Harris County Judge

You still have time to donate to the Democratic judges’ legal fund

Mar 2nd, 2023

Comments are off for this post

Just a reminder:

Here @JudgeGenesis Draper. She is 1 of 17 elected Harris County Dem. judges sued to undo ‘22 election. Judges can’t take pro bono help to defend selves. Can’t let Mattress Mack undo election wins. Clubs In Action raising legal $ for judges. Please help. https://mailchi.mp/3860a20fae8b/we-need-your-help?e=cf7bb2b770&fbclid=IwAR3bf6Pdu4mhPHiTnPDtpzT361sMx5VyDAxSnUXy7qM7EbTLGfZabSUiT4w

— Clubs in Action PAC (@CIAHTX) 8:32 PM – 27 February 2023

See here for the background. That link takes you here, and while the in-person fundraiser mentioned there is now over, the Donate link remains. But due to a change in state law, you only have until March 8 to make a contribution. That’s a new statutory deadline for all judicial fundraising – it used to be the case that judges who were involved in lawsuits could continue past that deadline, but the law was changed in the last session, so here we are. Please give a few bucks if you can and help them all out. Thanks!

You can help Democrats being sued by election losers

Feb 13th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

7 comments

From the inbox, sent to me by former HD133 candidate Sandra Moore:

Below is a list of the judges and electeds being sued by the Republicans. These are nuisance suits but the Judges and Lina have had to hire attorneys to represent them against the claims. Marilyn and Tenesha have pro bono attorneys but the others are not allowed to be represented pro bono due to conflicts of interest. The judge hearing the case is in San Antonio which complicates matters re time to get there and back for hearings. The travel time alone for the attorneys will be in the thousands when ZOOM meetings are not allowed! The average attorney charges $500 per hour. The fee can’t be lowered due to “appearance of impropriety” issues. The judges listed as well as Lina have little in their campaign coffers. That’s how it is for the judges. One judge whose race is being challenged, David Fleisher, lives in 133. This is the state house district in which I ran back in 2018 and 2020.

I was on several endorsements interviews with some of these judges through a different organization. This is how I learned how little was in their campaign accounts. The Republicans picked the judges with some of the smallest accounts.

It is believed that the purpose of these suits is to drag out the cases, have judges dip into personal resources, and be exhausted financially and emotionally by the time of their next race.

The Harris County Democratic Party is NOT doing anything to assist the 22 electeds. If even one is bounced, Abbott could appoint a replacement for those in the criminal courts. Judges are being sued “in their individual capacity.” That is why each person named in a suit has to retain their own attorney.

CLUBS IN ACTION is trying to raise 95K to donate to them. The maximum that a judge can receive from a PAC is $5000, so that is the goal for each judge and for Lina. We all know that Lina received very little in campaign contributions, especially compared to Mealer.

During the election CIA knocked on 300,000 doors. WHD knocked on about 1500. We worked hard to make this happen. No one wants all this hard work to go to waste. So, if you are willing to make a donation to CIA that would be great.

I was invited to this meeting because of the effort to create and carry out block walking events.

If you decide to make a contribution a check can be sent to:

CLUBS IN ACTION
2504 Rusk St. #110
Houston, TX 77003.

CIA plans to hold a fundraiser, hopefully on Feb 19. But I will send out word when I learn more. There is a deadline of MARCH 8 to raise funds!!

[…]

1 Cause No. 2023-00964; Alexandra Mealer v. Lina Hidalgo. Alexander Mealer is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Hidalgo is represented by Neal Manne.

2 Cause No. 2023-00925; Michelle Fraga v. Judge Christine Weems. Michelle Fraga is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Weems is represented by John Raley.

3 Cause No. 2023-00924; Elizabeth Buss v. Judge David Fleischer. Elizabeth Buss is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Fleischer is represented by John Raley.

4 Cause No. 2023-00841; Tami Pierce v. Judge DaSean Jones. Tami Pierce is representing herself with co-counsel, Paul Simpson. Judge Jones is represented by Oliver Brown.

5 Cause No. 2022-79328; Erin Lunceford v. Judge Tami Craft. Erin Lunceford is represented by Andy Taylor. Judge Craft is represented by Steve Kherker.

6 Cause No. 2023-00927; Bruce Bain v. Judge Corey Sepolio. Bruce Bain is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Sepolio is represented by John Raley.

7 Cause No. 2023-00932; Chris Daniel v. Marilyn Burgess. Chris Daniel is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Clerk Burgess is represented by Neal Manne.

8 Cause No. 2023-00930; Mark Goldberg v. Judge Erika Ramirez. Mark Goldberg is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Ramirez is represented by John Staley.

9 Cause No. 2023-00934; Brian Staley v. Judge Monica Singh. Brian Staley is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Singh is represented by Anthony Drumheller.

10 Cause No. 2023-00936; Mark Montgomery v. Judge Kelley Andrews. Mark Montgomery is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Andrews is represented by John Raley.

11 Cause No. 2023-00937; Matthew Dexter v. Judge Genesis Draper. Matthew Dexter is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Draper is represented by John Raley.

12 Cause No. 2023-00952; Nile Copeland v. Judge Latosha Lewis Payne. Nile Copeland is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Payne is represented by John Raley.

13 Cause No. 2023-00958; Rory Olsen v. Judge Jason Cox. Rory Olsen is represented by Jared Woodfill. Judge Cox is represented by Cris Feldman.

14 Cause No. 2023-00955; James Lombardino v. Judge Audrie Lawton-Evans. James Lombardino is represented by Jared Woodfill. Judge Lawton-Evans is represented by Anthony Drumheller.

15 Cause No. 2023-01202; Stan Stanart v. Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth. Stan Stanart is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Clerk Hudspeth is represented by Neal Manne.

16 Cause No. 2023-01066; Dan Simons v. Judge Sedrick Walker. Dan Simons is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Walker is represented by John Raley.

17 Cause No. 2023-301111; Will Archer v. Judge James Horwitz. Will Archer is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Horwitz is represented by John Raley.

18 Cause No. 2023-01103; Kyle Scott v. Carla Wyatt. Kyle Scott is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Ms. Wyatt is represented by Neal Manne.

19 Cause No. 2023-01076; Aaron Adams v. Judge LaShawn Williams. Aaron Adams is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Williams is represented by Anthony Drumheller.

20 Cause No. 2023-01067; Dan Spjut v. Judge Juanita Jackson. Dan Spjut is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Jackson is represented by John Raley.

21 Cause No. 2023-01052; Sartaj Bal v. Judge Toria Finch. Sartaj Bal is represented by Elizabeth Alvarez. Judge Finch is represented by Anthony Drumheller.

I will pass along information about the fundraiser when I have it. You can also contribute to any candidate you like directly – just google them or find their campaign Facebook page to get to a suitable Donate link for them. It’s deeply annoying that we have to do this – as a reminder, these cases are stinking piles of nothing and the losers pursuing them damn well know it – but it’s where we are. Let’s make it a little less hard for these Dems who clearly and correctly won their races.

Even the Republicans know their election contests are losers

Feb 8th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

This Chron story is about Dan Patrick telling a group of local Republicans that the 2022 election should be re-done in Harris County, because he has nothing better to say or do with his time. His claims, which the story notes he does not try to verify, aren’t worth the effort to copy and paste, but this tidbit caught my eye:

Without citing any examples of disenfranchised voters, the petition asks the court to declare the elections office made mistakes substantial enough to affect the outcome of the election.

According to Mealer’s petition, “there is no dispute that there were several dozens of polling locations who at some point in the day, ran out of paper and turned voters away.”

Tatum has maintained that while paper supplies ran low at some locations, the county has not been able to confirm whether any voters were turned away as a result.

Republican judicial candidate Erin Lunceford filed an election contest lawsuit in December after losing Harris County’s 189th judicial district court race to Democrat Tamika Craft.

In an email obtained by Craft’s attorneys and posted on the Harris County District Clerk’s website, Harris County Republican Party Chair Cindy Siegel gave candidates the party’s estimate of disenfranchised voters. Siegel’s email was sent on Jan 3, three days before the deadline to file election contest lawsuits.

“Based upon information to date we believe there were approximately 2,600 or more estimated voters turned away due to running out of ballot paper or machines not working for a period of time,” Siegel wrote.

It’s unclear whether that estimate would be enough to flip even the narrowest margins, as in Lunceford’s race, which Craft won by 2,743 votes out of more than 1 million ballots cast, or 0.26 percent of the vote.

The margins are far wider in some other races candidates are contesting. District Clerk candidate Chris Daniel lost by 25,640 votes, while County Clerk candidate Stan Stanart lost by 34,448 votes.

The election contests will be heard by Judge David Peeples of Bexar County. A trial date has not been set yet.

Emphasis mine, and see here for the previous entry. Note that as yet, not a single person has been identified as someone who showed up at a voting center on Election Day, was actually unable to cast a ballot while there because of paper issues, left before the problem was resolved, was unable to go to any of the 750 other voting locations in the county, and ultimately did not cast a ballot. Maybe such people exist and Republicans have been successful at keeping them all quiet until the lawsuits are heard, who can say. At this point, three months out, they seem as plausible as Bigfoot sightings, but let’s take Cindy Siegel at her word and assume the existence of 2600 actual people who were actually unable to cast a ballot on Election Day.

And if we do assume that statement to be a fact, then it is still the case that every single one of those Republican losers are still losers, with most of them still losing by more than a full percentage point, which is well above the standard for recounts that the loser doesn’t have to pay for. And that assumes that literally every one of those 2600 non-voters would have voted for the Republican candidate. Which would be so outlandishly unlikely as to appear to be its own conspiracy. I know that the Republicans are claiming that these problems took place at mostly Republican locations – another claim that is dubious at best and seemingly contradicted by news reporting on Election Day – but even the most partisan locations aren’t unanimous. In all likelihood, these votes would more or less split fifty-fifty, as a microcosm of the larger election, but let’s go ahead and assume the “friendly turf” claim as well. Suppose these votes split 80-20 for the Republicans, which would be plausible for an exclusive sample of such locations. That would mean that the Republicans netted about 1600 votes, which I need not point out is even farther away from closing the gap. If the margin is 60-40, the net gain is about 500 votes. Even under the most ludicrously generous assumptions, the math just plain doesn’t work.

And whatever else you may think about Dan Patrick, he’s not an idiot. He knows this. He also knows that his audience doesn’t care, and he knows that if he keeps repeating the lie, some people who don’t pay close attention will just think that the election was a mess and we don’t really know who won and maybe these “election integrity” laws that the Republicans keep passing have some merit. Winning takes many forms, after all. The Trib, which reported Patrick’s remarks but didn’t fact check them, and Campos, who called the Trib story “lazyarse reporting”, have more.

January 2023 campaign finance reports: Harris County

Feb 1st, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Previously: City of Houston

January 2022 reports are here, July 2022 reports are here. I did not get around to doing the 30-day and 8-day reports from 2022, so what you see here in these reports is not contiguous for those who were on last November’s ballot.

Lina Hidalgo, County Judge

Rodney Ellis, County Commissioner, Precinct 1
Adrian Garcia, County Commissioner, Precinct 2
Tom Ramsey, County Commissioner, Precinct 3
Lesley Briones, County Commissioner, Precinct 4

Kim Ogg, District Attorney
Christian Menefee, Harris County Attorney
Ed Gonzalez, Sheriff
Joe Danna, Sheriff
Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor

Alan Rosen, Constable Precinct 1
Jerry Garcia, Constable Precinct 2
Sherman Eagleton, Constable Precinct 3
Mark Herman, Constable Precinct 4
Ted Heap, Constable Precinct 5
Sylvia Trevino, Constable Precinct 6
Phil Sandlin, Constable Precinct 8

Teneshia Hudspeth, County Clerk
Marilyn Burgess, District Clerk
Carla Wyatt, County Treasurer

Alexandra Mealer, County Judge
Jack Cagle (SPAC), County Commissioner, Precinct 4
Steve Radack


Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
======================================================
Hidalgo         612,111  1,095,479  101,400     36,568

Ellis            40,800    443,116        0  3,543,358
Garcia, A       175,027    340,089        0    291,697
Ramsey          550,625    149,433        0    944,935
Briones         819,495    331,782        0    667,234

Ogg             161,659     19,356   48,489    242,159
Menefee          36,826     30,700        0    193,291
Gonzalez              0      4,032        0      9,258
Danna             1,983     19,814   18,452        982
Bennett               0      1,022        0     14,527

Rosen           717,202     84,691        0  1,322,398
Garcia           33,177      8,498        0     54,177
Eagleton         51,665     23,158  119,650     59,159
Herman                0     96,574        0    518,009
Heap                  0     69,735   18,880     68,808
Trevino           3,150      4,270        0     26,871
Sandlin          38,580     28,502        0     79,998

Hudspeth          4,660     22,009        0      9,952
Burgess             940     14,710    5,207      5,403
Wyatt             1,950      2,110        0      2,258

Mealer          356,684    621,482        0    188,512
Cagle            64,225    186,970        0      5,056
Radack                0     71,246        0    794,652

I included Mealer and Cagle for post-election inclusion mostly out of curiosity. Jack Morman did not have a report filed or I’d have included him as well. Cagle’s July report showed over a million bucks on hand. Life comes at you fast. (Except for Steve Radack, who still has a nice chunk of change in his account.) On the other side of that, you can see that Judge Hidalgo left it all on the field. She’ll have plenty of time to build that treasury back up; she did a pretty good job of that this cycle, so I’d expect to see her total tick up in short order. I didn’t look closely at new Commissioner Briones’ report, but I’d bet a nice lunch that a substantial chunk of her cash arrived after the election. It’s good to be a Commissioner.

I don’t think I’ve seen reports for District Attorney on the county election site before. DA is technically a state office – for smaller counties, the DA can cover several of them at once – so I’d normally expect to see them on the Texas Ethics Commission site. Not that I’m complaining. I figure it’s just a matter of time before incumbent DA draws a primary challenger or two, so we’ll want to keep an eye on her fundraising totals. Nothing else of great interest in this group – I’d expect both Ed Gonzalez and Christian Menefee to start posting bigger numbers soon. As for Joe Danna, is there ever a time when he isn’t running for Sheriff?

I don’t know if we will get Constable/JP redistricting, but there are always some interesting primary contests here, and even with the same maps we could have interesting November races in Precincts 4 and 5. Along those lines, I note two potential future Constable candidates: Don Dinh, a Deputy Constable in Precinct 1 since 2020 who was for 24 years before that a sergeant in the Fort Bend County Precinct 2 Constable’s office, filed a designation of treasurer to run for Constable in Precinct 5. I’m going to guess he’d run as a Democrat, but I can’t say for sure at this time. A William Wagner, about whom I could find nothing, filed the same for Constable in Precinct 7. He would almost surely run as a Dem in this heavily Democratic precinct.

Oh, and the second place where there might be a Democratic primary fight worth watching is in Precinct 1. Alan Rosen had his eye on the Sheriff’s office back when Ed Gonzalez was a nominee for head of ICE, but that’s off the table now. He may or may not seek to run for something else – do remember that the minute he says something to that effect he’ll have to resign, so all we would have before then is speculation – but either way I won’t be surprised to see some competition for the Precinct 1 slot. One of his top staffers ran against Judge Hidalgo in the 2022 Dem primary, and I imagine there will be some kind of response to that. That would not be a cheap race as things stand now, as you can see.

Not much else to say at this time for 2024, but I will note that at least some of the Democratic judges whose election is being challenged by a sore loser are raising funds for their legal defense. If you have a favorite or two among them and a few bucks to spare, I’m sure they’d appreciate a contribution.

Additional Losing Candidates File Election Contests in Harris County

Jan 7th, 2023

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

That’s the subject of the following email I got in my inbox yesterday, and I can’t do any better than that for a post title.

Additional Losing Candidates File Election Contests in Harris County

Houston, Texas – Today, several losing Republican candidates filed election contests to void the more than 1 million votes cast in Harris County’s November 2022 election. Thus far, the Harris County Attorney’s Office has identified filings by (and we expect more filings to be made today):

Mark Montgomery, former candidate for Harris County Criminal Court at Law No. 6 (lost to Judge Kelley Andrews)

Matthew Dexter, former candidate for Harris County Criminal Court at Law No. 12 (lost to Judge Genesis Draper)

Brian Staley, former candidate for Harris County Civil County Court at Law No. 4. (lost to Judge Manpreet Monica Singh)

Mark Goldberg, former candidate for Harris County Criminal Court at Law No. 8 (lost to Judge Erika Ramirez)

Bruce Bain, former candidate for the 269th District Court (lost to Judge Cory Sepolio)

Michelle Fraga, former candidate for the 281st District Court (lost to Judge Christine Weems)

Elizabeth Buss, former candidate for the Harris County Criminal Court at Law No. 5 (lost to Judge David Fleischer)

Chris Daniel, former candidate for Harris County District Clerk (lost to Marilyn Burgess)

These filings are in addition to previously announced contests by:

Erin Lunceford, former candidate for the 189^th District Court (lost to Judge Tamika Craft)

Tami Pierce, former candidate for the 180th District Court (lost to Judge DaSean Jones)

Alexandra Mealer, former candidate for Harris County Judge (lost to Judge Lina Hidalgo)

Mike May, former candidate for State Representative District 135 (lost to Representative Jon Rosenthal)

Below is the statement from the County Attorney released this morning:

“This is a shameful attempt by a group of losing candidates who couldn’t win the hearts and minds of Harris County voters and are now throwing nonsensical legal theories at the wall to see what sticks. Each of them should be deeply embarrassed and these claims should not be taken seriously by the public,” said Harris County Attorney Christian D. Menefee. “These losing candidates are finally laying bare what we all know to be true – for them, it’s not about improving elections or making sure our elections are secure, it’s about playing games with our democratic systems and refusing to accept the will of the voters.”

The contests being filed request that the more than one million votes cast in Harris County be voided and the county hold another election for the races being challenged (e.g., Harris County Judge, 189^th District Court, 180^th District Court, etc.).

“These election contests are frivolous attempts to overturn the votes of more than a million residents in the third largest county in the country. The county will now have to spend substantial resources handling these contests, time that could instead be spent serving the people of Harris County,” added County Attorney Menefee. “Voters have moved on. Public servants have moved on. These losing candidates should move on too.”

See here and here for the background. The judge in the Lunceford contest was assigned on December 13, I don’t know what has happened since then. I do know that at least one more loser has filed a loser’s contest, but I don’t care to give any of this any more validity. You can read the Chron story here and their explainer about election contests here. I think the Trib story contains the most relevant bit of information:

The Election Day problems were unlikely to have been substantial enough to swing the results of the Harris County judge’s race, according to Bob Stein, a political science professor at Rice University.

Nearly 70% of voters cast their ballots during the early voting period, but Mealer only cites issues on Election Day itself.

“I’m extremely doubtful that there is a legitimate legal challenge here,” Stein said. “It’s not like voters were told they couldn’t vote or that they had to go home. They were discouraged because the lines were long, or because they were told they’d have to wait.”

Those challenges do not amount to voter suppression, Stein said, but merely suggest that Harris County should operate fewer, better-resourced polling locations.

To make its case, Mealer’s legal team will have to find evidence that more than 18,000 voters were unable to cast ballots on Election Day, and that all of those voters planned to vote for Mealer, Stein said.

And every voter who might have been discouraged by issues at one location could have gone to another one, which would have been at most a couple of minutes away by car. Even at the highest end of the estimate of locations that had issues, more than 90% of them did not. We have multiple locations at which anyone can vote precisely as a hedge against problems at any one specific location. In the old days, when you had to vote at your precinct location, you really were screwed. Now you can just go somewhere else. Even in the case of the loser who lost to DaSean Jones by 449 votes, it’s extremely hard to imagine there could have been enough people who encountered problems and could not vote anywhere else and would have voted for the loser to make a difference. This is all bullshit and should be seen as such. Campos and the Texas Signal have 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.

Precinct analysis: Specifically, my precincts

Dec 4th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

I’m still waiting for the full landscape canvass data from Harris County – things are a bit up in the air right now because of the lawsuit filed by the local GOP, but I expect to get that data soon, and when I do I’ll do the usual set of analyses on it for you. In the meantime, I’ve been idly speculating about my own precincts in the Heights. I saw a lot of Mealer signs around, which is in part because she lives in the neighborhood, but it got me wondering if there was a significant crossover vote for her here. I never saw a yard that had both a Beto sign and a Mealer sign in it, but maybe those who voted that way wanted to keep it on the down low. The only way to know is to look at the data.

So I went to the canvass reports that are available now on the HarrisVotes website. I specifically wanted to see what the vote for Beto looked like versus what the Lina Hidalgo vote looked like in the two precincts around where I live and where I spend most of my time. For comparison, I did the same for 2018, to see how much Beto/Emmett crossover there was. It’s a limited look – I’ll be able to learn much more when I have the full landscape report – but all I’m looking for here is quick and dirty. That will do for now.

Here are the numbers. I added the vote totals for the two precincts. The percentages include the third party (and for 2022 County Judge, write in) candidates, so they don’t sum to 100. Note that precincts were redrawn last year, and the net effect is that there are more voters in them in 2022 than in 2018.


Year  Candidate   Vote    Pct
=============================
2018       Beto  1,819  72.0%
2018       Cruz    674  26.7%

2018    Hidalgo  1,205  49.2%
2018     Emmett  1,169  47.8%

2022       Beto  2,546  70.2%
2022     Abbott  1,019  28.1%

2022    Hidalgo  2,279  63.6%
2022     Mealer  1,302  36.3%

So yes, there were Beto/Mealer voters in my neighborhood. That’s not surprising, given that Beto got 54% of the vote and 595K votes total, while Hidalgo got under 51% and 553K votes. As I said, I won’t know if our neighborhood was substantially different than others in the improvement that Mealer had over Abbott until I get the full picture. She did fall well short of Ed Emmett in 2018, getting a bit more than half as many crossovers as he did then. Again, not a big surprise given Beto’s 58% versus Hidalgo’s 49% four years ago. Indeed, my neighborhood was a pretty good proxy for the count as a whole in the County Judge’s race in 2018, but it was significantly more Democratic in that race this year. Make of all that what you will.

From a turnout perspective, in 2018 2,527 of 3,431 registered voters came out, for 73.7% of the total. In 2022, it was 3,641 out of 5,298, or 68.7% turnout. The county as a whole declined from 52.86% to 43.54%, so again not a surprise. If anything, the decline was less steep here than elsewhere. But a decline it was.

Anyway, that’s what there is for this comparison. I will of course look at this in more depth once I have the data I need.

Whitmire launches his Mayoral campaign

Dec 1st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

11 comments

And we’re off.

Sen. John Whitmire

State Sen. John Whitmire formally launched his campaign for Houston mayor Tuesday evening with a fundraiser at the ritzy Post Oak Hotel, attended by dozens of the city’s political luminaries — including the hotel’s billionaire owner, Tilman Fertitta, and several other Republican mega-donors who are opening their checkbooks for Whitmire, a moderate Democrat.

With almost a year to go until next year’s Nov. 7 election, Whitmire outlined his platform and kickstarted his campaign at Tuesday’s fundraiser. The host committee is filled with prominent lobbyists, business groups, labor unions, former elected officials and a mix of donors to both political parties.

Whitmire said his campaign is motivated by his desire to solve a variety of problems that he has personally witnessed in Houston including homelessness, illegal dumping, rising crime and inefficient city services.

Among them, public safety is a driving issue for the candidate. Besides supporting law enforcement officers, he said he would also take a holistic approach to improving the criminal justice system including offering more resources to the court system and the crime lab.

“I’m not going to get into squabbles with other elected officials about what the numbers are, but the bottom line is we have a crime issue in Houston, Harris County,” he said at the fundraiser. “We are not New York or Chicago. We fix our problems.”

Whitmire said he is expecting resistance from people who do not want to see the changes that he is advocating for, including a more transparent government than how the city is currently operating.

“There are people who like the status quo. There’s people that like the city is operating because they are profiting real well. They know if I’m mayor, it’s going to be very transparent, honest and play no favors,” he said. “I want you to tell the firemen and the policemen that help is on the way. I want you to tell Houstonians that help is on the way.”

[…]

Whitmire, the longest-serving member of the Texas Senate, already has $9.5 million in his state campaign account, according to his most recent filing. He has built up his war chest over a decades-long career in the Legislature dating back to 1972, when he was elected to the state House while a senior at the University of Houston. He has served in the upper chamber since 1982.

It is not yet clear how much of the $9.5 million Whitmire can transfer to his mayoral campaign, though he is expected to start the race with a massive financial advantage over the rest of the field. Hollins reported a $1.1 million haul during the first five months of his campaign, while Edwards took in about $789,000 in a shorter span. Kaplan raised $800,000 and pitched in another $100,000 of his own money.

Nancy Sims, a longtime political consultant who now teaches political science at the University of Houston, said she had “never seen such hardcore fundraising this high and this early” in a Houston mayor’s race.

“This is going to be one very expensive mayoral campaign,” Sims said.

Boosting Whitmire’s mayoral bid are a number of donors who helped bankroll the recent campaign of Republican Alexandra del Moral Mealer, who came within two percentage points of unseating Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo in this month’s midterm election.

Mealer donors serving on the host committee for Tuesday’s fundraiser include Fertitta, Gallery Furniture owner Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, real estate developer Richard Weekley, Fidelis Realty Partners CEO Alan Hassenflu and Houston beer distributor John Nau, among others.

Also on the host committee are several former Republican elected officials, including former state representative Dan Huberty, former city councilmember Greg Travis and two of Whitmire’s former Senate colleagues: Todd Staples, who also served as agriculture commissioner, and Kevin Eltife.

A number of Democrats, including former state representative and city councilmember Ellen Cohen and former Harris County Democratic Party chair Lane Lewis, also are on the host committee.

[…]

In the Senate, Whitmire is best known for his work on criminal justice issues, having long served as chair of the Criminal Justice Committee, even under Republican leadership.

Though his record generally aligns with those of his Democratic colleagues on other issues, Whitmire has broken with his party on a number of votes related to criminal justice. He is a longtime ally of Houston and Harris County’s police union groups, which also are on the host committee for his kickoff fundraiser.

Last year, Whitmire voted for a GOP-backed bail bill that limits the opportunity for defendants to be released on no-cost personal bonds and gives judges more information about a defendant’s criminal history when setting bail.

He also voted to amend the Texas Constitution to expand the charges under which judges could deny bail outright, extending the list to include certain violent and sexual crimes. The measure died after nearly every Democrat in the House voted against it, denying the two-thirds support needed to pass.

Whitmire’s criminal justice stances are expected to bolster his position among Republican voters and donors, including those who supported Mealer in a county judge race that focused heavily on violent crime rates in Harris County.

His views on criminal justice, and his support from GOP-aligned donors, have attracted some early backlash from Democrats, including Hollins, who noted last month on Twitter that Whitmire had not endorsed Hidalgo in the county judge’s race.

There’s a lot here and I don’t want to get too much into it right now because it’s going to be a long campaign and where candidates start out is not always indicative of where they end up. Going into a race like this, where more than one candidate is going to be broadly acceptable to me, I usually take a moment to see how I react to the campaign launches, as in what are the themes they chose to emphasize, who do I know that is or is not already on board with them, that sort of thing. See what the vibes are and how I feel about that. Let’s put a pin in that for now and come back to it after Hollins and Edwards have launched.

One thing I will make note of is this:

Fertitta, who also spoke at the event, praised Whitmire for his bipartisan perspective.

“When you look in this room tonight, you see Republicans and Democrats and you see the whole city of Houston,” he said. “John looks at things the right way and isn’t partisan when it comes to doing the right thing.”

The billionaire also faulted Mayor Sylvester Turner for not taking a stronger stance to represent the city’s interest.

“When you had a strong mayor form of government and when you are the mayor in this city, you run this city. Every single department here is yours. It is no different than running a huge company,” Fertitta said. “When Harvey happened and the state got billions and billions of dollars, Houston didn’t get any money for years. I can tell you this, if John Whitmire is our mayor, that wouldn’t have happened.”

Wait, what? Does the name “George P. Bush” mean anything to you, Tilman? This is so at odds with the facts of the matter that I’m surprised the story didn’t include a paragraph explaining the way the Land Commissioner went about distributing the federal funds and how they overtly favored smaller, more rural, definitely more Republican, areas over Houston and Harris County. Also, isn’t Mayor Turner a longtime friend and ally of Sen. Whitmire? It’s a little weird to see such a potshot being launched like that, especially at a campaign kickoff. I don’t even know what to make of it.

Anyway. This is where the 2023 Mayor’s race starts out. It will be long and loud and expensive and we’ll all be ready for it to be over in a few months’ time. What are your vibes about this going in?

A few words from Judge Hidalgo

Nov 22nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

9 comments

Plus a few words that she could have said but didn’t, which I will fill in.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who narrowly won re-election last week over a strong push from GOP candidates and donors, outlined plans for her next four years in office, including continuing anti-crime efforts and doubling down on early childhood education.

“In some ways, it’s a continuation of the past four years — the work we’ve done to tackle violent crime, for example. We’ve already been able to bring down that violent crime rate by at least 10 percent. These are August numbers. We need to do more. We’re going to continue doing that,” Hidalgo said in a press briefing held Thursday.

Hidalgo took a jab at the two Republicans on commissioners court, Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey and Precinct 4 Commissioner Jack Cagle, who broke quorum for more than six weeks to stop Democrats from passing their proposed property tax rate. While the Democrats were proposing a tax rate decrease, Ramsey and Cagle argued for a slightly lower rate on the grounds that residents needed more tax relief.

Because the court was not able to reach a state-required quorum of four members present to set the tax rate by the end of October, the county defaulted to what is known as the no-new revenue rate, the levy that would generate the same revenue as last year. The county is projected to take in an additional $45 million from new properties on the tax roll.

Facing a lower tax rate, the court voted to approve a lower budget, cutting nearly $100 million that was to be allocated to law enforcement, including raises for sheriff deputies.

“I’m proud of the record investments we’ve made in public safety, even despite the fact that two colleagues boycotted our budget process and forced us to cut some expenses we’d planned,” Hidalgo said. “Even with that, we’ve been able to see results and we’re working really hard, including with the recent bond that passed, to try to strengthen our criminal justice system.”

County government will keep tackling issues that traditionally have not been on the agenda, she said.

That’s what she said. She didn’t say anything about Constable/JP redistricting, either as a political goal or a policy goal. She didn’t say anything about taking all of those $100 million in forced budget cuts from Tom Ramsey’s precinct, which I would totally tell her to at least publicly muse about if I were advising her. She didn’t say anything about whiny crybaby sore losers pursuing their completely bogus “investigation” of the Elections office. She’s a responsible elected official, and I’m a yahoo on the Internet, so that probably has something to do with it. But these are things that could be said, and maybe will be said in a more measured and nuanced way at some point in the coming weeks. We’ll see. Oh, and be sure also to see the hilariously thin-skinned response she drew for her victory celebration from a local furniture salesman and gambling aficionado. Someone needs a nap, I’d say.

UPDATE: Said furniture salesman gets roundly panned by Chron readers.

State and county election result relationships, part 4: What happened in 2022

Nov 15th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Now that the final totals are in, let’s go back and do the same exercise in comparing overall results for statewide candidates to the results they got in Harris County, and then from there comparing them to the local countywide numbers. I’m going to limit the comparisons to the last four elections, since as we saw things changed in 2016 and I don’t see any reason to go back farther than that. Here are the statewide numbers:


2016                   2018                   2020                   2022
State  Harris   Diff   State  Harris   Diff   State  Harris   Diff   State  Harris   Diff
43.24   53.95  10.71   48.33   57.98   9.65   46.48   55.96   9.48   43.81   54.00  10.19
38.38   47.35   8.97   42.51   52.11   9.60   43.87   52.90   9.03   43.44   53.41   9.97
38.53   47.96   9.43   46.49   56.07   9.58   43.56   52.90   9.34   43.62   53.40   9.78
41.18   50.78   9.60   47.01   56.90   9.89   44.49   53.16   8.67   40.91   50.56   9.65
39.36   48.28   8.92   43.39   52.74   9.35   44.08   53.49   9.41   42.10   51.08   8.98
40.05   49.86   9.81   43.19   53.71  10.52   44.76   53.76   9.00   43.63   53.15   9.52
40.20   49.53   9.33   46.41   56.68  10.27   44.35   52.97   8.62   40.51   49.92   9.41
40.89   50.72   9.83   43.91   53.25   9.34   45.18   54.45   9.27   41.81   50.40   8.59
                       46.83   56.68   9.85   44.70   54.72  10.02   42.87   51.44   8.57
                       46.29   56.48  10.19   45.47   54.00   8.53   43.55   52.13   8.58
                       46.29   55.18   8.89                          43.02   50.99   7.97
                       45.48   55.62  10.14                          42.74   50.46   7.72
                       45.85   54.90   9.05				
										
										
Min   8.92             Min   8.89             Min   8.53             Min   7.72
Max  10.71             Max  10.52             Max  10.02             Max  10.19
Avg   9.58             Avg   9.72             Avg   9.14             Avg   9.08

One could argue that the dip in the average difference between Harris County and the statewide results is a continuation from 2020, but I’m not so sure. I’m fascinated by the discrepancy between the executive office numbers and the judicial race numbers, which are the last five ones from 2022. The executive office average is 9.64, while the judicial average is 8.29. We have not seen anything like this in previous years – indeed, judicial races had some of the highest differences in all three previous cycles. My best guess for this is the same thing I’ve suggested before, that the multi-million dollar campaign waged against Democratic judges in Harris County had some modest but measurable success.

The point of this exercise was twofold. One was to show that Democrats don’t have to do all that well statewide to still carry Harris County. That’s been especially true in elections since 2016, but it was true before than. Barack Obama got 41.23% statewide, losing by 16 points, and yet Democrats won more than half of the races in Harris County. Wendy Davis got 38.90% in 2014 and lost by over 20 points; if she had lost by about 14 and a half points – which it to say, if she had done less than a point better than Obama – she’d have gotten to 50% in Harris County and Dems would have won at least some county races. Given this past history and the fact that Beto got to 54% in Harris County, the surprise is not that Dems won it’s that they didn’t sweep. I would have bet money on them taking everything with Beto at that level.

Which gets to the second item. In past elections, Democratic judicial candidates in Harris County have generally outperformed the statewide candidates. Most, and in some cases all, of the judicial candidates did better than the statewide candidates’ average in Harris County. That was the key to Dems winning as many judicial races as they did in 2008 (statewide candidate average 50.62%) and 2012 (statewide candidate average 48.59%). This just wasn’t the case in 2022. Let’s start with the numbers:


Havg	51.75
Jmin	49.29
Jmax	52.30
Drop	4.71

As a reminder, “Havg” is the average percentage of the vote in Harris County for statewide candidates. “Jmin” and “Jmax” are the lowest and highest percentages achieved by Harris County Democratic judicial candidates. “Drop” is the difference between the top score among statewide candidates (54.00% for Beto) and the low score among the judicial candidates.

The Harris average for the statewides was the third best it has ever been, behind 2020 and 2018. As noted in the past, weak statewide candidates have in the past lost a lot of votes to third party candidates, which has dragged down the “Havg” value in those years. While most years there have been judicial candidates that have scored worse than the Havg for the year (2006 and 2016 being exceptions), in previous years the bulk of the judicial candidates did better than the Havg number.

Not this year. By my count, only eight of the 61 district and county court Democrats scored better than 51.75% of the vote. Obviously, you don’t need that much to win, but the effect was that five candidates finished below fifty percent. The range between the top scoring judicial candidate and the bottom scoring one was right in line with historic norms, but because that range began at a lower point, there was a bigger gap overall between how the statewides did compared to the local judicials. That “Drop” of 4.71 points is the second biggest ever, and the only reason that the 2010 Drop was bigger was because Bill White was a huge outlier. If there’s one thing from this election that truly surprised me, it was the gap between the top of the Democratic ticket and the judicial races. That is something we had not seen before.

Again, I believe that the massive amounts of spending by the usual cadre of Republican oligarchs had an effect. It’s something we will have to take into account next time around. Not all of this spending was aimed at the judicial candidates, of course, There was an effect on the county executive office races as well, though thankfully it was smaller:


Havg	51.75	
CJ	50.79
DC	51.17
CC	51.59
CT	51.60

I haven’t calculated a judicial average score for Harris County yet, but my gut says that the three non-County Judge candidates came in above it, while Judge Hidalgo was probably a bit below it. Good enough to win, which is what matters most. County Judge is the only really visible one of these offices and it was very much Judge Hidalgo who was the subject of the ad blitzes. I’m not in a position to say why she persevered, but I will be very interested to see how she performs in the precinct data. In the UH Hobby Center poll of Harris County from October, their second poll of the county, they were pretty accurate about Beto’s performance – they pegged him at 50-42 over Abbott, an eight point lead, which I projected to Beto getting about 54%, dead on to where he was – but they had Hidalgo trailing Mealer among Latino voters by a 47-44 margin. I thought at the time that was inaccurate and I still do, but we’ll get a reality check when the precinct data is available. Let’s put a pin in this one.

I’ve made good on my promise to throw a lot of numbers at you. I hope this made sense, I hope it illustrated why I thought the pundits were likely to be wrong about Harris County, and I hope it will help inform this discourse going forward. Past performance may not predict future results, but it does help to at least know what that past performance was. The numbers are always there.

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.

Judge Hidalgo celebrates her win

Nov 11th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

8 comments

Winning is sweet. Victory laps are even sweeter.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

Fresh off a narrow reelection that was anything but assured, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Wednesday held a news conference to praise colleagues, thank supporters and call out some members of her own party for not backing her campaign.

“There were some elected officials that weren’t there because they didn’t think it was convenient, those in my own party that wouldn’t do an ad for me, that wouldn’t have a fundraiser, that wouldn’t help when it got tough,” Hidalgo said. “And oh, I remember who they are.”

The Hidalgo campaign declined to specify which officials she was addressing.

Hidalgo also addressed critics during the election cycle who accused the Democrats on Commissioners 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.

“This person who is supposed to represent justice in this county more than once said with a straight face ‘stop the defunding’ knowing full well that the budget had increased,” Hidalgo said.

[…]

Despite being significantly out-funded by Republican newcomer Alexandra del Moral Mealer, Hidalgo emerged from early voting ahead of her opponent and narrowly maintained that lead throughout the night as votes were counted. The final unofficial tally, released just before 9 a.m. Wednesday, put Hidalgo in front of Mealer by slightly more than 17,000 votes, or 50.8 percent of the nearly 1.1 million votes cast. That was a narrower margin of victory than her surprise election in 2018, when the then-27-year-old ousted popular Republican Ed Emmett.

Mealer tweeted her concession around 9:30 a.m.

“While we did not accomplish our goal of changing leadership in Harris County, we were successful in elevating the profile of critical issues like the need to appropriately resource our law enforcement and criminal justice system as well as the desire to eliminate corruption and increase transparency in local government,” Mealer said in a statement. “This campaign was always about good government and I am hopeful that we have played a role encouraging that going forward.”

Hidalgo acknowledged her opponent’s hard-fought campaign, much of which centered on crime, blaming policies championed by Hidalgo for rising numbers of homicides the past two years, and accusing the first-term judge of corruption, mostly related to a controversial COVID vaccination outreach contract that resulted in indictments against three of her aides.

Since July 1, Mealer raised more than $8.5 million, much of it from large donors like Gallery Furniture owner Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, an early supporter of her campaign. Hidalgo, who has refused to accept campaign contributions from county vendors, raised $2.4 million in that period.

“She had almost $10 million in the bank and she had a U.S. senator and she had a furniture salesman,” Hidalgo said in her speech, taking a swipe at McIngvale who ran several campaign ads in support of Mealer.

“I want to thank Alex Mealer for running a hard fought campaign,” Hidalgo said. “I want to thank her for her concession. And I want to thank her again for her service to our country.”

Surrounded by union leaders and Democratic party elected officials, Hidalgo thanked her supporters for helping her block walk, raise money and host campaign events.

Much of her speech was of a celebratory nature, citing past accomplishments with current Commissioner Court colleagues Rodney Ellis and Adrian Garcia.

“We have done so much from the very first meeting,” Hidalgo said, citing countywide voting as one example of successes while she has been in office. “We did that at the first meeting in 2019.”

In re: the margin of victory, they are referring to the raw vote differential. In 2018, Judge Hidalgo won by 19,277 votes, while in 2022 it was 17,397 votes. Of course, there were more total votes cast in 2018 than in 2022, which has an effect. As it happens Judge Hidalgo’s margin of victory as a percentage of the vote is greater now than it was then: In 2018 she won 49.76% to 48.18% (there was a Libertarian candidate that took the rest). In 2022, it was 50.79% to 49.19%, with a write-in candidate getting the other 0.02%. That means she won this year by 1.60 percentage points, compared to 1.58 in 2018. Pick your preferred measure of expression.

As for what may be on the agenda for 2023, I’m not the first person to suggest this, but don’t be surprised if Commissioners Court looks at redrawing the Constable/JP precincts. Most counties just have the Constable and JP precincts be the same as the Commissioners Court precincts. Harris has its own weird precincts for them that don’t match up in population and (as I understand it haven’t been updated since the 70s. There’s also no shortage of bad blood between (at least some) Constables and the Court, so a bit of payback may be in order. I suspect this would be a complex matter and would surely invite litigation so I don’t think it will be undertaken lightly, but I will be surprised if it doesn’t at least come up.

Beyond that, I expect the Court to do more of what it’s been doing, with the freedom of knowing that their next budget can’t be busted by no-shows. The main obstacle will continue to be interference from the state and whatever new BS legislation may come down. This is where I remind you that Harris County was under a Republican majority on Commissioners Court going back to at least the mid-70s, which is as far back as I’ve been able to verify, up until 2019 when Dems finally achieved a 3-2 advantage. We’ve done things a certain way for a long damn time. Making changes to make things better will take time, too. For now, we can celebrate a bit as we look forward. Let it out, Judge Hidalgo. You’ve earned it. The Press has more.

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.

Omnibus 2022 election results post

Nov 9th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

13 comments

It’s already midnight as I start writing this. I’m just going to do the highlights with the best information I have at this time.

– Nationally, Dems are doing pretty well, all things considered. As of this writing, Dems had picked up the Pennsylvania Senate seat and they were leading in Georgia and Arizona. They held on in a bunch of close House races. The GOP is still expected to have a majority in the House, but not by much. The Senate remains very close.

– Some tweets to sum up the national scene:

My best guess is 220R-215D, but uh…yeah, some wide error bands there.

— Lakshya Jain (@lxeagle17) 11:30 PM – 08 November 2022

Our estimate is that the GOP has a 73% chance to win. That’s not very different from the beginning of the night.
But the nature of this chance is very different.
Here’s an analogy

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) 11:32 PM – 08 November 2022

(it’s the 4th quarter in the second half of this analogy, btw)

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) 11:32 PM – 08 November 2022

– On that score, Republicans appear to have picked up CD15, which they drew to be slightly red, while the Dems took back CD34. Henry Cuellar is still with us, holding onto CD28.

– Statewide, well. It just wasn’t to be. The running tallies on the SOS Election Result site are a bit skewed as many smaller red counties have their full results in while the big urban counties have mostly just the early votes counted. Heck, they didn’t even have Harris County early results there until after 10:30 PM (the point at which I went and snoozed on the couch for an hour because I was driving myself crazy). It will be a ten-point or more win for Abbott, I just can’t say yet what. A survey of some county results early on suggested Beto was around where he’d been percentage-wise in most of the big counties (Tarrant, where he was a few points behind, being an exception) but was going to need some decent Election Day numbers to approach his raw vote margins. He didn’t do as well as he had done in 2018 in some of the larger suburban counties like Collin and Denton and didn’t do as well in South Texas.

– He also didn’t do as well in Harris, which made for some close races and a few Republican judicial candidates with early leads. A couple of those had eroded by the 11:30 addition of more Election Day and mail ballots, but we might see a few Republican judges on the bench next year. As of that 11:30 PM vote dump, Beto was leading Harris County by nine points, well short of where he had been in 2018.

– But as of this time, and with the proviso that I don’t know which voting centers have reported and which are still out, the Harris County Democratic delegation was all ahead, though not be a lot. This includes Lesley Briones for County Commissioner, which if it all holds would give Dems the 4-1 margin on Commissioners Court that they sought. There are still a lot of votes to be counted as I type this.

– Going back to the state races, Republicans may pick up a seat or two in the Lege. HD37 was leaning their way, and they may hold onto HD118. Dems were leading in HDs 70 (by a little) and 92 (by a more comfortable amount), two seats that had been drawn to siphon off Dem voters in formerly red areas. As of this writing, the open SD27 (Eddie Lucio’s former fiefdom) was super close but all of the remaining votes were from Hidalgo County, where Dem Morgan LaMantia had a good lead in early voting. That one will likely be a hold for Dems. On the other hand, SBOE2 was leaning Republican, so Dems may be back to only five members on the SBOE.

– There were of course some technical issues.

Tight races in Harris County, where around 1 million votes will be tallied, could hinge on whether ballots cast after 7 p.m. will be included in the count, after an Election Day filled with glitches and uncertainty for voters and poll workers alike.

Harris County District Court Judge Dawn Rogers signed an order keeping all county voting sites open until 8 p.m., only to have the Texas Supreme Court stay her order just in time to create confusion at voting locations letting voters arrive late.

In a three-sentence order, the court said voting “should occur only as permitted by Texas Election Code.” The high court also ruled that votes cast in the final hour should be segregated. That means those votes can’t be counted until the court issues a final ruling.

That ruling could be critical in the event that certain county races, including the hard-fought battle for county judge between Democratic incumbent Lina Hidalgo and Republican challenger Alexandra del Moral Mealer, are close enough to be decided by those set-aside votes.

“Every single vote counts,” said Laila Khalili, a director at the voter engagement group Houston in Action. “Some elections can be won by just a couple of votes.”

Khalili watched a handful of voters file provisional ballots at the Moody Park voting location.

The request to keep the polling sites open late was made by the Texas Organizing Project, Texas Civil Rights Project and ACLU of Texas, citing what they said were late election location openings and poor planning that disenfranchised some voters.

“These delays have forced countless voters to leave polling places without being able to vote,” the groups said.

Harris County was unable to estimate or confirm how many votes were cast after the typical 7 p.m. cutoff that allows for anyone in line by that time to cast a ballot.

Voters who arrived between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. cast a provisional ballot, according to the county attorney’s office. Some voters, later in the evening, complained that election workers even denied them that option, as the Supreme Court stay was broadcast to the 782 polling locations.

There were some issues with temporarily running out of paper at some locations and some long lines at others. We’ll just have to see how many provisional votes there are.

– Finally, for now, all of the county and city bond issues were passing. The closest ones as of this time were city of Houston prop E, up by eight points, and Harris County prop A, up by 11.

I’m going to hit Publish on this now and go to bed. I’ll make updates in the morning, either here or in a new post.

UPDATE: It’s 2:30 and I never actually got to sleep. With 334 of 782 voting centers reporting, Dems have gained some more ground in Harris County. Beto leads by nine points, while Judge Hidalgo is up by almost two full points and over 15K votes. She has led each aspect of voting. A couple of Dem judges who trailed early on are now leading, with a couple more in striking distance. There will be some Republican judges next year barring something very unexpected, but the losses are modest. All things considered, and again while acknowledging there are still a lot of votes out there, not too bad.

UPDATE:

A new batch of #ElectionDay results for #HarrisCounty are in and have been posted.
👉 View the results at https://bit.ly/3G0ETsV
👉 All Polls have been Received and Certified and 774 have been Tabulated.
#YourVoteYourVoice #HarrisVotes

— Harris County Elections (@HarrisVotes) 05:11 AM – 09 November 2022

An email with the summary file hit my inbox at 4:51 AM. Democrats officially have a 4-1 majority on Harris County Commissioners Court. By my count, Republicans won five judicial races in Harris County.

Endorsement Regrets Watch: She’s not going to do that

Nov 3rd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

I can’t. I just can’t.

Why do two West Texas oil billionaires — Christian nationalists waging war against secular public schools — care who becomes the next chief executive of Harris County, hundreds of miles from their homes? Why did a Houston real estate developer give $400,000, a staggering sum in a local campaign, to Republican county judge candidate Alexandra del Moral Mealer? Why did a furniture salesman, who became a celebrity by waving fistfuls of cash and promising to “Save! You! Money!” give $448,000 to Mealer in a single month? What — aside from earnest hopes of good governance — might these megadonors expect in exchange for their money? How much pressure will Mealer face to do their bidding if she wins?

These and other questions arise in reviewing Mealer’s latest campaign finance reports as she enters the home stretch of her bid to unseat one-term incumbent Democrat Lina Hidalgo. As the Chronicle’s Jasper Scherer reported, Mealer has raised $8.6 million since July 1, including $3.7 million in the past month alone. (By comparison, in the 2018 election, then-incumbent Republican Ed Emmett raised $446,000 from July through October). Mealer’s fundraising and spending in this cycle dwarfed that of incumbent Democrat Lina Hidalgo, who has raised $2.4 million since July 1, including $911,000 from Sept. 30 to Oct. 29.

One item that leaps out from Mealer’s reports is the pair of $100,000 donations from the Defend Texas Liberty Political Action Committee. This PAC is funded almost entirely by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who made their fortunes in oil exploration and fracking and have donated lavishly to far-right candidates for the Texas Legislature and statewide offices. Among other notable gifts: Houston home builder Richard Weekley gave Mealer $400,000, the largest single donation in the July-through-September reporting period. Furniture salesman and philanthropist Jim “Mattress Mac” McIngvale and his wife, Linda, have given more than $600,000 to Mealer. McIngvale often appears in television ads with Mealer and was one of her earliest supporters.

On its face, the donation from the Defend Texas Liberty PAC is puzzling. The Harris County judge has no authority over the causes that have animated Dunn and Wilks: promoting vouchers that would provide state funding for private or religious school fees, outlawing abortion and resisting expanded recognition and rights for LGBTQ Texans. Yet they saw fit to give her as much money as they gave to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a key Republican ally in their right-wing culture wars. A review of the Defend Texas Liberty PAC’s donations, compiled by the nonprofit Transparency USA, shows at least one other donation to a local candidate: $13,000 in 2021 to Mary Bone’s successful campaign for the school board in Round Rock, near Austin.

[…]

Mealer should return the money she received from the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, if only to signal her commitment to restoring good governance unbeholden to special interests and menacing, unholy alliances.

Short of that, well-intentioned voters are left to simply cross their fingers and hope that the candidates they support will demonstrate allegiance to the people they represent, not to the donors who helped get them elected. This board, which made the tough decision to recommend Mealer for the position, expects no less from her. If she prevails over Hidalgo, we urge her to resist any urge to repay donors such as Richard Weekley for their generosity, and to politely ignore the wishes of Farris Wilks, Tim Dunn, and other, like-minded donors — even if it means losing their support in any future campaigns.

She’s not going to do that. She’s delighted to collect their money and will give them her full attention if elected. She is laughing up her sleeve at how she put one over on those naive idiots at the MSM rag. The only correct words to say here were “We’re very sorry, Judge Hidalgo. We retract our endorsement of your opponent and endorse you instead.” I’m not surprised they don’t have the courage to do that. As with the last time, I will stop here before I say something I will later regret. But you own this, Chronicle editorial board. You own this.

Larry Veselka: The Chron got it wrong in the County Judge endorsement

Nov 2nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

22 comments

Judge Lina Hidalgo

(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.)

A couple of weeks ago the Chronicle Editorial Board endorsed Judge Hidalgo’s opponent in a schizophrenic editorial that any objective reader who read it without seeing the headline first would have thought was an endorsement for reelecting Judge Hidalgo. Harris County voters should take it substantively as one.

The editorial praised Judge Hidalgo, in many ways, e.g.:

-appreciating her “dynamic mix of wonkishness and progressive optimism” and her being an ‘inspiration to many”

-saying “if given the choice, we’d rather live in Hidalgo’s vision of Harris County, where government is inclusive, transparent and ethical, policy isn’t tainted by politics, the air is cleaner, the streets are safer, more children can attend pre-K, and climate change is treated with the urgency it deserves”

-“Hidalgo has made good on her promises, including fairness in distributing Harvey funding on a ‘worst-first’ basis and investments in badly needed air monitors in polluted neighborhoods and early childhood education”

– acknowledging, but unduly faintly in only one sentence, her courageous, tenacious, yet gracious leadership in fighting COVID in a way that probably saved thousands, if not more than ten thousand lives of local citizens;

– her handling of disasters, including Winter Storm Uri with “poise and a clear head”

– “it’s true that [Hidalgo] boasts a proposed budget that that would have increased funding for law enforcement… she never tried to ‘defund’ police… her plan would boost law enforcement funding $97 million more than the previous fiscal year, including pay raises for some ‘frontline deputies.”

So what did they see that was so wonderful about her opponent that swayed their opinion when they said this about her:

– She “can come off as combative, talking over others” and interrupting them;

– The board initially backed someone else in the Republican primary, “citing her lack of experience in governing”

– Asking whether “voters should trust an un-tested first-time candidate” without even mentioning that she was recruited to run by Ted Cruz and his wife;

– Her primary promise of “hiring 1,000 new law enforcement officers…is simplistic at this point” acknowledging how dubious such a promise is in light of the tight County budget;

– Her position in the primary opposing the reform of the misdemeanor bail system and incorrectly blaming that reform for the supposed “spike in violent crime” … “would be a deal-breaker for [the Board]” but they will now rely on her saying that she has changed her position, (will you?);

– “her understanding of the system may be incomplete and in some cases even flawed”

– She admitted that prosecuting polluters is “not first and foremost to her” and she does not think the County should address climate change, which the Board characterized as “grating in a low-lying coastal community baking in industrial emissions.”

The editorial claims that the Board was swayed by Judge Hidalgo’s supposed “failure to respond with urgency to Harris County’s crime wave,” citing as the critical factor the backlog in the Courts, while simultaneously acknowledging that Judge Hidalgo “didn’t cause the backlog … has no control over courtroom decisions on bail … [and] isn’t to blame for the provision in the Texas Constitution that guarantees virtually every defendant, even those with violent criminal records, an initial right to bail.”

The editorial went on to acknowledge that:

– “Harris County is far from the most dangerous place in the country, as Republican hyperbole would have it;

– “Mercifully, violent crime is currently declining and even at its peak, criminologists ranked Houston’s murder rate in the middle of the pack among major cities. Last year’s rate in unincorporated Harris County stayed flat….”

– The “felony backlog is down 23% since January.”

So why would the Board’s ultimate conclusion be in such stark contrast to most of its arguments?

The disconnect smacks of a lack of journalistic integrity. Did the Chronicle’s management override the independence of the Editorial Board, strong-arming the Board into backing down from its true position? The fact that the “News” department ran three front page stories about Judge Hidalgo’s opponent immediately after the endorsement evidences support for the conclusion that the lines between departments were blurred, an unforgiveable breach in journalistic ethics.

The Republicans hatched a plan for the midterms to over-hype an increase in crime coming out of two tough years under pandemic lockdowns and layoffs. Even though the Chronicle admits that violent crime has leveled off or dropped some this year, the Republicans needed something to scare people into voting Republican. This became more important once the decision overturning Roe v. Wade this summer kicked off a surge of renewed enthusiasm by
supporters of reproductive rights to register and drive supporters to the polls. Right-wing multi-millionaires and billionaires opposed to the County’s efforts to prevent flooding and pollution, some contributing as much as $350,000 to $400,000 each, began showering Judge Hidalgo’s opponent with millions of dollars of contributions to pay for deceitful attack ads against Judge Hidalgo. They knew that she could not match the millions flowing in, because Judge Hidalgo pledged in 2018 not to accept any contributions from the County’s vendors. In other words, she lived up to her campaign promise to do what all campaigns should do, but none other do, end “Pay-for-Play” politics. The Republican contributors knew that and knew, if County Judge Hidalgo were reelected with the 10 point lead she had earned over the last 3 1⁄2 years, it would mean the Republican state leaders that have carried so much water for them, and have been so bad for the majority of working people of Texas, could be in trouble. So they had to deliver the hits on Judge Hidalgo’s deserved popularity by funding a massive barrage of misleading arguments in favor of a flawed opponent.

The myriad issues confronting Harris County right now require keeping Judge Hidalgo’s steady hands on the wheel. It would be truly unconscionable for the Chronicle’s flawed endorsement and the millions of dollars in deceitful attack ads to wrest her hands away merely to turn it over to an inexperienced right-winger beholden to Trump, Cruz, and the multimillionaire and billionaire classes. Our democracy and our Constitutional rights are at stake. Embrace the wisdom expressed in the editorial while rejecting its inconsistent conclusion by voting to re-elect County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

Larry R. Veselka is a Houston lawyer and former County Chair for the Democratic Party who has been active in politics for 50 years.

NOTE FROM CHARLES: I’m just going to put this here:

On this Halloween evening, hate to scare the people of Harris County, but the billionaires are trying to buy a county judge seat. From September 30th to October 29th, these 35 people and groups have given Alex Mealer’s campaign $2,672,501.

? is, what do they get for their💰?

— Christopher Tackett (@cjtackett) 9:09 PM – 31 October 2022

A question that maybe the Chron editorial board should have asked themselves.

UH/Hobby poll: Mealer 47, Hidalgo 45

Oct 25th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

They’re the only outfit that has polled Harris County so far, so at least there’s a basis for comparison.

A new poll of Harris County voters shows that Alexandra del Moral Mealer and Lina Hidalgo are neck and neck in the race for county judge as early voting begins Monday.

Mealer, a Republican, held a slight lead over the Democratic incumbent Hidalgo, winning 47 percent of likely voters compared to Hidalgo’s 45 percent, according to the new poll from the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston.

The margin of error in the poll, however, is 3.9 percent, and 8 percent of likely voters were still undecided. That suggests that “the county judge race in Harris County is a statistical dead heat, with del Moral Mealer and Hidalgo effectively tied in regard to the vote intention of Harris County likely voters,” the poll said.

The Hobby School conducted the poll by texting likely Harris County voters and directing them to an online survey, which 625 people filled out.

Poll results show that the county judge contest is significantly closer than the gubernatorial race in Harris County, with Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke holding an 8-percent lead over Republican Greg Abbott.

[…]

Mealer held a 19-percent lead over Hidalgo among white voters, 56 percent of whom said they plan on voting for Mealer. The race is neck and neck among Latino voters, who favor Mealer over Hidalgo 47 percent to 44 percent, within the poll’s margin of error. Black voters overwhelmingly support Hidalgo, the poll said, by a rate of 73 percent to 17 percent.

The Hobby School also polled 350 likely voters in Precinct 4 for their opinions on the commissioner race between Jack Cagle and his Democratic challenger, Lesley Briones. Cagle, the Republican incumbent, leads Briones 40 percent to 35 percent, but 25 percent of likely voters remain undecided, the poll shows.

The poll also indicated that the county’s $1.2 billion bond proposals, supported by county Democrats and opposed by Republicans, could pass a referendum in the November election. The most popular proposal was the most expensive — a $900 million bond for road improvements, including drainage projects. It enjoyed support from 63 percent of likely voters, according to the poll.

See here for their previous poll from July, which had Hidalgo up 48-47 among likely voters, for which the poll data is here. I’ll be referring to that in a minute. The poll’s landing page is here and data for this poll is here. Note that in the early version of this story, the Chron had Cagle up 45-30, but if you look at the poll data document, it’s supposed to be 40-35. A huge number of Democrats in the poll are undecided, so there’s plenty of room for Briones to grow.

The one other sort-of poll of Harris County was the UH-TSU Texas Trends poll from September, which had Hidalgo up by 52-42 and winning Latino voters by a wide margin. This is not a direct comparison, however, because that was a smaller sample (195 voters) taken from a statewide poll. This October poll has a sample size of 625 while the July poll was from 325 voters, which meant the earlier one had a larger margin of error. Hold onto that thought for a minute.

The July poll has a slightly more Republican electorate – 43% Dem, 40% GOP, to 36-30 in this sample, with more independents in October – and basically no self-proclaimed Dems voting for Mealer. The July poll had Beto up over Abbott 51-42 among likely voters, while this one has Beto up 50-42. Assuming nothing weird with the undecided voters, this would have Beto on track for about 54% in Harris County, and we know what that means. This poll says that about 6% of Beto voters are voting for Mealer with 10% of Beto voters undecided; 95% of Abbott voters are voting for Mealer, only 1% for Hidalgo, and the rest undecided.

Taken as a whole, this would suggest that Mealer has had some success chipping away at Hidalgo’s base of support. Maybe that’s true, and if so that would be a key to her winning. I’ve expressed my skepticism about the Latino vote breakdown in these polls before, but the thing that really made me cock and eyebrow this time around was Mealer leading Hidalgo 48-43 among millennial/Gen Z voters; Hidalgo had led among this cohort 52-42 in July. These are the most Democratic voters in the state, and while this is surely a small enough subsample to make comparisons across the two polls dicey at best, I have to say, I find that unlikely. Alas, they don’t break down the Governor’s race data in the same fashion, so I can’t tell if their younger voter sub-population is weird as a whole or just weird in this way. For what it’s worth, in what is an even smaller subsample, Lesley Briones leads Jack Cagle among the younger cohort 33-32, with a bunch of undecideds. Make of that what you will.

Speaking of subsamples and margins of error, this bit from the Chron story made me grind my teeth:

The race is neck and neck among Latino voters, who favor Mealer over Hidalgo 47 percent to 44 percent, within the poll’s margin of error.

Emphasis mine. That’s not how this works. You have to calculate the margin of error for the subsample if you want to invoke it in this way, not the MoE for the entire poll. Latinos were 27% of the sample in this poll, which is about 170 voters total. The margin of error for 170 voters is about 7.5% – just google “margin of error calculator” to see for yourself. This is why you have to be extra careful with subsamples in a poll.

State and county election result relationships, part 3: Other county races

Oct 21st, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

6 comments

Part One
Part Two

Last time we looked at judicial races, which for all of the complaints about not knowing the candidates and just going by partisan labels have produced a consistent range of outcomes over the years. Some people are picking and choosing among judicial candidates – it’s not a huge number, and there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to it, but it’s happening. With candidates for county offices, especially higher profile ones like County Judge, District Attorney, and Sheriff, there’s even more of a range of outcomes, as these candidates are better known and the reasons for crossing over are clearer. Let’s get to the data.


2006          2008          2010          2012	
CJ      N/A   DA    49.79   CJ    39.40   DA    47.66
DC    46.09   CJ    46.85   DC    46.15   CA    51.48
CC    44.69   CA    51.39   CC    44.58   Sh    52.95
CT    48.34   DC    51.06   TA    45.27   TA    48.73
HCDE  48.63   TA    46.18   CT    43.01   HCDE  51.34
              Sh    56.28							
              HCDE  52.51								
              HCDE  52.58								

2014          2016          2018          2020	
DA    46.78   DA    54.22   CJ    49.78   DA    53.89
CJ      N/A   CA    53.72   DC    55.09   CA    54.66
DC    44.82   Sh    52.84   CC    54.60   Sh    57.46
CC    45.71   TA    50.31   CT    54.21   TA    53.07
CT    44.95	            HCDE  56.71   CC    53.76
HCDE  46.85                               HCDE  55.64
HCDE  46.79                               HCDE  54.65

Abbreviations:

CJ = County Judge
DC = District Clerk
CC = County Clerk
CT = County Treasurer
DA = District Attorney
CA = County Attorney
TA = Tax Assessor
Sh = Sheriff
HCDE = At Large HCDE Trustee

Note that in some years, like 2008 for County Judge, 2010 for Tax Assessor, and 2014 for District Attorney, there were special elections due to the death or resignation of a previously-elected official. There are three At Large HCDE Trustees, they all serve 6-year terms, and in a given election there may be zero, one, or two of them on the ballot. All of the numbers are the percentages achieved by the Democratic candidate for that office. In 2006 and 2014, there was no Democrat running for County Judge.

The first thing to note is that in all but two years, the Dem disaster year of 2014 and the Dem sweep year of 2020, the range of outcomes was at least four points. In four of the eight years, the range was at least five points. Beverly Kaufmann was a trusted long-serving name brand in 2006, the last year she ran for re-election. Adrian Garcia destroyed scandal-plagued incumbent Sheriff Tommy Thomas in 2008, while Ed Emmett rode his performance during Hurricane Ike to a chart-topping Republican vote total. (There was a Libertarian candidate in the Tax Assessor race that year, so the percentages for Paul Bettencourt and Diane Trautman were lower than they would have been otherwise.) Emmett continued to overperform in subsequent years, though it wasn’t quite enough for him in the 2018 blue landslide. The late Mike Anderson got to run against the idiot Lloyd Oliver in the 2012 DA race; four years later Kim Ogg won in a second try against Devon Anderson after her office imploded. Candidates and circumstances do matter in these races in a way that they don’t quite do in judicial races.

I find it fascinating that the At Large HCDE Trustees are consistent top performers for Dems, year in and year out. Note that this remained the case in 2020, following the abolition of straight ticket voting. The Republicans have run some lousy candidates in those races – their precinct HCDE trustee candidates have generally been stronger – but I doubt that accounts for too much. Honestly, I’d probably chalk that up to the Democratic brand, especially given that it says “Education” right there in the position’s name.

Minus the outliers, and I will have one more post in this series to take a closer look at them, the ranges for the county executive office candidates are basically in line with those of the judicial candidates, and as such are usually ahead of the statewides. As with the judicial candidates, there were mixed results in the close years of 2008 and 2012, and sweeps one way or the other otherwise. While the potential is there for an exceptional result – which in the context of statewide candidates still carrying Harris County means “a Democrat unexpectedly losing” – the conditions to avoid that are clear. If Beto is getting to 54% or better, I’ll be surprised if it’s not another Dem sweep.

Endorsement watch: Travesty

Oct 13th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

I have to link to this atrocious Chron endorsement of Republican Alexandra Mealer, but I refuse to quote from it. Instead, I’m going to crib from the daily Texas AFL-CIO email newsletter, which had its own thoughts on the matter:

Judge Lina Hidalgo

Our Brothers and Sisters in the Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation are standing tall for the reelection of County Judge Lina Hidalgo, a champion of working families. The ALF today posted a list of Hidalgo’s amazing accomplishments as she navigated a concentration of natural disasters in her first term.

The timing of the statement was appropriate. In a tortured editorial, the Houston Chronicle today endorsed Hidalgo’s Republican opponent. The editorial has so much praise of Hidalgo, so many misgivings about her opponent, and so much acknowledgment of disagreement on the editorial board that it has the clear look of a publisher’s intervention.

Hidalgo beat the Chronicle’s endorsement in 2018 and the labor movement is working overtime to make sure she does so again in 2022.

Statement from ALF Political Director Jay Malone:

“We’re incredibly disappointed in the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board’s decision to back an extremist candidate for Harris County Judge. Not only has Lina Hidalgo consistently invested in public safety – including a proposed 10% increase in next year’s budget – but she also recognizes that security and safety isn’t just about crime, it’s also about keeping families in their homes, helping them to keep the lights and heat on, and expanding opportunities for everyone, regardless of the zip code you live in.”

“Under Lina Hidalgo, Harris County has kept over 70,000 working families in their homes during the pandemic, expanded access to affordable childcare, worked to raise wages for essential workers and improve safety standards on construction sites and in retail stores, and implemented common-sense measures to keep us safe during the pandemic. And she fought back when state leadership tried to prevent Harvey recovery dollars from going where they’re needed, recovering $750 million earlier this year.

“Unlike her opponent, who is funded by West Texas billionaires and county contractors, Lina has taken a stand to end the corrupt system that puts the interests of the rich and connected first and leaves the rest of us with failed drainage, pockmarked highways, and collapsing bridges. The working people of Harris County stand with Lina.”

Throughout her tenure in office, Judge Hidalgo has worked closely with the labor movement to develop, pass, and implement policies to expand opportunity and keep working people safe, healthy, and in their homes. Among the accomplishment of Harris County Commissioner’s Court since Lina was sworn into office in 2019:

Raised the County minimum wage to $15 an hour for employees and certain construction contract workers

Implemented family-friendly workplace policies, including 12 weeks paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers and additional sick leave to care for ill children

Stood up for common-sense public health measures to keep working families safe, despite efforts by Governor Abbott to block them

Expanded access to the polls through innovative programs, such as drive through and 24 hour voting

Established work safe guidelines for grocery and construction workers

Implemented one of the most effective housing assistance programs in the country

Invested in a complete census count to ensure working families in Harris County receive the assistance they need after state leaders failed to do so

Created a fund to provide frontline workers with direct cash assistance

Required those who do business with the County to support and protect workers when considering awards for construction contracts.

Stood up against the Trump administration’s effort to instill fear in our immigrant communities. Judge Hidalgo has worked to fight against family separation policies, planned immigration raids in the County, and the inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.

Launched the $84 million Brighter Futures for Harris County Kids initiative to expand access to affordable childcare and youth healthcare

I completely agree. I was especially angered when they blamed the Republican quorum breaking on the Democrats on the Court, for not being flexible enough in their negotiations, as if they somehow could not grasp that Commissioners Cagle and Ramsey have no incentive to bargain in good faith. They get what they want if nothing happens! Even better, they get simps like the Chron editorial board to blame the other guys for their actions. I don’t know if they’re being deeply naive or willfully blind, but it’s infuriating that they can’t see this basic fact. Their ending note that they hope Mealer will somehow overcome her partisan preferences and govern in a manner that is completely at odds with her own campaign has big “endorse Ted Cruz in 2012 on the hope that he’ll somehow morph into Kay Bailey Hutchison 2.0″ energy. How’d that one work out?

And to think, my day started by reading the print edition endorsement of Chuck Crews in HD128, in which they gave a proper lashing of Briscoe Cain, and thinking I’d get to blog about that and it would all be puppies and sunshine. But that one still isn’t on their site (at least as of last night when I drafted this), and instead this turd is. Where do I send the invoice for that new bottle of Tums I had to buy?

UH-TSU Texas Trends poll: Abbott 49-Beto 42, and Hidalgo 52-Mealer 42

Sep 10th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

From their webpage, scroll down to Report 1 and Report 2:

In the race for governor, Republican Greg Abbott leads Democrat Beto O’Rourke by 7% among likely voters, 49% to 42%, with 7% undecided and 1% intending to vote for Libertarian Mark Tippetts and 1% for the Green Party’s Delilah Barrios.

Abbott holds a 29% (61% to 32%) lead over O’Rourke among white voters while O’Rourke holds a 57% (72% to 15%) lead over Abbott among Black voters, a 15% (53% to 38%) lead among Latino voters and a 9% (48% to 39%) lead among those voters with a mixed or other ethnic/racial identity.

Abbott and O’Rourke are deadlocked at 45% among women voters, while Abbott enjoys an 18% (55% to 37%) lead over O’Rourke among men.

In the race for lieutenant governor, Republican Dan Patrick leads Democrat Mike Collier by 6% among likely voters, 49% to 43%, with 8% undecided.

Patrick holds a 26% (60% to 34%) lead over Collier among white voters while Collier holds a 63% (78% to 15%) lead over Patrick among Black voters, a 14% (51% to 37%) lead among Latino voters and a 5% (44% to 39%) lead among those voters with a mixed or other ethnic/racial identity.

Collier holds a narrow 1% lead over Patrick among women voters (46% to 45%) while Patrick enjoys a 15% (54% to 39%) lead over Collier among men.

In the race for attorney general, Republican Ken Paxton leads Democrat Rochelle Mercedes Garza by 3% among likely voters, 45% to 42%, with 10% undecided and 3% intending to vote for Libertarian Mark Ash.

Paxton holds a 23% (56% to 33%) lead over Garza among white voters while Garza holds a 61% (75% to 14%) lead over Paxton among Black voters, a 16% (51% to 35%) lead among Latino voters, and a 15% (45% to 30%) lead among those voters with a mixed or other ethnic/racial identity.

Garza holds a 5% lead over Paxton among women voters (45% to 40%) while Paxton enjoys a 13% (51% to 38%) lead over Garza among men.

In addition to the statewide election analysis of likely voters, the 2022 Texas Trends survey looks at the race for county judge in Harris County, the nation’s third largest county and Texas’ largest, with a population of more than 4.5 million residents.

While the non-election related reports we will subsequently release focus on all Harris County adults aged 18 years and older, this county-specific election report is based on the analysis of a sample population of 195 likely voters, with a confidence interval of +/- 7.0%. Given the small size of this population, caution should be used in interpreting the results due to the comparatively large margin of errors surrounding all of the estimates.

This county-specific election study is presented as the second report in the overall series, and it includes the preferences for candidates running for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general in addition to county judge.

The vote intention in the race for Harris County judge is 52% for Democrat Lina Hidalgo and 42% for Republican Alexandra del Moral Mealer, with 6% undecided.

This 10 percentage point lead by Hidalgo is notably higher than the 1 percentage point lead she garnered in the Hobby School election survey released in July.

Del Moral Mealer holds a 19 percentage point advantage over Hidalgo among white voters, 58% to 39%.

Hidalgo holds a 71 percentage point advantage over del Moral Mealer among Black voters, 79% to 8%, and a 44 percentage point advantage among Latino voters, 69% to 25%.

Hidalgo enjoys a 14 percentage point lead over del Moral Mealer among women, 53% to 39%, but only a 2 percentage point lead among men, 50% to 48%.

Del Moral Mealer enjoys a 16 percentage point lead over Hidalgo, 56% to 40%, among the combined Silent Generation/Baby Boomers cohort, and Hidalgo a comparable 16 percentage point lead over del Moral Mealer among Generation X, 54% to 38%.

Hidalgo is the overwhelming favorite of the combined Millennials/Generation Z cohort, with a 40 percentage point lead in vote intention over del Moral Mealer, 67% to 27%.

That’s a lot to take in, but it’s all there on their site. Note that while this poll references the UH/Hobby poll from July that had Abbott up 49-44 and had Judge Hidalgo only up by one point, 48-47, this one is different in two ways. One is just simply that this poll is a collaboration between UH and TSU whereas the previous one was all UH. I don’t think that makes any real difference, but there it is anyway. The other is that the July poll of Harris County was (I assume, anyway) a separate sample of 321 voters, while this one is (again, I presume) a subsample of 195 likely voters from the larger all-state population of 1,312. I don’t know why they chose to do it this way, and I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s how I read it.

The full data for the statewide report is here, and for the Harris County subsample here. My observations, bullet-point-style:

– The July poll was also post-Dobbs, so at least as far as these surveys go there’s not been any change in the overall environment since then. Insert anodyne statement about individual data points and move on.

– In the July poll, Beto was down five overall and led in Harris County by nine; in this poll Beto is down seven overall and leads in Harris County by 13 (it was 51-42 in July and it’s 53-40 in September, as you can see in the second report). Again, if there were a live feed of me as I typed up this post, you would have seen me shrug right there. Beto beat Cruz in Harris County by a 58-41 margin in 2018, and he’s within range of that in this poll, though as noted one with a higher-than-usual margin of error. All I’m saying here is that historically there’s been a relationship between the statewide percentage for a Dem candidate and that same candidate in Harris County. As such, in general if Beto is doing better in Harris I’d expect him to be doing better across the state. But we’ll see.

– That July poll had Mealer leading Hidlago among Latino voters by three points. This one has Hidalgo up among those same voters by 44. I feel very confident saying that it cannot be the case that both of those figures were accurate. Maybe they’re both off, but if one is right then the other is extremely wrong.

– I didn’t post the generational numbers for the statewide races, but overall Hidalgo did much better than the others. Of course, this is a subsample of a subsample, so be super duper cautious in drawing any conclusions from this. For what it’s worth, in the three statewide races the Dems were around 55% for the Millennial/Gen Z cohort and the Republicans were in the 30-35 range.

– The main reason Rochelle Garza is closer to Ken Paxton than Beto and Collier are to Abbott and Patrick is that Paxton has less support overall, clocking in at 45%. Most likely, this is just a number of Abbott/Patrick voters moving into the “don’t know” pile in this race. Maybe they’re really not sure how they’re voting, and maybe they’re Republicans who don’t want to admit, even in a webpanel, that they’re voting for Paxton. I do think Garza has a chance to be the top Dem performer, but I don’t think you can necessarily conclude that from this poll, as her level of support is in line with Beto and Collier. She did do best in Harris County, leading Paxton 54-36 in that sample, compared to 53-40 for each of the other two Dems.

– This is not the first poll I’ve seen this cycle that had Abbott getting about 15% of Black voters, which is about five points better than I’d normally expect. I don’t know if this is sample weirdness or if there’s something there, like the Trump bump among Latinos was visible in some 2020 polls, though not all.

– Finally, as far as Latino voters go, imagine me shrugging again. Some of what we saw in 2020 was low-propensity voters turning out, but not all of it. I genuinely have no idea what to expect.

July 2022 campaign finance reports: Harris County

Jul 25th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Happy Mid-Year Campaign Finance Reporting Day to all who celebrate. Today we’ll be looking at the races of interest in Harris County, which thankfully for me has a lot fewer candidates to review than the last time we did this in January, before the primaries. I also did this roundup in July 2021 if you want to go that far back. You know the drill here, so let’s get to it.

Lina Hidalgo, County Judge
Alexandra Mealer, County Judge

Rodney Ellis, County Commissioner, Precinct 1

Adrian Garcia, County Commissioner, Precinct 2
Jack Morman, County Commissioner, Precinct 2

Tom Ramsey, County Commissioner, Precinct 3

Jack Cagle (SPAC), County Commissioner, Precinct 4
Lesley Briones, County Commissioner, Precinct 4

Teneshia Hudspeth, County Clerk
Stan Stanart, County Clerk

Marilyn Burgess, District Clerk
Chris Daniel (SPAC), District Clerk

Carla Wyatt, County Treasurer
~~Eric Dick, County Treasurer~~
Kyle Scott, County Treasurer


Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
======================================================
Hidalgo       1,150,804    569,065    1,400  1,983,697
Mealer          764,544    404,802    6,000    455,927

Ellis           543,900    241,714        0  3,805,232

Garcia, A       787,949    675,976        0  1,897,179
Morman           63,144     19,585        0     69,638

Ramsey           34,869     69,290        0    549,707

Cagle           388,332    209,368        0  1,231,540
Briones         126,038     98,547        0     90,720

Hudspeth         18,265     18,145        0     13,952
Stanart           3,407      5,583        0      6,729
Burgess          16,070     15,864    5,207     15,049
Daniel           20,600      9,619   25,000     12,144
Wyatt             2,085      6,082        0      1,092
Scott             2,309      5,340   23,000        719

With the much-smaller field of candidates now that we are fully past the primaries, everyone who is on the November ballot in these races has a current finance report online. Note that for some candidates, the report covers the period from February 20 through June 30 – these are the candidates who won their March primaries outright – and for some it covers the period from May 15 through June 30. These are the candidates who had to win in their runoff, a list that includes Alexandra Mealer, Jack Morman, and Lesley Briones. Mealer’s amount raised total is a lot more competitive with Judge Lina Hidalgo’s given the smaller amount of time that her report covers, but as John Coby points out, she got more than half of that total from four donors who each gave her $100K.

It’s interesting to me that Morman, who was a County Commissioner for eight years before Commissioner Garcia nipped him in 2018, has had such anemic fundraising. I’m not sure what that says, other than maybe not enough people think he can win. Lesley Briones still has a significant cash deficit against Commissioner Jack Cagle, but she’s been considerably more proficient at fundraising. She is unlikely to catch up to him in that department, but she’ll be more competitive.

Not much else to say, as the other offices tend to have little fundraising capacity, and these reports present no surprises. Eric Dick also filed a report for his current office of HCDE Trustee, in which he again reported zeroes across the board. Given Dick’s past propensities, I wouldn’t take any of that as gospel, but it is what he reported.

UPDATE: My bad, I had the wrong Republican candidate for Treasurer.

That UH/Hobby poll has Judge Hidalgo up by one in Harris County

Jul 15th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

7 comments

Don’t know how many of these polls we’re going to get.

Democrat Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo holds a 1 percentage point lead over Republican opponent Alexandra del Moral Mealer in polling results released Thursday by the University of Houston.

Hidalgo leads del Moral Mealer 48 percent to 47 percent with 5 percent undecided, among likely voters, putting the two candidates in a “statistical dead heat” in the Harris County 2022 county judge race, according to the report.

In the Texas 2022 gubernatorial race, Democrat Beto O’Rourke holds a 9 percent lead over Republican Greg Abbott, with O’Rourke leading Abbott 51 percent to 42 percent among Harris County likely voters.

The online survey was conducted by the Hobby School of Public Affairs between June 27 and July 7, in English and Spanish, with 321 respondents who are registered to vote in Texas. The margin of error is plus- or minus 5.47 percent.

Del Moral Mealer holds a 31-percentage point advantage over Hidalgo among white voters, while Hidalgo holds a 66-point advantage over del Moral Mealer among Black voters. Del Moral Mealer holds a 3-percentage point edge over Hidalgo among Latino voters. Hidalgo holds a 14-point lead over del Moral Mealer among women, while del Moral Mealer holds a 13-point edge among men.

See here for the Abbott/Beto poll post, and here for the poll details. Some of the subsample numbers are a little strange, but that’s what you get sometimes. Beto beat Ted Cruz in Harris County by a 58-41 margin in 2018, and I have to say it’s hard for me to see how the Governor’s race could be as close as five points if he’s only leading in Harris by nine. I don’t expect to get a whole lot of other Harris County-specific polls, though we may get more numbers from the Hobby Center before it’s all said and done. As always, putting too much faith in one poll result is a hazard to your health, so use this story wisely.

When is an emergency no longer an emergency?

Apr 8th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

I don’t know, but not yet.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo still has emergency powers to handle COVID, after a proposal to end her authority failed at commissioners’ court this week.

The proposal, by Precinct Four Commissioner Jack Cagle, failed on a 3-2 vote Tuesday, with the three Democratic members voting against.

Cagle sought to end the emergency powers granted to Hidalgo, citing the major improvement in pandemic realities and the court’s ability to frequently and quickly convene.

Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis called the idea “ridiculous.”

“The mayor will still have emergency powers, the county judges around us would still have emergency powers,” Ellis said.

[…]

Since March 2020, Hidalgo and every county judge in Texas — along with mayors — have had extraordinary ability because of the public health risks of the pandemic to close and open public places, approve contracts and establish emergency shelters, testing sites and vaccine distribution locations. When a disaster is declared by the state — in this case across all 254 counties — county judges are considered the top health official and assume emergency powers similar to those of the governor.

The difference, Cagle argued, is the governor needs them because it would take weeks to reconvene the legislature. Commissioners court can call a meeting in 72 hours.

I don’t want to spend too much time on this, as it was basically a stunt by Commissioner Cagle. It’s not even clear that Commissioners Court could have rescinded the emergency powers, as the preview story notes.

Numerous elected officials continue to have authority under the disaster declaration, including Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and all county judges across Texas. Under the state’s disaster declaration procedures, county judges in an affected area — in this case all of Texas — have emergency authority. Absent Abbott removing Harris County from the state’s disaster declaration, it is unclear whether Hidalgo would retain that authority with or without the support of local officials.

County judges typically need commissioners’ court approval, but their powers expand greatly as the head of county emergency management. Much of that comes from a 1975 state law that gave special responsibility to mayors, county judges and county health officials.

Exercising the powers, however, is different than having them, some officials said.

“We used common sense, but as the emergency has dragged on I think we have used that authority less and less because we didn’t need to,” said Jason Millsaps, chief of staff to Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough.

Still, Millsaps said Keough maintains the authority.

If literally every other county has retained emergency powers for their Judge, it makes no sense at all for Harris County to do otherwise. When the state and the country are no longer on emergency footing, which is to say no longer feels the need to act quickly in the event of another variant or other crisis, then we can talk.

2022 primary results: Harris County

Mar 2nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

11 comments

There were some issues, as there always are. Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I vote early – less time pressure in case something happens. There was also an issue with reporting the early ballots.

The Harris County Elections Administration has requested an extension on the 24-hour deadline to report the results of Tuesday’s primary elections, according to Texas Secretary of State John Scott.

State law requires that counties report results from both early voting and Election Day within 24 hours of the polls closing. Just after polls closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Scott’s office said that they were informed by Harris County election officials that the county would not be able to count and report the results.

“Harris County election officials have indicated to our office that the delay in ballot tabulation is due only to damaged ballot sheets that must be duplicated before they can be scanned by ballot tabulators at the central count location,” Scott said in a statement.

Failing to meet the deadline is a Class B misdemeanor, Scott’s office said.

“Our office stands ready to assist Harris County election officials, and all county election officials throughout the state, in complying with Texas Election Code requirements for accurately tabulating and reporting Primary Election results,” Scott said.

Don’t know what happened there, but I get a PDF of the results in my inbox every time they get posted to the web, and the first one arrived at 7:25, so whatever the delay was it didn’t take that long to fix it. Other places had their issues as well, often because of missing election judges. And I can’t wait to see how long it takes Potter County to finish its count.

County Judge Lina Hidalgo was headed for an easy win in her primary; she was at almost 70% of the vote in early voting. Erica Davis was just shy of 15%. Alexandra Mealer and Vidal Martinez were the two top Republicans. Marilyn Burgess was winning for District Clerk, but Carla Wyatt had a nearly identical lead for Treasurer over incumbent Dylan Osborne. You just can’t tell with these things sometimes.

Commissioner Adrian Garcia was also on the way to an easy win in Precinct 2, while Lesley Briones and Ben Chou were leading in Precinct 4. Jack Morman and Jerry Mouton were the top two for Precinct 2 on the Republican side.

Multiple District Court judges were losing their primaries. The ones who were leading included Hilary Unger, Chris Morton, Dedra Davis, Natalia Oakes, Leah Shapiro, and Frank Aguilar, the latter two by smaller margins that could vanish overnight. Amy Martin was trailing Melissa Morris by a small margin as well. Jason Luong was in second place and headed to a runoff against Andrea Beall, Chip Wells was in a similar position against Teresa Waldrop, while Greg Glass and Scott Dollinger were out of the running, with Glass’ opponents in a runoff and Tami Craft leading the field in Dollinger’s race. Veronica Nelson was above 50% in the three-way race for the new 482nd Criminal District Court.

The County Court judges were doing a bit better, with four out of seven leading their races. For the open benches, Juanita Jackson won in Criminal Court #10, Porscha Brown was above 50% for Criminal Court #3, and Monica Singh was leading for Civil Court #4, with second place too close to call between David Patronella and Treasea Treviño.

For the JP races, Sonia Lopez was leading in Precinct 1, with Steve Duble slightly ahead of Chris Watson for second place. Dolores Lozano won in Precinct 2, incumbent Lucia Bates was over 50% in Precinct 3. Roderick Rogers was winning in Precinct 5 and Angela Rodriguez was winning in Precinct 6.

That’s all I’ve got, with results trickling in. I’ll follow up tomorrow.

UPDATE: We’re going to be waiting for results for the rest of the day due to issues with the paper receipts and the printers.

Endorsement watch: Definitely in no rush

Feb 10th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

After a few days of only Republican endorsements, we get three Democratic ones. First up is the most obvious, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

Even those who treated 27-year-old Lina Hidalgo like she was born yesterday when she was elected Harris County judge in 2018 must admit that she’s been baptized by fire.

First, quite literally, by a chemical fire. Then a steady stream of other disasters: a global pandemic, an epic winter storm and deadly power grid blackout, and a relentless crime surge.

Many who thought she had no business running against 11-year incumbent Ed Emmett think she has no business keeping the seat. Some — on the right and left — have lined up to oust her.

Three years ago, we admired Hidalgo’s tenacity but weren’t persuaded to endorse an untested newcomer to lead a county of more than 4.5 million people, a budget of $5 billion and a surface area bigger than Rhode Island.

Since then, Hidalgo, who will be 31 by the March 1 primary, has been as tested as any county judge can be.

And we believe she’s passed, from her gutsy urging to close the rodeo days before community spread of COVID-19 was detected, to her bold mask mandate that prompted Republican leaders to cry “tyranny” until they enacted their own mandates, to her prescient warnings for residents to prepare for Winter Storm Uri as they would “a category 5 hurricane.”

She seems to have handled these disasters, and also a daily barrage of personal attacks, insults and condescension, with the poise and steadfastness of a seasoned public official and yet, maintains a wonky earnestness we find refreshing.

They find Erica Davis’ case thin and unconvincing, and note that no one else in the primary is making an effort. You know how I feel about these things. As no-brainers go, this one was one of the no-brainer-est.

Also an easy call, though far lower on anyone’s visibility list, they endorsed Janet Dudding in the primary for Comptroller.

Janet Dudding

Democrats have a choice of a journalist-turned-lawyer, a long-time certified public accountant, and a writer and strategist in the March 1 primary for Texas comptroller of public accounts.

Call us crazy but we believe the best option by far is the accountant, Janet Dudding of Bryan.

Dudding, 62, makes a compelling case for why Democrats should nominate her to challenge two-term incumbent Glenn Hegar in November’s general election.

“I’ve spent my adult life auditing, accounting for, administering and even investigating state and local governments and their grants, taxes, procurement, spending and reporting,” she told us in a screening last month. “I understand how the system works and how we could better utilize it to our advantage.”

[…]

She seems capable of taking the fight to Hegar in the fall, promising to highlight what she describes as his failure to manage the energy efficiency and climate impacts of state-owned buildings, promote the use of alternative fuels in state vehicles and find ways to boost rural broadband access.

Dudding has the most relevant experience and the broadest platform in this race. We urge Democrats to nominate her for comptroller.

Far as I can see, she’s the only serious candidate. Some statewide primary races have very tough choices – Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and Land Commissioner, to be specific – but this one was clear to me from the beginning.

And speaking of that Land Commissioner race, the Chron made their choice and it’s Jay Kleberg.

Jay Kleberg

After a years-long tug-of-war between George P. Bush’s Texas General Land Office and Houston leaders over unallocated Harvey relief funding, we suspect more than a few southeast Texans are eager for a new GLO direction. Democratic voters have high-quality choices in the race for Texas Land Commissioner, all of whom want a land office focused on science and aid, not politics. We recommend Jay Kleberg, an Austin-based conservationist who began working cattle at age 5 on his family’s ranch — the 825,000 acre King Ranch in south Texas.

Kleberg has an MBA from the University of Texas and has done extensive environmental advocacy. In the 2019 film “The River and the Wall,” Kleberg and four others journeyed 1,200 miles along the Texas-Mexico border to explore a wall’s impact on people and wildlife. Tapping into his near-legendary family’s background, and resources, he’s worked to educate Texas children about ranching and expand access to the great outdoors. In recent years, Kleberg has served as the associate director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, the nonprofit partner of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

“Texas deserves representation that believes in combating climate change and bringing people together,” Kleberg, 44, told us. “If elected, I will refocus the office to protect our most vulnerable communities on the coast … and ensure that we are passing on a more healthy, accessible environment to the next generation.”

[…]

We also think highly of Jinny Suh, a 44-year-old Austin-based lawyer who founded and leads Immunize Texas, a grassroots network dedicated to supporting pro-vaccine legislation. She has also worked as a science teacher.

Suh argues that her history of advocacy in Austin, along with her science and legal background, make her the best choice for land commissioner. She’s racked up several key endorsements, notably the Texas AFL-CIO and some Democratic state house members, and raised money through many small donations.

Kleberg and Suh are the top choices in this race. My interview with Kleberg is here and with Suh is here. Both would be a billion times better than the pampered dilettante we have now.

Four days out from the start of early voting and there are still a lot of big races to weigh in on. Tick tock, y’all.

Here’s the support for challengers to quorum breakers

Feb 9th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

It’s limited, but it’s not nothing.

Rep. Claudia Ordaz Perez

A new coalition that wants to install “better” Democrats in the Texas Legislature is endorsing primary opponents to two House members who were central in intraparty disputes last year.

The Texans for Better Democrats Coalition is throwing its weight behind Candis Houston, who is running against Rep. Harold Dutton of Houston, and Rep. Claudia Ordaz Perez, who is competing against Rep. Art Fierro after she was drawn her out of her El Paso district during redistricting.

The Democratic group is also endorsing Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo in her reelection bid as she faces a group of primary challengers including Erica Davis, the top staffer for a Harris County constable.

The coalition launched in October, and it is made up of three progressive groups tied to organized labor: the Texas Organizing Project, Communications Workers of America and Working Families Party. They are prepared to spend about $250,000 across the three primaries, funding field and mail programs in each one, said Pedro Lira, co-director of the Texas WFP.

“We’re in it to win it,” he said.

[…]

Ordaz Perez chose to run against Fierro after the Republican-led redistricting process forced her into the same district as a fellow Latina Democrat, Rep. Lina Ortega. In announcing her campaign against Fierro, Ordaz Perez criticized him for being one of the first House Democrats to return from the quorum break. A number of other House Democrats who remained in Washington, D.C., longer are backing her against Fierro.

In an interview, Fierro defended his decision to return along with two other El Paso-area Democrats, saying they had achieved their three goals from the start: staying off the floor for the remainder of the first special session, bringing national attention to the bill and “light[ing] a fire under Congress” to pass federal legislation protecting voting rights.

“I was on the bad-election-bill battle from day one,” he said, pointing to his efforts to fight it as a member of the House Elections Committee.

See here for the background. I noted both Dutton and Fierro as potential targets for such a campaign, mostly because nearly all of the other non-leavers and early-returners were not running or not opposed in the primary. I am of course all in for ousting Dutton – you can listen to my interview with Candis Houston here – but I don’t know enough about either Fierro or Ordaz Perez to offer an opinion beyond the quorum issue. The money being put up will help, though as we are less than a week out from early voting it might be less effective than it could have been. I’m just guessing about that.

I got an email from this group on Monday morning announcing the endorsements – I’ve pasted it beneath the fold for you. I’m glad to see them also endorse Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who has earned the support she’s receiving. We’ll see if they can make a difference.

(more…)

Three very early primary thoughts

Jan 29th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

1. After the exceedingly small number of mail ballots requested and cast in the District G special election, the primaries will be our next test of the SB1 effect on voting by mail. I will be interested to see if the number of mail ballots requested are down, and in particular if there’s a difference in the numbers for each party. For purposes of comparison, this is how many mail ballots were requested by voters in Harris County for each primary in 2020 and 2018.

2020

Dem – 38,667 requested
GOP – 31,162 requested

2018

Dem – 33,236 requested
GOP – 30,579 requested

That’s how many were requested, not all of which were returned. Switching to returned mail ballots, they made up the following percentages of total votes cast in each primary:

2020 Dem – 28,346 mail ballots out of 328,496 total = 8.6%
2020 GOP – 25,562 mail ballots out of 195,723 total = 13.1%

2018 Dem – 22,695 mail ballots out of 167,982 total = 13.5%
2018 GOP – 24,500 mail ballots out of 156,387 total = 15.7%

I will do a comparison with these totals after the votes are in. Still won’t be enough to draw conclusions, but it will be a significant data point.

2. Also of interest, given the huge amount of attention that the increase in Republican voting in various South Texas counties got in 2020, is how this may affect the turnout for the 2022 primaries. Dems have dominated these for years, so this will be a good test of the idea that the 2020 general election has changed voting patterns in this part of the state. Again, I would not draw any broad conclusions – primary turnout may be affected more by local races than the statewide or legislative contests, and primary voting may be a habit that dies more slowly than general election voting, if indeed there is a real change and not a one-election blip happening. I’m going to watch five counties – Cameron, Hidalgo, Maverick, Starr, and Webb. Here’s how they turned out in the 2018 primaries:


County      Dem votes  GOP votes
================================
Cameron        14,123      4,003
Hidalgo        37,739      7,050
Maverick        6,300        111
Starr           6,729         15
Webb           21,137      1,426

Those totals for Starr and Webb are not typos, I assure you. The Republican statewide primary races are much higher profile this year than they were in 2018, so that by itself might draw more people to that side of the ledger. As before, local races may pull people in the Democratic direction, in the way that numerous Democratic lawyers used to vote in the Republican primary in Harris County so they could affect the judicial races. I’m just looking for a data point.

3. I haven’t gotten any email from Erica Davis recently. That introductory video I noted in her email to Democratic precinct chairs from earlier in the month had 413 views and zero comments as of Friday afternoon. Her campaign Facebook page has 830 followers. She has five posts for January, with this one getting 24 likes and two comments. None of the others has as many as ten likes. By comparison, Judge Hidalgo has 47K followers, and most of her posts have hundreds of likes – this one has over 1,600 likes – and dozens of comments. To be sure, some of the comments are from people who oppose her, and of course she’s had a much longer time to build a following; this is very much an advantage of incumbency. All I’m saying is that whatever Erica Davis is doing, it’s not reaching a lot of people. And she still has not told us why we should vote to replace Judge Hidalgo on the ballot with herself.

January 2022 campaign finance reports: Harris County

Jan 22nd, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

You know what January means around these parts. There’s lots of action in Harris County, so that’s where we’ll begin. Here’s my summary of the July 2021 reports as a reminder. Let’s dive in.

Lina Hidalgo, County Judge
Ahmed Hassan, County Judge
Georgia Provost, County Judge
Erica Davis, County Judge
Kevin Howard, County Judge
Maria Garcia, County Judge

Martina Lemon Dixon, County Judge
Robert Dorris, County Judge
Randall Kubosh, County Judge
Naoufal Houjami, County Judge
Hector Bolanos, County Judge
Oscar Gonzales, County Judge
Alexandra Mealer, County Judge
Vidal Martinez, County Judge
Warren Howell, County Judge
George Zoes, County Judge

Rodney Ellis, County Commissioner, Precinct 1

Adrian Garcia, County Commissioner, Precinct 2
George Risner, County Commissioner, Precinct 2
Gary Harrison, County Commissioner, Precinct 2
John Manlove, County Commissioner, Precinct 2
Jerry Mouton, County Commissioner, Precinct 2
Jack Morman, County Commissioner, Precinct 2
Daniel Jason, County Commissioner, Precinct 2
Richard Vega, County Commissioner, Precinct 2

Tom Ramsey, County Commissioner, Precinct 3

Jack Cagle (SPAC), County Commissioner, Precinct 4
Ben Chou, County Commissioner, Precinct 4
Ann Williams, County Commissioner, Precinct 4
Clarence Miller, County Commissioner, Precinct 4
Lesley Briones, County Commissioner, Precinct 4
Gina Calanni, County Commissioner, Precinct 4
Jeff Stauber, County Commissioner, Precinct 4

Teneshia Hudspeth, County Clerk
Stan Stanart, County Clerk

Marilyn Burgess, District Clerk
Desiree Broadnax, District Clerk
Chris Daniel (SPAC), District Clerk

Dylan Osborne, County Treasurer
Carla Wyatt, County Treasurer
Kyle Scott, County Treasurer
Eric Dick, County Treasurer
Stephen Kusner, County Treasurer


Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
======================================================
Hidalgo         900,323    424,448    1,400  1,488,652
Hassan              200      2,461        0          0
Davis            50,114     10,143   21,852     59,970
Howard
Provost
Garcia, M

Lemond Dixon    196,977    109,175        0     90,294
Dorris                0         68        0         68
Kubosh           15,075      9,051   60,000      7,165
Houjami           1,390        592        0        147
Bolanos               0          0        0          0
Gonzales          2,475      3,432      500          0
Mealer           60,049     15,464        0     15,840
Martinez        514,585     86,782  100,000    516,134
Howell            1,450      7,075        0        375
Zoes

Ellis           264,000    181,904        0  4,192,308

Garcia, A       587,885    364,783        0  2,119,825
Risner            3,250      1,899        0     51,550
Harrison              5      2,191        0          0
Manlove          19,452      4,285        0     68,870
Mouton           29,100      2,916        0     26,283
Morman           45,749     66,119        0    165,834
Jason
Vega

Ramsey          236,900    185,263        0    581,035

Cagle           285,673    501,923        0  1,119,432
Chou             80,590      4,133        0     77,490
Williams          2,600      1,250    1,250      1,450
Miller            5,293     10,560        0     10,336
Briones         244,974     60,571        0    229,258
Calanni           5,540          0        0      5,540
Stauber               0      1,250        0          0

Hudspeth         26,464     10,395        0     19,376
Stanart               0      3,054        0      8,053
Burgess          24,169     26,475        0     17,222
Broadnax          9,649      9,538        0        110
Daniel           11,875      1,393   25,000     12,264
Osborne           2,440        622        0      2,202
Scott             7,900     20,489   14,000      1,410
Dick                  0      1,489        0          0
Kusner

If you don’t see a linked report for someone, it’s because there wasn’t one I could find on the harrisvotes.com page. The information I have here is current as of last night. It’s possible someone could still file a report, these things do happen, but I wouldn’t expect much from anyone who hasn’t by now.

There are items of greater substance to discuss, but I can’t help myself: Naoufal Houjami was a candidate for Mayor in 2019 – if you don’t remember him, it’s probably because he got a total of 565 votes, for 0.2%, finishing last in the field. He has filed a finance report as a candidate for Harris County Judge, but he is not listed as a candidate for either primary, according to the Secretary of State’s Qualified Candidates page. (The Harris County GOP candidates page doesn’t have him, either.) The first two pictures I saw on his webpage were one with him and Greg Abbott, and one with him and Sheila Jackson Lee. Go figure. He is fully supporting his friend George P. Bush for Attorney General, so you make the call. This is way more than you ever needed to know about Naoufal Houjami.

Anyway. Barring an unlikely late and lucrative report from Georgia Provost, who wasn’t much of a fundraiser as a City Council candidate, incumbent Judge Lina Hidalgo outraised all of the other candidates for that position combined. Erica Davis claimed $70K raised on the summary page of her report but just $50K on the subtotals page – I suspect the $70K number was a typo. She had six total donors listed, two of whom gave $25K each, one who gave $196, and the others gave $19.12 apiece. Vidal Martinez was the other big fundraiser, though as John Coby notes, almost 70% of his donations came from 14 people who each ponied up at least $10K. For sure, it’s all green, but that’s not exactly grassroots support. As for Alexandra Mealer, I’d been wondering about her because I’ve seen multiple signs for her in my very Democratic neighborhood. Turns out she’s also my neighbor, now living in one of the historic houses. That explains a lot.

I included the two Commissioners who are not on the ballot just as a point of comparison. Adrian Garcia is obviously well-equipped for battle. George Risner presumably had a few bucks in his account from his time as a Justice of the Peace, but his candidacy for Commissioner does not seem to have drawn much support so far. Jack Morman also had some coin still in his bank and drew more support on his attempt to come back, but he’s nowhere close to Garcia. For Precinct 4, Jack Cagle raised a reasonable amount, though as you can see not an earth-shaking total, with Lesley Briones coming close to him. He has a tidy sum in his treasury, but it’s less than what he had in July thanks to how much he spent. Gina Calanni didn’t raise much – to be fair, there isn’t that much time between the filing deadline and the finance reporting deadline – but her report showed $40K in pledges, which are noted as transfers from her State House campaign account.

None of the other offices tend to raise much. Chris Daniel has a personal report as well as the SPAC report. The non-SPAC account reported no money raised and $1,151 in expenditures.

Finally, someone named Stephen Kusner filed a finance report for Treasurer in July but is not on either ballot and has no report for January. I’m just making a note of that here in case anyone who looked at my July summary is wondering what happened to him.

I’ll take a look at some state reports next, and Congressional reports later. Let me know if you have any questions.

An email from Erica Davis

Jan 12th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

15 comments

From the inbox, sent to Democratic precinct chairs:

Erica Davis

You elected me to serve as your Trustee for the Harris County Department of Education and I am very proud of what we have accomplished. I too believe in elevating voices, educating the uniformed and ensuring ethical leadership. I made a commitment to be a grassroots’ leader to our community.

Today I write to inform you in my most humble self, that I have filed to run for Harris County Judge. I have served Harris County residents for over a decade building relationships and working to keep people safe.

Every citizen deserves the same response time to safety, the elimination of wasteful spending, and bringing resources back to the Harris County residents. That is why I am running today, a native Houstonian with a purpose and passion for the residents of Harris County.

I’ll be giving you a call in the next week to speak with you. I’d like to share my vision for Harris County and invite you to discuss what matters to you. Thank you for your service and commitment to our community.

Emphasis in the original. Still no “why me and not Judge Hidalgo” statement, as previously noted, but there’s at least some mention of issues. Response times from law enforcement seems to me to be more of an HPD issue, but it could be a call for increasing the Sheriff’s budget, with maybe some more for the Constables as well. I find that a call to “eliminate wasteful spending” is in general sufficiently vague as to be meaningless. What is “wasteful” to you may be critical to me, and vice versa. If you can’t or won’t specify what you consider wasteful, we can’t have a real conversation about it. In other contexts, references to “wasteful” spending have usually meant an intent to cut spending overall. That would seem to be in conflict with a call for a bigger Sheriff’s budget, but 1) I’m drawing an inference here, and 2) we need specifics. As for “bringing resources back to the Harris County residents”, I guess talk to our legislative and Congressional delegations? I don’t know how to interpret this.

I should note that while I got that email on Monday, I got another one on Tuesday that contained this video, in which she restated her concerns about crime and “wasteful spending”, with additional concerns about property taxes and infrastructure. No ideas for improvements were mentioned – this was a brief introductory video – but again, it was the beginning of a critique of her opponent. How receptive a Democratic primary electorate that knows and likes Judge Hidalgo will be to this remains to be seen, but at least she’s saying something.

Good thing I’ll be getting a call to speak with Candidate Davis in the next week or so. As you may imagine, I have some questions.

Erica Davis announces herself

Jan 6th, 2022

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Her timing is interesting.

Erica Davis

Former Precinct 1 Constable’s Office Chief of Staff Erica Davis announced her run for Harris County Judge on Wednesday, joining 11 other challengers in the race to unseat Lina Hidalgo.

Davis has worked as the Trustee for the Harris County Department of Education and comes from a family of educators. She has also served in the Precinct 1 Constable’s Office for more than a decade and grew up in Houston’s Sunnyside neighborhood.

“My work experience coupled with my education has prepared me to hold leaders accountable and implement policies that mirror the diverse county we serve,” Davis said in a statement announcing her run.

Davis is one of several women who reported she was sexually assaulted at a Houston-area Massage Heights location in 2019. Her lawsuit helped spark an investigation of the national chain and landed her assaulter — who also was charged in an assault on an undercover Precinct 1 officer during a sting — in jail.

That undercover officer and Davis later both sued the establishment for negligence. Davis agreed to a monetary settlement in the case.

I did not know that about Erica Davis. Respect to her for her courage and persistence.

I am curious about the seemingly slow pace of her campaign. She filed for Harris County Judge on December 13, which is now four weeks ago, but her impending candidacy was teasted on Twitter a week before that. As far as I can tell, this is her first official communication as a candidate for this office. The primary campaign season is pretty short to begin with, and she’s just now introducing herself to an audience that knows the incumbent very well. Her campaign webpage is still very bare-bones, with almost nothing other than a brief biography – the In the Community and “Erica in the News” sections have nothing. She does now have a campaign Facebook page, which is not linked on her campaign webpage and which appears to be her Facebook page from her 2020 campaign for HCDE renamed for this purpose – the last update is from November 4, 2020, which is to say Election Day.

Nowhere in the press release, the webpage, or the Facebook page is there any stated reason for why she is running. She talks about her life and experience, which would be fine if she were just now gearing up to take on a Republican incumbent in November, but sure seems like an omission in this context given that she’s asking Democratic voters to vote out someone who I daresay is quite popular and is frequently talked up as a future statewide candidate. I’m sure there are people who will vote for Erica Davis because they know her, and there are some people (yes, even Democrats) who will vote for her because they don’t like Judge Hidalgo, but there’s no way that’s enough to get her to a runoff, much less to fifty percent. The question is not “would Erica Davis make for a good County Judge”, it’s “would Erica Davis make for a better County Judge than Lina Hidalgo”, and so far Erica Davis has not attempted to answer that question. I have no idea what she’s waiting for.

(Yes, I know, I could try to schedule an interview with her and ask her that myself. I’m still trying to schedule an interview with Judge Hidalgo, and I’m not interested in talking to anyone else in that race until and unless I’m able to do that. Plus, not to put too fine a point on it, this sure seems like something she should be leading with. It shouldn’t be up to me, or anyone else, to have to get that information out of her.)

One more thing: The Chron persists in saying that there are three Democrats running against Judge Hidalgo when we all know there are five. I double-checked the SOS Qualified Candidates page just to make sure that Maria Garcia and Kevin Howard were still there and hadn’t been disqualified or something, but there they are. I mean, neither of these candidates will make any impression on the race, but they are there on the ballot and I have no idea why the Chronicle seems to be unable to accurately report that.

Filing update: More candidates than you can count

Dec 15th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

This headline and first paragraph are short by a couple of candidates.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

A dozen potential challengers to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo were among the scores who filed ahead of Monday’s deadline to run for county offices next year.

[…]

Hidalgo, who is seeking a second term, faces three candidates in the Democratic primary: former Precinct 1 Constable’s Office Chief of Staff Erica Davis, real estate broker AR Hassan and photographer Georgia Provost.

Nine Republicans are vying for their party’s nomination, including attorney Vidal Martinez, former Army Capt. Alexandra del Moral Mealer, Humble Independent School District board president Martina Lemond Dixon and Randy Kubosh, brother of Houston Councilman Michael Kubosh. The others are Oscar Gonzales, George Zoes, Robert Dorris, Warren Howell and HQ Bolanos.

There are five Democrats running against Judge Hidalgo, not three. Joining Erica Davis on the last-day-to-file train were Kevin Howard and Maria Garcia; I know nothing about either of them. The photos in that Facebook post, plus the 2022 candidate filings album, are the main source that I have for figuring out where the SOS qualified candidates webpage falls short. Chron reporter Zach Despart must have gotten his info from there before the late-filers were included.

There are still some oddities and seeming exclusions on the SOS page as well. I know I saw a Democratic candidate for CD22 on there on Monday, but as of Tuesday there’s no listing. There’s still no one listed for HD22, the seat being vacated by longtime Rep. Joe Deshotel, but local news in Beaumont lists three candidates, one of whom (Joseph Trahan) is the Jefferson County Democratic Party Chair. Jonathan Cocks had been listed for well over a week as a candidate for SBOE8 but is now showing as a candidate for SD08, which makes sense because his address is in the Metroplex city of Allen, and because the Svitek spreadsheet had him going there after pulling out of the Land Commissioner race. Svitek lists two of the three HD22 candidates as the news story, and has the CD22 candidate (Jamie Jordan) as well.

Some other bits of interest:

.
Pérez tells me: “I have checked off all of my goals by 2022 and I firmly believe in passing the torch to the next, most talented individual to represent our district, and I believe Dr. Melissa N. Ortega is that individual.”

— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) 11:43 AM – 14 December 2021

.
A couple notable holes in GOP recruitment for South Texas right now, w/ two hours to go: No challenger against state Rep. Tracy King, D-Batesville, and no #RGV-based candidate for @SenatorLucio’s open seat #HD80 #SD27 #txlege

— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) 4:03 PM – 13 December 2021

HD80 was carried by Trump by four points in 2020, so yeah, that’s a big miss for the GOP.

.
Former U.S. Rep. John Bryant is a Democratic candidate to replace the retiring @TurnerForTX in the Texas House. He once served in the Legislature.

— Gromer Jeffers (@gromerjeffers) 9:57 PM – 13 December 2021

.
He told me that the political extremism brought about by Donald Trump is now in Texas and that he wants to “get off the sidelines and get back in the fight.”

— Gromer Jeffers (@gromerjeffers) 10:06 PM – 13 December 2021

Bryant represented the old CD05 through the 1994 election. He ran in the 1996 primary for US Senate and lost in the runoff to Victor Morales. His old seat was then won by Pete Sessions, who was drawn into CD32 by Tom DeLay in the 2003 re-redistricting, knocking off longtime Rep. Martin Frost the next year. This concludes your history lesson for the day.

.
Looks like a last-minute filing by healthcare executive @ceojaved means Fletcher will have a primary challenge. Javed last ran against
@RepSylviaGarcia for the TX29 Dem primary in 2018. #TX07

— RA News (@RANewsTX) 6:00 AM – 14 December 2021

Spent a million bucks of his own money to do so, ultimately winning 3,831 votes, or 20.67%, against Rep. Garcia and several others. I suspect Rep. Fletcher won’t have too much trouble with him, but she’ll want to spend some money to make sure.

.
Expect it to take more than a week before we’ll know everyone who has filed for office. The Secretary of State list – which is currently unofficial – will not be final until next week.

— Texas Election Source (@TXElects) 6:02 PM – 13 December 2021

.
It will still be a couple of days still everything is settled. But my #txlege notes as of now: SENATE 13% primaried, 39% general, 10% both, 39% no challengers. HOUSE 23% Primaried, 25% general, 15% both, 37% no challengers.

— Bonnie Bruce, vaccinated (@BonnieBruce) 5:00 PM – 13 December 2021

I will of course keep an eye on that. I’m sure there will be at least one more post in this general vein.

Two other items of note: While Fort Bend County Judge KP George did not draw a primary challenger, there are two candidates vying to take him on in November, including failed 2020 Sheriff candidate and Congressional brother Trever Nehls. Both incumbent County Commissioners, Grady Prestage and Ken DeMerchant, drew multiple primary opponents. Here in Harris County, while HCDE Trustee Eric Dick is one of two Republicans running in the primary for County Treasurer, his wife Danielle is running for his seat (Position 2) in Precinct 4. She will be opposed by Andrea Duhon, the incumbent in Precinct 3 who now lives in Precinct 4 following the adoption of the new map. A bit more than a year from now, we will have between zero and two members of the Dick household in public office. I can’t think of a better place to end this post.

UPDATE: Tahir Javed has withdrawn from the CD07 primary, leaving Rep. Fletcher without opposition in March. I’ll have a post on that tomorrow.

Filing update: Not that Rick Perry

Dec 14th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

I’m going to let this speak for itself.

Not that Rick Perry

Rick Perry is running for governor — but not that Rick Perry.

The Republican Party of Texas updated its list of candidate filings Monday — hours before the deadline for the March primary election — to include a Rick Perry running for governor. The party quickly confirmed that it was not Rick Perry, the former governor and U.S. energy secretary, against Gov. Greg Abbott. Instead it’s Ricky Lynn Perry, a man from Springtown, a town in Parker County northwest of Fort Worth. On the form, the man listed “Rick Perry” as the version of his name that he wants to appear on the ballot.

A LinkedIn profile for a Rick Perry from Springtown lists his current job as a senior desktop technician for Lockheed Martin. Neither Perry could be immediately reached for comment.

Abbott is running for a third term and has drawn at least three primary challengers. While Abbott may not be facing a challenge from his predecessor, having such a widely known name on the primary ballot could complicate his path to renomination.

Rick Perry was the longest-serving governor of Texas, preceding Abbott before the latter took office in 2015.

The candidate Perry’s form was notarized by Tony McDonald, an Austin lawyer who is active in anti-establishment conservative circles and has supported one of Abbott’s primary opponents, Don Huffines. McDonald told the Tribune that Perry is a “good conservative activist from Parker County” whom he knows through a “friend of a friend.” McDonald said he was supporting Perry and serving as his campaign treasurer.

Asked if one of Abbott’s existing primary challengers had convinced Perry to run, McDonald said he was “not aware of that.”

[…]

Abbott’s campaign, meanwhile, scoffed at Perry’s filing. The governor’s top political strategist, Dave Carney, said on Twitter that it was “another stupid pet trick” and that it “will backfire as these stunts always do.”

You know me, I love a good phony candidate story. Most likely this is just a dumb trick that will have no effect on the outcome. But it’s funny, and we could all use a laugh.

As yesterday was the filing deadline, there was a bit of a rush to get the job done, and the SOS Qualified Candidates page is missing a few names here and there. I’ll have another update tomorrow to fill in the remaining blanks, but in the meantime we have some coverage from the Trib.

The Democratic primary for lieutenant governor got a third candidate as Carla Brailey, vice chair of the state party, announced her campaign. Her launch came amid a lingering discussion among Democrats about whether their statewide slate is diverse enough.

Brailey said in an interview that she was running because she “really believe[s] our democracy is at stake, and I think this is gonna be one of the most important elections we have experienced in a very long time in Texas.”

“It’s very important that we have leadership that just reflects Texans — all Texans — and I think I will be able to do that,” said Brailey, who is Black.

She joined a primary field that includes Mike Collier, the last nominee for lieutenant governor who has been running since early this year, and state Rep. Michelle Beckley of Carrollton, who announced last month. Matthew Dowd, the cable-news commentator who once was a strategist for former President George W. Bush, had been running in the primary until last week, when he dropped out and said he wanted to make way for a more diverse field.

Brailey is not the only Democrat who has stepped forward for the statewide ticket as the filing deadline loomed. Janet Dudding, a 2020 candidate for a battleground state House seat in Brazos County, filed to run for comptroller, joining at least two other Democrats vying to take on GOP incumbent Glenn Hegar. Susan Hays, a prominent cannabis lawyer and hemp advocate, announced she was running for agriculture commissioner, giving Democrats their first candidate to challenge Republican incumbent Sid Miller.

“Farming is hard, but ethics should be easy,” Hays said Thursday as she announced her campaign against the scandal-prone Miller.

[…]

Over in the Houston area, where one of Texas’ new congressional seats is located, the longtime Republican frontrunner, Wesley Hunt, got arguably his best-known opponent yet: Mark Ramsey, a former member of the State Republican Executive Committee. The seat was drawn to favor the GOP, so Republicans have been watching how complicated of a path Hunt will have on his quest for a general-election win.

Until Monday, no Democrat was contesting the Houston-area seat — the 38th District — but that changed when Centrell Reed, a Houston life coach, switched to the race after filing for the 7th District. Reed’s decision spares the 7th District incumbent, U.S. Rep. Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, D-Houston, a primary challenge in a district that has been made much bluer by redistricting.

In state House races, there was little late drama involving incumbents. One question mark going into Monday was whether state Rep. Claudia Ordaz Perez would follow through on her plan to run against state Rep. Art Fierro, a fellow El Paso Democrat — and she did, filing with hours to spare. Ordaz Perez had chosen to take on Fierro after redistricting forced her into the district of a fellow El Paso Latina, Democratic state Rep. Lina Ortega.

In another late development in a state House contest, state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, drew a primary challenger: Candis Houston, president of the Aldine chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. Dutton, chair of the House Public Education Committee, was under fire from fellow Democrats earlier this year over how he handled legislation placing restrictions on transgender student athletes.

That Lite Guv primary is going to be a tough choice, those are three good candidates. Susan Hays picked up an opponent in her race, some dude named Ed Ireson. CD38 went from zero candidates to three – in addition to Centrell Reed (who the SOS still had in CD07 as of last night), Diana Martinez Alexander (candidate for Commissioners Court, Precinct 3 in 2020) and someone named Duncan Klussman filed. Other Harris County highlights:

– Three people, one of whom is the long-awaited Erica Davis, filed for Harris County Judge, making it a six person field.
– Sen. John Whitmire picked up a challenger, Molly Cook, who is one of the leading opponents to the I-45 project; see here for a story about that project that quotes her.
– Dems now have candidates for HDs 129 and 150, though I still don’t see anyone for HD133.
– Moving the lens out a bit, there are a few more primary challenges in the Lege – Erin Zwiener (HD45), Rhetta Bowers (HD113), and Ray Lopez (HD125) now have company – but if anyone was expecting a wave of such contests, you’re still waiting.
– By the way, the means I have to know that there are some filings that are not yet reflected on the SOS page is the photo album on the HCDP Facebook page, which contained most of the late arrivers. Here’s the full album with all the filers in alphabetical order. You think someone got the idea to take a picture of all the hopefuls to ensure there are no more of those mystery candidates? It’s a damn good idea, whether or not that was the motivation behind it.

Like I said, I’ll post another update tomorrow, to clean up anything we missed this time around. The Chron, which focused more on the Republican side, has more.

The filings I’m still looking for

Dec 13th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filing update: We have an Ag Commissioner candidate

Dec 11th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

But before I can get to that and other news, I have to bring you this:

A Fort Worth man is running for the State Board of Education as a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian and Green Party member. Filing for a place on a primary ballot for multiple parties is allowed, however “a person who becomes a candidate in multiple parties’ primary elections would not be eligible for a place on the general election ballot,” a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s office said in an email.

Fort Worth school district employee Daniel “DC” Caldwell, who previously ran for Fort Worth mayor, is seeking to represent Tarrant County’s District 11 on the State Board of Education, a seat held by Republican Patricia Hardy of Fort Worth. Caldwell, reached by the Star-Telegram on Wednesday, recognized the unusual nature of his bid.

“I understand that nobody hardly ever does that, but I have lots of reasons,”said Caldwell, who teaches special education at Boulevard Heights. “The simplest to articulate is really that we should have more unity and less division. Like really, I have friends on both sides of the aisle and even down the hall, as it were. I have an inclusionist rather than exclusionist philosophy. … I’ve read the platform or value statement of the Green Party, of Libertarian Party, of the of the Democratic Party, of the Republican Party, and when it comes down to fundamentals, we actually have far more in common than we’d like to admit.”

A spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s office wrote in an email that filing for multiple parties is almost unprecedented, “with the notable exception of former Gov. Shivers,” who served as Texas governor from 1949-1957. He was both the Republican and Democratic nominee in his 1952 bid.

[…]

State law says a person “who voted at a primary election or who was a candidate for nomination in a primary is ineligible for a place on the ballot for the succeeding general election for state and county officers as … the nominee of a political party other than the party holding the primary in which the person voted or was a candidate.”

University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus put it this way: “You can file for primaries for multiple parties but you won’t be able to win in the general if you do that.”

“Candidates who try to run in more than one party primary are effectively without any party,” he said in an email.

But Caldwell interprets the law as allowing him to appear on the general election ballot.

“It prevents you from running as an independent or running as a write in, or being nominated by more than one at the same time, but it does not prevent you from being in the primary,” he said. “But if you happen to win, you can only accept one of the nominations. That’s what it’s intended to do. That’s what it literally says.”

Pretty sure Caldwell also ran for the HCC Board in 2017. Dude gets around. I admit, I thought Patrick Svitek had somehow screwed up the spreadsheet, but no. There’s only one thing to say to that:

Anyway. I promised you a Democratic candidate for Ag Commissioner, and I aim to deliver. Meet Susan Hays.

I’m running for Agriculture Commissioner because corruption is bad for business. No one trusts the incumbent to do what’s right for Texas. Farming is hard, but ethics should be easy.

I grew up in rural Texas in the middle of ranching and hunting country. But like many of my generation I left for the city to get an education and make a living. My law practice took me to advising cannabis producers and businesses, and pushing Texas to open the door to this high-value crop with the hemp program. I welcomed the opportunity to get back to the country and find a way to make an income off the land again. Working on the roll-out of the hemp program, I started hearing rumors of corruption. Folks talking about having to pay thousands of dollars to get a hemp license which sounded pretty strange to me because I knew the law was intended to make things easy and affordable on farmers.

Then, the Commissioner’s political consultant got arrested for trying to sell hemp licenses for $25,000.

Licenses that cost $100 and are available to anyone.

And that made me mad.

And so here she is. In a just world, she’ll clean the clock of that malevolent clown Sid Miller. In this world we’ll have to see, but being pro-hemp and anti-corruption seems like a good place to start.

On the Congressional side, a couple of candidacies to note. One is in CD02, where Woodlands-area activist and organizer Robin Fulford has filed. No announcement yet – she’s been teasing it on Facebook, not that it was a terribly well-kept secret to begin with – but her name is now in bold on the Svitek spreadsheet. CD02 is a tougher district than it was before, not really a competitive one by the new numbers, but no one will outwork Robin. In CD07, Rep. Lizzie Fletcher now has a primary opponent, Centrell Reed. I know nothing more about her than what you can see for yourself. I would have thought if someone was going to challenge Rep. Fletcher in her newly drawn district it would be more of a traditional political type. That does not appear to be the case here. I’ll be interested to see how she runs.

I’ll wrap up in Harris County, where a name I’d forgotten about has turned up on the Commissioners Court Precinct 4 candidates list: Clarence Miller, who can credibly claim to have been the first candidate in this race. Also running for County Commissioner is Gary Harrison, who has filed in Precinct 2 against Commissioner Adrian Garcia.

Finally, while Erica Davis hasn’t yet filed for County Judge, or updated her webpage to reflect her candidacy for that office, someone else has filed. Frequent City Council candidate Georgia Provost is now in the race. I’d say she’s better known than Erica Davis, and that’s not to be dismissed in a primary. I believe in Judge Hidalgo, and I believe she’ll want to start spending some of that campaign cash of hers sooner rather than later.

The deadline is Monday. There are still a number of races I’m looking at that don’t have candidates yet. I’ll update on Monday morning, and then we’ll see where we end up. Leave your hot gossip here in the comments.

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