Election 2024

The Democratic National Convention told Houston officials this week the city will not host Democrats’ national convention in 2024.

Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office confirmed Thursday that Houston no longer is in the running. The snub leaves New York City, Chicago and Atlanta vying to host the convention, which Democrats have estimated could bring more than $230 million in economic activity.

Houston did not publicize its bid, but the convention would have been split between the Toyota Center and the George R. Brown Convention Center downtown, according to officials at Houston First Corp., the city’s convention arm.

The city separately is vying to host the 2028 Republican National Convention. It could not bid for that party’s 2024 gathering because it conflicted with other events at the two facilities.

See here for the background. I’d put a few bucks on Atlanta being the eventual winner given the competition, but who knows. Would Houston have had a better chance if Dems did better in Texas last year? Again, who knows. All I can say is that if we somehow win the bid for the 2028 RNC, I’ll be making plans to be out of town when it happens.

You can donate to Ted Cruz’s 2024 opponent now

Jan 19th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Kudos to Daily Kos for being out ahead of the curve.

Not Ted Cruz

We’re not gonna lie: Holding the Senate in 2024 is going to be hard. Democrats are defending 23 seats to just 11 for Republicans, and three of those are in states Trump won. Several more are in swing states.

But Democrats have defied political gravity before. In 2020, against all odds, we flipped not one but two seats in Georgia in those epic runoffs, enough to retake the majority. And in 2022, we gained a seat by flipping Pennsylvania, despite the fact that the party in power almost always loses ground in midterm years.

That means only one thing’s for sure: You can’t draw any foregone conclusions about what the coming election cycle may hold.

What’s more, there are two races where we can go on offense in ’24, targeting two of the most odious Republican senators who escaped with just narrow wins when they were last on the ballot: Ted Cruz in Texas and Rick Scott in Florida.

We also have a plan that’ll allow us to start preparing for battle right now—we don’t need to wait. Thanks to ActBlue’s nominee funds, we can donate funds to all of the top races immediately.

Those funds hold all donations in escrow and then give them to the winner of each Democratic primary. That gives our nominees a huge boost just when they’ll need it most, ensuring they can hit the ground running and make the strongest possible case to voters.

Right now, we’re starting with Texas and Florida as well as the open Democratic seat in Michigan, but we’ll be adding more races as the election develops.

Please donate $10 or even $20 apiece to each of these races to help Democrats keep the Senate blue in 2024!

We need to find an opponent, or at least start talking about one, soon. As noted, Rep. Colin Allred’s name is out there, but you know the rules: Until we hear those words from his lips or keyboard, it’s all just rumor. But at least it’s a start. And look, Texas and Florida are the two best, and possibly only even remotely plausible, Democratic pickups in 2024. To say the least, there’s a lot of work to be done. May as well get started.

The Lege does its housekeeping

Jan 12th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

In the Senate, they drew their lots to see who would have to run again in 2024.

Sen. John Whitmire

It was the luck of the draw for Texas senators on Wednesday as they drew lots to decide which half of them would get two-year terms and which would get four-year terms.

The practice is outlined in Article 3, Section 3, of the Texas Constitution, which calls for “Senators elected after each apportionment [redistricting]” to be divided into two classes: one that will serve a four-year term and the other to serve a two-year term. That keeps Senate district elections staggered every two years. After that, senators serve four-year terms for the rest of the decade.

On Wednesday, each of the chamber’s 31 lawmakers walked to the front of the chamber and drew lots by picking an envelope that held a pill-shaped capsule. Inside the capsules were numbers: Even numbers meant two-year terms, and odd were for four-year terms.

“I’m sure each and every one of you are happy with what you drew, right?” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick joked.

Sixteen senators had Lady Fortune on their side and drew four-year terms, and fifteen unlucky souls will have to run for reelection in two years.

[…]

All eyes were on Sen. John Whitmire, a longtime Democrat who has announced plans to leave the chamber to run for Houston mayor after the session, and Judith Zaffirini, a Laredo Democrat who is second in seniority to Whitmire.

Whitmire drew a two-year term, and Zaffirni drew a four-year term.

Three freshmen senators drew two-year terms, including Democrat Morgan LaMantia of South Padre Island, who was in the tightest race in the Senate last year. The two other freshmen, Republicans Kevin Sparks of Midland and Mayes Middleton of Galveston, both drew four-year terms.

After the 2012 election, the main question was whether then-Sen. Wendy Davis, who won a tough race in a district carried by Mitt Romney, would have to run again in 2014. She drew a short straw, and I think that contributed to her decision to run for Governor. Of course, we were in a time and of a political makeup in which Dems were getting creamed in non-Presidential years. That changed quite dramatically in 2018, when Dems won back Davis’ old seat and picked up another Senate seat as well. Sen. LaMantia had a tough race in 2022, and at this time I have no idea if it’s better for her to run in 2024 or not. We’ll just have to see.

As for Whitmire, what this means is that if he’s elected Mayor this year, things will be messy in SD15 the next year. There would be both a primary and a special election to replace and succeed him, much as there was in HD147 this past year. You could have the primary winner, who would get to serve a four-year term after winning in November of 2024, and the special election winner, who would serve out the remainder of 2024, be two different people. One person could face five elections total in 2024, if the primary and the special both go to runoffs; this would happen for someone who wins the primary in a runoff and makes it to the runoff (win or lose) in the special. Did I mention that the primary runoff and the special election would take both place in May, but on different dates, again as it was in HD147? Speaking as a resident of SD15, I’m already exhausted by this possibility, which may not even happen. May God have mercy on our souls.

Anyway. The Houston-area Senators who will be on the ballot in 2024 are Carol Alvarado (SD06), Paul Bettencourt (SD07), John Whitmire (SD15), and Joan Huffman (SD17). The ones who get to wait until 2026 are Brandon Creighton (SD04), Mayes Middleton (SD11), Borris Miles (SD13), and Lois Kolkhorst (SD18).

Meanwhile, over in the House…

Texas House leadership on Wednesday shut down a long-building push to ban Democratic committee chairs, deploying procedural legislative maneuvers to defeat multiple proposals on the issue.

The chamber also approved new punishments for members who break quorum, like most House Democrats did two years ago in protest of GOP-backed voting restrictions. Those members left for Washington, D.C., for weeks to stop the House from being able to do business in an effort to prevent passage of the bill. Under the new rules, quorum-breakers can now be subject to daily fines and even expulsion from the chamber.

The chamber passed the overall rules package by a vote of 123-19, with Democrats making up most of the opposition.

Going into the rules debate, most attention was on the subject of committee chairs, who have the power to advance legislation or block it from being taken up by the full House. For months, a small but vocal minority of House Republicans have been calling for the end of the chamber’s longtime tradition of having committee chairs from both parties. But Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, and his allies moved successfully Wednesday to prevent the matter from even getting to a vote on the floor.

They did it by passing a “housekeeping resolution” earlier in the day that included a new section codifying a constitutional ban on using House resources for political purposes. That resolution passed overwhelmingly with little debate or fanfare. Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, then cited the new provision to call points of order — procedural challenges — on two amendments proposed by Rep. Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City, to restrict Democratic committee chairs. Phelan ruled in favor of Geren both times.

“The amendment would require the speaker to use public resources, including staff time and government facilities, on behalf of one political instrumentality,” Phelan said the first time. “This obviously would require the speaker to violate the Housekeeping Resolution.”

It was a relatively anticlimactic end to the fight over Democratic committee chairs, which were a major issue in House primaries earlier this year, a rallying cry for conservative activists and a recurring theme in speeches as the legislative session kicked off Tuesday. After the House reelected Phelan by a nearly unanimous vote, he cautioned freshmen to “please do not confuse this body with the one in Washington, D.C.”

“After watching Congress attempt to function last week, I cannot imagine why some want Texas to be like D.C,” Phelan said.

Committee appointments are expected to be made in the next couple of weeks. Phelan has said he will appoint roughly the same proportion of Democratic chairs as last session, but it remains to be seen whether they’ll be appointed to lead any powerful or coveted committees.

The amendment about sanctions for quorum-busting drew more No votes, almost entirely from Dems. Honestly, I have no problem with what was passed. It’s perfectly appropriate for the chamber to have sanctions for that kind of action, and it’s not that different, at least to my mind, than what was passed after the 2003 walkout. New rules get adopted each session, this can always be revisited in the future. TPR has more.

Lawsuit filed to keep The Former Guy off the 2024 ballot

Jan 10th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Good luck with that.

Former president Donald Trump is facing a legal challenge to his 2024 bid for the presidency from a fellow Republican.

John Anthony Castro, an attorney from Texas and long-shot candidate for president in 2024, filed the lawsuit in federal court on Friday arguing that Trump was constitutionally ineligible to hold office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Known as the “Disqualification Clause,” the section prohibits anyone who engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from holding “any office, civil or military, under the United States.” Castro is arguing that Trump’s involvement in the January 6th insurrection should disqualify him from holding public office again.

“The framers of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment intended the constitutional provision to be both self-executing and to provide a cause of action,” Castro, who’s representing himself, wrote in the complaint. “More specifically, the Union sought to punish the insurrectionary Confederacy by making their ability to hold public office unconstitutional.”

The Disqualification Clause mostly sat dormant since 1869 until last fall, when a New Mexico judge ousted Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin from his position on the Otero County Commission for breaching the Capitol complex on Jan. 6.

Several advocacy groups, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), have vowed to pursue similar legal action against Trump during his 2024 run.

“The evidence that Trump engaged in insurrection is overwhelming,” CREW President Noah Bookbinder wrote in a letter to the former president on Nov. 3, before he declared his candidacy. “We are ready, willing and able to take action to make sure the Constitution is upheld and Trump is prevented from holding office.”

Castro was among the giant herd of candidates who ran in the CD06 special election in 2021. He won 5.51% of the vote, which was probably in the top half of performers. I saw another story about this that described him as a “long shot candidate”, and I’d say that’s accurate. He filed this lawsuit in Florida, and ironically drew the Trump-toadiest judge out there, Aileen Cannon; he says he plans to disqualify her from hearing the case, which checks out. He also noted that the advocacy groups that intend to file their own lawsuits will do so later in the year, and he wanted to get out ahead of things. I don’t expect anything to happen with this lawsuit, but it ought to be fun to watch regardless. Bloomberg has more.

Precinct analysis: Hidalgo versus Mealer

Dec 29th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

6 comments

PREVIOUSLY
Beto versus Abbott
Beto versus the spread

We’ve looked at the Governor’s race, in which Beto was the top Democratic performer. Now we’ll look at the next highest profile race, in which the result was a surprise to some people who didn’t connect Democratic performance at the top of the ticket with the other local races. Here’s the data for the County Judge race, in which Judge Lina Hidalgo won re-election by a close margin, though on a percentage basis it was slightly wider than her initial win in 2018. As with the first Beto post, I’m just going to dump all the data and will add my comments at the end.


Dist   Mealer  Hidalgo    W-I
=============================
CD02   77,665   46,669     21
CD07   53,108   77,625     29
CD08   46,156   45,668     17
CD09   23,451   71,374     29
CD18   46,492  107,792     46
CD22   13,292    8,076      2
CD29   33,392   66,220     27
CD36   70,392   41,817     24
CD38  170,772   87,662     46

CD02   62.45%   37.53%  0.02%
CD07   40.61%   59.36%  0.02%
CD08   50.26%   49.73%  0.02%
CD09   24.72%   75.25%  0.03%
CD18   30.13%   69.85%  0.03%
CD22   62.20%   37.79%  0.01%
CD29   33.51%   66.46%  0.03%
CD36   62.72%   37.26%  0.02%
CD38   66.07%   33.91%  0.02%

Dist   Mealer  Hidalgo    W-I
=============================
SD04   58,925   34,135     14
SD06   45,259   81,877     39
SD07  163,993   97,075     50
SD11   60,351   32,991     17
SD13   25,998   96,440     45
SD15   97,303  146,861     50
SD17   64,692   46,518     22
SD18   18,199   17,006      4

SD04   63.31%   36.68%  0.02%
SD06   35.59%   64.38%  0.03%
SD07   62.80%   37.18%  0.02%
SD11   64.64%   35.34%  0.02%
SD13   21.23%   78.74%  0.04%
SD15   39.84%   60.14%  0.02%
SD17   58.16%   41.82%  0.02%
SD18   51.69%   48.30%  0.01%

Dist   Mealer  Hidalgo    W-I
=============================
HD126  38,281   21,401     17
HD127  41,603   24,533      5
HD128  33,175   12,968     12
HD129  39,519   24,982     11
HD130  47,660   18,606     13
HD131   6,519   24,611     13
HD132  37,180   23,721      7
HD133  36,909   23,379     11
HD134  35,653   45,142     16
HD135  17,620   22,982      7
HD137   8,600   12,670      9
HD138  33,875   22,977      9
HD139  13,492   30,143     11
HD140   6,238   12,885      5
HD141   5,209   20,104     17
HD142   9,939   24,454      7
HD143   9,087   15,412      6
HD144  12,242   14,069      9
HD145  15,445   30,141     11
HD146   9,975   31,981     11
HD147  10,964   35,240     12
HD148  16,934   20,004      8
HD149  12,496   19,196      4
HD150  36,105   21,302     10

HD126  64.12%   35.85%  0.03%
HD127  62.90%   37.09%  0.01%
HD128  71.88%   28.10%  0.03%
HD129  61.26%   38.72%  0.02%
HD130  71.91%   28.07%  0.02%
HD131  20.93%   79.03%  0.04%
HD132  61.04%   38.95%  0.01%
HD133  61.21%   38.77%  0.02%
HD134  44.12%   55.86%  0.02%
HD135  43.39%   56.59%  0.02%
HD137  40.42%   59.54%  0.04%
HD138  59.58%   40.41%  0.02%
HD139  30.91%   69.06%  0.03%
HD140  32.61%   67.36%  0.03%
HD141  20.56%   79.37%  0.07%
HD142  28.89%   71.09%  0.02%
HD143  37.08%   62.89%  0.02%
HD144  46.51%   53.45%  0.03%
HD145  33.87%   66.10%  0.02%
HD146  23.77%   76.21%  0.03%
HD147  23.72%   76.25%  0.03%
HD148  45.83%   54.14%  0.02%
HD149  39.42%   60.56%  0.01%
HD150  62.88%   37.10%  0.02%

Dist   Mealer  Hidalgo    W-I
=============================
CC1    80,014  194,272     79
CC2   101,745  103,117     48
CC3   233,567  133,554     63
CC4   119,394  121,960     51

CC1    29.16%   70.81%  0.03%
CC2    49.65%   50.32%  0.02%
CC3    63.61%   36.37%  0.02%
CC4    49.46%   50.52%  0.02%

Dist   Mealer  Hidalgo    W-I
=============================
JP1    71,793  116,463     40
JP2    23,249   29,149     10
JP3    37,340   40,840     31
JP4   180,017  119,979     60
JP5   152,130  137,293     52
JP6     5,840   17,018      5
JP7    13,972   64,220     27
JP8    50,379   27,941     16

JP1    38.13%   61.85%  0.02%
JP2    44.36%   55.62%  0.02%
JP3    47.74%   52.22%  0.04%
JP4    59.99%   39.99%  0.02%
JP5    52.55%   47.43%  0.02%
JP6    25.54%   74.43%  0.02%
JP7    17.86%   82.10%  0.03%
JP8    64.31%   35.67%  0.02%

Hidalgo got 50.78% of the vote, which is 3.25 points less than Beto. She got 553K votes, which is 42K less than Beto. Mealer got 534K votes, 44K more than Abbott. Third party candidates accounted for over 16K votes in the Governor’s race, while the write-in candidate for County Judge got 241 total votes. I do not and never will understand anyone who thinks that writing in a candidate for County Judge could possibly be productive, but that’s not important right now.

For the most part, Hidalgo’s performance in each district is about what you’d expect in comparison to Beto. Generally speaking, she did a couple of points worse. The two glaring exceptions to this are HDs 133 and 134, both wealthy, well-educated, predominantly white districts that, in keeping with recent trends, are a lot more Democratic than they used to be. Hidalgo trailed Beto by six points in HD133 and seven in HD134. If I were the New York Times, I’d spend the next six months visiting brunch counters in those districts to talk to more-in-sadness-than-in-anger Mealer voters, who will turn out to have been almost uniformly Ed Emmett voters in 2018 but who will insist that they really wanted to support Hidalgo, they largely agreed with her on how she handled the pandemic and all, but for reasons they can’t quite articulate they just couldn’t. I’m sure it would be compelling reading, but I don’t have the staff or the budget for that. Plus, the idea of it makes me gag, so it’s just as well.

Anyway. The other notable thing is that with the lone exception of JP/Constable Precinct 5, Hidalgo still carried every district Beto carried. (I’m not concerning myself with fractional districts like CD08.) I was worried that if Hidalgo lost, there was a real chance Dems could lose not one but both of the Commissioners Court races as well. Looking at the numbers, it’s not an irrational fear. I’ll have more to say about those Commissioners Court precincts later, so let’s put a pin in that for now.

We have to talk about the many millions of dollars spent by various wealthy wingnuts against Judge Hidalgo and Democratic criminal court judges. We can’t say for certain how much all that spending affected the final outcomes, but it’s impossible to think it had no effect. What I wonder about is whether there will be much appetite for that kind of spending in future races. For sure, it’s hard to imagine much money spent on Republicans locally in 2024. Democrats haven’t lost a judicial race in a Presidential year since 2012, and haven’t lost a majority of judicial races in a Presidential year since 2004. In 2020, eleven Democratic judicial candidates were unopposed. I won’t be surprised if that number is matched or exceeded in 2024. I won’t speculate about 2026 – at the very least, Republicans will have four incumbents to try to defend, so they’ll want to do something – but I don’t see them having a $25 million budget. Maybe Judge Hidalgo will have an easier time of it as well.

I’ll have more to say about judicial races later. In the meantime, let me know what you think.

Electoral Count Act included in must-pass budget bill

Dec 21st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It’s not nearly enough to shore up voting rights, but it’s still vitally necessary and clearly the best we could do.

After months of negotiations, it now appears to be official: The Electoral Count Reform Act has hitched a ride on the much-anticipated 2023 omnibus funding package that was released Monday night, setting up a path for the legislation to pass the Senate.

“My two-word reaction is thank God,” said Matthew Seligman, a lawyer and fellow at Stanford Law School’s Constitutional Law Center who has tracked the reform effort closely. “I think this means that it’s virtually certain that it will be included in the final bill and the Electoral Count Reform Act will become law.”

Democrats and a handful of Republicans have been negotiating over how to reform the outdated 1887 law — which lays out how presidential electors are counted in Congress — for the past year. The effort to do so was prompted by vagaries in the text that former President Donald Trump and lawyer John Eastman sought to exploit to subvert the 2020 election.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced they’d come to an agreement this summer, but it has been unclear for some time whether the legislation would garner the 60 Republican votes needed to clear a filibuster, and whether it would pass before Republicans take over control of the House next year.

But the end game is coming into focus: The Friday government funding deadline is coming up, lawmakers are aiming to pass the massive $1.66 trillion spending bill — and the ECA reform included in it — before then.

“We must finish passing this omnibus before the deadline on Friday when government funding runs out, but we hope to do it much sooner than that,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on Tuesday morning. He added the first procedural votes in the Senate could happen as soon as today.

The ECA reform bill would clarify that the vice president’s role in certifying a presidential election is purely ceremonial and make it clear that they do not have the sole power to address disputes over electors. It would also raise the threshold for Congress to invalidate legitimate electors and for state legislatures to override the popular vote in their states.

This reform is “a critical step to strengthen the guardrails for our democracy and ensure that the will of the voters is upheld following a presidential election,” said Holly Idelson, a counsel with Protect Democracy.

It really is a shame that a much more robust reform package that included a renewed Voting Rights Act, redistricting restrictions, requirements for early voting, voting by mail, same-day voter registration, and more was not able to pass. I’ve ranted about that before, and all I can do at this point is hope that another opportunity comes up in the foreseeable future. At least this will make it harder for a bad actor to try to steal the next Presidential election. You take the wins where you can.

Precinct analysis: Beto versus the spread

Dec 19th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

PREVIOUSLY
Beto versus Abbott

So last time we saw the numbers for the 2022 Governor’s race. But what numbers need in order to be meaningful is context, and that means other numbers to compare them to. We’re going to do that in a few different ways, and we’ll start with the numbers from the Texas Redistricting Council for these new districts. Specifically, the numbers from 2018 and 2020.


Dist    Abbott    Beto     Cruz    Beto
=======================================
HD126   35,835  23,627   38,851  26,028
HD127   39,102  26,791   40,573  28,326
HD128   31,983  13,915   32,586  15,892
HD129   37,118  27,144   38,281  29,112
HD130   44,983  20,891   42,747  20,968
HD131    5,963  25,387    5,628  33,440
HD132   35,079  25,603   32,220  23,431
HD133   33,195  26,971   34,930  30,329
HD134   29,592  51,010   32,114  54,514
HD135   16,443  24,121   16,162  27,762
HD137    7,860  13,421    8,713  19,309
HD138   31,077  25,464   32,754  28,778
HD139   11,643  32,115   11,599  38,842
HD140    5,717  13,400    5,393  19,532
HD141    4,549  20,922    4,459  28,096
HD142    8,666  25,793    8,265  29,705
HD143    8,420  16,047    8,751  23,602
HD144   11,566  14,683   12,511  21,278
HD145   12,631  32,765   12,101  37,672
HD146    8,511  33,610    9,227  40,111
HD147    8,952  37,366    9,575  45,020
HD148   15,451  21,460   16,281  26,815
HD149   12,068  19,844   12,097  27,142
HD150   33,857  23,303   33,084  23,466


Dist   Abbott%   Beto%    Cruz%   Beto%
=======================================
HD126   59.37%  39.14%   59.40%  39.80%
HD127   58.50%  40.08%   59.30%  40.00%
HD128   68.66%  29.87%   66.80%  32.60%
HD129   56.80%  41.53%   56.30%  42.80%
HD130   67.29%  31.25%   66.60%  32.70%
HD131   18.78%  79.96%   14.30%  85.20%
HD132   57.06%  41.64%   57.50%  41.80%
HD133   54.41%  44.21%   53.10%  46.10%
HD134   36.16%  62.34%   36.80%  62.40%
HD135   39.97%  58.63%   35.00%  64.40%
HD137   36.32%  62.01%   30.90%  68.40%
HD138   54.09%  44.32%   52.80%  46.40%
HD139   26.25%  72.41%   22.90%  76.50%
HD140   29.36%  68.82%   21.50%  78.00%
HD141   17.61%  80.98%   13.60%  85.80%
HD142   24.79%  73.80%   21.60%  77.80%
HD143   33.86%  64.53%   26.90%  72.50%
HD144   43.34%  55.02%   36.80%  62.50%
HD145   27.31%  70.85%   24.10%  75.00%
HD146   19.95%  78.80%   18.60%  80.70%
HD147   19.04%  79.49%   17.40%  81.90%
HD148   41.18%  57.19%   37.50%  61.70%
HD149   37.31%  61.36%   30.60%  68.70%
HD150   58.34%  40.15%   58.10%  41.20%

Greg Abbott got 490K votes in 2022, whereas Ted Cruz got 498K in 2018. It’s therefore not a surprise that Abbott generally matched Cruz’s vote totals in the districts, with a bit of variation here and there. Beto, meanwhile, got 595K votes in 2022 after getting 700K in 2018, a significant drop. You can clearly see that in the district data. What’s interesting to me is that Beto was pretty close to his 2018 performance for the most part in Republican districts. His dropoff was almost entirely in strong Democratic districts, which accounts for the decrease in vote percentage he got. This is consistent with reports that Republicans had the turnout advantage nationally, due in part to weaker Democratic turnout among Black voters.

You can shrug your shoulders about this or freak out for What It All Means for 2024 as you see fit. I tend to lean towards the former, but I will readily acknowledge that the job of working to get turnout back to where we want it for 2024 starts today. I’ll have more to say about this in future posts as well, but let me open the bidding by saying that the target for Democratic turnout in Harris County in 2024, if we want to make a serious run at winning the state for the Democratic Presidential nominee, is one million Democratic votes; it may actually need to be a little higher than that, but that’s the minimum. It’s doable – Biden got 918K in 2020, after all. Ed Gonzalez got 903K in his re-election for Sheriff. Really, we may need to aim for 1.1 million, in order to win the county by at least 300K votes, which is what I think will be needed to close the statewide gap. Whether we can do that or not I don’t know, but it’s where we need to aim.

I also want to emphasize the “Abbott got more or less the same number of votes in each district as Cruz did” item to push back as needed on any claims about Abbott’s performance among Latino voters. His improvement in percentage is entirely due to Beto getting fewer votes, not him getting more. That’s cold comfort from a big picture perspective for Democrats, and as we saw in 2020 a greater-than-expected share of the lower-propensity Latino voters picked Trump, so we’re hardly in the clear for 2024. All I’m saying is that claims about Abbott improving his standing with Latino voters need to be examined skeptically. Remember that if we compared Abbott to Abbott instead of Beto to Beto, he got 559K votes in 2018, so he dropped off quite a bit as well. He got fewer votes in each of the Latino districts in 2022 than he did in 2018:

HD140 – Abbott 6,466 in 2018, 5,717 in 2022
HD143 – Abbott 10,180 in 2018, 8,420 in 2022
HD144 – Abbott 13,996 in 2018, 11,566 in 2022
HD145 – Abbott 15,227 in 2018, 12,631 in 2022
HD148 – Abbott 18,438 in 2018, 15,541 in 2022

So yeah, perspective. I suppose I could have done the Governor-to-Governor comparison instead, but I was more interested in Beto’s performance, so that’s the route I took. Beto would look better from a percentage viewpoint if I had done it that way. There’s always more than one way to do it.

One last thing on turnout: In 2014, Wendy Davis led the Democratic ticket with 320K votes in Harris County. Beto was at over 401K even before Election Day. His total is almost twice what Davis got. We can certainly talk about 2022 being “low turnout”, but we’re in a completely different context now.


Dist    Abbott    Beto    Trump   Biden
=======================================
HD126   35,835  23,627   50,023  35,306
HD127   39,102  26,791   53,148  38,332
HD128   31,983  13,915   46,237  21,742
HD129   37,118  27,144   51,219  38,399
HD130   44,983  20,891   58,867  29,693
HD131    5,963  25,387   10,413  42,460
HD132   35,079  25,603   46,484  35,876
HD133   33,195  26,971   42,076  40,475
HD134   29,592  51,010   38,704  66,968
HD135   16,443  24,121   26,190  40,587
HD137    7,860  13,421   12,652  24,885
HD138   31,077  25,464   42,002  37,617
HD139   11,643  32,115   17,014  49,888
HD140    5,717  13,400   10,760  24,045
HD141    4,549  20,922    8,070  38,440
HD142    8,666  25,793   13,837  41,332
HD143    8,420  16,047   15,472  28,364
HD144   11,566  14,683   20,141  25,928
HD145   12,631  32,765   18,390  45,610
HD146    8,511  33,610   12,408  51,984
HD147    8,952  37,366   14,971  55,602
HD148   15,451  21,460   24,087  34,605
HD149   12,068  19,844   21,676  35,904
HD150   33,857  23,303   45,789  34,151

Dist   Abbott%   Beto%   Trump%  Biden%
=======================================
HD126   59.37%  39.14%   57.80%  40.80%
HD127   58.50%  40.08%   57.30%  41.30%
HD128   68.66%  29.87%   67.10%  31.60%
HD129   56.80%  41.53%   56.20%  42.20%
HD130   67.29%  31.25%   65.50%  33.00%
HD131   18.78%  79.96%   19.50%  79.60%
HD132   57.06%  41.64%   55.60%  42.90%
HD133   54.41%  44.21%   50.30%  48.40%
HD134   36.16%  62.34%   36.10%  62.50%
HD135   39.97%  58.63%   38.70%  59.90%
HD137   36.32%  62.01%   33.20%  65.40%
HD138   54.09%  44.32%   52.00%  46.60%
HD139   26.25%  72.41%   25.10%  73.70%
HD140   29.36%  68.82%   30.60%  68.30%
HD141   17.61%  80.98%   17.20%  81.80%
HD142   24.79%  73.80%   24.80%  74.10%
HD143   33.86%  64.53%   34.90%  64.00%
HD144   43.34%  55.02%   43.20%  55.60%
HD145   27.31%  70.85%   28.30%  70.10%
HD146   19.95%  78.80%   19.00%  79.80%
HD147   19.04%  79.49%   20.90%  77.60%
HD148   41.18%  57.19%   40.50%  58.10%
HD149   37.31%  61.36%   37.20%  61.70%
HD150   58.34%  40.15%   56.50%  42.10%

Obviously, the vote totals don’t compare – over 1.6 million people voted in 2020, a half million more than this year. But for the most part, Beto was within about a point of Biden’s percentage, and even did better in a couple of districts. Abbott did best in the Republican districts compared to Trump. As we’ll see when we look at the other statewide races, Abbott (and Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton) was one of the lower performers overall among Republicans, as was the case for Trump in 2020, but maybe there were slightly fewer Republican defectors this year.

It will take an improvement on the 2020 Biden and 2018 Beto numbers for Dems to put any State Rep districts into play, with HD138 being the first in line; remember that HD133 was a bit of an outlier, with a lot of Republican crossovers for Biden. Incumbency has its advantages, and as we have seen Dem performance can be a lot more variable downballot than at the top, especially when the top has the most divisive Republicans, so it will take more than just (say) Biden getting 50.1% in HD138 for Rep. Lacy Hull to really be in danger. It’s more that this will be another incentive to really work on boosting overall turnout. Having a good candidate in place, which I think Stephanie Morales was this year, and making sure that person has the financial and logistical support they need (which she didn’t have) will be key.

I’ll have more to say as we go along. Please let me know what you think and ask any questions you may have.

State and county election result relationships: Tarrant County

Dec 12th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

In years past, Tarrant County was a pretty close bellwether for election results in the state of Texas. From 2004 through 2016, the closeness of their Presidential numbers with the statewide numbers was eerie. But since 2018 the talk has been about how Tarrant is on the verge of turning blue, which puts it at least a little to the left of the state as a whole. As I did before with Harris County, I thought I’d take a closer look at how statewide candidates have done in Tarrant County compared to the state overall, to see what it might tell me. We start as we did with Harris in the distant past of 2002:


2002                 2004                   2006
State Tarrant  Diff   State Tarrant  Diff   State Tarrant  Diff
===================   ===================   ===================
43.33   41.27 -2.06   38.22   37.01 -1.21   36.04   34.80 -1.24
39.96   38.53 -1.43   40.94   37.36 -3.58   29.79   31.07  1.28
46.03   42.63 -3.40   40.77   38.06 -2.71   37.45   37.06 -0.39
41.08   37.76 -3.32   42.14   39.15 -2.99   37.23   36.99 -0.24
32.92   30.86 -2.06                         37.01   36.41 -0.60
41.48   37.94 -3.54                         40.96   40.67 -0.29
37.82   34.85 -2.97                         41.79   40.86 -0.93
41.49   39.02 -2.47                         41.73   40.52 -1.21
40.51   37.55 -2.96                         44.89   42.79 -2.10
41.54   38.73 -2.81                         43.35   41.56 -1.79
41.89   38.49 -3.40								
43.24   39.74 -3.50								
45.90   42.26 -3.64								
39.15   35.90 -3.25								
42.61   39.20 -3.41								
40.01   36.92 -3.09								
										
Min   -3.64           Min   -3.58           Min   -2.10
Max   -1.43           Max   -1.21           Max    1.28
Avg   -2.96           Avg   -2.62           Avg   -0.75

You can read the earlier posts for the explanation of the numbers. The bottom line is that in early to mid Aughts, Tarrant was more Republican overall than the rest of the state. As was the case with Harris, there was a step in the Democratic direction in 2006, with the chaotic multi-candidate Governor’s race providing the first Democrat to do better in Tarrant than in the state, but it was still about a point more Republican than overall.


2008                  2010                  2012
State Tarrant  Diff   State Tarrant  Diff   State Tarrant  Diff
===================   ===================   ===================
43.68   43.73  0.05   42.30   40.98 -1.32   41.38   41.43  0.05
42.84   42.52 -0.32   34.83   34.97  0.14   40.62   40.41 -0.21
44.35   43.39 -0.96   33.66   33.90  0.24   39.60   39.20 -0.40
43.79   43.47 -0.32   35.29   35.24 -0.05   41.91   41.40 -0.51
45.88   44.16 -1.72   35.80   35.83  0.03   41.24   40.31 -0.93
44.63   43.51 -1.12   36.24   35.64 -0.60				
45.53   43.81 -1.72   37.26   35.39 -1.87				
43.75   42.49 -1.26   37.00   35.97 -1.03				
                      35.62   35.17 -0.45				
                      36.62   36.05 -0.57				
										
Min   -1.72           Min   -1.87            Min   -0.93
Max    0.05           Max    0.24            Max    0.05
Avg   -0.92           Avg   -0.55            Avg   -0.40

Still slightly on the Republican side as we move into elections that feel more familiar to us – as I’ve said before, looking at those elections from 2002 through 2006 is like visiting a foreign country – and you can see how dead on the Tarrant Presidential numbers were. Tarrant was a bit more Republican in the judicial races than in the executive office and Senate races, but otherwise not much else to say.


2014                  2016
State Tarrant  Diff   State Tarrant  Diff
===================   ===================
34.36   36.13  1.77   43.24   43.14 -0.10
38.90   41.08  2.18   38.38   38.62  0.24
38.71   39.53  0.82   38.53   38.43 -0.10
38.02   38.91  0.89   41.18   40.49 -0.69
37.69   38.67  0.98   39.36   39.58  0.22
35.32   36.49  1.17   40.05   39.75 -0.30
36.84   38.14  1.30   40.20   40.91  0.71
37.25   38.43  1.18   40.89   40.59 -0.30
36.49   38.02  1.53				
37.60   38.41  0.81				
36.54   38.00  1.46				
						
Min    0.81           Min   -0.69
Max    2.18           Max    0.71
Avg    1.28           Avg   -0.04

I wouldn’t have guessed that 2014 would be the year that Tarrant County officially became (slightly) more Democratic than the state as a whole, but here we are. Maybe because 2014 was such a miserable year, maybe because Wendy Davis was the Dem nominee for Governor, maybe it was just time. It wasn’t quite the start of a trend, as things snapped back a bit in 2016, but a threshold had been crossed.


2018                  2020                  2022
State Tarrant  Diff   State Tarrant  Diff   State Tarrant  Diff
===================   ===================   ===================
48.33   49.93  1.60   46.48	49.31  2.83   43.81   47.24  3.43
42.51   43.75  1.24   43.87	46.18  2.31   43.44   47.36  3.92
46.49   47.25  0.76   43.56	45.25  1.69   43.62   46.80  3.18
47.01   48.11  1.10   44.49	46.71  2.22   40.91   44.33  3.42
43.39   44.70  1.31   44.08	46.14  2.06   42.10   44.90  2.80
43.19   43.99  0.80   44.76	47.23  2.47   43.63   46.72  3.09
46.41   47.37  0.96   44.35	46.50  2.15   40.51   43.83  3.32
43.91   44.85  0.94   45.18	47.38  2.20   41.81   45.14  3.33
46.83   47.86  1.03   44.70	47.03  2.33   42.87   46.36  3.49
46.29   47.44  1.15   45.47	47.91  2.44   43.55   46.75  3.20
46.29   47.68  1.39                           43.02   46.48  3.46
45.48   46.24  0.76                           42.74   46.22  3.48
45.85   47.14  1.29								
										
Min    0.76           Min    1.69            Min    2.80
Max    1.60           Max    2.83            Max    3.92
Avg    1.10           Avg    2.27            Avg    3.34

And thus, despite the small hiccup of 2016, the ball moved ever forward. It would be easy to look at the Tarrant County results in 2022, especially at the top, compare them to 2018 and 2020, and declare that Tarrant had backslid, but as you can see that would be a misreading of the data. I’m going to step a little out on a limb here and say that Tarrant will be Democratic at a Presidential level again in 2024, and there’s a good chance that will be true elsewhere on the statewide ballot as well. Going by the average gap in 2022, two other Dems would have carried Tarrant County in 2018. If the trend we see here continues, getting to about 45% statewide would probably be enough to win Tarrant in 2024. Please feel free to point at this and laugh at me if this turns out to be wildly off base. Until then, I’ll do this same exercise for a couple more counties, just for the fun of it.

At least we avoided violence

Dec 11th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

I’ve tried and failed to come up with a better post title than that for this.

After two years of fears of electoral dysfunction and violence, voting rights advocates breathed bated sighs of relief this week as Texas finished a relatively calm midterm election cycle.

“It was a little bit better than I thought, but I also had very low expectations,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the voting rights group Common Cause Texas. “We were really concerned about violence at the polls, and most of that was pretty limited.”

But he’s not celebrating.

Citing thousands of voter complaints received throughout the midterm cycle, Common Cause and other voter advocacy groups want the Texas Legislature to bolster voter protection and education measures and revisit recently passed laws that empowered partisan poll watchers.

The complaints ranged from long lines, malfunctioning machines and delayed poll site openings to harassment, intimidation, threats and misinformation. Common Cause received at least 3,000 such complaints on its tipline, Gutierrez said, and most of the harassment, misinformation and intimidation allegations came from voters of color, sparking fears that there were targeted efforts to quell election turnout in 2022 and future contests.

Other voting rights groups said this week that they saw a similar number of complaints. They warned that even isolated incidents can have reverberating effects on voter confidence or exacerbate political tensions that are already at dangerous levels.

“It could be chilling to thousands and thousands of voters,” said Emily Eby, senior election protection attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project. “We can’t underestimate the impact of fear entering the voting equation.”

The 2022 cycle was the first major electoral contest since the passage of Senate Bill 1, a package of voting laws that the Texas Legislature pursued in part due to unfounded claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The legislation tightened mail-in voter identification requirements, banned drive-thru and 24-hour voting and curtailed early-voting hours.

It also enhanced partisan poll watchers’ access to polling places, giving them “free movement” at sites and allowing for misdemeanor charges to be pursued against election officials accused of obstructing them “in a manner that would make observation not reasonably effective.”

Voting and civil rights groups warned at the time that the new law — coupled with rising election denialism — would disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color in Texas. In 2020, Texas had the most Black eligible voters in the nation, the second-largest number of Hispanic eligible voters and the third-largest number of Asian eligible voters, according to Pew Research Center. Texas has routinely ranked among the nation’s most restrictive for voting due to, among other things, its tight rules on mail-in and absentee ballots. This year, Texas ranked 46th out of 50 states for ease of voting, according to the Election Law Journal’s annual Cost of Voting Index.

I drafted this right after the election and am just running it now. You can read the rest, I don’t have much to add. I was pleasantly surprised that early voting went as smoothly as it did, and while there were some polling place issues in Harris County they were snafus and not the result of intimidation or sabotage, despite the risible efforts to nullify the results. There were some issues with poll watchers elsewhere in the state but I didn’t hear of anything here. Nationally, at least at this very minute, there seems to be a moment of reckoning for election denialism, though given the results here there’s no reason to believe any Texas Republican has had anything remotely close to a change of heart on that score. I too am glad we made it through this election without anything horrible happening, but I don’t know that I’m more optimistic about 2024. Ask me again later, I sure hope I can give a different answer.

Yes, we’re talking about Texas Senate 2024

Dec 8th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Gromer Jeffers points out that Ted Cruz may run for both President and re-election to the Senate in 2024, which he can do under the law that was passed to allow LBJ to run for Vice President in 1960 (and Lloyd Bentsen in 1988). Among other things, that means the list of potential candidates to fill his seat is already pretty long.

Not Ted Cruz

After eight years of the current GOP statewide leadership, many Texas Republicans are anticipating a shift in the state’s power dynamic.

The moves Cruz makes in 2024 could trigger some of Texas’ most notable elected officials to run for the Senate seat he holds, as well as other offices created by a domino effect.

Democrats are also watching Cruz.

U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, is a possible 2024 Senate contender whether or not Cruz seeks reelection.

So in any scenario, there could be political intrigue, which is frequently the case in situations involving Cruz.

[…]

If he changes course and doesn’t seek reelection, several Republicans have been mentioned as potential candidates to replace him. The list includes Paxton, who in November was elected to a third term, U.S. Reps. Dan Crenshaw of Houston, Pat Fallon of Sherman and Lance Gooden of Terrell. Other contenders are Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar and Texas Sen. Dawn Buckingham of Lakeway.

Statewide leaders like Paxton and Hegar could run for Senate in 2024 without risking the seats they hold. Members of Congress are elected every two years and don’t have that luxury.

[…]

Presidential politics aside, Texas Democrats are hoping to deny Cruz another term in the Senate. In 2018 Cruz beat former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke by only 2.6 percentage points. O’Rourke, who ran for president in 2020, lost a November governor’s race to Abbott.

With an O’Rourke vs. Cruz rematch unlikely, a potential candidacy by Allred, in his second term as a congressman representing North Dallas, is creating buzz among Democrats.

Allred, considered a pro-business moderate, has not sought any Democratic Party leadership post in the aftermath of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to step down as leader. That gives him the flexibility to avoid ultra-partisan votes that would haunt him in a statewide campaign for Senate.

The question for Allred and others: Can a Democrat win a statewide race in Texas?

See here for some background, and prepare yourself to hear way too much about Ted Cruz over the next year or more. Note that Dawn Buckingham is the Land Commissioner-elect, so she’s in the same “doesn’t need to risk her seat” camp as the other statewides. As for Rep. Allred, I had recently heard some speculation about his potential candidacy in 2024. It would be a bold move, giving up a safe Congressional seat for an underdog run for Senate, but Allred is young enough that he could have a second act in politics with little difficulty. If he loses in a close race, he’d be in the same position in 2026 and 2028 as Beto was after 2018, the default frontrunner for a second bite at the apple. If it comes to that, I sure hope he has a better result on the retry. Anyway, at least now we have a possible Dem candidate, one who has already won a tough November race and who has established himself as a good fundraiser. We’ll see how it goes from there.

It’s legislative bullying time

Nov 29th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Here we go again.

Republican lawmakers in Texas and Washington D.C. are threatening some of the nation’s largest corporate law firms if they provide what the lawmakers consider to be improper advice on issues such as climate change, diversity and abortion.

The Texas legislators have even threatened business lawyers with criminal prosecution and disbarment.

In letters sent Nov. 3, five GOP senators on the Judiciary Committee told 51 of the nation’s largest law firms, including 33 with offices and lawyers in Texas, that they have a “duty to inform clients of the risks they incur by participating in climate cartels and other ill-advised ESG schemes.”

The memo doesn’t describe what a “scheme” involving environmental, social and governance principles might look like. Nor does it say what is objectionable about efforts to defend the environment or democratize corporate capitalism.

In July, 11 members of the politically conservative Texas Freedom Caucus sent a letter to Sidley Austin Dallas partner and chair Yvette Ostalaza, threatening her and other corporate law firms operating in Texas with criminal prosecution, civil sanctions and a ban on practicing law if they help their employees in the state to get an abortion in another state.

The three-page letter to Sidley Austin, which has nearly 200 lawyers in Houston and Dallas, accused the firm of being “complicit in illegal abortions.” The Freedom Caucus members posted the letter on its website and sent a copy to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The letters, legal experts say, show that conservative Republican lawmakers believe they can score political favor with their base by attacking corporate lawyers, which they see as facilitating more liberal causes.

“Corporate law firms, especially in Texas because of the political environment, are taking these letters very serious,” said Kent Zimmermann, a consultant who works with several Texas law firms. “These are pure political hit jobs, but the law firms do not want to give any of these threats oxygen by responding.”

“It puts law firms in an unfair position in what amounts to a play to the (GOP) base,” Zimmerman said.

Zimmermann said law firm leaders need to respect the lawmakers even if the demands are not legally sound.

[…]

“It’s a stupid letter; a totally stupid letter,” Dallas legal ethics expert Randy Johnston said. “It’s kind of offensive in concept. “Some of the authors are also lawyers and are flirting with an ethical violation by this attempt to intimidate other lawyers in connection with those lawyers’ representation of advice to clients.”

Dru Stevenson, a professor at the South Texas School of Law in Houston, describes the letter as “mostly political theater,” but he cautions that it needs to be taken seriously.

Stevenson, who studies the legal issues associated with the ESG movement, says antitrust litigation may prove to be the only real weapon to curb increasingly popular trends toward climate change mitigation and, more specifically, energy transition and decreased use of carbon-based fuels like oil, natural gas and coal.

“The senators can’t sue, only threaten legislation,” Stevenson said. “For now, they are stuck (with the Biden administration), but the issue is worth keeping in mind. The political pendulum goes back and forth.”

We’ve seen this before, and as we get closer to the start of the legislative session we’ll see much more of it. Unfortunately, the voter backlash to Dobbs and the rejection of efforts to further limit abortion via referendum all happened outside of Texas. The fanatics have every reason to believe they’ve been vindicated, and they will act accordingly. The best part, as far as they’re concerned, is that the bluster is often enough to get what they want, because large firms are risk averse and would rather placate than fight. But if it comes down to it, or just because it’s what they want, they’ll still push forward with plenty of unhinged legislation aimed at criminalizing abortion and various forms of dissent. Some of this may wind up in court, and Lord help us if that happens. You know what I’m going to say about nothing changing until election results start to change. This is our motivation for next time. There’s no other choice.

We do need to find someone to run against Ted Cruz

Nov 27th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

6 comments

I don’t know who that ought to be yet, but surely someone is out there.

Not Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz said on Saturday that he would seek a third term in the U.S. Senate in 2024, though he also did not rule out running for president.

“I’m running for reelection in the Senate, I’m focused on the battles in the United States Senate,” Cruz told reporters after addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas. He said he was also focused on the Senate runoff in Georgia on Dec. 6, according to a video of his discussion with reporters posted by Fox News.

The Texas Republican reiterated his disappointment that his party failed to take control of the Senate in this month’s midterm elections, a setback he blamed on a lack of determination within the party.

Cruz was one of 10 Republican senators who voted against the reelection of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, as minority leader on Wednesday. McConnell easily fended off a challenge from Sen. Rick Scott, R-Florida, by a vote of 37-10.

I know I just said that I don’t want to engage in wischcasting for this, and I still don’t. But we do need to be prepared to think about who we want to see run for this nomination, and the sooner the better. It’s still the case that no Texas Republican has come as close to losing statewide this century as Cruz did in 2018, and it’s still the case that all decent people loathe Ted Cruz. I’m sure there are some people who will relish the opportunity.

I know we just came off a mediocre at best election, but the optimistic view is that Dems have been steadily gaining ground overall, and we’ve done better in Presidential years. The lunatic fringe of the Republican-majority House will make a very easy foil for President Biden, and Donald Trump will either be the Republican nominee – and nobody has done more for Democratic turnout efforts over the past three cycles than he has – or will be enraged and embittered over not being the nominee – and nobody has done more to sow division and turmoil in the Republican Party over the past six years than he has. There are any number of ways that things could be bad, and that’s before we consider whether Biden should be running for a second term, but there is a very plausible optimistic case to be made. Of course, I said the same thing about 2022 not long after Biden was inaugurated, so take all that into account. The point still is, at least at this time, there’s no need to fear running in 2024.

As to who, we can debate that as we see fit. Maybe Julian Castro, if he hasn’t reached his sell-by date. Maybe a current (Ron Nirenberg, Eric Johnson) or recent (Annise Parker) Mayor might want to take a step up. Maybe a State Senator who wins the draw to not be otherwise on the ballot in 2024. Who knows? My argument is simply that this is an opportunity that someone should want to take. We know we can raise enough money for whoever it is. Just think about it, that’s all I’m asking.

What to expect when you’re expecting a (larger) Democratic majority

Nov 25th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

I have three things to say about this.

Despite narrowly winning reelection against bruising campaigns by well-funded challengers, the Democratic majority on Commissioners Court has made clear it intends to continue its progressive remake of Harris County.

Though neither County Judge Lina Hidalgo, Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia or Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis invoked the word “mandate,” their public promises of four more years of what they have been doing leaves little doubt about their intentions.

Adding a fourth Democrat in Precinct 4, where former county court at law judge Lesley Briones ousted incumbent Commissioner Jack Cagle will only strengthen that resolve.

It also will prevent the lone Republican remaining on court, Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey from pulling off a quorum break as he did this year with Cagle to prevent the Democratic majority from passing its preferred property tax rate.

“Democrats will likely lean into a more progressive agenda now that they have uniform control of the court,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “They as much as campaigned on this promise.”

The question, Rottinghaus said, is how far Democrats should go in a progressive direction.

“Voters didn’t provide an overwhelming mandate for a major left shift and probably signaled some modest opposition to or, at least, different emphasis on priorities from the prior four years,” Rottinghaus said.

I’m old enough to remember the 2006 election, you know, the one where Rick Perry was elected with 39% of the vote. There was some Discourse at the time about how Perry should be humbled by his weak showing and should mend his ways and just somehow not be so Rick Perry-like. He did none of those things, was easily re-elected again in 2010, was briefly a Presidential candidate in 2012, and eventually became a Cabinet member. Mandates are what you make of them.

With the new stronger majority on the court, Harris County Republican Party Chair Cindy Siegel said she is concerned Democrats will be punitive toward those who have challenged them, pointing to Hidalgo’s victory speech delivered the day after the election.

In those remarks, Hidalgo spoke about her critics who have accused Democrats on the court of defunding police, including what she called “unscrupulous politicians of both parties.” She called out Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, a Democrat, without naming her directly.

“That was sort of what was implied with her statement addressed to those people who didn’t support her. So, does that mean she’s not going to be supportive of the constables and the DA’s office?” Siegel said. “Because it’s one thing saying that you’re for funding and you want to make crime go down, but now it’s time to deliver. That’s what she told people.”

Oh, Cindy. Have you seen what Republicans are promising to do in Congress now that they have a slim majority? That’s what being punitive looks like. There are some significant policy differences between Judge Hidalgo and Commissioners Court on the one hand and Kim Ogg and the Constables on the other. Judge Hidalgo has – I’m gonna say it – a mandate to use her office to implement the policies she and the Court campaigned on and think are best. If Ogg and the Constables, who are all up for election in 2024, disagree about that, they can make a campaign issue out of it and hope to get their own mandate at that time. If Hidalgo and the Court really do overstep, that can be ammunition in their fight.

Still, Rottinghaus said, the opposition Democrats faced during the election cycle reflected the difficulty they had messaging on crime issues.

“Governing a massive and ideologically diverse county like Harris means compromising,” he said. “So, despite a solid majority, the close election shows Democrats on the Court need to encourage Republicans to come back to the table.”

This is just your periodic reminder that Harris County Commissioners Court operated with a Republican majority for at least 40 years – I’m only able to verify the Court’s makeup via election results back to about 1974 – before Dems took it in 2019. We operated under Republican laws, rules, norms, and assumptions for a long, long time. Only so much of that can be changed to reflect the current political reality in four years’ time, especially when a Republican minority was still able to wield a budget veto. The fact is that this now-larger Democratic majority – which even with the benefit of redistricting was still hard won – will continue to modify, update, and undo some of the things that we had long done under Republican rule. Everyone needs to wrap their heads around that.

On comparing counties from 2018 to 2022

Nov 19th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I started with this.

Voters in counties across Texas chose GOP leaders over Democrats at a higher rate than they did four years ago, a Dallas Morning News analysis shows.

The findings, based on data as of noon on Wednesday, reflect that an overwhelming number of counties — 205 out of 254 — favored Republicans. Those counties turned more Republican by an average of 2.87 percentage points, the data showed.

The analysis also showed urban areas are shifting toward Democrats, part of a continuing trend across the country.

All five North Texas counties experiencing population growth saw an uptick in the percentage of votes for Democrats, the analysis showed.

Collin County, a Republican stronghold anchored by suburban women, shifted its share of votes to Democrats by 4.45 percentage points compared to 2018, according to the analysis.

Tarrant County, another GOP-dominated region that has seen an increasing number of Democratic votes, increased support for Democrats by 3.04 percentage points; Dallas County, by 3.23 percentage points; Denton by 3.53; and Rockwall by 3.5, the analysis showed.

Political experts who reviewed The Dallas Morning News’ findings weren’t surprised by the shift. Though slow-moving, the changes can make an impact over the next decade, they said.

“We shouldn’t delude ourselves in any way that the Democrats are about to take over,” said James Riddlesperger, a professor of political science at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. “At the same time, election coalitions are dynamic and what we’re seeing is the competitiveness of the two political parties in this area is becoming more apparent.”

This Trib story has more of the same. And it set me off to do the thing I usually do, which is put a bunch of numbers into a spreadsheet and then try to make something interesting happen with them. If you were to do the same – copy county-by-county election results for the Governor’s races from 2018 and 2022 into Excel – you’d see what these stories say, which is that Beto generally did better than Lupe Valdez in the large urban and suburban counties, and generally did worse elsewhere. You’d also notice that the reverse is true, which is that Abbott did worse where Beto did better and vice versa. You might think this means something about maybe Dems closing the gap in some places, and maybe that’s true, but if so then you have to contend with the fact that the likes of Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton did better overall than they had done four years ago, and as such there’s a limit to this kind of analysis.

I got to that point and I just didn’t feel like putting more time into it. I’ll spend plenty of time looking at district-level numbers, to see how the assumptions of the 2021 redistricting have held up so far and where opportunities and dangers for 2024 might lurk. Much of that data won’t be available until after the next Legislative session begins, though some county data should be there after the votes are canvassed. But statewide, I think we already know what we might want to know, at least at a macro level. We Dems didn’t build on 2018. There’s nothing to suggest that the trends we saw over the last decade have reversed, but there was nothing to see this year to suggest that we have moved the ball any farther than it would have moved on its own. So I’m going to put my effort into places where I hope to find things to work for in the next election or two. I promise I’ll throw numbers at you in those posts.

Christopher Busby: The Case for Texas Democratic Optimism

Nov 17th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

(Note: The following is a guest post that was submitted to me. I occasionally solicit guest posts, and also occasionally accept them from people I trust.)

The election came and went with a similar story. Texas Democrats just started to get their hopes up about the idea of finally breaking through for their first statewide win since their fall from voters’ graces in the early 90s. Then falling flat yet again in their efforts. 30 years in the wilderness can do a lot to sting the hopes of Democrats parched for any sign of success. In 2014 Wendy Davis sent shock waves among Texas Democrats in her voracious defense of abortion rights yet lost by 20 points. In 2018 Beto O’Rouke came within a three point margin of knocking off the firebrand Junior Senator from Texas Ted Cruz. In 2020 President Joe Biden lost by just 6 pts, the best Democratic Presidential performance since 1996.

Yet despite all the clear movement in Democrats favor, incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott decisively defeated Beto O’Rouke to win by approximately 11 points. My guess is that across the state Texas Democrats feel much like Charlie Brown lying on his back on the football field. Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me for three decades?

The message I want Texas Democrats to take away from this however is counter intuitive. My message is: Y’all are still headed in the right direction.

Before you think I’m just Lucy with her football again, hear me out.

In political statistics it is often most useful to compare the final performance of a candidate’s party relative to the national environment. In 2000 then Texas Governor George Bush lost the national popular vote in his race for president yet won Texas by 21 points in the same year. In parlance of political statistics that would make Texas an R+21 state. 8 years later when President Obama was carrying the country by 8 points he lost Texas by 12 points, meaning that despite a facially 8 point improvement, Texas was still R+20 compared to the nation as a whole. Little relative movement.

Taking this in mind we shouldn’t be too surprised by political consultants who got excited about Hillary Clinton’s Texas performance where she lost the state by only 9 points despite winning the popular vote by 2 points. Suddenly Texas moves from an R+20 state to an R+11 state. Suddenly Texas moves from a pipe dream to just… a dream.

In the years after Clintons narrow loss Texas Democrats have started taking themselves seriously again. What have the numbers since then told us? Looking at the presidential race President Biden lost the state by 6 points while winning nationally by 4 points. Now R+10 Texas inches ever closer to being competitive. BUT we just got done with a midterm year. Midterm numbers are where data nerds’ minds will pour over for the next few months.

2018 was the Texas Democrats banner year. Beto O’Rouke was cast as a political rockstar for almost upsetting Texas Senator Ted Cruz. His 3 point loss during a year when Democrats were winning by 8 points was very much in line with the R+11 numbers that Clinton and Biden would achieve in the elections before and after. Yet let’s look at Governor Greg Abbott who also was on that same ballot. He defeated Dallas Sheriff Lupe Valdez by approximately 13 points, an R+21 performance. Many will want to argue that Beto’s performance at the top of the ticket was indicative of Democratic performance that year however looking at the data it’s clear that most statewide officials fell closer to Abbott’s performance. Abbott was one of the top performing officials on the ticket year of either party.

2022 tells a story for state Democrats that they should take some optimism in. Taking the 2018 top performer from each party would seem like a recipe for a competitive race. Easy math would have expected an Abbott victory of 6-8 points if the year was the same. However the midterm years were very different. Numbers are still slowly trickling in so the data here will be less precise than the historical numbers, yet the initial measure of national vote seems like it will likely land somewhere between an R+1-2 year, much different from the D+8 year of the previous midterm. Moving almost 10 points redder Abbott lost 2 points off his victory margin and his performance fell from a solid R+21 to an R+9-10. The message should be clear: When Texas Democrats put up strong candidates with a real performance they can draw down the Republican ceiling more than Republicans can push Democrats to their floor.

Let’s take a more detailed look at the national picture. Governors across the country went up for re-election. Republicans had been hoping to score a host of upsets in swing states. Instead Democrats held on and in fact gained 3 governor’s mansions in open races. The story however was different for Republican incumbents. In every single state where a Republican governor ran for re-election they gained more support as compared to 2018. Except one: Texas. I’ll say it again for effect Texas was the ONLY governor’s race in the nation where the Republican incumbent lost support in re-election compared to 2018. In fact only Nevada and Georgia had governors races where the winning Republican candidate did worse than Greg Abbott and both those states were states which President Biden won in 2020. And looking briefly at President Biden’s performance you would see that of all states won by former President Trump, the only state to vote to the left of Texas was Florida. Florida, for the record, completely fell off the map for Democrats this year with Senator Marco Rubio winning by 17 points and Governor Ron DeSantis winning by 19 points.

So if I haven’t lost you in all the numbers, what does this mean for Texas Democrats in 2024? It means that Texas may be on the precipice of a major shift. Or may not. It depends on whether national Democrats want to fight for it or not. Ted Cruz is no Greg Abbott. While partisan Democrats might find equal distaste in the two I think you would be hard pressed to find the same polarization around Governor Abbott that you do Senator Cruz. Ted Cruz simply falls flat with the same independent voters who have proved crucial Republicans past successes. On a ticket with the equally, if not more, polarizing former President Trump Texas Democrats have a real opportunity. If Texas Democrats put up a real candidate who can draw investment and has a proven track record of campaigning they might just create an opening. Most importantly President Biden’s campaign team needs to take a hard look at the hundreds of millions dumped in Florida cycle after cycle even as it drifts more and more red. 2022 saw Texas and Florida cross each other’s paths in terms of state partisanship. Texas sits to the left of every major red state at this point and only the population sparse Alaska might argue an opportunity for an easier flip. If national Democrats are looking to expand the map beyond the states won by President Biden in 2020 they have their best opportunity in the lone star state.

Christopher Busby is a lifelong Houstonian and independent political campaign consultant and policy advisor. He is a currently pursing a medical doctorate, is former K-12 educator, and has worked extensively on local campaigns. All views and opinions expressed are his own and not representative of any affiliated entities.

In which Harris County Republicans look for moral victories

Nov 13th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Believe me, as a Texas Democrat and a longtime fan of the Rice Owls, I know what it looks like to search for moral victories in the face of defeat. It looks like this.

Feel the power…

Harris County Republicans on Tuesday posted their strongest showing in years, appearing to capture their first countywide race since 2014 and nearly unseating County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

In the end, though, Hidalgo eked out a narrow victory over Republican Alexandra del Moral Mealer, leaving the party all but empty-handed despite massively outspending Democrats and launching an all-out push to reclaim control of Harris County Commissioners Court.

Under new precinct boundaries crafted by Democrats last year to expand their court majority, Republican Commissioner Jack Cagle also came up short against Democrat Lesley Briones, whom he trailed by more than 3 percentage points with all voting centers reporting. Democratic Commissioner Adrian Garcia also held off Republican Jack Morman by more than 5 points in Precinct 2.

Mealer conceded early Wednesday morning, cementing a 4-1 majority for Democrats on Commissioners Court.

Even Republicans acknowledged this year could be their last realistic chance, and certainly their best shot in recent years, at winning a county that has seen pronounced demographic shifts over the last couple of decades. Harris County’s population is growing younger and more racially and ethnically diverse, while adding more college-educated residents — groups that all tend to favor Democrats, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

However, Harris County Republicans saw a confluence of factors — the felony indictment of three Hidalgo aides, a rise in homicides, Democrats bracing for a Republican wave year nationally — that appeared to put the county judge race and other countywide seats in play. Also fueling their optimism was the removal last cycle of straight-ticket voting, meaning voters no longer can cast their ballots for every candidate from one party by pressing a single button.

“The best chance to unseat a Democrat in Harris County is when they’re new to office, when they’re somewhat vulnerable, and when national trends cut against the Democrats,” Rottinghaus said. “That’s the perfect storm.”

Typically a low-profile affair, this year’s county judge race unfolded into one of Texas’ marquee election battles. Republican and business community donors, sensing Hidalgo was vulnerable, poured millions of dollars into Mealer’s campaign and political action committees backing Republican candidates, leaving Hidalgo and other local Democrats financially overwhelmed in a race few expected to be truly competitive a year ago.

The conditions in Harris County’s high-profile races appeared to boost Republicans in down-ballot judicial contests, five of which swung in favor of the GOP. Through unofficial results, Democrats appeared to lose control of two criminal district courts and three county misdemeanor courts, marking the party’s first countywide defeats in eight years.

Republicans also held a number of Democratic judicial candidates under 51 percent, far narrower results than their recent courthouse sweeps.

“We are light years from where we were four years ago. Light years,” state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said to a crowd at the Harris County Republican Party’s election night watch party.

Atop the ballot, Democrat Beto O’Rourke carried Harris County over Republican Gov. Greg Abbott by about 9 percentage points — far less than his 17-point margin over U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018.

That year, O’Rourke helped usher in a wave of Democratic wins in down-ballot county races. Under less favorable conditions atop the ticket this year, Democrats running for administrative countywide offices still narrowly retained the seats they had first captured four years ago.

I wrote three posts talking about the connection between statewide performance and Harris County performance for Democrats. This might be a good time to point out that when Republicans were running the table in Harris County in the off-year elections, they were also absolutely stomping Democrats statewide. This was a worse year for Dems statewide than 2020 and 2018 were, but it was (ahem) light years from where they were in 2014 and 2010. Light years.

I mean, I had plenty of moments of doubt and worry going into this race. Some of those late polls, the ones that had Beto down by 12 or 13 points, were in line with the expectation that Harris County would be at best a mixed bag for Dems, with the real possibility of not only losing Judge Hidalgo’s race but also the majority on Commissioners Court. Hell, having both Lesley Briones and Adrian Garcia also lose wasn’t out of the question if things were really going south. I would have preferred to not lose any of those judicial races, but I can live with it. At least now there will be benches to run for that don’t require primarying someone. Oh, and by the way, all five of the losing Democratic judges had a higher percentage of the vote than Mealer did. Just so you know.

I will say, and I’ll say it again when I write another post about the state-county connection to update it for 2022, I do think the campaign to blame Democrats for crime, and all the money spent on it, probably moved the needle enough to get at least a couple of those Republican judicial candidates over the hump. They still needed the good statewide showing to be in a position to take advantage, but every little bit helps. But crime has been declining, and the crime rate has basically nothing to do with who’s on the bench anyway, so good luck replicating that in 2026.

I must note, by the way, that some people (on Twitter and on the CityCast Houston podcast) have mentioned that the five losing Democratic judicial candidates were all Black and all had names that might suggest they are Black. On the podcast, Evan Mintz noted this and mentioned the 2008 election, in which several Democratic judicial candidates with uncommon names had lost. I will just say that if you scroll through the Election Day results you will see quite a few Democratic candidates who are Black and whose names might also suggest they are Black that won. I’ve said before, there is always some variation in the range of performance for the Democratic judicial candidates. I’ve never found a pattern that consistently explains it, and that includes this year. As such, I am very reluctant to offer reasons for why this happens. I do think as I have just stated that the millions of dollars spent on blaming crime on the judges had some effect, but if it did then the effect was an overall one, with the range of scores being a bit lower than it might have been. That was enough to push a handful of Dems below fifty percent.

By the way, the two Republican judicial candidates who lost by the largest margins were named “Geric Tipsword” and “Andrew Bayley”. Make of that what you will.

I guess the question I’d ask is how confident are you right now that things will be better for your team in 2024, and in 2026? I feel pretty confident right now that Dems will sweep Harris County in 2024. The track record in Presidential years is a bit longer and more decisive. For 2026, it’s much harder to say. The possibility of a bad year in what could be Year 6 of President Biden or Year 2 of President Some Other Democrat is one that can’t be dismissed. You couldn’t get me to wishcast a 2026 gubernatorial frontrunner right now for love or money. Current trends suggest Dems would be in a better position in four years even with those possibilities, but trends don’t always continue as they have in the past, and even when they do they can slow down or bounce around a bit. With all that said, I still like our chances. Ask me again in three years when it’s filing season for that election.

Election 2022 miscellania: Marijuana, Austin Mayor, CRT

Nov 12th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Three items of interest for you. First up, several local initiatives to decriminalize marijuana were successful on Tuesday.

By the end of Election Day, five Texas cities have voted to decriminalize low-level marijuana possession.

After Austin voters overwhelmingly approved the proposition to decriminalize carrying small amounts of marijuana in May, Ground Game Texas — the progressive group behind that effort — successfully worked with local organizations and pushed for similar measures to appear on the ballots of Denton, San Marcos, Killeen, Elgin and Harker Heights for the midterms cycle.

Voters in these cities have now shown strong support for the proposals at the polls.

The campaign saw the highest level of support in San Marcos — home to Texas State University — with nearly 82% of the votes. Denton, which has several university campuses, saw more than 70% of the votes backing the proposition.

In Killeen, known for its proximity to military base Fort Hood, close to 70% of voters approved the proposition. Elgin, just outside of Austin, saw almost 75% of votes in support of the reform. And on the low end, more than 60% of voters in Harker Heights in Bell County casted ballots in favor of decriminalizing marijuana.

“These meaningful reforms will keep people out of jail and save scarce public resources for more important public safety needs,” said Mike Siegel, political director of Ground Game Texas and a former Democrat congressional candidate. “We’re extremely happy with our results.”

Like Austin’s ordinance, the successful propositions establish city ordinances that end low-level enforcement, including citations and arrests for possessing less than four ounces of marijuana and related drug paraphernalia, in most cases. They also largely ban using city funds and staff to test substances for THC, the cannabis plant’s chemical that gets users high.

[…]

Ultimately, Ground Game Texas hoped to use the campaign to boost turnout, especially among young voters.

“We wanted to use workers, wages and weed to engage new voters,” Siegel said.

Looking ahead, Ground Game Texas will continue working with on-the-ground groups to place progressive measures on local ballots. They aim to put the measure along with several other propositions, including abortion decriminalization, in front of San Antonio voters in May 2023. And similar efforts are likely to pop up in other big cities like Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston in the 2024 elections, Siegel added.

“We’re hoping that we can prove not only that these issues are popular, but they also boosted turnout in the communities that are on the ballot,” he said. “And in the days following this election, we’re going to be having lots of conversations with folks about the next cycle.”

See here for some background. As noted there, I’m not sure what the practical effect of this will be, and I worry about legislative backlash just because that’s the world we live in now. I’ll be very interested to see if there is any evidence that this drove turnout, because Lord knows we could have used more of it if it did. And while I’m glad to see that there’s interest in bringing this to Houston, please remember that we already have several charter amendments on the ballot next year, which means either this would have to happen then or you’ll need to wait until at least 2025, since there’s a mandatory two-year wait after a successful charter amendment election. Hope y’all are already engaging with folks here about this, Ground Game Texas, so there are no unpleasant surprises for anyone.

Item two: There will be a runoff for Mayor of Austin between two familiar faces.

Austin’s next mayor was not decided Tuesday, as a tight race between Celia Israel and Kirk Watson will continue into a runoff in December.

To win the race outright, a candidate would have had to earn more than half of all votes as of Tuesday. Israel took 40% and Watson 35% of the vote, according to final but unofficial results. They were separated by more than 15,000 votes.

Jennifer Virden, the only other candidate who conducted a significant campaign, earned 18%.

Three other candidates received limited support. Phil Brual received 2%, and Gary Spellman and Anthony Bradshaw each received 1%.

In total, 304,000 votes were recorded.

Heading into the day, political insiders who analyzed the election said they expected the race to go to a runoff, as voters seemed split between Watson, the former Austin mayor and state senator, and Israel, a sitting state representative. Although Watson outraised Israel $1.3 million to $409,000, it was Israel who enjoyed momentum heading into Tuesday with recent endorsements from the American-Statesman and the Austin Chronicle.

I don’t have a dog in this fight. I like both of them and wish the eventual winner all the best.

And finally, a small bit of good news on the school board hysteria front:

The five “anti-CRT” candidates running as a slate in that wild school board race in Round Rock are getting routed in early vote results. (These are Williamson County results, similar margins in smaller Travis County portion of the district).

— Mike Hixenbaugh (@Mike_Hixenbaugh) 7:48 PM – 08 November 2022

It’s a similar story in nearby Leander ISD. Broadly speaking, based on early results, candidates who ran campaigns focused on CRT and explicit library books are trailing.

— Mike Hixenbaugh (@Mike_Hixenbaugh) 7:59 PM – 08 November 2022

A very welcome reversal from last year, in a different political climate. Well done, Round Rock and Leander.

Some opening thoughts on the 2022 election

Nov 10th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

10 comments

Done in the traditional bullet-point style. There may or may not be a part 2 to this, depending on the usual factors.

– Obviously the overall result was disappointing. It was harder to see a Beto victory this year from the polling data than it was in 2018, but that doesn’t lessen the sting. There were polls that had the race at about five or six points and there were polls that had it at about 11 to 13. One of those groups was going to be more right than the other, and unfortunately it was the latter.

– I’m not prepared to say that turnout was disappointing. I mean sure, Beto didn’t get the margins he had gotten four years ago in the big urban counties, and that was partly due to lower turnout. But look, turnout was over 8 million, which up until the 2020 election would have been considered Presidential level. Indeed, more votes were cast in this year’s Governor’s race than in the 2012 Presidential race. We didn’t build on 2018, certainly not as we wanted to, and turnout as a percentage of registered voters is down from 2018, but this was still by far the second highest vote total in an off year election, not too far from being the first highest. There’s still plenty to build on. And for what it’s worth, election losers of all stripes often complain about turnout.

– That said, I think any objective look at the data will suggest that more Dems than we’d have liked stayed home. I don’t know why, but I sure hope someone with access to better data than I have spends some time trying to figure it out. How is it that in a year where Dems nationally outperformed expectations the same didn’t happen here? I wish I knew.

– Turnout in Harris County was 1,100,979, according to the very latest report, for 43.21% of registered voters. A total of 349,025 votes were cast on Election Day, or 31.7% of the total. That made the pattern for 2022 more like 2018 than 2014, and the final tally came in at the lower end of the spectrum as well.

– For what it’s worth, predictions of a redder Election Day than Early Voting turned out to be false, at least when compared to in person early voting; Dems did indeed dominate the mail ballots, with statewide and countywide candidates generally topping 60%. Those five judicial candidates who lost only got about 55-56% of the mail vote, and did worse with early in person voting than their winning peers. On Election Day, most Dems did about as well or a little better than early in person voting. The Dems who fell a bit short of that on Election Day were generally the statewides, and it was because the third party candidates did their best on Election Day; this had the effect of lowering the Republican E-Day percentages as well. Go figure.

– In answer to this question, no I don’t think we’ll see Beto O’Rourke run for anything statewide again. If he wants to run for, like Mayor of El Paso, I doubt anyone would stake their own campaign on calling him a loser. But his statewide days are almost surely over, which means we better start looking around for someone to run against Ted Cruz in 2024. We know he’s beatable.

– Before I let this go, and before the narratives get all hardened in place, one could argue that Beto O’Rourke was the most successful Democratic candidate for Governor since Ann Richards. Consider:


Year  Candidate       Votes    Deficit    Pct   Diff
====================================================
2002    Sanchez   1,819,798    812,793  39.96  17.85
2006       Bell   1,310,337    406,455  29.79   9.24
2010      White   2,106,395    631,086  42.30  12.67
2014      Davis   1,835,596    960,951  38.90  20.37
2018     Valdez   3,546,615  1,109,581  42.51  13.30
2022   O'Rourke   3,535,621    889,155  43.80  11.01

He got more votes than anyone except (just barely) Lupe Valdez, but he came closer to winning than she did. He got a better percentage of the vote than anyone else, and trailed by less than everyone except for Chris Bell in that bizarre four-way race. Like Joe Biden in 2020, the topline result fell short of expectations, but compared to his peers he generally outperformed them and you can see some progress. It will take someone else to move to the next steps.

– I’ll take a closer look at the State House data when it’s more fully available, but overall I’d say Republicans did pretty well compared to the 2020 baseline. That said, there are some seats that they will have a hard time holding onto. Getting to 75 will probably take continued demographic change and the continuation of the 2016-2020 suburban trends, and a lot of work keeping up with population growth. All that will take money and wise investment. That’s above my pay grade.

– In Harris County, I was swinging back and forth between confidence and panic before Tuesday. In the end, I’m pretty happy. Getting to that 4-1 margin on Commissioners Court is huge, and that’s before savoring the end of Jack Cagle’s time in power and the enormous piles of money that were set on fire to oust Judge Hidalgo. I may have made a few rude hand gestures at some houses with Mealer signs in my neighborhood as I walked the dog on Wednesday. One of the pollsters that was close to the target statewide was the UH Hobby Center poll, but they botched their read on the Harris County Judge race, finding Mealer in the lead and underestimating Hidalgo by six points. Hope y’all figure that one out.

– In the end there were 59,186 mail ballots counted, after 57,871 mail ballots were returned at the end of early voting. These took awhile to be fully counted – as of the 5 AM tally, only 55,393 mail ballots had been tabulated in the Governor’s race, with fewer in the others. In the past, we have seen the mail ballot total go up by quite a bit more in the days between the end of early voting and the Tuesday results – for example, in 2018 there were 89,098 ballots returned as of the end of the EV period and 97,509 mail ballots tabulated. I have to assume this is about the rejection rate, which if so I’ll see it in the post-canvass election report. If not, I’ll try to ask about it.

– By the way, since there were more mail ballots counted at the end, they had the effect of giving a small boost to Democratic performance. There was a slight chance that could have tipped one or more of the closest judicial races where a Republican had been leading, but that did not happen. It almost did in the 180th Criminal District Court, where incumbent Dasean Jones trails by 465 votes – 0.04 percentage points – out of over a million votes cast. If there are any recounts, I’d expect that to be one. Unless there are a ton of provisional ballots and they go very strongly Democratic it won’t change anything, so just consider this your annual reminder that every vote does indeed matter.

I do have some further thoughts about Harris County, but I’ll save them for another post. What are your initial impressions of the election?

UPDATE: There were still votes being counted when I wrote this. I think they’re done now. Turnout is just over 1.1 million as of this update.

Echelon Insights: Abbott 48, Beto 46

Sep 14th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Make of this what you will. It’s a national poll plus samples of likely voters in a variety of states, some red and some blue and some purple, including Texas. The numbers of interest for us:

Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Joe Biden?

Very favorable = 20%
Somewhat favorable = 21%
Somewhat unfavorable = 13%
Very unfavorable = 44%
Other/Unsure = 0%

Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Donald Trump?

Very favorable = 26%
Somewhat favorable = 20%
Somewhat unfavorable = 9%
Very unfavorable = 44%
Other/Unsure = 2%

Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Greg Abbott?

Very favorable = 27%
Somewhat favorable = 22%
Somewhat unfavorable = 10%
Very unfavorable = 36%
Other/Unsure = 5%

Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of Beto O’Rourke?

Very favorable = 28%
Somewhat favorable = 18%
Somewhat unfavorable = 10%
Very unfavorable = 38%
Other/Unsure = 6%

If the election for Governor were held today, would you vote for

Abbott = 48%
Beto = 46%

If the 2024 presidential election were being held today, would you vote for

Trump = 48%
Biden = 43%

If the election for U.S. House of Representatives in your district were held today, would you vote for

The Republican = 50%
The Democrat = 43%

I’m not familiar with this pollster. In the states like Arizona and Pennsylvania, they have pretty enthusiastic leads for Democratic candidates, but in the states where you’d expect Republicans to win they have them up by expectedly large margins. The Abbott/Beto race is the closest we’ve seen in any poll so far, but it’s not really an outlier. Abbott’s level of support is pretty consistently around 47-49 – he rarely if ever tops 50% in the polls – while Beto is usually around 42 or 43. It’s plausible to get this result just by the “don’t know” respondents leaning towards Beto. Note that this poll did not name either of the third party candidates, as some other polls have, so that could have a boosting effect for both Abbott and Beto as well. This is an optimistic result, and I’d like to see more like it before I fully bought in, but it’s not a bolt out of the blue. The Trump approval and 2024 numbers, the generic Congressional numbers, the Biden approval numbers, they’re all in line with other polls or in the case of the Congressional one leaning a bit Republican. Like I said, make of this what you will. See Lakshya Jain’s Twitter thread for more.

Of course the redistricting lawsuit trial will be delayed

Sep 3rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

All we ever get is delays.

The legal fight over the shape of Texas political representation for the next decade won’t be decided until next year after a federal panel agreed Tuesday to delay a trial over new political maps.

The federal three-judge panel hearing the case pushed the start of the trial, which was originally scheduled for Sept. 28, following a flurry of disputes over discovery that left both the state and the various plaintiff groups questioning whether they’d have enough time to prepare to make their cases in a federal court in El Paso.

The court said it would announce a new trial at a later time.

The maps passed by the Legislature in 2021 have already gone into effect and are being used for the first time in this year’s elections, but the litigation could decide whether those maps need to be changed to ensure that voters of color have a fair say in choosing their representatives in elections for years to come.

The state faces a broad catalog of challenges to its four political maps, including its congressional and statehouse maps, that could affect a litany of districts. The legal claims, stemming from nearly a dozen consolidated lawsuits, include allegations of intentional discrimination, vote dilution and racial gerrymandering. The Republican-drawn maps largely serve to bolster the party’s dominance, giving white voters greater control of political districts throughout the state.

At issue in the delay were ongoing fights to compel Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general’s office and other Republican elected officials to turn over thousands of documents that the state has been fighting to keep concealed. With less than a month until the scheduled start of the trial, the state and the plaintiffs groups were also jostling over various depositions in which state lawmakers relied on asserting legislative privilege to avoid divulging information on how the maps were drafted.

Redistricting cases are complex, with plaintiffs carrying the burden of proving wrongdoing by the state. The release of the disputed documents, the plaintiffs argued, could reveal new facts that could require additional depositions.

“Were the September 28 trial setting to hold, the Court could rule in advance of the upcoming legislative session. This would have been a clear benefit to all parties. But a ruling on only partial evidence does justice for none,” some of the plaintiffs wrote in a joint advisory filed with the court last week.

But the delay is not without risk.

This is the joint lawsuit with multiple plaintiffs; the Justice Department lawsuit, which survived a motion to dismiss in June, is being heard separately. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit scored a couple of wins recently relating to documents that must be disclosed to them. Those rulings obviously weren’t the end of the dispute, and so we have delays. The risk mentioned is that a final ruling would not be made in time for the Lege to make any required adjustments to the maps for the 2024 election. Remember, unless the primaries get moved back, which would affect the Presidential races, we need maps by October or so, to accommodate filing season and any updates that county election officials need to make. That’s not a lot of time. We’ll see when the new trial date is scheduled, but keep that time frame in mind. Unless we want to wait until 2026 – which, as we know from previous decades’ experience, is hardly out of the norm – the clock is very much ticking.

Cheney versus Cruz

Aug 27th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Pop your popcorn, this should be fun.

Not Ted Cruz

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the GOP’s highest-profile critics of former President Donald Trump, plans to set her sights on U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and other Republicans who she says “made themselves unfit for future office” by going along with Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.

The Wyoming Republican, who lost a primary this month to Trump-backed attorney Harriet Hageman, launched a political action committee with her campaign funds and now says she plans to use the PAC to go after “election deniers.”

Cheney, a leading member of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, told the Wall Street Journal that her first targets include Cruz, who she said “took steps that fundamentally threatened the constitutional order and structure in the aftermath of the last election.”

Cruz led an effort in the Senate to delay certifying President Joe Biden’s election win and objected to Arizona’s electoral votes less than an hour before demonstrators breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, pointing to “unprecedented” — and unproven — allegations of voter fraud. Cruz at the time was pushing for an “emergency audit,” which he has argued could have provided the final say Trump supporters needed to accept the results.

Cruz’s Senate term runs through 2024. The Texas Republican has said he would run again for president “in a heartbeat” after coming in second to Trump in the 2016 GOP primary.

Just so we’re clear, I don’t expect this effort to make much difference politically. I respect Liz Cheney for her principled stand for democracy and truth in the face of all kinds of resistance, but I’m under no illusions that she’s suddenly a force for progressive politics. I’m just hoping she’ll land some punches on a guy who needs to be regularly punched. I have no expectations beyond that.

Let’s name a few legislative battlegrounds

Aug 22nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It’s getting to be that time of the election cycle.

Mihaela Plesa

Two years ago, Democrats were gearing up for a rare opportunity in modern times: capturing the Texas House majority.

But after they came up woefully short — and Republican-led redistricting reduced the number of competitive races — the battlefield heading into November is notably smaller.

Still, both sides see important stakes in the state House races this time around. While the majority is not on the line, the hottest races are unfolding in key areas that each party understands is critical to their growth for the next decade.

Look no further than the three districts that both Democrats and Republicans see as their highest priorities. Two of them are in South Texas, where Republicans are working to make inroads with Hispanic voters, while the other is in North Texas’ Collin County, a place emblematic of the fast-growing suburbs where Democrats have gained ground over the last few election cycles.

The GOP is especially serious about the two seats in South Texas — House District 37, a new open seat in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley, and House District 118, a San Antonio-based seat that Republican John Lujan flipped last year in a special election. House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, and the Republican State Leadership Committee, a national group that works to elect Republicans to state legislatures, are announcing Monday that they are funding $360,000 in TV ads aimed at the two districts, a substantial opening salvo on the battlefield.

[…]

Millions of dollars are expected to pour in to HD-37 and HD-118 — the two South Texas seats — and then HD-70, the one in Collin County. President Joe Biden would have carried each of the three seats over Donald Trump in 2020, but only by margins of 2 to 11 points, which gives them battleground status in the current environment, according to operatives. HD-37, which Republicans rammed into the map overnight during redistricting, is the closest on paper, with a Biden margin of only 2 percentage points.

Lujan is easily the most endangered Republican incumbent, but a few others can be expected to have competitive races, including Reps. Steve Allison of San Antonio, Morgan Meyer of Dallas and Angie Chen Button of Richardson. However, all three have had tough general elections before — especially Meyer and Button — and Republicans have faith in their ability to defend themselves.

There are also some additional open seats that the GOP will have to monitor, like the Houston seat where Republican state Rep. Jim Murphy is retiring.

On the Democratic side, the most endangered incumbent may be Rep. Eddie Morales of Eagle Pass, who represents a massive district covering most of the Texas-Mexico border.

As for the issues, the GOP messaging is set to take on a national tone, seeking to tap into Biden’s deep unpopularity in Texas, especially on border security and inflation. The House Democratic Campaign Committee said its candidates are focusing on “good jobs, strong public schools and access to affordable health care.”

“In contrast, Republicans are obsessed with banning abortion with no exceptions and making sure anyone can carry a gun with no training or license,” an HDCC spokesperson, Stella Deshotel, said in a statement.

With the primaries over, candidates across the races are sounding notes of independence and bipartisanship. Mihaela Plesa, the Democratic nominee for HD-70, said in an interview it was important for representatives to go to Austin and “not just be another vote for the party line.” Her Republican opponent, Jamee Jolly, said she was optimistic she would appeal to the Biden voters in the district, which he would have carried by 11 percentage points.

“I think a lot of people chose Biden because they didn’t like the Republican option. I know that for a fact because I have friends who have said that,” Jolly said, adding that her friends found Trump “divisive” and that she would legislate as “much more of a convener, a solutions-seeker,” reaching across the aisle.

Plesa said the No. 1 issue she hears about is public school finance, along with concerns about the “social wars” that are erupting in the classroom. But she said she is also hearing a lot about abortion after the Roe v. Wade decision, which triggered a ban without exceptions in Texas. Jolly said that her focus is now on “how we continue to support maternal health care.”

First and foremost: San Antonio is not South Texas, and I will die on that hill. I am begging you to be more precise in your geographical descriptors.

Second, just to provide some perspective, here are the 2020 Biden/Trump numbers for all of the districts name-checked in this story:


Dist  Biden   Trump Biden% Trump%
=================================
037  27,740  26,576  50.6%  48.4%
070  45,111  35,989  54.7%  43.6%
074  31,415  28,538  51.7%  46.9%
108  54,481  55,364  48.9%  49.7%
112  44,881  45,370  48.9%  49.4%
118  36,578  34,584  50.6%  47.9%
121  50,133  52,533  48.1%  50.4%
133  40,475  42,076  48.4%  50.3%

Most of these districts got more Democratic between 2012 and 2020, often much more Democratic. HDs 37 and 74 are the exceptions in that list. You can go read that earlier post for all the context. HD70 is a current Republican district that was redrawn to be Democratic, whose incumbent is not running for re-election, and should be the most likely of the bunch to flip. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here to say that if Dems don’t pick up HD70, it will have been a disappointing Election Day. It’s impossible to imagine a good overall result if the Republicans can hold that one. Republicans flipped HD118 in a low-turnout special election, which is a thing they had done before as well. Dems won it back that November, but HD118 was a more Democratic district in the previous map. Bexar County moved strongly Democratic overall last decade, though (Pre-redistricting) HD118 was at the bottom of the progress list. I also feel confident saying that Dems will be disappointed if they don’t take this one back.

Fundraising numbers are also a factor, and likely a reason some other relatively even districts were not mentioned in this Trib story. HD70 Dem candidate Mihaela Plesa has done pretty well, while HD118 candidate Frank Ramirez, who fell short in the runoff of that earlier special election, has done less so. I’ll want to take a look at the 30-day numbers in some of these races to see what other signals there may be.

I don’t want to get too deep into all this, as I don’t know much about these races beyond the numbers. I do believe that we will see a different, perhaps broader, class of contested races in 2024, partly because a lot of Republican seats were drawn with relatively tight margins, and partly because this year may tell us something new about the trends we have been seeing in the past three elections. There are always some districts that over- or under-perform their expected numbers, and this time should be no exception.

July 2022 campaign finance reports: Congress

Jul 19th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

The runoffs are now over, and we’re fully into the fall election season. As before, I’ve consolidated this list down to the elections of interest, which means I’ve dropped CD30 as it was a primary-only affair. I’m also dropping CD10 and CD22, because while those are districts that are of interest to me, neither Linda Nuno nor Jamie Jordan has managed to file a report so far, and so I just can’t be bothered. Better candidates next time, please. The October 2021 reports are here, the July 2021 reports are here, the January 2022 reports are here, the April 2022 reports are here, and you can get the links to the previous cycle’s reports from there.

Dan Crenshaw – CD02
Robin Fulford – CD02
Keith Self – CD03
Sandeep Srivastava – CD03
Michelle Vallejo – CD15
Monica de la Cruz – CD15
Chip Roy – CD21
Claudia Zapata – CD21
Tony Gonzales – CD23
John Lira – CD23
Beth Van Duyne – CD24
Jan McDowell – CD24
Henry Cuellar – CD28
Cassandra Garcia – CD28
Vicente Gonzalez – CD34
Mayra Flores – CD34
Wesley Hunt – CD38
Duncan Klussman – CD38


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
02    Crenshaw     14,140,850 13,216,975        0  2,776,589
02    Fulford         109,995    100,957   15,595      9,038
03    Self            314,699    240,821        0     73,877
03    Srivastava      160,121    141,656   65,000     18,464
15    Vallejo         699,131    540,643  100,000    158,488
15    De la Cruz    2,914,515  2,366,992        0    555,028
21    Roy           1,757,556  1,047,612        0  1,173,526
21    Zapata           77,500     68,918        0      8,581
23    Gonzales      3,346,655  2,054,016        0  1,323,998
23    Lira            486,541    395,459        0     91,081
24    Van Duyne     3,022,405  1,366,847        0  1,723,967
24    McDowell         44,677     27,975    3,843     16,701
28    Cuellar       3,351,820  4,664,602        0    237,690
28    Garcia          695,640    470,707        0    224,932
34    Gonzalez      2,251,211  2,201,071        0  1,420,633
34    Flores        1,765,515  1,651,532        0    113,983
38    Hunt          4,238,227  2,390,809        0  2,071,360
38    Klussman        180,323    145,198    7,000     35,125

I get kind of a 2012 vibe from looking at these numbers. Dems raised big money in two races – the eternal target of CD23, and the open seat CD14 which only drew interest because former Congressman Nick Lampson made a run at it – and decent money in CD27, a former Dem district lost in the 2010 debacle that was made more Republican in redistricting. No Dem candidate in a red district approached raising as much as $100K for the entire cycle outside of those three; I remarked on that multiple times in 2018 as Dem candidates were shattering records left and right.

It’s a little less bleak this time, but the shape is similar. CD15 is the new CD23, though for this cycle at least it’s still a Dem hold and not a flip. CD23 is redder than before though still closer to 50-50 than any other district, with a stronger Republican incumbent; Quico Canseco was a typical “dog that caught the car” in 2010, and that surely helped Pete Gallego in his quest to win it back. John Lira is not in Gallego’s fundraising neighborhood, but he might approach a million bucks before it’s all said and done. Duncan Klussman, Sandeep Srivastava, and Robin Fulford have all topped $100K already, with Claudia Zapata likely to get there. That’s a symbolic figure more than an impactful one, but given how bleak things were in 2012 we can at least reset some expectations. I have hope that the districts I’ve quit following will rejoin the conversation in future cycles. As for Jan McDowell in CD24, at least some things never change.

The top Democratic fundraiser in a district that ought to be competitive this fall was Jessica Cisneros, who raised over $6.5 million in her ultimately losing race against Henry Cuellar. Cisneros complained loudly and at length about Dem leadership supporting the incumbent in this race. I get that and I will not offer any defenses of Cuellar, but I will note that the lack of support she got on that front did little to hinder her ability to raise money. I’m pretty sure we’ve not heard the last of her. She did succeed in wiping out Cuellar’s cash on hand advantage over Cassy Garcia, but I assume Cuellar will reopen that gap this quarter.

Along those lines, that special election in CD34 certainly helped Mayra Flores rake it in, though Vicente Gonzalez still has a large lead in cash on hand. Flores has a lot more visibility now, but she’s running in a different CD34 in November, one that was drawn to be a lot friendlier to Dems. We’ll see if she has a big Q3 or if she comes back to earth in that reality.

On the Republican side, I still have no idea what’s going on with Keith Self. How is it he hasn’t raised more than $314K at this point, having had all of Q2 to himself as the nominee in CD03? It’s a mystery to me. Unlikely to matter much, as he should easily win this year, but it will get harder for him in this blue-trending district. Mostly, I just don’t understand why he’s lagging his peers. Not complaining, you understand, just puzzling.

I’m working on posts for the other finance reports of interest. Let me know what you think.

Houston vies for 2028 RNC

Jul 15th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

I’ll be sure to be out of town if we get it.

Houston wants the GOP to come to the Bayou City for its national convention in 2028.

City Council on Wednesday voted 14-2 to pass a resolution in support of hosting the 2028 Republican National Convention, with the hopes of adding another blockbuster event to the city’s portfolio. Councilmembers Abbie Kamin and Robert Gallegos voted no, saying their constituents are negatively affected by the GOP platform.

Houston separately has applied to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention, as well. It is in the second phase of that process, competing with New York City, Chicago and Atlanta.

Both parties invited the city to bid for the events. Houston could not bid for the 2024 Republican National Convention because it had conflicting events at the convention center for the RNC’s desired dates.

City officials said Houston was one of only a few cities nationwide to get invites from both Republicans and Democrats, according to news reports.

[…]

Houston First does not publicize its bid, but the convention would take place at the Toyota Center if the RNC chooses Houston, Heckman said. Other programming would include the George R. Brown Convention Center. If Houston is selected, the RNC and city then would work out an agreement for services and how to cover their costs.

Houston has not hosted a national convention since 1992, when former President George H.W. Bush was nominated for re-election at the Astrodome. It has not hosted the Democrats since 1928.

See here for the background. I remember that 1992 convention. I was doing clinic defense at the Planned Parenthood, which was still on Fannin in what we’d now call Midtown. They still had their main entrance right on the street. It was a wild time. I understand why the city will make a bid for this event. I will also be happy if we don’t get it.

Radack drops his redistricting lawsuit

Jun 7th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

From the inbox:

Former Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit he filed against Harris County Commissioners Court alleging Commissioners Court violated the Open Meetings Act during county redistricting.

Below is a statement from Harris County Attorney Christian D. Menefee on the lawsuit:

“I’m glad this frivolous lawsuit was dismissed. The County ran a transparent, thorough redistricting process. My office will continue working with each of the Commissioners to ensure the transition process is as seamless as possible.”

The suit sought to have the new Commissioners Court map invalidated and alleged court members violated state law by not making the map public at least 72 hours prior to the meeting at which that map was approved.

As you may recall, first there was a lawsuit filed by Commissioners Cagle and Ramsey along with a couple of voters, which claimed that redrawing of Commissioners Court precincts was a voting rights violation because people who would have voted for Commissioner in 2022 would have to wait until 2024. It was dismissed by a Harris County civil district court judge on the grounds that the plaintiffs did not have jurisdiction to sue. A subsequent writ of mandamus to the Supreme Court was denied mostly on procedural grounds, as there would be no time to take any action as the primaries had already begun. The initial lawsuit is as I understand it pending an appeal to the First Court of Appeals, and SCOTx did not rule on the merits of the litigation so we could see a ruling against the county at some point in the future.

The Radack lawsuit was filed on December 31, shortly after the first lawsuit was dismissed by the district court. It claimed that commissioners violated the Open Meetings Act because they did not make public the map that ultimately was approved within 72 hours of the meeting. As far as I know, this suit never had a hearing in court. I checked with the County Attorney’s office and the pending appeal to the First Court is the only active litigation over county redistricting at this time. So there you have it.

UPDATE: Here’s a Chron story about it.

Houston vies for 2024 DNC

May 29th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It would be nice, but I feel like I’ve seen this movie before and I know how it ends.

Houston is vying to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention held the summer before the next presidential election, in which Texas could be a highly-sought battleground state.

The city is competing with Chicago, Atlanta and several other major cities to host the internationally-televised, week-long presidential nominating extravaganza before voters head to ballot boxes in 2024. City Council approved the bid on Wednesday.

Officials are betting that Houston’s track record as a seasoned host to Super Bowls, petroleum conventions and, this weekend, the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting will help lure the DNC to the Bayou City. Another bonus? Its position as a Democratic stronghold in one of the country’s largest conservative states.

Texas’s rapidly changing electorate — and its role at the center of national debates on gun control, abortion rights and immigration — may make it an ideal place to energize voters within the state and across the country, said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at University of Texas Austin.

“The fact that Houston is even a possible destination for the convention shows the degree to which Texas has become a competitive state in the eyes of Democrats,” Blank said.

For those hoping to turn the Lone Star state blue, he said, hosting the convention and the media spectacle it ensues would offer a valuable chance to reach undecided voters and highlight up-and-coming local politicians.

The same arguments were made in 2020 as I recall, and we lost out to Milwaukee, in the much more traditional swing state of Wisconsin. I can already see Atlanta having the edge on us for similar reasons. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.

And for the record:

The city is not being considered to host the 2024 Republican National Convention, city officials said, because the dates “conflicted with other events” at convention venues.

I know someone was wondering about this, so there you have it.

TDP officially applies for early primary status

May 8th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

They’ll have a lot of competition.

More than a dozen states and at least one territory are applying to be among the first to vote for Democrats’ next presidential nominee — with the biggest pile-up coming out of the Midwest, where states are jockeying to take Iowa’s long-held early spot.

Fifteen state parties and counting, plus Puerto Rico, have submitted letters of intent to the Democratic National Committee ahead of a Friday deadline to be considered as a 2024 early state, according to a POLITICO tally. The process — the first major reimagining of the early-state presidential order in years — is being run through the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which will hear pitches from different states in late June and recommend a new early-state lineup to the full DNC by July.

The roster of states looking to go early hails from all over the country, including New Jersey, Washington, Colorado and Georgia. But a particularly intense competition is brewing in the Midwest, where Iowa — whose lack of diversity and messy caucus process drew Democratic ire in 2020, sparking the new look at the calendar — has been forced to reapply for its traditional slot. It is under pressure from five other states seeking to be the regional representative in the early-state lineup, depending on how broadly the DNC defines the region: Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

The shakeup is part of a broader move by forces in the Democratic Party that want to eliminate caucuses and give more influence to voters of color. While Democrats moved Nevada and South Carolina forward on the calendar in 2008 to increase the racial diversity of the voters who get an early say on presidential nominations, the party voted this spring to fully reopen the nominating process, including the first two spots occupied for a half-century by Iowa and New Hampshire.

“Nothing is locked in,” said Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and a member of the rules committee. “There are no sacred cows here.”

The sixteen state and territory Democratic Party organizations applying for early-state status in the next Democratic presidential primary: Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas and Washington.

See here for the background, and here for the TDP’s statement on the matter. As I said before, I’m fine with where we are now in the primary process. Mostly, I don’t want to move the primaries any earlier, and I definitely don’t want to separate the Presidential primary from the rest of the races. It’s far from clear we could get the Lege to move the primary date up anyway, so this may just be an academic exercise. We’ll see what happens.

April 2022 campaign finance reports: Congress

May 3rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The primaries are over, and while we do still have some runoffs plus now a weird special election in CD34, we do have a smaller set of races and candidates to review. Given how many I had to cram into the previous posts, I’m sure you can feel my relief at that. The October 2021 reports are here, the July 2021 reports are here, the January 2022 reports are here, and you can get the links to the previous cycle’s reports from there.

Dan Crenshaw – CD02
Robin Fulford – CD02
Keith Self – CD03
Sandeep Srivastava – CD03
Mike McCaul – CD10
Linda Nuno – CD10
Ruben Ramirez – CD15
Michelle Vallejo – CD15
Monica de la Cruz – CD15
Chip Roy – CD21
Claudia Zapata – CD21
Ricardo Villarreal – CD21
Troy Nehls – CD22
Jamie Kaye Jordan – CD22
Tony Gonzales – CD23
John Lira – CD23
Beth Van Duyne – CD24
Derrik Gay – CD24
Jan McDowell – CD24
Henry Cuellar – CD28
Jessica Cisneros – CD28
Sandra Whitten – CD28
Cassandra Garcia – CD28
Jane Hope Hamilton – CD30
Jasmine Crockett – CD30
Vicente Gonzalez – CD34
Mayra Flores – CD34
Wesley Hunt – CD38
Duncan Klussman – CD38
Diana Martinez Alexander – CD38


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
02    Crenshaw     12,249,172 10,844,572        0  3,257,314
02    Fulford          95,297     50,703   15,595     44,594
03    Self            235,044    225,791        0      9,253
03    Srivastava      100,619     96,231   55,000      4,388
10    McCaul        1,749,060  1,243,137        0    513,656
10    Nuno                  0          0        0          0
15    Ramirez         356,758    257,059   12,250     99,698
15    Vallejo         299,915    217,293  100,000     82,621
15    De la Cruz    2,313,272  1,957,129   13,000    363,649
21    Roy           1,454,476    830,885        0  1,087,173
21    Zapata           54,801     43,550        0     11,251
21    Villarreal       32,586     17,015   20,563     13,866
22    Nehls           670,482    322,270    5,726    367,417
22    Jordan                0          0        0          0
23    Gonzales      2,261,907    985,463        0  1,307,803
23    Lira            251,642    195,017        0     56,625
24    Van Duyne     2,035,203    731,839        0  1,371,774
24    Gay             208,661    165,886        0     42,774
24    McDowell         11,183      5,632        0      5,550
28    Cuellar       2,753,040  2,864,938        0  1,438,575
28    Cisneros      3,248,787  2,214,132        0  1,037,623
28    Whitten          58,037     57,036        0      9,142
28    Garcia          219,408    104,225        0    115,183
30    Hamilton        555,455    460,356   15,014     95,098
30    Crockett        502,506    384,575        0    117,931
34    Gonzalez      1,990,337  2,021,196        0  1,339,633
34    Flores          347,758    227,100        0    120,657
38    Hunt          3,385,520  1,743,508        0  1,865,954
38    Klussman        121,440     72,934    7,000     48,505
38    Alexander        33,812     30,882        0      2,930

I’ve taken out the people who are no longer running after the primaries, and I’ve removed some districts that aren’t particularly interesting for the general election; CD30 will be the next to go once that runoff is settled. Still a long list, but it will be shorter for Q3.

It’s weird to see the two nominees in CD03 having less than $10K on hand at this point in the cycle, but there are some extenuating circumstances. Keith Self was supposed to be in a runoff, one he just barely squeaked into, but then Rep. Van Taylor self-immolated, resetting everything in the race. I’m sure Self will post much bigger numbers for July. I would hope that Sandeep Srivastava is able to capitalize a bit as well – this district isn’t really competitive on paper, especially not in a tough year for Dems, but Collin County overall has been moving rapidly in a blue direction, and a good showing by Srivastava could put him in strong shape for 2024, which may be a much better year to run there. I’d love to see him at $250-300K raised in the Q3 report.

Also remarkable for his modest total is Rep. Troy Nehls, who really stands out in a “one of these things is not like the others” when compared to Reps. Chip Roy, Tony Gonzales, and Beth Van Duyne. I don’t know if this reflects a lack of interest in fundraising on his part, a lack of interest in him by the donor class, a lack of urgency given that his opponent hasn’t raised anything, or some combination. CD22 is another district that I expect to be competitive in a couple of cycles, so if Nehls proves to be a lackluster fundraiser that could be an issue down the line.

We’ve talked about the CD34 special election and the financial edge that the Republicans should have in it. The filing deadline for that was in April, so the candidates in that election, other than Mayra Flores who is the GOP candidate for November, is on this list. Flores also has less money than I would have thought, but as with Keith Self I expect that to grow between now and the next report. There will be some interim reports available before the election on June 14, I’ll check in on that in a few weeks.

Not much else to say at this time. Let me know what you think.

I’m not sure I want us to be an early Presidential primary state

Apr 22nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

We’re pretty early already. I’m fine with that.

The Texas Democratic Party is planning to apply to be one of the first states to vote on the 2024 presidential nomination.

The Democratic National Committee recently decided to allow new states to bid for the coveted status, which has long belonged to places like Iowa and New Hampshire. But after complaints throughout the 2020 primary — and Iowa’s disastrous caucus — the national party is looking to overhaul the calendar to kick off the nominating process in states that better reflect the diversity of the broader electorate.

The Texas party had been considering a bid and was planning to meet Wednesday with the DNC to go over the process, according to a state party spokesperson, Angelica Luna Kaufman. She said later Wednesday that the party had decided it would submit an application.

“Because Texas has such a vibrant and diverse population, we believe candidates that would emerge from our primary would better represent and be better prepared to face the country’s growing dynamic and diverse population,” Luna Kaufman said. “The candidates that would come out of an earlier Texas primary would be quite a force. And a force is exactly what it’s going to take to win in 2024.”

However, it could be a tricky process and starts out with uncertain odds. Moving up the primary date would ultimately be up to the Legislature, where Republicans are in charge.

States have until May 6 to submit a letter of interest to the DNC and then until June 3 to submit an application. The DNC could finalize the new calendar by the end of the summer.

In 2020, Iowa had its contest on Feb. 3, followed by New Hampshire on Feb. 11, Nevada on Feb. 22 and South Carolina on Feb. 29.

Our primary is right after South Carolina, and as the story noted it was pretty important in 2020. In 2008 too, as there wasn’t a clear leader going in and then all of a sudden we were the center of attention for a couple of weeks. I don’t want our primary to be any earlier in the year – to be honest, this is as much a selfish desire on my part as anything, as the Christmas holiday works really well for me to do a ton of candidate interviews, and moving this up would ruin that. Nor do I want a split primary, where we do a separate Presidential vote before we do the rest of the races. I seriously doubt the Lege is interested in doing anything to accommodate Democratic Presidential hopefuls, but even on its own merits I’d expect there to be a lot of reluctance. We can debate it all we want, in the end I think this will be an academic exercise. And that’s fine by me.

SCOTx hearing on state redistricting lawsuits

Mar 24th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The state lawsuits over the “county line rule” in Cameron County and the Eckhardt/Gutierrez “decennial redistricting only in a regular session” contention had a hearing before the State Supreme Court over whether these suits can be heard in state district court.

Attorneys representing a group of Democratic state lawmakers faced off Wednesday with the state attorney general’s office in the latest partisan battle over redrawn political maps passed by the Texas Legislature in 2021.

The arguments before the Texas Supreme Court were part of a case filed against Gov. Greg Abbott by the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, or MALC, that allege Texas Republicans violated the Texas Constitution when they redrew political boundaries after the 2020 U.S. Census.

Attorneys for MALC and what are collectively called the Gutierrez plaintiffs — state Sens. Roland Gutierrez and Sarah Eckhardt, House District 37 candidate Ruben Cortez, and the Tejano Democrats — alleged in state court that the Texas Legislature violated what is known as the “county line rule” when political maps were redrawn in 2021. That rule requires counties with sufficient populations to be kept whole during the process.

They argue the Legislature violated that rule when it passed House Bill 1, the lower chamber’s redistricting bill, because it split the Cameron County line twice when maps were redrawn. It did so by including districts that went in two different directions into two counties to create part of separate House districts, according to a court filing.

The arguments Wednesday centered on whether the courts are a proper venue for the debate, something the state argued against. In December, a three-judge panel denied a request by the attorney general’s office to dismiss the case based on that argument.

“This court has repeatedly recognized that redistricting is a uniquely legislative task,” said Lanora Pettit, an attorney with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office. Pettit said that a previous ruling by the court stated it could only intervene in “exigent circumstances” but the current lawsuit didn’t qualify.

“This is not such a circumstance,” she said. “Plaintiffs who lack standing seek an order that is a function of the [Texas] Constitution.”

Justice Jeff Boyd said the broad argument seemed “hard to swallow.”

“Challenging new maps on these grounds raises a very important constitutional issue and I hear the state arguing ‘Yeah. Well, so sorry. There is nobody that gets to raise that,” he said.

Later attorney Wallace Jefferson, a former Republican state supreme court chief justice, said that if the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue the state on the issue of redistricting, it would essentially mean that nobody could challenge perceived violations of the Texas Constitution.

“If these voters and these candidates lack standing, no one could ever sue to enforce mandatory provisions of the Texas Constitution,” he said.

See here and here for the background. I had thought at one point that these lawsuits might have affected the primaries this year, but that was not to be. If the plaintiffs prevail, the first election in which we’d see the effects would be 2024, or possibly later depending on how the appeals go. I am of course rooting for the plaintiffs here, but the state’s argument here really does seem very broad. Doesn’t mean they won’t win anyway, but it would be a significant matter if they did, at least on this point. I hope that SCOTx decides to let the issue play out in court before they have to step in, but you never know.

Here’s a Twitter thread from MALC, one of the plaintiffs, about the arguments. A brief interview with MALC attorney Joaquin Gonzalez is in the Texas Signal, and you can find relevant case documents at Democracy Docket. KVUE has more on this part of the case.

As for the Eckhardt/Gutierrez challenge, it’s a bit confusing.

Texas lawmakers are bound by state law to open a fresh round of redistricting in 2023, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office asserted Tuesday in a Texas Supreme Court hearing.

The assertion came from an appellate attorney with Paxton’s office during a hearing related to multiple lawsuits challenging district maps approved during a special session last year.

Lanora Pettit, Texas’ principal deputy solicitor general, argued that the lawsuits were moot, as plaintiffs including Democratic state Sens. Sarah Eckhardt and Roland Gutierrez as well as the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, are asking for the court to order the Legislature to take up redistricting next year.

“The state takes the position that the Legislature is required to redistrict again in January of 2023 and as a result, because (the plaintiffs) are not seeking to change the outcome — the map — for this election cycle, then whatever this court would be to order would not have an effect on a real world election,” Pettit said.

Democrats are also arguing that the Legislature needs to take up redistricting again in 2023, but believe that a court needs to order it or else Republicans, who led the effort and created a highly favorable map for their party, would not do it otherwise.

The main claims Democrats have in this case revolve around two provisions in state law.

The suit from Eckhardt and Gutierrez points to a provision in the Texas Constitution that requires redistricting to occur during the first regular session of the Legislature following the release of the once-a-decade census.

Because of COVID-19 delays, census redistricting numbers were not released until after 2021′s regular legislative session was adjourned. The process instead took place during a special session.

I guess it comes down to whether the Lege has to redistrict, which would presumably be on terms more favorable to at least some Democrats, or it gets to redistrict, in which case the Republicans get to choose. I’d rather not find out what that looks like. If the suits survive the effort to dismiss them, they will go back before that three-judge panel that first heard arguments in December.

The hotly contested SD15 primary

Feb 27th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

This may be the most compelling primary race in the county.

Sen. John Whitmire

On the last day for candidates to file for the 2022 primary in Texas, things were looking good for state Sen. John Whitmire.

The longtime Democrat, sitting on an $11 million campaign war chest, had recently announced his plan to run for mayor of Houston in 2023. The more pressing matter — Whitmire’s re-election to the state Senate in 2022 — seemed a mere formality, with the filing deadline hours away and no other Democrat running in his deep-blue district.

Instead, Whitmire drew a last-minute challenge from Molly Cook, an emergency room nurse and progressive activist who appears to be the incumbent senator’s most formidable opponent in decades.

The longest-serving member of the Senate, Whitmire is heading into Tuesday’s election with clear-cut advantages over Cook, having outspent her roughly 3-to-1 and represented the district since nearly a decade before she was born. Still, Whitmire’s declared — and potential — mayoral opponents are keeping a close eye on the contest, which poses a fresh test of the senator’s electoral strength in a district that takes in a large chunk of the Houston electorate.

Whitmire said he takes “each and every opponent very seriously,” including Cook. He has shaped his re-election bid around his 39 years of experience in the Senate, arguing that his knowledge of the legislative process and presence on key committees — as chair of the Criminal Justice Committee and a member of the budget-shaping Finance and Business & Commerce committees — give him clout even in the Republican-dominated chamber.

“I think my chairmanship of Criminal Justice is reason alone for people to support me,” said Whitmire, 72. “Experience matters. … I don’t even think it’s a close call on who is prepared, from Day One, to represent Houston.”

Molly Cook

Though Cook, 30, is making her first run for elected office, she entered the race after spending more than a year as a lead organizer behind Stop TxDOT I-45, the group opposing the state transportation agency’s controversial $7 billion plan to remake Interstate 45 north of downtown Houston. She said her deep ties to grassroots organizing would shape her approach to serving in the Senate, vowing to seek input from community advocates through “bottom-up planning.”

At the same time, Cook argues that Whitmire — who was elected to the House in 1972, while a senior at the University of Houston, before moving to the Senate a decade later — has lost touch with the district through his nearly half-century in office. She has also accused Whitmire of “running for two offices at once” by way of his early mayoral announcement.

At a forum in late January, Cook said Whitmire’s “way of doing things is no longer serving our district or our state. She touted her own “fresh perspective and public health and policy expertise.”

“Sen. Whitmire has been in the Legislature since he was 23,” Cook said. “I have the experience of being a health care worker, making sacrifices to afford my health care, renting my home, and grassroots organizing. Sen. Whitmire is weighed down by experience, decades of campaign contributions, backroom deals and protecting personal political capital.”

Whitmire insists that he is completely focused on his current election, and dismissed charges from Cook that he would already have one foot out the door during the 2023 legislative session. He noted that Mayor Sylvester Turner also ran for re-election to the state House in 2014, even as he was gearing up for a mayoral run the following year.

“Nothing matters more to me right now than the Senate race. Any future race, we’ll take up after this race. I see no conflict,” Whitmire said. “So, that’s just a smokescreen. My opponent had to say something. She’s not going to say I’m a good guy. She should, but, you know, there’s no core Democratic issue to talk about. I voted nearly exactly like (state Sens.) Borris Miles and Carol Alvarado. We work very closely as a delegation.”

As a reminder, my interview with Sen. Whitmire is here, and my interview with Molly Cook is here. There are a lot of Molly Cook signs in my neighborhood. I wouldn’t claim we’re indicative of anything, but it’s interesting to me anyway. I know Cook has blockwalked here – she knocked on my door a few weeks ago – and as far as I know Whitmire has not. That can make a difference, especially in a neighborhood like mine that is often not visited by canvassers. It’s also the case that the I-45 expansion plan is very unpopular here – we have been dreading TxDOT’s plans for I-45 for at least the last 20 years – and I suspect that Cook has found more than a few supporters by talking about her involvement in the opposition to TxDOT.

I also think that Whitmire’s announcement of his Mayoral campaign last November didn’t do him any favors. Whitmire has noted correctly that Mayor Turner ran for re-election in 2014 and then served ably in the Legislature in 2015 before his successful Mayoral campaign. I don’t remember Turner announcing his Mayoral candidacy that early, though it was hardly a secret that he intended to run. It may just be that things are different now, and people feel differently about that. It also may be that the backlash to Whitmire’s dual candidacy announcement is totally overblown and nothing more than a tempest in the teapot-sized world of the very inside and very online local politics contingent. Ask me again after the election results come in.

One more thing:

Even if Cook loses, a strong showing could establish her as a frontrunner in what would likely be a crowded race to replace Whitmire if he wins the November 2023 mayoral race, said University of Houston political science associate professor Jeronimo Cortina.

“Perhaps what she wants to do is get on the ballot early and claim that particular space that is going to be opened,” Cortina said. “I think it’s a smart move on her behalf.”

If she comes up short next week, Cook said she would likely run for the seat again if the opportunity arises in 2024.

“I don’t like to make promises or commitments looking forward, because anything could happen,” Cook said. “But I would say that there’s a high likelihood.”

I fully expect that Cook has an eye on 2024, because winning this race was always going to be tough, and because there is an opening for someone to get in front of the field for that potential special election. One step at a time, obviously. We can talk about this after the election as well.

We don’t really need more prosecutors on the bench

Feb 13th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

22 comments

Ugh.

Kim Ogg

On a winter afternoon nine months into the pandemic, Harris County district attorney Kim Ogg held a Zoom meeting with felony judges and prosecutors to discuss the backlog of cases caused by COVID-19 shutdowns at the downtown Houston courthouse. But the backlog wasn’t the only issue to come up that day. For years, the Democratic DA had been publicly criticizing local judges who set what she deemed insufficiently high bonds for defendants accused of violent crimes. Now her office would deliver a direct warning. First assistant district attorney David Mitcham, Ogg’s top lieutenant, informed the judges that there would be a “reckoning” if they didn’t start setting higher bonds.

“My reaction was like, ‘Wow, that was bold,’ ” said Joe Vinas, the president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, who was on the call representing the criminal defense bar. “One of the judges asked if Mitcham was threatening him.”

Many in Houston’s legal community have thought back to that moment, now that fourteen Harris County prosecutors and one DA investigator have filed to run for criminal court judgeships this year—eight in Democratic primaries, seven in Republican primaries. It’s not unusual for prosecutors to run for judgeships, but the high number in this election cycle has raised eyebrows. In 2020 not a single Harris County prosecutor ran in any of the nine local criminal court races; in 2018, which featured 31 races, just one prosecutor ran. But with Ogg linking a sharp rise in homicides to the bail practices of reform-minded judges elected in recent years, perhaps it’s no surprise that so many of her prosecutors are challenging the 29 Democratic incumbents up for reelection this year.

[…]

In 2019 Harris County agreed to a sweeping set of reforms, including the elimination of cash bail for the vast majority of misdemeanor defendants. Instead, defendants would be released before trial on so-called “personal bonds,” which require no up-front payment. The landmark settlement, the first of its kind in the U.S., was endorsed by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and every other major county-wide Democratic officeholder—with the exception of Ogg, who warned that letting defendants out on personal bonds would threaten the public by giving judges “unfettered and unreviewable discretion” to delay trials or excuse defendants from ever appearing in court.

In the wake of Harris County’s settlement, Travis County also eliminated cash bail for most misdemeanor offenses. Two recent academic studies have found that this reform has been effective. Fewer defendants are now incarcerated before trial and those released on personal bonds have proven unlikely to be rearrested. But that hasn’t stopped some politicians from arguing that more lenient bail policies are endangering public safety. And Republicans, who have not won a county-wide race in Harris County since 2014, hope to capitalize on the issue to regain some judgeships and other offices in 2022.

The concerns about bail reform have been exacerbated by local and national spikes in violent crime over the past two years. Between 2019 and 2020, murders jumped by nearly 30 percent across the country—the largest year-over-year increase in at least six decades—and homicides rose again in 2021 (although the FBI hasn’t released its final data). That trend has held true for Houston: there were an estimated 469 homicides in the city last year, an increase of 71 percent from 2019. That’s still well below the 701 killings in 1981, the city’s deadliest year, when the population was nearly one million less.

Violent crimes such as assault have also increased since 2019, both nationally and in Harris County, although nonviolent crime is down. While the national homicide rate remains below its historic peak in the early nineties, the rapid increase has received intense attention in local media, with crime stories frequently leading television news. Houston’s Fox 26 features a recurring segment called “Breaking Bond”—created in collaboration with nonprofit group Crime Stoppers of Houston—about felony defendants who are rearrested while out on bail. The series regularly features prominent local Republicans blasting Democratic judges for their bail practices.

Criminologists disagree on the reason for the rising crime, but most agree that pandemic-induced frustrations, the surge in gun sales during the coronavirus outbreak, and a general police pullback in reaction to protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd have something to do with it. There’s little evidence to connect bail reform with the surge in homicides, but one notorious case last September added fuel to the argument. After judge Greg Glass set bonds of $10,000 and $20,000 for two drug charges against thirty-year-old Deon Ledet, the Harris County man went free and allegedly killed one police officer and injured another. Prosecutors had asked Glass to hold Ledet without bond because he had twice been convicted of a felony. In March, Glass (who did not respond to an interview request) faces two primary challengers, one of them a Polk County assistant district attorney; if he prevails, he’ll face one of Ogg’s Republican prosecutors in the fall general election.

There’s a lot in here to annoy me, starting with the conflation of the reforms to misdemeanor bail reform and complaints about the amounts of bail being set by felony court judges. The simple fact of the matter is that if your system allows for any possibility of bail, sooner or later someone, whether out on ten dollars bail or ten million dollars bail, is going to commit a crime. You could have a system that’s right 99.9% of the time, but given the thousands of people that go through the courts each year, that means multiple times each year when that happens. Unless your solution is to lock everyone up from the time they’re arrested until the time their case is completed in whatever fashion, no matter what the charge or their circumstances or anything else, then you need to accept this basic fact of life.

(Such a solution would be blatantly unconstitutional, of course. So is simply charging everyone more for bail, since that makes bail only accessible to the wealthy, and punishes others for being poor. Which is what the misdemeanor bail lawsuit was all about. That does introduce some risk as noted, but we’re trying to balance it against the enormous wrong of locking up people who have not been convicted of any crime. Sometimes these things don’t have simple answers.)

Look, you can read the various judicial Q&A responses I’ve published from incumbents and candidates. I’ll have run over 40 of them by the time all is said and done. I’ve no doubt some of these assistant DAs would be fine judges. But this isn’t a good look, and I’m not at all inclined to view their time in that office as a positive because of it. And speaking as someone who has voted for Kim Ogg in each of the past two primaries, I’ll be looking very carefully at my other options in 2024.

January 2022 campaign finance reports: Congress

Feb 10th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

The filing deadline has passed, the primary lineups are set, and we have a new set of races and candidates to review. As was the case in the past two cycles, I’ll follow the contested primaries as well as the (fewer than before) November races of interest. I’ll drop the former once those contests are settled. The October 2021 reports are here, the July 2021 reports are here, and you can get the links to the previous cycle’s reports from there.

Dan Crenshaw – CD02
Robin Fulford – CD02
Van Taylor – CD03
Keith Self – CD03
Sandeep Srivastava – CD03
Doc Shelby – CD03
Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Mike McCaul – CD10
Linda Nuno – CD10
Mauro Garza – CD15
John Villarreal Rigney – CD15
Ruben Ramirez – CD15
Roberto Haddad – CD15
Eliza Alvarado – CD15
Monica de la Cruz – CD15
Chip Roy – CD21
Scott Sturm – CD21
Robert Lowry – CD21
Claudia Zapata – CD21
Ricardo Villarreal – CD21
Troy Nehls – CD22
Jamie Kaye Jordan – CD22
Tony Gonzales – CD23
John Lira – CD23
Beth Van Duyne – CD24
Derrik Gay – CD24
Kathy Fragnoli – CD24
Jan McDowell – CD24
Henry Cuellar – CD28
Jessica Cisneros – CD28
Tannya Benavides – CD28
Ed Cabrera – CD28
Willie Vasquez Ng – CD28
Cassandra Garcia – CD28
Abel Mulugheta – CD30
Jane Hope Hamilton – CD30
Jessica Mason – CD30
Jasmine Crockett – CD30
Colin Allred – CD32
Vicente Gonzalez – CD34
Mayra Flores – CD34
Greg Casar – CD35
Eddie Rodriguez – CD35
Rebecca Viagran – CD35
Lloyd Doggett – CD37
Donna Imam – CD37
Wesley Hunt – CD38
Duncan Klussman – CD38
Diana Martinez Alexander – CD38
Centrell Reed – CD38


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
02    Crenshaw     10,302,932  7,639,567        0  4,516,080
02    Fulford          49,692     15,595   15,595     34,097
03    Taylor        1,857,852    652,058  503,192  1,228,292
03    Self            165,608     58,297        0    107,321
03    Srivastava       59,699     49,257   25,000     10,441
03    Shelby                0          0        0          0
07    Fletcher      2,414,235    485,311        0  1,990,020
10    McCaul        1,413,600    643,881        0    777,453
10    Nuno                  0          0        0          0
15    Garza           504,584    162,893  663,201    387,578
15    V Rigney        151,025         26  151,000    150,999
15    Ramirez         108,280     34,054   12,250     74,225
15    Haddad          100,000    100,000        0          0
15    Alvarado         75,035     24,183   29,000     50,851
15    De la Cruz    1,539,153    921,051   13,000    625,607
21    Roy           1,240,412    651,863        0  1,052,131
21    Sturm            47,618     37,869        0      5,728
21    Lowry            39,725     36,227   27,325      3,497
21    Zapata           38,436     34,619        0      4,769
21    Villarreal       25,190     15,048   20,563     10,141
22    Nehls           670,482    322,270    5,726    367,417
22    Jordan                0          0        0          0
23    Gonzales      2,261,907    985,463        0  1,307,803
23    Lira            251,642    195,017        0     56,625
24    Van Duyne     2,035,203    731,839        0  1,371,774
24    Gay             208,661    165,886        0     42,774
24    Fragnoli         28,121     17,328   12,096     10,793
24    McDowell         11,183      5,632        0      5,550
28    Cuellar       1,853,133  1,056,272        0  2,347,334
28    Cisneros        812,072    320,983        0    494,058
28    Benavides        27,177     17,265        0      9,912
28    Cabrera         289,230    112,450  250,000    176,779
28    Ng              137,786     11,436   50,900    126,349
28    Garcia           85,601      2,742        0     82,858
30    Mulugheta       252,713     65,673        0    187,039
30    Hamilton        228,605    157,280    5,014     71,325
30    Mason           199,082    160,217        0     38,865
30    Crockett        101,281     21,094        0     80,186
32    Allred        2,213,564    621,340        0  1,751,646
34    Gonzalez      1,688,731    942,491        0  2,116,732
34    Flores          187,115    128,345        0     58,769
35    Casar           467,579    111,870        0    355,709
35    Rodriguez       251,472     31,134        0    220,338
35    Viagran          47,375      2,286        0     45,088
37    Doggett         635,901    360,138        0  5,476,237
37    Imam            210,983    110,414        0    100,518
38    Hunt          2,039,403    708,280        0  1,555,065
38    Klussman         17,865        385    7,000     17,479
38    Alexander        11,892      6,462        0      5,429
38    Reed             11,377        192    6,496     11,184

Some of these races have a lot of candidates, and in some of those cases I limited myself to people who raised a noticeable amount of money. Most but not all races have both Republicans and Democrats listed – the incumbent is listed first followed by other candidates from that party, if any. In the case of open seats like CDs 15 and 34, I listed the Democrats first since those are Democratic seats.

The two races that the DCCC has focused on as potential pickups are CDs 23 and 24. Leading candidates John Lira and Derrik Gay had raised respectable amounts so far, but if you look at the October reports you can see they didn’t add all that much to their totals. They spent more than they took in over the past three months, not terribly surprising given that they’re in contested races (Lira’s opponent didn’t report anything), but it means they’ll be starting way in the hole. If they don’t pick it up considerably in this quarter it won’t much matter anyway.

I’m a little surprised that State Rep. Jasmine Crockett hasn’t raised more in CD30, as she is the candidate endorsed by outgoing Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, but she was only an official candidate in that race for five weeks, so in that context she did pretty well. In the likely event of a runoff, we’ll see what her April report says. On the Republican side, I expected more from Keith Self, who was Collin County Judge and whose candidacy was fueled by the grievance of Rep. Van Taylor voting for the January 6 commission. I guess his buddy Ken Paxton is in no position to lend him a hand right now. Rebecca Viagran is the one San Antonio candidate in a district with two Austin heavyweights duking it out. You’d think that might be a good path to getting into a runoff, but her fundraising doesn’t reflect that.

Donna Imam had been running in CD31 as of the October report, but switched to the new CD37 when her old district became less hospitable. I expect she’ll join a long list of candidates who got their heads handed to them by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, but you don’t know till you try. All of the Dems in CD38 were late filers in the race, so they had less than three weeks to collect cash. If this were 2012, the eventual winner of that primary would struggle to raise more than about $50K over the entire year. This is not a race that Dems have any expectation of winning, but I’ll be interested to see if the nominee here can do better than their long-longshot counterparts from a decade ago. My theory is that after two exciting cycles and a fair amount of engagement and organization, there should be a higher base level of support for candidates like these. We’ll see how dumb that theory turns out to be.

I did not comment on the absurd fundraising total of Rep. Dan Crenshaw last time. I will do so this time: That’s a lot of money. Whatever else you might say about the guy, he’s a fundraising machine. Spends a lot of it, too – I don’t look at the report details, so I can’t say where it’s going. But anyone who can rake it in like that, you have to think he’s got his eye on a statewide run, maybe in 2024 if Ted Cruz makes good his threat to run for President again. He does have three primary opponents, who combined to raise less than $50K. He also occasionally says things that make the most rabid of Trump minions howl with rage, so the possibility exists that he could underperform against that collection of no-names. I would not expect it to amount to anything, but it might provide a bit of fodder for the pundits.

No restraining order in SD10 lawsuit

Feb 2nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

The March primary will officially proceed as scheduled.

Sen. Beverly Powell

A federal three-judge panel in El Paso on Tuesday denied a request by Tarrant County residents to block a reconfigured state Senate district from being used in the upcoming March primary election while they pursue a lawsuit arguing that Texas lawmakers intentionally discriminated against voters of color when they redrew its boundaries.

The legal challenge to Senate District 10 in the Fort Worth area offered the only avenue to alter the state political maps drawn last year by the Legislature before the primary election. The Republican-controlled Legislature used the once-a-decade redistricting process to draw maps solidifying the GOP’s political dominance while weakening the influence of voters of color.

Without a successful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the maps will remain in place until later this year, when the panel is expected to hold a trial to hear the large collection of challenges to the new maps for the state House and Senate, the State Board of Education and the state’s Congressional seats.

The plaintiffs — including Democratic state Sen. Beverly Powell, who represents SD-10 in its previous configuration — and attorneys for the state faced off in an El Paso courtroom last week during a four-day hearing before the three-judge panel. The plaintiffs were asking for a temporary injunction blocking the primary using the redrawn SD-10.

[…]

The state also argued it was too late to make changes for the March 1 primary, for which mail-in ballots have already started going out. In-person early voting begins Feb. 14.

The three-judge panel did not specify its reasons for siding with the state in its Tuesday order, saying those would be contained in a forthcoming opinion. The panel did note the state’s argument that an order to block the use of the redrawn SD-10 so close to the primary election would “fly in the face” of the Supreme Court’s previous warnings that lower courts should not make changes “on the eve of an election.”

See here and here for the background. I can’t say I’m surprised – we are less than two weeks out from the start of early voting, and mail ballots are being sent to those lucky few who have managed to fill out their applications correctly. Whether it was possible for the court to have acted faster than this I can’t say, but given where we are now, this was the most likely outcome. This lawsuit and the other federal and state suits will proceed later, and if there are any remedies offered they will happen no earlier than the 2024 election. Which means that if the plaintiffs do eventually prevail in this one, it will be too late for Sen. Powell, who is a big underdog in the current district. That sucks and it’s not fair, but it’s where we are. All we can do is move forward.

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