Chrysta Castaneda

Luke Warford announces for Railroad Commissioner

He’s got the right idea about what to run on.

Luke Warford

A 32-year-old former top staffer for the Texas Democratic Party is running for a spot on the three-person commission regulating the state’s oil and gas industry, hoping to unseat Republican incumbent Wayne Christian with a chief focus on the power grid failure earlier this year.

Luke Warford, the party’s former chief strategy officer, said in an interview with The Texas Tribune that he is running for the Texas Railroad Commission “because I genuinely think this is one of the most important elected offices in the state and because the current people serving on the commission are only looking out for their interests and the interests of their friends, not the interests of Texans.”

“No time was that clearer than during the winter storm,” Warford said, faulting the commission for not doing enough to ensure natural gas companies “weatherize” their facilities, or prepare them for extreme weather.

Christian announced months ago that he would seek a second term in 2022, and Warford is an underdog. The 2020 Democratic nominee for railroad commissioner, Chrysta Castañeda, lost by 9 percentage points, despite getting national money and facing a little-known Republican, Jim Wright, who had unseated an incumbent in the primary.

Warford is undeterred, saying he believes the grid failure “fundamentally changes the calculus” for the race. The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll found that voters are very dissatisfied with how lawmakers responded to the crisis, with 18% approving and 60% disapproving.

Warford may or may not have the primary to himself – filing season still hasn’t begun, so we just don’t know yet. He may be a great candidate on paper, but we’ve all seen good candidates struggle to make themselves known to primary voters because they don’t have any money, and we know what kind of random results we can get because of it. So while I’m glad to see him in the race and I’m especially glad to see the issues he wants to prioritize, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

All that said, Warford has the right idea for how to position this campaign. The freeze and the blackout are necessarily going to be big issues, and the Railroad Commission is uniquely placed to do something about what happened. I fully expect there will be similar messaging from the top of the ticket, which will help. I mean, probably 90% of the state has no idea who or what the Railroad Commission is, but thanks to that deeply scarring incident from earlier this year, more people have likely at least seen a mention of it, and should be receptive to hearing about what they have (not) done and what they can do to make sure another disastrous freeze-induced blackout doesn’t happen again.

Both incumbent Wayne Christian, a former backbencher in the Lege, and Democrat Grady Yarbrough, an annoying perennial candidate, were bigtime underperformers in the 2016 election. Both got the fewest votes for their party on the statewide ballot. Nearly 750K voters, a bit more than 8.5% of the total, picked one of the third-part candidates instead. Some of that is because voters’ attention tends to wander a bit in those lower-profile races, and some of that was because those two were and are unqualified chuckleheads. We can at least take care of our side of that equation this year. Beyond that, raising enough money to make sure the voters know who’s who on this ballot is going to be critical. I welcome Luke Warford to the race and hope he can pull his weight and get the support he’s going to need if he’s the nominee. The Chron has more.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez to switch to CD34

Oct 28th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

And in doing so, he’s probably going to make it harder to hold onto CD15, the swingiest district in the state (as far as we can tell from 2020 data).

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez

U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, announced Tuesday he is running for reelection in the 34th Congressional District rather than his current 15th District.

Gonzalez had been considering the move due to redistricting, which made the 15th District more competitive for Republicans — and the 34th District safer for Democrats. U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Brownsville, is retiring in the 34th District, and he has voiced support for Gonzalez’s switch.

Gonzalez’s decision was made more likely by the final version of the congressional map that Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law Monday. The map redraws the 34th District to include Gonzalez’s residence.

[…]

Gonzalez was staring down a tough race in the 15th District, where he won reelection last year by a surprisingly close margin and his 2020 challenger, Monica De La Cruz, is running again with the support of national Republicans. She reiterated Monday she remains committed to the 15th District.

Under the map that Abbott signed Monday, the 15th District shifts from one that President Joe Biden won by 2 percentage points to one that Donald Trump would have carried by 3 points. The 34th District, meanwhile, goes from a district where Biden had a 4-point margin of victory to one that he would have swept by 16 points.

In the new map, both the 15th and 34th districts remain anchored in the Rio Grande Valley, with the 15th ending in Hidalgo County and the 34th ending in Cameron County. But the 34th District was revised to be more concentrated in the Valley, which is predominantly Democratic, and the 15th District was reconfigured to include fewer blue areas outside the Valley.

Gonzalez’s decision sets off a scramble to fill the Democratic primary in the 15th District. The primary has attracted at least two candidates in recent days: Ruben Ramirez, who ran for the seat in 2016, and Eliza Alvarado, an education advocate.

See here, here, and here for some background. I don’t blame anyone for wanting to be in an easier district, or for not wanting to move, but I imagine there are some teeth being gnashed at the DCCC right now. Rep. Gonzalez has two million bucks in the bank, and now none of that is going to be used to try to hold onto a close district. The Republicans are celebrating this news, and they should. It was exactly what they wanted.

All that said, CD15 is hardly a lost cause. Multiple Democrats carried it in 2020, specifically Chrysta Castaneda, Amy Clark Meachum, Gisela Triana, and Elizabeth Davis Frizell. Nearly every Dem carried CD15 by 10-12 points in 2018, with Lupe Valdez the main exception though she still did carry it. Dems had even broader margins in 2016.

Now, we’ve studied this stuff to death, and we know that Latino districts in many places took a hard turn away from Dems in 2020, with CD15 being high on that list. There’s lots of reasons to think this is part of a larger trend, the same trend that is pushing suburbs and more college-educated voters towards the Dems even as some Latinos move away from them. But so far it’s one election, and without Donald Trump on the ballot in 2022 who knows what the many lower-propensity voters who supported Trump last year will do. The main beneficiary here may be the Democrat who wins this primary.

Or maybe not. Maybe even if one of them wins in 2022, it will be super close and they’ll get wiped out in 2024, or they’ll spend however much time they have in Congress doing nothing but fundraising because they’ll always be a top national target. Again, I don’t blame anyone for not welcoming that fate, but it is what it is. It sure would have been nice to take one for the team.

One more thing:

State Rep. Alex Dominguez, D-Brownsville, had been considered a potential candidate for the 34th District, but with Gonzalez switching races, Dominguez may run for something else. His team confirmed Friday that he was instead exploring a primary challenge to state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville.

Fine by me!

Precinct analysis: Congress, part 2

Sep 21st, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

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
Congress, part 1

I didn’t want to leave the Congressional district analysis without looking at some downballot races, since I mentioned them in the first part. To keep this simple, I’m just going to compare 2020 to 2012, to give a bookends look at things. I’ve got the Senate race (there was no Senate race in 2016, another reason to skip that year), the Railroad Commissioner race, and the Supreme Court race with Nathan Hecht.


Dist   Hegar   Cornyn  Hegar% Cornyn%
=====================================
01    79,626  217,942  26.30%  71.90%
02   157,925  180,504  45.50%  52.00%
03   188,092  224,921  44.50%  53.20%
04    79,672  256,262  23.20%  74.70%
05   101,483  173,929  36.00%  61.70%
06   155,022  178,305  45.30%  52.10%
07   154,670  152,741  49.20%  48.60%
08   100,868  275,150  26.20%  71.50%
09   168,796   54,801  73.50%  23.90%
10   191,097  215,665  45.90%  51.80%
11    54,619  232,946  18.60%  79.20%
12   129,679  228,676  35.20%  62.00%
13    50,271  217,949  18.30%  79.40%
14   117,954  185,119  38.00%  59.60%
15   110,141  111,211  48.10%  48.60%
16   148,484   73,923  63.10%  31.40%
17   127,560  174,677  41.00%  56.20%
18   178,680   60,111  72.60%  24.40%
19    65,163  194,783  24.40%  73.00%
20   163,219   99,791  60.10%  36.80%
21   203,090  242,567  44.50%  53.10%
22   188,906  214,386  45.80%  52.00%
23   135,518  150,254  46.10%  51.10%
24   165,218  171,828  47.80%  49.70%
25   165,657  222,422  41.70%  56.00%
26   168,527  256,618  38.60%  58.70%
27    98,760  169,539  35.90%  61.70%
28   118,063  107,547  50.60%  46.10%
29    99,415   51,044  64.00%  32.80%
30   203,821   53,551  77.00%  20.20%
31   178,949  206,577  45.20%  52.20%
32   170,654  165,157  49.60%  48.00%
33   111,620   41,936  70.40%  26.50%
34   101,691   93,313  50.60%  46.50%
35   175,861   87,121  64.50%  32.00%
36    78,544  218,377  25.90%  71.90%


Dist   Casta   Wright  Casta% Wright%
=====================================
01    75,893  217,287  25.20%  72.20%
02   153,630  176,484  44.90%  51.60%
03   181,303  220,004  43.70%  53.00%
04    76,281  254,688  22.50%  75.00%
05   100,275  171,307  35.80%  61.20%
06   151,372  176,517  44.60%  52.00%
07   149,853  149,114  48.50%  48.20%
08    97,062  271,212  25.60%  71.40%
09   168,747   51,862  74.10%  22.80%
10   184,189  211,020  44.90%  51.40%
11    53,303  230,719  18.30%  79.10%
12   123,767  227,786  33.90%  62.50%
13    47,748  215,948  17.60%  79.50%
14   114,873  182,101  37.40%  59.40%
15   113,540  103,715  50.50%  46.10%
16   144,436   75,345  62.30%  32.50%
17   121,338  171,677  39.70%  56.20%
18   177,020   57,783  72.60%  23.70%
19    62,123  192,844  23.60%  73.20%
20   165,617   93,296  61.40%  34.60%
21   197,266  234,785  43.90%  52.30%
22   184,521  209,495  45.50%  51.60%
23   136,789  144,156  47.10%  49.60%
24   160,511  167,885  47.10%  49.20%
25   157,323  218,711  40.30%  56.00%
26   160,007  251,763  37.30%  58.70%
27    97,797  165,135  36.00%  60.80%
28   121,898  100,306  52.90%  43.60%
29   102,354   46,954  66.30%  30.40%
30   204,615   50,268  77.60%  19.10%
31   169,256  203,981  43.40%  52.30%
32   168,807  160,201  49.60%  47.10%
33   111,727   40,264  71.10%  25.60%
34   105,427   86,391  53.30%  43.70%
35   173,994   82,414  64.70%  30.60%
36    76,511  216,585  25.40%  72.00%


Dist Meachum    HechtMeachum%  Hecht%
=====================================
01    79,995  215,240  26.60%  71.50%
02   154,787  179,887  45.20%  52.50%
03   185,076  220,662  44.60%  53.10%
04    79,667  253,119  23.50%  74.50%
05   101,813  172,186  36.40%  61.50%
06   155,372  175,793  45.80%  51.80%
07   149,348  154,058  48.20%  49.70%
08    99,434  272,277  26.20%  71.60%
09   170,611   52,213  75.00%  22.90%
10   188,253  212,284  45.80%  51.60%
11    56,146  228,708  19.30%  78.50%
12   129,478  225,206  35.50%  61.80%
13    51,303  214,434  18.90%  78.90%
14   118,324  181,521  38.50%  59.10%
15   115,046  103,787  51.20%  46.20%
16   149,828   73,267  64.20%  31.40%
17   126,952  170,378  41.50%  55.70%
18   179,178   58,684  73.50%  24.10%
19    66,333  190,784  25.20%  72.30%
20   166,733   93,546  62.00%  34.80%
21   200,216  237,189  44.50%  52.80%
22   188,187  210,138  46.30%  51.70%
23   138,391  143,522  47.70%  49.50%
24   164,386  168,747  48.10%  49.40%
25   162,591  218,370  41.60%  55.80%
26   168,621  251,426  39.10%  58.30%
27   100,675  164,273  37.10%  60.50%
28   122,263   99,666  53.50%  43.60%
29   101,662   48,349  66.00%  31.40%
30   207,327   50,760  78.50%  19.20%
31   172,531  198,717  45.00%  51.80%
32   169,325  163,993  49.60%  48.10%
33   112,876   40,077  71.80%  25.50%
34   104,142   84,361  53.80%  43.50%
35   177,097   82,098  66.00%  30.60%
36    78,170  216,153  26.00%  71.90%

	
Dist  Sadler     Cruz Sadler%   Cruz%
=====================================
01    76,441  169,490  30.55%  67.74%
02    84,949  155,605  34.35%  62.92%
03    88,929  168,511  33.52%  63.52%
04    69,154  174,833  27.60%  69.79%
05    73,712  130,916  35.14%  62.41%
06   100,573  143,297  40.12%  57.16%
07    89,471  141,393  37.73%  59.63%
08    55,146  190,627  21.88%  75.64%
09   140,231   40,235  76.35%  21.91%
10   103,526  154,293  38.76%  57.76%
11    45,258  175,607  19.93%  77.32%
12    77,255  162,670  31.22%  65.74%
13    43,022  175,896  19.12%  78.17%
14    97,493  142,172  39.77%  58.00%
15    79,486   62,277  54.55%  42.74%
16    91,289   56,636  59.66%  37.02%
17    82,118  130,507  37.31%  59.30%
18   145,099   45,871  74.37%  23.51%
19    52,070  155,195  24.37%  72.65%
20   106,970   73,209  57.47%  39.33%
21   115,768  181,094  37.32%  58.38%
22    90,475  157,006  35.74%  62.02%
23    86,229   98,379  45.28%  51.66%
24    90,672  147,419  36.88%  59.97%
25   101,059  155,304  37.79%  58.07%
26    77,304  173,933  29.66%  66.74%
27    81,169  125,913  38.11%  59.12%
28    90,481   68,096  55.14%  41.50%
29    71,504   38,959  63.27%  34.47%
30   168,805   44,782  77.58%  20.58%
31    89,486  138,886  37.46%  58.13%
32   103,610  141,469  41.03%  56.03%
33    81,568   33,956  68.96%  28.71%
34    79,622   60,126  55.23%  41.71%
35   101,470   56,450  61.37%  34.14%
36    63,070  168,072  26.66%  71.04%


Dist   Henry    Cradd  Henry%  Cradd%
=====================================
01    67,992  170,189  27.73%  69.41%	
02    78,359  155,155  32.30%  63.95%	
03    80,078  167,247  31.02%  64.80%	
04    64,908  170,969  26.53%  69.87%	
05    69,401  129,245  33.75%  62.86%	
06    96,386  141,220  39.03%  57.18%	
07    80,266  143,409  34.60%  61.81%	
08    51,716  188,005  20.83%  75.74%	
09   138,893   39,120  76.19%  21.46%	
10    94,282  153,321  36.00%  58.54%	
11    44,310  171,250  19.77%  76.42%	
12    72,582  160,255  29.85%  65.90%	
13    42,402  171,310  19.15%  77.36%	
14    96,221  137,169  39.91%  56.89%	
15    81,120   56,697  56.51%  39.50%	
16    90,256   49,563  60.67%  33.31%	
17    77,899  126,329  36.20%  58.70%	
18   142,749   44,416  73.97%  23.01%	
19    50,735  150,643  24.17%  71.76%	
20   102,998   72,019  56.19%  39.29%	
21   103,442  181,345  34.03%  59.66%	
22    85,869  155,271  34.42%  62.24%	
23    85,204   92,976  45.63%  49.79%	
24    83,119  146,534  34.52%  60.85%	
25    92,074  153,051  35.16%  58.44%	
26    71,177  172,026  27.82%  67.24%	
27    79,313  120,235  38.16%  57.84%	
28    94,545   59,311  58.53%  36.72%	
29    72,681   35,059  65.14%  31.42%	
30   166,852   43,206  77.43%  20.05%	
31    82,045  136,810  35.10%  58.52%	
32    92,896  143,313  37.69%  58.15%	
33    81,885   30,941  69.96%  26.43%	
34    82,924   50,769  58.78%  35.99%	
35    97,431   55,398  59.79%  34.00%	
36    62,309  161,751  26.88%  69.79%


Dist   Petty    Hecht  Petty%  Hecht%
=====================================
01    71,467  163,306  29.37%  67.11%
02    84,472  147,576  35.05%  61.23%
03    85,368  161,072  33.16%  62.56%
04    68,551  163,313  28.26%  67.31%
05    72,559  123,012  35.59%  60.34%
06   101,437  133,905  41.29%  54.51%
07    86,596  135,562  37.63%  58.90%
08    55,495  181,582  22.47%  73.53%
09   141,509   36,555  77.91%  20.13%
10   100,998  146,370  38.76%  56.17%
11    47,657  163,669  21.49%  73.81%
12    76,959  153,820  31.79%  63.53%
13    46,099  162,448  21.01%  74.02%
14   100,566  131,348  41.86%  54.67%
15    83,009   53,962  58.27%  37.88%
16    93,997   46,517  63.26%  31.31%
17    82,692  120,206  38.64%  56.16%
18   145,329   41,564  75.56%  21.61%
19    54,458  143,426  26.12%  68.80%
20   109,712   66,441  59.93%  36.29%
21   112,633  172,657  37.12%  56.90%
22    91,252  149,320  36.71%  60.06%
23    90,554   87,003  48.74%  46.83%
24    89,019  139,910  37.09%  58.29%
25    98,663  145,549  37.88%  55.87%
26    76,953  165,377  30.12%  64.73%
27    83,222  114,299  40.30%  55.36%
28    97,850   55,633  60.91%  34.63%
29    74,382   33,124  66.97%  29.82%
30   169,799   39,877  78.96%  18.54%
31    89,084  128,420  38.24%  55.13%
32    97,997  137,060  39.92%  55.84%
33    84,095   28,859  72.01%  24.71%
34    85,950   47,645  61.27%  33.96%
35   102,646   51,225  63.03%  31.46%
36    66,497  154,956  28.85%  67.24%

There are two things that jump out at me when I look over these numbers. The first actually has to do with the statewide totals. Joe Biden cut the deficit at the Presidential level nearly in half from 2012 – where Barack Obama trailed Mitt Romney by 1.26 million votes, Biden trailed Trump by 631K. The gains were not as dramatic in the Senate and RRC races, but there was progress. Ted Cruz beat Paul Sadler by 1.246 million votes, while John Cornyn beat MJ Hegar by 1.074 million; for RRC, Christi Craddock topped Dale Henry by 1.279 million and Jim Wright bested Chrysta Castaneda by 1.039 million. Not nearly as much progress, but we’re going in the right direction. At the judicial level, however, that progress wasn’t there. Nathan Hecht, then running for Supreme Court Place 6, won in 2012 by 908K votes, and he won in 2020 by 934K. That’s a little misleading, because in the only other contested statewide judicial race in 2012, Sharon Keller beat Keith Hampton for CCA by 1.094 million votes, and five out of the seven Dems running in 2020 did better than that. Still, the point remains, the judicial races were our weakest spot. If we really want to turn Texas blue, we will need more of an investment in these races as well.

One explanation for this is that Dem statewide judicial candidates didn’t do as well in at least some of the trending-blue places. Hegar and Castaneda both carried CD07, but only two of the Dem judicial candidates did, Staci Williams and Tina Clinton. All of them carried CD32, but none of them by more than two points, while Biden took it by ten; to be fair, Hegar won it by less than two, and Castaneda had the best performance with a 2.6 point margin. Maybe these folks were motivated by Trump more than anything else, and they didn’t see the judicial races in those terms. I have noted before that Dem judicial candidates did better in CD07 in 2018 than in 2020, so maybe the higher turnout included more less-likely Republicans than one might have expected. Or maybe these folks are in the process of becoming Democratic, but aren’t all the way there yet. Just something to think about.

On the flip side of that, while Hegar underperformed in the three closer-than-expected Latino Democratic districts CD15, CD28, and CD34 – Cornyn actually carried CD15 by a smidge – everyone else did better, and indeed outperformed Biden in those districts. The judicial candidates all carried CDs 28 and 34 by at least six points, with most in the 8-9 range and a couple topping ten, and all but two carried CD15 by a wider margin that Biden’s 1.9 points, with them in the three-to-five range. Still a disconcerting step back from 2012 and 2016, but at least for CDs 28 and 34 it’s still a reasonably comfortable margin. Maye this is the mirror image of the results in CDs 07 and 32, where the Presidential race was the main motivator and people were more likely to fall back on old patterns elsewhere. As with CDs 07 and 32, we’ll have to see where those trends go from here.

After however many entries in this series, I don’t have a whole lot more to say. We’ll be getting new maps soon, and we’ll have a better idea of what the immediate future looks like. I think the last two decades has shown us that there’s only so far out in the future that redistricting will be predictive in such a dynamic and growing state as Texas, but we have seen the winds shift more than once, so let’s not get too comfortable with any one idea. Whatever we get in this session is not etched in stone, and we still have some hope for federal legislation. For now, this is what we’re up against.

Precinct analysis: The median districts

Jun 14th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

This is a straightforward post, with a simple answer to an important question. We know that Joe Biden carried 74 State House districts and 15 State Senate districts. How much better did he need to do to get a majority in each chamber? Daily Kos calls this the “median district”. In this context, that means the data for the 76th-most Democratic House district, and the 16th-most Democratic Senate district. The idea is to see how far off the Dems were from being able to win those districts and thus claim a majority in each chamber.

We’ll start with the State House. The table below gives the data for the median district in each of the last three Presidential elections for the Presidential race, the Senate race (2012 and 2020 only), and the Railroad Commissioner race:


Year    Dist      Dem      GOP   Tot D
======================================
2012   HD138   39.29%   59.16%      54
2016    HD54   43.58%   50.50%      65
2020    HD54   48.85%   48.98%      74
				
2012    HD97   38.35%   58.88%      54
2020    HD92   46.04%   51.12%      68

2012    HD97   36.16%   59.58%      54
2016    HD66   37.77%   54.46%      56
2020    HD31   46.52%   50.55%      68

In 2012, the 76th-most Democratic district was HD138, in which Barack Obama received 39.29% of the vote to Mitt Romney’s 59.16%. This is a polite way of saying that the 2011 gerrymander was super effective, and the Democrats weren’t within hailing distance of winning half the chamber. The last column shows the total number of districts carried by the Democratic Presidential candidate. In 2012, this closely mirrored the total number of seats that the Dems actually won, which was 55. One Democratic-held seat was carried by Romney – HD23, the Galveston-based district won that year (and for the final time, as he declined to run again) by Craig Eiland. As you may recall from previous analyses, that district has trended away from the Dems ever since – in 2016, it was won 56-41 by Trump, and in 2020 it was 57-41 for Trump. Obama carried zero Republican-won seats – the closest he came was a 52-47 loss in HD43, another district that has moved farther away from Dems over the decade. He came within six points in three Dallas districts that Democrats now hold – HDs 113, 107, and 105. Like I said, an extremely effective gerrymander. Also a consistent one, as Paul Sadler and Dale Henry won the same districts Obama did, no more and no less.

Until it wasn’t, of course. The cracks began to show in 2016, when Hillary Clinton carried 65 districts, though Dems still only won 55 of them overall. HD23 fell to the Republicans in 2014, but Dems earned their first flip of the decade (*) by taking HD107, which as noted above was one of the closer misses in 2012. The nine GOP-won districts that Hillary Clinton carried were HDs 113, 105, 115, 102, 112, 114, 138, 134, and 108. Seven of those are now Democratic districts, with six flipping in 2018 and one (HD134) flipping in 2020.

Note how Clinton ran ahead of other Dems as well. Perennial candidate Grady Yarbrough picked up only HD105, and that by a 45.9 to 44.6 margin (there was a lot of third-party voting in that extremely unappealing race), and it was the same at the judicial level. You may recall this is why I was more guarded in my optimism about 2018 initially – I had some doubts about what the Clinton/GOP voters would do their next time out.

We know how that turned out, and we know how Biden did, as well as how MJ Hegar and Chrysta Castaneda did in 2020. Look at how the median district shifted over time. In 2012, the 76th district was more Republican than the Presidential race was, at each level. In 2016, the median district looked a lot like the Presidential race, and to be honest a lot like the RRC race as well; Wayne Christian defeated Grady Yarbrough 53.1 to 38.4, a bit closer than the median but not far off. In 2020, at all levels, the median district was closer than the statewide race was. Republicans outperformed their baseline in the House, and they needed to because by this point their vaunted gerrymander had completely failed them. I have to think this is something they’re giving serious thought to for this time around.

Here’s the same data for the State Senate districts:


Year    Dist      Dem      GOP   Tot D
======================================
2012    SD08   36.60%   61.67%      11
2016    SD09   41.75%   53.09%      12
2020    SD09   48.30%   50.00%      15

2012    SD08   35.94%   61.05%      11
2020    SD09   45.40%   51.70%      13

2012    SD08   33.34%   62.19%      11
2016    SD08   36.19%   55.94%      11
2020    SD09   44.60%   51.60%      13

It’s a similar pattern as above. In 2012, Mitt Romney carried SD10, which Wendy Davis won in a hard-fought race. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried SD16 by a 49.9 to 45.3 margin, and just missed in SD10, losing it 47.9 to 47.3; she also came within a point of SD17. The median district was a little friendlier to the GOP in 2016, but in 2020 as with the House it was closer than the corresponding statewide race. Again, the once-solid gerrymander buckled at the knees, aided in large part by the suburban shift. Dems also managed to hold onto all of the red-shifting Latino districts, while Biden dropped two of them in the House.

What does any of this mean going forward? I have no idea. I’m seeing map proposals for Congress that are pretty brutal, but who knows what we’ll get in 2022, and who knows how population growth and the shifts in suburban and (mostly rural) Latino areas will affect things. Texas is a more challenging state than the likes of Wisconsin or Michigan to control over an entire decade precisely because it changes so much in that time. Republicans will have some opportunities for gain in 2022, but they also have a lot of vulnerabilities, and their best defense may be to just try to shore up everything they now have. The choices they make, based to some degree on their level of risk tolerance, will be fascinating to see.

Precinct analysis: State House districts 2020, part 2

Jun 7th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Today’s post is going to be an analysis of the State House districts from the perspective of the US Senate and Railroad Commissioner races. We have already observed in other contexts how Joe Biden outran the rest of the Democratic ticket, and we will see that here as well. But it’s a little more nuanced than that, because of the Latino vote and the Trump shift, which we have characterized as being mostly about Trump. The Texas Signal boiled down one piece of research on that as follows:

In an interview with Texas Signal, the Executive Director of Cambio Texas, Abel Prado, walked us through some of the big takeaways from their post-election report. One of his first points from the report was that many of the voters who came out in the Rio Grande Valley were specifically Donald Trump voters, and not necessarily Republican voters.

Many of Trump’s traits, including his brashness, a self-styled Hollywood pedigree, his experience as a businessman, and his billionaire status, resonated with many voters in the Rio Grande Valley. “The increase in Republican vote share were Donald Trump votes, not conservative votes, and there’s a difference,” said Prado.

Hold that thought, we’ll get to it in a bit. I’m going to present the data here in the same order as I did in the previous post, with the results from the Senate race (MJ Hegar versus John Cornyn) and the RRC race (Chrysta Castaneda versus Jim Wright) grouped together. We will start with the Republican districts that Biden carried:


Dist    Hegar   Cornyn   Hegar%  Cornyn%
========================================
026    40,478   43,650    47.1%    50.8%
066    42,688   42,768    48.9%    49.0%
067    47,484   46,775    49.2%    48.5%
096    42,210   44,471    47.5%    50.0%
108    50,639   49,689    49.4%    48.5%
112    34,800   32,591    50.2%    47.0%
121    44,062   49,365    46.0%    51.2%
132    48,460   50,865    47.5%    49.8%
134    61,018   48,629    54.7%    43.6%
138    31,508   31,993    48.3%    49.1%

Dist    Casta   Wright   Casta%  Wright%
========================================
026    39,238   42,818    46.5%    50.8%
066    41,139   41,650    48.1%    48.7%
067    45,970   45,494    48.6%    48.1%
096    41,135   44,103    46.7%    50.1%
108    49,347   48,118    48.8%    47.6%
112    34,635   31,768    50.3%    46.2%
121    43,992   46,975    46.6%    49.8%
132    47,483   49,947    47.0%    49.4%
134    57,940   47,504    53.2%    43.6%
138    30,796   31,201    47.9%    48.6%

You don’t need to review the previous post to see that Hegar and Castaneda fell short of the standard Biden set. ~~Still, they carried 70 House districts, three more than were won by the Dems, and came within a point of two more~~. What we see here is the same thing we saw when we looked at these races in Harris County, which is not only that Joe Biden got more votes than these two Democrats, but John Cornyn and Jim Wright outperformed Donald Trump. These are your crossover voters, and the big question going into 2022 is what potential exists to swing them again, and in which races. Dems still fell short statewide in 2020 even with all those voters, but the hill is less steep with them than without them.

UPDATE: Correction – Hegar and Castaneda carried 68 House districts, one more than the total won by Dems. They carried GOP-won HDs 67, 108, and 112 and lost Dem-won HDs 31 and 74, for a net increase of one. I managed to confuse myself with the math by basing the calculation on that table above. They were still within a point of two other districts as shown above.

Here are the near-miss and reach districts for Biden:


Dist    Hegar   Cornyn   Hegar%  Cornyn%
========================================
014    27,435   35,269    42.2%    54.3%
028    54,571   65,387    44.6%    53.4%
029    43,327   52,292    44.2%    53.4%
054    34,462   36,551    47.1%    49.9%
064    39,350   47,395    43.8%    52.8%
092    36,564   40,601    46.0%    51.1%
093    37,934   44,925    44.4%    52.6%
094    34,826   39,970    45.3%    52.0%
097    42,210   44,471    47.4%    50.0%
122    51,835   72,452    40.9%    57.1%
126    33,618   39,298    44.9%    52.5%
133    38,149   51,111    41.9%    56.2%

032    29,613   38,322    43.5%    53.4%
070    48,246   77,306    37.5%    60.1%
084    22,626   35,019    37.8%    58.5%
085    32,212   43,653    41.5%    56.3%
089    40,761   57,531    40.5%    57.1%
106    53,674   73,313    41.2%    56.3%
129    35,924   48,318    41.5%    55.8%
150    39,872   56,019    40.5%    56.9%

Dist    Casta   Wright   Casta%  Wright%
========================================
014    25,863   34,522    40.7%    54.3%
028    53,363   64,123    44.3%    53.2%
029    42,256   51,097    43.7%    52.9%
054    33,036   36,749    45.4%    50.5%
064    37,396   46,264    42.5%    52.6%
092    35,180   40,269    44.8%    51.3%
093    36,501   44,700    43.2%    52.9%
094    33,630   39,603    44.3%    52.1%
097    35,954   44,647    43.0%    53.4%
122    51,488   69,624    41.2%    55.7%
126    32,979   38,409    44.6%    52.0%
133    36,456   50,069    40.9%    56.2%

032    28,939   36,856    42.2%    53.7%
070    46,349   75,914    36.6%    60.0%
084    21,625   34,530    36.8%    58.8%
085    31,967   42,990    41.6%    55.9%
089    39,378   56,345    39.8%    56.9%
106    50,925   71,782    39.9%    56.3%
129    35,326   46,707    41.5%    54.8%
150    38,995   55,111    40.0%    56.6%

Not a whole lot to say here. The near-misses look farther away, and the reaches look out of reach. It’s important to remember that a lot of these districts weren’t on anyone’s radar going into 2016, and that the trend has been heavily favorable to the Democrats. We certainly hope those trends continue, but even if they do that doesn’t mean the district in question is on the verge of being competitive.

Here are the districts that Trump won or came close it. For this, I’m going to reprint the Biden/Trump numbers, to make it easier to illustrate the point I want to make.


Dist    Hegar   Cornyn   Hegar%  Cornyn%
========================================
031    23,609   28,980    43.5%    53.4%
074    22,397   25,232    45.5%    51.2%

034    27,567   26,236    49.8%    47.4%
035    22,735   18,926    52.7%    43.8%
080    25,339   19,960    54.1%    42.6%

038    28,050   20,464    56.2%    41.0%
041    29,594   24,797    52.8%    44.3%
117    49,759   40,386    53.6%    43.5%
118    31,726   25,841    53.5%    43.6%
144    16,246   14,108    51.8%    45.0%

Dist    Casta   Wright   Casta%  Wright%
========================================
031    24,700   26,837    46.5%    50.5%
074    22,942   23,836    47.4%    49.2%

034    27,816   24,985    51.0%    45.8%
035    23,684   17,094    56.2%    40.5%
080    25,945   18,750    56.2%    40.6%

038    29,097   18,502    59.2%    37.7%
041    30,611   22,881    55.5%    41.5%
117    49,871   38,567    54.2%    41.9%
118    32,568   24,454    55.2%    41.5%
144    16,851   13,251    54.1%    42.6%

Dist    Biden    Trump   Biden%   Trump%
========================================
031    25,315   33,101    42.9%    56.1%
074    23,478   27,319    45.6%    53.1%

034    29,226   26,606    51.7%    47.0%
035    24,991   21,049    53.8%    45.3%
080    26,251   22,543    53.3%    45.8%

038    29,116   21,573    56.8%    42.1%
041    31,956   25,187    55.5%    43.7%
117    53,983   39,495    56.8%    41.6%
118    34,228   25,848    56.2%    42.4%
144    17,365   14,599    53.6%    45.0%

We don’t see the same pattern here that we did before. In these districts, Trump is outrunning Cornyn and Wright. Biden is still outperforming Hegar and Castaneda, but not by as much. That makes HDs 31 and 74 closer, especially for Castaneda. This suggests two things to me. One is that as was claimed in that Texas Signal story, there really was more of a Trump effect than a Republican shift. It also appears that Castaneda benefitted from her Latina surname; one could also argue that Cornyn got some incumbent benefit as well. The main point is that the story of these districts is a little more nuanced than some of the discourse would have you believe. Doesn’t mean there aren’t issues for Dems to confront, just that it’s not a one-dimensional situation.

Finally, here are the districts that the Dems picked up in the 2016 and 2018 cycles.


Dist    Hegar   Cornyn   Hegar%  Cornyn%
========================================
045    57,413   54,996    49.5%    47.4%
047    69,906   66,452    50.2%    47.7%
052    51,448   45,369    51.6%    45.5%
065    40,789   38,039    50.3%    46.7%
102    37,879   29,970    54.5%    43.1%
105    31,769   24,477    54.8%    42.2%
107    34,360   26,248    55.1%    42.1%
113    36,185   31,239    52.2%    45.0%
114    42,291   36,918    52.3%    45.6%
115    39,307   31,859    53.8%    43.6%
135    37,050   36,728    48.9%    48.4%
136    55,420   44,710    53.8%    43.4%

Dist    Casta   Wright   Casta%  Wright%
========================================
045    54,943   53,725    48.2%    47.1%
047    66,419   64,426    48.7%    47.3%
052    48,688   44,402    49.7%    45.3%
065    39,040   36,949    49.2%    46.6%
102    37,549   28,844    54.5%    41.9%
105    31,723   23,639    55.2%    41.1%
107    34,364   25,234    55.5%    40.8%
113    36,116   30,540    52.4%    44.3%
114    42,043   35,411    52.6%    44.3%
115    38,704   30,803    53.5%    42.6%
135    36,487   35,845    48.6%    47.8%
136    52,576   43,535    52.0%    43.0%

Even with the erosion of support from the top of the ticket, Dems still held these districts at the Senate and RRC level. The gain were maintained. I know what the narrative for 2020 was, but it’s hard for me to see that as anything but a rousing success.

Precinct analysis: Fort Bend County, part 1

Feb 1st, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

I’ve finally run out of Harris County races from 2020 to analyze, so let’s move over to Fort Bend County. I’ve said before that while Fort Bend provides downloadable Excel files on their county elections page, they format these results in a way that makes it harder for me to do the same analysis I do with Harris County. Basically, Harris County puts all the results on one worksheet, with the totals for every candidate given in each precinct. For district races, that means a blank in the results when the precinct in question is not in that district, but the cell for that district is there. That makes it super easy for me to use Excel functions to add up the vote totals for, say, the Presidential candidates in the precincts where, say, the HD134 voters are. I can do practically every race in a matter of an hour or two, and indeed I spend more time formatting the blog posts than I do the calculations.

Fort Bend, on the other hand, separates each race into its own worksheet, which is fine in and of itself, except that for district races they only include the precincts for that race on the worksheet in question. That completely nullifies the formulas I use for Harris County, and when I went and looked to see how I did it in 2016, I saw that I manually added the relevant cells for each of the countywide races, an approach that is inelegant, labor intensive, and prone to error. But it was the best I could do, so I did it again that way here. I can tell you that my results are not fully accurate, and I know this because the subtotals don’t add up correctly, but they’re close enough to suffice. The one exception is for the County Commissioner precincts, which are fully grouped together in Fort Bend – each precinct number is four digits, with the first digit being a one, two, three, or four, and that first digit is the Commissioner precinct. So those at least are easy to add up correctly. The rest is messy, but I did the best I could. When the official state reports come out in March and they’re off from mine, you’ll know why.

Anyway. That’s a lot of minutia, so let’s get to the numbers.


Dist    Trump    Biden    Lib    Grn
====================================
CD09   15,527   52,998    414    292
CD22  142,191  142,554  2,614    799
				
HD26   42,389   45,097    743    283
HD27   24,191   59,921    576    296
HD28   65,043   61,103  1,212    313
HD85   26,661   29,016    503    197
				
CC1    37,765   40,253    699    261
CC2    18,054   52,525    441    307
CC3    61,437   49,976  1,120    247
CC4    40,460   52,798    768    276

Dist   Trump%   Biden%   Lib%   Grn%
====================================
CD09   22.43%   76.55%  0.60%  0.42%
CD22   49.34%   49.47%  0.91%  0.28%
				
HD26   47.89%   50.95%  0.84%  0.32%
HD27   28.47%   70.51%  0.68%  0.35%
HD28   50.95%   47.86%  0.95%  0.25%
HD85   47.29%   51.47%  0.89%  0.35%
				
CC1    47.82%   50.97%  0.89%  0.33%
CC2    25.31%   73.64%  0.62%  0.43%
CC3    54.48%   44.31%  0.99%  0.22%
CC4    42.90%   55.99%  0.81%  0.29%


Dist   Cornyn    Hegar    Lib    Grn
====================================
CD09   15,345   49,730  1,082    639
CD22  145,632  129,254  4,277  1,473
				
HD26   43,650   40,478  1,264    506
HD27   24,695   55,984  1,308    672
HD28   66,532   55,483  1,859    580
HD85   26,653   26,678    949    355
				
CC1    38,088   37,124  1,318    447
CC2    17,948   49,130  1,123    626
CC3    63,061   45,045  1,614    489
CC4    41,877   47,685  1,304    550

Dist  Cornyn%   Hegar%   Lib%   Grn%
====================================
CD09   22.97%   74.45%  1.62%  0.96%
CD22   51.89%   46.06%  1.52%  0.52%
				
HD26   50.82%   47.12%  1.47%  0.59%
HD27   29.88%   67.73%  1.58%  0.81%
HD28   53.46%   44.58%  1.49%  0.47%
HD85   48.78%   48.83%  1.74%  0.65%
				
CC1    49.48%   48.23%  1.71%  0.58%
CC2    26.08%   71.38%  1.63%  0.91%
CC3    57.22%   40.87%  1.46%  0.44%
CC4    45.81%   52.16%  1.43%  0.60%

Dist   Wright    Casta    Lib    Grn
====================================
CD09   14,727   50,118    923    769
CD22  142,842  125,932  4,794  2,479
				
HD26   42,848   39,268  1,367    860
HD27   23,874   55,827  1,267    850
HD28   65,253   54,232  2,115  1,011
HD85   26,165   26,418    968    521
				
CC1    37,302   36,877  1,341    640
CC2    17,328   49,299    984    776
CC3    61,909   43,760  1,924    863
CC4    41,027   46,114  1,468    969

Dist  Wright%   Casta%   Lib%	Grn%
====================================
CD09   22.13%   75.32%  1.39%  1.16%
CD22   51.75%   45.62%  1.74%  0.90%
				
HD26   50.80%   46.56%  1.62%  1.02%
HD27   29.18%   68.23%  1.55%  1.04%
HD28   53.22%   44.23%  1.72%  0.82%
HD85   48.39%   48.86%  1.79%  0.96%
				
CC1    48.98%   48.42%  1.76%  0.84%
CC2    25.34%   72.09%  1.44%  1.13%
CC3    57.08%   40.35%  1.77%  0.80%
CC4    45.80%   51.48%  1.64%  1.08%

The first number to consider is not about any of the districts. It’s simply this: John Cornyn received 3K more votes in Fort Bend County than Donald Trump did, but MJ Hegar got over 16K fewer votes than Joe Biden. Jim Wright got about as many votes as Trump did, but Chrysta Castaneda got 19K fewer votes than Biden. That trend continued in the district races as well. Troy Nehls got 2K more votes than Trump did in CD22, while Sri Kulkarni got 19K fewer votes. Jacey Jetton got a thousand more votes than Trump did in HD26, while Sarah DeMerchant got 4,500 fewer votes than Biden did. Biden clearly got a few Republican crossover votes, but by far the difference between his performance and everyone else’s on the ballot was that there was a significant number of people who voted for Joe Biden and then didn’t vote in other races. That was just not so on the Republican side.

I don’t have a single explanation for this. It’s a near reverse of what happened in Harris County in 2004, when George Bush clearly got some Democratic crossovers, but by and large there were a lot of Bush-only voters, while the folks who showed up for John Kerry generally stuck around and voted for the other Dems. I don’t think what happened here in Fort Bend is a function of straight ticket voting, or its removal in this case, because there’s a world of difference between someone who picks and chooses what races to vote in and someone who votes for President and then goes home – I just don’t believe that latter person would have selected the “straight Democratic” choice if it had been there. In 2004, my theory was that Bush was a brand name candidate who drew out more casual voters who didn’t really care about the other races, while Kerry voters were more hardcore. I don’t buy that here because if anything I would have expected the Trump voters to be more likely to be one and done. It’s a mystery to me, but it’s one that state and Fort Bend Democrats need to try to figure out. At the very least, we could have won HD26, and we could have elected Jane Robinson to the 14th Court of Appeals if we’d done a better job downballot here.

One other possibility I will mention: Sri Kulkarni wrote an article in the Texas Signal that analyzed his loss and cited a large disinformation campaign against him that contributed to his defeat. That may be a reason why the Libertarian candidate did as well as he did in that race. I don’t doubt Kulkarni’s account of his own race, but I hesitate to fully accept this explanation. Dems had a larger dropoff of the vote in CD09 as well – about 3K fewer votes for Hegar and Castaneda, less than 1K fewer for Cornyn and Wright – and the dropoff in CD22 was pretty consistent for other Dems as well, though Kulkarni did generally worse. It may have moved the needle somewhat against him, but it doesn’t explain what happened with other Dems. Again, someone with more time and resources available to them – the TDP, in particular – should do a deeper dive on this. I do believe that disinformation was an issue for Dems last year, and will be an increasing problem going forward, and we need to get our arms around that. I just believe there were other causes as well, and we need to understand those, too.

One more thing: Kulkarni ran a lot closer to the Biden standard in Harris County than he did in Fort Bend. Biden and Trump were virtually tied in CD22 in Harris County, with the vote going 21,912 for Trump to 21,720 for Biden; Nehls defeated Kulkarni 20,953 to 19,743 in Harris. That’s the kind of result that one can easily attribute to Biden crossovers, and doesn’t raise any flags about the level of undervoting. I haven’t looked at Brazoria County yet, but my point here is just that Fort Bend County was very different in its behavior than Harris County was. And again, for the Nth time, we need to understand why. That is the point I’m trying to sledgehammer home.

Moving on, HD28 was a steeper hill to climb than perhaps we thought it would be. Eliz Markowitz got about 1,500 fewer votes than MJ Hegar did, and about 300 fewer than Castanada, while Gary Gates outperformed both Jim Wright and John Cornyn. It should be noted that while Dems in general lost HD28 by 20 points or so in 2016, Markowitz and other Dems were losing it by ten or eleven points in 2020. In total vote terms, a gap of 16-18K votes in 2016 was reduced to 12-13K votes in 2020. The shift is real, and even if it didn’t net us any extra seats, it’s still there.

The other way that shift manifested was in the County Commissioner precincts. In 2016, Republicans won three of the four precincts, with two-term Democrat Richard Morrison in Precinct 1 finally getting unseated after he had won against badly tainted opponents in previous years. There was a lot of movement in the Dem direction in Precinct 4, however, and that came to fruition in 2018 when Ken DeMerchant (yes, Sarah’s husband) flipped that seat. As you can see, there was no retreat in CC4 in 2020, and it probably wouldn’t take too much tinkering to make Precinct 1 a fifty-fifty or better proposition for Dems. It didn’t happen in either county this year, but in 2024, aided by demography and maybe a bit of gerrymandering, both Harris and Fort Bend counties can have 4-1 Democratic majorities on their Commissioners Courts.

I do have totals for the other Fort Bend races, though they’re not dramatically different from what you see here. I will put them together in a future post just to have it on the record. As always, let me know what you think.

Precinct analysis: Comparing to 2012 and 2016

Dec 14th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts

I had meant to get to this last week, but SeditionPalooza took up too much of my time, so here we are. The intent of this post is to compare vote totals in each of the State Rep districts from 2012 to 2016, from 2016 to 2020, and from 2012 to 2020. The vote totals compared are from the Presidential and Railroad Commissioner races for each of these years, and for the Senate races from 2012 and 2020, as there was no Senate race in 2016.

President

								
Dist   12-16 R   12-16D   16-20R   16-20D   12-20R   12-20D
===========================================================
HD126   -3,207    5,285    6,100    9,611    2,893   14,896
HD127     -931    6,042    8,547   12,707    7,616   18,749
HD128      124    2,272    8,728    6,208    8,852    8,480
HD129   -3,226    5,992    8,844   11,033    5,618   17,025
HD130    2,216    6,749   14,229   13,325   16,445   20,074
HD131     -649    2,707    4,306    6,683    3,657    9,390
HD132    3,065   10,267   15,786   20,304   18,851   30,571
HD133   -7,791    8,688    5,592   12,018   -2,199   20,706
HD134  -10,938   15,346    6,692   17,904   -4,246   33,250
HD135   -2,571    6,505    6,664   11,473    4,093   17,978
HD137     -537    2,443    2,451    4,167    1,914    6,610
HD138   -2,804    6,451    6,537    9,433    3,733   15,884
HD139   -1,294    1,187    4,847    6,854    3,553    8,041
HD140     -733    4,416    4,146    1,855    3,413    6,271
HD141      222     -681    2,604    4,453    2,826    3,772
HD142      290    2,084    4,703    8,880    4,993   10,964
HD143   -1,042    3,226    4,500    1,495    3,458    4,721
HD144   -1,039    3,561    4,057    1,523    3,018    5,084
HD145   -1,291    5,594    5,310    5,088    4,019   10,682
HD146   -1,633     -884    2,459    6,864      826    5,980
HD147   -1,272    3,583    4,602    9,933    3,330   13,516
HD148   -1,489    8,544    5,634   10,180    4,145   18,724
HD149   -3,879    3,420    8,154    4,696    4,275    8,116
HD150      503    8,228   10,180   15,037   10,683   23,265
							
Total  -39,906  121,025  155,672  211,724  115,766  332,749

Senate

	
Dist    12-20R   12-20D
=======================
HD126    3,705   13,479
HD127    8,876   16,687
HD128    8,999    7,330
HD129    7,238   14,684
HD130   18,113   17,564
HD131    3,413    8,389
HD132   19,527   28,278
HD133    2,610   16,268
HD134    3,330   27,237
HD135    4,898   16,279
HD137    2,129    6,023
HD138    4,594   14,227
HD139    3,602    6,608
HD140    2,611    5,499
HD141    2,460    2,779
HD142    4,903    9,702
HD143    2,619    4,082
HD144    2,577    4,485
HD145    3,562   10,103
HD146    1,337    4,811
HD147    4,019   12,164
HD148    5,762   16,497
HD149    4,282    7,157
HD150   11,865   20,878
		
Total  137,031  291,210

RRC

								
Dist   12-16 R   12-16D   16-20R   16-20D   12-20R   12-20D
===========================================================
HD126   -1,676    3,559    4,735   10,131    3,059   13,690
HD127    1,006    4,180    6,933   13,217    7,939   17,397
HD128      989    1,200    7,749    6,681    8,738    7,881
HD129   -1,550    3,595    7,325   12,422    5,775   16,017
HD130    4,403    4,540   13,107   12,954   17,510   17,494
HD131     -465    1,814    3,419    6,824    2,954    8,638
HD132    4,638    8,171   14,267   19,768   18,905   27,939
HD133   -4,382    3,417    5,039   14,285      657   17,702
HD134   -5,177    6,106    5,497   23,976      320   30,082
HD135   -1,163    4,634    5,398   11,950    4,235   16,584
HD137     -132    1,538    1,929    4,571    1,797    6,109
HD138   -1,483    4,248    5,378   10,328    3,895   14,576
HD139     -551      -83    3,837    7,033    3,286    6,950
HD140     -321    2,969    2,874    2,855    2,553    5,824
HD141      181     -896    2,165    3,773    2,346    2,877
HD142      844    1,204    3,814    8,568    4,658    9,772
HD143     -550    1,586    3,148    2,910    2,598    4,496
HD144     -530    2,677    2,993    2,255    2,463    4,932
HD145     -531    3,369    3,983    7,142    3,452   10,511
HD146   -1,047   -2,256    1,853    7,402      806    5,146
HD147      104      536    3,510   11,837    3,614   12,373
HD148      665    4,416    4,945   12,352    5,610   16,768
HD149   -3,089    2,133    6,698    5,331    3,609    7,464
HD150    2,552    6,010    8,826   14,942   11,378   20,952
								
Total   -7,265   68,667  129,422  233,507  122,157  302,174

The columns represent the difference in vote total for the given period and party, so “12-16” means 2012 to 2016, “16-20” means 2016 to 2020, and “12-20” means 2012 to 2020. Each column has a D or an R in it, so “12-16R” means the difference between 2016 Donald Trump and 2012 Mitt Romney for the Presidential table, and so forth. In each case, I subtract the earlier year’s total from the later year’s total, so the “-3,207” for HD126 in the “12-16R” column for President means that Donald Trump got 3,207 fewer votes in HD126 than Mitt Romney got, and the “5,285” for HD126 in the “12-16D” column for President means that Hillary Clinton got 5,285 more votes than Barack Obama got. Clear? I hope so.

Note that there were 130K more votes cast in Harris County as a whole in 2016 than there were in 2012, and 320K more votes cast in the county in 2020 over 2016, which makes a grand total of 450K more votes in 2020 than 2012. Some districts grow faster than others, but as a general rule given the overall totals you should expect increases in each district to some extent.

I have left percentages and third party totals out of this discussion. As I have shown before, tracking changes in vote percentages can give a misleading view of whether the actual gap is growing or narrowing, and by how much. I also want to emphasize that in 2012, Harris County was very much a 50-50 proposition, and now it is very much not. Doing it this way help illustrate how and where that has happened, and by how much.

And yet, with all that said, I’m going to start with an observation about percentages. In 2012, Mitt Romney got 60% or more of the vote in eight State Rep districts – HDs 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 133, 138, and 150. Ted Cruz, running for Senate against Paul Sadler, got 60% or more of the vote in ten State Rep districts, the same eight as Romney plus HDs 132 and 135 – yes, the same 132 and 135 that Dems won in 2018. I didn’t publish an analysis of the RRC race from that year, but a review of the spreadsheet that I created at the time confirmed that Christi Craddick, running against Dale Henry, got 60% or more of the vote in eleven State Rep districts, the same ten as Cruz plus HD134. In other words, every single Republican-held State Rep district in Harris County in 2012 was at least a 60% Republican district in the Railroad Commissioner race. Mitt Romney, it should be noted, just missed getting to 60% in HDs 132 and 135, and was over 57% in HD134, as was Cruz. (Let’s just say Cruz fell way short of that mark in 2018.)

You can see how much the vote totals shifted at the Presidential level from 2012 to 2016. Trump got nearly 40K fewer votes than Romney, a combination of crossovers, third-party and write-in voting, and just the gentle degradation of the Republican brand, as you can see by Wayne Christian’s reduced vote totals from Christie Craddick. Still, in 2016, Donald Trump scored 60% or more of the vote in three State Rep districts: HDs 127, 128, and 130. In 2016, Wayne Christian, running for RRC against Grady Yarbrough, scored 60% or more of the vote in four State Rep districts: the three that Trump got plus HD150. And finally, in 2016, Eva Guzman, running for State Supreme Court, scored 60% or more of the vote in six State Rep districts: the four Christian got plus HDs 129 and 133. HDs 132 and 135 were clearly competitive at the Presidential level – Trump won 132 by four points and 135 by two points; he also lost HD138 by a hair. He lost votes compared to Romney in 18 of 24 districts.

It is certainly true that Republicans in general and Donald Trump in particular did better in 2020 than most people expected them to do – surely, they did better than I expected them to do. Trump gained 155K votes over his 2016 total, which put 2020 Trump more than 100K votes ahead of Mitt Romney. Even though Joe Biden gained 211K votes over Hillary Clinton, for a net gain of 56K, Trump had net gains on Biden in seven districts – HDs 128, 130, 140, 143, 144, 145, and 149, with the latter five being Democratic districts and four of the five being Latino. Still, Dems had a net gain from 2012 to 2020 in every district except HD128, and some of those gains were truly huge – just look at 133 and 134, for starters. And Trump’s gains in the Dem districts largely melted away by the time you got to the RRC race, with Chrysta Castaneda coming close to matching Jim Wright’s increases in 140, 143, and 144, and far exceeding him in 145. It’s hard to say from this what if any staying power the Trump gains may have, though Dems should be paying close attention to what happened there regardless.

Anyway, back to the percentages: In 2020, Donald Trump, John Cornyn, and Jim Wright scored 60% or more of the vote in two State Rep districts: HDs 128 and 130. The only statewide Republicans to score 60% or more in a third State Rep district were the statewide judicial candidates who did not have a Libertarian opponent – Jane Bland, Bert Richardson, Kevin Patrick, and David Newell – who also reached that level in HD127. I haven’t published the statewide judicial race analysis yet so you’ll have to take my word for it for now, but in any event I trust you see the pattern. This is what I mean when I say that Republicans just don’t have any spare capacity in Harris County, and that will present problems for them in redistricting. Look at the numbers in districts like 126 and 129 and 133 and 150 in 2020, and compare them to the numbers in 132 and 135 and 138 in 2012. Where do you think things are going to be in another couple of cycles?

I’ve thrown a lot of words and numbers at you, so I’ll wrap it up here. I hope this helps illustrate what I’ve been saying, about how Dem gains have largely come from huge steps forward in formerly Republican turf, and how there’s still very much room for Dems to improve in their strongholds. We need to keep building on our gains from this past decade as we proceed into the 20s. I’ll have a look at the statewide judicial races next. Let me know what you think.

Precinct analysis: Commissioners Court and JP/Constable precincts

Dec 10th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts

We now zoom in for a look at various county districts, which are also called “precincts”. I don’t know why we have County Commissioner precincts and JP/Constable precincts to go along with regular voting precincts – it makes for a certain amount of either monotony or inaccuracy when I have to write about them – but it is what it is. Dems made a priority of County Commissioner Precinct 3 and didn’t get it, but did flip a longstanding Republican Justice of the Peace bench.


Dist    Trump    Biden    Lib    Grn  Trump%  Biden%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
CC1    90,536  295,657  3,355  1,338  23.16%  75.64%  0.86%  0.34%
CC2   154,159  154,516  3,250  1,028  49.26%  49.37%  1.04%  0.33%
CC3   220,205  234,323  4,876  1,328  47.79%  50.86%  1.06%  0.29%
CC4   235,730  233,697  5,338  1,435  49.50%  49.08%  1.12%  0.30%

Dist    Trump    Biden    Lib    Grn  Trump%  Biden%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
JP1    85,426  182,182  3,199    822  31.45%  67.07%  1.18%  0.30%
JP2    35,864   51,624    741    330  40.50%  58.29%  0.84%  0.37%
JP3    53,543   70,746  1,055    375  42.59%  56.27%  0.84%  0.30%
JP4   232,147  199,750  4,698  1,250  53.02%  45.62%  1.07%  0.29%
JP5   199,292  236,253  4,525  1,384  45.14%  53.52%  1.03%  0.31%
JP6     8,554   28,500    357    158  22.77%  75.86%  0.95%  0.42%
JP7    17,977  104,457    835    464  14.53%  84.42%  0.67%  0.38%
JP8    67,827   44,681  1,409    346  59.36%  39.10%  1.23%  0.30%

Dist   Cornyn    Hegar    Lib    Grn Cornyn%  Hegar%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
CC1    94,601  278,805  6,735  3,743  24.20%  71.33%  1.72%  0.96%
CC2   152,772  144,150  6,038  2,703  48.82%  46.06%  1.93%  0.86%
CC3   229,016  214,734  7,608  3,129  49.71%  46.61%  1.65%  0.68%
CC4   241,839  216,469  8,836  3,314  50.79%  45.46%  1.86%  0.70%

Dist   Cornyn    Hegar    Lib    Grn Cornyn%  Hegar%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
JP1    93,109  167,648  4,655  2,101  34.28%  61.72%  1.71%  0.77%
JP2    35,186   48,126  1,638    946  39.73%  54.34%  1.85%  1.07%
JP3    52,663   67,120  2,257  1,121  41.89%  53.39%  1.80%  0.89%
JP4   235,664  186,072  8,077  2,923  53.82%  42.50%  1.84%  0.67%
JP5   205,996  217,791  7,543  3,288  46.66%  49.33%  1.71%  0.74%
JP6     8,342   26,680    795    472  22.20%  71.02%  2.12%  1.26%
JP7    19,157   99,241  2,051  1,291  15.48%  80.21%  1.66%  1.04%
JP8    68,111   41,480  2,201    747  59.61%  36.30%  1.93%  0.65%

Dist   Wright    Casta    Lib    Grn Wright%  Casta%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
CC1    90,035  276,291  7,330  5,863  23.03%  70.68%  1.88%  1.50%
CC2   146,598  145,934  6,329  3,756  46.84%  46.63%  2.02%  1.20%
CC3   223,852  208,983  9,167  5,678  48.59%  45.36%  1.99%  1.23%
CC4   236,362  212,151 10,305  5,711  49.64%  44.55%  2.16%  1.20%

Dist   Wright    Casta    Lib    Grn Wright%  Casta%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
JP1    90,194  163,531  5,804  3,640  33.20%  60.20%  2.14%  1.34%
JP2    32,881   49,373  1,605  1,218  37.13%  55.75%  1.81%  1.38%
JP3    50,924   67,644  2,207  1,398  40.51%  53.81%  1.76%  1.11%
JP4   230,575  183,069  9,233  5,036  52.66%  41.81%  2.11%  1.15%
JP5   200,704  213,004  8,895  5,800  45.46%  48.25%  2.01%  1.31%
JP6     7,490   27,172    730    651  19.94%  72.33%  1.94%  1.73%
JP7    17,970   98,421  2,115  2,039  14.52%  79.54%  1.71%  1.65%
JP8    66,109   41,145  2,542  1,226  57.86%  36.01%  2.22%  1.07%

First things first, the Justice of the Peace and Constable precincts are the same. There are eight of them, and for reasons I have never understood they are different sizes – as you can see, JPs 4 and 5 are roughly the size of Commissioners Court precincts, at least as far as voting turnout goes, JP1 is smaller but still clearly larger than the rest, and JP6 is tiny. When I get to have a conversation with someone at the county about their plans for redistricting, I plan to ask if there’s any consideration for redrawing these precincts. Note that there are two JPs in each precinct – Place 1 was up for election this cycle, with Place 2 on the ballot in 2022. The Constables are on the ballot with the Place 1 JPs. I’ll return to them in a minute.

You may recall from my first pass at Harris County data, Donald Trump had a super slim lead in Commissioners Court Precinct 2, home of Adrian Garcia. That was from before the provisional ballots were cured. There were something like five or six thousand provisional ballots, and overall they were pretty Democratic – I noted before that this almost pushed Jane Robinson over the top in her appellate court race – though they weren’t uniformly pro-Dem; Wesley Hunt in CD07 and Mike Schofield in HD132 netted a few votes from the provisionals, among those that I looked at more closely. In CC2, the provisional ballots put Joe Biden ever so slightly ahead of Trump, by a teensy but incrementally larger lead than Trump had had. MJ Hegar lost CC2 by a noticeable amount, and Chrysta Castaneda missed it by a hair.

Now, in 2018 Beto won CC2 by over six points. Every statewide candidate except for Lupe Valdez carried it, and every countywide candidate except for Lina Hidalgo carried it. Oddly enough, Adrian Garcia himself just squeaked by, taking the lead about as late in the evening as Judge Hidalgo did to claim the majority on the Court for Dems. I’d have thought Garcia would easily run ahead of the rest of the ticket, but it was largely the reverse. The conclusion I drew from this was that being an incumbent Commissioner was an advantage – not quite enough of one in the end for Jack Morman, but almost.

I say that for the obvious reason that you might look at these numbers and be worried about Garcia’s future in 2022. I don’t think we can take anything for granted, but remember two things. One is what I just said, that there’s an incumbent’s advantage here, and I’d expect Garcia to benefit from it in two years’ time. And two, we will have new boundaries for these precincts by then. I fully expect that the Dem majority will make Garcia’s re-election prospects a little better, as the Republican majority had done for Morman in 2011.

The bigger question is what happens with the two Republican-held precincts. I’ve spoken about how there’s no spare capacity on the Republican side to bolster their existing districts while moving in on others. That’s not the case here for Dems with Commissioners Court. Given free rein, you could easily draw four reasonable Dem districts. The main thing that might hold you back is the Voting Rights Act, since you can’t retrogress Precinct 1. The more likely play is to dump some Republican turf from Precincts 2 and 3 into Precinct 4, making it redder while shoring up 2 for the Dems and making 3 more competitive. I wouldn’t sit around in my first term in office if I’m Tom Ramsey, is what I’m saying.

I should note that Beto also won CC3, as did Mike Collier and Justin Nelson and Kim Olson, but that’s largely it; I didn’t go back to check the various judicial races but my recollection is that maybe a couple of the Dem judicials carried it. Overall, CC3 was still mostly red in 2018, with a few blue incursions, and it remained so in 2020. I feel like it would be gettable in 2024 even without a boost from redistricting, but why take the chance? Dems can set themselves up here, and they should.

What about the office Dems flipped? That would be Justice of the Peace, Place 1, where longtime jurist Russ Ridgway finally met his match. You will note that Precinct 5 Constable Ted Heap held on by a 51.5 to 48.5 margin, almost the exact mirror of Israel Garcia’s 51.4 to 48.6 win over Ridgway. What might account for the difference? For one, as we’ve seen, candidates with Latino surnames have generally done a couple of points better than the average. For two, it’s my observation that more people probably know their Constable’s name than either of their JPs’ names. Your neighborhood may participate in a Constable patrol program, and even if you don’t you’ve surely seen road signs saying that the streets are overseen by Constable so-and-so. I think those two factors may have made the difference; I’m told Garcia was a very active campaigner as well, and that could have helped, but I can’t confirm that or compare his activity to Dem Constable candidate Mark Alan Harrison, so I’ll just leave it as a second-hand observation. Dems can certainly aim for the Place 2 JP in Precinct 5, and even though Precinct 4 was in the red I’d really like to see someone run against Laryssa Korduba, who is (as of last report, anyway) the only JP in Harris County who no longer officiates weddings following the Obergefell ruling. She’s consistent about it, and acting legally by not doing any weddings, and that’s fine by me as a personal choice, but that doesn’t mean the people of Precinct 4 couldn’t do better for themselves. I’d like to see them have that choice in 2022.

Next up, some comparisons to 2012 and 2016. Next week, we get into judicial races and county races. Let me know what you think.

Precinct analysis: State Rep districts

Dec 9th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Introduction
Congressional districts

We move now to State Rep districts, which is my usual currency since they provide complete coverage of the county with no partial pieces. You can also get a much more nuanced view of how things have shifted over time. There are more numbers here since there are more districts, so buckle up.


Dist    Trump   Biden    Lib    Grn  Trump%  Biden%   Lib%   Grn%
=================================================================
HD126  38,651  36,031    740    264  51.07%  47.61%  0.98%  0.35%
HD127  53,644  38,409  1,024    215  57.50%  41.17%  1.10%  0.23%
HD128  49,349  23,343    742    198  67.02%  31.70%  1.01%  0.27%
HD129  47,389  38,941  1,125    246  54.03%  44.40%  1.28%  0.28%
HD130  69,369  35,958  1,298    220  64.92%  33.65%  1.21%  0.21%
HD131  10,508  45,904    331    192  18.46%  80.63%  0.58%  0.34%
HD132  50,223  51,737  1,190    360  48.52%  49.98%  1.15%  0.35%
HD133  47,038  43,262    965    201  51.43%  47.30%  1.06%  0.22%
HD134  42,523  67,811  1,356    238  37.99%  60.58%  1.21%  0.21%
HD135  36,114  39,657    862    246  46.98%  51.58%  1.12%  0.32%
HD137  10,382  22,509    308    144  31.14%  67.51%  0.92%  0.43%
HD138  31,171  34,079    703    226  47.10%  51.50%  1.06%  0.34%
HD139  15,691  46,918    511    241  24.76%  74.05%  0.81%  0.38%
HD140  10,259  22,819    227    150  30.67%  68.21%  0.68%  0.45%
HD141   7,443  37,222    289    178  16.49%  82.47%  0.64%  0.39%
HD142  14,187  43,334    469    189  24.39%  74.48%  0.81%  0.32%
HD143  13,229  25,318    282    141  33.95%  64.97%  0.72%  0.36%
HD144  14,598  17,365    308    150  45.03%  53.56%  0.95%  0.46%
HD145  15,393  28,572    462    185  34.50%  64.05%  1.04%  0.41%
HD146  10,938  45,784    439    204  19.07%  79.81%  0.77%  0.36%
HD147  14,437  56,279    734    278  20.13%  78.46%  1.02%  0.39%
HD148  20,413  41,117    901    203  32.59%  65.65%  1.44%  0.32%
HD149  22,419  32,886    428    172  40.10%  58.82%  0.77%  0.31%
HD150  55,261  42,933  1,125    287  55.48%  43.10%  1.13%  0.29%

Dist   Cornyn   Hegar    Lib    Grn Cornyn%  Hegar%   Lib%   Grn%
=================================================================
HD126  39,298  33,618  1,343    535  52.54%  44.95%  1.80%  0.72%
HD127  54,433  35,689  1,690    543  58.94%  38.64%  1.83%  0.59%
HD128  48,646  22,029  1,323    447  67.15%  30.41%  1.83%  0.62%
HD129  48,318  35,924  1,715    603  55.82%  41.50%  1.98%  0.70%
HD130  70,329  32,961  1,933    551  66.49%  31.16%  1.83%  0.52%
HD131  10,557  43,670    938    621  18.92%  78.28%  1.68%  1.11%
HD132  50,865  48,460  2,011    774  49.81%  47.46%  1.97%  0.76%
HD133  51,111  38,148  1,232    471  56.19%  41.94%  1.35%  0.52%
HD134  48,629  61,015  1,408    489  43.60%  54.70%  1.26%  0.44%
HD135  36,728  37,050  1,427    628  48.43%  48.86%  1.88%  0.83%
HD137  10,617  20,914    629    343  32.66%  64.34%  1.94%  1.06%
HD138  31,993  31,508  1,183    486  49.09%  48.35%  1.82%  0.75%
HD139  15,984  44,273  1,168    647  25.75%  71.33%  1.88%  1.04%
HD140   9,771  21,167    630    423  30.54%  66.17%  1.97%  1.32%
HD141   7,409  35,278    820    511  16.83%  80.14%  1.86%  1.16%
HD142  14,269  41,061  1,055    562  25.06%  72.10%  1.85%  0.99%
HD143  12,535  23,679    737    511  33.46%  63.21%  1.97%  1.36%
HD144  14,107  16,246    629    374  44.99%  51.81%  2.01%  1.19%
HD145  15,236  26,758    899    490  35.12%  61.68%  2.07%  1.13%
HD146  11,598  43,259    938    563  20.58%  76.76%  1.66%  1.00%
HD147  15,359  53,237  1,359    707  21.74%  75.34%  1.92%  1.00%
HD148  22,087  37,707  1,303    489  35.86%  61.23%  2.12%  0.79%
HD149  22,329  30,630    888    471  41.11%  56.39%  1.63%  0.87%
HD150  56,019  39,872  1,959    650  56.87%  40.48%  1.99%  0.66%

Dist   Wright   Casta    Lib    Grn Wright%  Casta%   Lib%   Grn%
=================================================================
HD126  38,409  32,979  1,562    942  51.98%  44.63%  2.11%  1.27%
HD127  53,034  35,348  1,948  1,026  58.05%  38.69%  2.13%  1.12%
HD128  47,576  22,153  1,382    605  66.34%  30.89%  1.93%  0.84%
HD129  46,707  35,326  2,084  1,095  54.81%  41.46%  2.45%  1.29%
HD130  69,295  31,825  2,387    981  66.32%  30.46%  2.28%  0.94%
HD131   9,786  43,714    930    899  17.69%  79.01%  1.68%  1.62%
HD132  49,947  47,483  2,288  1,389  49.40%  46.96%  2.26%  1.37%
HD133  50,069  36,455  1,636    998  56.16%  40.89%  1.83%  1.12%
HD134  47,504  57,938  2,155  1,239  43.65%  53.23%  1.98%  1.14%
HD135  35,845  36,487  1,706    988  47.78%  48.63%  2.27%  1.32%
HD137  10,168  20,606    695    589  31.72%  64.28%  2.17%  1.84%
HD138  31,201  30,796  1,377    859  48.57%  47.94%  2.14%  1.34%
HD139  15,235  44,188  1,166    895  24.78%  71.87%  1.90%  1.46%
HD140   8,840  21,955    515    509  27.78%  69.00%  1.62%  1.60%
HD141   6,885  35,470    766    654  15.73%  81.03%  1.75%  1.49%
HD142  13,584  41,134  1,041    788  24.02%  72.74%  1.84%  1.39%
HD143  11,494  24,467    657    563  30.91%  65.81%  1.77%  1.51%
HD144  13,250  16,851    603    417  42.58%  54.15%  1.94%  1.34%
HD145  14,246  27,135    903    703  33.14%  63.12%  2.10%  1.64%
HD146  10,964  42,686  1,034    947  19.71%  76.73%  1.86%  1.70%
HD147  14,711  52,289  1,554  1,199  21.09%  74.96%  2.23%  1.72%
HD148  21,527  36,656  1,580    869  35.50%  60.46%  2.61%  1.43%
HD149  21,458  30,419    976    727  40.05%  56.77%  1.82%  1.36%
HD150  55,111  38,995  2,186  1,127  56.57%  40.03%  2.24%  1.16%

There’s a lot here, and I’m going to try to limit the analysis in this post to just what’s here, since I will have a separate post that looks back at previous elections. I’m going to pick a few broad themes here and will continue when I get to that subsequent post.

It’s clear that the big districts for Republicans crossing over to vote for Biden were HDs 133 and 134. Biden basically hit Beto’s number in 134, and he made 133 nearly as competitive as 126. The same effect is visible but smaller in 126, 129, 138, and 150, but it’s more noticeable in the lower downballot Democratic total than the Republican number. Some of those votes migrate to third party candidates, some may be people just voting at the Presidential level – it’s hard to say for sure. In 2016, there were bigger third party totals at the Presidential level, but this year those numbers were more like prior norms.

However you look at this, the fact remains that Republicans don’t have a lot of areas of strength. Only HDs 128 and 130 performed consistently at a 60% level for them; as we will see with the judicial races, some candidates reached that number in HD127 as well. Spoiler alert for my future post: That’s a big change from 2012. We’ll get into that later, but what that means for now is what I was saying in the Congressional post, which is that there’s little spare capacity for Republicans to distribute. There’s some red they can slosh into HDs 132, 135, and 138 if they want, but it’s going to be hard to make more than a few Republican incumbents feel safe.

I’m still not comfortable calling HD134 a Democratic district – which is a bit meaningless anyway as we head into redistricting – but the numbers are what they are. There’s still some volatility, mostly in judicial races as you’ll see, but this district just isn’t what it used to be. After the 2016 election, when Greg Abbott went hard at Sarah Davis and the Trump effect was already obvious, I wondered what Republicans would do with that district, since they didn’t seem to care about Davis. Abbott subsequently rediscovered his pragmatic side, but Davis is now history, and this district is at least as blue as Harris County is overall, so they have a whole different problem to contemplate. If anyone reading this is of a mind to mourn Davis’ demise, I say put 100% of the blame on Donald Trump and the degeneracy he has brought forward in the GOP. Sarah Davis never took my advice to leave the Republican Party, but a lot of her former voters did. The future is always in motion, but at this point I would not expect them to come back.

On the flip side, Trump and the Republicans saw some gains in Democratic areas. The two that stand out to me are HDs 144 and 149 – Dems were well above 60% in the latter in 2016. Note how Chrysta Castaneda was the best performer in this group among Dems – her numbers in HD144 were comparable to Rep. Mary Ann Perez’s totals. As for 149, it was the inverse of HD133, more or less, without anyone making it look competitive. Here, Biden did about as well as Rep. Hubert Vo. I think this is more likely to be a Trump-catalyzed fluke than the start of a trend, but we’ll just have to see what the next elections tell us.

Finally, I should probably do a separate post on third party voting by State Rep district this cycle, but for now let me state the obvious that there was a whole lot less of it than in 2016, for a variety of reasons. I didn’t bother naming the Libertarian and Green candidates in the column headers above because honestly, even with the kerfuffle over both Republicans and Democrats trying to force them off the ballot for filing fee non-payment, there just wasn’t any attention on them this year. HD148 was the high-water mark for the Libertarian candidate in 2016 at the Presidential level, and HD134 topped the chart for Railroad Commissioner levels, with 4.53% in the former and an eye-popping 12.18% in the latter; the Chron endorsement of Mark Miller for RRC in 2016 surely helped him there. HD148 was the “winner” this year for each, though at much tamer 1.44% and 2.68%, respectively. For the Greens in 2016, it was HD137 for President (1.30%) and HD145 for RRC (6.49%), and this year it was HD144 (0.46%) for President and HD137 (1.84%) for RRC. You can say what you want about which third party affects which major party – I will note that Chrysta Castaneda outperformed Grady Yarbrough in HD134 by fifteen points, while Wayne Christian was four points better than Jim Wright in the same district. HD134 shifted strongly Dem in 2020, but the quality of the Dem also mattered.

Next up is a look at County Commissioner and JP/Constable precincts, and after that we’ll get that deeper look at 2020 versus 2016 and 2012. Let me know what you think.

Precinct analysis: Congressional districts

Dec 8th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

Introduction

All right, let’s get this party started. In the past I’ve generally done the top races by themselves, but any race involving Trump provides challenges, because his level of support just varies in comparison to other Republicans depending on where you look. So this year it felt right to include the other statewide non-judicial results in my Presidential analyses, and the only way to do that without completely overwhelming you with a wall of numbers was to break it out by district types. That seemed to also pair well with a closer look at the competitive districts of interest, of which there were more than usual this year. So let’s begin with a look at the Congressional districts in Harris County. Only CDs 02, 07, 18, and 29 are fully in Harris County – we won’t have the complete data on all Congressional districts until later – so just keep that in mind.


Dist    Trump    Biden    Lib    Grn  Trump%  Biden%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
CD02  174,980  170,428  4,067    969  49.93%  48.63%  1.16%  0.28%
CD07  143,176  170,060  3,416    903  45.09%  53.55%  1.08%  0.28%
CD08   25,484   16,629    520     87  59.65%  38.93%  1.22%  0.20%
CD09   39,372  125,237  1,066    589  23.68%  75.32%  0.64%  0.35%
CD10  101,390   65,714  2,023    431  59.80%  38.76%  1.19%  0.25%
CD18   57,669  189,823  2,382    962  22.99%  75.68%  0.95%  0.38%
CD22   21,912   21,720    522    137  49.47%  49.04%  1.18%  0.31%
CD29   52,937  106,229  1,265    649  32.86%  65.95%  0.79%  0.40%
CD36   83,710   52,350  1,558    402  60.65%  37.93%  1.13%  0.29%

Dist   Cornyn    Hegar    Lib    Grn Cornyn%  Hegar%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
CD02  180,504  157,923  6,215  2,164  52.37%  45.82%  1.80%  0.63%
CD07  152,741  154,670  4,939  2,161  48.90%  49.52%  1.58%  0.69%
CD08   25,916   15,259    846    221  61.67%  36.31%  2.01%  0.53%
CD09   39,404  118,424  2,725  1,677  24.54%  73.76%  1.70%  1.04%
CD10  102,919   60,687  3,168    939  61.71%  36.39%  1.90%  0.56%
CD18   60,111  178,680  4,806  2,468  24.68%  73.35%  1.97%  1.01%
CD22   21,975   20,283    898    377  50.92%  47.00%  2.08%  0.87%
CD29   51,044   99,415  3,022  1,969  33.26%  64.77%  1.97%  1.28%
CD36   83,614   48,814  2,598    913  61.92%  36.15%  1.92%  0.68%

Dist   Wright    Casta    Lib    Grn Wright%  Casta%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
CD02  176,484  153,628  7,631  4,122  51.62%  44.94%  2.23%  1.21%
CD07  149,114  149,853  6,276  3,974  48.22%  48.46%  2.03%  1.29%
CD08   25,558   14,796    992    394  61.23%  35.45%  2.38%  0.94%
CD09   37,090  117,982  2,764  2,570  23.12%  73.55%  1.72%  1.60%
CD10  101,414   58,873  3,758  1,793  61.15%  35.50%  2.27%  1.08%
CD18   57,783  177,020  5,021  3,846  23.71%  72.65%  2.06%  1.58%
CD22   21,026   20,231  1,007    675  48.97%  47.12%  2.35%  1.57%
CD29   46,954  102,354  2,802  2,334  30.40%  66.27%  1.81%  1.51%
CD36   81,424   48,619  2,880  1,300  60.66%  36.22%  2.15%  0.97%

Dist      GOP      Dem    Lib    Grn    GOP%    Dem%   Lib%   Grn%
==================================================================
CD02  192,828  148,374  5,524         55.61%  42.79%  1.59%
CD07  149,054  159,529  5,542         47.75%  50.79%  1.76%
CD08   25,906   15,212    926         61.62%  36.18%  2.20%
CD09   35,634  121,576  4,799         22.00%  75.04%  2.96%
CD10  103,180   60,388  3,496         61.76%  36.15%  2.09%
CD18   58,033  180,952  4,514  3,396  23.51%  73.29%  1.83%  1.38%
CD22   20,953   19,743  2,291         48.74%  45.93%  5.33%
CD29   42,840  111,305  2,328         27.38%  71.13%  1.49%
CD36   84,721   46,545  2,579    985  62.84%  34.52%  1.91%  0.73%

The first three tables are the Presidential, Senate, and Railroad Commissioner results, in that order. Subsequent presentations with State Rep and JP/Constable precincts will be done in the same fashion. For this post, I have also included the actual Congressional results – each Congressional race had both a Dem and a Republican, which doesn’t always happen, so they provide a good point of comparison. The candidate labeled as “Green” in CD18 was actually an independent – only CD36 had an actual Green Party candidate. In the other Congressional races, there were only three candidates.

How competitive CD02 looks depends very much on how you’re looking at it. On the one hand, Joe Biden came within 1.3 points, with Trump failing to reach fifty percent. On the other hand, Dan Crenshaw won by almost thirteen points, easily exceeding his marks from 2018 while clearly getting some crossover support. In between was everything else – MJ Hegar and Chrysta Castaneda trailed by about six and a half points each, with third-party candidates taking an increasing share of the vote. As we’ll see, most of the time the spread was between seven and nine points. That doesn’t tell us too much about what CD02 will look like going forward, but it does tell us that it doesn’t have a large reserve of Republican votes in it that can be used to bolster other Republicans. One possible outcome is that the map-drawers decide that Crenshaw will punch above his weight – he certainly fundraises at a very high level – which will allow them to leave him in a seemingly-narrow district while tending to more urgent matters elsewhere. The downside there is that if and when Crenshaw decides he’s made for bigger things, this district would be that much harder to hold with a different Republican running in it.

Another possibility is that Republicans will decide that they’re better off turning CD07 into a more Dem-friendly district, and using the space Republican capacity from CD07 to bolster CDs 02 and maybe 10. Lizzie Fletcher didn’t win by much, though I will note that Wesley Hunt’s 47.75% is a mere 0.28 points better than John Culberson in 2018. (There was no Libertarian candidate in 2018; do we think that hurt Hunt or Fletcher more in this context?) But other than Biden, no Dem came close to matching Fletcher’s performance – Hegar and Castaneda were among the top finishers in CD07, as we will see going forward. Like Crenshaw, Fletcher got some crossovers as well. It’s a big question how the Republicans will approach CD07 in the redistricting process. In years past, before the big blue shift in the western parts of Harris County, my assumption had been that the weight of CD07 would continue to move west, probably poking into Fort Bend and Waller counties. I’m less sure of that now – hell, I have no idea what they will do. I have suggested that they make CD07 more Democratic, which would enable them to shore up CD02, CD10, maybe CD22. They could try to add enough Republicans to tilt CD07 red, and at least make Fletcher work that much harder if not endanger her. Or who knows, they could throw everything out and do a radical redesign, in which case who knows what happens to CD07. Harris is going to get a certain number of full and partial Congressional districts in it no matter what, and there are Republican incumbents who will want to keep various areas for themselves, and the Voting Rights Act is still in effect, so there are some constraints. But there’s nothing to say that CD07 will exist in some form as we now know it. Expect the unexpected, is what I’m saying.

None of the other districts had as large a variance in the Trump vote. He trailed Cornyn and Wright in total votes in every district except CDs 29 and 36 (he also led Wright in 22). He trailed the Republican Congressional candidate in every district except 09, 18, and 29, the three strong D districts. Conversely, Joe Biden led every Democratic candidate in every district except for Sylvia Garcia in CD29; Garcia likely got about as many crossover votes as Lizzie Fletcher did. I’m amused to see Trump beat the designated sacrificial lamb candidate in CD18, partly because he was one of the co-plaintiffs on the state lawsuit to throw out all of the drive-through votes, and partly because I saw far more yard signs for Wendell Champion in my mostly-white heavily Democratic neighborhood (*) than I did for Trump. Maybe this is what was meant by “shy Trump voters”.

One more point about redistricting. Mike McCaul won the Harris County portion of CD10 by 43K votes; he won it by 46K in 2012 and 47K in 2016. He won overall by 30K, after squeaking through in 2018 by 13K votes. He had won in 2012 by 64K votes, and in 2016 by 59K votes. Now, a big driver of that is the ginormous growth in the Travis County Dem vote – he went from a 14K deficit in Travis in 2012 to a 57K deficit in 2020. The point I’m making is that there’s not a well of spare Republican votes in CD10 that could be used to redden CD07, not without putting CD10 at risk. Again, the Republicans could throw the current map out and start over from scratch – there will be new districts to include, so to some extent that will happen anyway – it’s just that Harris County is going to be of limited, and decreasing, use to them. They have to work around Harris, not with it. It’s going to make for some interesting decisions on their part.

I’ll have a look at the State Rep districts next. Let me know what you think.

(*) The two main precincts for my neighborhood went for Biden over Trump by a combined 68-28.

Initial thoughts about the election

Nov 5th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

8 comments

And now for some reactions and analysis…

– The polls were garbage. Oy vey. Not just here, though they were definitely off here, underestimating Trump and the Republicans after doing the same to Beto and the Dems in 2018. This time, after all that national soul-searching following the 2016 state-level misfires (the national polling was fairly accurate overall in 2016), we got this flaming mess. Not my problem to solve, but I wonder how much of this is the known issue of “differential response” writ large. We know that in some circumstances, like when there’s been a big news event, one candidate’s supporters, or members of one party in general, may be more or less likely to answer the phone and respond to a pollster. It may be that just as a matter of course now, Republicans are less likely to respond to polls, in a bigger way than previously thought, and that had a disproportionate effect on the numbers. I’m just guessing here, but if that’s the case then perhaps the web panel approach to polling needs to be used more often. For what it’s worth, the UT/Texas Tribune and UH Hobby School polls from October, both of which had Trump up 50-45, used web panels. Maybe that’s a fluke, maybe they had a better likely voter model going in, maybe they were onto something that the others weren’t, I don’t know. But they came the closest, so they get the glory. As for the rest, thanks for nothing.

– Along those same lines, pollsters who did deeper dive polls on Latino voters, such as Univision and Latino Decisions, really need to question their methods and figure out how they went so mind-bogglingly wrong. I get that what we had, at least to some extent, appears to have been lower-propensity Latino voters turning out at surprisingly high levels for Trump, but damn, this is your job. You need to be on top of that.

– The old adage about “Texas isn’t a red state, it’s a non-voting state” can be safely buried for now. We had record-breaking turnout, over 11 million votes cast when we’d never surpassed nine million before, and yet Trump still won by six points while other statewide Republicans were winning by nine to eleven points. To be sure, that’s closer than 2016 was, but at this rate we’ll need to have thirty million people voting for Dems to catch up, and I feel confident saying that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon. The lesson here is that there are low-propensity Republican voters, too, and they are capable of showing up when they are persuaded. We saw that happen in 2018, and we saw it again this year.

I admit I bought into the hype, and put too much faith into the idea that the non-voters would be more consistently Democratic than Republican. To be fair, I think that was the case in 2018, as Democrats made huge gains relative to past off years. It’s certainly been the case in Harris County that increases in voter registration have led to significant increases in Democratic votes – I’ll get to this in more detail later in the post, but this can be pretty easily quantified, and it’s why Dems have been dominating the countywide races with increasing ease. It’s where those gains came from that seems to have been a difference-maker.

I don’t want to sell short what was accomplished here. Joe Biden got over 1.3 million more votes than Hillary Clinton; Trump improved on his total by about 1.15 million. Chrysta Castaneda got 1.36 million more votes than Grady Yarbrough. The statewide judicial candidates got between 3,378,163 and 3,608,634 votes in 2016; in 2020, the range was 4,762,188 to 4,899,270 votes. If you want to be particularly gruesome, Biden got 3.3 million more votes than Wendy Davis did for Governor in 2014. Granted, Trump outdid Greg Abbott by just over 3 million votes, but still. A lot more people now have voted for a Democrat in Texas than at any other point in history. Even as we pick through the wreckage, that’s worth keeping in mind.

So how do we close that remaining gap of 700K to one million voters statewide? One, we should remember that off year elections are far more volatile from a turnout perspective, and we need to do everything we can to make these new folks habitual voters while we continue to register and recruit new voters. Two, having dynamic statewide candidates, who can learn the lessons of these past elections while applying them to the environment they’re in, would help. And three, maybe we need to give another look to the reviled old “persuasion” strategy, and see how we can do a better job of peeling away some of the other guy’s voters. Easier said than done, but then that’s why I’m a blogger and not a campaign professional.

– By the way, if anyone asks you who the current all-time vote leader in Texas is, the answer as of 2020 is Supreme Court Justice Jane Bland, who tipped the scales at 6,002,233 votes. No one else topped six million. She was helped by not having a third-party opponent in the race; the Libertarians in three other races got between 254L and 283K votes.

– I take no position on the question about whether the Republicans’ continued use of traditional door-to-door campaigning during the pandemic, which the Democrats largely eschewed out of a sense of safety for their campaign workers and as a statement of living their values, was a factor in this election. The academic research on various methods of increasing turnout and persuading swing voters is mixed, and does not suggest that one method (such as door-knocking) is clearly superior to others (such as phone-banking). Winning teams always point to their methods and strategies as the reason why they won and the other team lost. I’m not saying this couldn’t have made a difference, or that it didn’t make a difference. It may have, and I have no way to disprove the assertion. I’m just saying that it’s anecdotal data, and I consider it to be such.

– Also, too: I saw people again cursing Beto’s name for not running for Senate this year. All I can say is that anyone who thinks Beto would have done better than Biden is not thinking clearly. He probably would have exceeded MJ Hegar, but there’s a lot of room between that and winning. With all the money that was spent in Texas this year, I do not buy the argument that having Beto on the ticket would have moved the needle for Dems.

– Speaking of money, hoo boy. I hope this isn’t the end of our candidates being able to raise enough of it. We’re going to need plenty in 2022.

– How much of an effect did the lack of straight ticket voting have? Far as I can tell, very little. In Harris County, there were 1,633,557 votes cast in the Presidential race. Way down at the bottom of the ballot, in the two At Large HCDE races, there were 1,551,731 and 1,548,760 votes. In other words, about 95% of the people who voted in the Presidential race also voted in these two HCDE races.

Now, if you look at the various judicial races, you will see that Democratic judicial candidates generally got 60-80K fewer votes than Biden, while most Republican judicial candidates (though not all) exceeded Trump’s total. Some of that was just crossover voting, which we knew was happening, but some of it may have been a greater propensity by Dems to skip some number of downballot races. It’s hard to say how much is each. For what it’s worth, 12 out of 15 Dem judicial candidates (district and county courts) who had a Republican opponent had fewer votes than MJ Hegar, who had 848K to Biden’s 911K, while 8 out of those 15 Republican opponents did better than John Cornyn’s 717K votes; Trump got 699K, and all but two of those Republicans did better than that, while no one came close to Biden.

So did the absence of straight ticket voting mean more crossovers in general? I will remind you, as I have done before, there’s always a range of outcomes in the judicial races, so there has always been some amount of crossover voting, just usually not that much. Why did MJ Hegar get so many fewer votes than Joe Biden did? Some of it was more voting for third party candidates – there were 22K votes for the Libertarian and Green Presidential candidates, and 42K such votes in the Senate race – some of it was the 26K fewer votes cast in the Senate race (about 98.5% of all Presidential voters also voted for a Senate candidate), and some of it was the 18K people who voted for Cornyn but not Trump. Make of that what you will.

– While I’m thinking about it, let me update that range-of-results table I just linked to:


2004 
Rep 524K to 545K
Dem 460K to 482K

2008
Rep 526K to 564K
Dem 533K to 585K

2012
Rep 550K to 580K
Dem 555K to 581K

2016
Rep 580K to 621K
Dem 643K to 684K

2020
Rep 690K to 740K
Dem 812K to 865K

So congratulations to Republicans, who have boosted their base vote by almost 200K since 2004, while Dems have increased theirs by over 380K. Five points was as close as any Republican got.

– Despite their successful defense of their Congressional and legislative seats, Republicans still face some tricky decisions in redistricting. Look at it this way – in an election year that clearly wasn’t as good for Dems as 2018 was, they still managed to hold onto all but one of the seats they won that year. The same map that gave Republicans 95 House members was only good for 83 this year, and it wouldn’t have taken much to knock that number down by a half dozen or so. Morgan Meyer and Angie Chen Button may have survived, but Dallas County is a problem for the GOP. Harris County has three safe Republican districts – HDs 127, 128, and 130 – four that are still pretty safe but have gotten a lot less so over the decade – HDs 126, 129, 133, and 150 – and two on the knife’s edge, HDs 132 and 138. That may have been hard to see from the vantage point of 2011, but the broad outlines of it were there, and as I have noted before, HDs 132 and 135 were already trending Dem in 2012, with both being a little bluer than they were in 2008 despite 2012 being a slightly lesser year for Dems overall. Who’s going to need protection, and whose seat may wind up on a target list a couple of cycles later because you didn’t understand the demographics correctly? In Congress, Dan Crenshaw won by a comfortable 14 points…in a district Ted Poe won by 24 points in 2016, and 32 points in 2012. How do you shore him up? Splitting pieces of Travis County into four Republican districts was a great idea, until it threatened the re-election of three of those Republicans. Who even knows how many Congressional seats we’ll have, given the chaotic nature of the Census?

Oh, and here in Harris County, I’m sure the Democratic majority on Commissioners Court will bolster Adrian Garcia in CC2, as the Republicans did for Jack Morman in 2010. The bigger question is do they go after their new colleague Tom Ramsey, or do they just not help him out and hope nature takes its course? That’ll be fun to watch.

I think that’s it for now. I’m sure more things will occur to me as we go. When I get a draft canvass, I’ll start doing the usual slicing and dicing.

Bloomberg drops some money in the RRC race

Oct 28th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I have four things to say about this.

Chrysta Castañeda

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg has made a late donation of $2.6 million to the Democratic nominee for railroad commissioner, Chrysta Castañeda, providing a massive fundraising boost in a race for the oil and gas regulatory board that usually does not see such big money — or attract much political interest outside Texas.

Bloomberg’s contribution helped Castañeda raise $3.5 million on her latest campaign finance report, according to her campaign. The filing covers Sept. 25 through Oct. 26 and is due to the Texas Ethics Commission by the end of the day Monday.

“Chrysta Castañeda will be a champion for Texans — her commitment to improving people’s lives is clear,” Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for president this year, said in a statement. “I’m glad to support Chrysta in her campaign to be the next Railroad Commissioner, because she has the vision and experience needed to build a safer, healthier, and more environmentally prosperous future for the state of Texas.”

Bloomberg gave $2.625 million total to Castañeda, $2.5 million in direct money and the rest in in-kind contributions, according to her campaign. It said her report will also show she received $500,000 from environmentalist philanthropists Richard and Dee Lawrence, and that the Sierra Club donated $90,000 and has pledged another $125,000.

[…]

In a statement, Castañeda said the seven-figure support “has allowed us to place television ads in every major Texas market,” educating voters about the little-known commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry. Her commercials have also taken aim at [Republican opponent Jim] Wright, pointing out, among other things, that the commission fined a business he once owned in 2017 for environmental violations.

On the previous round of campaign finance reports, covering early July through Sept. 24, Castañeda was competitive with Wright on donations, taking in $230,000 to his $244,000. She also had $81,000 in in-kind contributions. But he outspent her nearly 3 to 1 and ended the period with more cash on hand, $170,000 to her $104,000.

1. Hooray! We’ve been waiting for this. Castañeda has raised a few bucks and gotten some commercials on the air as noted, but not nearly enough to make much of an impression. This kind of money is enough to run ads statewide for two weeks, and that will mean something.

2. Which leads to the obvious: Sure would have been nice to have had this in place sooner. I need to look at the 8 day report to see exactly when Bloomberg cut the check, but Castañeda started having ads on the air a month ago, so it’s not quite as late in the cycle as I first thought when I read the headline of the story. At least she seems to have gotten the money before people started voting, which was my main concern.

3. It is very much the case that the outcome of this race will be closely correlated with the Presidential race. There’s only so much Castañeda can do to move the needle (more on that in a minute), but if Biden wins Texas or comes close enough, she can put herself in a position to win. It should be noted that downballot statewide Dems have generally lagged the top of the ticket by a few points, and that was the case in 2016 and 2018. There is some variation from race to race – generally speaking, in lower-profile races, having a Latino surname is a benefit. Note that the top downballot votegetters in 2016 were Eva Guzman (top overall in her case) and Dori Garza, both Supreme Court candidates. Castañeda has that going for her, which is likely to be worth a point or so in the final tally. If there’s one downballot Dem that I think could out-perform Biden, at least on a percentage basis, it’s Chrysta Castañeda.

4. The presence of third party candidates means that one does not need fifty percent of the vote to win. That, and who third party candidates tend to draw some votes from, was the basis for all that litigation that ultimately did not result in any candidates being thrown off the ballot. The RRC races, which are pretty obscure for most voters and which have featured some, um, less than optimal candidates in recent years, is a prime example of this. Here are the combined third-party vote percentages from the past three Presidential elections:

2016 – 8.56%
2012 – 4.23%
2008 – 3.52%

There were Libertarian and Green candidates in 2016 and 2012, and just a Libertarian in 2008. The 2016 race had two of the worst candidates ever for this office, bad enough that the Libertarian got several major newspaper endorsements. The point here is that it is likely 48% of the vote will be enough to win; 49% for sure will win. And while RRC is very close to the top of the ballot – fourth in line, after the three federal races – it’s likely more people will skip it than perhaps the Supreme Court races because they have no idea what the RRC does. That means fewer votes are needed as well. Anything Castañeda can do to minimize undervoting by Dems and to tempt soft Rs and indies to cross over will help. That’s what this money can do. The Chron has more.

UH-Hobby: Trump 50, Biden 45

Oct 27th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

29 comments

Here’s a poll result that stands in contrast to the others we have seen lately.

President Donald Trump is leading Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by more than five points among likely voters in Texas, according to a poll released Monday by the Hobby School for Public Affairs at the University of Houston.

The poll, conducted between Oct. 13 and Oct. 20, found 50% of voters said they already had or will vote for Trump, while 44.7% said they had or will vote for Biden.

Trump and running mate Mike Pence carried Texas by nine points in 2016.

The Republican edge held for statewide contests down the ballot, including for U.S. Senate, Texas Railroad Commission and three statewide judicial races covered by the poll.

“Record turnout in early voting clearly shows the state’s Democrats are energized, but at least at the top of the ticket, that enthusiasm appears unlikely to overcome the Republican advantage among men, Anglos and older voters,” said Renée Cross, senior director of the Hobby School. “In fact, we found the Republican candidate leading by wider margins in statewide races farther down the ballot.”

Among the findings:

More than 40% had already voted at the time of the poll. Biden held a substantial edge among those voters, leading Trump 59% to 39%. Almost two-thirds of those who plan to vote on Election Day said they will vote for Trump.

Incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn leads Democratic challenger MJ Hegar 48.9% to 41.6%.

Republican Jim Wright is leading in the race for an open seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, with 46.8% of the vote; Democrat Chrysta Castañeda has 38.4%.

Biden holds a slight edge among women, 49.5% to 46%. Trump is preferred among men by a notably larger margin, 54.3% to 39.5%.

While 63% of Anglos support Trump, and 87% of African-American voters back Biden, the gap is narrower among Latino voters: 56% support Biden, and 38% back Trump.

Republican Nathan Hecht leads Democrat Amy Clark Meachum 47.5% to 40% for Texas Supreme Court chief justice. For Supreme Court Justice Place 6, Republican Jane Bland leads Democrat Kathy Cheng 49.2% to 40.1%.

Republican Bert Richardson leads Democrat Elizabeth Davis Frizell 48.2% to 38.3% for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Place 3.

The full report is available on the Hobby School website.

The Hobby School did a primary poll in February and one Trump-Clinton poll around this time in 2016; they also did a couple of polls of Harris County in 2016. As noted in their introduction, this was a YouGov poll, so similar in nature to the UT/Texas Tribune polls. As I alluded to in the headline, this is the first poll we’ve had in awhile that was this positive for Trump, and it especially stands in contrast with that UT-Tyler poll that came out over the weekend. What does one make of this?

You can peruse the poll data as you wish. I’m going to note one thing that really stood out to me. The following is a list of how Independent voters went in each of the last nine polls over the past month for which that data was available (in other words, skipping the Morning Consult polls). See if you can see what I saw:


Poll      Biden   Trump
=======================
UH-Hobby     34      51
UTT/DMN      51      29
Q'piac Oct   50      39
DFP          40      36
PPP          60      35
UT-Trib      45      37
UML          43      39
NYT/Siena    41      37
Q'piac Sep   51      43

Yeah, that’s a very different result for independent voters than for basically every other poll we’ve seen. Note that the UT-Trib poll had Trump up by five, as did the Quinnipiac poll from September (both were 50-45 for Trump, in fact), and that UMass-Lowell poll had Trump up 49-46. As the song goes, one of these things is not like the others.

There are other things that can be said about this poll – I appreciate the “who has voted” versus “who has yet to vote” distinction, and I appreciate the inclusion of downballot races though I tend to discount those results because of the increase in “don’t know” responses – but this is the main thing I wanted to cover.

Links to the cited polls, and their data or crosstabs page where the numbers I included can be found:

UT-Tyler/DMN – data
Quinnipiac – data
Data for Progress – data
PPP – data
UT-Trib (data about indies in quoted excerpt)
UMass-Lowell – data
NYT/Siena – data
Quinnipiac – data

I will also note that Jim Henson and Joshua Blank have observed a shift in independents’ preferences in Texas towards indies this cycle. And now I will stop beating this horse.

30 Day 2020 campaign finance reports: State races, part 1

Oct 13th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Time once again to look at campaign finance reports. I don’t usually review the 30-day reports but this is a special year, and there’s a lot of money sloshing around, so let’s keep an eye on it. As before, I will split these into four parts. Part one will be statewide, SBOE, and State Senate, part two will be State House races from the Houston area, part three will be State House races from elsewhere in the state, and part four will be for Democratic incumbents that may be targeted. I’m not going to be doing every race of course, just the ones of interest. January reports for statewide candidates can be found here, January reports for various SBOE and State Senate races can be found here, and the July reports for the candidates in this post are here.

Chrysta Castaneda, RRC
Jim Wright, RRC

Amy Clark Meachum, Supreme Court, Chief Justice
Nathan Hecht, Supreme Court, Chief Justice

Gisela Triana, Supreme Court, Place 8
Brett Busby, Supreme Court, Place 8

Kathy Cheng, Supreme Court, Place 6
Jane Bland, Supreme Court, Place 6

Staci Williams, Supreme Court, Place 7
Jeff Boyd, Supreme Court, Place 7

Rebecca Bell-Metereau, SBOE5
Lani Popp, SBOE5

Michelle Palmer, SBOE6
Will Hickman, SBOE6

Marsha Webster, SBOE10
Tom Maynard, SBOE10

Susan Criss, SD11
Larry Taylor, SD11

Roland Gutierrez, SD19
Pete Flores, SD19


Candidate   Office    Raised     Spent     Loan     On Hand
===========================================================
Castaneda      RRC   310,709   161,145   27,166     103,934
Wright         RRC   243,765   452,473   45,000     169,761

Meachum      SCOTX   103,704    27,920        0     200,072
Hecht        SCOTX   176,761   806,375        0     105,298

Triana       SCOTX    37,075    19,945        0     134,736
Busby        SCOTX   314,946   580,588        0     342,010

Cheng        SCOTX    17,901     5,196   90,174      80,371
Bland        SCOTX   167,487   490,849        0     132,174

Williams     SCOTX   127,667    69,733    1,000      78,572
Boyd         SCOTX   128,500   168,373        0     466,196

BellMetereau SBOE5    63,473    18,316    2,250      66,834
Popp         SBOE5    64,012    22,713   60,000      50,637

Palmer       SBOE6    17,395     8,251        0      12,982
Hickman      SBOE6     2,660       819    2,500       2,887

Webster     SBOE10     4,195     3,200       25       4,523
Maynard     SBOE10     4,332    14,797    4,000         848

Criss         SD11    18,137    29,403        0       5,048
Taylor        SD11    47,775   138,166        0   1,054,841

Gutierrez     SD19   199,270    50,785        0      11,309
Flores        SD19   627,919   531,779        0     606,589

I didn’t have a whole lot to say about these reports last time, and I don’t have much to add now. Chrysta Castaneda raised a few bucks and has done a bit of TV advertising, but there’s not a whole lot you can do statewide with less than a million bucks as an opening bid. She has done well with earned media, and I think Democrats may be more aware of this race than they usually are, which could have an effect on the margins if it keeps the third-party vote level low. To be sure, the Presidential race is by far the single biggest factor here. The hope is that Castaneda can outpace Biden, even by a little, and if so then she just needs it to be close at the top.

The same is true for the Supreme Court, where Dems at least are fired up by the rulings relating to mail ballots. I think the potential for crossovers is lower than in the RRC race, where Jim Wright is so obviously conflicted, but just retaining a sufficient portion of the Presidential vote would mean a lot. I know people like to talk about the lack of straight ticket voting, but 1) these races are all near the top of the ballot, following the three federal contests, and 2) the message about voting out Republicans at all levels has been pounded all over the place. How much will it matter? I have no idea. All this may be little more than a social media mirage. It’s just what I’ve observed.

I am a little surprised that Roland Gutierrez hasn’t raised more money, and it’s equally odd to me that Pete Flores has outspent him by that much. But like everywhere else, the top of the ticket will drive this result more than anything else. In the context of 2016, this was basically a 10-12 point Dem district. Flores has to convince a lot of people to cross over in order to win. That’s the challenge he faces.

More of these to come. Let me know what you think.

Castaneda on the air

Sep 29th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

More of this, please.

Chrysta Castañeda

Chrysta Castañeda, the Democratic candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, is investing in six figures worth of television ads in the Houston area starting Friday.

Castañeda is facing off against Republican Jim Wright, best known for his campaign’s glaring conflict of interest with his own company, DeWitt Recyclable Products, a company overseen by the same state agency he seeks to help guide.

The ad focuses on wasteful and illegal flaring from oil and gas companies and Castañeda’s promise to put a stop to it. It also mentions some of the violations issued by the Texas Railroad Commission to Wright’s company, and some of the lawsuits that Wright has found himself in.

“Many Texans don’t know a thing about the Railroad Commission, but for the countless Texans who work in the oil and gas industry, it’s probably the elected body with the biggest impact on their lives,” Castañeda said in a prepared statement. “Houston is synonymous with oil and gas, so it’s the ideal place to roll out our first TV ad.”

There’s a video of the ad embedded in the story. Most likely, if you encounter this it will be on a cable station, probably during a sporting event. (That’s when I see political ads the most, anyway.) Polling data has suggested that Castaneda can move the needle with targeted attacks on Wright, but it will take much more of this to have a measurable impact. I’m glad to see it, don’t get me wrong, I’d just like to multiply it by at least ten, so it could get out there beyond Houston. But it’s a start.

A matter of timing

Sep 20th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

That’s the stated reason why SCOTX overturned the earlier decision that booted three Green Party candidates off the ballot.

The Texas Supreme Court in a new opinion Friday explained its decision to reinstate to the November ballot Green Party candidates who did not pay their filing fees, saying lower courts denied them the chance to resolve the issue while there was still time under the law.

[…]

Justices acknowledged the strain that adding last-minute candidates may put on county elections officials, who were just days away from sending out their first rounds of ballots before the court’s order was announced on Tuesday. The high court did not publish its opinion in the matter until Friday.

“We recognize that changes to the ballot at this late point in the process will require extra time and resources to be expended by our local election officials,” the opinion read. “But a candidate’s access to the ballot is an important value to our democracy.”

[…]

In the unsigned opinion handed down Friday, justices said Democrats challenging the validity of Green Party candidates failed to prove that the election law requires party chairs to declare candidates ineligible when they don’t pay filing fees, and that the 2019 law doesn’t include a deadline for paying them.

Justices also say the Third Court of Appeals should have given Green Party candidates a chance to pay their fees before declaring ineligible and tossed from the ballot.

See here and here for the background. The opinion is here, and Michael Hurta continues his Twitter thread on this here, with some replies from me at the end. We’re going to need to delve into the opinion, because it’s more nuanced than what this story gives, and also clarifies something else that I hadn’t realized I was confused about.

First, in stating that RRC candidate Chrysta Castañeda “failed to prove the Election Code clearly spelled out the duty of the co-chairs to declare the Green Party candidates ineligible for their failure to pay the filing fee”, SCOTX clears up something from the legal challenge to the filing fees that I had missed.

The court explained that section 141.041 does not set a deadline for compliance but that the requirements apply only to the candidates actually nominated at a party’s nominating convention generally held in March or April of the election year. Id. at ___. Candidates who intend to seek a nomination at a convention must file a notarized application in December before the convention. Id. at ___ (citing TEX. ELEC. CODE §§ 141.031, 172.023(a), 181.031–.033). The advisory, by requiring payment of the filing fee before the nominating convention, expanded the requirements in 141.041 from all nominated candidates to all candidates seeking nomination. Id. at ___. The court ultimately held that payment of the filing fee under section 141.041 was still required, but the court affirmed the trial court’s order temporarily enjoining the Secretary of State from refusing to certify third-party nominees on the grounds that the nominees did not pay a filing fee at the time of filing. Id. at ___.

We agree with the Fourteenth Court of Appeals that under section 141.041 only a convention-nominated candidate is required to pay the filing fee. See TEX. ELEC. CODE §141.041(a) (“[A] candidate who is nominated by convention . . . must pay a filing fee . . . .”). Therefore, we also agree that the Secretary of State’s advisory requiring payment of the filing fee at the time of filing an application is not required by, and indeed conflicts with, the Election Code. See id. Section 141.041 does not include a deadline for compliance, but as we explained in In re Francis, when an Election Code provision does not provide explicit guidance, we apply a presumption against removing parties from the ballot. 186 S.W.3d at 542.

I had not understood the distinction between mandating that all candidates who compete for the nomination must pay the fee and just mandating that the candidates who actually receive the nomination must pay it. I’m fine with that. The key to the decision here is the question about deadlines, and how much time the Green Party and its candidates were supposed to have to fix their failure to pay these fees (which as we know they claim are unconstitutional).

Castañeda presented a public record to the co-chairs showing that as of August 17, the Green Party candidates had not paid the filing fee. As previously noted, section 141.041 requires the filing fee but contains no deadline for its payment, see TEX. ELEC. CODE § 141.041, and the only potential applicable deadline in the Secretary of State’s election advisory conflicts with that provision. Hughs, ___ S.W.3d at ___. Strictly construing these sections against ineligibility, we disagree that the public document demonstrating that the Green Party candidates had not paid the filing fee as of August 17 conclusively established that they were ineligible. To be “eligible to be placed on the ballot,” the Green Party Candidates were required to pay the filing fee or file signature petitions. TEX. ELEC. CODE § 141.041 (emphasis added). The co-chairs did not have a ministerial statutory duty to declare the candidates ineligible, as the law did not clearly spell out their duty on August 17 when the candidates had not yet paid the filing fee such that nothing was left to the exercise of their discretion. See In re Williams, 470 S.W.3d at 821.

The court of appeals ordered the co-chairs to declare the Green Party candidates ineligible and take necessary steps to ensure their names did not appear on the ballot. ___ S.W.3d at ___. But the court did not address a deadline for payment, nor did it otherwise allow for payment of the fee. And under In re Francis, an opportunity to cure should be provided when a candidate could still comply with Election Code requirements. 186 S.W.3d at 541–42 (noting that an opportunity to cure complies with the purposes of the Election Code and avoids potential constitutional problems that “might be implicated if access to the ballot was unnecessarily restricted”). “The public interest is best served when public offices are decided by fair and vigorous elections, not technicalities leading to default.” Id. at 542. In the absence of recognizing a deadline for paying the filing fee or giving the candidates an opportunity to comply, the court of appeals erred in ordering the Green Party candidates removed from the ballot on August 19.

Emphasis in the original. The opinion cited an earlier case of a candidate who had turned in petition signatures to be on a ballot but failed to correctly fill out all the petition pages with information about the office he sought, and was tossed from the ballot as a result. On appeal, he was restored on the grounds that he should have been given the chance to fix the error before having the axe fall on him. Much as I dislike this opinion, I agree with that principle, and I don’t have a problem with it being applied here, though of course we can argue about what a reasonable amount of time should be to allow for such a fix to be applied. SCOTX left that question open, so if the filing fees are still in place in 2022 and the Libertarians and Greens are still resisting it, look for some judges to have to determine what sort of schedule should be applied to non-fee-payers, in an attempt to follow this precedent.

As I said, I don’t like this decision, but I can accept it. It didn’t immediately make me want to crawl through the Internet and slap someone. But let’s be clear about something, if SCOTX is going to appeal to higher principles in cases like this, which just happen to also align with the desires of the Republican Party, then I’d like to see some evidence that they will err on the side of the voters in a case that doesn’t align with the GOP. Like, say, the Harris County mail ballot applications case. What are you going to do with that one, folks? And please note, the clock is ticking. A decision rendered for Chris Hollins in late October doesn’t exactly mean anything. Let’s see where the SCOTX justices really stand.

Endorsement watch: Three to get started

Sep 19th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

But first, why do endorsements, anyway?

If newspapers are objective, why do you recommend candidates?
Newspapers don’t endorse candidates. Editorial boards do. The editorial board is separate from the newsroom. It is made up of opinion journalists with wide-ranging expertise whose consensus opinions and recommendations represent the voice of the institution — defined as the board members, their editor and the publisher. We do it as a service to our readers and to our democracy, which cannot flourish without an informed citizenry. For many busy people, researching each candidate isn’t possible. Rather than turn to partisan slates, some with pay-to-play motivations, we offer an alternative: informed candidate recommendations from nonpartisan journalists informed by facts, borne of careful analysis.

[…]

What’s our process?
General elections always involve hundreds of hours of screening, writing and editing to ensure trustworthy recommendations that readers can access readily and even take to the polls. The pandemic has forced a few changes. For congressional and local top races, we’re conducting Zoom interviews with all who accept our invitations. For many other races, we’ve conducted one-on-one interviews. In most races, lead writers for each research, conduct outside interviews and background candidates before making recommendations to the full board, which reaches a consensus.

Consensus isn’t always easy, especially when parties have failed to draw qualified candidates. Still, voters must vote, so we feel we must decide. When recommending someone we have reservations about, we’ll explain why to readers, same as we do when there are multiple excellent candidates.

Sometimes, an extra level of focus and expertise is needed to make the right call. As in past years, we’ve enlisted the help of retired longtime journalists in the 20 local judicial races. Mary Flood and Jeff Franks research and background candidates and then make recommendations for the board to consider.

Do we only endorse candidates who agree with us?
No. While we look favorably upon candidates whose values mirror our basic commitments to responsible spending, economic growth, strong public schools, improving health and protecting the environment, we often endorse candidates who don’t share our opinions on more contentious issues. To better serve voters in a diverse array of districts, we prioritize broader expectations of elected leaders: experience, willingness to work across the aisle, knowledge of issues, strong sense of ethics, fit with the district and general viability of the candidacy. For judges, fairness, competence and temperament are also strong considerations and, at times, the ideological diversity of the court as a whole. We give weight to incumbency, especially if it means seniority benefiting constituents, but we also scrutinize incumbents’ records on effectiveness, leadership, constituent services and ability to keep promises to voters.

Whether readers agree with our ultimate choices or not, we hope the facts, observations and analysis in each written editorial recommendation serves as a helpful tool in voters’ own research and decision-making.

I appreciate the Chron’s efforts and I find their process to be useful and valuable, even though I (sometimes very strenuously) disagree with some of their selections. Honestly, this is more of an academic exercise for me in an election where there’s no doubt about who’s getting my votes, but it is of great value to me in other contexts. It is good to have some reasonably objective and process-oriented sources for the races where the decision is truly hard.

Anyway, on to the endorsements. We start statewide with the Railroad Commissioner’s race and an endorsement for Chrysta Castaneda.

Chrysta Castañeda

Texas and Houston depend mightily on a thriving oil and gas industry, and that’s why it’s so important that the Railroad Commission of Texas be led by experienced, capable commissioners.

Fortunately, as an engineer and a lawyer, Democrat Chrysta Castañeda has the combination of knowledge and experience to help the RRC shepherd the crucial industry through one of the most challenging economies in decades.

As the founding law partner of the Castañeda Firm, which focuses on oil and gas litigation, she also understands the importance of crafting and enforcing regulations to protect the state’s environment.

That is why we recommend Castañeda, 57, in the statewide Railroad Commission race in the Nov. 3 election. If elected, she would join two Republican commissioners who, like her opponent, can be counted on to give the industry’s needs top billing over environmental concerns. What’s really needed is a balance between helping the industry thrive and minimizing its harmful impacts.

[…]

While [Republican candidate Jim] Wright also would bring experience to the job, it would be solely from the industry side. Texas needs at least one member of the Railroad Commission who takes to heart both the mandate that the commission promote the oil and gas industry and its charge to safeguard the water and air Texans drink or breathe.

Wright has some other issues, which the Chron does not delve into. With Presidential-level polling showing a very tight race, the other statewides are being seen as tossups this year. Castaneda may draw some crossover support if she can get enough of a message out. You can listen to my interview with her here if you haven’t yet.

Next, Michelle Palmer for SBOE.

Michelle Palmer

Long-time history teacher Michelle Palmer was troubled when the Texas State Board of Education approved a social studies curriculum that describes Moses as an influence on the Founding Fathers.

The Aldine ISD teacher saw the 2018 decision as a particularly egregious example of the board incorporating historical inaccuracies into textbooks and curricula used to teach 5.4 million Texas public school students.

“Moses was not much of an influence on Thomas Jefferson. He was not much of an influence on many of the Founding Fathers,” Palmer told the editorial board. “I find it very troubling that they have that as a standard that is supposed to be taught to our 13- and 14-year-old eighth graders.”

Even more troubling: It was part of a pattern for the 15-member state board of education, which is more often guided by conservative ideology than by good curriculum design.

That history motivated Palmer, 50, to run for the position currently held by Chair Donna Bahorich, R-Houston, who is not seeking re-election.

“As a board member, I would listen to the experts,” said Palmer, a Democrat.

That sounds basic, and it should be. But too many on the current board have refused to do so. That is why we are recommending Palmer for SBOE Position 6. The state board of education has responsibilities critical for the education of Texas children: setting curriculum standards, adopting textbooks and other instructional materials for public schools, overseeing the Texas Permanent School Fund and reviewing charter school applications.

We’re all familiar with the clown show that has been the SBOE. To be fair, it has gotten somewhat less bad in recent years, thanks in large part to the eviction of Don McLeroy from its ranks. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, and adding Michelle Palmer would be a step in that direction. My primary interview with Palmer is here.

Finally, there’s Natali Hurtado for HD126.

Natali Hurtado

In a repeat of the 2018 race for state House District 126, Democrat Natali Hurtado is facing off against Republican Sam Harless.

Two years ago, we recommended Harless for this seat based in large part on the Republican’s wise and politically brave support for expanding Medicaid and his contempt for the unscrupulous far-right activist group Empower Texans.

Unfortunately, Harless has backed away from Medicaid expansion at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has made access to health care more important than ever. In a recent screening with the editorial board, he said he looked forward to a debate about expansion and expected it would happen someday. But he would not express support outright.

He also voted against a 2019 amendment that would have directed the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to seek a federal waiver to expand Medicaid in the state. That vote just happened to earn a green check mark from Empower Texans.

As our state battles COVID-19, Harless has appeared at campaign events without a mask and taken issue with Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s mask order. Those actions show a troubling tendency to ignore science and turn a public health crisis into a partisan issue.

All this led us to take a fresh look at Hurtado. We like what we see.

You can read the rest for the affirmative case for Hurtado. She’s got a compelling biography, and actually means it when she says she supports Medicaid expansion in Texas. HD126 is on the target list for Dems this year, though not as high up as HDs 134 and 138. It’s looking like a competitive race, and an Election Day that includes a Dem win in HD126 almost certainly means a Democratic House.

The Chron also endorsed Republican Rep. Dan Huberty in a non-competitive race for HD127. More to come as they run ’em.

The Green Party owes Ken Paxton a thank-you note

Sep 18th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

He did them a solid, that’s for sure.

Turns out it is easy being Green

In the legal fight to exclude minor party candidates from the November ballot, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton took a flexible view of time and deadlines.

After the Texas GOP filed suit Aug. 21 to remove 44 Libertarians from the ballot for failure to pay a required candidate filing fee, Paxton told the Texas Supreme Court that there was plenty of time to pursue the challenge.

This week, however, Paxton told the same court that a Democratic bid to oust three Green Party candidates — filed four days before the unsuccessful GOP challenge — was begun much too late and needed to be overturned.

“The (Democrats’) dilatory conduct and unjustified delay in seeking relief imposed an undue burden on the Green Party officials,” Paxton told the court in a brief filed Monday.

[…]

[F]acing an Aug. 21 deadline to declare candidates ineligible, Democrats sued Aug. 17 to strike three Greens running for U.S. Senate, U.S. House and Railroad Commission.

The Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals gave the Greens less than 48 hours to respond, then issued an Aug. 19 order declaring the three Green Party candidates ineligible for failure to pay the filing fee. The 2-1 ruling had two Democrats in the majority and one Republican dissenting.

The ruling drew the notice of Republican Party leaders, who quickly demanded that Libertarian leaders drop a long list of candidates for the same reason.

When those demands were rejected, Republican organizations and candidates asked the 3rd Court of Appeals to follow the precedent set in the Democratic challenge and order the Libertarians removed from the ballot.

But the GOP filed its challenge on Aug. 21, the deadline to declare candidates ineligible, and the appeals court tossed it out, ruling that there wasn’t time to hear from all parties and gather the necessary information before the deadline expired.

The GOP turned to the Texas Supreme Court, arguing that instead of challenging candidate eligibility under an expired deadline, it was challenging the Libertarians’ candidate applications as improper — giving them until Sept. 18 to seek court intervention.

Paxton, in a letter brief to the Supreme Court, agreed with the GOP interpretation of state election law.

“Under Texas law, there is still time for this Court to compel compliance,” Paxton told the court on Sept. 4.

The all-Republican Supreme Court disagreed, ruling Sept. 5 that the GOP and Paxton were looking at the wrong section of the Election Code on deadlines. The court concluded that the Libertarians could not be removed from the ballot because the GOP challenge was filed too late.

[…]

Then on Friday, the Green Party asked the Supreme Court to reinstate its three candidates, arguing that like the GOP, the Democrats relied on the wrong part of the Election Code, rendering their challenge void as well.

The court asked Paxton’s office for its opinion.

In Monday’s response, filed 10 days after arguing that the GOP had not acted too late in challenging Libertarian opponents, Paxton urged the court to reinstate the Green candidates because the Democrats waited too long to act and because the 3rd Court of Appeals engaged in a rushed process that didn’t give the Greens, other political parties and other candidates time to weigh in.

“The 3rd Court abused its discretion,” Paxton wrote.

The Supreme Court’s one-paragraph order to reinstate the Green candidates did not explain the court’s rationale.

See here for the background. We expect SCOTX to publish its opinion on this ruling today, so we may get some idea if it’s all a bunch of sophistry or if they can make a principled argument that the Greens were deprived of their right to respond to the Dems’ legal action in a timely manner, which was a part of the ruling against the GOP in the Libertarian purge attempt. That Ken Paxton was willing to be morally and conveniently flexible on the subject should come as no surprise, given everything we know about him and his character. The Republican Party of Texas has a longstanding willingness to help the Greens whenever they think it might benefit them. This time that support came from an elected official instead of a deep-pocketed donor. Whatever works.

There was a debate in the comments of the last post about ranked choice voting (RCV) being a solution to this kind of legal gamesmanship. The theory is that since the people who voted Green or Libertarian (or independent, or whatever else may have been on the ballot) would still be able to express their electoral support for whichever major party candidate they like as their backup selection, which in turn would reduce the incentive for the major parties to bump them off the ballot. The logic has merit, though the lack of RCV around the country means there’s no data to test that hypothesis.

In this case, the argument that had been made by both the Ds and the Rs is that the other parties’ candidates had violated the law by not paying the newly-mandated filing fees – you may note, the Dems did not challenge the three Greens who did pay their filing fees, just the three candidates who had not – and there is a long history of candidates being challenged because they failed to meet eligibility requirements. If the filing fee law continues to survive the lawsuits against it, and there are Greens and Libertarians who refuse to comply with it in 2022, I would fully expect them to be taken to court again, surely in a more expeditious fashion, and I would expect that even in an RCV-enabled world. This is a basic tool in the political toolbox, one that I would not expect to go away if the method of determining the winner of an election changes. That too is a testable question, and perhaps one day we’ll have an answer for it. For now, that’s how I see it.

SCOTX puts Greens back on the ballot

Sep 16th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

23 comments

That sound you hear is my head spinning.

The Texas Supreme Court has ordered three Green Party candidates to be restored to the November ballot after Democrats successfully sued to remove them.

Last month, a state appeals court sided with the Democrats, who were seeking to kick the candidates off the ballot because they had not paid filing fees. The three candidates are David Collins for U.S. Senate, Katija “Kat” Gruene for Railroad Commission and Tom Wakely for the 21st Congressional District.

The Texas Green Party appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court, which ruled Tuesday that the secretary of state “shall immediately take all necessary actions to ensure these candidates appear on the” November ballot. The Supreme Court did not give its rationale, but said a full opinion was forthcoming.

It is the latest development in a spate of legal battles over third parties on the November ballot. At issue is a new requirement that third parties pay filing fees like Democrats and Republicans do. The law, passed last year by the Legislature, is the subject of multiple legal challenges, and many third-party candidates had not paid filing fees amid the pending litigation.

A state appeals court upheld the 2019 law last week.

While the Democrats were initially successful in booting the three Green Party candidates off the ballot, Republicans more recently failed in their bid to remove 44 Libertarians from the ticket for a similar reason. In rejecting the GOP effort earlier this month, the Supreme Court said the party waited too long to raise the issue.

[…]

It is crunch time for finalizing ballots across the state, with a Saturday deadline for counties to mail overseas and military ballots. The state’s most populous county, Harris County, wrote to the Supreme Court on Monday saying that “it is too late to make changes,” even if the court acted that day.

In an email sent to county election officials shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Texas secretary of state indicated that counties that had already sent out mail ballots would need to send a corrected version “as soon as possible.”

“The Supreme Court’s ruling and ballot change will not be an acceptable excuse for missing the [Sept. 19] deadline,” wrote Keith Ingram, the state’s director of elections. “That deadline must still be met.”

State law requires corrected ballots to include both a written notice explaining the change and instructions to destroy “defective” ballots that have not yet been returned to a county. A defective ballot returned to the county will be counted if a corrected ballot is not returned in time.

See here and here for the background on the Dems’ effort to boot those three Green candidates, and see here and here for more on the Republicans’ failed effort to boot the Libertarians. A fourth Green candidate had withdrawn from the ballot before all this started because he had voted in the Democratic primary this year.

My first reaction on seeing this news was that it was awfully late in the game for further changes to the ballot. Looking at the case filings, the writ was filed by the Greens on September 11, the Dems had till the 14th to respond, and the ruling came down on the 15th. I’ll have an opinion on the ruling when it is available, but until then all I can do is shrug. It is what it is. You can read this Twitter thread, which began with the original rulings in the two cases, for some more context. The Chron has more.

Data for Progress: Biden 48, Trump 45

Sep 5th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

From the inbox:

New polling data from Data For Progress shows Texas Democrats in a strong position to capture control of the Texas House of Representatives in the November general election.

A late-August survey of likely Texas general election voters in 30 battleground house districts found an unnamed Democratic state house candidate leading the Republican 45-42. In those same districts, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump 49-42.

“This polling data confirms what we are seeing in targeted house districts across the state,” said HDCC Chairwoman Celia Israel. “Texans want new leadership in Austin, focused on meeting their needs during this challenging time. Our candidates are offering that leadership and voters are responding.”

The poll, conducted August 20-25, surveyed 2,295 likely general election voters, including 1,032 voters in battleground state house districts, and has a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points.

You can see the polling memo here and the poll data here. The poll used online web panels. Of interest from the polling memo:

● Biden leads Trump by 3 points statewide (48% Biden, 45% Trump)
● Democrat MJ Hegar trails Republican incumbent John Cornyn by six points in the U.S. Senate race (40% Hegar, 46% Cornyn), with 15% of voters undecided
● In competitive state House districts, Democrats lead Republicans by 3 points (45% Democrats, 42% Republicans), with Biden leading by seven points in those districts (49% Biden, 42% Trump)
● Democrat Chrysta Castañeda trails Republican Jim Wright by six points in the Texas Railroad Commission race (33% Castañeda, 39% Wright), with 25% of voters undecided
● A majority of voters (65%) say they are more likely to support a candidate for office who pledges to achieve 100% clean energy by 2035 and create millions of new clean energy jobs as America transitions to a clean energy economy
● A majority of voters (58%) say they are more likely to support a candidate if they refused to take money from fossil fuel companies, executives, or lobbyists

And from the poll data:

[1] If the 2020 presidential election was held tomorrow and the candidates for president were Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, who would you vote for?


                                  D    R    I
Democrat Joe Biden         48%  94%   9%  47%
Republican Donald Trump    45%   4%  87%  33%
Not sure                    8%   3%   4%  21%

[2] If the election for U.S. Senator from Texas was held tomorrow, who would you vote for?


                                  D    R    I
Democrat MJ Hegar          40%  84%   7%  32%
Republican John Cornyn     46%   6%  85%  36%
Not sure                   15%  10%   8%  32%

[3] If the election for Texas state house was held tomorrow, who would you vote for?


                                  D    R    I
The Democratic candidate   43%  92%   6%  34%
The Republican candidate   45%   4%  88%  33%
Not sure                   12%   5%   6%  34%

[4] If the election for Texas Railroad Commissioner was held tomorrow, which of the following candidates would you vote for?


                                  D    R    I
Democrat Chrysta Castaneda 35%  80%   4%  22%
Republican Jim Wright      41%   4%  82%  26%
Libertarian Matt Sterett    3%   2%   1%   8%
Not sure                   21%  13%  13%  44%

Where the Democrats lag in these races is with Democratic and independent voters. That suggests the real results will be closer to the Presidential race; compare to the previous poll of the RRC race. In the 34 contested Hous3 districts (12 held by Dems, the other 22 held by Republicans), the numbers are 49-42 for Biden, 43-41 for Cornyn over Hegar, 39-36 for Wright over Castaneda, and 45-42 for the Dem State House candidate. We’ll see how this poll compares to the others when they start coming out.

Once again, please pay some attention to the Railroad Commissioner race

Aug 29th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It does matter.

Chrysta Castañeda

The Republican candidate running to join the Texas oil and gas regulatory agency has run afoul of state environmental rules and is embroiled in a series of lawsuits accusing him of fraud in the oil patch.

Jim Wright, owner of an oilfield waste services company, says he has done nothing wrong and that he’s the victim of a Democratic Party smear job.

If nothing else, South Texas court filings and public records showing more than $180,000 in state fines levied against Wright point to the fractiousness of the oilfield.

Wright, who lives on a ranch outside Orange Grove, 35 miles northwest of Corpus Christi, faces Democrat Chrysta Castañeda, a Dallas oil and gas attorney and engineer, in November for a spot on the three-member Texas Railroad Commission.

At the center of the disputes is DeWitt Recyclable Products, a company Wright started nearly a decade ago near Cuero to take oily muds and other drilling site byproducts and recycle them into crude oil, diesel fuel and cleaned-up dirt.

[…]

James McAda, who has run an oilfield services company for more than three decades and is fighting Wright in court, said he is owed more than $200,000 by Wright.

“I think a man who wants to do that kind of job should be following the rules of the agency that he’s going to help run,” McAda said. “This wasn’t just some little small type infraction violation; this was a pretty major deal involving disposal of waste.”

“I’m a dedicated Republican voter, but I don’t think Jim Wright is the man for the job,” he added.

Another company that had sued Wright over cleanup issues, Tidal Tank, settled with him after his March primary victory.

In a separate case, oilfield services firm Petro Swift LLC of Kerrville has accused Wright, his partners and DeWitt Recyclable Products of failing to pay for construction work the Kerrville company did at the Cuero-area site.

Petro Swift attached a lien to the property, but company officials accuse Wright of “fraudulent transfers” of the property through different companies to avoid payment.

Petro Swift co-owner Travis McRae told the American-Statesman that going after Wright was “like chasing a ghost through the woods.”
He said Wright owes Petro Swift about $205,000 on the original bills, plus at least $70,000 in attorney’s fees.

“If the guy can’t follow the rules of his own permits — if he doesn’t have respect for rules that are assigned him that he has to comply with — what makes anyone think he’s going to try to enforce rules when he holds that office?” McRae said.

McRae described himself as a “hardcore conservative, Republican all the way down the ticket.”

But, he said, “I’m not voting for Jim Wright.”

“I always thought the Democratic side is anti-oil, anti-fracking, so let’s have a Republican on the Railroad Commission,” he said. “In this particular case, based on personal experience, I don’t want that dude running anything — even if that means voting Democratic.”

We’ve seen these allegations before, and there’s not a lot of new factual information in this story. The main difference is these quotes from two people who know Jim Wright from being in the same industry and would normally vote for him as the Republican candidate for RRC, except they know who he is and won’t vote for him as a result. I’m not so naive as to think that the negative opinion of two Republicans in an election where we might see upward of ten million votes is in any way a factor in this race. But the differences between the two candidates is a factor in Chrysta Castaneda’s favor, as her recent poll indicated, and thus it’s why she hopes to raise enough money to get that message out. The next time you happen to talk politics with one of your less-engaged friends, this is the kind of race you should make them aware of. It’s the best chance we have.

Republicans try and fail to remove Libertarian candidates from the ballot

Aug 27th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

12 comments

From Patrick Svitek:

.
Texas appeals court rejects last-minute lawsuits by @NRCC, @TravisGOP to kick Libertarian candidates off November ballot for not paying filing fees: http://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia.aspx?MediaVersionID=fee8c1fc-f70a-4d57-baf0-5775ccdea786&coa=coa03&DT=Opinion&MediaID=9242cd19-73c0-441c-bc1f-786be9ec000f

— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) 12:00 AM – 26 August 2020

The Third Court of Appeals decision is here. You may be wondering, why did this same court agree to boot three Green candidates off the ballot last week, for the same reason of not paying filing fees? A good question, with a straightforward answer in the opinion.

Basically, the key difference is timing. By state law, the deadline for withdrawing from the ballot is 74 days before the general election, which this year was August 21. The same date is also the deadline for removing an ineligible candidate’s name from the ballot. A candidate who has withdrawn, or been declared ineligible, or died after this date will still appear on the ballot. Recent examples of the latter include Sen. Mario Gallegos in 2012 and State Rep. Glenda Dawson in 2006. If the ineligible/withdrawn/deceased candidate wins the election (as was the case in those two examples I cited), there is then a vacancy for the office, because that person cannot take office, and thus there is the need for a special election to fill that vacancy.

How that matters in this case is that the plaintiffs (“relators” in Appeals Court-speak) waited too long to take action. The relators included the NRCC, the Republican Party of Travis County, and Rep. Van Taylor. As outlined in the Dem cases against the Greens, they asked via email the Libertarian Party of Texas to disqualify the candidates that didn’t pay the filing fee, and then followed that up with the filing to the Third Court. The problem was, they sent that email “late in the evening on Thursday, August 20”, and filed their mandamus petitions on the 21st (the NRCC in the morning, the Travis County GOP at 9:19 PM). That did not leave adequate time for the Libertarian Party to respond, and it also means that the legal deadline I just mentioned had already passed. Here’s the analysis of the case from the court’s ruling:

“The law is clear that a challenge to the candidacy of an individual becomes moot ‘when any right which might be determined by the judicial tribunal could not be effectuated in the manner provided by law.’” Brimer v. Maxwell, 265 S.W.3d 926, 928 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2008, no pet.) (quoting Polk v. Davidson, 196 S.W.2d 632, 634 (Tex. 1946) (orig. proceeding)). “If a challenge to a candidate’s eligibility ‘cannot be tried and a final decree entered in time for compliance with pre-election statutes by officials charged with the duty of preparing for the holding of the election,’ we must dismiss the challenge as moot.” Id. (quoting Smith v. Crawford, 747 S.W.2d 938, 940 (Tex. App.—Dallas 1988, orig. proceeding)).

The Texas Election Code provides that “[a] candidate’s name shall be omitted from the ballot if the candidate withdraws, dies, or is declared ineligible on or before the 74th day before election day.” Tex. Elec. Code § 145.035. However, “[i]f a candidate dies or is declared ineligible after the 74th day before election day, the candidate’s name shall be placed on the ballot.” Id. § 145.039. “If the name of a deceased, withdrawn, or ineligible candidate appears on the ballot under this chapter, the votes cast for the candidate shall be counted and entered on the official election returns in the same manner as for the other candidates.” Id. § 145.005(a).

Because relators waited to file their challenge to a total of 30 candidates until the last possible day this Court could grant the relief they seek, they made it impossible for the Court to obtain the information and briefing needed to afford due process and make a reasoned decision until less than 74 days remained before election day. Accordingly, even if this Court were to conclude based on the mandamus record that respondents have a statutory duty to declare the real parties in interest ineligible, their names would remain on the ballot and any votes cast for them would be counted. See id. §§ 145.039, .005(a); see also Brimer, 265 S.W.3d at 928 (holding that challenge to candidate’s eligibility for general election becomes moot when it cannot be tried and final decree entered in time for compliance with pre-election statutes); accord Smith, 747 S.W.2d at 940 (“This is true, even though the contestant may have good cause or grounds for the contest.”) (citing Cummins v. Democratic Exec. Comm’n 97 S.W.2d 368, 369 (Tex. App.—Austin 1936, no writ)). No order that this Court might enter would be effective to change this result. The Republican Party candidates’ only legally recognized interest in pursuing this mandamus is to avoid being opposed by an ineligible candidate—an outcome that we cannot, at this point, change.

In other words, if the Republicans wanted the Libertarians who didn’t pay the fee off the ballot, they needed to act sooner than they did, in order to meet the statutory deadline for removing those candidates’ names from the ballot and also to give them their due process rights to respond to the allegations. Because they waited as long as they did, the law was clear that the candidates’ names would remain on the ballot, even if they were indeed ineligible. If one of those Libertarians were to win, then (I presume, anyway) there could be a subsequent lawsuit over whether they could take office or not, but that would be a fight for another day. They snoozed, they lost, better lawyering next time.

One more thing, from a footnote to the analysis of the case:

We note that relators seek the same relief that was sought and granted in our recent opinion, In re Davis, No. 03-20-00414-CV, __S.W.3d__, 2020 WL 4931747 (Tex. App.—Austin Aug. 19, 2020, orig. proceeding). There, the petition for mandamus was filed four business days before the statutory deadline. To assure due process to respondents, this Court required responses in one business day, the same as it did here. And in In re Davis, the candidates themselves brought the challenge. While it is clear that “a candidate for the same office has ‘an interest in not being opposed by an ineligible candidate,’” Brimer v. Maxwell, 265 S.W.3d 926, 928 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2008, no pet.) (quoting In re Jones, 978 S.W.2d 648, 651 (Tex. App.—Amarillo 1998, orig. proceeding [mand. denied]) (per curiam)), respondents in this proceeding challenge whether political parties have an interest sufficient to confer standing to pursue mandamus relief. See Colvin v. Ellis Cnty. Republican Exec. Comm’n, 719 S.W.2d 265, 266 (Tex. App.—Waco 1986, no writ) (holding that “voter” who was opposing political party’s chair had no justiciable interest apart from general public and could not bring suit to enjoin candidacy of ineligible candidates). We need not reach this issue or the other legal and evidentiary arguments raised by respondents because we are disposing of the mandamus petitions based on mootness.

In other words, the question of who raised this challenge to the Libertarian candidates would have been an issue for the court to decide if the matter was not moot. I should note that the Brimer v. Maxwell case cited in that footnote was a reference to a challenge brought by then-Sen. Kim Brimer against Wendy Davis for the 2008 election. There had been a prior challenge made by some Fort Worth firefighters who alleged that Davis did not resign her Fort Worth City Council seat in time to file for the Democratic primary, but that case was dismissed because the court ruled those plaintiffs did not have standing. Brimer did have standing, but a district court ruled in Davis’ favor and a subsequent appeal was denied in part because it was way past the deadline to boot anyone from the ballot. You never know what tidbits of interest can lurk in these things. Anyway, that should be that for now.

Weekend voting litigation news

Aug 23rd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I have two news items about voting-related lawsuits. Both of these come via the Daily Kos Voting Rights Roundup, which has been increasingly valuable to me lately, given the sheer number of such lawsuits and the fact that some news about them either never makes the news or does so in a limited way that’s easy to miss. For the first one, which I have been unable to find elsewhere, let me quote directly from the DKos post:

A federal court has rejected the GOP’s motion to dismiss a pair of Democratic-backed lawsuits challenging a 2019 law Republicans enacted to ban mobile voting locations that operate in a given location for only part of the early voting period. The law in question requires that all polling places be open for the entire early voting period, but because this puts additional burdens on county election officials’ resources, many localities have opted not to operate so-called “mobile” polling places altogether.

Democrats argue that the law discriminates against seniors, young voters, voters with disabilities, and those who lack transportation access in violation of the First, 14th, and 26th Amendments.

This was originally two lawsuits, one filed in October by the Texas Democratic Party, the DSCC, and the DCCC, and one filed in November by former Austin Assistant City Manager Terrell Blodgett, the Texas Young Democrats (TYD) and Emily Gilby, a registered voter in Williamson County, Texas, and student at Southwestern University serving as President of the Southwestern University College Democrats (the original story listed this plaintiff as Texas College Democrats, but they are not mentioned in the ruling). These two lawsuits were combined, and the ruling denying the motion to dismiss means that this combined lawsuit will proceed to a hearing. Now, I have no idea how long it will take from here to get to a hearing on the merits, let alone a ruling, and as far as I know there’s no prospect of an injunction preventing the law in question (HB1888 from 2019), so this is more of a long-term impact than a 2020 thing, but it’s still good news. I should note that there was a third lawsuit filed over this same law, filed in July by Mi Familia Vota, the Texas NAACP and two Texas voters. That one was filed in San Antonio federal court, while this one was in Austin. I do not know anything about that lawsuit other than the fact that it exists. Like I said, this stuff is hard to keep up with.

The ruling is here, and it’s not long if you want to peruse it. The motion to dismiss argued that the Secretary of State could not be sued because it didn’t enforce voting laws, that the plaintiffs did not have standing because the injuries they claimed under HB1888 were speculative, and that HB1888 was constitutional. The judge rejected the first two claims, and said that once standing and the right to sue were established, the constitutionality question could not be answered in a motion to dismiss because the state had a burden to meet for the law to be constitutional, even if that burden is slight. So it’s on to the merits we go. Now you know what I know about this particular offensive against one of Texas’ more recent attempts to limit voting.

Later in the Kos roundup, we learned about a brand new lawsuit, filed by the Hozte clown car crowd, which is suing to overturn Greg Abbott’s executive order that extended early voting by an additional six days.

Conservative leaders and two Republican candidates have filed suit to block Gov. Greg Abbott’s order that added six days of early voting for the November election as a pandemic-inspired safety measure.

The extension, they argued, must be struck down as a violation of the Texas Constitution and state law.

“This draconian order is contrary to the Texas spirit and invades the liberties the people of Texas protected in the constitution,” the lawsuit argued. “If the courts allow this invasion of liberty, today’s circumstances will set a precedent for the future, forever weakening the protections Texans sacrificed to protect.”

The lawsuit was the latest attempt by prominent conservative activist Steven Hotze to overturn Abbott’s executive orders and proclamations in response to the coronavirus.

None of Hotze’s suits to date has succeeded, but the barrage of legal challenges highlights the difficulty Abbott is having with his party’s right wing, which questions the severity of the pandemic and opposes limits on businesses and personal decisions.

The latest lawsuit, filed late Thursday in Travis County state District Court, was joined by Republican candidates Bryan Slaton, running for the Texas House after ousting Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Canton, in the GOP primary runoff, and Sharon Hemphill, a candidate for district judge in Harris County.

Other plaintiffs include Rick Green, a former Texas House member from Hays County, and Cathie Adams, former chair of the Republican Party of Texas and a member of Eagle Forum’s national board.

In late July, when Abbott extended the early voting period for the Nov. 3 election, he said he wanted to give Texas voters greater flexibility to cast ballots and protect themselves and others from COVID-19.

Beginning early voting on Oct. 13, instead of Oct. 19, was necessary to reduce crowding at polls and help election officials implement safe social distancing and hygiene practices, Abbott’s proclamation said. To make the change, Abbott suspended the election law that sets early voting to begin 17 days before Election Day.

At the same time, Abbott also loosened vote by mail rules allowing voters to deliver completed ballots to a county voting clerk “prior to and including on election day.”

The Hotze lawsuit, which sought to overturn that change as well, argued that Abbott’s emergency powers do not extend to suspending Election Code provisions and that the early voting proclamation violates the Texas Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine because only the Legislature can suspend laws.

The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order barring the Texas secretary of state from enforcing Abbott’s proclamation and a court order declaring it unconstitutional.

See here for a copy of the lawsuit. Abbott did extend early voting, though whether it was in response to Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins’ request or if it was something he was always planning to do – remember, he did do the same for the primary runoff election – is not known. What is known is that the State Supreme Court has shown little patience for Hotze and his shenanigans lately. The quote in the story from the lawsuit may be one reason why – there’s a lot more heat than facts being alleged, and even a partisan institution like SCOTX likes to have some basis in the law for what it does. The fact that the extension of early voting for the July runoffs went unchallenged would seem to me to be relevant here – if this is such a grave assault on the state Constitution, why was it allowed to proceed last month? The obvious answer to that question is that there’s a partisan advantage to (potentially) be gained by stopping it now, whereas that wasn’t the case in July. My guess is that this goes nowhere, but as always we’ll keep an eye on it. Reform Austin has more.

Finally, I also have some bonus content relating to the Green Party candidate rejections, via Democracy Docket, the same site where I got the news about the mobile voting case. Here’s the temporary restraining order from the Travis County case that booted David Collins from the Senate race and Tom Wakely from CD21; it was linked in the Statesman story that I included as an update to my post about the mandamus request to SCOTX concerning Wakely and RRC candidate Katija Gruene, but I had not read it. It’s four pages long and very straightforward, and there will be another hearing on the 26th to determine whether the Texas Green Party has complied with the order to remove Collins and Wakely or if there still needs to be a TRO. Here also is the Third Court of Appeals opinion that granted mandamus relief to the Democratic plaintiffs regarding all three candidates:

Molison and Palmer are hereby directed to (1) declare Wakely, Gruene, and Collins ineligible to appear as the Green Party nominees on the November 2020 general statewide ballot and (2) take all steps within their authority that are necessary to ensure that Wakely’s, Gruene’s, and Collins’s names do not appear on the ballot. See In re Phillips, 96 S.W.3d at 419; see also Tex. Elec. Code § 145.003(i) (requiring prompt written notice to candidate when authority declares candidate’s ineligibility). The writ will issue unless Molison and Palmer notify the Clerk of this Court, in writing by noon on Thursday, August 20, 2020, that they have complied with this opinion.

“Molison” is Alfred Molison and “Palmer” is Laura Palmer, the co-chairs of the Texas Green Party. Since the question of the state lawsuit filed by the Libertarian Party over the filing fee mandate came up in the comments on Friday, here’s what this opinion says about that, in a footnote:

We note that although the Green Party and other minor parties and candidates have attempted to challenge the constitutionality of the filing-fee or petition requirement in federal and state court, the statute is currently in effect and enforceable. The federal court denied the parties’ and candidates’ motion for preliminary injunction on November 25, 2019. See Miller v. Doe, No. 1:19-CV-00700-RP, (W.D. Tex., Nov. 25, 2019, order). Although the state district court granted a temporary injunction on December 2, 2019, temporarily enjoining the Secretary of State from refusing to certify third-party nominees from the general election ballot on the grounds that the nominee did not pay a filing fee or submit a petition, the State superseded the temporary injunction, and an interlocutory appeal is pending before the Fourteenth Court of Appeals. See Hughs v. Dikeman, No. 14-19-00969-CV, (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.], interlocutory appeal pending).

Emphasis mine. So there you have it.

A poll of the RRC race

Aug 22nd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

7 comments

Here you go:

Chrysta Castañeda

A new survey from nationally respected polling firm Global Strategy Group (GSG) shows that the combination of Chrysta Castañeda’s unique biography, her opponent Jim Wright’s potent negatives, and Donald Trump’s free-fall in Texas give Castañeda a clear path to victory in the race for the Texas Railroad Commission.

Unsurprisingly, the race for Texas Railroad Commission — which oversees Texas’ oil and gas industry — is currently unformed as neither candidate is well known, and a quarter of voters are undecided. But after voters hear balanced profiles of both candidates, Castañeda emerges with a six-point lead in an informed ballot test. That lead expands to 10 points after balanced negatives against each of the candidates are provided.

“I have seen few polls in recent years that show so clearly how much stronger one candidate is versus the other,” said Andrew Baumann, Senior Vice President at GSG, who conducted the poll. “Not only does Castañeda’s biography and agenda resonate strongly, but Wright’s negatives are also disqualifying.”

The poll didn’t just include good news for Castaneda. According to their findings, former Vice President and Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden leads Republican President Donald Trump by two points in Texas — a result that, if it holds, would have profound implications for the presidential race.

“It’s clear that Texans are hungry for change,” Chrysta said. “I believe that we can balance our demand for energy and a healthy oil and gas industry with the critical need to address the environmental concerns that endanger our children’s future. This is not a binary choice. I’m ready to bring practical, creative solutions to the Railroad Commission, and it looks like Texans are ready for me to do just that.”

For more on the survey, including the methodology, read the polling memo here.

From that polling memo:

The Texas political terrain has become much more favorable for Democrats as Trump trails by two after winning statewide by nine points in 2016. Joe Biden has a two-point lead over Trump in the race for president (47% Biden/45% Trump), including a six-point lead among self-identified independents (37% Biden/31% Trump). This is driven by Trump’s acute unpopularity among independents (33% fav/55% unfav). Republicans have just a two-point lead on the generic ballot for state representative (44% Democrat/46% Republican) and Democrats are more motivated to vote this November (79% of Democrats are extremely motivated to vote vs. 75% of Republicans who are extremely motivated to vote).

Wright holds a name ID advantage thanks to the contested GOP primary and sharing a name with the former Speaker of the U.S. House, but Castañeda starts within striking distance in a very open race. Jim Wright competed in a competitive Republican primary, which drove his name ID up with Republicans, but he is actually has higher name ID with Democrats, many of whom are likely mistaking him with the former Speaker of the U.S. House from Texas with the same name. As a result, his name ID, while not high at 26%, is higher than Castañeda’s (18%). Despite the lower level of familiarity, Castañeda is behind Wright by only six points, 31% Castañeda/37% Wright, with 8% going to Libertarian Matt Sterett and 24% undecided – with Democrats significantly more likely to be undecided than Republicans.

After a balanced introduction, Castañeda moves into a six-point lead which expands to double-digits after balanced negative. Following the initial ballot, voters heard profiles of equal length about both Castañeda and Wright (with Wright’s based on information from his own website). Following this simulated debate, Castañeda takes a six-point lead (45% Castañeda/39% Wright/5% Sterett), with 11% undecided. Voters then heard critiques of both candidates, with the critique of Wright focused on his legal troubles and the attack against Castañeda attempting to paint her (inaccurately) as a liberal Democrat who is backed by “radical environmental groups” and running on a “platform of implementing massive new job-killing regulations on the oil and gas industry” that will “kill the Texas Miracle.” As the table below shows, this exchange expands Castañeda’s lead to 10 points.

See here for more on that Jim Wright business, and you can click over to see the table. It’s 42-32-8, with 18 undecided, when the Libertarian candidate is named, and 47-38, with 15 undecided, when it’s just Castañeda and Wright. It’s always tricky to poll low-profile races like this precisely because the candidates are not well-known, but this is a plausible result. The Presidential numbers are in line with other recent polls, the initial Wright-versus-Castañeda totals make sense, with lots of undecideds that are mostly Democrats, and the push part of the poll is not outrageous. The key here of course is that Chrysta Castañeda would need to have enough money to run ads that deliver that information about herself and her opponent for any of this to matter. That’s one reason why candidates commission polls like these and then release them if they’re good enough. Castañeda doesn’t have that kind of money, or at least she didn’t as of July 6, but the money could be raised. And for sure, as with MJ Hegar and the judicial candidates, the better Joe Biden does in Texas the better the position Chrysta Castañeda will be in. The point here is that it is all quite doable. See The New Republic for more.

Further thoughts on the Dems defenestrating the Green candidates

Aug 21st, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

18 comments

But first, the Chron story about yesterday’s legal action.

An appellate court on Wednesday blocked three Green Party candidates from the November ballot because they failed to pay candidate filing fees.

The candidates are David Collins, who was running for Senate; Tom Wakely, who was running for the 21st Congressional District, and Katija “Kat” Gruene, who was running for the Railroad Commission. The legal challenge was filed by their Democratic opponents: MJ Hegar, Wendy Davis and Chrysta Castañeda, respectively.

Two members of a three-judge panel of the court sided with the Democrats late Wednesday.

In their majority opinion, Justice Thomas Baker wrote that Wakely, Gruene and Collins are ineligible to appear on the ballot and compelled the Green Party to “take all steps within their authority” to ensure they don’t appear on the ballot. Due to the time sensitivity, Baker said the court would not entertain motions for a rehearing.

Chief Justice Jeff Rose dissented, saying providing no other explanation than that relief was “not appropriate based on the record before us.”

[…]

Davis’ campaign declined to comment. Hegar’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Randy Howry, Hegar’s lawyer in the Travis County case, referred questions about the impetus for the suit to attorney Alexi Velez, who was not available for comment.

Castañeda said the suit was a matter of fairness and that the timing was “based on the fact that the Green Party tactics only recently came to light.”

“I and my fellow candidates worked very hard to get on the ballot, and the statute is clear for all of us,” she said, adding that if the candidates didn’t want to or couldn’t pay the fee, they “could have acquired the signatures to petition to be on the ballot but chose not to do so.”

[…]

Wakely said it was clear to him that the last-minute pile-on of lawsuits was a coordinated strategy to eliminate competition. He added that it was curious that Libertarian candidates, including the one in his 21st District race, Arthur DiBianca, who also did not pay fees, were facing similar scrutiny.

Gruene added that the last-minute nature of the case also seems to be part of the Democrats’ strategy, as it leaves the Green candidates without many options for relief.

Charles Waterbury, a lawyer for the Green Party candidates, agreed that the timing seemed like a tactic and said Democrats should have raised the issue sooner.

“The Democrats waited so long for what I would argue is kind of an artificial emergency,” Waterbury said. “If this is such a huge deal, if keeping the juggernaut that is the Green Party off the ballot is so important, this is something they should have filed way before. … They know the difficulty faced by a party like the Greens is basically insurmountable.”

Gruene said she views the suit against her in the same way as Wakely.

“It’s a way to siderail a campaign to shift into dealing with legal matters instead of campaigning,” Gruene said. “The Democratic Party has always seen the Green Party as their opposition, and they, from 2001 until today, have used lawsuits as a way to bankrupt candidates, bankrupt parties and prevent voters from having the choice of voting for Green Party candidates.”

See here and here for the background. Let me begin by saying that yes indeed, the Democratic Party and the Green Party are opponents, by definition. Only one candidate in a race can get elected, so by definition every candidate in a given race is an opponent to the others. I have no patience at all for the whining of these candidates about how mean the Democrats are being to them because I am old enough to remember the 2010 election, in which deep-pocketed Republican backers paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to help Green candidates get on that year’s ballot, an act of charity that the Green Party was only too happy to accept. Those Republicans did that with the intent of making it just a bit harder for Bill White to beat Rick Perry in the Governor’s race. It turned out they needn’t have bothered, but that wasn’t the point. So please spare me the hand-wringing, and pay the filing fee or collect the petition signatures as long as that is required by law, or face the consequences of your actions.

Along those same lines, I respectfully disagree with RG Ratcliffe:

I have never voted for the Green Party and never will, but it is really chickenshit of Texas Democrats to complain about voter suppression and then try to suppress the choices of voters who want to cast ballots for candidates of a party with ballot access over a filing fee the party candidates did not have to pay until this year. And this is about more than a few candidates, this is about denying the Greens ballot access in the future.

I don’t agree that challenging candidates who did not follow the law as written – and please note, a couple of the Green candidates did pay the filing fee, so it’s not that they all shared this principle or all lacked the ability to pay – is in the same universe as passing discriminatory voter ID laws, refusing to expand vote by mail in a pandemic, aggressively pursuing felony prosecutions against people who made honest mistakes (two words: Crystal Mason), but I’ll allow that filing these motions to oust the Greens is not exactly high-minded. To respond to that, let me bring in Evan Mintz:

Here’s an important lesson: Hypocrisy in politics isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. There is no grand umpire or arbiter who punishes elected officials for inconsistency (besides the voters, and they usually don’t mind). Politics isn’t about truth; it’s about power. If past positions get in the way, change them.

I’d say that’s a lesson they don’t teach you in school, but actually they do. Rice University graduate student Matt Lamb told me it’s the first thing he teaches students in his Introduction to American Politics class: “Politics is about power.”

It’s the power to implement an agenda, impose one’s own morality on others, or distribute resources. It’s the reason people try to get elected in the first place.

Texas Democrats must’ve missed that class, because for the past 30 years or so they’ve acted as if noble intentions alone are enough to merit statewide office. Uphold the process. Act professionally. Do the right thing. Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said essentially that in a May conference call with journalists in response to the governor’s plan on ending COVID lockdowns. “The Democratic Party is not looking at the response through a political lens,” he said. “We’re looking at what is good for the public. If that costs us votes, so be it.”

There’s a slight flaw in Hinojosa’s plan: You can’t pursue the public good if you don’t get the public vote.

I’d say it’s clearly the case that the Democrats took legal action to remove these Green Party candidates from the ballot for the same reason why the Republicans paid money in 2010 to help put them on the ballot: They want to increase the chances that their candidates can win these elections. Obviously, there are limitations to this. One need only look at the utter degradation of the Republican Party and the principles it once held on subjects like free trade and personal morality under Donald Trump, where the only principle they now have is winning at all costs for the sake of holding onto power, to understand this. I’d like the Democratic candidates I support to hold principles that I support as well. But you also have to try your best to win elections, because as I’ve said way too many times over the past decade-plus, nothing will change in this state until the Dems start winning more elections. If that means I have to live with the knowledge that we booted some Green Party candidates off the ballot for the purpose of maybe upping our odds some small amount, I’ll do that. If you want to judge me for that, you are free to do so. I can live with that, too.

More challenges to Green Party candidates

Aug 20th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

From Patrick Svitek:

.
@ChrystaForTexas, @wendydavis sue to remove their Green Party opponents from the ballot, saying they didn’t pay filing fees on time: http://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia.aspx?MediaVersionID=6f9426d1-7b86-4718-b99a-8356e5d806a6&coa=coa03&DT=Brief&MediaID=297d5426-ee45-4039-8bfc-dc8891686f76

The Green Party candidate in Davis’ race is @Wakely2020, who was the 2016 Democratic nominee for the same seat. #TX21
— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) 8:59 AM – 19 August 2020

As we know, the Green Party candidate for Supreme Court Chief Justice withdrew following a challenge that alleged he had violated election law by voting in this year’s Democratic primary. The writ makes the following allegations:

1) The passage of HB2504, the same bill that lowered the statewide vote threshold from five percent to two percent for third parties to automatically qualify for the ballot also mandates a filing fee (or collection of petition signatures), with the same fees or petition requirements for third parties as for Dems and Republicans.

2) Candidates Wakely and Gruene did not pay the filing fees or collect the petition signatures, and the Green Party was aware of this. Indeed, the Green Party specifically stated in their April newsletter that some of their candidates did pay the filing fee while others (including Gruene, Wakely, the already-withdrawn Waterbury, and Senate candidate David Collins, who for whatever the reason was not named in this mandamus) did not.

3) Both the Greens and the Libertarians filed lawsuits alleging that the filing fee was illegal for them, since the idea of the fee was to help pay for the primary elections, which they don’t have. The Libertarians won a temporary injunction against the fee in December, but that was put on hold by the Fourteenth Court of Appeals, and as of today the filing fee is still in effect. (This had caused some confusion for the Ls and Gs, and I have no idea how many other candidates there may be in this particular boat.)

4) Because of all this, the Green Party was required to disqualify these candidates, and since they did not, the Dems are asking the Supreme Court to do so. They are asking via mandamus because Friday the 21st is the statutory deadline for candidates to be included or excluded from the November ballot.

So we’ll see what happens. In theory, I’ll have an update to this by the weekend. The Libertarians’ lawsuit over the legality of the filing fees is still ongoing, it just won’t be resolved in time for this election. Two side notes of interest that I discovered while writing this: One, Katija Gruene also tried to file for HD51, but was not allowed to file for two different offices by the SOS. Pretty sure it’s clear in state law that’s a no-no. Also, a candidate who had applied to run for HD45 was disqualified by the Greens at their convention because he had voted in the Dem primary. Just like Charles Waterbury, except I guess he was up front about it. So there you have it.

UPDATE: Apparently, there was more than one effort going on.

A Travis County judge issued an order Wednesday that temporarily blocked two Texas Green Party candidates for Congress from appearing on the November ballot.

The 14-day temporary restraining order was granted after Democratic Senate candidate MJ Hegar, joined by two national Democratic organizations, argued that her Green Party opponent, as well as a Green candidate opposing Democrat Wendy Davis, should not be placed on the ballot because they failed to pay a candidate filing fee as required by a new state law.

District Judge Jan Soifer’s order blocked the Texas secretary of state’s office from certifying David Collins, the Green candidate for U.S. Senate, and Tom Wakely, running for U.S. House District 21, to appear on the Nov. 3 ballot. Both candidates were “indisputably ineligible” to appear on the ballot, Soifer said.

Soifer, who was head of the Travis County Democratic Party before becoming a judge, also set an Aug. 26 hearing to determine if the Democrats’ request for an injunction should be granted.

[…]

Hegar’s challenge was one of two that Democrats had recently filed in state courts seeking to keep Green Party challengers off the ballot over failure to pay the fees.

Davis, running for the House seat held by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Hays County, and Chrysta Castañeda, running for the Railroad Commission, filed an emergency petition Monday asking the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals to issue an order blocking their Green Party opponents from the ballot.

Hegar, seeking to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, also joined that effort Wednesday. The appeals court has not yet ruled on the request.

Green Party candidates are generally believed to take votes that would otherwise go to Democrats.

The Green Party acknowledges that its candidates – Collins, Wakely and Katija Gruene for railroad commissioner – did not pay the filing fee or collect the needed number of petition signatures to avoid the fee.

But the party believes the fee, as it applies to third parties, is unconstitutional and improper, said Laura Palmer, Green Party co-chair.

Wow. I had wondered about Collins, given that he wasn’t mentioned in the mandamus request. If all of these motions succeed, the Greens will end up with no statewide candidates, one Congressional candidate (in CD36), one State Senate candidate (SD26), and two State House candidates (HDs 92 and 119). That’s not a lot, but even if the Greens prevail they’d still only have seven total candidates on the ballot. Seems like maybe there’s a bigger issue than the filing fee here, but maybe that’s just me.

UPDATE: And here’s a Trib story by Patrick Svitek with further information.

On Wednesday, both a Travis County district judge and a state appeals court blocked the Green Party nominees for U.S. Senate and the 21st Congressional District from appearing on the ballot. The Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals additionally forced the Green Party nominee for railroad commissioner off the ballot.

Earlier this week, it surfaced that a Green Party contender for chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court had withdrawn after the Democratic nominee questioned his eligibility.

The Democrats are largely targeting Green Party candidates because they have not paid filing fees — a new requirement for third parties under a law passed by the Legislature last year. The filing fees were already required of Democratic and Republican candidates. The new law is being challenged by multiple lawsuits that remain pending, and the Green Party of Texas has been upfront that most of its candidates are not paying the fees while they await a resolution to the litigation.

[…]

The rulings Wednesday came in response to lawsuits in two different courts that involved some of the same candidates. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, MJ Hegar, had sued in Travis County district court to disqualify the Green Party nominees for U.S. Senate, David Collins, and for the 21st District, Tom Wakely. Meanwhile, Hegar had joined the Democratic nominees for the 21st District, Wendy Davis, and for railroad commissioner, Chrysta Castañeda, to seek an ineligibly ruling for their three respective Green Party candidates before the 3rd Court of Appeals.

In the appeals court’s opinion, Justice Thomas Baker ordered the Green Party of Texas to declare their three candidates ineligible and do all they can to make sure they do not appear on the ballot. Baker said the court would not accept motions for rehearing, citing the “time-sensitive nature of this matter.”

In the Travis County district court decision, Judge Jan Soifer said her order is in effect for the next two weeks. However, she scheduled a hearing for Aug. 26 — two days before the state’s ballot certification deadline — where she could reevaluate the decision.

Four things: One, as of these rulings we are now at the point I mentioned earlier, where there are no statewide Green candidates. Two, this may moot the mandamus request to the SCOTX. Three, apparently I was wrong earlier, because August 28 is the deadline for party nominees to be certified for the ballot. August 21 is the deadline to withdraw. And finally, that strategy of not paying the filing fees while the lawsuit over filing fees carries on, even though there is no injunction stopping the filing fees, sure does not appear to have worked out well for the Greens.

Please allow me to turn your attention to the Railroad Commissioner race for a moment

Aug 17th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

6 comments

Because there’s a serious issue with one of the candidates, and this sort of thing never gets the attention it deserves.

Chrysta Castañeda

There is a glaring conflict of interest with Jim Wright, the Republican candidate running for Texas Railroad Commissioner, the state agency responsible for regulating the oil & gas industry and mining in the state.

On Wednesday, Texas Democrats circulated a news release detailing 255 logged violations of Wright’s company, DeWitt Recyclable Products. The inspections and violations were issued by the Texas Railroad Commission and date back to 2016, two years after his oilfield waste disposal company was founded.

Most striking, 50 of the violations for Wright’s company are for the unpermitted disposal of oil and gas wastes at his company’s facility in DeWitt County.

It’s clear why owning a waste disposal facility — one of only 24 facilities in Texas permitted to receive oilfield waste — could be problematic for someone running for a spot in the three-person Railroad Commission. The agency is ultimately responsible for the regulation and enforcement of oil & gas companies that must adhere to pages and pages of Texas administrative code.

But inspections and violations aside, Wright’s company is also engaged in a slew of litigation that presents even more problems for his candidacy. One such lawsuit was profiled in great detail by the Houston Chronicle this week. The report explains how Wright’s waste disposal company, which he sold Watson Energy Investments (but remained listed as the president) was shut down by the Texas Railroad Commission.

“Shortly after the facility was shut down, Watson Energy Investments fell behind on its payments to Wright,” the Chronicle’s Sergio Chapa reported. “He excercised an option in the contract to take control of the facility. In a lawsuit filed in March against his former business partners, Wright maintains that Watson still owes him $495,000 of payments from sale and another $180,000 in crude oil royalties.”

Here’s that TDP press release, and you should read the Chron story as well – there’s too much there to excerpt. The TL;dr of all this is that Jim Wright would be in an excellent position to make a lot of these problems for himself go away if he were elected to the Railroad Commission, even if as he claims he’d recuse himself from anything having to do with his own businesses. I submit to you, being on the regulatory body that oversees your business is a problem. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution for this, and that’s to elect Chrysta Castañeda, a very well-qualified candidate without any of this baggage. You can listen to my interview with her here if you haven’t already. And now you can return to obsessing about coronavirus, Trump’s latest tweets, destroying the post office in the name of voter suppression, the Senate’s unwillingness to take action to help the people who have been devastated by the COVID crisis, or whatever else is eating your brain.

July 2020 campaign finance reports: State races, part 1

Jul 31st, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

I’m going to take a look at the July finance reports from the various state races, which I will split into three parts. Part one will be statewide, SBOE, and State Senate, part two will be State House races from the Houston area, and part three will be State House races from elsewhere in the state. I’m not going to be doing every race of course, just the ones of interest. January reports for statewide candidates can be found here, and January reports for various SBOE and State Senate races can be found here.

Chrysta Castaneda, RRC
Jim Wright, RRC

Amy Clark Meachum, Supreme Court, Chief Justice
Nathan Hecht, Supreme Court, Chief Justice

Gisela Triana, Supreme Court, Place 8
Brett Busby, Supreme Court, Place 8

Kathy Cheng, Supreme Court, Place 6
Jane Bland, Supreme Court, Place 6

Staci Williams, Supreme Court, Place 7
Jeff Boyd, Supreme Court, Place 7

Rebecca Bell-Metereau, SBOE5
Lani Popp, SBOE5

Michelle Palmer, SBOE6
Will Hickman, SBOE6

Marsha Webster, SBOE10
Tom Maynard, SBOE10

Susan Criss, SD11
Larry Taylor, SD11

Roland Gutierrez, SD19
Pete Flores, SD19


Candidate   Office    Raised     Spent     Loan     On Hand
===========================================================
Castaneda      RRC    43,072    38,785   27,166      16,043
Wright         RRC   384,282    90,680   45,000     350,856

Meachum      SCOTX    51,093    44,271        0     132,303
Hecht        SCOTX   312,030   106,598        0     727,648

Triana       SCOTX    17,592     9,781        0     113,567
Busby        SCOTX   207,080   116,130        0     611,700

Cheng        SCOTX     7,637     4,033   90,174       9,292
Bland        SCOTX   264,370   106,000        0     417,335

Williams     SCOTX    14,135    47,262        0       7,466
Boyd         SCOTX   104,743   171,002        0     492,183

BellMetereau SBOE5    27,439     8,027    2,250      20,935
Popp         SBOE5    22,930    98,185   10,000      25,354

Palmer       SBOE6     6,873     9,134        0       6,076
Hickman      SBOE6     1,800     2,225    2,500       1,047

Webster     SBOE10     2,480     1,589       25       3,529
Maynard     SBOE10     3,170     1,103    5,000       4,216

Criss         SD11    22,586    14,071        0      13,644
Taylor        SD11    64,150   116,848        0   1,129,009

Gutierrez     SD19    60,074    99,208        0      11,309
Flores        SD19   295,760    65,577        0     563,459

I skipped the Court of Criminal Appeals races because no one raises any money in them. Jim Wright is the no-name Republican challenger who ousted incumbent Ryan Sitton in the GOP Railroad Commissioner primary, in an upset no one saw coming. He had $12K on hand in his eight-day report for the March primary. You can see where he is now, thanks to the Republican money machine including Tim Dunn (evil rich guy behind Empower Texans, $20K) and a slew of PACs. Ryan Sitton had $2.5 million in his account at the time of his defeat (all of which he can now donate to other campaigns, if he wants), so Wright isn’t in that league yet, but the point is that Wright wasn’t a no-name nobody for long. The establishment just moved over to his camp and did their thing. The Republican Party of Texas is currently a dumpster fire, and many of its county parties (see, in particular, Harris and Bexar) are even worse off, but the real power structure is still operating at peak efficiency.

The larger point I would make here, as we begin to see Joe Biden and Donald Trump ads on TV – I saw one of each while watching the Yankees-Nationals game on Saturday night – is that there’s more than one way to do a statewide campaign in Texas. For a million bucks or so, you could probably blanket local and cable TV in many of the media markets with ads for Chrysta Castaneda and the statewide Democratic judicial slate. I have seen my share of “vote for Republican judges” ads on my teevee, as recently as 2016 and 2018. Our Congressional candidates have shown there’s plenty of financial support out there for Democratic contenders, even those in odds-against races. There are many people who know enough to create a PAC, get some dough in the door, then cut an ad and buy some time for it. The numbers say this is the best chance we’ve had in a quarter century to win statewide. What are we going to do about that?

As for the Senate races, SD11 isn’t really competitive. It’s on the list of “races that may end up being closer than you might have thought because of prevailing conditions and recent political shifts”, but it’s too far out of reach to expect more than that. The thing I’d ponder is if the likes of Larry Taylor, and other Republican Senators in safe districts or not on the ballot this year, will put some of their spare cash towards helping their fellow partymates who are in tough races. I’m sure we can all think of a few of them. As for SD19, I’m not too worried about the current gap between Roland Gutierrez’s and Pete Flores’ cash on hand. I fully expect Gutierrez, the one Dem running in a truly flippable district, to have the resources he needs. But I’ll still check the 30-day report, because SD19 officially makes me nervous after the 2018 special election fiasco.

Nobody ever raises money in the SBOE races. It would have been fascinating to see what might have happened had cartoon character/performance artist Robert Morrow won that primary runoff, but alas. It’s just another boring contest between two normal people. Which, given the history of the SBOE, is actually quite comforting.

2020 primary runoff results: Statewide

Jul 15th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

14 comments

It was a tight race all night, but it looks like MJ Hegar will win.

MJ Hegar

MJ Hegar was holding a 5-percentage-point lead over Royce West on Tuesday night in the Democratic primary runoff for U.S. Senate, according to unofficial results.

With 71% of polling locations reporting, Hegar was ahead of West, 52.4% to 47.6%. Hegar is the former Air Force helicopter pilot endorsed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and West is the longtime state senator from Dallas.

Speaking to reporters shortly after 10 p.m., Hegar said she was not declaring victory yet but felt “very confident.”

West and his campaign, meanwhile, said the runoff was still too close to call and that they expected it to come down to about 10,000 votes.

With about three-fourths of the precincts reporting, Hegar was leading by 40K votes. I don’t think there’s enough time, or enough outstanding ballots, for West to make up the ground. For what it’s worth, West had about a 3K vote lead in Harris County after early voting, but Hegar whittled away at that on Election Day, and very slowly stretched her lead out over the state. There was some bad blood in this race towards the end, and West picked up a number of endorsements from elected officials, while John Cornyn ran some ads stoking the fire. I expect people will mostly forget about all that in November, but for now there’s some healing to do.

In the Railroad Commissioner race, Chrysta Castaneda led everywhere I looked in early voting by a wide amount, and then kept adding to it. She was easily over 60% as Election Day results were coming in. I called that race on Twitter pretty much right away.

We’ve talked about the potential pickup of the Senate seat, as that is one extra reason for the Biden campaign to invest in Texas. The polling we’ve had in the Senate race doesn’t suggest a top tier opportunity, but it’s not like John Cornyn is anywhere near fifty percent, nor is he appreciably ahead of Trump in his level of support. Basically, if Joe Biden can win Texas, or maybe even if he can just come really close to winning Texas, MJ Hegar/Royce West can win that race as well.

The thing is, that also holds true for the RRC race and the statewide judicial races. I can make the argument that Biden will run ahead of other Dems (mostly because there will still be some Republican crossover at the Presidential level but not downballot, as was the case in 2016), and I can also make the argument that Trump will run ahead of other Republicans (mostly because I think there will be more vote-for-Trump-only people than vote-for-Biden-only people, and maybe because the third party vote will be bigger downballot than at the top, as it usually is in Presidential years), but the same basic calculus holds. If Biden wins Texas, the odds are good he will have company. If he falls short, even by less than a point, the odds are no one else makes it across. The national folks have very little reason to care about these races, but the rest of us should.

Early voting for primary runoffs starts tomorrow

Jun 28th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Remember the runoffs? It’s time we settle who our nominees are.

Who can vote in the runoffs?

Texas has open primaries, meaning you don’t have to be a registered member of either party to cast a ballot in a primary runoff. You can check your voter registration status here. But you can only vote in one party’s primary, and which one might depend on how you voted in the first round of the primaries in March. People who voted in the March 3 primary are only able to vote in that same party’s runoff election, as they have affiliated themselves with that given party for that calendar year. Those who did not participate in the March primary are able to vote in either primary runoff election.

What’s different this year?

The primaries were originally scheduled for May, but Abbott delayed them until July because of the coronavirus. Abbott also doubled the length of the early voting period for the July primary runoff elections in a move to aimed at easing crowds at the polls during the pandemic. Early voting runs from Monday through July 10.

“It is necessary to increase the number of days in which polling locations will be open during the early voting period, such that election officials can implement appropriate social distancing and safe hygiene practices,” Abbott wrote in a May proclamation.

For Harris County, the early voting map of locations with wait times is here. Please take advantage of a less-busy location if you can. The traditional PDF with the map and hours is here. Please note the new and changed locations. Please also note that there is no voting on Friday, July 3 and Saturday, July 4, due to the holiday. Voting hours are extended on Sunday, July 5 (10 to 7, instead of the usual 1 to 6) and on the last day, Friday, July 10 (7 AM to 10 PM). All other days are 7 AM to 7 PM. We should be able to get in and out safely, and you will need to bring a mask. See here for the Harris County Clerk’s SAFE principles.

My Runoff Reminder series will remind you who’s running: Statewide, Congress, SBOE and State Senate, State House, select county races, and select judicial races. Links to interviews and Q&As are in there as well.

The Chron re-ran a bunch of its endorsements on Friday:

Mike Siegel, CD10
Chrysta Castañeda, Railroad Commissioner
Michelle Palmer, SBOE6
Akilah Bacy, HD138
Rep. Harold Dutton, HD142
Rep. Anna Eastman, HD148

They had endorsed Royce West for Senate in March, and they reran that endorsement on Saturday. (UPDATE: They reran their endorsement of Michael Moore for Commissioners Court, Precinct 3, this morning.)

Also on the ballot for this election: the special election in SD14 to succeed Kirk Watson. I have interviews with the two candidates of interest, Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, and former Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt. Please give them a listen if you live in this district. I expect this will go to a runoff, which I hope will not need to endure a delay like the May elections did.

All the elections for July 14 are important, but just as important is that this will serve in many ways as a dry run for November, both in terms of handling a higher volume of mail ballots and also in terms of making the in person voting process as safe as it can be in this pandemic. I was on a conference call a week or so ago with a national group, the Voter Protection Corps, which presented a report for policymakers with concrete steps to protect in-person voting and meet the equal access to voting requirements enshrined in federal law and the U.S. Constitution. Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins was one of the presenters in that call. You can see a summary of the call with highlights from the report here. I will be voting in person for this election, but however you do it please take the steps you need to in order to be safe.

Runoff reminder: Statewide

Jun 3rd, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

As I said in the interview posts for SD14, I’m going to revisit the runoff races of interest ahead of early voting. It’s been awhile since we’ve really paid attention to a lot of these folks, what limited news there has been for them has likely fallen under your radar, and it’s time to get back into thinking about who we want to vote for. So with that, I’ll kick things off with the two statewide runoffs and go from there. This will be a mostly freestyle kind of thing, with whatever I can find, on an as-I-can-do-it schedule. Enjoy!

Senate

MJ Hegar

The Senate runoff features MJ Hegar and State Sen. Royce West, who led the field of about a million candidates in March. The Texas Signal had a nice brief overview of what has been happening since then. Hegar has been the much stronger fundraiser of the two, though it will be interesting to see how everyone has been doing in Q2 given the pandemic and the economy. She has a lead in one runoff poll – polling overall has been scant in this race – though neither Hegar nor West has gained enough traction to differentiate themselves in head-to-head matchups with Big John Cornyn.

All of the top candidates that have endorsed in the runoff have endorsed West, citing policy differences and Hegar’s less reliable attendance at primary candidate forums. Hegar has a lot of national backing, from the DSCC and EMILY’s List to former Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren. There is an online debate scheduled for this Saturday, June 6, in case you haven’t had the opportunity to hear from the candidates before now.

Sen. Royce West

The November race has been on the fringes of the national radar. Nationally, Democrats have four strong pickup opportunities, in Colorado, Nevada, Maine, and North Carolina, with a second tier that includes the two Georgia races and Iowa. (There’s also the Doug Jones-held seat in Alabama, which is widely considered a lost cause for Dems.) The Texas race is usually lumped in with longer-shot races like the ones in Kansas and South Carolina, though Presidential-level polling in Texas shows a fairly tight race. It’s not clear to me how Cornyn will run compared to Trump statewide, but the better Biden does the better either Hegar or West will do. If polling between Biden and Trump remains tight, that increases the odds that the eventual nominee will raise more money and get support from national groups. Assume this same dynamic will play out, with less money, in other statewide contests.

Railroad Commissioner

Chrysta Castañeda

There’s not much news out there about the Railroad Commissioner race. That’s just the nature of the beast here – the RRC is fairly low profile and little understood by normal people, and just doesn’t have the opportunity to make much news. I couldn’t find any recent stories featuring candidates Chrysta Castañeda or Roberto Alonzo, but I did find this Star-Telegram profile of the four primary candidates, for which Alonzo and Castañeda were the first two. Neither candidate had raised much money as of the January finance report, but perhaps that will change for the July and 30-day-runoff reports.

The one relevant news item I found in searching for these two candidates was this KVUE story about the RRC meeting to suspend some operating rules, which drew a critical response from Castañeda. Both candidates participated in an online debate hosted by 2020 Democratic Candidate Debates. I’m not aware of any other similar events at this time. I did an interview with Castañeda for the primary – I didn’t reach out to Alonzo because he didn’t have any campaign presence at the time I was doing interviews.

Roberto Alonzo

As with the Senate race, I see this one to be about as competitive as the Presidential race is. There are two points of interest to note here. One is that the Republican incumbent, Ryan Sitton, was ousted in the GOP primary by some dude who raised no money. Sitton himself had about $2 million cash on hand, which isn’t a huge amount for a statewide race but ain’t nothing, either. The other is that low-profile statewide races like the RRC tend to draw a higher third-part vote – the Libertarian and Green candidates in 2016 combined for over 8.5% of the vote, though that was a stranger than usual race, with Libertarian Mark Miller receiving some newspaper endorsements. Undervotes are also an issue – the RRC race in 2018 drew about 150K fewer votes than the Senate race, and in 2016 it drew 200K fewer votes than the Presidential race. My point here is that Dems may be leaving some votes on the table, which a strong candidate and/or a strong coordinated campaign may mitigate. Let’s not lose a winnable race because we didn’t vote all the way down.

I’ll have a look at Congressional runoffs next. Let me know what you think.

More runoff debates

May 18th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

In case you had not seen this, as I myself had not before Sunday.

Watch Democratic Candidate Debates Here!

Every Tuesday and Thursday in May, join us for our debate series:

Debate Schedule:
Tuesday, May 5 – Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner
Thursday, May 7 – Texas State House District 138
Tuesday, May 12 – Texas State House District 142
Thursday, May 14 – Texas State House District 148
Tuesday, May 19 – US Congressional District 10
Thursday, May 21 – Texas State Board of Education Position 6
Tuesday, May 26 – Texas Railroad Commission
Thursday, May 28 – United States Senate

Video of past debates are on the page, so for example if you want to hear Anna Eastman and Penny Shaw, go here. In some cases, one of the candidates in the runoff has declined or not responded, but in most cases you can hear both candidates. Early voting begins June 29, so remind yourself of who’s on your ballot and start making up your mind.

Primary precinct analysis: Who did what in the RRC race

Mar 19th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

The Railroad Commissioner primary was a bit like the Senate primary – multiple candidates (though not nearly as many), not a whole lot of money, but the candidate who did best in fundraising was also the leading votegetter. Here’s a look at the top 25 counties in terms of votes cast for the Railroad Commissioner’s race:


County    ALONZO   CASTAÑEDA    STONE   WATSON      Total
=========================================================
All        503,666   592,770  380,236  277,578  1,754,250
HARRIS      77,618    85,166   59,552   40,428    262,764
DALLAS      56,824    57,822   48,718   36,255    199,619
TRAVIS      30,199    97,284   37,641   20,290    185,414
BEXAR       50,228    62,708   22,880   16,583    152,399
TARRANT     35,318    36,767   28,238   25,021    125,344
COLLIN      15,227    22,793   18,487    9,250     65,757
EL PASO     25,353    21,426    6,750    7,065     60,594
FORT BEND   12,550    14,895   16,826   12,685     56,956
DENTON      10,804    21,541   14,966    6,851     54,162
WILLIAMSON  11,031    19,375   10,852    9,924     51,182
HIDALGO     24,057    15,382    6,617    3,699     49,755
CAMERON     11,849     9,267    3,691    3,558     28,365
WEBB        13,080     7,841    2,455    1,850     25,226
HAYS         5,161     6,451    6,152    4,059     21,823
MONTGOMERY   4,820     5,963    5,248    3,898     19,929
NUECES       7,364     5,914    3,146    2,424     18,848
BRAZORIA     4,643     4,659    4,961    4,502     18,765
GALVESTON    4,020     5,225    4,914    3,127     17,286
BELL         4,818     4,619    4,056    3,577     17,070
JEFFERSON    4,640     3,132    3,704    4,813     16,289
LUBBOCK      3,462     3,858    2,741    2,081     12,142
MCLENNAN     2,308     3,078    3,623    2,290     11,299
SMITH        2,536     2,512    2,466    2,985     10,499
BRAZOS       3,000     3,429    2,571    1,488     10,488
ELLIS        2,524     2,266    2,410    1,737      8,937

Chrysta Castañeda

Chrysta Castaneda, who led the pack with nearly 34% of the total vote, also led the way in 13 of these 25 counties, including the top six and eight of the top ten. That’s a pretty good recipe for success in the runoff as well. She led in Dallas County, which is the home of runnerup Roberto Alonzo, who represented a State House district in Dallas County for 26 years. Alonzo led in the five big predominantly Latino counties – El Paso, Hidalgo, Cameron, Webb, and Nueces – plus Bell and Ellis Counties. Castaneda leads Alonzo by five points going into the runoff, which is hardly insurmountable, and other than Travis County her lead over him in the biggest counties was small. I feel like Castaneda’s big lead in Travis County is a significant advantage for her for the runoff. It’s hard to project anything based on past primary runoffs because the data set is so small, but given that there will be a Senate runoff as well, and given that Travis County was also a strong performer for MJ Hegar, it could deliver a decent margin for Castaneda in May. If that happens, it may be hard for Alonzo to make up the ground elsewhere.

Of the other candidates, Kelly Stone led in Fort Bend, Brazoria, and McLennan Counties, while Mark Watson topped the field in Smith and Jefferson. There’s another similarity to the Senate race – everyone got to be a leader of the pack. I have no idea how their voters might go in the runoff – neither has made any endorsement, as far as I can tell, and in all honesty that likely would be just a marginal factor. Turnout always drops quite a bit in primary runoffs, and with the coronavirus situation happening now, who knows what effect that may have. I see Castaneda as the solid favorite in this race, but Alonzo can pull it off if he can get his own message out.

Runoff roundup

Mar 7th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

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.

Chrysta Castaneda

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