional map simply because there will be two more districts. (We should think about adding legislative districts, especially Senate districts, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.) I have to assume that Republicans will try to give themselves two more districts, one way or another, but I suppose it’s possible they could just seek to hold serve, if going for the gusto means cutting it too close in too many places. I figure we’ll see a starter map pretty soon, and from there it will be a matter of what alternate realities get proposed and by whom. For sure, the future plaintiffs in redistricting litigation will have their own maps to show off.

For comparison, as I did in other posts, here are the Congressional numbers from 2016 and 2012:


Dist Clinton    TrumpClinton%  Trump%
=====================================
1     66,389  189,596  25.09%  71.67%
2    119,659  145,530  42.75%  52.00%
3    129,384  174,561  39.90%  53.83%
4     60,799  210,448  21.63%  74.86%
5     79,759  145,846  34.18%  62.50%
6    115,272  148,945  41.62%  53.78%
7    124,722  121,204  48.16%  46.81%
8     70,520  214,567  23.64%  71.93%
9    151,559   34,447  79.14%  17.99%
10   135,967  164,817  42.82%  51.90%
11    47,470  193,619  19.01%  77.55%
12    92,549  177,939  32.47%  62.43%
13    40,237  190,779  16.78%  79.54%
14   101,228  153,191  38.29%  57.95%
15   104,454   73,689  56.21%  39.66%
16   130,784   52,334  67.21%  26.89%
17    96,155  139,411  38.43%  55.72%
18   157,117   41,011  76.22%  19.90%
19    53,512  165,280  23.31%  71.99%
20   132,453   74,479  60.21%  33.86%
21   152,515  188,277  42.05%  51.91%
22   135,525  159,717  43.91%  51.75%
23   115,133  107,058  49.38%  45.92%
24   122,878  140,129  44.28%  50.50%
25   125,947  172,462  39.94%  54.69%
26   109,530  194,032  34.01%  60.25%
27    85,589  140,787  36.36%  59.81%
28   109,973   72,479  57.81%  38.10%
29    95,027   34,011  70.95%  25.39%
30   174,528   40,333  79.08%  18.27%
31   117,181  153,823  40.07%  52.60%
32   134,895  129,701  48.44%  46.58%
33    94,513   30,787  72.78%  23.71%
34   101,704   64,716  59.07%  37.59%
35   128,482   61,139  63.59%  30.26%
36    64,217  183,144  25.13%  71.68%

Dist   Obama   Romney  Obama% Romney%
=====================================
01    69,857  181,833  27.47%  71.49%
02    88,751  157,094  35.55%  62.93%
03    93,290  175,383  34.13%  64.16%
04    63,521  189,455  24.79%  73.95%
05    73,085  137,239  34.35%  64.49%
06   103,444  146,985  40.72%  57.87%
07    92,499  143,631  38.57%  59.89%
08    55,271  195,735  21.74%  76.97%
09   145,332   39,392  78.01%  21.15%
10   104,839  159,714  38.77%  59.06%
11    45,081  182,403  19.55%  79.10%
12    79,147  166,992  31.65%  66.77%
13    42,518  184,090  18.51%  80.16%
14    97,824  147,151  39.44%  59.32%
15    86,940   62,883  57.35%  41.48%
16   100,993   54,315  64.03%  34.44%
17    84,243  134,521  37.76%  60.29%
18   150,129   44,991  76.11%  22.81%
19    54,451  160,060  25.02%  73.55%
20   110,663   74,540  58.77%  39.59%
21   119,220  188,240  37.85%  59.76%
22    93,582  158,452  36.68%  62.11%
23    94,386   99,654  47.99%  50.67%
24    94,634  150,547  37.98%  60.42%
25   102,433  162,278  37.80%  59.89%
26    80,828  177,941  30.70%  67.59%
27    83,156  131,800  38.15%  60.46%
28   101,843   65,372  60.21%  38.65%
29    75,720   37,909  65.89%  32.99%
30   175,637   43,333  79.61%  19.64%
31    92,842  144,634  38.11%  59.36%
32   106,563  146,420  41.46%  56.97%
33    86,686   32,641  71.93%  27.09%
34    90,885   57,303  60.71%  38.28%
35   105,550   58,007  62.94%  34.59%
36    61,766  175,850  25.66%  73.05%

Looking at the 2016 numbers, you can begin to see the outlines of future competitiveness. That’s more a function of Trump’s weak showing in the familiar places than anything else, but Democrats got their numbers up enough to make it a reality. Looking back at 2012 and you’re reminded again of just how far we’ve come. Maybe we’ll reset to that kind of position in 2022, I don’t know, but that’s a little harder to imagine when you remember that Mitt Romney won the state by ten more points than Trump did. We’ll be going down that rabbit hole soon enough. As always, let me know what you think.

July 2021 campaign finance reports: Congress

It’s July, and that means its campaign finance report season. I’m going to do a tour through the finance reports as I have done before, beginning with Congressional reports. I have posted reports from January 2021, which is the completion of the 2020 cycle, and the October 2020 reports, which gave a look back on that cycle and the 2018 cycle, but these are the first reports I’ve posted from the 2022 cycle, not counting the CD06 special election. Because we’re in that weird pre-redistricting period, when no one knows what districts will be where, there’s not a lot of new candidate activity. The list of mostly incumbents below will likely change over time, but for now here are some reports that may be of interest.

Dan Crenshaw – CD02
Van Taylor – CD03
Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Morgan Luttrell – CD08
Mike McCaul – CD10
Vicente Gonzalez – CD15
Monica de la Cruz Hernandez – CD15
Chip Roy – CD21
Troy Nehls – CD22
Matthew Berg – CD22
Tony Gonzales – CD23
John Lira – CD23
Beth Van Duyne – CD24
Derrik Gay – CD24
John Carter – CD31
Donna Imam – CD31
Colin Allred – CD32


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
02    Crenshaw      5,184,216  3,143,696        0  3,893,234
03    Taylor        1,137,073    250,293        0    909,277
07    Fletcher      1,225,493    182,475        0  1,104,114
08    Luttrell        461,429     12,672        0    448,757
10    McCaul          745,285    260,682        0    492,336
15    Gonzalez        607,467    454,132        0  1,523,826
15    Hernandez       438,341    218,901        0    226,945
21    Roy             678,470    385,959        0    756,093
22    Nehls           312,512    112,897        0    218,821
22    Berg            113,753     41,564    5,100     72,189
23    Gonzales      1,088,487    331,330        0    788,516
23    Lira            100,789     49,833        0     50,955
24    Van Duyne     1,084,713    296,053        0    857,070
24    Gay
31    Carter          429,329    216,023        0    413,711
31    Imam              7,682          0        0      7,682
32    Allred        1,216,765    329,397        0  1,046,790

Couple of things. I’m including Republicans here mostly because there just aren’t that many reports of interest otherwise. That will likely change later, but for now this is what I’ve got. I’ve no idea what districts will be of interest this cycle yet, but we know these were all of interest last time. CD08 is an open seat, and as you can see there’s a candidate who has established a presence to note. CD34 is also an open seat, but as yet no one has filed a report with anything of substance. There are a couple of Democrats filing reports in CD30, where longtime Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson may or may not step down – she’s had challengers in most of the last few cycles, but no one has come close to really threatening her.

So far there are announced Democrats in four districts that were competitive in 2018 and 2020, and will likely be at least somewhat competitive in 2022. Derrik Gay and Donna Imam, who was the CD31 challenger in 2020, entered late enough in the cycle to not have anything to report. I find it somewhat heartening that even without knowing what the districts will look like, Matthew Berg and John Lira started out with totals over $100K; as you recall, almost no Dem challengers raised as much as $100K for the entire 2012 cycle. We’ve come a long way from that. That said, freshman incumbents Tony Gonzales and Beth Van Duyne are not taking their upcoming challenges lightly.

Along with the now-open CD34, CD15 was unexpectedly close in 2020, and the challenger from that cycle is back for another crack at it. Monica de la Cruz Hernandez raised some decent money, but incumbent Vicente Gonzalez maintains a strong lead in cash on hand. For all of the districts with two candidates, I listed the incumbent first.

Not much else to say here. Given when we’ll get the apportionment data, and assuming we’ll have the redistricting-oriented special session in September as expected, we probably won’t get a feel for who’s running for what until the Q4 reports come in next January. There will probably be some further announcements before then, and there’s always the possibility than an incumbent will choose to step down, but everything is written in pencil until we know what the new districts – including the two extra ones – look like.

UPDATE: This was drafted before State Rep. Michelle Beckley announced her intent to run in CD24. Her July report from the TEC is here – she reports $25K on hand, with her ability to raise funds limited by being in session for most of the year. Also, there is now a candidate in CD10, but he announced in July, so we won’t see a report from him until Q3.

DCCC starts with two targets in Texas

Consider this to be written in chalk on the pavement, pending the new Congressional maps.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced Tuesday that it will target two Republican-held districts in Texas — the ones currently held by Reps. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio and Beth Van Duyne of Irving. They were one of 22 districts nationwide that the committee included on its 2022 target list, which it emphasized as preliminary due to redistricting.

Last election cycle, the DCCC sought to make Texas the centerpiece of its strategy to grow its House majority — and came up woefully short. They initially targeted six seats here and later expanded the list to 10 — and picked up none of them.

Van Duyne’s and Gonzales’ races ended up being the closest. Van Duyne won by 1 percentage point to replace retiring Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell, while Gonzales notched a 4-point margin to succeed Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, who was also retiring.

The shape of those races remains very much in question more than a year and a half out from Election Day, most notably because Texas lawmakers are expected to redraw congressional district lines in a special session of the state Legislature later this year. Texas is on track to gain multiple congressional seats due to population growth. Republicans control the redistricting process and may be be able to make Gonzales’ and Van Duyne’s seats more secure.

On paper, Van Duyne’s 24th District looks to be the most competitive in 2022. It was the only GOP-held district in Texas that Democratic President Joe Biden won — and he carried it by a healthy margin of 5 points. The DCCC has already run TV ads against Van Duyne this year.

Biden, meanwhile, lost Gonzales’ 23rd District by 2 points. The 23rd District is a perennial swing seat that stretches from San Antonio to near El Paso and includes a large portion of the Texas-Mexico border.

As noted, the Republicans have their target list as well, which will also be affected by whatever the final maps look like as well as any retirements. CD24 is an obvious target, but if the map were to remain exactly as it is now I’d have several CDs higher on my list than CD23 at this point based on 2020 results and demographic direction. I’d make CDs 03, 21, 22, and 31 my top targets, with CDs 02, 06 (modulo the special election), and 10 a rung below. I’d put CD23 in with that second group, but with less conviction because I don’t like the trend lines. Again, this is all playing with Monopoly money until we get new maps.

Just to state my priors up front: I believe there will be electoral opportunities in Texas for Congressional candidates, though they will almost certainly evolve over the course of the decade. I believe that if the economy and President Biden’s approval ratings are solid, the 2022 midterms could be decent to good, and that we are in a different moment than we were in back in 2009-10. I also know fully well that the 2022 election is a long way off and there are many things that can affect the national atmosphere, many of them not great for the incumbent party. I was full of dumb optimism at this time in 2009, that’s for sure. I also had extremely modest expectations for 2018 at this point in that election cycle, too. Nobody knows nothing right now, is what I’m saying.

January 2021 campaign finance reports: Congress

Should have done this a long time ago, just to close the books on the 2020 election cycle, but for a variety of reasons I didn’t. With the forthcoming special election in CD06, I now have a reason to care about the April finance reports for Congress, so I may as well cross this off the list. The October 2020 finance reports can be found here, and you can get the links to all the earlier posts from there.

MJ Hegar – Senate

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Colin Allred – CD32

Hank Gilbert – CD01
Sima Ladjevardian – CD02
Lulu Seikaly – CD03
Stephen Daniel – CD06
Elizabeth Hernandez – CD08
Mike Siegel – CD10
Adrienne Bell – CD14
Rick Kennedy – CD17
Wendy Davis – CD21
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Candace Valenzuela – CD24
Julie Oliver – CD25
Carol Ianuzzi – CD26
Donna Imam – CD31


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   Hegar        29,597,569 29,558,486        0     86,564

07    Fletcher      6,405,639  6,386,609        0     61,096
32    Allred        5,777,600  5,721,622        0    159,422  

01    Gilbert         968,154    734,410   50,000    233,744
02    Ladjevardian  3,894,082  3,886,672   50,000      7,410
03    Seikaly       1,654,380  1,654,038    3,000        341
06    Daniel          681,820    678,976        0      2,833
08    Hernandez        17,407     15,160        0      1,985
10    Siegel        2,942,987  2,898,827  127,835     47,651
14    Bell            248,995    245,174        0      8,920
17    Kennedy         216,825    218,253        0          0
21    Davis        10,428,476 10,366,864  257,967     61,611
22    Kulkarni      5,781,704  5,772,741        0     36,731
23    Jones         6,918,062  7,005,280        0      4,300
24    Valenzuela    4,945,025  4,933,058        0     11,967
25    Oliver        2,228,218  2,214,190    2,644     14,027
26    Ianuzzi         121,500    121,500   44,361          0
31    Imam          1,242,218  1,242,218        0          0

I’m not going to spend too much time on this since all these races are over and we know what happened, but a few observations:

– I don’t know what Hank Gilbert has planned for that $233K he has left over, but I hope he intends to do something with it. We’re going to need some dough in a lot of races next year.

– I’d like to see an autopsy done on how all this money was spent. It was a weird year, and a lot of money that would have been spent on field wound up going to other uses, so maybe it will be hard to draw meaningful conclusions, but still. I have no doubt that some candidates spent their money better than others, and that some candidates had much higher overhead costs than others. We should get a better picture of what happened here.

– I say that because I think the 2020s are much more likely to have multiple competitive races throughout the decade, in a way that we didn’t in the 2010s. If so, we’re going to see a much higher baseline of campaign contributions overall than what we were used to. So again, let’s have some confidence that our candidates and their campaigns are spending it well.

– MJ Hegar got off to a slower start than Beto did in raising money for her Senate campaign, but almost $30 million is real money, enough to run a credible statewide race. We’re going to need that kind of money for at least a couple of our statewide candidates next year.

– The 2022 Congressional campaign is going to be much more compressed than the last few have been, since we won’t know until this fall what the districts look like, and that’s without taking any litigation into account. Who even knows when we’ll begin to see potential candidates make themselves known?

That’s about all I have. I’ll check the Q1 2021 reports to see who’s raised what for the May 1 CD06 special, and we’ll see what if anything is interesting after that.

Precinct analysis: Presidential results by Congressional district

From Daily Kos Elections, the breakdown of how Presidential voting went in each of Texas’ 36 Congressional districts:

Two districts did in fact flip on the presidential level: Trump lost the 24th District in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs while recapturing the 23rd District along the border with Mexico. Biden, however, made major gains in a number of other suburban districts and nearly won no fewer than seven of them. Trump, meanwhile, surged in many heavily Latino areas and likewise came close to capturing three, but except for the 24th, every Trump seat is in GOP hands and every Biden seat is represented by Democrats. The 24th, which includes the suburbs north of Dallas and Fort Worth, is a good place to start because it saw one of the largest shifts between 2016 and 2020. The district began the decade as heavily Republican turf—it backed Mitt Romney 60-38—but Trump carried it by a substantially smaller 51-44 margin four years later.

Biden continued the trend and racked up a 52-46 win this time, but the area remained just red enough downballot to allow Republican Beth Van Duyne to manage a 49-47 victory in an expensive open-seat race against Democrat Candace Valenzuela.

Biden fell just short of winning seven other historically red suburban seats: the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 10th, 21st, 22nd, and 31st, where Trump’s margins ranged from just one to three points and where the swings from 2016 ranged from seven points in the 22nd all the way to 13 points in the 3rd, the biggest shift in the state. However, as in the 24th, Biden’s surge did not come with sufficient coattails, as Republicans ran well ahead of Trump in all of these seats. (You can check out our guide for more information about each district.)

Two seats that Democrats flipped in 2018 and stayed blue last year also saw large improvements for Biden. The 7th District in west Houston, parts of which were once represented by none other than George H.W. Bush from 1967 to 1971, had swung from 60-39 Romney to 48-47 Clinton, and Biden carried it 54-45 in 2020. Democratic Rep. Lizzie Fletcher won by a smaller 51-47 spread against Wesley Hunt, who was one of the House GOP’s best fundraisers. The 32nd District in the Dallas area, likewise, had gone from 57-41 Romney to 49-47 Clinton. This time, Biden took it 54-44 as Democratic Rep. Colin Allred prevailed 52-46.

Biden’s major gains in the suburbs, though, came at the same time that Trump made serious inroads in predominantly Latino areas on or near the southern border with Mexico. That rightward shift may have cost Team Blue the chance to flip the open 23rd District, which stretches from San Antonio west to the outskirts of the El Paso area.

A full breakdown by county and district is here, and a comparison of percentages from 2016 and 2020 is here. CD23 went from being a Romney district to a Clinton district to a Trump district, though in all cases it was close. The red flags are in CDs 15, 28, and 34. In CD15, incumbent Vicente Gonzalez won by only three points, in a district Biden carried by one point, a huge drop from Clinton’s 57-40 win in 2016. Everyone’s least favorite Democrat Henry Cuellar had an easy 19-point win, but Biden only carried CD28 by four points, down from Clinton’s 20-point margin. It’s not crazy to think that Jessica Cisneros could have lost that race, though of course we’ll never know. This wasn’t the scenario I had in mind when I griped that CD28 was not a “safe” district, but it does clearly illustrate what I meant. And Filemon Vela, now a DNC Vice Chair, also had a relatively easy 55-42 win, but in a district Biden carried 52-48 after Clinton had carried it 59-38. Not great, Bob.

We don’t have the full downballot results – we’ll probably get them in March from the Texas Legislative Council – but the Harris County experience suggests there will be some variance, and that other Dems may do a little better in those districts. How much of this was Trump-specific and how much is long-term is of course the big question. The Georgia Senate runoffs, coupled with the 2018 results, suggest that having Trump on the ballot was better for Republicans than not having him on the ballot. On the other hand, 2022 will be a Democratic midterm year, and the last couple of them did not go well. On the other other hand, Trump is leaving office in complete disgrace and with approval levels now in the low 30s thanks to the armed insurrection at the Capitol, and for all the damage he did to the economy and the COVID mitigation effort, Biden is in a position to make big progress in short order. It’s just too early to say what any of this means, but suffice it to say that both Ds and Rs have challenges and opportunities ahead of them.

There are some very early third-party efforts at drawing new Congressional districts – see here and here for a couple I’ve come across. We still need the actual Census numbers, and as I’ve said before, the Republicans will have to make decisions about how much risk they want to expose themselves to. The way these maps are drawn suggests to me that “pack” rather than “crack” could be the strategy, but again this is all very early. There is also the possibility that the Democratic Congress can push through voting rights reform that includes how redistricting can be done, though the clock and potentially the Supreme Court will be factors. And if there’s one thing we should have learned over the last 20 years, it’s that due to Texas’ rapid growth, the districts you draw at the beginning of the decade may look quite a bit different by the end of the decade. We’re at the very start of a ten-year journey. A lot is going to happen, and the farther out we get the harder it is to see the possibilities.

A closer look at county races, Part 1

In this series of entries, I’m going to take a trip through the local election results pages on some counties of interest, to get a closer look at how they went this year and how that compares to 2016. We know Dems didn’t make the kind of gains they hoped for in Congress or the Lege, but there are other races on the ballot. How did things look there?

Harris County: We know the basic story of Harris County, where Republicans have claimed to get their mojo back. I’m not going to re-litigate that, but I will note that while things were mostly at stasis at the countywide and legislative levels, Dems flipped JP Precinct 5, long held by Republicans, though Constable Precinct 5 remained Republican. Beto carried all eight JP/Constable precincts in 2018, and while Biden only carried six in 2020, there still remain opportunities for Dems to win offices currently held by Republicans in Harris County.

Tarrant County: At a macro level, Dems were far more competitive in judicial races in 2020 than they were in 2016. None of the statewide judicial candidates got as much as 41% of the vote in 2016, while the range for statewide judicials in 2020 was 46.13% to 47.91%. In 2016, Dems fielded only one candidate for a district court bench; he lost by 15 points. In 2020, Dems challenged in 9 of 11 district court plus one county court race, with all candidates getting between 46 and 48 percent. This is basically where Harris County Democrats were in 2004, with more candidates in these races.

A little farther down the ballot, and Democrats flipped two Constable offices, in Precincts 2 and 7. Neither Republican incumbent had been challenged in 2016.

Fort Bend County: We know the topline, that Hillary Clinton won Fort Bend County in 2016, by a 51-45 margin. But there was no downballot effect – none of the statewide Democratic candidates won a plurality (all statewide candidates were below fifty percent). None of the Courts of Appeals candidates won, and none of the countywide candidates won, though most were around 48 or 49 percent. State Rep. Phil Stephenson won the Fort Bend part of HD85 by six points. Republicans won back County Commissioner Precinct 1 by finally running an untainted candidate against two-term incumbent Richard Morrison. Fort Bend was on the precipice, but it seemed like it had been there before.

As we know, Democrats broke through in a big way in 2018, and 2020 was more of the same. It’s not just that Biden carried Fort Bend by over ten points. It’s that every statewide Dem took a majority in Fort Bend, as did every Courts of Appeals candidates and every countywide candidate. Dems did not win back CC1, though challenger Jennifer Cantu did a smidge better than Morrison had done, but they did win the Constable race in Precinct 4; this was an open seat, as previous incumbent Trever Nehls ran unsuccessfully for Sheriff. Nehls had been unopposed in 2016.

Bexar County: Bexar is reliably blue at this point, and Biden’s 58-40 win is almost exactly in line with the October countywide poll we got. The big difference I see between Bexar 2020 and Bexar 2016 is in the legislative races. Phillip Cortez won HD117 back in 2016 by two and half points after having been swept out in the 2014 debacle. He won in 2020 by over 13 points. Tomas Uresti won HD118 in 2016 by ten points; Leo Pacheco won it in 2020 by seventeen. Rebecca Bell-Metereau lost the Bexar portion of SBOE5 in 2016 by 42K votes; she lost it by 24K votes in 2020, which is to say by 18K fewer votes. She won the district by 17K total votes, mostly boosted by Travis County, but she needed it to be closer in Bexar and it was. By the same token, Sen. Carlos Uresti won the Bexar portion of SD19 over challenger Pete Flores in 2016 by 34K votes. Incumbent Pete Flores lost the Bexar portion of SD19 to Roland Gutierrez by 33K votes, and he needed that margin to be as good as it was considering how the rest of the district went for Flores by 23K; Uresti had won the rest of the district by 3K in 2016. However you feel about the 2020 election in Texas, you would feel much worse about it if Rebecca Bell-Metereau had lost and Pete Flores had hung on. So thank you, Bexar County.

Williamson County: WilCo made news in 2018 when Beto carried the county, with MJ Hegar doing the same in CD31. I’ll get to the 2020 results in a minute, but first let’s remind ourselves where things were in 2016. Trump won WilCo by nine points over Hillary Clinton, John Carter beat Mike Clark in CD31 by 19 points, other statewide Republicans led by 16 to 19 points, and Tom Maynard led in SBOE10 by 16 points. State Rep. Larry Gonzalez had only a Libertarian opponent in HD52, Rep. Tony Dale won HD136 by eleven points. Republicans running for countywide office were all unopposed. The one Democratic victory was for County Commissioner, Precinct 1, which Terry Cook took with 51%.

Fast forward to 2020. Biden won Williamson County by about a point and a half – more than ten points better than Clinton in 2016. As with Tarrant County, his win was a solo at the county level, but the Democratic tide was much higher. Hegar lost to John Cornyn by three points, Donna Imam by five in CD31, and the other statewide Dems trailed by three to seven points. Tom Maynard carried WilCo in SBOE10 again, but only by four points. Dems had flipped HDs 52 and 136 in the 2018 wave, and both freshmen Reps were easily re-elected, James Talarico by three points in HD52, and John Bucy by 10 in HD136. Dems lost the two District Court races they challenged, and they lost for County Attorney, but they did oust the scandal-tainted Sheriff, by a massive 12 points. Terry Cook was re-elected as County Commissioner in Precinct 1 with over 57%, and Dems won Constable Precinct 1, while coming close in Precincts 3 (losing by five) and 4 (losing by two). It’s not at all hard to see Williamson as the next Fort Bend.

The point of all this is twofold. One is a reminder that there are more races than just the state races, and there’s more ways to measure partisan strength than just wins and losses. The other is that these much less visible races that Dems are winning is exactly what Republicans were doing in the 80s and 90s and into the aughts. Every election it seemed like I was reading about this or that traditionally Democratic county that had gone all Republican. There is a trend here, and we’d be foolish to ignore it. To be sure, this is happening in fewer counties than with the Republican march of the previous decades, but there’s a lot more people in these counties. I’ll take population over land mass any day.

I’ll be back with a look at more counties next time. Let me know what you think.

UPDATE: While I was drafting this, I received a press release from the TDP congratulating three Democratic Sheriffs-elect, all of whom had won offices previously held by Republicans: Eric Fagan in Fort Bend, Mike Gleason in Williamson – both of which were mentioned in this post – and Joe Lopez of Falls County, which is adjacent to McLennan and Coryell counties to the east; basically, it’s east of Waco. Falls was Republican at the Presidential level, with Trump carrying it 4,177 to 1,899, so I assume there was some reason particular to that race that assisted Lopez in his victory.

October 2020 campaign finance reports: Congress

This is it, the last quarterly finance report roundup for the cycle. It’s been quite the time, hasn’t it? Let’s do this and see where we are as voting continues. The January 2019 roundup is here, which closed out the 2017-18 election cycle, the April 2019 report is here, the July 2019 report is here, the October 2019 report is here, the January 2020 report is here, the April 2020 report is here, and the July 2020 report is here. For comparison, the January 2018 report is here, the April 2018 report is here, and the July 2018 report is here. The FEC summary page for Congress is here and for the Senate is here.

MJ Hegar – Senate

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Colin Allred – CD32

Hank Gilbert – CD01
Sima Ladjevardian – CD02
Lulu Seikaly – CD03
Stephen Daniel – CD06
Elizabeth Hernandez – CD08
Mike Siegel – CD10
Adrienne Bell – CD14
Rick Kennedy – CD17
Wendy Davis – CD21
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Candace Valenzuela – CD24
Julie Oliver – CD25
Carol Ianuzzi – CD26
Donna Imam – CD31


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   Hegar        20,579,453 12,121,009        0  8,505,926

07    Fletcher      5,673,282  4,115,705        0  1,599,643
32    Allred        5,060,556  3,477,172        0  1,686,828  

01    Gilbert         595,890    321,193   50,000    274,697
02    Ladjevardian  3,102,882  2,373,600   50,000    729,282
03    Seikaly       1,143,345    580,360    3,000    562,985
06    Daniel          558,679    396,453        0    162,225
08    Hernandez
10    Siegel        1,994,611  1,712,734        0    285,368
14    Bell            226,601    196,623        0     35,078
17    Kennedy         190,229    161,093    8,103     30,563
21    Davis         7,917,557  6,035,908        0  1,881,649
22    Kulkarni      4,663,288  2,941,745        0  1,749,310
23    Jones         5,893,413  3,877,366        0  2,107,566
24    Valenzuela    3,589,295  2,601,580        0    987,715
25    Oliver        1,599,523  1,102,297    2,644    497,225
26    Ianuzzi         129,145     91,293   53,335     37,852
31    Imam          1,000,764    620,512        0    380,251

These totals are just off the charts. Remember how in the 2018 cycle I was freaking out as one candidate after another topped $100K? Here we have nine challengers to incumbent Republicans that have topped one million, with the tenth-place challenger still exceeding $500K. For that matter, nine out of those ten outraised their opponents in the quarter, though several still trail in total raised and/or cash on hand. I’ve run out of synonyms for “unprecedented”. All this is without accounting for DCCC and other PAC money being spent. Who could have imagined this even as recently as 2016?

The one question mark is with the incumbent Dems, as both Rep. Lizzie Fletcher and Rep. Colin Allred were outraised for the quarter. Both took in over $1.2 million apiece, so it’s not like they slacked, and they both maintain a cash on hand lead while having spent more. I don’t know what to make of that, but I’m not terribly worried about it. Republican money has to go somewhere.

MJ Hegar raised $13.5 million this quarter, and there’s some late PAC money coming in on her behalf. I wish she had been able to raise more earlier, and I wish some of the excess millions that are going to (very good!) Senate candidates in much smaller and less expensive states had come to her instead, but she’s got what she needs to compete, and she’s got a competitive race at the top of the ticket helping her, too. We don’t have a Senate race in 2022, and someone will get to run against Ted Cruz in 2024. All I can say is I hope some folks are thinking about that now, and taking some initial steps to build on what Beto and MJ have done before them.

I don’t have a whole lot to say otherwise, because these numbers speak for themselves. I mean, remember when we were a little worried about the ability of candidates like Lulu Seikaly and Julie Oliver and Donna Imam to raise enough money? Seems like a long time ago now.

Let me end with a thought about the future. Will what we saw in 2018 and 2020 carry forward? 2022 is the first post-redistricting election, so with new districts and the likelihood of some open seats, there should be plenty of action. We did see a fair amount of cash being raised in 2012, after all. If there are many more Dem incumbents, it’s for sure there will be more money flowing in. We’ll have to see how many competitive races there are beyond that. What I do know is that we have definitively proven that this can be done, that quality candidates can be found and they will be supported. We had the power, and we figured out how to use it. Hard to believe that will go away.

CD31 poll: Carter 43, Imam 37

Another interesting Congressional race poll.

Donna Imam

With less than two months to go until Election Day, an increasing number of eyes are looking toward Texas, where Republicans are fighting to keep their grip on the once-reliably conservative state.

There is perhaps no better sign of Texas’ shift toward Democrats than what’s happening in the state’s 31st Congressional District. The previously deep red district north of Austin has shifted dramatically in recent years, and a new poll obtained exclusively by COURIER shows incumbent Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) is vulnerable.

The poll, conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP), found Carter leading challenger Donna Imam by only six points, 43-37 among 831 voters in the district. Libertarian Clark Patterson and Independent Jeremy Bravo tallied 10% of the vote combined, while 11% of voters remained undecided.

Imam performs particularly well with independent voters, leading Carter 44-28. She also appears to have significant room to grow, as 53% of voters said they were unsure whether or not they had a favorable opinion about her.

The poll also surveyed voters on the presidential race and found that President Donald Trump holds a narrow one-point lead (48-47) over Democratic nominee Joe Biden, a substantial shift from 2016 when Trump won the district 54-41.

[…]

While Democrats have set their eyes on several prizes across the state, the recent blue shift in the 31st has been particularly notable. Between 2002 and 2016, Carter won each of his elections by at least 20 points. But in 2018, Carter faced the fight of his career and narrowly edged out his Democratic challenger, MJ Hegar, by only three points. Hegar is now challenging Cornyn and finds herself down only 2 points in the district (48-46), according to the PPP poll.

You can see the poll data here. It’s a solid result in a district where Beto got 48.4% of the vote. Hegar ran just a shade behind Beto – he lost to Ted Cruz 50.5 to 48.4, while Hegar lost 47.6 to 50.6 – and this district has been on the radar for the DCCC (and for the Republicans, and for the national race-raters) from the beginning of the cycle. The problem has been finding a standout candidate, as there was a rotating cast of players in the primary, with nobody raising any money or making much noise until the runoff, when Imam finally started to edge forward. She still has to establish herself as a fundraiser – the DCCC is in town, but they’ve got plenty of fish to fry. I’ll be very interested in Imam’s Q3 finance report.

This poll is reminiscent of the polling in CD21, another near-miss district from 2018 with a similar demographic profile. In 2018, Joe Kopser lost to Chip Roy 50.2 to 47.6, Beto lost the district by a tenth of a point, and in 2016 Hillary Clinton lost it to Donald Trump 52-42. These latest polls have Biden up by one in CD21 and down by one in CD31, consistent with statewide polling that has Texas as a real tossup.

They key here has been the shift in voter preferences in Williamson County, which comprises a bit more than two-thirds of the district. Here’s how the Williamson County vote has gone in recent elections:


2012       Votes    Pct
=======================
Romney    97,006  59.4%
Obama     61,875  37.9%

Cruz      92,034  57.3%
Sadler    60,279  37.5%

Carter    96,842  60.9%
Wyman     55,111  34.6%


2016       Votes    Pct
=======================
Trump    104,175  51.3%
Clinton   84,468  41.6%

Carter   112,841  56.8%
Clark     74,914  37.7%


2018       Votes    Pct
=======================
Cruz      99,857  48.0%
Beto     105,850  50.8%

Abbott   112,214  54.1%
Valdez    90,002  43.4%

Patrick  101,545  49.2%
Collier   98,375  47.6%

Paxton    98,175  47.7%
Nelson   100,345  48.7%

Carter    99,648  48.2%
Hegar    103,155  49.9%

The story of 2018 was of the huge gains Democrats made in suburban areas like Williamson, but the thing here is that Dems gained about as many votes from 2012 to 2016 as they did from 2016 to 2018, with Republicans barely growing their vote at all outside of a couple of races. It wasn’t so much a shift as an acceleration, and it took WilCo from being on the fringes of competitiveness, where you could see it off in the distance from the vantage point of 2016 but figured it was still a few cycles away, to being a true swing district just two years later. If Dems can even come close to replicating that kind of growth in 2020, then CD31 is likely being undersold as a pickup opportunity. Obviously, the pandemic and the ambient chaos and pretty much everything else is a variable we can’t easily quantify. But the numbers are right there, so if CD31 does go Dem, we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.

One more thing: That 10% total for the Libertarian and independent candidates combined is almost certainly way too high. Libertarian candidates actually do pretty well overall in this district. The Lib Congressional candidate in 2012 got 3.7%, while a couple of statewide judicial candidates in races that also had a Democrat topped five percent. In 2016, the Libertarian in CD31 got 5.2%, with Mark Miller getting 7.1% in the Railroad Commissioner’s race. They didn’t do quite as well in 2018, however, with the Congressional candidate getting 1.9%, and the high water mark of 4.1% being hit in the Land Commissioner’s race. I’d contend that’s a combination of better Democratic candidates, with more nominal Republicans moving from casting a “none of the above” protest vote to actually going Dem. My guess is 2020 will be more like 2018 than 2016 or 2012, but we’ll see. In any event, I’d put the over/under for the two “other” candidates at five, not at ten. The Texas Signal has more.

DCCC expands the field in Texas again

This is as wide as it goes.

Lulu Seikaly

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is adding three more districts to its Texas target list, expanding an already ambitious battlefield in the state.

The new targets of the House Democratic campaign arm are Republican Reps. Van Taylor of Plano, Roger Williams of Austin and Ron Wright of Arlington. The DCCC is now targeting 10 districts across Texas, or nearly half the GOP-held seats in the state’s congressional delegation.

“Democrats are on offense across Texas, campaigning on access to quality, affordable health care and protections for those with pre-existing conditions,” DCCC spokesperson Avery Jaffe said in a statement. “That consistent message and our 16-month long investment in Texas have put fast-changing districts like these ones in play and Democratic candidates in strong position to deliver in November.”

Julie Oliver

Taylor, Williams and Wright all won their races in 2018 by margins ranging from 8 to 10 percentage points. However, Beto O’Rourke, that year’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, came closer in each district, giving some Democrats hope that they could come into play this fall with the right candidates and environment.

Taylor is being challenged by Plano lawyer Lulu Seikaly, Wright by Waxahachie attorney Stephen Daniel and Williams by Julie Oliver, who was the 2018 nominee against him and lost by 9 points.

The DCCC’s interest in the races has not been a secret. The committee polled in at least two of them earlier this summer, finding single-digit leads for the Republican incumbents — and dramatic swings in the presidential race in favor of the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.

Still, the Democrats face an uphill battle. Taylor and Williams have large cash-on-hand advantages, and Taylor has demonstrated significant self-funding capacity. And while Wright is a weak fundraiser, he has the support of the deep-pocketed Club for Growth, which backed him in 2018 and endorsed him for reelection last week, calling him the “right candidate to represent the district and beat his radical liberal challenger, Stephen Daniel.”

See here for more on the CD25 poll, here for CD03, and here for CD06. As noted before, if Joe Biden really is in position to win Texas or come very close to it, then Dems really are in position to win a bunch of Congressional seats here as well. It’s certainly possible that Biden runs a couple of points ahead of most or all of these Dem challengers, much as Beto did in 2018, with the result that Biden carries several more than are won by the Congressional candidate. The best way to minimize that, and thus maximize the number of seats Dems win, is to boost all of the viable Democratic candidates. It’s true that some of the Dem challengers aren’t in great fundraising shape, but overall the Dems are carrying the day, so maybe the DCCC can afford to spend a bit less on the Wendy Davises and Gina Ortiz Joneses and more on the Lulu Seikalyes. Just a thought. I actually don’t know what this announcement means in real terms – it may mean little more than the DCCC telling its donors who are looking for new places to park their money that these are approved by them – but it should have some positive effect. We’ll certainly know more when the next finance reports are in. In the meantime, let us all pause for a moment and marvel at the realization that the DCCC is playing offense in ten Congressional districts in Texas. Who had that on their 2020 Bingo card?

Once again with female Congressional candidates

This is another post that was drafted in the Before Times, specifically right after the March primary. I went through the runoffs and assessed all of the races that could or would contain a female candidate or incumbent against a male opponent or open seat with a retiring male incumbent, mixed in the likelihood of said female candidate winning, and presented a range of possibilities for the number of female members of Congress in Texas in 2021, a number that now stands at six. That’s six female members of Congress out of 36 total – five Democrats (out of 13 total) and one Republican (out of 23). With the lineups for November settled, let’s do a quick review, then you can click on to see what I had written originally.

First of all, the next member of Congress in CD24 will be a woman, either Democrat Candace Valenzuela or Republican Beth Van Duyne. It would be nice to say that this means the number of women in Congress from Texas will go up, but Rep. Lizzie Fletcher could lose her race to Wesley Hunt, which would leave us at six as before. I think as things stand right now Fletcher is a clear favorite to win, but we have to allow for the possibility.

Other than Van Duyne, the only Republican running in a competitive district is Genevieve Collins in CD32 against Rep. Colin Allred, who like his fellow freshman Fletcher is the favorite to win but could lose if things go poorly from here. CD24 is one of the more Dem-leaning seats that are currently held by Republicans, but since it’s Republican-held I’d say it has slightly better odds of staying red than CD07 or CD32 have of flipping to red. Republicans can add up to two women to their caucus, and they can subtract one from the Democratic caucus, but I think the single most likely outcome is that Rep. Kay Granger remains the only Republican woman in Congress, and Rep. Lizzie Fletcher gets another term.

If that’s the case, then Dems will add at least one woman to their caucus, but given the bigger picture it’s nearly impossible to imagine that it would be one and only one. I can’t envision a scenario in which Candace Valenzuela wins but Gina Ortiz Jones does not. Wendy Davis is a notch behind those two, and then a little further behind we have Sima Ladjevardian, Lulu Seikaly, Julie Oliver, and Donna Imam. A gain of two Democratic women feels like the single most likely possibility, followed very closely by a gain of three. Four or more is more remote, but not at all out of the question.

That’s the nickel summary. More recently, The 19th wrote about this from a national perspective, with a focus on Republican efforts to recruit more and better female candidates for Congress. They all pretty neatly avoid the Donald Trump-shaped elephant in the room, but that’s their problem. Read on for my original post, which included all of the candidates who are now out of the race or who are running for seats that are not competitive.

(more…)

A slightly less rosy view of Democratic prospects

Here’s the latest race ratings from Texas Elects:

Texas Election Source has updated 27 race ratings based on the latest polling, July campaign finance reports and primary runoff results. Twenty of those races moved one column toward the Democrats’ advantage. Our complete ratings are located here. Thirteen Republican-held seats in the legislature or congressional delegation are rated Toss-up or Lean Democratic. No Democrat-held seat is rated below Lean Democratic after several seats formerly in the Toss-up column were shifted into the Lean Democratic column.

The most significant impact of the new ratings on our projections is in the Texas House. Democrats need a net of nine seats to retake a majority in the chamber. We project they will get six, up three from our April ratings, which would cut the Republicans’ advantage to 77-73 entering the 2021 legislative session. Seven more Republican-held seats are projected to be within 1.5 percentage points of the range we consider a toss-up race. Only two Democrat-held seats are projected to be within 1.5 percentage points of a toss-up.

Four Republican-held seats are rated Lean Democratic, listed from greatest to least lean:

  • HD134 – Rep. Sarah Davis (R-Houston) vs. Ann Johnson (D)
  • HD138 open – Lacey Hull (R) vs. Akilah Bacy (D)
  • HD108 – Rep. Morgan Meyer (R-Dallas) vs. Joanna Cattanach (D); and
  • HD66 – Rep. Matt Shaheen (R-Plano) vs. Sharon Hirsch (D).

Since 2010, the four House seats on the list have drifted an average of 7.3 percentage points bluer, relative to the state as a whole. Two seats in other chambers – CD23 and SD19 – are also rated Lean Democratic. They have gotten relatively redder but remained 3.9 and 9.1 percentage points bluer than the state as a whole in 2018. We are projecting SD19 to get another 1.4 percentage points redder, but even that keeps it just .07% from being labeled as Likely Democratic.

Incidentally, HD134 would rate as Likely Democratic but for Davis’s consistent over-performance of other Republicans in the district. In 2018, the average Democrat received 55% of the vote in her district measured head-to-head against the Republican, but Davis survived thanks to ticket-splitting voters. Longtime political observers will remember former Rep. Jim McReynolds (D-Lufkin) who held onto his district by finishing as much as 19 points better than the rest of the Democratic slate. He was overwhelmed by rising Republican leanings in 2010 but still over-performed the rest of the ticket by 12 points. We project Davis’s ability to win over ticket-splitting voters will not be enough this year.

Dallas Co. was the epicenter of the Democratic surge in 2018. Only two Republicans represent the county in the state House currently, and we project that number will be zero after November. Tarrant Co., home to five races rated Toss-up or Lean Republican, and Fort Bend Co., with three seats in the Lean and Likely Republican columns, are expected to be the chief battleground counties in the House this year.

There’s more, so go read the rest. Texas Elects has a lot of premium content, but the free stuff is worth checking regularly.

Unlike the exuberant Capitol Inside projections, Texas Elects has the Dems falling short of a majority in the House, though it does expect three Congressional seats and SD19 to flip, and it has all of the statewide races as “Lean Republican”. You might be wondering about the inclusion of some Dem-held seats on the table, but as noted before, HDs 31, 34, and 74 are three of the four most purple districts out there that were held by Dems prior to 2018. They could be vulnerable in a bad year for Dems, though I don’t think this is that kind of year. As for HD41 and HD144, I can’t say I’m worried about them.

As that Capitol Inside projection was ebullient for Dems, this one is more sober. It sounds a little crazy to say when you think of the decade in total, but a six-seat pickup by Dems in the Lege would feel disappointing. It’s well within the range of possibility, and if all we ever think about is the best case scenario we’re not being honest with ourselves. All projections are art as well as science, in that you have to decide which factors are the most important and by how much. Individual candidates and fundraising prowess mean a lot, but so does the national environment, and so do demographic trends.

As far as candidates mattering goes, read that analysis of the HD134 race carefully. I come back to this a lot, but the key thing that happened in HD134, and in CD07 (which includes almost all of HD134) is exactly that the Democratic shift from 2016 to 2018 went much deeper than the top of the ticket. The average Republican judicial candidate won CD07 by thirteen points in 2016, and won HD134 by eight. In 2018, the average Republican judicial candidate barely won CD07. I didn’t do the exact same analysis for the State House districts, because I spent so much time talking about straight tickets and undervoting, but in service of that analysis I did this sample of judicial races, and as you can see each Dem was over fifty percent in HD134, by varying amounts. The point is, the fundamental nature of HD134 has shifted from “a Republican district that will sometimes support specific Democrats” to “a Democratic district that has – at least till now – supported Sarah Davis”. That’s what she’s up against this year, not just her November opponent but the baggage of the entire Republican Party and the prospect of a Democratic Speaker. She could hang on, and for sure she should not be underestimated, but this year, for the first time, she’s the underdog.

Anyway. I love this kind of analysis because it makes me think about my own assumptions and expectations for the year. Go take a look and see what you think.

Checking in on CD21

Thar’s the race where Wendy Davis is trying to unseat the mini-Ted Cruz known as Chip Roy, and the pundits are thinking she can do it.

Wendy Davis

All signs are pointing toward a competitive race between incumbent conservative firebrand U.S. Rep. Chip Roy and Democratic mainstay Wendy Davis in Texas’ 21st Congressional District.

The district, which stretches from northern San Antonio to Austin and includes a swath of the Hill Country, has long been viewed as a GOP stronghold. Roy’s predecessor, Republican Lamar Smith, held the seat for more than 30 years. But in 2018, Roy won it with a margin of less than 3 percent.

With $4.4 million raised, Davis has pulled in 75 percent more in campaign donations than Roy — a rare feat for a candidate facing a Republican incumbent.

The politically polar-opposite candidates have already begun casting each other as extremists of their parties. Roy’s campaign has sent a barrage of emails to supporters saying Davis “would be one of the most extreme liberal members of Congress, right there with AOC, Ilhan Omar, Pelosi and the rest of the socialist Democrats.”

Davis, a former state Senator best-known for her 2013 filibuster against an anti-abortion law, has seized on Roy’s response to the pandemic, criticizing his rejection of coronavirus relief funding for businesses. Roy was one of 40 GOP House members who voted against the bill and said he did so because he did not have enough time to review the legislation before voting.

She called Roy, who once served as chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz, “an extreme voice who has spent his time in Washington looking out for corporate drugmakers and wealthy special interests.”

Roy-Davis is one of four congressional races in Texas where Republicans have been favored but are seeing their opponents gain momentum, according to the Cook Political Report, a prominent nonpartisan political ratings group. The publication on Friday switched the 21st District from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up.” It was welcome news for the Davis campaign and other national Democrats.

We’re seeing a lot of Congressional ratings updates now, mostly I think because the Q2 finance reports are out, but also because of the seismic changes in Donald Trump’s approval and re-elect numbers. CD21 is to me in the second tier of pickup opportunities for Dems – CDs 23 and 24 are on top, and at this point I’d consider it very disappointing if Dems didn’t take them both. CD21 is in the next tier, along with CDs 10 and 22, and I’d consider it an upset at this point if Dems didn’t win at least one of them. After that comes all of the longer-shot districts, namely CDs 02, 03, 06, 25, and 31. The fact that we are seeing favorable internal polls getting released by the Democratic challengers in these races, including now a poll from CD21, says something about where we are now in the campaign. Granted, the poll numbers have been more favorable to Joe Biden than to the Dem challengers, but especially in districts with incumbents running for re-election, I think it’s likely that Biden will have to top 50% in most if not all of them for the Dems to have a strong chance. There’s likely more slack in the open seat races, but I’d expect even the more-ardent Trump-humpers to outperform the rest of the ticket on their turf, so a boost from Biden would be very nice.

Davis should also get a boost from the relentless voter registration efforts, which have been especially fruitful for Dems along the I-35 corridor, which overlaps quite a bit with CD21. (And CD23, and CD24, and CD31, and to a lesser extend CDs 03, 06, 10, and 25.) Davis has vastly outraised Roy, and while putting some of that towards tying him to Trump is needed, I’d hope she spends a lot of it on more voter registration and a ton of GOTV. (She will have to spend some of it countering the gobs of PAC money being spent to defend Chip Roy.) The opportunity here is about as good as it gets, and the more Democrats that get elected this year, the harder it’s going to be for Republicans to draw themselves a maximalist Congressional map in the 2021 redistricting process.

July 2020 campaign finance reports: Congress

Congratulations, everyone. Not only have we made it to the other side of another quarterly reporting period, we have also successfully navigated the primary runoffs. My next quarterly finance report post for Congress will thus be shorter, as this is the last time the folks who did not win their runoffs will be listed. So let’s get on with it already. The January 2019 roundup is here, which closed out the 2017-18 election cycle, the April 2019 report is here, the July 2019 report is here, the October 2019 report is here, the January 2020 report is here, and the April 2020 report is here. For comparison, the January 2018 report is here, the April 2018 report is here, and the July 2018 report is here. The FEC summary page for Congress is here and for the Senate is here.

MJ Hegar – Senate
Royce West – Senate

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Colin Allred – CD32

Hank Gilbert – CD01
Sima Ladjevardian – CD02
Lulu Seikaly – CD03
Sean McCaffity – CD03
Stephen Daniel – CD06
Elizabeth Hernandez – CD08
Mike Siegel – CD10
Pritesh Gandhi – CD10
Adrienne Bell – CD14
Rick Kennedy – CD17
David Jaramillo – CD17
Wendy Davis – CD21
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Candace Valenzuela – CD24
Kim Olson – CD24
Julie Oliver – CD25
Carol Ianuzzi – CD26
Donna Imam – CD31
Christine Eady Mann – CD31


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   Hegar         6,605,966  5,751,355        0    902,092
Sen   West          1,867,804  1,689,538  258,103    178,265

07    Fletcher      4,384,162    978,573        0  3,453,656
32    Allred        3,801,649    924,378        0  2,980,715  

01    Gilbert         245,146     96,526   50,000    148,619
02    Ladjevardian  1,674,680  1,129,634   50,000    545,046
03    Seikaly         409,531    370,312    3,000     39,219
03    McCaffity       507,661    441,938        0     65,723
06    Daniel          328,097    243,191        0     84,906
08    Hernandez
10    Siegel          917,771    756,306        0    164,956
10    Gandhi        1,276,854  1,200,742        0     76,112
14    Bell            103,734     81,576        0     11,247
17    Kennedy          97,859     87,125   11,953     12,161
17    Jaramillo        21,246     17,942        0      3,303
21    Davis         4,467,270  1,536,995        0  2,930,275
22    Kulkarni      2,530,971  1,352,948        0  1,205,791
23    Jones         4,133,598  1,215,227        0  3,009,888
24    Valenzuela    1,119,403  1,008,739        0    110,664
24    Olson         1,667,400  1,417,247   20,000    250,153
25    Oliver          681,850    591,851    2,644     89,999
26    Ianuzzi          84,645     66,691   46,050     17,954
31    Mann            372,445    353,802   44,500     20,080
31    Imam            449,274    407,175        0     42,099

First things first, any worries about fundraising capacity in these brutally awful times have been assuaged. The totals speak for themselves, but let’s go into some detail anyway. Basically, the candidate in nearly every race of interest is ahead of their 2018 pace, often by a lot. Let me put this in another table to quantify:


Dist  Year     Candidate     Raised       Cash
==============================================
02    2018        Litton    843,045    407,674
02    2020  Ladjevardian  1,674,680    545,046

03    2018         Burch    153,559     19,109
03    2020       Seikaly    409,531     39,219

06    2018       Sanchez    358,960     67,772
06    2020        Daniel    328,097     84,906

10    2018        Siegel    171,955     46,852
10    2020        Siegel    917,771    164,956

21    2018        Kopser  1,594,724    364,365
21    2020         Davis  4,467,270  2,930,275

22    2018      Kulkarni    405,169     89,434
22    2020      Kulkarni  2,530,971  1,205,791

23    2018   Ortiz Jones  2,256,366  1,150,851
23    2020   Ortiz Jones  4,133,598  3,009,888

24    2018      McDowell     61,324     28,091
24    2020    Valenzuela  1,119,403    110,664

25    2018        Oliver    199,047     78,145
25    2020        Oliver    681,850     89,999

31    2020         Hegar  1,618,359    867,266
31    2020          Imam    449,274     42,099

With the exception of CD31, where no one has come close to MJ Hegar (who as the US Senate nominee may help boost turnout in this district anyway), and CD06, where Stephen Daniel is a pinch behind Jana Sanchez in fundraising (but also a pinch ahead in cash on hand), each nominee is substantially better off this time around. Todd Litton, Joe Kopser, and the original version of Gina Ortiz Jones were all strong fundraisers, and they’ve all been blown out of the water this year. Mike Siegel, Sri Kulkarni, and Julie Oliver have all greatly outpaced themselves. I will maintain that we might have won CD24 in 2018 if we’d had a candidate who could raise money; that’s very much not a problem this year. Lulu Seikaly is well ahead of Lori Burch, who was herself quite a pleasant surprise in CD03.

There are still things to address. Seikaly, Siegel, and Valenzuela all needed to spend a bunch of money in the extended runoffs, and thus need to build up cash with less time to do it. Given their records so far, I’m not too worried about it. Both Jana Sanchez and 2018 Julie Oliver had May runoffs to win, so their modest cash on hand totals were understandable, but Stephen Daniel and 2020 Julie Oliver were both March winners, so I don’t understand why they’ve been spending as much as they have at this point. I hope that isn’t a problem. Donna Imam is not going to approach Hegar’s fundraising prowess, but she alone among the crowd in CD31 seemed to have some capacity for the task, so maybe she’ll at least make up some ground.

The big difference is that there isn’t a juggernaut Senate campaign, which was a boost to downballot candidates in 2018, this time around. On the other hand, we do have a Presidential campaign, which is already airing ads, and we have the DNC airing ads, and we have the DCCC, which has added CD02 to its already-long target list (though they may have dropped CD31 by now). Point being, there will be plenty of other money invested that will help with these races, directly or indirectly.

So overall, a pretty rosy picture, and the financial resources to support the notion that a whole lot of seats are actually in play. Remember how I spent much of the 2018 cycle talking about how there never used to be any Congressional money raised in Texas, outside of CD23? The world is in flames, but that one small part of the Before Times, I don’t miss.

Last but not least, a brief shoutout to Hank Gilbert, playing the part of Dayna Steele in this cycle – a great candidate and a swell human being in an absolute no-hope district against a terrible incumbent who is raising a surprising amount of money. If doing good and being good were all it took, Hank would be in the top tier of next year’s freshman class. Maybe someday we’ll live in that world. Godspeed, Hank.

Dems could possibly win a lot of Congressional races in Texas

It started with this:

You might think wow, that’s a really optimistic take, but after the Tuesday primary runoff, we also got this:

I’d quibble with the categorization of those 2018 contests as “not serious” – all of the candidates raised a decent amount of money that year, and prognosticators had CD10 on their radar by the end of the cycle – but I take his point. And in the replies to that tweet, we got this:

A second Blue Wave in the suburbs?

Well-educated suburban districts, particularly ones that also were diverse, were a major part of the Democrats’ victory in the House in 2018. Democrats captured many formerly Republican districts where Donald Trump performed significantly worse in 2016 than Mitt Romney had in 2012. Democratic victories in and around places like Northern Virginia, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, the Twin Cities, Atlanta, Orange County, CA, parts of New Jersey, and elsewhere came in seats that meet this broad definition.

And then there’s Texas. Democrats picked up two districts there, one in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex (TX-32) and another in suburban Houston (TX-7). But Democrats put scares into several other Republican incumbents, and the closeness of presidential polling in Texas could lead to unexpected opportunities for Democrats there this November.

Trump has generally led polls of Texas, but many have been close and Biden has on occasion led, like in a Fox News poll released last week that gave him a nominal lead of a single point.

Tellingly, of 18 Texas polls in the RealClearPolitics database matching Biden against Trump dating back to early last year, Trump has never led by more than seven points — in a state he won by nine in 2016. It seems reasonable to assume that Trump is going to do worse in Texas than four years ago, particularly if his currently gloomy numbers in national surveys and state-level polls elsewhere do not improve.

In an average of the most recent polls, Trump leads by two points in Texas. In 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) won reelection over then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D, TX-16) by 2.6 points. If Trump were to win Texas by a similar margin this November, the congressional district-level results probably would look a lot like the Cruz-O’Rourke race. Those results are shown in Map 1, courtesy of my colleague J. Miles Coleman.

Map 1: 2018 Texas Senate results by congressional district

Cruz carried 18 districts to O’Rourke’s 16. That includes the 11 districts the Democrats already held in Texas going into the 2018 election, as well as the two additional ones where they beat GOP incumbents (TX-7 and TX-32) and three additional districts that Republicans still hold. Those are TX-23, an open swing seat stretching from San Antonio to El Paso; Rep. Michael McCaul’s (R, TX-10) Austin-to-Houston seat; and TX-24, another open seat in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.

TX-23 is competitive primarily because it’s two-thirds Hispanic, and it already leans to the Democrats in our ratings. TX-10 and TX-24 better fit the suburban mold: Both have significantly higher levels of four-year college attainment than the national average (particularly TX-24), and Republican incumbents in both seats nearly lost to unheralded Democratic challengers in 2018.

Cruz won the remaining districts, but several of them were close: TX-2, TX-3, TX-6, TX-21, TX-22, TX-25, and TX-31 all voted for Cruz by margins ranging from 0.1 points (TX-21) to 5.1 (TX-25). These districts all have at least average and often significantly higher-than-average levels of four-year college attainment, and they all are racially diverse.

In other words, these districts share some characteristics of those that have moved toward the Democrats recently, even though they remain right of center.

This is all a long preamble to an alarming possibility for Republicans: If Biden were to actually carry Texas, he might carry many or even all of these districts in the process. In a time when ticket-splitting is less common than in previous eras of American politics (though hardly extinct), that could exert some real pressure on Republicans in these districts.

Ted Cruz carried 20 districts to Beto’s 16, a minor quibble. Remember this post in which Mike Hailey of Capitol Inside predicted Dems would flip eight Congressional seats? Not so out there any more.

Look at it this way: Since the start of June, Trump has had exactly one poll, out of eight total, in which he has led Joe Biden by more than two points. The four-point lead he had in that poll is smaller than the five-point lead Biden had in a subsequent poll. In those eight polls, Trump has led in three, Biden has led in three, and the other two were tied. The average of those eight polls is Biden 45.9, Trump 45.6, another data point to suggest that Biden has gotten stronger as we have progressed.

Insert all the usual caveats here: Polls are snapshots in time. It’s still more than 100 days to Election Day. Things can change a lot. No Texas Democrat has won a statewide race since 1994, a losing streak to rival Rice football versus UT. (As it happens, the last time Rice beat UT in football was…1994. Coincidence? I think not.) The polls all said Hillary was gonna win in 2016 and we know how that went, smartass. Fill in your own rationalization as well.

The point here is simply this: If Joe Biden actually wins Texas, it could be really, really ugly for Republicans downballot. Even if Biden falls short, it’s likely going to leave a mark on them as well.

I’ll leave where we started:

Karma, man.

2020 primary runoff results: Congress

I’m going to bullet point these just for simplicity. There will be news stories to look at later.

CD03 Dem: Lulu Seikaly cruised to an easy win here. She was just over 60% at around 10 PM, with some Election Day precincts in.

CD10 Dem: Looking good for Mike Siegel, who is leading in Harris and Travis counties, where most of the votes are.

CD24 Dem: This was surprisingly not close, as Candace Valenzuela led early thanks to a big lead in Dallas County, but as of 10 PM she was also leading in Tarrant and Denton. A really hard-fought battle, with Valenzuela gaining a ton of momentum and stepping up her fundraising as the election neared. This is one of those where you might wonder if things would have been different with the runoff in May as originally scheduled.

CD31 Dem: Donna Imam takes it in both Williamson and Bell counties for the win.

On the Republican side, Ronny Jackson in CD13, Pete Sessions (yeah, that guy again) in CD17, Troy Nehls in CD22 (say goodbye to another $8 million, Kathaleen Wall) are all winners. I’m not prepared to all CD23 between Raul Reyes (endorsed by Ted Cruz) and Tony Gonzales (endorsed by Donald Trump). There were other runoffs, but all involving candidates with no hope to win in November, so I’m not too worried about them. The Texas Tribune has a good result tracker for both parties if you want to be a completist.

UPDATE: Tony Gonzales has slipped ahead of Raul Reyes in CD23, but the contest has not been called yet, and Reyes has not conceded.

A bullish take on the State House

From Mike Hailey of Capitol Inside:

The wildly unpredictable coronavirus appears to be fueling a massive blue wave that sweeps the Democrats back into power in the Texas House of Representatives with President Donald Trump as their all-time greatest ally.

With the president blowing up a submissive GOP in Texas and beyond, the Democrats are poised to take the Legislature’s lower chamber back as long they stay out of the way of the runaway train called the Trump campaign between now and November.

The Capitol Inside crystal ball foresees a cataclysmic November shaping up for the Republicans who could be on the verge of fumbling away the 38 Texas electoral votes and a U.S. Senate seat as well if Trump doesn’t pull off the biggest comeback in modern American history.

Barring a miraculous economy recovery that’s Trump’s only hope for a successful re-election bid, the tentative forecast here has the Democrats running up the score on the critical state House battlefield this fall with a net gain of at least 15 seats with the potential for more at the rate the Republicans are going now.

While the 2020 election is harder to predict than votes in the past, the current outlook for the Legislature’s lower chamber is a solid blue with a minimum of 82 Democrats and 68 Republicans or less taking the oath in January. The Democrats have a good chance to flip more than a half-dozen congressional districts in Texas with a toxic president leading the charge for the GOP. The minority party will oust GOP State Senator Pete Flores of Pleasanton in a district where he was lucky to win in the first place in a special election in 2018.

After predicting that Democrats would pick up 11 Texas House seats in 2018 when they wrestled a dozen away from the GOP, the crystal ball here sees Republican incumbents and open race candidates with cause for concern in any district where Trump failed to win less than two-thirds of the vote four years ago.

U.S. Senator John Cornyn would have won a new term in a November blowout if he hadn’t wrapped himself in a president who’d sought to portray the worst public health crisis in more than a century as a partisan hoax before ordering the military to attack peaceful protesters for the sake of a campaign photo op.

Cornyn might still have a 50-50 chance of surviving Trump in a development that could help minimize the down-ballot devastation that appears to be on the horizon for the Republicans here.

[…]

Texas Republicans have tried to dismiss the blue wave in 2018 as an offshoot of Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s strong showing as the minority party ticket leader in a battle that he almost won against U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. But the truth is that Trump had dramatically accelerated the conversion of Texas from red to blue with the results at the polls in 2016 and 2018 as obvious evidence of the unprecedented drain that he’s had on the Republicans here.

The Democrats would reclaim the state House with a net gain of nine seats. They could accomplish that simply by winning in every GOP-controlled district that O’Rourke carried two years ago.

Republicans will be running as underdogs in most of 17 House districts where Trump garnered less than 55 percent of the vote in his first White House race. Some of seven GOP candidates in House districts where the president claimed between 55 percent and 60 percent of the 2016 vote are probably going to lose as well.

At the top of the page, there’s a summary that predicts 15 seats picked up by Dems in the House, one seat picked up in the Senate, eight (!) Congressional seats flipped by Dems, and it also rates the US Senate and Railroad Commissioner races as tossups. Heady stuff, to say the least. The Dems are officially targeting something like 22 State House seats, so a net of plus fifteen is conceivable, if quite aggressive. Picking up eight Congressional seats means not only taking all of CDs 10, 21, 22, 23, and 24, but also three out of 02, 03, 06, 25, and 31. That’s way on the high end of my imagination – though I will note it’s right in line with the Rachel Bitecofer model – and I confess I have a hard time wrapping my brain around it. That said, you see bits like this excerpt from the Daily Kos Elections digest, and you wonder:

TX-06: The DCCC’s Targeting and Analytics Department has conducted an in-house poll that gives freshman Republican Rep. Ron Wright a small 45-41 lead over Democrat Stephen Daniel in a race that hasn’t attracted much outside attention. The survey also shows Joe Biden and Donald Trump deadlocked 46-46 here. This seat, which includes Arlington and rural areas south of Dallasbacked Trump 54-42, but last cycle, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz carried it just 51-48. Wright won his first term 53-45 in a contest that featured very little outside spending.

It’s an internal poll, so take it with an appropriate level of salt. But if it’s accurate, if CD06 really is a tossup for Biden, then at the very least those first five seats would all be leaning Dem to some degree, and the other four would be very tight as well. It’s way optimistic, but that doesn’t mean it’s unrealistic. The Texas Signal has more.

Runoff reminder: Congress

Previously, we looked at the two statewide runoffs in the Democratic primary. Today we’re going to look at four Congressional primary runoffs. There are more than four total runoffs in Congressional primaries, but these are in the districts that are at least somewhat competitive, including a couple that are high on the national target list. As a reminder, here’s a look at the April campaign finance reports for Congress.

CD03

CD03 is held by freshman Rep. Van Taylor, who won by a 54-44 margin in 2018; Beto O’Rourke got 47.9% in the district. It’s not a first-tier opportunity, but the primary features two candidates who are way ahead of the 2018 fundraising pace, Sean McCaffity and Lulu Seikaly, who was a later entrant into the race. Seikaly has gotten more press that I could find of the two of them. Here’s a profile/interview with her on the Shondaland website. She recently picked up the endorsement of Rep. Marc Veasey after having been endorsed by the DMN for the primary. As for McCaffity, I found this profile of him from February. I don’t have a whole lot of insight to add to this race. Both candidates look good to me, either could break through and generate some national attention if they keep up the good fundraising or someone does a poll in the district. CD03 is entirely within Collin County, so if the suburbs do wind up abandoning Trump in a big way – in other words, even more than in 2018 – this race could be a sleeper.

CD10

CD10 of course has been on the radar all cycle, since Mike Siegel lost to longtime Rep. Mike McCaul by a bit more than four points, in a district that Beto carried by a hair. Siegel faces Dr. Pritesh Gandhi, who has been a strong fundraiser so far. As a working doctor who’s treating COVID-19 patients when he’s not on the campaign trail, Gandhi has also been featured in numerous new stories, getting both local and national coverage for his dual role. Siegel has made his way into some of that coverage, and was the subject of a nice recent profile. He also picked up a couple of endorsements, from Rep. Veronica Escobar and State Rep. Erin Zwiener.

CD24

This may be the spiciest runoff of the four, for a seat that Beto won with 51.5% of the vote in 2018. Precisely because this is such an clear-cut target – it’s been on the DCCC’s radar from day one – there’s been some fighting over who the DCCC should be backing in this race, Kim Olson and Candace Valenzuela. Olson is the 2018 nominee for Ag Commissioner (she got 46.4%, losing by five points) and is one of six Dem challengers so far to have raised over a million bucks as of April. Olson has a military background that’s a big part of her biography, but the circumstances surrounding her exit from the Air Force have some people worried that could be a drag on her campaign. Meanwhile, Valenzuela has also been a strong fundraiser and has picked up some notable endorsements including EMILY’s List, which is a fascinating decision on their part given that there were multiple pro-choice female candidates in the primary, including, you know, Kim Olson. Some of Valenzuela’s allies will be running ads against Olson over the issues with Olson’s military record. There’s a nice profile of Valenzuela here if you want to know more about her. As with these other races, I don’t have a strong preference. I feel like this race is there for the Dems to win, we just have to not screw it up.

CD31

Finally, there’s CD31, which started out the cycle high on the target list but has been slipping down since. While there have been a ton of candidates cycling through this race, none have caught fire the way MJ Hegar did in 2018, and none have distinguished themselves in fundraising. The two who survived the first round, Christine Eady Mann and Donna Imam, were the top fundraisers, but neither is close to the top tier among Dem challengers, and only Imam has a decent amount of cash on hand. Eady Mann, who lost in the 2018 primary runoff to Hegar, is also a medical doctor and has also been featured in some stories for her candidacy and career in a time of COVID. I couldn’t find any recent stories about Imam. I don’t see this race as being all that competitive anymore, but the trend in Williamson County will keep it reasonably close regardless. A surprise is still possible, but I’m going to want to see the winner of this runoff start to rake in some bucks before I’ll buy into it.

I’ll be looking at SBOE and State Senate next. Let me know what you think.

Comparing the April finance reports

In my roundup of April finance reports for Congress, I said I’d do a comparison of the 2018 numbers to 2020. I’m a blogger of his word, so let’s have that look.


Dist  Year Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
=================================================================
02      18 Litton          546,503    304,139        0    242,363
02      20 Ladjevardian  1,133,296    930,810   50,000    202,485

03      18 Burch           104,700    116,639   25,649     14,085
03      18 Johnson          62,473     59,143    3,100      6,490
03      20 McCaffity       387,506    313,098        0     74,407
03      20 Seikaly         252,591    232,038    3,000     20,552

06      18 Sanchez         241,893    188,313        0     56,456
06      18 Woolridge        75,440     45,016   15,000     47,708
06      20 Daniel          196,861    187,942    7,500      8,918

10      18 Siegel           80,319     65,496    5,000     19,823
10      18 Cadien
10      20 Siegel          664,291    542,317   10,000    125,464
10      20 Gandhi        1,011,877    948,927        0     62,949

21      18 Kopser        1,100,451    846,895   25,000    278,556
21      18 Wilson           44,772     51,041   26,653     20,384
21      20 Davis         3,047,765  1,094,009        0  1,953,755

22      18 Kulkarni        178,925    158,369   35,510     56,067
22      18 Plummer         108,732     99,153        0      9,578
22      20 Kulkarni      1,564,263  1,226,088        0    365,942

23      18 Ortiz Jones   1,025,194    703,481        0    321,713
23      18 Trevino          16,892     20,416    3,285      3,915
23      20 Ortiz Jones   3,310,358  1,024,041    3,024  2,377,835

24      18 McDowell         33,452     16,100        0     17,470
24      20 Olson         1,231,183  1,028,804   20,000    202,378
24      20 Valenzuela      647,105    506,708        0    140,397

25      18 Oliver           78,841     37,812    3,125     40,860
25      18 Perri           139,016    133,443   24,890     30,603
25      20 Oliver          464,623    427,972    2,644     36,651

31      18 Hegar           458,085    316,854        0    141,240
31      18 Mann             56,814     58,856    2,276          0
31      20 Mann            277,815    278,885   44,500        367
31      20 Imam            363,194    223,126  100,000    140,068

I included losing candidates from primary runoffs in 2018 as well, as they were still in the race at that time. I did not include the high-dollar races in CDs 07 and 32 – Lizzie Fletcher and Laura Moser had each raised over $1M by this point, with Colin Allred and Lillian Salerno combining for close to $1.4M – because I wanted to focus only on challengers. Reps. Fletcher and Allred are doing quite well in this department now, they’re just in a different category. It’s clear there’s a lot more money now than there was in 2018, which I attribute mostly to the national Democratic focus on many of these races. Only CDs 03, 06, and 25 are not official targets, but any of them could get bumped up if the environment gets more favorable or the nominees step it up another level. Both CD03 candidates and the 2020 version of Julie Oliver are well ahead of the 2018 pace, while Stephen Daniel was a later entrant in CD06 and may catch up in the next report.

We eventually got used to the big numbers from 2018, which I repeatedly noted were completely unprecedented for Democratic Congressional challengers in Texas, and so there’s less of an “ooh, ahh” factor when we look at this year’s numbers, but let’s not totally lose our ability to be wowed. Joe Kopser raised a ton of money in 2018, and Wendy Davis has left him in the dust, taking in three times as much at this point. Sri Kulkarni has nearly matched his entire total from 2018, while Gina Ortiz Jones is doing to herself what Wendy Davis is doing to Joe Kopser. Throw in Sima Ladjevardian and both Kim Olson and Candace Valenzuela, and wow. We do need to appreciate where we are now, because there was a long time when anything like this would have been unthinkable. Hell, you can count on one hand the number of statewide candidates from 2004 to 2016 who raised as much as these Congressional candidates have done so far.

There’s also a lot more spending, as four candidates have already dropped a million bucks, with Ladjevardian and Pritesh Gandhi not far behind. Those two plus Sri Kulkarni and Kim Olson were in competitive primaries, with Olson and Gandhi in the runoffs, while Wendy Davis and Gina Ortiz Jones had much less formidable opposition. I have to assume the latter two did most of their spending with an eye towards November.

I will admit that some of the cash on hand totals from this year’s report had me nervous, but doing this comparison mostly alleviates those concerns. I am of course still worried about the environment for raising money now, but there’s only so much one can worry about it, and as we saw in the previous post there was no noticeable slowdown for the month of March. We’ll see what the July numbers look like.

If there is a cause for concern, it’s in CD31, which has been a soft spot in the lineup from the beginning. Christine Eady Mann and Donna Imam seem to have finally hit a stride in fundraising after the entire field, including several who dropped out along the way, got off to a slow start, though Mann continues a pattern from 2018 of spending every dollar she takes in. Neither has matched MJ Hegar’s pace from 2018, and I seriously doubt they’ll do any better going forward. That’s a high hurdle to clear – Hegar eventually raised over $5 million – but I’m more hopeful now that whoever emerges in that race can at least be competitive.

The next finance reports of interest will be the 30-day reports for state candidates, and then the June reports for county candidates. You know I’ll be on them when they come out. As always, let me know what you think.

April 2020 campaign finance reports: Congress

Hey, remember politics? You know, races and finance reports and stuff like that? Yeah, it’s still happening, weird as that may seem right now. As we are well into April, the Q1 Congressional finance reports for 2020 are in, and thankfully for me the number of candidates whose reports I need to review is much smaller. Let’s have a look. The January 2019 roundup is here, which closed out the 2017-18 election cycle, the April 2019 report is here, the July 2019 report is here, the October 2019 report is here, and the January 2020 report is here. For comparison, the January 2018 report is here and the April 2018 report is here. The FEC summary page for Congress is here and for the Senate is here.

MJ Hegar – Senate
Royce West – Senate

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Colin Allred – CD32

Hank Gilbert – CD01
Sima Ladjevardian – CD02
Sean McCaffity – CD03
Lulu Seikaly – CD03
Stephen Daniel – CD06
Elizabeth Hernandez – CD08
Mike Siegel – CD10
Pritesh Gandhi – CD10
Adrienne Bell – CD14
Rick Kennedy – CD17
David Jaramillo – CD17
Wendy Davis – CD21
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Kim Olson – CD24
Candace Valenzuela – CD24
Julie Oliver – CD25
Carol Ianuzzi – CD26
Christine Eady Mann – CD31
Donna Imam – CD31


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   Hegar         4,830,038  3,781,873        0  1,095,647
Sen   West          1,363,387  1,242,563  242,162    242,162

07    Fletcher      3,375,004    723,963        0  2,693,107
32    Allred        2,370,113    555,774        0  1,917,783  

01    Gilbert         190,941     44,804   50,000    146,136
02    Ladjevardian  1,133,296    930,810   50,000    202,485
03    McCaffity       387,506    313,098        0     74,407
03    Seikaly         252,591    232,038    3,000     20,552
06    Daniel          196,861    187,942    7,500      8,918
08    Hernandez
10    Siegel          664,291    542,317   10,000    125,464
10    Gandhi        1,011,877    948,927        0     62,949
14    Bell             84,724     71,740        0     16,061
17    Kennedy          65,908     59,041   11,953      8,294
17    Jaramillo        20,681     17,864        0      2,816
21    Davis         3,047,765  1,094,009        0  1,953,755
22    Kulkarni      1,564,263  1,226,088        0    365,942
23    Ortiz Jones   3,310,358  1,024,041    3,024  2,377,835
24    Olson         1,231,183  1,028,804   20,000    202,378
24    Valenzuela      647,105    506,708        0    140,397
25    Oliver          464,623    427,972    2,644     36,651
26    Ianuzzi          82,254     63,909   47,032     18,344
31    Mann            277,815    278,885   44,500        367
31    Imam            363,194    223,126  100,000    140,068

Some real separation in the Senate race, as MJ Hegar approaches five million total raised. She is in a much stronger position for the runoff than Royce West, though there’s still time for him to raise a few bucks. Hegar has a long way to go to be on par with John Cornyn, but she’s at least putting herself into “reasonably viable for a statewide candidate” range. For what it’s worth, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez and Amanda Edwards did eventually top a million dollars raised, and in the end they both spent nearly all of it. I still don’t know why Tzintzún Ramirez was unable to do better in this department, but that’s water under the bridge now.

As was the case in 2018, everyone in all of the interesting races is raising a ton of money. The two incumbents are doing what they should be doing. Six challenger candidates have now topped a million dollars raised, with Wendy Davis and Gina Ortiz Jones both over three million. Pritesh Gandhi and Kim Olson still have to make it through the July runoff, by which time their runoff opponents – Mike Siegel and Candace Valenzuela – may have also topped that mark. Of course, right now is kind of a lousy time to be raising money, so hold that thought for a minute. We’re at a point where it’s basically routine for everyone to pile up big money-raised numbers, so let me note that the thing that stands out here is the amount that some of these candidates have spent. It’s more than a little mind-boggling that four candidates so far have spent over a million bucks, and some people, even the big moneybags, have left themselves a bit bereft in the cash-on-hand department. I’m glad to see both CD31 candidates finally start to get on the board, but that’s quite the hole Christine Eady Mann left herself in cash-wise. I’m going to do a separate post with a direct comparison to April 2018 later, but let’s put a pin in that. We don’t know what the fundraising environment is going to be like over the next few months. Dems benefited from a lot of Congressional cash in 2018. We had every reason to believe the same thing would happen this year as of the last report, but that was in the Before Times. Now, who knows?

We can take a little peek at how the fundraising environment may be. Everyone had to report their totals as of February 22 as well, thanks to the March primary. So here’s a look at how the Raised totals varied from January to April:


Dist Candidate         Jan01      Feb22      Apr01
==================================================
Sen  Hegar         3,225,842  3,864,201  4,830,038
Sen  West            956,593  1,134,953  1,363,387

07   Fletcher      2,339,444  2,481,687  3,375,004
32   Allred        2,370,113  2,577,348  2,370,113

02   Ladjevardian    407,781    660,853  1,133,296
03   McCaffity       267,288    308,240    387,506
03   Seikaly         109,870    173,031    252,591
06   Daniel          148,655    179,330    196,861
10   Siegel          451,917    527,802    664,291
10   Gandhi          786,107    869,277  1,011,877
21   Davis         1,850,589  2,186,063  3,047,765
22   Kulkarni      1,149,783  1,246,943  1,564,263
23   Ortiz Jones   2,481,192  2,684,696  3,310,358
24   Olson           861,905    967,032  1,231,183
24   Valenzuela      333,007    442,351    647,105
25   Oliver          325,091    387,523    464,623
31   Mann            170,759    198,783    277,815

Donna Imam did not have a February 22 total when I went looking for these numbers, so I omitted her from this table. Honestly, it doesn’t look like there was much of a slowdown in March, which is what I had been afraid of. Hell, Wendy Davis raised nearly a million bucks just in the last five weeks of the period. With the primaries over, the federal contribution limits get reset, so I think Davis and at least a couple other candidates who emerged victorious reaped a benefit from becoming the official nominee. Certainly Sima Ladjevardian and Gina Ortiz Jones took in a decent haul in the latter half of the filing period. Julie Oliver and Stephen Daniel did not get such a boost, however. I don’t have much more to say about this, I was just curious about how this went. We’ll see what the next quarter brings. As always, let me know what you think.

Does getting to 40% make you likely to win the runoff?

Anna Eastman

I was talking with some fellow political nerds last week, and one of the topics was the forthcoming runoffs. As is usually the case, this year we have some runoffs between candidates who finished fairly close together in round one, and some in which one candidate has a clear lead based on the initial election. The consensus we had was that candidates in the latter category, especially those who topped 40% on Super Tuesday, are basically locks to win in May. The only counter-example we could think of off the tops of our heads was Borris Miles beating Al Edwards, who had been at 48%, in the 2006 runoff for HD146.

So, later on I spent a few minutes on the Secretary of State election archive pages, looking through past Democratic primary results and tracking those where the leader had more than forty percent to see who went on to win in the runoff. Here’s what I found:

2018

Winners – CD03, CD10, CD23, CD31, Governor, SD17,
Losers – CD27, HD37, HD45, HD64, HD109*, HD133*

2016

Winners – CD15, HD27
Losers – SBOE6

2014

Winners – Senate, SBOE13
Losers – HD105

2012
Winners – CD34, HD95, HD137
Losers – CD23*, SBOE2

2010
Winners – CD10, HD76*

2008
Winners – CD32, RRC

2006
Winners – Senate, Lt Gov, HD42, HD47*
Losers – HD146

In each of the cited races, the leading candidate had at least 40% of the primary vote. Races that have asterisks indicate that the runnerup also had at least 40%. As you can see, up until 2018, having forty percent or more in the primary was indeed a pretty good indicator of success in overtime. The last cycle provided quite a few counterexamples, however, including one incumbent (Rene Oliveira, who had been busted for a DWI earlier) who went down. So maybe 40% isn’t such a magical number, or maybe it’s harder now than it was before 2012. Or maybe this is just a really small sample and we should be careful about drawing broad conclusions from it.

Fortunately, we have quite a few races this year to add to this sample:

CD03 – Lulu Seikaly 44.5%, Sean McCaffity 43.8%
CD10 – Mike Siegel 44.0%, Pritesh Gandhi 33.1%
CD13 – Gus Trujillo 42.2%, Greg Sagan 34.7%
CD17 – Rick Kennedy 47.9%, David Jaramillo 35.0%
CD24 – Kim Olson 40.9%, Candace Valenzuela 30.4%
SBOE6 – Michelle Palmer 46.8%, Kimberly McLeod 34.6%
SD19 – Xochil Pena Rodriguez 43.7%, Roland Gutierrez 37.3%
SD27 – Eddie Lucio 49.8%, Sara Stapleton-Barrera 35.6%
HD119 – Liz Campos 46.1%, Jennifer Ramos 43.7%
HD138 – Akilah Bacy 46.7, Jenifer Pool 29.3%
HD142 – Harold Dutton 45.2%, Jerry Davis 25.3%
HD148 – Anna Eastman 41.6%, Penny Shaw 22.1%
138th District Court – Gabby Garcia 48.0%, Helen Delgadillo 31.0%
164th District Court – Cheryl Elliott Thornton 41.3%, Alexandra Smoots-Thomas 33.1%

I’ll be sure to do an update in May, when we can see if the leading candidates mostly held serve or not. Place your bets.

Runoff roundup

Here, as best as I can determine, are the runoffs of interest for May:

US Senate – MJ Hegar versus Royce West

CD02 – Sima Ladjevardian versus Elisa Cardnell
CD03 – Lulu Seikaly versus Sean McCaffity
CD10 – Mike Siegel versus Pritesh Gandhi
CD17 – Rick Kennedy versus David Jaramillo (D), Pete Sessions versus Renee Swann (R)
CD22 – Troy Nehls versus Kathaleen Wall (R)
CD23 – Tony Gonzales versus Raul Reyes (R)
CD24 – Kim Olson versus Candace Valenzuela
CD31 – Christine Eady Mann versus Donna Imam

Note that Wendy Davis (CD21), Sri Kulkarni (CD22), Gina Ortiz Jones (CD23), and on the Republican side Wesley Hunt (CD07) all won outright. I skipped a couple of Republican runoffs in safe D districts, because life is short.

Railroad Commissioner – Chrysta Castaneda versus Roberto Alonzo

SBOE5 – Robert Morrow versus Lani Popp (R, wackadoo versus what passes for normal)
SBOE6 – Michelle Palmer versus Kimberley McLeod

SD19 – Xochil Peña Rodriguez versus Roland Gutierrez
SD27 – Eddie Lucio versus Sara Stapleton-Barrera

Didn’t mention this yesterday, but Susan Criss prevailed in SD11.

HD02 – Dan Flynn versus Bryan Slaton (R)
HD25 – Ro’Vin Garrett versus Cody Vasut (R, this is Dennis Bonnen’s old seat)
HD26 – Suleman Lalani versus Sarah DeMerchant (D), Matt Morgan versus Jacey Jetton (R)
HD45 – Carrie Isaac versus Kent Wymore (R)
HD47 – Jennifer Fleck versus Don Zimmerman (R)
HD59 – Shelby Slawson versus JD Sheffield (R)
HD60 – Jon Francis versus Glenn Rogers (R)
HD67 – Tom Adair versus Lorenzo Sanchez
HD100 – Lorraine Birabil versus Jasmine Crockett
HD119 – Liz Campos versus Jennifer Ramos
HD138 – Akilah Bacy versus Jenifer Pool
HD142 – Harold Dutton versus Jerry Davis
HD148 – Anna Eastman versus Penny Shaw

Note that in that HD47 primary, one (1) vote separates second and third place, according to the Travis County Clerk. I assume there will be a recount, and even before then late-arriving mail ballots could change this. In the event of an actual tie, there will be a coin flip to determine who goes to the runoff. I’m rooting so hard for that outcome, you guys.

In the HD67 primary, 63 votes separate Lorenzo Sanchez and Rocio Gosewehr Hernandez, or 0.3 percentage points. I would expect a recount there as well, but with a far lesser chance of affecting the outcome.

Lorraine Birabil was the winner of the special election in HD100 to fill out the unexpired term of Eric Johnson, who is now Mayor of Dallas. Anna Eastman was the winner of the special election in HD148 to succeed Jessica Farrar.

14th Court of Appeals, Place 7 – Tamika Craft versus Cheri Thomas

164th District Court – Cheryl Elliott Thornton versus Alex Smoots-Thomas
339th Criminal Court – Te’iva Bell versus Candance White

County Commissioner, Precinct 3 – Diana Martinez Alexander versus Michael Moore

Moore was leading most of the night, but Alexander caught and passed him as final results came in. I don’t care to go through the various Constable and JP races, but the good Jerry Garcia was leading problematic incumbent Chris Diaz going into the Precinct 2 Constable runoff.

Whatever turnout there will be in the runoffs will be driven primarily by the Dem Senate race and the Congressional races on both sides. Won’t be much, but it ought to be a bit more than usual, and surely more on the D side if there were no Senate runoff.

2020 primary results: Senate and Congress

In the US Senate primary, MJ Heger is clearly headed to the runoff. It’s less clear who’s in second place, in part because the statewide results are so out of date on both the Trib and SOS pages. As of this draft, these pages show Royce West trailing Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez by three points, with 64,041 votes cast for him. However, as of the same time, the Dallas County election results show West with 58,873 votes, just in Dallas. Suffice it to say, the statewide results are not up to date. My guess is that West finishes second, but check back later.

For Congress:

– Sima Ladjevardian was close to 50% in CD02 after early voting, but slipped back a bit from there and will be in the runoff with Elisa Cardnell.

– Mike Siegel was leading in CD10 as far as I could tell, but it’s not clear who he’ll face in the runoff.

– Sri Kulkarni appears to be over 50% in CD22. I very much hope that race ended last night.

– Wendy Davis (CD21) and Gina Ortiz Jones (CD23) were winning easily, and Julie Oliver (CD25) was also headed to victory. Kim Olson and Candace Valenzuela were basically tied in CD24 and will face off in May, as will Sean McCaffity and Lulu Seikaly in CD03. Christine Eady Mann and Donna Imam made the cut in CD31. Elizabeth Hernandez appeared to be leading Laura Jones in CD08.

– Henry Cuellar seems to have held on in CD28, and on the Republican side Kay Granger was doing the same in CD12. So Republicans will still have at least one female member of Congress from Texas.

– Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green won easily against their challengers.

– Pete Sessions will be in the runoff in CD17, and Troy Nehls gets to face Kathaleen Wall and her millions of dollars in CD22. I pity everyone who will have to suffer through the TV commercials.

One more of these to go.

UPDATE: The Chron says it’s Mike Siegel and Pritesh Gandhi in the CD10 runoff, with Shannon Hutcheson finishing third. That’s a rare failure for a female candidate in any Dem primary from this year.

Who will carry the flag in CD31?

This primary interests me mostly to see if we can get a truly viable challenger in this district or not. No one person has emerged yet, that’s for sure.

Democrats who want to be Republican U.S. Rep. John Carter’s challenger in November think focusing on health care will turn the 31st District north of Austin blue. But Republicans, who have long held the seat, say their opponents won’t have much luck without a high-profile candidate like 2018’s MJ Hegar, who is now focusing on a U.S. Senate run.

Democratic candidates Eric Hanke, Donna Imam, Dan Janjigian, Christine Mann and Tammy Young are vying for their party’s nomination in the district includes suburban Williamson County and the more rural Bell County. They say rising health care costs and support for military veterans are voters’ top priorities — and most want to expand access to affordable health care to address those concerns.

“I would put health care at the top of the list because we have a lot of people that don’t have access to health care because it’s not affordable,” said Hanke, a 41-year-old singer-songwriter who recorded a new song, “Turn Texas Blue,” for a campaign ad.

But whoever snags the party’s nomination will need to unseat Carter, who was first elected in 2002 and said the general election in November will be about economic security and safety.

[…]

In 2018, Hegar, a political newcomer, became a strong challenger to Carter after a viral ad documenting her military service garnered millions of views. She came within 3 percentage points of unseating Carter, making the district a target for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this cycle.

“MJ really put this race on the map and showed us that this was possible,” said Young, a 51-year-old Round Rock City Council member. “For too long, we’ve allowed Washington insiders to stay in office as long as they want, not believing things could change. MJ showed us what is possible with the right candidate.”

[…]

So far, there is no clear Democratic front-runner, according to State Rep. James Talarico. He campaigned alongside Hegar for his seat in the Texas House and said the key to flipping the congressional district is to have an inclusive platform and work across the aisle.

“It’s going to take a candidate who has a message that appeals to a broad base of community members. One that fires up our Democratic base while still being inclusive of independents and even some disillusioned Republicans,” said Talarico.

Mann, who entered the primary before the other four candidates, has been the top fundraiser in contributions, collecting $171,000 through Dec. 31, according to Federal Election Commission records. Imam has raised $208,000, though it includes a $100,000 loan to herself.

Steve Armbruster, chair of the Williamson County Republican Party, sees Hegar’s 2018 run as lightning in a bottle and is doubtful Democrats will replicate her performance.

“I don’t think that the Democrats have anybody on their side of the aisle that they could choose that would have the ability to draw voters out like they had two years ago,” Armbruster said.

Hegar said she believes this year’s Democratic lineup is competitive enough to finish what she started in 2018.

“We have a strong batch of candidates, and I am confident that by continuing to mobilize volunteers and voters the eventual nominee will close the 2.9 [percentage point] gap we had left and send John Carter to retirement in 2020,” Hegar said in an email.

The story of CD31 is like the story of several other Congressional districts, in that it took a small step in a blue direction from 2012 to 2016, then went really far in that direction in 2018. It’s no surprise at all that CD31 is on the DCCC target list, but let’s do keep in mind how far we have come.


2012

Carter  61.3%  Wyman   35.0%
Romney  59.4%  Obama   38.1%
Keller  57.8%  Hampton 36.8%

2016

Carter  58.4%  Clark   36.5%
Trump   52.6%  Clinton 40.1%
Keasler 56.8%  Burns   37.3%

2018

Carter  50.6%  Hegar   47.7%
Cruz    50.5%  Beto    48.4%
Keller  52.7%  Jackson 44.2%

That’s incumbent John Carter versus his opponent that year, then the top of the ticket, and then a Court of Criminal Appeals race for further context. Carter was used to doing better than other Republicans in CD31, but that did not happen with MJ Hegar as his opponent. The blue shift has occurred up and down the ballot, but the top has gone farther in our direction, as you can see. That means there’s still work to be done, and that the candidate quality will matter. It also means that if the environment isn’t quite as good as we hope it will be, what looks competitive now will be less so later. On the other hand, if the Presidential race remains as close as recent polling has indicated it is, then we should expect to see conditions much like 2018, with the extra benefit of further demographic change and Presidential year turnout.

I don’t know any of these candidates well enough to have a preference. I’m sure they’d all be fine. I also don’t expect anyone to raise money like Hegar did, but we do need someone to start raking it in, so that they can have the resources they will need in November. I’m hoping the primary will give us some clarity, at the very least.

January 2020 campaign finance reports: Congress

The big ones for this cycle the Q4 2019 Congressional finance reports. For the last time, we have new candidates joining the list, and a couple of folks dropping out. Let’s do the thing and see where we are going into 2020. The January 2019 roundup is here, which closed out the 2017-18 election cycle, the April 2019 report is here, the July 2019 report is here, and the October 2020 report is here. For comparison, the October 2017 report is here. The FEC summary page for Congress is here and for the Senate is here.

MJ Hegar – Senate
Chris Bell – Senate
Amanda Edwards – Senate
Royce West – Senate
Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez – Senate
Sema Hernandez – Senate
Adrian Ocegueda – Senate
Michael Cooper – Senate
Jack Foster – Senate
Anne Garcia – Senate
John Love – Senate (did not file for the primary)

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Colin Allred – CD32

Henry Cuellar – CD28
Jessia Cisneros – CD28

Hank Gilbert – CD01
Elisa Cardnell – CD02
Travis Olsen – CD02
Sima Ladjevardian – CD02
Sean McCaffity – CD03
Tanner Do – CD03
Lulu Seikaly – CD03
Stephen Daniel – CD06
Elizabeth Hernandez – CD08
Laura Jones – CD08
Mike Siegel – CD10
Pritesh Gandhi – CD10
Shannon Hutcheson – CD10

Adrienne Bell – CD14
Rick Kennedy – CD17
William Foster – CD17
David Jaramillo – CD17
Jennie Lou Leeder – CD21
Wendy Davis – CD21
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Nyanza Moore – CD22
Derrick Reed – CD22
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Rosey Ramos Abuabara – CD23
Jaime Escuder – CD23
Ricardo Madrid – CD23
Efrain Valdez – CD23

Jan McDowell – CD24
Kim Olson – CD24
Candace Valenzuela – CD24
John Biggan – CD24
Richard Fleming – CD24
Sam Vega – CD24
Crystal Lee Fletcher – CD24 (suspended campaign)
Julie Oliver – CD25
Heidi Sloan – CD25
Carol Ianuzzi – CD26
Mat Pruneda – CD26
Christine Eady Mann – CD31
Dan Jangigian – CD31
Eric Hanke – CD31
Donna Imam – CD31
Michael Grimes – CD31
Tammy Young – CD31


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   Hegar         3,225,842  2,269,671        0  1,003,653       
Sen   Bell            318,983    310,983        0      8,000
Sen   Edwards         807,478    476,485   30,000    330,993
Sen   West            956,593    430,887  202,162    525,706
Sen   T-Ramirez       807,023    577,782        0    229,240
Sen   Hernandez         7,551      7,295        0      3,891
Sen   Ocegueda          5,773      5,273    5,600        500
Sen   Cooper            4,716      2,598       41       -660
Sen   Foster            6,957      5,604        0      1,353
Sen   Garcia           10,000      6,058   22,844      3,941
Sen   Love             31,533     27,610        0      3,922

07    Fletcher      2,339,444    544,518        0  1,836,992
32    Allred        2,370,113    555,774        0  1,917,783  

28    Cuellar       1,530,976  1,140,095        0  2,935,884
28    Cisneros        982,031    366,588        0    615,442

01    Gilbert         107,625     21,733   50,000     85,891
02    Cardnell        284,514    193,910        0     90,603
02    Olsen            29,141     24,271   11,037      4,870 
02    Ladjevardian    407,781     30,035        0    377,746
03    McCaffity       267,288     54,939        0    212,348
03    Do               17,815     17,523        0        291
03    Seikaly         109,870     43,518    3,000     66,351
06    Daniel          148,655    128,989        0     19,665
08    Hernandez
08    Jones             4,250      2,698    1,910      1,552
10    Siegel          451,917    303,847   10,000    151,560
10    Gandhi          786,107    335,354        0    450,752
10    Hutcheson       750,981    295,404        0    455,577
14    Bell             84,724     71,740        0     16,061
17    Kennedy          48,623     38,593   11,953     11,457
17    Foster
17    Jaramillo        14,280        163        0     14,116
21    Leeder           29,112     25,444    9,475      3,662
21    Davis         1,850,589    635,794   18,493  1,214,794
22    Kulkarni      1,149,783    515,958        0    661,592
22    Moore           142,528    141,373   38,526      1,154
22    Reed            142,458    104,196        0     38,261
23    Ortiz Jones   2,481,192    544,523    3,024  2,028,187
23    Abuabara
23    Escuder           8,454      2,985        0        926
23    Madrid
23    Valdez
24    McDowell         67,351     73,140        0      7,531
24    Olson           861,905    357,238   20,000    504,667
24    Valenzuela      333,007    191,231   33,956    141,776
24    Biggan           62,887     58,333   27,084      4,554
24    Fleming          16,813     16,414      300        398
24    Vega
24    Fletcher        122,427     35,099      823     87,327
25    Oliver          325,091    195,265    2,644    129,826
25    Sloan           136,461     54,257        0     82,204
26    Ianuzzi          72,607     56,912   42,195     15,695
26    Pruneda          30,117     15,546   16,000     16,935
31    Mann            170,759    126,616        0     45,580
31    Jangigian        36,127     27,383   14,681      8,743
31    Hanke            46,390     35,111        0     11,278
31    Imam            207,531     20,461  100,000    187,070
31    Grimes           15,300          0        0     15,300
31    Young            50,939     14,430        0     36,508

In the Senate primary, there’s MJ Hegar and there’s everyone else. Her totals above understate her lead in the money race, because VoteVets will be spending on her candidacy as well. I would have thought Royce West would have raised more, and I thought Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez might have done better as well, but here we are. I do think the eventual nominee will be able to raise plenty of money, and will likely get some national help as well. For sure, we know Hegar is on the DSCC’s list; whether that transfers to someone else if she falls short remains to be seen.

I’ve expressed some skepticism about Jessica Cisneros in her primary against incumbent Henry Cuellar, but she’s proven she can raise money – in fact, she outraised him for this quarter, though obviously Cuellar still has a big cash on hand advantage. I can’t say I’ve ever been enthusiastic about her candidacy – she seemed awfully green at the beginning, and as someone who had moved back to Laredo to run this race she didn’t strike me as the kind of candidate that could give him a serious challenge. But man, Cuellar is a jackass, and I’m sure that’s helped her in the fundraising department. He’s also now got some national money coming in, which suggests at least a little case of the nerves. This is the marquee race that’s not in Harris County for me, though I will reiterate what I said before about taking out Cuellar versus taking out Eddie Lucio.

Sima Ladjevardian made a big splash in CD02, and around the same time as her announcement of her Q4 haul the DCCC put CD02 on its target list, adding it to the six other seats (CDs 10, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 31) that were already there. I assume the two are related, though Elisa Cardnell keeps chugging along.

Even though there was a long history of Democratic challengers to Republican Congressmen not raising any money, we all got used to the idea of our candidates breaking records and putting up very impressive totals in 2018. Look at the January 2019 summary that I linked to above, which adds it up for the cycle. Even candidates in completely non-competitive districts were topping $100K, even $200K or more. So maybe some of the totals you see here have you a bit jaded, like “oh, sure, we can raise money now, we’re good at that now”. If that’s what you’re thinking – and I don’t blame you, I feel that way too – I invite you to look back at the January 2018 summary, which is the point in time from that cycle that we’re in now. Look in particular at CDs 03, 10, 22, and 24, where candidates this time around have in some cases done better by an order of magnitude than their counterparts – who in some cases were themselves – did two years ago. Look at Julie Oliver in CD25 – she hadn’t even cracked $20K at this point in 2018. We are in such a different world now.

I could go down the list and look at all the race, but you can see the totals. There are no surprises here, in the sense that the candidates you’d expect to do well are indeed doing very well. Only CD31 is underperforming, at least relative to the other districts, but Christine Mann has stepped it up a bit and Donna Imam is willing to throw some of her own money in the pot. With the DCCC jumping into CD02, we’ve already expanded the field, and with the numbers so far it will be easy to expand it further. If this all still feels a little weird to you, I get it. Things were the way they were for a long time. They’re not that way any more, and I for one am glad to adjust to that.

DMN profile of MJ Hegar

Third in the series, and first of the candidates to jump in the race, back when we still thought Beto would be a candidate.

MJ Hegar

As she looks confidently to November, and a chance to try to pack U.S. Sen. John Cornyn “off to take his three taxpayer-funded pensions,” MJ Hegar hustles a brand she insists is distinctive.

She’s a combat veteran who sacrificed a dream career to sue the military on behalf of other women. She’s also a “mama bear,” fiercely protective of her two young sons, a working mom, a tattooed motorcyclist and a rural Texan — OK, she grew up near Austin, but her high school in Leander still has hundreds of kids in FFA.

Most of all, Hegar casts herself as “a disrupter.”

Unlike the last such person she says Texas elected to the Senate, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, Hegar says she won’t sell out to party leaders or big donors, instead fighting for blue-collar Texans. Senate Republicans, though, assail her as “Hollywood Hegar,” someone too liberal for the state.

The one-third of Texans who are “in the middle” of the electorate distrust parties, Hegar said during a recent Texas Tribune event.

“They’re looking for character,” someone who will be a team player and “servant leader,” putting country above narrow or partisan interests, she said.

“We have not fielded a combat veteran as a Democrat in a statewide election in a state like Texas that is so pro-military and patriotic,” she told Tribune chief executive Evan Smith.

“It’s not just being a combat veteran, though,” she explained. “It’s being a disrupter. It’s not just being a veteran who goes along and does as they’re told. It’s being a veteran who took on the Pentagon, took on the establishment — and won.”

[…]

Hegar (pronounced hey-GARR) is 43 – in age, the median of the five major Democratic contenders. Last year, she came close to knocking off entrenched Central Texas GOP Congressman John Carter of Georgetown.

As she asks her party for its Senate nomination against Cornyn, Hegar is being followed at all her public appearances by three different “trackers,” who take video of her, she said an interview.

“A huge compliment,” she said. It means the GOP sees her as a threat, she noted. Of the Democrats running, Hegar has raised the most money by far — $2 million.

In 2016, Hegar cast a vote in her first primary, she recalled. She voted in the GOP primary “to stop Donald Trump,” she said. “I voted for Carly Fiorina and she had already dropped out.”

After September’s disclosures about suspension of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, Hegar backed an impeachment inquiry into Trump’s actions.

Following her recent Tribune appearance, several audience members old enough to be grandparents approached her to discuss climate change. Though Hegar said she favors “aggressive action,” she declined to bless a carbon tax measure, saying she wanted to make sure it doesn’t increase the cost of food for the middle class.

University of Texas law student Anthony Collier asked her position on Medicare for all, which would eliminate private health insurance.

Hegar said she favors preserving and improving Obamacare and adding a “public option” that would include subsidies for low-income people to be able to buy into Medicare. But she would keep private plans for Americans who want them, she said.

“We can still get there while offering people choice,” she told Collier.

Speaking to reporters after formally filing her papers Dec. 9, Hegar said people aren’t asking her about impeachment but about jobs, schools and health care.

“On some issues I’m this, on some issues I’m that,” she said. “I make up my mind based on what’s … right for my state. When Texans look at me, they don’t see a progressive or moderate. They see a bad-ass, ass-kicking Texas woman.”

Hegar probably comes into this race as the best-known candidate, thanks to her 2018 Congressional race against John Carter and the publicity she was able to generate thanks to her viral ad. The skimpy polling information we have shows her leading the primary field, though with numbers small enough for that to not really mean anything. She’s done the best at fundraising, but she’s raised Congressional numbers, not Senate numbers. We’ll see what the Q4 report has to say.

Hegar is more of a personality candidate, at least at this point, than an issues candidate, though as you can see from the story that she does have coherent positions on issues. As someone who talks to a lot of candidates and who hears a lot of answers of varying degrees of depth and understanding on basic issues, I tend to appreciate the latter more than the former, though history would suggest I’m in the minority. I also don’t want to overstate the case here or to be insulting to Hegar’s substance – she has plenty to say about issues, she just tends to lead with the “bad-ass, ass-kicking” stuff. Which, let’s be honest, is almost certainly a wise strategic move, one that makes an equal amount of sense in a future campaign against a milquetoast enabler like John Cornyn. Read the story for more.

(Previously: Chris Bell, Amanda Edwards.)

On Republican female Congressional candidates

The sub-head for this article should be “It’s easy to show large percentage gains when you start from a very low base”.

Heavy recruiting of female candidates paid off for Texas Democrats in 2018, but it is Republican women who are making a splash in 2020.

At least 30 Republican women from Texas have filed to run for election to Congress next year, more than twice as many as in the 2018 elections. That year, 13 women ran under the GOP banner while almost three times as many women ran in the Democratic primary, state and party records show.

“If we’re going to have a pink wave, you need to have red in there,” said Nancy Bocskor, a longtime GOP fundraiser who is now director of the Center for Women and Politics at Texas Woman’s University.

Political strategists say the boost is a reaction to the 2018 election after Democrats made major gains in the suburbs, flipping a dozen Texas House seats and coming within striking distance of defeating several established Republicans in statewide office. Bocskor likens it to a wake up call: “They were asleep at the switch, they were not prepared.”

[…]

The number of Republican women running for Congress is up, but still short of the enthusiasm from Democrats. This year, 34 Democratic women are running for Congress.

We went through a similar exercise last cycle, when three Democratic women were actually elected to Congress – Reps. Lizzie Fletcher, Veronica Escobar, and Sylvia Garcia. It’s good to have a diverse slate of candidates, but some nominations are worth more than others, and having multiple women in a given race is no guarantee that the odds of a woman winning are any better. Let’s take a closer look at the races to see who has a decent shot at getting nominated, and of winning in November if they do.

On the Republican side, there are two open seats in which the Republican nominee is a gold-plated cinch to win in November: CDs 11 and 13. In CD17, the Republican nominee will have excellent odds of winning, surely over 90%. In each of these races, there are female candidates running. None stand out as likely to make the runoff, but who knows. A win by a female candidate in any of these three primaries is by far the best chance of increasing the number of Republican women from Texas in Congress. From one, to two. And that’s assuming that incumbent Rep. Kay Granger doesn’t lose her primary, thus reducing the number of Republican women from Texas in Congress from one to zero.

There are also several high-profile races that could go either way, in which there’s a decent chance the Republicans could win:

– CD07, held by Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, in which Cindy Siegel is one of two women vying for the Republican nod. Wesley Hunt appears to have the establishment backing, however.
– CD32, held by Rep. Colin Allred, in which Genevieve Collins appears to be a strong contender.
– CD24, open seat being vacated by Rep. Kenny Marchant. Beth Van Duyne is the best known Republican hopeful.
– CD22, open seat being vacated by Rep. Pete Olson. Kathaleen Wall has moved in to dump more of her millions in a large primary field, but with the likes of Pierce Bush, Troy Nehls, and Greg Hill also running, she may once again fail to make the runoff.
– CD23, open seat being vacated by Rep. Will Hurd. Tony Gonzales is the establishment candidate, but there are some women also running.

I have no deep thoughts on who is or isn’t more likely to win than anyone else. I’m just saying that if I were a Republican and I cared about not looking entirely like an Anglo sausage party, I’d be rooting for a couple of these women to break through.

There are other women running in other Republican primaries, but none of the races will be remotely competitive. Ava Pate in CD18, where there are six people running to be the Republican nominee in a 75% Democratic district, is an example named in the story. I guarantee you, no one will mention Ava Pate’s name after the primary. (Fun fact: She was the Republican nominee in CD18 in 2018. See what I mean?)

On the Democratic side, Gina Ortiz Jones in CD23 and Wendy Davis in CD21 are almost certainly going to win those nominations, and they will both have decent chances of winning in November. All of the leading candidates in CD24 are women, and there are viable women running in CDs 02, 03, 10, 22, 25 (both candidates are women in that one), and 31, with varying levels of hope for November.

So, in a way the Republicans are in the same position Democrats were in 2018, in that there are a couple of open seats that are guaranteed to be theirs, so if they manage to nominate a woman for them they’ll absolutely increase the number of women in their Congressional caucus. Of course, Dems had the likes of Sylvia Garcia and Veronica Escobar to run for those seats in 2018. Republicans don’t appear to have anyone of similar stature this year. They do have some credible female candidates in other races where they can win. So do the Democrats, in more races and with better overall odds of those women making it through the primaries. Ask me again in May after the primary runoffs and we’ll see where things stand.

After-deadline filing review: Congress

Let’s continue our walk through the filings. I’m going to take a look at some of the interesting Congressional races, skipping over the ones we just looked at.

CD01: It’s still not remotely competitive, but I once again want to salute Hank Gilbert for fighting the good fight against the preposterous Louie Gohmert. Seriously, if you saw a character based on Gohmert in a TV show or movie, you’d be complaining about what an insulting and outdated stereotype of a Texan he was. If only. Anyway, Hank’s candidacy is a reminder that good people do exist everywhere, and that Louie Gohmert is also complicit in Trump’s Ukraine-related crimes.

CD03: In the end, Tanner Do did file, joining Sean McCaffity and Lulu Seikaly. Not a top tier race, but on the radar.

CD17: Rick Kennedy is running again. He’s joined in the primary by David Jaramillo and William Foster. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go pour one out for Chet Edwards.

CD21: It’s Wendy Davis and Jennie Lou Leeder, and that’s it. I’m actually a little surprised no one else jumped in, though the way Davis has been crushing it at fundraising, as well as her name brand, it’s not that surprising.

CD23: Basically, it’s Gina Ortiz Jones and a bunch of people who have not established much of a presence in the race. I do not understand why Rosey Abuabara has not filed a finance report. Liz Wahl, the first person connected with CD23 this cycle, did not file.

CD24: We’re familiar with the main players in this group – Kim Olson, Candace Valenzuela, Crystal Fletcher, Jan McDowell, John Biggan. I still feel like we could have won this seat last year with a stronger nominee. As long as we avoid that mistake this time, we should have a great shot at it now.

CD25: Julie Oliver and Heidi Sloan, and that’s it. Another not-top-tier race, but still one to watch.

CD31: All five of the people mentioned here, plus one more, filed. I would really like to see at least one of them post a strong Q4 finance report.

Incumbents: We know about the challenges to Reps. Al Green and Sheila Jackson Lee, and of course the Henry Cuellar/Jessica Cisneros matchup is the marquee attraction. Other incumbents who face primary opponents: Joaquin Castro (CD20, two opponents), Eddie Bernice Johnson (CD30, three opponents), Marc Veasey (CD33, one opponent), Filemon Vela (CD34, two opponents), and Lloyd Doggett (CD35, one opponent). I do not expect any of them to have any trouble. All other Dem incumbents are unopposed in March.

Other races: None of these outside-the-Houston-area districts are competitive, but they all have contested primaries anyway: CDs 12, 13, 14, 26, 27. They contain a mix of new and repeat candidates. Godspeed to them all.

Next up, state offices (may break that into two posts), and judicial races. Let me know what you think.

The “Has Not Yet Filed” list

Today is the actual, official filing deadline. Anyone who has not filed for a spot in the primary by 6 PM today is not a candidate for a Democratic nomination in 2020. A whole lot of people have already filed, and a whole lot more will file today – I’m going to have a lot to talk about with this tomorrow and for the rest of the week – but there are still a few notable absences (with the caveat that the SOS list may not be complete). So with that in mind, here are the “why aren’t they there yet?” list to ponder as the hours tick down.

US Senate: MJ Hegar is not yet listed. John Love, the Midland City Council member who announced his candidacy in October, has ended his campaign, on the grounds that he lacked the time and finances. Good for him for recognizing his situation, and I hope he looks at 2022 for another possible statewide campaign. Eleven candidates have filed so far, Hegar will make it 12 when she makes it official.

US Congress: Reps. Joaquin Castro (CD20) and Colin Allred (CD32) are not on the list as of Sunday evening. Some of the more recent entrants in CDs 03 and 31 – Tanner Do, Chris Suprun, Dan Jangigian – are not yet on the list. Much-ballyhooed CD28 challenger Jessica Cisneros is not yet on the list. Wendy Davis has CD21 to herself right now, as Jennie Leeder has not yet appeared. CDs 19, 27, and 36 do not yet have Democratic candidates. And while this has nothing to do with our side, the Republican field in CD22 is mind-bogglingly large. Good luck with that.

Railroad Commissioner: Kelly Stone had not filed as of Sunday, but she has an event on her candidate Facebook page announcing her filing at 2:30 today. Former State Rep. Robert Alonzo has joined the field.

SBOE: All positions are accounted for. Letti Bresnahan remains the only candidate in District 5, the most flippable one on the board. I still can’t find any information online about her candidacy.

State Senate: No candidates yet in SDs 12, 18, 22, or 28. Not surprising, as none are competitive, but a full slate is still nice. Sens. Borris Miles and Eddie Lucio now each have two opponents, the field in SD19 is four deep, and Rep. Cesar Blanco still has SD29 all to himself.

State House: Far as I can tell, the only incumbent who hasn’t filed yet is Rep. Rene Oliveira in HD37. Of the top targets for 2020 based on Beto’s performance, HDs 23, 43, and 84 do not yet have Democratic candidates. Those are if not the bottom three on the competitiveness scale, with the first two trending away from us, they’re close to it. If they go unfilled it will still be a waste, but about the smallest possible waste. Rep. Ron Reynolds does not have a challenger. Sean Villasana, running for the HD119 seat being vacated by Rep. Roland Gutierrez as he runs for SD19, has the field to himself so far. In all of the big counties, the only one missing a Dem right now is HD99 in Tarrant, which is not particularly competitive.

District Courts: Limiting myself to Harris County, Judges Jaclanel McFarland (133rd Civil), Ursula Hall (165th Civil), Elaine Palmer (215th Civil), and George Powell (351st Criminal) have not filed. Other candidates have filed in the 165th and 351st, as have candidates in the 337th Criminal (Herb Ritchie) and 339th Criminal (Maria Jackson) where the incumbents are known to not be running again. Alex Smoots-Thomas now has an opponent for the 164th, and I am told another may be on the way.

Harris County offices: All of the candidates I’ve tracked for District Attorney, County Attorney, Sheriff, and Tax Assessor have now filed; I’m told another candidate may be filing for Tax Assessor, but I don’t know any more than that. David Brown has not yet filed for HCDE Position 7 At Large, but he was at the CEC meeting yesterday and I expect to see him on the ballot. Luis Guajardo has not yet filed for Commissioners Court in Precinct 3. There’s still no JP candidates in Precincts 4 and 8, and no Constable in Precinct 8. And Precinct 1 Constable Alan Rosen is still missing. Could that mean something? We’ll find out today. I’ll have a report tomorrow.

Our first Congressional race ratings

From Politico, here’s the early view of the state of Texas’ Congressional races in 2020.

Lean Dem

CD23 (Open, R)
CD32 (Allred, D)

Tossup

CD07 (Fletcher, D)
CD22 (Open, R)
CD24 (Open, R)

Lean GOP

CD02 (Crenshaw, R)
CD10 (McCaul, R)
CD21 (Roy, R)
CD31 (Carter, R)

Likely GOP

CD03 (Taylor, R)
CD06 (Wright, R)
CD17 (Open, R)
CD25 (Williams, R)

The rest are all Solid for their respective parties. A few thoughts:

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher

– I think they are underrating CD07. It’s a Lean Dem to me, based on Rep. Fletcher’s performance, the continued anti-Trump atmosphere, the overall strength of the HCDP and the overall weakness of the Harris County GOP. Until and unless I see something to make me think otherwise, CD07 and CD32 are equivalent.

– The three Republican-held-but-open seats that are Lean Dem or Tossup seem right to me. I’ve been burned by CD23 before, but I’ve chosen to believe that Rep. Will Hurd had some special sauce that enabled him to survive two elections he really should have lost. We’ll see if I’m right about that or if this district will bedevil us again.

– The Lean GOP districts sure seem to be on a spectrum. On the one end, CD10 was carried by Beto O’Rourke in 2018, and all three Dems are raising good money; CD21 is a bit redder, but Wendy Davis is killing it in fundraising. On the other end, we still have no idea who might emerge as a serious contender in CD31, while Dan Crenshaw is getting Will Hurd levels of undeserved media attention, while also sitting on three million bucks in his campaign coffers. Both are trending in the right direction, and Elisa Cardnell is a good candidate (who now has a primary opponent), but it’s not hard to imagine these races being classified as “likely GOP” in the future or by other prognosticators.

– The Likely GOP districts seem about right, though the inclusion of CD17 is optimistic, to put it mildly, even if it is an open seat and even if the Ukraine-compromised Pete Sessions is the GOP nominee. (Unless someone persuades Chet Edwards to jump in, which would change things considerably.) CDs 03 and 06 have candidates with fundraising potential, and could possibly get upgraded if everything goes well. CD25 is a step behind them, but having it on the radar at all is a sign of how much things, and the perception of things, have changed since 2016.

– We’re getting way, way ahead of ourselves, but the GOP is going to have to think long and hard about what the landscape is going to look like over the next decade. The 2011/2013 gerrymander worked very well for them in a state that was 55-60% Republican. In a state that’s a tossup or close to it, they have a lot of seats to defend. Texas will get more Congressional seats in 2021, assuming its idiotic penury in supporting the Census doesn’t cause a dramatic undercount, which will give a bit more latitude, but the basic questions about how many reasonably safe GOP seats the state can support will remain. And if the Dems take the State House and gain leverage over the process, those questions will get even trickier for them.