HD127

Precinct analysis: State House 2022

Texas Democrats and Republicans are beginning to gear up for a presidential election cycle in which opportunities to flip seats for Congress and the Legislature appear limited.

It’s a natural outcome after Republicans redrew legislative and congressional district boundaries in 2021 to shore up their majorities for the next decade, stamping out most districts that had turned competitive by the end of the last decade. Most of the remaining competitive territory was in South Texas, which is predominantly Hispanic, and where the GOP poured almost all their resources in 2022 — to mixed results.

On paper, there are few obvious pickup opportunities based on an analysis of the governor’s race results in each district. Among U.S. House seats, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke did not carry any districts that are currently held by a representative from the other party. The same was true in the Texas Senate. And among state House districts, Abbott and O’Rourke each won only one that is currently controlled by the opposing party.

The statewide election results often provide a helpful guide of how a district is trending given that they often represent the highest-turnout contest in a district.

The size of the battlefield in 2024 could depend on the top of the ticket, which will be the presidential race. President Joe Biden is expected to run for reelection, and the Republican frontrunner to challenge him is former President Donald Trump, whose 2016 and 2020 runs yielded some of the closest presidential races in Texas in recent history. His closest competitor for the nomination is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has not launched a campaign yet but is widely expected to jump in.

There are other factors for the down-ballot contests that remain to be seen.

Even though Abbott signed off on redistricting in 2021, the lines could still change for the 2024 election. Various groups are suing over the maps, alleging things like intentional discrimination and efforts to dilute voters of color, and they are currently awaiting a trial in federal court in El Paso. On the line in the case are boundaries for seats such as a San Antonio state House seat currently held by GOP Rep. John Lujan; that seat is a top battleground in the Texas House.

My initial view of the new map, which looked at the past elections of the decade, is here, and an index of my look at the results from the 2020 election under the old maps is here. I’ll look at the other types of results in future posts, but today we focus on the State House. The 2022 data for the new map is here.

The gist of this story is that the Republican redistricting was very effective and that there aren’t many competitive districts, which means we’re headed for some boring elections, much as we had in the first couple of cycles last decade. That’s slightly less true for the State House than it is for the other entities, and I think the 2024 environment will at least differ enough from last year to produce some variance.

I’m presenting the districts of interest in two groups. One is the competitive Dem-held districts, the other is the same for Republicans. I’ve sorted them further into districts where Abbott or Beto took less than 55%, and districts where they won between 55 and 60 percent. With all that said, here we go. First up are the closer districts currently held by Dems.


Dist  Abbott   Abb%    Beto   Beto%
===================================
022   17,170  44.5%   20,822  54.0%
034   18,285  47.0%   20,128  51.7%
070   27,581  45.9%   31,749  52.8%
074   18,915  48.7%   19,218  49.5%
080   20,611  51.9%   18,249  46.0%

035    9,867  39.9%   14,517  58.7%
036   10,835  39.0%   16,525  59.4%
039   12,056  40.0%   17,686  58.7%
041   17,364  43.5%   22,125  55.5%
045   26,119  38.9%   39,783  59.2%
076   20,148  39.8%   29,705  58.6%
078   21,133  41.4%   29,140  57.0%
092   14,217  40.2%   20,680  58.4%
105   13,086  42.1%   17,515  56.4% 
113   17,848  41.2%   24,854  57.4%
115   22,605  42.1%   30,334  56.5%
135   16,443  40.0%   24,121  58.6%
144   11,566  43.3%   14,683  55.0%
148   15,451  41.2%   21,460  57.2%

As the story notes, the Republicans somehow failed to field a challenger to Rep. Tracy King in HD80, an oversight I expect they’ll fix in 2024. They made the same mistake in 2010 with then-Rep. Allan Ritter in HD21, but Ritter, an old school conservative rural Dem, rectified their error by switching parties. King, whose district is considerably bluer than Ritter’s was, seems unlikely to follow suit; among other things, he’s been pushing to raise the age to buy automatic weapons from 18 to 21, which puts him at odds with Republican orthodoxy. Never say never, and if the district continues a trend towards the red King could be amenable to such overtures, but for now I don’t see that happening.

For the others, HD70 is a newly-drawn Dem district, and I’d expect it to get bluer over time. HD74, which Rep. Eddie Morales won by 11 despite its closeness at the statewide level, was modestly blue based on 2020 results and should be more so in 2024, though if that isn’t true then expect a bigger fight later on. HD34 was purple-ish before redistricting, and as with HD74 I think it will be bluer next year, but again keep an eye on it. The one district that I think will become more vulnerable over time is HD22, in Jefferson County, which has a declining population and much like Galveston County in the 2000s and 2010s a reddish trend over the past decade. I’d like to see some effort made to shore it up, but I don’t know enough about the local conditions to know how feasible that is. Feel free to chime in if you do.

None of the other districts concern me. The Latino districts, I’d like to see what they look like in 2024. They’re all actually pretty spot on to the 2020 numbers, which given the overall lackluster Dem showing in many areas is moderately encouraging. The rest of them are in overall strong Dem areas, and I don’t expect any reversion of past trends.

Now for the Republican-held seats that Dems might like to target:


Dist  Abbott   Abb%    Beto   Beto%
===================================
037   20,551  51.1%   19,202  47.7%
052   41,813  52.5%   36,500  45.8%
063   35,831  54.8%   28,630  43.8%
094   34,479  54.7%   27,557  43.8%
108   46,796  52.6%   41,022  46.1%
112   35,245  50.6%   33,467  48.0%
118   25,172  48.5%   25,952  50.0%
121   40,300  51.1%   37,368  47.4%
122   47,856  54.7%   38,491  44.0%
133   33,195  54.4%   26,971  44.2%
138   31,077  54.1%   25,464  44.3%

014   27,936  56.9%   20,207  41.1%
020   48,367  56.5%   35,743  41.8%
025   31,545  59.3%   20,785  39.1%
026   36,266  57.7%   25,683  40.8%
028   38,940  58.1%   27,061  40.4%
029   33,393  58.8%   22,579  39.7%
054   23,763  59.7%   15,463  38.8%
055   28,125  58.4%   19,322  40.1%
057   37,715  58.1%   26,311  40.5%
061   39,753  56.1%   30,211  42.7%
065   41,487  56.9%   30,451  41.7%
066   41,464  56.9%   30,421  41.8%
067   38,127  56.3%   28,647  42.3%
089   38,701  57.5%   27,643  41.1%
093   34,136  57.6%   24,310  41.0%
096   35,260  55.2%   27,877  43.6%
097   36,059  55.2%   28,336  43.4%
099   31,869  58.6%   21,719  39.9%
106   41,639  58.3%   28,875  40.5%
126   35,835  59.4%   23,627  39.1%
127   39,102  58.5%   26,791  40.1%
129   37,118  56.8%   27,144  41.5%
132   35,079  57.0%   25,603  41.6%
150   33,857  58.3%   23,303  40.1%

I think it’s fair to say that the failure to win back HD118 was a big disappointment last year. I’ll use a stronger word if we get the same result in 2024. HD37 remains the subject of litigation – if there’s anything on the agenda to address it in this legislative session, I am not aware of it at this time. It had a slight Democratic tilt in 2020 and will clearly be a top target next year. As will HDs 112 and 121, with 108 and 52 a notch below them, though 108 is starting to feel a bit like a white whale to me. All things being equal, Dems should be in position to make a small gain in the House next year, with some potential to do better than that, and given everything we’ve seen since the dawn of time, the potential to do a bit worse as well.

The farther-out districts are mostly those we had identified as targets following the 2018 election, with a few adjustments for the new map. They’re all in counties and regions that had been trending Democratic. For the most part, I expect that to continue, but that doesn’t have to be monotonic, nor does it have to be at a fast enough pace to make any of these places actually primed to flip. I’ve said before that the way Tarrant County was sliced up it gives me “Dallas County 2012” vibes, but whether than means that a bunch of districts eventually flip or they all hold on if by increasingly tight margins remains to be seen. We’ll know more after 2024.

In theory, there won’t be many truly competitive districts in 2024, like there weren’t last year. The national environment, plus the higher turnout context, plus whatever yet-unknown factors may be in play will surely affect that, by some amount. I’d like to see an optimistic view for next year and get as many strong candidates in as many of these districts as possible, but that’s far easier said than done. This is not that different than how things looked after the 2012 elections, and we know how things went from there. Doesn’t mean anything will go any particular way or on any timetable, it’s just a reminder that there’s only so much we can know right now. I’ll have some thoughts about the other district types going forward. Let me know what you think.

Precinct analysis: The new State House map

Nov 8th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Like it or not, we have new State House districts. We may as well acquaint ourselves with them. The coverage we’ve had so far has focused on the 2020 election numbers to say whether a district will be red or blue or (in a limited number of cases) purple. I think that we need to see more data than that to get a full picture. I’ve spent a bunch of time on this site looking at how districts changed over the course of the past decade. This post will do the same for the new State House districts. I may do the same for the other types of districts – we’ll see how busy things get once filing season opens – but for now let’s look at how things are here.

We now have a full set of election data for the new districts. All of the data for the new State House districts can be found here. I am using election data for these years in this post: 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020

If you want to remind yourself of what the map looks like, use the district viewer, which allows you to zoom in all the way to street level. What would have happened in the last decade if we had had this map in place following the 2011 session?

2012 – 59 seats won by Obama
2014 – 51 seats won by Davis
2016 – 64 seats won by Clinton
2018 – 66 seats won by Beto
2020 – 65 seats won by Biden

This shows a couple of things. One is just how bad a year 2014 was. Two, how effective the 2011/2013 map was for the conditions that existed at the time. Note that with this map, the big shift towards the Democrats happened in 2016, not 2018. I have to wonder how things might have played out in 2018 and 2020 if that had been our experience. After that, it gets a lot more static. I’ll tell you which districts were won by Beto but not Clinton, and which district was won by Beto but not Biden, later in this post.

Enough setup. You’re ready for some numbers, right? I know you are. I’ve broken this down more or less by region, and am including districts that are within 20 points in the 2020 results.


Dist  Obama  Romney Obama%Romney%    Biden   Trump Biden% Trump%
================================================================
014  14,134  29,676  31.5%  66.1%   30,840  38,146  43.5%  53.8%
020  19,803  40,618  31.9%  65.4%   44,651  58,876  42.2%  55.6%
045  20,079  21,248  47.0%  49.8%   48,915  32,987  58.4%  39.4%
052  16,708  28,942  35.7%  61.8%   44,974  49,046  46.7%  51.0%
054  18,164  22,668  43.9%  54.7%   26,960  31,067  45.5%  52.4%
055  17,348  26,906  38.5%  59.8%   30,054  36,826  43.9%  53.8%
118  21,895  25,284  45.7%  52.8%   36,578  34,584  50.6%  47.9%
121  25,850  47,798  34.5%  63.8%   50,133  52,533  48.1%  50.4%
122  21,516  48,130  30.4%  68.1%   50,094  59,855  44.9%  53.7%

Call this the “Central” region – HD14 is Brazos County, HDs 20 and 52 are Williamson, HD45 is Hays, HDs 54 and 55 are the infamous “donut” districts of Bell County, and the other three are Bexar. Couple things to note, as these themes will recur. One is that if there’s a district you think might belong but which isn’t listed, it’s probably because it just doesn’t qualify as a “swing” district any more. A great example is HD47 in Travis County, which was a 52-47 district for Mitt Romney in 2012. In 2020, however, it was won by Joe Biden by a 61-36 margin. HD45 is more or less the same, but I included it here as a borderline case.

Looking at the shifts, it’s not too hard to imagine the two Williamson districts moving into (back into, in the case of HD52) the Dem column, in a future election if not this year. Note also that HD118 was once a red district. It’s one of the two that Beto flipped and which Biden held. Sure, it’s accurately described in all of the coverage of the special election runoff as being more Republican than the current HD118, but one should be aware of the direction that it has traveled. I won’t be surprised if it outperforms the 2020 number for Dems in 2022. (No, the result of this special election runoff doesn’t change my thinking on that. It’s not the first time that Republicans have won a special election in HD118.)

Not all districts moved so dramatically – that parsing of Bell County looks like it will be durable for the GOP, at least at this time. The other two Bexar districts were a lot more Democratic at the Presidential level than they were downballot, so one has to wonder if the splits we see here are entirely about Trump, or if they will be the leading edge for Dems as the 2016 Trump numbers were in places like CD07 and all of the Dallas House districts that Republicans once held.


Dist  Obama  Romney Obama%Romney%    Biden   Trump Biden% Trump%
================================================================
034  28,030  19,409  58.4%  40.4%   32,171  26,232  54.4%  44.3%
035  19,519   5,678  76.7%  22.3%   22,629  16,478  57.3%  41.7%
036  21,416   7,022  74.5%  24.4%   26,905  19,328  57.6%  41.4%
037  21,580  17,109  55.2%  43.7%   27,740  26,576  50.6%  48.4%
039  23,219   8,076  73.5%  25.6%   27,861  18,679  59.2%  39.7%
041  20,882  15,585  56.6%  42.2%   33,385  25,616  56.1%  43.0%
074  25,903  16,270  60.5%  38.0%   31,415  28,538  51.7%  46.9%
080  26,122  16,344  60.9%  38.1%   27,099  29,572  47.3%  51.6%

Here we have South Texas and the Valley, where things are not so good for the Dems. Again, the districts you don’t see here are the ones that are not swing districts; check out the linked numbers to see for yourself. HD41 was pretty stable, and I will note that the current version of HD74 was carried by Trump, so the new map is a bit friendlier to the Dems, at least for now. HD80 is the Beto district that Biden lost, and as with every other Latino district we’re just going to have to see how it performs in a non-Trump year. If State Rep. Alex Dominguez, the incumbent in HD37, does indeed primary Sen. Eddie Lucio, that puts another Dem seat squarely in the danger zone. (Modulo the pending litigation, of course.)


Dist  Obama  Romney Obama%Romney%    Biden   Trump Biden% Trump%
================================================================
033  16,134  40,104  28.2%  70.1%   35,618  53,384  39.3%  58.9%
057  13,506  30,350  30.3%  68.0%   36,387  47,660  42.6%  55.8%
061  15,178  34,157  30.3%  68.1%   43,274  50,795  45.2%  53.0%
063  20,983  40,571  33.5%  64.8%   42,303  47,444  46.4%  52.0%
065  18,851  36,946  33.3%  65.2%   43,265  51,231  45.1%  53.4%
066  19,348  41,191  31.5%  67.0%   43,902  51,608  45.2%  53.1%
067  16,268  32,870  32.6%  65.7%   39,889  47,769  44.6%  53.5%
070  23,926  36,395  38.9%  59.2%   45,111  35,989  54.7%  43.6%
084  17,622  30,644  35.8%  62.3%   25,604  36,144  40.7%  57.5%
089  18,681  39,334  31.6%  66.6%   39,563  49,499  43.5%  54.5%
093  13,971  29,638  31.6%  67.0%   34,205  45,799  42.0%  56.2%
094  23,934  46,010  33.6%  64.6%   37,985  45,950  44.4%  53.8%
096  22,912  42,668  34.5%  64.2%   39,472  48,073  44.4%  54.1%
097  21,540  40,721  34.0%  64.4%   38,218  46,530  44.3%  53.9%
099  17,899  33,551  34.2%  64.2%   31,245  43,999  40.8%  57.5%
106  12,893  30,578  29.2%  69.3%   38,447  50,868  42.4%  56.2%
108  26,544  58,932  30.7%  68.1%   54,481  55,364  48.9%  49.7%
112  24,601  44,320  35.2%  63.4%   44,881  45,370  48.9%  49.4%

So much action in the Multiplex. HD33 is Rockwall and a piece of Collin. HDs 61 and 70 are Collin, HD57 is Denton. I have lumped HD84 in here as well, even though it’s Lubbock and it remains on the fringe, but I don’t care. We will make a race out of that district yet! HDs 108 and 112 in Dallas are also much more Republican downballot than they were at the top, and while I think they will eventually fall, it’s unlikely to be in 2022. HD70, by the way, is the other district that flipped Dem in 2018.

Everywhere else I look, I see districts that are about as competitive as the formerly Republican-held districts of Dallas County were circa 2012. (Note how none of them have made an appearance in this post.) Look at how huge those splits were a decade ago. A decade in the future, either we’re going to be grimly hailing the evil genius of this gerrymander, or we’re going to be chuckling about Republican hubris and how if they’d maybe thrown another district or two to the Dems they could have saved themselves a bucketful of losses.


Dist  Obama  Romney Obama%Romney%    Biden   Trump Biden% Trump%
================================================================
025  16,141  33,014  32.4%  66.2%   29,441  43,675  39.7%  58.9%
026  14,574  36,701  32.4%  66.2%   37,863  47,532  43.7%  54.8%
028  15,831  33,229  31.9%  67.0%   36,213  46,580  43.1%  55.4%
029  18,280  37,848  32.1%  66.5%   32,787  46,758  40.6%  57.9%
126  18,574  47,202  27.9%  70.7%   35,306  50,023  40.8%  57.8%
127  19,674  45,760  29.7%  69.1%   38,332  53,148  41.3%  57.3%
129  21,321  45,292  31.5%  66.9%   38,399  51,219  42.2%  56.2%
132  13,399  31,974  29.1%  69.5%   35,876  46,484  42.9%  55.6%
133  21,508  45,099  31.8%  66.7%   40,475  42,076  48.4%  50.3%
134  34,172  42,410  43.7%  54.3%   66,968  38,704  62.5%  36.1%
138  20,133  40,118  32.9%  65.6%   37,617  42,002  46.6%  52.0%
144  17,471  16,254  51.1%  47.6%   25,928  20,141  55.6%  43.2%
148  20,954  19,960  50.4%  48.0%   34,605  24,087  58.1%  40.5%
150  14,511  34,552  29.2%  69.6%   34,151  45,789  42.1%  56.5%

Finally, the Houston area. HDs 25 and 29 are Brazoria County, HDs 26 and 28 are Fort Bend. The now-in-Fort-Bend HD76 slides in here as another former swing district, going from 51-48 for Romney to 61-38 for Biden. I threw HD134 in here even though it’s obviously not a swing district by any reasonable measure in part because it was once the epitome of a swing district, and because damn, just look at how far that district shifted towards Dems. The open HD133 is unfortunately another one of those redder-downballot districts, so even though it’s an open seat don’t get your hopes up too much for this cycle. Maybe later on, we’ll see.

I’m fascinated by HD144, which like HD74 is now slightly more Dem than it was under the existing map. I guess Republicans had other priorities in the area. As for HD148, it’s a little jarring to see it as a genuine swing district from 2012, though it barely qualifies as of 2020. Rep. Penny Morales Shaw has complained about the changes made to her district, not just geographically but also by reducing that Latino CVAP by almost ten points. Finally, I will note that while the GOP shored up HD138, it’s another district that used to be a lot redder than it is now. Again, we’ll just have to see how resilient that is. That “genius/hubris” divide will largely come down to places like that.

I hope this helped shed some light on what these districts may be going forward. As always, let me know what you think.

Precinct analysis: County Attorney 2020 and 2016

Jan 5th, 2021

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts
Comparing 2012 and 2016
Statewide judicial
Other jurisdictions
Appellate courts, Part 1
Appellate courts, Part 2
Judicial averages
Other cities
District Attorney

The office of County Attorney gets less attention than District Attorney, but as we have seen it’s vitally important. Vince Ryan held the office for three terms before being ousted in the primary by Christian Menefee. Menefee’s overall performance was similar to Ryan’s in 2016 – I’ll get to that in a minute – but as we saw in the previous post that doesn’t mean there can’t be a fair bit of variance. Let’s see where that takes us. Here’s the 2020 breakdown:


Dist     Nation  Menefee  Nation% Menefee%
==========================================
CD02    178,265  154,520   53.57%   46.43%
CD07    149,139  151,213   49.65%   50.35%
CD08     25,809   14,986   63.27%   36.73%
CD09     37,016  119,594   23.64%   76.36%
CD10    102,438   59,410   63.29%   36.71%
CD18     58,121  179,867   24.42%   75.58%
CD22     21,591   20,074   51.82%   48.18%
CD29     48,935  100,744   32.69%   67.31%
CD36     82,457   48,040   63.19%   36.81%
				
SBOE4   104,688  334,552   23.83%   76.17%
SBOE6   380,793  351,322   52.01%   47.99%
SBOE8   218,290  162,575   57.31%   42.69%
				
SD04     55,522   22,733   70.95%   29.05%
SD06     56,939  117,097   32.72%   67.28%
SD07    235,108  171,376   57.84%   42.16%
SD11     76,866   46,710   62.20%   37.80%
SD13     36,807  159,259   18.77%   81.23%
SD15    112,115  194,216   36.60%   63.40%
SD17    115,210  125,384   47.89%   52.11%
SD18     15,204   11,676   56.56%   43.44%
				
HD126    38,751   33,320   53.77%   46.23%
HD127    53,950   35,101   60.58%   39.42%
HD128    48,046   21,796   68.79%   31.21%
HD129    47,571   35,152   57.51%   42.49%
HD130    69,976   32,109   68.55%   31.45%
HD131     9,822   44,446   18.10%   81.90%
HD132    50,540   47,980   51.30%   48.70%
HD133    49,624   36,901   57.35%   42.65%
HD134    46,775   58,410   44.47%   55.53%
HD135    36,489   36,696   49.86%   50.14%
HD137    10,191   20,871   32.81%   67.19%
HD138    31,535   30,924   50.49%   49.51%
HD139    15,325   44,753   25.51%   74.49%
HD140     9,241   21,586   29.98%   70.02%
HD141     6,943	  35,992   16.17%   83.83%
HD142    13,733   41,540   24.85%   75.15%
HD143    11,934   24,039   33.17%   66.83%
HD144    13,762   16,387   45.65%   54.35%
HD145    14,777   26,896   35.46%   64.54%
HD146    11,016   43,379   20.25%   79.75%
HD147    14,738   53,266   21.67%   78.33%
HD148    21,758   36,937   37.07%   62.93%
HD149    21,400   30,636   41.13%   58.87%
HD150    55,873   39,332   58.69%   41.31%
				
CC1      90,530  280,069   24.43%   75.57%
CC2     149,810  143,859   51.01%   48.99%
CC3     224,601  210,646   51.60%   48.40%
CC4     238,830  213,877   52.76%   47.24%
				
JP1      90,035  165,193   35.28%   64.72%
JP2      33,965   48,473   41.20%   58.80%
JP3      51,412   67,741   43.15%   56.85%
JP4     233,642  184,203   55.92%   44.08%
JP5     201,673  214,852   48.42%   51.58%
JP6       7,971   26,993   22.80%   77.20%
JP7      17,824  100,329   15.09%   84.91%
JP8      67,249   40,667   62.32%   37.68%

Menefee scored 54.66% of the vote, better than Ogg by almost a point, and better than Ryan’s 53.72% in 2016 by slightly more. Ryan was consistently an upper echelon performer in his three elections, and that was true in 2016 as well, as only Ogg, Hillary Clinton, and judicial candidate Kelly Johnson had more votes than his 685,075, with those three and Mike Engelhart being the only ones with a larger margin of victory than Ryan’s 95K. Menefee, who collected 848,451 total votes and won by a margin of 145K, was also top tier. His vote total trailed all of the statewide candidates except Chrysta Castaneda and Gisela Triana (one better than Kim Ogg), though his percentage was better than everyone except Joe Biden and Tina Clinton. He outpaced three of the four appellate court candidates (he trailed Veronica Rivas-Molloy) and all but four of the local judicial candidates. His margin of victory was eighth best, behind Biden, Castaneda, two statewide judicials, and three local judicials. (And Ed Gonzalez, but we’ll get to him next.)

Here’s my 2016 precinct analysis post for the County Attorney race, and here’s the relevant data from that year:


Dist    Leitner     Ryan  Leitner%   Ryan%
==========================================
CD02    158,149  113,363    58.25%  41.75%
CD07    135,129  116,091    53.79%  46.21%
CD09     25,714  106,728    19.42%  80.58%
CD10     80,244   36,703    68.62%  31.38%
CD18     46,062  154,354    22.98%  77.02%
CD29     35,312   93,732    27.36%  72.64%
				
SBOE6   331,484  269,022    55.20%  44.80%
				
HD126    34,999   25,571    57.78%  42.22%
HD127    47,719   24,876    65.73%  34.27%
HD128    40,809   17,464    70.03%  29.97%
HD129    41,206   26,677    60.70%  39.30%
HD130    58,268   21,630    72.93%  27.07%
HD131     6,719   39,011    14.69%  85.31%
HD132    37,294   30,571    54.95%  45.05%
HD133    46,509   28,002    62.42%  37.58%
HD134    42,937   44,634    49.03%  50.97%
HD135    31,651   27,468    53.54%  46.46%
HD137     8,661   17,869    32.65%  67.35%
HD138    26,893   23,486    53.38%  46.62%
HD139    11,874   39,721    23.01%  76.99%
HD140     6,316   20,762    23.33%  76.67%
HD141     4,969   32,887    13.13%  86.87%
HD142    10,179   34,249    22.91%  77.09%
HD143     8,745   23,486    27.13%  72.87%
HD144    10,725   16,024    40.09%  59.91%
HD145    10,858   22,921    32.14%  67.86%
HD146     9,532   38,323    19.92%  80.08%
HD147    11,719   45,087    20.63%  79.37%
HD148    17,529   29,206    37.51%  62.49%
HD149    15,405   27,290    36.08%  63.92%
HD150    48,085   26,950    64.08%  35.92%
				
CC1      70,740  240,579    22.72%  77.28%
CC2     123,739  124,368    49.87%  50.13%
CC3     188,415  160,213    54.04%  45.96%
CC4     206,707  158,990    56.52%  43.48%

Kim Ogg did slightly better in the districts in 2016 than Vince Ryan did (most notably in CD02, though Ryan outdid her in HD134), which is what you’d expect given her overall better performance. In a similar fashion, Menefee did slightly better in the districts than Ogg did, as expected given his superior totals. He won CD07 by a thousand more votes than Ogg did, and carried HD135 where Ogg did not. He lost CC2 by two points and 6K votes, while Ogg lost it by four points and 12K votes. His lead in CD29 was 6K smaller than Ryan’s was, while Ogg lost 10K off of her lead in CD29 from 2016.

Overall, Menefee improved on Ryan’s 2016 totals, and made larger gains than Ogg did over her 2016 numbers. Like Ogg, he lost ground in the Latino districts – CD29, HD140, HD143, HD144, CC2 – but not by as much. He had higher vote totals in the Latino State Rep districts, though by small amounts in HDs 140, 143, and 144, and increased the lead over what Ryan had achieved in HDs 145 and 148. Like Ogg, he also lost ground in HD149, going from a 12K lead to a 9K lead, and in HD128, going from a 23K deficit to a 27K deficit (Ogg went from down 21K to down 27K). He gained ground in HD127 (from down 23K to down 19K; Ogg stayed roughly the same) and lost only about a thousand net votes in HD130 as Ogg went from down 34K to down 39K. He posted strong gains in HD126 (down 9K to down 5K), HD133 (down 18K to down 13K), and HD150 (down 21K to down 16K).

On the whole, a very strong initial performance by Menefee. As I said, County Attorney is generally a lower-profile job than District Attorney and Sheriff, but between bail reform, the multiple election lawsuits, and the forthcoming Republican legislative assault on local control, there should be many chances for Menefee to make statements about what he does and can do. He’ll have a solid chance to build on what he did this year when he’s next up for election.

Precinct analysis: Comparing to 2012 and 2016

Dec 14th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Introduction
Congressional districts
State Rep districts
Commissioners Court/JP precincts

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

President

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

Senate

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

RRC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Precinct analysis: State Rep districts

Dec 9th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Introduction
Congressional districts

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Initial thoughts about the election

Nov 5th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

8 comments

And now for some reactions and analysis…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Endorsement watch: Three to get started

Sep 19th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

But first, why do endorsements, anyway?

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chrysta Castañeda

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

Next, Michelle Palmer for SBOE.

Michelle Palmer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, there’s Natali Hurtado for HD126.

Natali Hurtado

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where the primary action is

Jan 18th, 2020

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

It’s on the Democratic side in Harris County. This should come as a surprise to no one.

The crowded Harris County Democratic primary field reflects a new reality in Houston politics: With the county turning an even darker shade of blue in 2018, many consider the real battle for countywide seats to be the Democratic primaries, leading more candidates to take on incumbent officeholders.

“This is the new political landscape of Harris County. Countywide offices are won and lost in the Democratic Primary,” said Ogg campaign spokesperson Jaime Mercado, who argued that Ogg’s 2016 win “signaled a monumental shift in county politics” and created renewed emphasis on criminal justice reform now championed by other Democratic officials and Ogg’s opponents.

In the March 3 primaries, Ogg, Bennett, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and County Attorney Vince Ryan — all Democrats — face at least two intra-party opponents each, while Democratic Commissioner Rodney Ellis has a primary challenger in former state district judge Maria Jackson.

Excluding state district and county courts, 10 of 14 Harris County Democratic incumbents have at least one primary foe. In comparison, three of the seven county GOP incumbents — Justice of the Peace Russ Ridgway, Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman and education department trustee Don Sumners — have drawn primary challengers.

At the state level, Republicans from the Harris County delegation largely have evaded primary opponents better than Democrats. All but three GOP state representatives — Dan Huberty, Briscoe Cain and Dennis Paul — are unopposed.

On the Democratic side, state Sen. Borris Miles and state Reps. Alma Allen, Jarvis Johnson, Senfronia Thompson, Harold Dutton, Shawn Thierry and Garnet Coleman each have primary opponents.

Overall, the 34 Democratic incumbents seeking re-election to federal, state and county seats that cover at least a portion of Harris County — not including state district and county courts — face 43 primary opponents. The 22 Republican incumbents have 10 intra-party challengers.

It should be noted that a few of these races always draw a crowd. Constable Precincts 1, 2, 3, and 6 combined for 22 candidates in 2012, 21 candidates in 2016, and 17 this year. Three of the four countywide incumbents – DA Kim Ogg, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, and Tax Assessor Ann Harris Bennett – are in their first term, as is County Commissioner Rodney Ellis. There are fewer Republican incumbents to target, so Dem incumbents get to feel the heat. The bigger tell to me is that Republicans didn’t field candidates in nine District Court races. As I’ve said ad nauseum, it’s the judicial races that are the best indicator of partisan strength in a given locale.

The story also notes that the usual ideological holy war in HD134 is on hold this year – Greg Abbott has endorsed Sarah Davis instead of trying to primary her out, and there’s no Joe Straus to kick around. Republicans do have some big races of their own – CD07, CD22, HD26, HD132, HD138, County Commissioner Precinct 3 – but at the countywide level it’s kind of a snoozefest. Honestly, I’d have to look up who most of their candidates are, their names just haven’t registered with me. I can’t wait to see what the finance reports have to say. The basic point here is that we’re in a new normal. I think that’s right, and I think we’ll see more of the same in 2022. Get used to it.

All have filed who are going to file

Dec 10th, 2019

by Charles Kuffner.

8 comments

Barring any late challenges, disqualifications, or lawsuits, what we have now is our lineup for the March primary. Most of what there is to say was covered in yesterday’s post, but here are the highlights and there is some big news.

– Pretty much all of the “not yet filed” people did indeed file. There are three notable absences that I can see, though do keep in mind that the SOS page may be behind and shouldn’t be considered final until we have confirmation. Be that as it may, two people I don’t see are Judge Elaine Palmer (215th Civil Court; no one is listed on the Dem side for this court as of Monday night) and Precinct 1 Constable Alan Rosen. Hold those in mind, because there are news stories about some of the other interesting bits. Until I hear otherwise, the absence of any mention of those two suggests to me there’s no news, just a not-fully-updated SOS filing page.

– News item #1: Commissioner Steve Radack retires.

Steve Radack will not seek a ninth term as Harris County commissioner for Precinct 3, vacating a powerful position he has held for three decades that Democrats hope to flip next year.

Radack, 70, said he plans to invest his time and significant campaign account into helping Republicans regain seats after disastrous elections in 2016 and 2018.

“I’m not through being involved in public service, and I felt that there’s a lot I can do to help the Republican Party,” Radack said.

[…]

Radack and Harris County’s other Republican commissioner, Jack Cagle, endorsed Spring Valley Village Mayor Tom Ramsey for the seat.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said Radack’s impending retirement speaks to the shifting county electorate, which has helped Democrats sweep every countywide race since 2016.

“It is getting harder and harder for Republicans to compete in a rapidly changing county,” Rottinghaus said.

[…]

Several candidates from both major parties have joined the race. Ramsey, City Councilwoman Brenda Stardig and former West University Place Mayor Susan Sample will run in the Republican primary. The Democratic race will feature Michael Moore, chief of staff to former Mayor Bill White, former state Rep. Kristi Thibaut, educator Diana Martinez Alexander and three other candidates.

I wish Commissioner Radack well in his retirement. And I am very much looking forward to seeing a Democrat elected to succeed him.

– News item #2: Council Member Jerry Davis will challenge State Rep. Harold Dutton in HD142.

Houston City Councilman Jerry Davis filed Monday to run as a Democrat for House District 142, a northeast Harris County seat long represented by state Rep. Harold Dutton.

Davis, who has represented District B since 2011, is prevented from seeking re-election due to Houston’s term limits. His council district overlaps part of the House district, which includes the Fifth Ward and runs east and then north to FM 1960.

The move ensures Dutton, D-Houston, will have his most challenging primary in years. He was first elected to the Legislature in 1984 and frequently has coasted to victory without primary opposition. Last cycle, he beat primary challenger Richard A. Bonton, 65 percent to 35 percent.

Bonton is running for the seat again this cycle.

I always figured CM Davis would run for something else when his time on Council ended, it was just a matter of what opportunity there would be. I’ll have more to say about this later, but for now this is an exciting race.

– News item #3:

HISD trustee @JonesJolanda filed just now to run as a Democrat for tax assessor-collector against @voteannbennett. #hounews

— Jasper Scherer (@jaspscherer) 5:50 PM – 9 December 2019

Well, I did hear that a “big name” was set to enter this race. Now we know.

– News item #4:

News: Sima Ladjevardian — Houston lawyer, prominent Democratic activist/fundraiser and former @BetoORourke adviser — is making a late entry into the primary to challenge @DanCrenshawTX. #TX02

— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) 4:35 PM – 9 December 2019

And now Beto has endorsed Sima. I’ve already published one interview in CD02, and I have another in the works. I’ll figure out something for this.

– Five Democratic incumbents in Congress do not have primary opponents: Reps. Lizzie Fletcher (CD07), Vicente Gonzalez (CD15), Veronica Escobar (CD16), Sylvia Garcia (CD29), and Colin Allred (CD32). Everyone else needs to be gearing up for March. As was the case in 2018 and for the second time ever, Dems have at least one candidate in all 36 districts.

– All of the statewide offices except CCA Place 9 are contested, with several having three candidates. Already, the potential for multiple primary runoffs is high.

– According to the TDP, in the end Dems have candidates in all but one of the Senate districts that are up (only SD28 is uncontested), and they have candidates in 119 of the 150 State House races. HD23 drew a candidate, but HDs 43 and 84 apparently did not. In Harris County, only HD127 is uncontested.

– There is now a third candidate for HD148, an Emily Wolf. I cannot conclusively identify her – maybe this person? – so it’s impossible to say more than that.

– And on the Republican side, State Rep. Mike Lang in HD62 is your promised surprise retirement. Dems do have a candidate in this not-swing district.

– Looking at the Republican filings, quite a few Democratic judges have no November opposition. We have officially come full circle.

Again, remember that the SOS page may not be complete. The parties have five days to notify the SOS of their candidates. It’s possible there are still surprises lurking, to be confirmed and reported. If you’re not sure about a particular candidate, google them or find them on Facebook, to see if there’s been an announcement. I’ll have more as we go this week.

Filing period preview: SBOE, Senate, House

Nov 13th, 2019

by Charles Kuffner.

8 comments

Previously: Congress, and Statewide. As before, I am using the Patrick Svitek spreadsheet as my primary reference.

Buckle up, there’s a lot to talk about here. I’m going to limit my discussion of State House races to the greater Houston area.

SBOE: There are three SBOE seats on the ballot that were carried by Beto in 2018. Winning all three would give Democrats am 8-7 majority on this famously flaky board. One of these seats in within Harris County, and that’s SBOE6, where Michelle Palmer and Debra Kerner have been in for some time.

State Senate: Unlike 2018, there’s really only one competitive district on the ballot, and that’s SD19, the seat Dems fumbled away in the special election. State Rep. Roland Gutierrez and Xochil Peña Rodriguez, daughter of former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, are in. Despite the self-own in 2018, the district is basically 55-45 Dem, with a bit of variance on either end. Beto took it by 15 points, but even Lupe Valdez cleared fifty percent. A return to normal partisan behavior should make Pete Flores a temporary Senator.

Democratic incumbents Carol Alvarado (SD06) and Borris Miles (SD13) do not have primary opponents as yet. I tend to think someone will run against Miles after those harassment allegations against him were reported, but if so it will likely be a newcomer. One other Dem who both needs and has primary opponents is Eddie Lucio; I discussed Ruben Cortez and Sara Stapleton-Barrera, his known opponents, here. SD29 in El Paso is open following the retirement of Jose Rodriguez, with State Rep. Cesar Blanco the only contender to succeed him so far.

The two Republican-held seats in the Houston area have Dem challengers. For SD04, mostly in Montgomery County, there’s Jay Stittleburg, who ran for Montgomery County Judge in 2018. Griffin Winkworth is listed in the spreadsheet as having filed a designation of Treasurer. SD11 has two contenders: Margarita Ruiz Johnson, who was a candidate for CD22 in 2018 but did not advance to the runoff, and Susan Criss, former District Court judge in Galveston County and candidate for HD23 in 2014. Neither district is particularly competitive – Beto got 41.5% in SD11, but most Republicans carried it by 20 or more.

State House: Let’s start with the districts that don’t have Dem challengers yet. As noted, this is limited to the greater Houston area. You can peruse the spreadsheet at your leisure for other districts.

HD03 (Montgomery/Waller)
HD15 (Montgomery)
HD16 (Montgomery)
HD18 (Liberty)
HD23 (Galveston)
HD24 (Galveston)
HD29 (Brazoria)
HD85 (Fort Bend/Wharton/Jackson)
HD127 (Harris)
HD129 (Harris)
HD133 (Harris)
HD150 (Harris)

HDs 29 (which originally had a Dem who later withdrew) and 127 were the only ones in 2018 that went unchallenged. HD29 in particular is a district of interest, as it was a 47% Beto district in 2018.

Now for Republican-held districts that do have Dem challengers, at least according to the spreadsheet.

HD25 (Brazoria, the now-open Dennis Bonnen seat) – Someone named J. Patrick Henry, whom I cannot conclusively identify.
HD26 (Fort Bend) – Sarah DeMerchant, the 2018 candidate; Rish Oberoi; Suleman Lalani.
HD28 (Fort Bend) – We all know about Eliz Markowitz, right?
HD126 (Harris) – Natali Hurtado, the 2018 candidate.
HD128 (Harris) – Josh Markle, who got a nice fundraising boost from Beto after his little tiff with incumbent Briscoe Cain over automatic weapons.
HD130 (Harris) – Bryan Henry.
HD134 (Harris) – Ann Johnson, the 2012 candidate; Ruby Powers; Lanny Bose, the most recent entrant.
HD138 (Harris) – Akilah Bacy; Josh Wallenstein, who was a candidate in the primary for HCDE at large in 2018.

Two Democratic incumbents so far have primary opponents, Alma Allen in HD131 (Carey Lashley) and Garnet Coleman in HD147 (Aurelia Wagner). Both always seem to draw primary opponents, for whatever the reason. Ron Reynolds in HD26 usually draws one as well, for reasons that are more clear. I note that the spreadsheet lists Richard Bonton as a Republican opponent for Harold Dutton in HD142. Bonton ran against Dutton in the Dem primary in 2018.

We can’t end this conversation without bringing up HD148. I fully expect Anna Eastman to win the special election runoff, which is most likely be on December 14, the same day as the city of Houston runoffs. It doesn’t have to be on the 14th – Greg Abbott sets the runoff date, and he has some discretion. The last time we had a special election for a State Rep seat in an odd year was 2005 with the election in HD143, and that runoff was held on the same date as the city runoffs. Not a guarantee, but a data point. In any event, whatever happens in that race, there’s no reason to believe that some other candidates won’t file for the primary in HD148 as well. Any of the runners up may conclude that this was a wonky election, and that maybe they lost some votes to not-that-Adrian-Garcia. For sure, the primary will have a very different electorate, and Anna Eastman will not be very well known to them. I will be a little surprised if Eastman has the primary to herself.

Last but not least in this series: county races. I don’t get to lean on the spreadsheet for that one.

Precinct analysis: Undervoting in judicial races

Dec 5th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Last time, we looked at undervoting by State Rep district in the two city propositions, which were at the very end of the 2018 ballot. That showed a somewhat greater likelihood of people in Democratic districts to skip those races, which was the first real evidence to support the assertion that Dems might suffer more in the post-straight ticket world. I said this was suggestive but far from conclusive, since we were looking at non-partisan referenda, with no candidates involved.

So with that in mind, let’s look at undervoting in a few of the judicial races that were on the ballot this year. These are also low profile and deep into the ballot, but they do provide the cue of party identification. What if any patterns do we see in the tendency to not vote in these races? To try to answer this, I looked at six judicial races, three of the first ones that appear and which have an overall low undervote rate, and three that appear near the end and which have an overall high undervote rate.


55th Civil Court

Dist       Rep     Dem   None     Rep%    Dem%  Under%
======================================================
HD126   30,233  24,644  1,355   55.09%  44.91%  10.85%
HD127   42,637  24,900  1,574   63.13%  36.87%  10.12%
HD128   35,499  16,006  1,166   68.92%  31.08%  10.70%
HD129   37,342  26,324  2,023   58.65%  41.35%  12.24%
HD130   52,602  22,821  1,669   69.74%  30.26%  10.04%
HD131    6,328  35,416    803   15.16%  84.84%   9.40%
HD132   33,591  32,514  1,267   50.81%  49.19%   9.54%
HD133   43,482  26,449  2,625   62.18%  37.82%  12.38%
HD134   43,229  43,298  4,447   49.96%  50.04%  13.50%
HD135   27,503  27,919  1,288   49.62%  50.38%  10.82%
HD137    7,664  16,339    651   31.93%  68.07%  12.07%
HD138   24,343  23,390  1,477   51.00%  49.00%  12.93%
HD139   11,101  35,586  1,187   23.78%  76.22%  11.00%
HD140    5,470  17,978    604   23.33%  76.67%  14.49%
HD141    4,035  27,344    456   12.86%  87.14%   8.83%
HD142    8,754  30,706    762   22.18%  77.82%   9.07%
HD143    7,706  20,648    883   27.18%  72.82%  14.69%
HD144    9,282  13,946    589   39.96%  60.04%  13.11%
HD145   10,224  22,188  1,053   31.54%  68.46%  13.19%
HD146    8,664  34,224  1,237   20.20%  79.80%  11.43%
HD147   10,994  43,284  1,603   20.25%  79.75%  11.21%
HD148   17,180  29,480  2,205   36.82%  63.18%  14.28%
HD149   14,500  24,179    994   37.49%  62.51%  13.36%
HD150   42,340  27,688  1,648   60.46%  39.54%  10.41%

113th Civil Court

Dist       Rep     Dem   None     Rep%    Dem%  Under%
======================================================
HD126   30,196  24,706  1,330   55.00%  45.00%  10.65%
HD127   42,466  25,062  1,582   62.89%  37.11%  10.17%
HD128   35,412  16,121  1,137   68.72%  31.28%  10.43%
HD129   37,111  26,583  1,994   58.26%  41.74%  12.07%
HD130   52,495  22,970  1,628   69.56%  30.44%   9.79%
HD131    6,340  35,364    843   15.20%  84.80%   9.87%
HD132   33,499  32,612  1,263   50.67%  49.33%   9.51%
HD133   43,377  26,602  2,576   61.99%  38.01%  12.15%
HD134   42,809  43,765  4,399   49.45%  50.55%  13.36%
HD135   27,447  27,985  1,278   49.51%  50.49%  10.74%
HD137    7,652  16,353    649   31.88%  68.12%  12.03%
HD138   24,316  23,460  1,434   50.90%  49.10%  12.55%
HD139   11,015  35,683  1,175   23.59%  76.41%  10.89%
HD140    5,397  18,035    619   23.03%  76.97%  14.85%
HD141    4,031  27,310    494   12.86%  87.14%   9.56%
HD142    8,737  30,727    758   22.14%  77.86%   9.02%
HD143    7,650  20,712    875   26.97%  73.03%  14.55%
HD144    9,214  14,003    600   39.69%  60.31%  13.35%
HD145   10,086  22,309  1,071   31.13%  68.87%  13.42%
HD146    8,650  34,212  1,264   20.18%  79.82%  11.68%
HD147   10,915  43,365  1,600   20.11%  79.89%  11.19%
HD148   17,005  29,665  2,194   36.44%  63.56%  14.21%
HD149   14,447  24,233    993   37.35%  62.65%  13.35%
HD150   42,295  27,745  1,635   60.39%  39.61%  10.33%

157th Civil Court

Dist       Rep     Dem   None     Rep%    Dem%  Under%
======================================================
HD126   30,042  24,846  1,343   54.73%  45.27%  10.76%
HD127   42,272  25,265  1,573   62.59%  37.41%  10.12%
HD128   35,281  16,231  1,159   68.49%  31.51%  10.63%
HD129   36,933  26,762  1,993   57.98%  42.02%  12.06%
HD130   52,322  23,142  1,628   69.33%  30.67%   9.79%
HD131    6,238  35,494    815   14.95%  85.05%   9.54%
HD132   33,353  32,753  1,266   50.45%  49.55%   9.54%
HD133   43,043  26,911  2,601   61.53%  38.47%  12.27%
HD134   42,716  43,888  4,370   49.32%  50.68%  13.27%
HD135   27,295  28,129  1,286   49.25%  50.75%  10.81%
HD137    7,550  16,442    662   31.47%  68.53%  12.27%
HD138   24,070  23,719  1,420   50.37%  49.63%  12.43%
HD139   10,938  35,770  1,166   23.42%  76.58%  10.81%
HD140    5,375  18,069    607   22.93%  77.07%  14.57%
HD141    3,982  27,377    475   12.70%  87.30%   9.19%
HD142    8,699  30,765    756   22.04%  77.96%   9.00%
HD143    7,588  20,773    876   26.76%  73.24%  14.57%
HD144    9,133  14,084    600   39.34%  60.66%  13.35%
HD145    9,994  22,398  1,074   30.85%  69.15%  13.45%
HD146    8,552  34,330  1,244   19.94%  80.06%  11.49%
HD147   10,860  43,432  1,589   20.00%  80.00%  11.12%
HD148   16,924  29,752  2,189   36.26%  63.74%  14.17%
HD149   14,398  24,291    984   37.21%  62.79%  13.23%
HD150   42,017  28,012  1,646   60.00%  40.00%  10.40%  

Crim Ct 9

Dist       Rep     Dem   None     Rep%    Dem%  Under%
======================================================
HD126   29,830  24,865  1,537   54.54%  45.46%  12.31%
HD127   42,199  25,096  1,815   62.71%  37.29%  11.67%
HD128   35,154  16,210  1,306   68.44%  31.56%  11.98%
HD129   36,365  27,045  2,278   57.35%  42.65%  13.78%
HD130   52,079  23,117  1,896   69.26%  30.74%  11.41%
HD131    6,169  35,441    936   14.83%  85.17%  10.96%
HD132   33,179  32,735  1,459   50.34%  49.66%  10.99%
HD133   41,803  27,603  3,148   60.23%  39.77%  14.85%
HD134   39,653  46,022  5,296   46.28%  53.72%  16.08%
HD135   27,110  28,157  1,443   49.05%  50.95%  12.13%
HD137    7,498  16,405    750   31.37%  68.63%  13.90%
HD138   23,827  23,757  1,626   50.07%  49.93%  14.23%
HD139   10,811  35,768  1,293   23.21%  76.79%  11.99%
HD140    5,379  18,029    644   22.98%  77.02%  15.45%
HD141    4,005  27,279    551   12.80%  87.20%  10.66%
HD142    8,698  30,678	  843   22.09%  77.91%  10.03%
HD143    7,576  20,721    940   26.77%  73.23%  15.64%
HD144    9,172  14,023    621   39.54%  60.46%  13.82%
HD145    9,829  22,420  1,215   30.48%  69.52%  15.22%
HD146    8,249  34,479  1,398   19.31%  80.69%  12.92%
HD147   10,283  43,791  1,806   19.02%  80.98%  12.63%
HD148   16,219  30,145  2,500   34.98%  65.02%  16.19%
HD149   14,267  24,365  1,041   36.93%  63.07%  14.00%
HD150   41,803  28,015  1,856   59.87%  40.13%  11.73% 

Crim Ct 10

Dist       Rep     Dem   None     Rep%    Dem%  Under%
======================================================
HD126   29,452  25,205  1,574   53.89%  46.11%  12.61%
HD127   41,583  25,678  1,850   61.82%  38.18%  11.90%
HD128   34,899  16,440  1,331   67.98%  32.02%  12.21%
HD129   35,939  27,475  2,275   56.67%  43.33%  13.77%
HD130   51,686  23,502  1,905   68.74%  31.26%  11.46%
HD131    5,983  35,592    971   14.39%  85.61%  11.37%
HD132   32,929  32,966  1,478   49.97%  50.03%  11.13%
HD133   41,082  28,334  3,138   59.18%  40.82%  14.80%
HD134   38,613  47,031  5,328   45.09%  54.91%  16.18%
HD135   26,847  28,401  1,461   48.59%  51.41%  12.28%
HD137    7,324  16,567    762   30.66%  69.34%  14.13%
HD138   23,483  24,083  1,644   49.37%  50.63%  14.39%
HD139   10,567  35,974  1,330   22.70%  77.30%  12.33%
HD140    5,243  18,158    648   22.41%  77.59%  15.55%
HD141    3,929  27,329    576   12.57%  87.43%  11.15%
HD142    8,543  30,818    858   21.70%  78.30%  10.21%
HD143    7,390  20,879    967   26.14%  73.86%  16.08%
HD144    8,991  14,211    615   38.75%  61.25%  13.69%
HD145    9,670  22,571  1,224   29.99%  70.01%  15.33%
HD146    8,056  34,654  1,415   18.86%  81.14%  13.07%
HD147   10,087  43,932  1,861   18.67%  81.33%  13.02%
HD148   15,808  30,508  2,547   34.13%  65.87%  16.49%
HD149   14,075  24,529  1,068   36.46%  63.54%  14.36%
HD150   41,459  28,345  1,871   59.39%  40.61%  11.82%


Probate Court 4

Dist       Rep     Dem   None     Rep%    Dem%  Under%
======================================================
HD126   30,387  24,311  1,532   55.55%  44.45%  12.27%
HD127   42,669  24,596  1,844   63.43%  36.57%  11.86%
HD128   35,440  15,919  1,311   69.00%  31.00%  12.03%
HD129   37,372  26,067  2,250   58.91%  41.09%  13.61%
HD130   52,671  22,515  1,906   70.05%  29.95%  11.47%
HD131    6,425  35,169    953   15.45%  84.55%  11.16%
HD132   33,759  32,171  1,444   51.20%  48.80%  10.88%
HD133   43,453  26,046  3,056   62.52%  37.48%  14.41%
HD134   42,830  43,007  5,134   49.90%  50.10%  15.59%
HD135   27,621  27,648  1,440   49.98%  50.02%  12.10%
HD137    7,696  16,214    744   32.19%  67.81%  13.79%
HD138   24,436  23,142  1,631   51.36%  48.64%  14.27%
HD139   11,236  35,313  1,324   24.14%  75.86%  12.27%
HD140    5,474  17,937    640   23.38%  76.62%  15.36%
HD141    4,126  27,136    571   13.20%  86.80%  11.05%
HD142    8,912  30,439    867   22.65%  77.35%  10.32%
HD143    7,680  20,605    952   27.15%  72.85%  15.83%
HD144    9,248  13,948    621   39.87%  60.13%  13.82%
HD145   10,235  21,997  1,231   31.75%  68.25%  15.42%
HD146    8,760  33,962  1,404   20.50%  79.50%  12.97%
HD147   11,217  42,809  1,851   20.76%  79.24%  12.95%
HD148   17,153  29,185  2,525   37.02%  62.98%  16.35%
HD149   14,556  24,074  1,042   37.68%  62.32%  14.01%
HD150   42,460  27,401  1,815   60.78%  39.22%  11.47%

As before the undervote rate is calculated by subtracting out the straight ticket votes from the total turnout in each district, so the percentage is (undervotes) / (non-straight ticket votes). There are three things to note here.

1. Three strong Democratic districts, HDs 131, 141, and 142, are consistently among those with the lowest undervote rates. Two strong Republican districts, HDs 129 and 133, are consistently among those with the highest undervote rates. There are also Democratic districts (HDs 140, 143, 145, 148) with high undervote rates, and Republican districts (HDs 126, 127, 128, 130, 150) with low undervote rates. The message is mixed.

2. If we zoom in on the most even districts – HDs 132, 134, 135, and 138 – we see that as we move from the races with overall low undervote rates to the races with the overall high undervote rates, the Democratic percentages in these districts increased in two of the three races. This is also the case for Democratic majority districts – look at HDs 144, 145, 146, and 147, for example. In other words, the voters that are dropping off are for the most part not those that are voting for Democratic judicial candidates.

3. Pulling back out to the bigger picture, the total number of votes affected here is really small. Look at HD148, one of the highest-undervote districts. The total number of undervotes there ranges from 2,189 to 2,545, a difference of 356 votes. As I said weeks ago, the range of undervotes in these judicial races is something like 31K to 36K, so maybe about five thousand more people drop off at the bottom of the ballot than in the middle, where we start voting for judicial candidates. That’s not a lot of votes! The Democratic judicial candidates in 2018 all won by at least 100K votes. The closest judicial race in 2016 was decided by 23K votes. You’d need to have a really big dropoff rate and a really big partisan differential for there to be a chance this could have an effect. There is zero evidence for either of these.

Now look, I admit that I am not a Professional Political Scientist. If I were, I’d probably being doing linear regressions or other fancy mathematical analyses to try to rigorously tease out possible correlations. I’m just a lowlife blogger fooling around in Excel while I watch the Texans game. But again, that’s my whole point about these ridiculous claims about “voter fatigue” and “Republican voters are more committed”, which is SHOW ME THE FRICKING EVIDENCE FOR THESE CLAIMS. I’m doing my amateur-level best to try and find it, and I can’t. If anything, I’m finding evidence for the opposite. Prove me wrong! I double dog dare you!

Anyway. I still have one last post on this topic, then I will go back to looking at precinct data in the way you’re more used to me looking at it. I hope you have found this useful.

Endorsement watch: A veritable plethora, part 5

Feb 24th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 is here, part 4 is here and the full endorsements page is here.

We finish with the Republican races with challenged incumbents. And the first thing to note is the races in which no endorsements are made: US Senate and Governor. Yes, Greg Abbott has ridiculous token opposition, and none of Ted Cruz’s challengers are likely to be recognized by anyone on the street, but still. Not even a cursory “none of the alternatives are worthwhile” piece? That’s gotta sting a little. Of course, it could be worse. The DMN went whole hog and endorsed Stefano de Stefano over Cruz:

Texas Republicans have an opportunity in the March 6 primary featuring incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz and four Republican opponents to vote for the kind of public leadership that inspires America rather than divides it. A kind of leadership that gives America its best chance to address the very real challenges ahead.

To make the most of the moment, we urge voters to choose Houston energy lawyer Stefano de Stefano over Cruz. Stefano, 37, is an earnest if mostly untested conservative who offers Republicans a way past the bruising style that has characterized Cruz’s time in public life.

Hell hath no fury like a Republican-cheerleading editorial board scorned. Still, the fact that the Chron skipped the US Senate and Governor primaries is even more remarkable when you consider…

CD07: John Culberson

Rep. John Culberson

We don’t want to imagine what would have happened after Hurricane Harvey without U.S. Rep. John Culberson in Congress.

In Harvey’s wake, cities from Port Aransas to Houston waited for the Trump administration to release its proposed disaster recovery bill, which mayors, county judges and families of all stripes hoped would provide the robust federal support needed to rebuild destroyed towns and keep the coast safe from the next big storm.

We didn’t get it. Instead, the White House released a pathetic $44 billion proposal that attracted criticism even from fellow Republicans.

Luckily for Houston, Donald Trump doesn’t decide how federal dollars are spent. That duty falls on Congress and, specifically, the Senate and House Appropriations Committees – which includes Culberson.

The west Houston representative worked with his Republican and Democratic colleagues to double the size of the hurricane recovery proposal, turning a failure of a bill into a passable piece of legislation. Throughout the process, Culberson was a point-man for City Hall, ensuring that areas hit by flood after flood – such as Houston – would be first in line for federal dollars.

The bill wasn’t perfect, but it was better than the alternative.

[…]

If you ignore the most recent term, Culberson’s accomplishments for the 7th Congressional District, which covers west Houston neighborhoods from West University through the Energy Corridor, seem pretty thin. That historically weak record, combined with a district that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016, has attracted a strong group of Democratic challengers for the general election.

It should be an exciting race, and there’s little reason for Republican primary voters to deny Democrats their shot at the incumbent.

I don’t think the Chron has ever endorsed Culberson in a November race, not even in 2010 when he didn’t have a Democratic opponent. I have no doubt this year will be the same. Seeing them say anything nice about him is kind of a weird experience, but here we are.

HD150 (Republican): James Michael Wilson

An interesting battle is taking place in the Republican primary in District 150 where first-term incumbent state Rep. Valoree Swanson is being challenged by James Richard Wilson for being a political extremist.

Swanson, 45, is a tea party member who became the first woman in the Freedom Caucus last year in the Texas Legislature. Her district covers a largely unincorporated area of north Harris County that includes parts of Spring, The Woodlands and Tomball.

She didn’t have much luck in Austin passing legislation, which she blamed on House Speaker Joe Straus and his supporters, who spent much of the session fending off what they considered bad bills.

But Wilson, 44, a long-time Republican who worked for Republican state representatives and then-U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, R-Texas, thinks the problem was more Swanson’s zealotry for causes only popular with the political fringe.

“I don’t feel and a large number of people in our community don’t feel that our state representative is representing the interests of our community,” Wilson told the Chronicle.

Swanson is the type of wingnut that can make one almost nostalgic for the likes of Debbie Riddle. If Wilson can make the Lege an inch or two less crazy, then I wish him well.

HD134: Sarah Davis

Last year Texas Monthly listed state Rep. Sarah Davis as one of the best legislators in the session and called her “one of the few true moderates left in an increasingly strident Legislature.”

Gov. Greg Abbott apparently doesn’t agree and has endorsed her opponent in this primary – Susanna Dokupil.

Before explaining our endorsement, we have to ask: Is moderate really the best way to describe Davis? Moderate implies compromise, a willingness to change one’s positions and seek out the path of least resistance.

If that were Davis, then she would have spent her time in Austin acting more, for lack of a better word, extreme. At at time when the Texas GOP welcomes conspiracy theories about Jade Helm 15 and the panic about transgender bathrooms, Davis could have spent her days prattling on about black helicopters and the threat of chupacabras in West University and probably avoided a primary challenger. She could have acquiesced to the governor’s bizarre personal goal of overriding local tree regulations and easily earned his support.

But Davis did not seek out the path of least resistance. Instead, she stood alongside House Speaker Joe Straus against the reckless political antics of Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and their acolytes. She held various leadership roles in the House, which she used to get money for foster care, mental health and women’s health programs and tried unsuccessfully to secure property tax relief for some Hurricane Harvey victims.

She fought Patrick’s attempt to include private school vouchers in the school funding bill and led an investigation into shenanigans at the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission that resulted in the resignation of the commission’s seven top officials, two of them Abbott appointees.

This one appeared earlier, but I’m including it here. I don’t care about Sarah Davis, and I figure we Dems have a much better shot at that seat if she gets ousted in the primary. That said, I hate the idea of Greg Abbott and his goons, which in this race includes the anti-vaxxers, degrading our politics even more than they already have. All I’ll say at this point is that if I were Sarah Davis and I’m still standing on March 7, I’d tweet this picture at Greg Abbott every day for the rest of my life. Maybe someone can set up a fake Twitter profile to do that for her in the likely even she has too much class to do it herself. RG Ratcliffe has more.

HD127: Dan Huberty

State Representative Dan Huberty is effectively already the winner in the race for District 127 in northeast Houston because his only opponent in the Republican primary, Reginald C. Grant Jr., has been ruled ineligible for living outside the district and nobody is running for the Democratic nomination.

Even though Grant’s name will remain on the ballot, it would take a very strange occurrence for Huberty not to win a fifth consecutive term to the Texas House of Representatives, which is good news because he has emerged as a competent, well-intended legislator and the body’s leading expert on the very complicated topic of school finance.

Huberty has drawn his own share of ire from the Taliban wing of the local GOP, presumably because of his support for public education. If they succeed in taking out Sarah Davis, don’t be surprised if he’s on the hit list in 2020.

And that’s a wrap. I hope you feel like you have enough information to make educated decisions in the primary of your choice.

So is there a residency standard now?

Jan 21st, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

This is curious.

Rep. Dan Huberty

State Rep. Dan Huberty’s only primary challenger was on Friday declared ineligible to run to represent House District 127.

In a summary judgment, Harris County District Court Judge Bill Burke declared Reginald C. Grant Jr. did not meet the residency requirement outlined in the state’s Election Code.

Grant’s name will remain on the ballot. Should he win the March 6 primary, district precinct chairs will vote on a replacement candidate.

[…]

Huberty’s attorneys first filed suit after discovering through public documents that Grant had not lived in the district for six continuous months prior to filing for candidacy, as required by the Election Code.

According to court documents, Grant is currently undergoing a divorce. In March 2017, he moved out of his estranged wife’s Huffman house — which is owned by her father and which Grant listed as his permanent address on his filing papers. The candidate is currently staying with his father outside of the district.

Blakemore told the Texas Tribune that the state law’s definition of a “residence” includes where an individual “intends” to live, and Grant has said he will return to the district. But Blakemore said Grant has no claim to his permanent address because he isn’t the property’s owner.

[Grant’s attorney Tom] Zakes said Thursday that Grant still uses the Huffman address for his driver’s license and voter registration. He said it doesn’t matter who owns the Huffman house because Grant’s intended residence will remain the same until the candidate determines a new residence by changing his address on those documents.

“Will he ever move back to the house? I can’t tell you that,” Zakes said. “He intends to go back either to that specific residence or to somewhere else in the district.”

There’s no Democrat on the ballot in HD127, and I have no particular interest in who the Republican is, though I do have respect for Huberty for his work on public education. I am also Not A Lawyer and claim no technical knowledge here. But I have to ask, how is it that this case defines what the boundaries of the “your residency is where you intend to live” standard are? It’s very much an open secret that a non-trivial number of legislators don’t actually live where they claim to live. And as you know, I’m okay with that standard for residency being loosey-goosey. Given the way things have always been, I have a hard time seeing why this case was worthy of summary judgment in favor of rejecting Grant’s candidacy. At the very least, let’s fight this out in a full trial. And if this is the standard, then let’s do some checking and see who among the current cop of elected officials may fail to meet it. Maybe then we’ll get some real clarity.

All the interviews for 2012

Oct 22nd, 2012

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

As we begin early voting for the November election, here are all the interviews I conducted for candidates who are on the ballot as well as for the referenda. These include interviews that were done for the primary as well as the ones done after the primary. I hope you found them useful.

Senate: Paul Sadler – Web – MP3

CD02: Jim Dougherty – Web – MP3

CD07: James Cargas – Web – MP3

CD10 – Tawana Cadien – Web – MP3

CD14: Nick Lampson – Web – MP3

CD20: Joaquin Castro – Web – MP3

CD21: Candace Duval – Web – MP3

CD23: Pete Gallego – Web – MP3

CD27: Rose Meza Harrison – Web – MP3

CD29: Rep. Gene Green – Web – MP3

CD33: Marc Veasey – Web – MP3

CD36: Max Martin – Web – MP3

SBOE6: Traci Jensen – Web – MP3

SD10: Sen. Wendy Davis – Web – MP3

SD25: John Courage – Web – MP3

HD23: Rep. Craig Eiland – Web – MP3

HD26: Vy Nguyen – Web – MP3

HD127: Cody Pogue – Web – MP3

HD131: Rep. Alma Allen – Web – MP3

HD134: Ann Johnson – Web – MP3

HD137: Gene Wu – Web – MP3

HD144: Mary Ann Perez – Web – MP3

HD146: Rep. Borris Miles – Web – MP3

HD147: Rep. Garnet Coleman – Web – MP3

HD150: Brad Neal – Web – MP3

Harris County Sheriff: Sheriff Adrian Garcia – Web – MP3

Harris County District Attorney: Mike Anderson – Web – MP3

Harris County Attorney: Vince Ryan – Web – MP3

Harris County Tax Assessor: Ann Harris Bennett – Web – MP3

HCDE Position 3, At Large: Diane Trautman – Web – MP3

HCDE Position 6, Precinct 1: Erica Lee – Web – MP3

Harris County Commissioner, Precinct 4: Sean Hammerle – Web – MP3

Constable, Precinct 1: Alan Rosen – Web – MP3

HISD Bond Referendum: Interview with Terry Grier – MP3

City of Houston Bond and Charter Referenda: Interview with Mayor Annise Parker – MP3

HCC Bond Referendum: Interview with Richard Schechter – MP3

Metro Referendum: Interviews with David Crossley, Gilbert Garcia and Christof Spieler, Sue Lovell, and County Commissioner Steve Radack

Interview with Cody Pogue

Sep 19th, 2012

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Cody Pogue

Running for office is always a challenge, but some challenges are bigger than others. HD127 up in the Kingwood area is a particularly large challenge for a Democratic candidate. Cody Pogue has undertaken that challenge. Pogue, who can trace his Texas roots back to Sam Houston and the Battle of San Jacinto, is a teacher of US history at Lone Star College and in HISD before that. We discussed his insider’s view of the budget cuts to public education, what it takes to run in such a challenging district, and a lot of other things:

Cody Pogue MP3

You can still find a list of all interviews I did for this primary cycle, plus other related information, on my 2012 Harris County Primary Elections page and my 2012 Texas Primary Elections page, which I now need to update to include fall candidate information. You can also follow this blog by liking its Facebook page.

30 day reports, Harris County candidates for state office

May 3rd, 2012

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

We’re now 26 days out from the May 29 primary, which means more campaign finance reports from candidates for state and county offices who are in contested primaries. I’m going to post about all of these, starting today with reports from Harris County candidates for state offices. Here are the Democrats, whose reports are linked from my 2012 Democratic primary election page:


Candidate    Office   Raised   Spent   Loans    Cash
====================================================
Nilsson       SBOE6    1,100   1,267       0   1,092
Jensen        SBOE6    8,105   9,462       0   4,699
Scott         SBOE6      200     474       0     346

Allen         HD131  103,451  52,965       0  60,002
Adams         HD131   17,930  70,768     411  24,110

Madden        HD137   15,968  12,232       0  13,987
Smith         HD137   29,352  24,993       0   6,255
Winkler       HD137   15,575   4,170  20,000  35,914
Wu            HD137   35,579  30,539       0  73,468

Perez         HD144   48,120  20,238       0  40,729
Risner        HD144    9,315  15,158       0   4,156
Ybarra        HD144    4,650   7,586       0      27

Miles         HD146   16,600  27,776 730,000  58,573
Edwards       HD146   14,449  13,685       0     764

Coleman       HD147   41,525  39,052       0  84,433
Hill          HD147

My post on the January reports is here. Some thoughts about these reports:

I think we can say that Rep. Alma Allen has eradicated the early lead Wanda Adams had in cash on hand. The establishment has rallied to Rep. Allen’s side, as is usually the case with an incumbent in good standing. A lot of money has already been spent in this race, and I don’t expect that to change over the next four weeks.

Usually, establishment support and fundraising prowess go hand in hand, but not always. HD137 is one of the exceptions, as Gene Wu has been the strongest fundraiser despite garnering only one endorsement (that I’m aware of) so far – HAR, which is certainly a nice get but not a core Democratic group. Joe Madden and Jamaal Smith have racked up the endorsements but don’t have the financial support to match. Other than there will be a runoff, I have no idea what will happen in this race.

For a variety of reasons, many organizations have not endorsed in HD144. The candidates got off to a late start thanks to the changes made to the district in the second interim map, and no one had much to show in their January finance reports. HCC Trustee Mary Ann Perez, who has the backing of Annie’s List, clearly distinguished herself this cycle, which will undoubtedly help her in a part of town that’s not used to having competitive D primaries for State Rep. The other news of interest in this race has nothing to do with fundraising. Robert Miller reported on candidate Kevin Risner having had three arrests for DUI, a fact that I’m sure was going to come out sooner or later. Miller, who’s a Perez supporter, thinks Risner is in a good position to win the primary. I’m not sure I agree with his analysis, but we’ll see.

Poor Al Edwards. It’s hard running a race without Tom Craddick’s buddies, isn’t it? I think Rep. Miles is going to break the pattern of alternating victories this year. On a side note, the Observer’s Forrest Wilder listened to my interview with Rep. Miles, even if he didn’t link to it. I guess he’s not much of a fan of either candidate in this race.

As of this writing, Ray Hill had not filed a 30 Day report. He finally did file a January report that listed no money raised or spent.

Here are the Republicans:


Candidate    Office   Raised   Spent   Loans    Cash
====================================================
Cargill       SBOE8    4,474  10,059       0  18,626
Ellis         SBOE8    6,614   2,795       0   5,224

McCool         SD11    5,957   4,959       0     997
Norman         SD11    6,200  44,086  30,000   1,007
Taylor         SD11  344,708 330,586       0 169,468

Huberty       HD127   77,536  44,423       0  64,691
Jordan        HD127      791   1,731       0       0

Davis         HD129   49,816  42,193       0  70,317
Huls          HD129    1,482   1,314       0     167

Callegari     HD132   67,385  27,632       0 258,286
Brown         HD132    2,275   2,380       0      93

Murphy        HD133  110,665  89,167       0 211,004
Witt          HD133    9,043 139,943 240,100  34,207

Bohac         HD138   38,975  18,931       0  44,094
Smith         HD138   22,998  13,562 100,000 105,504

Salazar       HD143   
Weiskopf      HD143

Pineda        HD144   28,100   6,591       0  19,613
Pena          HD144    3,968   1,368       0       0

Lee           HD149    
Williams      HD149
Mullins       HD149

Riddle        HD150    8,175  24,461       0  92,216
Wilson        HD150   11,900   8,520   1,100   4,272

Note that there are differences from the last time. In January, there was a four-way race for HD136, which was eliminated by the San Antonio court in each of the interim maps. Ann Witt, who had been one of the candidates in HD136, moved over to HD133 and replaced the previous challenger, who apparently un-filed during the second period. In that second period, HD144 incumbent Ken Legler decided to drop out, and incumbent Dwayne Bohac picked up an opponent, and multiple people filed in HDs 143, 144, and 149.

Candidates Frank Salazar in HD143 and Jack Lee in HD149 did not have reports filed as of posting time. Their opponents did have reports filed, but those reports are not viewable until each candidate in the race has filed.

Witt had loaned herself $100K as of January; she has since more than doubled that amount. Whet Smith dropped $100K on himself in his challenge against Bohac. Why he’d do that and not have spent any of it as of the reporting deadline is a question I can’t answer. His $23K raised is a decent amount for the time period, but having more cash on hand with 30 days to go than the amount you loaned yourself makes no sense to me.

I’m surprised there hasn’t been more money raised in HD144. That’s a key pickup opportunity for Dems. Gilbert Pena has run for office twice before – HD143 in 2010, and SD06 in 2008 – and I had assumed he’d be the frontrunner in this primary because of that. Am I missing something here?

That’s all I’ve got. I’ll work on the other Dem primaries in Texas and the Harris County races next.

January finance reports: Harris County state races

Jan 31st, 2012

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

In addition to county candidates, my 2012 Democratic primary election page has information about state and federal candidates who will be on the ballot in Harris County. There are numerous contested primaries, and while I’m not tracking information about Republican races on that page, I thought it would be useful to check on the finance reports for all races of interest. Here’s the relevant data for candidates that have submitted reports, with my comments at the end. Candidates without a party affiliation listed are Democrats, and incumbents are noted as such.


Candidate      Office   Raised    Spent  Cash on hand
=====================================================
Nilsson         SBOE6    1,600      431         1,552
Jensen          SBOE6        0    1,088             0
Scott           SBOE6    1,010      362           647
Bahorich (R)    SBOE6      325      669        50,320

Cargill (R, I)  SBOE8   38,586   18,710        25,626
Ellis (R)       SBOE8    2,195    7,019         1,163

McCool (R)       SD11   10,047    8,515            31
Taylor (R)       SD11  329,124  154,172       169,778
Norman (R)       SD11    9,981    6,512        11,534

Huberty (R, I)  HD127   58,075   37,575        36,811
Jordan (R)      HD127    1,763      967             0

Davis (R,I)     HD129   20,475   45,286        62,852
Huls (R)        HD129    1,684    1,501           182

Allen (I)       HD131    5,565   14,542        18,764
Adams           HD131        0    4,697        59,572

Callegari (R,I) HD132    8,250   28,593       222,340
Brown (R)       HD132      975      779           195

Murphy (R,I)    HD133   72,015   38,365       182,682
Johnston (R)    HD133    6,244    6,015         6,244

Johnson         HD134    7,347        0         7,347
Davis (R, I)    HD134   83,035   61,807       102,570

Witt (R)        HD136    4,821   85,139        25,218
Schofield (R)   HD136   67,203   34,899        29,245
Holm (R)        HD136  142,997   98,594        44,402
DeAyala (R)     HD136  144,860   39,105       106,253

Smith           HD137    2,500      750         2,500
Madden          HD137   11,002      750        10,252
Wu              HD137   71,700      831        70,869
Winkler         HD137      850      750         1,378
Khan (R)        HD137   

Risner          HD144        0        0             0
Perez           HD144    1,300    2,569        14,547
Ybarra          HD144
Legner (R,I)    HD144   27,475   57,949        34,040

Miles (I)       HD146   15,900    2,750         6,800
Edwards         HD146        0        0         1,199

Coleman (I)     HD147  158,474  106,581       106,823
Hill            HD147

Riddle (R,I)    HD150   89,401   54,384       108,874
Wilson (R)      HD150    4,160    4,366           893

My notes:

– Donna Bahorich loaned herself $50,000, which is where her cash on hand figure comes from.

– Despite having the opportunity to support a “Senator McCool”, it seems clear that Republicans prefer State Rep. Larry Taylor in SD11.

– As noted before, Wanda Adams’ money comes from her Council campaign coffers. I will be interested to see who gives to her between now and the primary. Rep. Allen unsurprisingly has the support of her legislative colleagues, at least if a recent notice about a fundraiser for her is any indication.

– Given that HD134 is likely to be the highest profile legislative race in November regardless of what the next map looks like, I was curious how Rep. Sarah Davis’ efforts stacked up against her predecessors as they headed into their first re-election campaign. In 2008, Ellen Cohen reported $188K raised, $45K spent, and $203K on hand. None of Martha Wong’s 2004 included cash on hand information, so I can’t get an exact comparison with her. Her January 2004 report showed only $7K raised and $18K spent, but I doubt that indicates that she was cash-poor, as she was a generally strong fundraiser. Her July 2005 report is the first to include cash on hand, and she had $250K at that time. For January 2006 her numbers were $127K raised, $24K spent, and $349K on hand. All this is to say that Davis is not starting out in any better shape than either Cohen or Wong, at least financially.

– I have to say, that’s an impressive amount of fundraising in HD136, which currently does not exist in Harris County. As Greg noted, the one guy with no electoral experience had quite a strong showing, and Ann Witt’s burn rate is almost as impressive. Witt also has $100K in loans to herself outstanding.

– Not much action in HD137 so far. It’s the opposite of HD136 in the sense that it was originally obliterated by the Lege but restored by the court. My guess is that if it gets folded back into HD149, none of the Dems will remain in the race. Gene Wu’s money came primarily from himself ($50K) and a relative ($20K). MJ Khan had not filed a report at the time of this publication.

– Also not much action in HD144, which is currently a Dem-favorable district, but was originally made a stronger Republican district. Legler may be feeling the effect of the uncertainty, though he surely had plenty of time before the court got involved to raise a few bucks. Ybarra had not filed a report at publication time, and Risner reported no money raised or spent.

– Don’t be fooled by Rep. Borris Miles’ numbers. He’s perfectly capable of self-funding; he has $655K in loans to himself outstanding. This is Al Edwards’ first run as a non-incumbent in the post-Craddick era. Will his old buddies still support him?

– Ray Hill had not filed a report as of publication time. I don’t really expect him to get much financial support, but you never know.

That’s about all I’ve got. As the Trib had reported earlier, uncertainty over the map for 2012 has made fundraising more of a challenge for many candidates. We can see some of that here, but I daresay things will be clearer in the next reports, which would now be due in early March but presumably will get pushed back along with the primary date, if need be. On a related note, for a look at cash on hand among Senators, see Robert Miller.

When is a filing deadline not a filing deadline?

Dec 20th, 2011

by Charles Kuffner.

7 comments

Answer: When there will be another filing period after the filing deadline, as will be the case in Texas, according to the Secretary of State.

“Based on the federal court’s order handed down December 16, candidates will be permitted to file when the filing period reopens on a date yet to be determined and set to close, again by the federal court’s order, on February 1, 2012,” said Secretary of State spokesman Rich Parsons.

~~I presume this only applies to the offices without districts, i.e., Congress, State Senate, and State House. Those of you looking to file for County Commissioner or some such, it’s now too late.~~

I have been informed that the second filing period, to begin on a date to be determined but to end no later than February 1, will be for all offices, not just those affected by the redistricting litigation. My apologies for the error.

The big news of the day is that Nick Lampson will saddle up again.

Nick’s back.

“I am. I have sent in the filing papers, so that means I am in the race (for the 14th Congressional District),” said Former Rep. Nick Lampson, 66, who held the Ninth Congressional District for eight years before redistricting split it up, putting Jefferson County and part of Orange County into the Second District along with a substantial chunk of Houston’s northern suburbs. Republican Ted Poe won the reconfigured Second District in 2004.

Also in the race are Beaumont attorneys Michael Truncale, 53, and Jay Old, 48, who both are running as Republicans, as well as a handful of other GOP contenders.

The latest round of redistricting hasn’t quite played out yet, but Lampson, a Democrat, was confident enough that the newly drawn 14th District will remain relatively stable, containing somewhere between 80-85 percent of the former Ninth District, that he was willing to throw his hat in the ring.

Expect there to be a lot of money in that race. It’s winnable for a Democrat, and Lampson is the best person for that job. Welcome back, Rep. Lampson.

Meanwhile, Democrats also now have a candidate for Senate who can claim to be someone some people might have heard of, former State Rep. Paul Sadler.

Sadler served as chairman of the House Public Education Committee and played a major role in passage of several key education laws from 1995 through 2001.

“I decided to run because Texas needs an advocate who can put the good of the state ahead of all else,” said Sadler, an attorney and current executive director of The Wind Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes use of wind as an energy source. “Like all Texans I am disgusted by the gridlock in Washington. I have a solid record of working with members of both parties to accomplish legislation that improves the lives and education of our children and all Texans.” Sadler represented an East Texas House district.

Best I recall he was a pretty decent fellow. He ran for SD01 in a special election to replace the retiring Bill Ratliff in 2003 and lost 52-48 in the runoff to Sen. Kevin Eltife. I doubt he has any more potential to win than Gen. Sanchez did, but he’s someone who has successfully run for public office before. He’s the frontrunner for my vote in the primary.

There were three new filings for the Lege in Harris County yesterday: Cody Pogue in HD127, Paul Morgan in HD135, and Sarah Winkler in HC137. Someone had left a comment recently asking where all the longshot candidacies were, well, those first two would qualify for that. As for Winkler, she’s a trustee in Alief ISD – I interviewed her in 2009 when she last ran for re-election. Her entrance makes HD137 a four-candidate race, with all four being good quality.

Unfortunately, there are also a couple of lemons on the ballot as well. A perennial candidate who has mostly filed as a Republican in races past is in for SD07; I’m not naming him because he has a history of harassing behavior. Popping up like a pimple in Precinct 4 is hatemeister Dave Wilson, filing for the second election in a row for County Commissioner. He was booted from the ballot last time for having an invalid residential address; I’m not sure where the ensuing litigation now stands, but with any luck he’ll be thrown off again. Even if he isn’t, the good news is that this time he’s not alone – in a deliciously ironic twist, former HGLBT Political Caucus Chair Sean Carter Hemmerle filed to run as well. Don’t let me down here, Precinct 4 voters.

I mostly haven’t paid much attention to the GOP filings in Harris County, as I’m not that interested in them, but with the “deadline” having passed I thought I’d take a peek and see who’s doing what to whom. Here are the highlights:

Senate: With the addition of the gentleman from ESPN, there are now ten candidates for KBH’s soon-to-be-vacated seat, a few of whom you’re familiar with. One recent entrant is 2008 HD134 candidate Joe Agris, who has apparently decided to go the Grandma Strayhorn route and call himself “Doc Joe” Agris. My guess is the end result will be approximately the same.

Congress: Kevin Brady, Mike McCaul, and Pete Olsen have primary challengers. Two-time loser John Faulk has not filed for CD18, with Sean Siebert taking his place as the designated sacrificial lamb. State Sen. Mike Jackson has six opponents for CD36, while three people I’ve never heard of are running for CD34. My guess is that the A-listers are waiting to see what SCOTUS does before hopping in.

Judiciary: A couple of old familiar names pop up on the Supreme Court ballot: Steven Wayne Smith, who ousted Xavier Rodriguez in 2002, was ousted by Paul Green in 2004, and lost to Don Willett in 2006, is back to challenge Willett again. Rodriguez, of course, went on to a federal bench, and was one of the three judges in the San Antonio redistricting case, who ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. (I’m assuming this is Steven Wayne Smith – the Harris GOP website simply says “Steve Smith”.) Also making like a zombie is John Devine, wingnut former occupant of a Harris County bench who went on to lose races for County Attorney and CD10. He’s one of two people running against Justice David Medina. Ken Law gets to be the 2012 test of “Can a guy with a nice, easy, Anglo name knock off an incumbent Latino Republican in a primary even if the entire GOP establishment is against him” as he goes against Perry-appointed Judge Elsa Alcala on the Court of Criminal Appeals. CCA Judge Larry Meyers is also taking another crack at Presiding Judge Sharon Keller. In Harris County, several judges who lost in 2008 are seeking rematches, including Jeff Hastings, John Coselli, Lamar McCorkle, Roger Bridgwater, ~~Tad Halbach~~, and Brock Thomas.

SBOE: As noted before, Terri Leo is stepping down in District 6. Donna Bahorich is unopposed for the nomination to succeed her. Barbara Cargill has a challenger in District 8.

The Lege: State Rep. Larry Taylor has two opponents for SD11, which is being vacated by Sen. Jackson. Five Republican incumbent House members have primary opponents – Dan Huberty (HD127), John Davis (HD129), Bill Callegari (HD132), Jim Murphy (HD133), and Debbie Riddle (HD150). I can only shudder to think what a challenge from Riddle’s right might look like. There are still four people listed for HD136, including former Council Member Pam Holm, even though that district was eliminated by the San Antonio court. You never know what SCOTUS will do, of course. The most interesting name for a Democratic-held seat is another former Council member, MJ Khan, who is vying for the open HD137. Seems unlikely to me that the court will rule in a way to make both of these candidacies valid, but again, you never know.

County: We already knew that DA Pat Lykos and Tax Assessor Don Sumners had company. So do looney-tunes HCDE Trustee Michael Wolfe and newly-appointed County Commissioner Jack Cagle, who has two opponents in his primary. There are three candidates for the open HCDE Precinct 3 seat, with two others running to be the candidate who gets crushed in Precinct 1 in Roy Morales’ place. Finally, there are eight candidates for Sheriff, including 2004 Democratic nominee for Sheriff Guy Robert Clark, who also lost in the 2008 Dem primary to Sheriff Adrian Garcia. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, I guess.

Finally, both the HCDP and the Harris County GOP will have contested elections for Party Chair, as Lane Lewis and current GOP Chair Jared Woodfill drew last-day opponents. Keryl Douglas, the subject of that “draft” movement I mentioned before, will oppose Lewis, while Woodfill will face someone named Paul Simpson. I know basically nothing about either person, but I do know I’ll be voting for Lewis to be interim Chair at tonight’s CEC meeting.

That’s all I’ve got. Let me know what I missed. PDiddie and Texas Politics have more, and be sure to see the Texas Tribune and TDP pages for any other blanks to be filled.

New map, new opportunities: Harris County

May 10th, 2011

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

For our last stop on this tour we look at Harris County, which provided several pickup opportunities for Democrats last decade. How will they fare this time around?

Harris County's new districts

Republicans started the last decade with a 14-11 advantage – they intended it to be 15-10 after drawing Scott Hochberg out of his seat, but he moved into HD137, drawn at the time to be a 50-50 district, won it, and watched it grow more Democratic with each election. Democrats picked up seats in 2004, 2006, and 2008, then lost two of them in 2010, ending the decade at a 13-12 disadvantage. This map shrinks the Harris delegation to 24 seats and in doing so forces the only Dem-on-Dem pairing, as Hochberg and Hubert Vo were thrown together. At this point I don’t know who is going to do what. I’ve heard rumors about Hochberg moving to 134, which includes a fair amount of turf from his pre-2001 district, but that’s all they are. We won’t know till much later, and I doubt anyone will commit to a course of action until the Justice Department has weighed in.

Assuming there are no changes, the Republicans had some work to do to shore up their members. With the current map, Jim Murphy in 133 and Sarah Davis in 134 would be heavily targeted, with Dwayne Bohac in 138 and Ken Legler in 144 also likely to face stiff competition. By virtue of shifting districts west, where the population has grown and where the Republicans have more strength, they bought themselves some time. Here’s a look at the 2004 Molina numbers for the old districts versus the 2008 Sam Houston numbers in both the old and the new ones.


Dist 04 Molina  Old Houston  New Houston
========================================
126       32.9         42.0         37.9
127       28.3         33.3         32.4
128       35.5         38.9         38.0
129       33.4         36.8         38.6
130       23.6         29.5         26.4
132       30.3         41.4         40.6
133       44.0         51.2         41.6
134       43.3         44.7         42.6
135       35.5         42.1         39.5
136       28.1         31.7         40.0
138       41.1         44.8         40.3
144       39.9         45.1         42.1
150       28.4         36.4         33.0

A couple of massive shifts, in 133 to protect Murphy, and in 136 where Beverly Woolley gave up some turf to help out Bohac and Davis. Some Democratic districts got even bluer, though not all of them; losing a district allowed voters of all stripes to be spread around more. Woolley and Davis’ districts cover neighborhoods that are unlikely to change much, so what you see there is likely to be what you’ll get. Everywhere else, especially in the western territories – 132, 133, 135, and 138 – are likely to see change similar to what we saw last decade. I wouldn’t be surprised if their partisan numbers are already different. The question is how much time have the Republicans bought themselves, and how much effort and resources the Democrats will put into reaching the new residents out there; not much had been done in the past. Other than perhaps Davis, who will surely be attacked for voting mostly in lockstep with the rest of the Republicans, it’s not clear that any of these seats are winnable next year, but the results we get at that time may tell us when they’ll be ripe for the picking. I expect we’ll see some turnover over time, but I don’t know how much.

Interview with Joe Montemayor

Aug 16th, 2010

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

Joe Montemayor

We turn our attention this week to some of the Democratic candidates who are running in Republican-held districts. First up is Joe Montemayor, who ran for HD127 in 2008 against Joe Crabb and is running for it again this year against nominee Dan Huberty. Montemayor is a Navy veteran and retired ICE agent, and now owns a small business in Crosby. Here’s what we talked about:

Download the MP3 file

You can find a list of all interviews for this cycle on the 2010 Elections page.

Endorsement watch: That’s a wrap

Mar 1st, 2010

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Here’s the Sunday Chron:

Over the past few weeks, the Chronicle has made dozens of recommendations in selected contested races in the Democratic and Republican primaries. We reprint those endorsements here, roughly in the order they’ll appear on Tuesday’s ballot.

Reprint them they do, and it would seem that’s all we’re going to get. By my count, the following races will go un-endorsed:

– County Judge (Dem), and District Clerk (GOP)

– CD22 (Dem) and CD29 (GOP)

– HD127 (GOP), HD134 (GOP), and HD148 (GOP)

I’m stunned that they will not address the Democratic primary for County Judge and the GOP primary for HD127, which is the only open legislative seat on the ballot and where the winner of that race will be the heavy favorite to win in November. Did they run out of time getting the interviews scheduled? That’s my guess, based on the late start they had. I say they owe us an explanation for why they left some of these races unexamined. I mean, I guess they could still do more tomorrow, but I don’t see why that would happen at this point.

Here comes Addie

Aug 11th, 2009

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Timing is everything in this life.

[Former Houston City Council Member Addie] Wiseman tells me she is going to run a full and vigorous campaign to replace State Rep. Joe Crabb. Details are still being worked out, she didn’t have a campaign manager or a treasurer when we talked. However, she said she’s well prepared and feels this is really a good fit for her.

Wiseman was term-limited out in 2007, so this opportunity is coming along at a good time for her. There had been some talk that she might run for Jerry Eversole’s seat on Commissioner’s Court next year when he steps down, but apparently that’s not the case. I expect she’ll have as good a shot as anyone to succeed Rep. Crabb.

Elsewhere in election news, freshman State Rep. Marisa Marquez of El Paso, who ousted longtime Rep. Paul Moreno in a Democratic primary last year, may have a primary opponent oh her own, and State Sen. Dan Patrick says he is running for re-election next year. I don’t know that this “answers weeks of speculation that he might be appointed to or run for” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s seat in the event she steps down, but it is suggestive, since he was under no real time pressure to announce his re-election bid. Still, if KBH does resign and Rick Perry comes a-callin’, do you think he’d say No? I don’t.

Finally, the word today is that Diane Trautman has announced she will run again for Harris County Tax Assessor. I haven’t seen a press release or anything, but it’s been mentioned a few times on Twitter – I’m guessing she said something at today’s HCDP Brown Bag Lunch event – and there’s now a Facebook page for her candidacy. I’ve heard of another possible candidate for this office, but I don’t know where that person stands as yet.

Crabb not running for re-election

Aug 10th, 2009

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Republican State Rep. Joe Crabb, whose district is HD127 up in Kingwood, is not running for re-election next year.

The announcement came when he briefly spoke at the Crosby Alumni Association Reunion dinner.

Crabb represents District 127 in the Texas House of Representatives.

“It has been 18 exciting years,” Crabb said, “but after 49 years as a Methodist preacher and 26 in the military reserves, it’s time to move on to the next years which will include some fill-in for some pastor friends, some business ventures and much more time with the family.

“We moved to Crosby toward the end of WWII. Other than our parents and church, your friendship contributed the most to our values. We did all our public school education here in Crosby and will always be Crosby Buffaloes at heart,” Crabb said.

HD127 is solidly Republican. Diane Trautman made a nice run at it in 2006, helped by the fact that Crabb was never all that popular within the GOP – he’s drawn primary challengers, usually winning with less than 60% of the vote, for several cycles – but this is a safe seat for the Republicans. Stace, who notes that there have been retirement rumors around Crabb for years, has more.

HD127

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