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Pete Sessions

A roundup of runoffs

Mar 3rd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
12 comments

I was going to just do a basic recap of all the primary races that will require runoffs, and then this happened, and I had to do some redesign.

Rep. Van Taylor

U.S. Rep. Van Taylor, R-Plano, has decided to end his reelection campaign after he was forced into a primary runoff amid 11th-hour allegations of infidelity.

Taylor made the stunning announcement Wednesday, hours after he finished his five-way primary with 49% of the vote, just missing the cutoff for winning the primary outright. The runner-up was former Collin County Judge Keith Self, who is now likely to become the next congressman for the 3rd District.

“About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world,” Taylor wrote in an email to supporters. “I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life. I want to apologize for the pain I have caused with my indiscretion, most of all to my wife Anne and our three daughters.”

The day before the primary, the conservative outlet Breitbart News posted a story that Taylor had had a monthslong affair with a Plano woman, Tania Joya, who he had paid $5,000 to keep quiet. The publication reported that she provided it a phone screen shot purporting to be communications with Taylor and a bank record showing that she deposited $5,000 into her account. The Texas Tribune has not been able to independently verify the report.

[…]

Taylor has until March 16 to remove his name from the runoff ballot, which he plans to do, according to a spokesperson. After he does that, Self is automatically the Republican nominee for the district. There is a Democratic nominee for the seat, Sandeep Srivastava, but they face long odds after the district was redrawn last year to favor Republicans.

Holy shit. There’s a link to that article in the Trib story, which I refuse to include. It’s one of the less important aspects of this story, but the timing is curious. Why not publish this earlier, if that’s what you’re going to do, and not take the chance that he could win without a runoff? It gets a whole lot more complicated for the Republicans if he withdraws after winning the primary, and he came quite close to doing just that. I don’t understand any of this.

Anyway, this is where I was originally going to start this post. Here’s a list of the races that have gone into overtime. You can also read the Decision Desk wrapup for some more details.

Statewide Dem

Lite Guv – Mike Collier vs Michelle Beckley.

AG – Rochelle Garza vs Joe Jaworski. As of Wednesday afternoon Jaworski had less than a 2K vote lead over Lee Merritt. When I first looked at this, it was a 3K lead, with all of the remaining ballots in Harris County, where Jaworski started the day with a 6K vote lead over Merritt. That had shrunk to a bit less than 5K votes by the afternoon, which almost made my logic that Jaworski would easily hold his lead look idiotic, but the gap appears to have been too large for Merritt to overcome. But who knows, there may be a bunch of late-fixed mail ballots out there, so let’s put a pin in this one.

Comptroller – Janet Dudding vs Angel Vega.

Land Commissioner – Sandragrace Martinez vs Jay Kleberg.

Congressional Dem

CD01 – JJ Jefferson vs Victor Dunn.

CD15 – Ruben Ramirez vs Michelle Vallejo, who has a 300-vote lead over John Rigney.

CD21 – Claudia Zapata vs Ricardo Villarreal.

CD24 – Jan McDowell vs Derrik Gay, who rebounded after my initial bout of pessimism to finish in second place.

CD28 – Rep. Henry Cuellar vs Jessica Cisneros. Cisneros had a big early lead that was mostly a function of the order in which the counties reported their results. Cisneros crushed it in Bexar County, then watched as Starr, Webb, and Zapata erased her lead. In the end, if what I’m seeing is the actual final tally, it was Cuellar who missed winning outright by nine (!) votes. This one could change to a Cuellar win as the overseas and provisional votes are tallied, and then of course there may be a recount. Hold onto your hats.

CD30 – Jasmine Crockett vs Jane Hope Hamilton.

CD38 – Diana Martinez Alexander vs. Duncan Klussman. This is the only Congressional runoff in Harris County for Dems.

SBOE Dem

SBOE1 – Melissa Ortega vs Laura Marquez. The third-place finisher had big charter school backing, so this race can go back to being one you don’t need to know about.

SBOE2 – Victor Perez vs Pete Garcia.

SBOE4 – Coretta Mallet-Fontenot vs Staci Childs. This is in Harris County, it’s the seat Lawrence Allen vacated in his unsuccessful run for HD26. I’ll put this one on my to do list for runoff interviews.

SBOE11 – Luis Sifuentes vs James Whitfield. Double-timer DC Caldwell finished third, while also losing in the Republican primary for this same seat to incumbent Pat Hardy. Let us never speak of this again.

State Senate Dem

SD27 – Morgan LaMantia vs Sara Stapleton-Barrera.

State House Dems

HD22 – Joseph Trahan vs Christian Hayes.

HD37 – Ruben Cortez vs Luis Villarreal

HD70 – Cassandra Hernandez vs Mihaela Plesa. This one was an almost even split among three candidates, with third place finisher Lorenzo Sanchez 29 votes behind Plesa and 102 votes behind Hernandez. Another overseas/provisional vote count to watch and another recount possibility.

HD76 – Suleman Lalani vs Vanesia Johnson. This is the new Dem-likely seat in Fort Bend.

HD100 – Sandra Crenshaw vs Venton Jones.

HD114 – Alexandra Guio vs John Bryant. Bryant was a Dem Congressman in the 90’s, in the old CD05. After winning a squeaker against Pete Sessions in 1994, Bryant tried his luck in the primary for Senate in 1996, eventually losing in a runoff to Victor Morales. Bryant just turned 75 (why anyone would want to get back into the Lege at that age boggles my mind, but maybe that’s just me), while Guio is quite a bit younger. Should be an interesting matchup. This was a five-way race with everyone getting between 17 and 25 percent, so endorsements from the ousted candidates may make a difference.

HD147 – Jolanda Jones vs Danielle Bess.

Harris County Dems

185th Criminal District Court – Andrea Beall vs Judge Jason Luong.

208th Criminal District Court – Beverly Armstrong vs Kim McTorry. Judge Greg Glass finished third.

312th Family District Court – Teresa Waldrop vs Judge Chip Wells.

County Civil Court at Law #4 – Manpreet Monica Singh vs Treasea Treviño. David Patronella was in second place after early voting, but fell behind as the Tuesday votes came in.

Commissioners Court, Precinct 4 – Lesley Briones vs Ben Chou.

Justice of the Peace, Precinct 1, Place 2 – Sonia Lopez vs Steve Duble.

Republicans

Not really interested in a complete rundown, but it’s Paxton versus P Bush for AG, Dawn Buckingham versus Tim Westley for Land Commissioner, and Wayne Christian versus Sarah Stogner for Railroad Commissioner. At least that last one will be interesting.

As noted yesterday, it will be Alexandra Mealer versus Vidal Martinez for the nomination for County Judge. I have no feelings about this.

I will put some other primary news and notes in a separate post. Let me know if I missed a race.

Filing update: More candidates than you can count

Dec 15th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

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

Judge Lina Hidalgo

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

Some other bits of interest:

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

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

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

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

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

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

CD17 poll: Sessions 45, Kennedy 42

Sep 4th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Another mind-blowing poll result, in a district that no one has seen as competitive.

Rick Kennedy

In a district where 56 percent of voters supported President Donald Trump in 2016, Democratic congressional candidate Rick Kennedy is in a strong position to challenge the Republican control of Texas’ 17th Congressional district. Our recent survey of likely 2020 voters finds that Kennedy is within striking distance of former Congressman Pete Sessions who moved to the district last year after losing a race in his former Dallas based congressional district.

While Kennedy is fairly well-known and well-liked for a challenger in this traditional Republican stronghold (41% know enough about him to have an opinion and 63% of this cohort have a favorable opinion of him), he is clearly being helped by two factors: 1) Sessions is bringing a lot of baggage with him from northern Texas and 2) Democratic nominee Joe Biden is only trailing by 1 point in his race against the sitting President.

Normally running against someone who spent close to 20 years in Washington DC would be a challenge but that is not the case in this race. Sessions is known by 69 percent of likely voters and among these voters, 57 percent have a negative opinion of the former Congressman. This includes 21 percent of Republican voters who are familiar with Sessions. When it comes to the top of the ticket, statewide numbers in Texas have shown a close race between Biden and Trump, and the 17th district is following this trend with Biden receiving the support of 47 percent of voters in the district while Trump just one point ahead with just five percent undecided.

Given the state of the Presidential race, and the negative views surrounding Session’s connection to the Ukraine scandal that the President was impeached over, it is not surprising to see such close numbers in the congressional race. Indeed, Kennedy is only trailing Sessions by 3 points (42% to 45%) with 13% of voters undecided.

Naturally, there’s a Patrick Svitek tweet as the source for this. You can see a slightly wordier version of this on Kennedy’s campaign webpage.

For sure, voters have good reason to dislike Pete Sessions, reasons that go well beyond mere carpetbagging. But let’s be clear, this district wasn’t on anyone’s radar because Beto lost it by ten points, with Kennedy and lower-profile Democrats trailing by fifteen. As Matt Mohn points out, there’s not a lot of Dem-friendly turf in this district. It wasn’t even on Rachel Bitecofer’s extensive watch list, as it lacks the higher concentration of college-educated white folks that have made suburban districts trend blue. And not to put too fine a point on it, but Kennedy has no money, so even if Joe Biden is running right on Donald Trump’s heels here, Kennedy would be in a weaker position to capitalize on it than a better-funded candidate would be.

If I sound a little skeptical, it’s because I am. CD17 was more Republican than the state as a whole, in 2016 and in 2018. If it truly is basically a tossup at the Presidential level, we should be seeing even better Democratic results statewide and in other Congressional districts. I’d expect to see polls showing Biden up by three to five points to be consistent with this. Is this impossible? No, not at all. But it is exceptional, and I would want some correlation before I felt comfortable touting it as evidence of anything.

And speaking of other poll results, here are two more of interest:

In CD21, a poll sponsored by End Citizens United has Wendy Davis tied with freshman Rep. Chip Roy 46-46, with Biden up by one point, 48-47, on Trump. An earlier poll had Davis down one and Biden up three, so basically just some float within the margin of error. These results feel closer to what I’d expect if Biden is more or less even or a point or two behind in Texas. If anything, I might expect Davis, as well known as any Texas Dem and with a pile of money, to be doing a little better. This poll included a bit of negative messaging on Roy, which moved the numbers to 49-45 for Davis.

In HD138, one of the top Democratic targets in the State House, Akilah Bacy leads Lacey Hull 48-42, with Biden up ten, 53-43. After “balanced positive and negative messages for both candidates”, Bacy remains up by six, 50-44. This one also feels about right to me. If that Commissioners Court poll is in the ballpark, Bacy should be in a very strong position.

That’s your polling news for today. I’m sure I’ll be back soon with more, the way this has been going.

Once again with female Congressional candidates

Aug 9th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

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

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

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

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

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

(more…)

2020 primary runoff results: Congress

Jul 15th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Runoff roundup

Mar 7th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

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

US Senate – MJ Hegar versus Royce West

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

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

Railroad Commissioner – Chrysta Castaneda versus Roberto Alonzo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2020 primary results: Senate and Congress

Mar 4th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

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

For Congress:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One more of these to go.

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

Our first Congressional race ratings

Dec 3rd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

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

Lean Dem

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

Tossup

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

Lean GOP

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

Likely GOP

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

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

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher

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

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

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

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

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

October 2019 campaign finance reports: Congress

Nov 5th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Moving on to the Q3 FEC reports, we again have new candidates making their appearance. The January roundup is here, which closed out the 2017-18 election cycle, the April report is here, and the July report is here. For comparison, the October 2017 report is here. The FEC summary page for Congress is here and for the Senate is here.

MJ Hegar – Senate
Chris Bell – Senate
Amanda Edwards – Senate
Royce West – Senate
Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez – Senate
Sema Hernandez – Senate
Adrian Ocegueda – Senate
Michael Cooper – Senate

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Colin Allred – CD32

Henry Cuellar – CD28
Jessia Cisneros – CD28

Hank Gilbert – CD01
Elisa Cardnell – CD02
Sean McCaffity – CD03
Tanner Do – CD03
Stephen Daniel – CD06
Mike Siegel – CD10
Pritesh Gandhi – CD10
Shannon Hutcheson – CD10
Rick Kennedy – CD17
Jennie Lou Leeder – CD21
Wendy Davis – CD21
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Nyanza Moore – CD22
Derrick Reed – CD22
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Liz Wahl – CD23
Rosey Ramos Abuabara – CD23
Jan McDowell – CD24
Kim Olson – CD24
Candace Valenzuela – CD24
Crystal Lee Fletcher – CD24
John Biggan – CD24
Julie Oliver – CD25
Heidi Sloan – CD25
Carol Ianuzzi – CD26
Christine Eady Mann – CD31
Murray Holcomb – CD31
Dan Jangigian – CD31
Eric Hanke – CD31
Donna Imam – CD31


Dist  Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
============================================================
Sen   Hegar         2,058,080  1,211,904        0    893,657       
Sen   Bell            206,629     94,894   10,000    111,734
Sen   Edwards         557,430    219,645        0    337,785
Sen   West            347,546    172,926  202,162    376,782
Sen   T-Ramirez       459,442    233,953        0    225,489
Sen   Hernandez         7,551      7,295        0      3,891
Sen   Ocegueda          1,048        262      900        786
Sen   Cooper

07    Fletcher      1,789,359    391,448        0  1,439,978
32    Allred        1,705,723    355,711        0  1,453,457  

28    Cuellar       1,099,758    400,328        0  3,244,434
28    Cisneros        465,026    173,329        0    291,697

02    Cardnell        177,733    115,886        0     61,847
03    McCaffity       155,404      7,080        0    148,324
03    Do               16,947     15,725        0      1,221
06    Daniel          111,009     70,409        0     40,600
10    Siegel          355,691    207,532   20,000    161,650
10    Gandhi          527,967    209,989        0    317,978
10    Hutcheson       534,515    161,665    4,000    372,850
17    Kennedy          31,298     15,079   11,953     17,646
21    Leeder           15,697     14,509        0      1,188
21    Davis           940,581    336,645    8,863    603,936
22    Kulkarni        817,139    299,219        0    545,687
22    Moore           112,311    102,863   12,915      9,447
22    Reed            114,137     60,268        0     53,868
23    Ortiz Jones   1,652,739    303,861        0  1,440,396
23    Wahl              9,000      6,521    1,000      2,478
23    Abuabara
24    McDowell         57,515     52,519        0     18,316
24    Olson           567,394    241,708   20,000    325,685
24    Valenzuela      201,377     92,814        0    108,563
24    Fletcher        122,427     35,099      823     87,327
24    Biggan           45,893     35,999   13,834      9,894
25    Oliver          223,417     75,836    2,644    147,580
25    Sloan            56,043     23,125        0     32,918
26    Ianuzzi          67,828     35,539   47,604     32,288
31    Mann             95,449     58,685        0     38,200
31    Holcomb          66,610     57,770        0      8,840
31    Jangigian        23,265      2,248    1,500     21,016
31    Hanke            18,302      9,098        0      9,203
31    Imam             60,441      7,088        0     53,353

There’s a lot here – so much that it’s taken me this long to post, and so much that I thought about splitting this into two separate posts – but let’s start with the Senate candidates. MJ Hegar has been in the race the longest, and she has raised the most, matching her performance from the previous quarter. All the other candidates (save for the low-profile no-hope types, and hey isn’t it nice to finally see Sema Hernandez file a finance report?) entered during Q3 and their finance reports can be graded on a curve as a result. That said, time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking, and John Cornyn keeps on raising piles of money, so everyone needs to kick it up a notch or two. It was nice that every candidate at the Texas Signal candidate forum was asked about their path to victory, but raising money is a key part of that, even if it is a tacky subject to bring up. We’re going to need to see a lot more in the January reports.

Incumbents Lizzie Fletcher and Colin Allred are doing what they need to do. Their potential Republican opponents are raising a bunch of money, but they’re staying ahead of them, which they need to keep doing. Jessica Cisneros has done well in her challenge to Henry Cuellar, who is made of money, and she is getting some national press for her efforts. I still don’t know how much either money or national attention will mean in this race, but I do know that if she does win, it will be a very big deal and will make a lot of Dem incumbents look over their shoulders.

There are a number of new names on this report. Hank Gilbert is not going to win in CD01 because it’s a 70%+ Trump district, but Hank is a mensch and Louie Gohmert is a death eater from a hell dimension, so the least I can do is note that Hank is taking on the thankless task of challenging Gohmert. We noted last time that Lorie Burch has ended her campaign in CD03, and now several others have stepped in. Sean McCaffity, who is off to a strong fundraising start, and Tanner Do have reports for this quarter, and they will have company next time. Chris Suprun, whom you may remember as one of the wannabe faithless electors from 2016, has entered the race. He had also run in the CD27 special election last year, and had a brush with the voter ID law before that. Plano attorney Lulu Seikaly is also in the race, and I apologize to her for making her follow that.

Elsewhere in new candidates, Heidi Sloan has entered the race in CD25. Julie Oliver, the nominee from 2018, is well ahead of her fundraising pace from that year, so we’ll see how that goes. There are now a bunch of candidates in CD31, though I can tell you now that that article from August is out of date. I’ll have more on that in a separate post. Among the newcomers here are Dan Jangigian, Eric Hanke, and Donna Imam. Jangigian may have the most interesting resume of any Congressional candidate in recent memory – he’s a onetime Olympic bobsledder, and acted in the legendary bad movie The Room. He was subsequently portrayed in the movie The Disaster Artist, the movie about the guy who made The Room, by Zac Efron. And now he’s running for Congress. What have you done with your life?

A more familiar candidate making her first appearance here is Wendy Davis, who took in nearly a million bucks for CD21. That’s one of several top target races where there’s a clear frontrunner, at least as far as fundraising goes, which is a change from 2018 when most of the hotter primaries had the money more widely dispersed. Gina Ortiz Jones did even better, topping $1.6 million already. Rosey Abubara, who I thought might give her a challenge, has not filed a report. Candace Valenzuela and Crystal Fletcher have raised a few bucks in CD24, but Kim Olson is well ahead of them both, while Sri Kulkarni is lapping the field in CD22. The exception is in CD10, where all three candidates are doing well, but 2018 nominee Mike Siegel is a step behind Pritesh Gandhi and Shannon Hutcheson.

Rounding up the rest, Elisa Cardnell stepped it up in CD02, but faces a steep challenge as Dan Crenshaw is one of the biggest fundraisers in Congress now. Stephen Daniel is doing all right in CD06. I know their totals don’t look like that much compared to some of these other folks, but remember how much time we spent in 2018 talking about how rare it was for any Democratic challenger to raise as much as $100K for an entire cycle? We’ve come a long way. And I’m still hoping for either Rick Kennedy to start doing more in CD17 or for someone else to jump in, even if that race is a big longshot. The Quorum Report made my heart flutter with a teaser about a poll testing former CD17 Rep. Chet Edwards against carpetbagger Pete Sessions. I don’t know if this is a real thing or just someone’s idea of a cool thought experiment, but I’d be all in on another run by Edwards. We’ll see if there’s anything to it.

“Congressman 1”

Oct 11th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

Way to go, Pete!

Former U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions is an unnamed member of Congress mentioned in an indictment against two business associates of President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, according to NBC News.

The two Soviet-born men, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, were arrested late Wednesday night at Dulles Airport outside of Washington, D.C, per ABC News. The Wall Street Journal reported that the two men are accused of “violating campaign finance rules, including funneling Russian money into President Trump’s campaign.”

Regarding Sessions, the indictment against the two men states that they “committed to raise $20,000 or more for a then-sitting U.S. Congressman” who is referred to in the court document as “Congressman-1.” The indictment goes on to state that the congressman “had been the beneficiary of approximately $3 million” in donations from a campaign committee. NBC News and other outlets identified that person as Sessions and reported that the committee was a Trump-aligned super PAC.

Federal authorities alleged that around the same time, Parnas “sought Congressman-1’s assistance in causing the U.S. government to remove or recall” the American ambassador to Ukraine at the time, Marie Yovanovitch. Yovanovitch was a well-regarded diplomat who came into disfavor within the Trump administration and was removed from her post earlier this year.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Sessions, in his capacity as House Rules Committee chairman, advocated for the ouster of Yovanovitch.

I’ll provide a few links for supplemental reading in a minute, but just ponder that this story came out a week after Sessions announced his intention to move to another city so he could run in a now-open Congressional district, much to the displeasure of the outgoing incumbent, a fellow Republican. Timing is everything in this life, ain’t it? Slate, the Signal, Daily Kos, and TPM, which was way ahead of the curve, has more.

Secondhand Sessions

Oct 7th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

If at first you don’t succeed, find something easier to do.

Rep. Bill Flores

Former U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions formally launched his campaign Thursday to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, opting against running again in his old Dallas-based district and pressing forward in Flores’ seat despite some local Republican unease.

“My goal is to work together to restore the Republican majority in the House and maintain our control of the Senate and White House,” Sessions said in a news release Thursday afternoon. “My support for President Trump is unwavering and I will dedicate my time in office to help enact his conservative agenda.”

Later in the afternoon, Sessions held an announcement event at the McLennan County GOP headquarters in Waco, where he railed against Democrats who he said have gone “completely left,” and promised to be “vigorous” in his campaign.

Sessions lost reelection last year to Dallas Democrat Collin Allred, who defeated Sessions by 7 percentage points. Sessions spent months toying with a rematch in the 32nd District until emerging Tuesday as a likely contender for Flores’ seat, which is about 80 miles south of the 32nd Congressional District and in more safely Republican territory.

Sessions, who plans to move to the 17th District, was born in Waco and grew up there. He previously represented some of the counties that are now in the 17th District. One of those counties is Limestone County, and its GOP chair, Lance Phillips, introduced Sessions on Thursday, emphasizing his connections to the area.

“This is not foreign territory for him by any stretch of the imagination,” Phillips said.

The notion of a Sessions bid for Flores’ seat prompted a backlash from some local Republicans in the 17th District. Among those speaking out was Flores himself, who balked at Sessions moving toward a run without consulting the incumbent and who said the feedback from district GOP leaders was “not positive.”

“TX17 is blessed with a strong cadre of emerging leaders who live, work, raise families, and serve the communities in our district,” Flores told The Texas Tribune after Sessions’ announcement Thursday. “Some of these leaders would be world class Congressional candidates for whom I would be honored to vote and to have represent our neighbors and me in Congress.”

It’s pretty funny, and even after Sessions belatedly reached out to his former colleague, Flores was still like “yeah, whatever, try to beat the candidates that actually do live here then we’ll see”. Sessions has been putting out statements about how he’s all in on Trump, and while that’s much more likely to help him in CD17 than it would have in CD32, maybe even here that will wear a bit thin. Democrat Rick Kennedy is running again, and I’m hoping either he can raise more money this time around, or someone else who can raise more money decides to give it a try. This could be a way-under-the-radar opportunity if Pete Sessions gets on the ballot again. The Observer has more.

Rep. Will Hurd to step down

Aug 2nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

Wow. I did not see this coming.

Rep. Will Hurd

The U.S. House’s last black Republican member, Rep. Will Hurd of Helotes, announced Thursday that he is retiring from Congress. President Donald Trump’s racist comments about elected officials weighed heavily on Hurd, who has often spoken out against the rhetoric.

In announcing his resignation on Twitter, he alluded to future plans, but provided no specifics.

“I have made the decision to not seek reelection for the 23rd Congressional District of Texas in order to pursue opportunities outside the halls of Congress to solve problems at the nexus between technology and national security,” he wrote.

It was unclear as the news broke whether or not state or national Republicans have a back-up plan for a candidate in this district. Several state and national Republican operatives reached out to the Tribune to react to the news. Nearly all of the commentary involved highly explicit language.

It is apparent that this reelection would have been difficult.

Veteran Gina Ortiz Jones nearly defeated Hurd last cycle, and Democrats were emphatic that they would put all of their muscle in helping her capture this district, which has become something of a white whale for the party.

Emphasis mine. I’d feel sorry for those SOBs if they deserved any sympathy, but they don’t. I do however have an idea of why they’re so upset, and it’s because they’re in the same state I am, which is caught off guard. I mean, earlier that same day came this Politico piece about potential Republican retirements, and well, see for yourself:

Among those on the retirement watch list include older members, like Hal Rogers of Kentucky, Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin and Don Young of Alaska; moderates, like Fred Upton of Michigan and Greg Walden of Oregon; lawmakers facing tougher races, like Texans Michael McCaul and Kenny Marchant, and Ann Wagner of Missouri; and the two members under indictment, Duncan Hunter of California and Chris Collins of New York.

History suggests that an uptick in retirements is common for the minority party after a shift in power. More than a dozen House Democrats left Congress after the 2010 tea party wave that swept Republicans back to power — and seven House Republicans have already announced their departures from politics, just seven months into the cycle.

“Unfortunately, I am afraid there may be more coming,” said Sarah Chamberlain, president and CEO of the Republican Main Street Partnership, which supports centrist Republicans in swing districts.

The pile-up of retirements could complicate the GOP’s path back to the majority after a bruising midterm election. Almost immediately after Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas) announced he would not seek reelection last week, election forecasters shifted the race from “lean Republican” to “toss-up.”

Olson, who came to Congress in 2009, would have faced a competitive reelection battle in his district in the Houston suburbs, where he just narrowly fended off a Democratic challenger last year. And Democrats are dumping resources into Texas this cycle, hoping to build on their gains in the midterms.

“Texas is the biggest battleground state. Republicans know it,” said Abhi Rahman, communications director for the Texas Democratic Party. “We wouldn’t be surprised if there were more retirements because Republicans know their 2020 prospects in Texas are doomed.”

I guarantee you, if there had been any whispers of Hurd hitting the exit, it would have been in that story. This was a bolt from the blue, and it had to have left a mark. Good. Also, too, if McCaul and Marchant drop out, the Republicans are really in a world of hurt.

As for Dem opposition in CD23, Gina Ortiz Jones is off to a fast start in fundraising. She has two opponents in the primary so far, though only Rosey Aburabara looks like a serious challenger. I don’t expect anyone else with any heft to get in on the Dem side. I have no idea who might get in on the Republican side, but my best guess would be someone from the Bexar County part of the district.

One more thing:

Because I love you all, I can and will tell you that the others are:

Ted Poe (CD02)
Sam Johnson (CD03)
Jeb Hensarling (CD05)
Joe Barton (CD06)
John Culberson (CD07)
Mike Conaway (CD11)
Rubén Hinojosa (CD15)
Beto O’Rourke (CD16)
Randy Neugebauer (CD19)
Lamar Smith (CD21)
Pete Olson (CD22)
Will Hurd (CD23)
Blake Farenthold (CD27)
Gene Green (CD29)
Pete Sessions (CD32)

As noted later by Svitek, that doesn’t include John Ratcliffe (CD04), who is reported to be Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence. Add in McCaul and Marchant and we’d have turned over more than half the delegation in the last three elections. That’s pretty amazing.

There sure was a lot of money spent on Congressional races in Texas

Feb 3rd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

If we’re lucky, it will be the start of a trend.

Never has Texas seen as much money spent on Congressional campaigns as it did in 2018.

New campaign finance data shows that the state didn’t just beat its old campaign spending records for Congress, it obliterated them. More than $97 million was poured into the November general election in 2018 for the U.S. House. The previous spending record was in 2004 when just under $60 million was spent by candidates running for Congress in Texas.

The record spending for the state’s 36 House seats was spurred by Texas suddenly having a half dozen competitive races that became a key part of the national battle for the control of Congress. Three of those races accounted for nearly one-third of all the spending.

[…]

Overall, the 36 Congressional districts averaged more than $2.6 million spent per contest.

That spending doesn’t count candidates who lost in the primaries like Republican Kathaleen Wall, who spent $6.2 million of mostly her own money in a failed attempt to win the 2nd Congressional District primary in Houston. Despite not making it to the general election, Wall still ended up spending more money on her race than any House candidate in Texas. Republican Dan Crenshaw, a retired Navy SEAL won the 2nd Congressional District primary and defeated Democrat Todd Litton in November. Crenshaw spent almost $1.7 million on his campaign.

The 2004 election was the one following the Tom DeLay re-redistricting of 2003, so that money was being spent in the five Democratic-held districts where Republican challengers were seeking to oust the Dem incumbents with the help of the new, friendly map. In other words, the same basic dynamic of multiple competitive races, which led to a crap-ton of money being raised. I know people have a lot of negative opinions – for good reasons! – about money in politics, but the fact remains that money gets spent when there are competitive elections. When there are no competitive elections, much less money gets spent. All things being equal, I’d rather have the competitive elections.

Here’s the FEC summary page for Texas Democratic Congressional campaigns from 2017-18, and here’s the last roundup of reports I did, at the end of Q3. The three biggest-money races were the ones you’d expect – CDs 07, 23, and 32 – but as we know there were four other Dem candidates who raised over a million bucks for the cycle, and a lot more big-money primaries, of which CD07 was definitely one.

To me, the big under-reported story is in how much money was raised by candidates in “non-competitive” races. Dayne Steele, God bless her, raised over $800K. Julie Oliver, who was actually in a reasonably competitive race that no one paid attention to, raised over $500K. Candidates Vanessa Adia (CD12), Adrienne Bell (CD14), Linsey Fagan (CD26), and Eric Holguin (CD27), none of whom cracked forty percent, combined to raise over $500K. The candidates in the highest profile races brought in staggering amounts of money – and note that we haven’t even mentioned the candidates whose name rhymes with “Schmeto” – but I cannot overstate how mind-bogglingly impressive what these candidates did is. They deserve more credit for helping to generate and sustain the enthusiasm that led to the massive turnout and major downballot Democratic wins than they will ever receive. We should be so lucky as to have a repeat of this performance in 2020.

Pete Sessions’ fine whine

Dec 23rd, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

There ain’t enough cheese in the entire state of Wisconsin to accompany this.

Rep. Pete Sessions’ campaign might be over. But he isn’t over it.

The Dallas Republican is still smoldering about the circumstances that led to his decisive loss in November to Democrat Colin Allred, a first-time political candidate who ended Sessions’ 22-year career in Congress and helped tip the House back to Democratic control.

“It required an incredible amount of money and an overwhelming sense of mischaracterization,” Sessions told The Dallas Morning News at his Capitol office.

That indignation burned through a recent exit interview, one that included a matter-of-fact assessment by the chairman of the House Rules Committee that he’s “not done with politics.”

His biggest campaign regret, he allowed, was that he didn’t “take more credit for the things that I do.” The campaign’s X factor had nothing to do with his own race, he said, but instead the success that Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke had in bringing Democrats to the polls.

He struggled to win over new voters, he vented, because of the “Democratic Party and their allies who smeared” him as an out-of-touch Beltway insider — and worse.

“I got tattooed this election,” he said. “People fell victim to thinking, ‘Wow, he’s for dogfighting. Wow, he does nothing for seniors. Wow, he voted against cancer drugs.’”

There’s more, and you should click over and savor every last word of it. Honestly, there’s no sweeter sound than those of a PAC-fattened kingpin complaining about how unfair it is that he has to get a real job now. Don’t worry, Pete, I’m sure the gravy train will make a stop at your office before you have to vamoose. In the meantime, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

The next round of redistricting is going to be even more fun

Dec 2nd, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

Close races do complicate things.

Rep. Beto O’Rourke

Texas Republicans collected half of the votes statewide in congressional races this month. ­But even after Democrats flipped two districts, toppling GOP veterans in Dallas and Houston, Republicans will control 23 of the state’s 36 seats.

It’s the definition of gerrymandering.

“You wouldn’t expect perfect proportionality, but when something is really skewed, that’s probably a sign that something’s amiss,” said redistricting expert Michael Li.

Demographically and politically, the state is evolving — faster in some places than in others. Many Texas Republicans in Congress faced surprisingly close calls in the 2018 midterms.

Boundaries drawn early this decade to maximize GOP power blunted the damage. But the bulwarks built after the last census have begun to weaken. The midterms exposed unexpected shortcomings as college-educated white women — traditionally a major source of votes for the Texas GOP — abandoned the party.

Some were repelled by President Donald Trump and, at the same time, intrigued by Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the El Paso Democrat who offered a vision of less confrontational leadership, albeit with a liberal bent.

In Dallas, lawyer and former pro football player Colin Allred ousted Rep. Pete Sessions, a member of the GOP leadership. In Houston, lawyer Lizzie Pannill Fletcher unseated Rep. John Culberson, who led a subcommittee that controls billions in federal spending.

Both districts have seen some of the fastest demographic shifts in the state, with the nonwhite share of the electorate rapidly shrinking. They were stocked with high-income, highly-educated white voters long presumed to be Republican; many turned out to be swing voters under the right circumstances.

“These districts … weren’t built to elect Republicans in the age of Donald Trump,” said Li. “The Republican Party of today is almost unrecognizable to people of 2011.”

Independents in Texas have been in the habit of backing Republicans.

“But they can be re-educated to see Democrats as an option,” said Steve Bickerstaff, a retired University of Texas adjunct law professor whose books include Lines in the Sand, about the 2003 redistricting fight in Texas.

[…]

In two GOP-held districts that Trump carried, O’Rourke topped Cruz. That helped fellow Democrats come much closer than expected.

In the Dallas-area 24th District, Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell, survived with a margin of just 3 percentage points over a little-known challenger he outspent 11-1.

In suburban Houston’s 2nd District, Rep. Ted Poe notched 2-1 blowouts for years. He retired this year. Dan Crenshaw, a retired Navy SEAL who lost an eye in Afghanistan, won by 7 points. National Democrats might have paid attention to the race had they recognized the opportunity.

O’Rourke fought Cruz nearly to a draw in the 6th District, where Arlington Rep. Joe Barton’s retirement paved the way for his former chief of staff Ron Wright, the Tarrant County tax assessor-collector.

There, the map enacted by the Legislature after the 2010 census operated as intended: Democratic nominee Jana Lynne Sanchez ran up the score in Tarrant County precincts, but conservative voters in Ellis County put Wright over the top.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, outspent his challenger 4-1 in a district that runs from the west side of Houston to the east side of Austin. The rural midsection kept the outgoing House Homeland Security chairman in his seat with a narrow, 4-point win.

Just north of Austin, Rep. John Carter, another senior Republican, beat M.J. Hegar by 3 points in a district that Trump carried by 13 points.

“Those districts were gerrymandered to absorb Democrats,” said Matt Angle, a veteran Democratic strategist who has been involved in Texas redistricting fights for two decades. “There are some of these congressional districts that Beto defined as more in play than any of us thought. … Those exurban areas are getting away from them.”

Turns out it’s a lot easier to draw yourself a bunch of “safe” districts when you’ve got a 15-20 point cushion in statewide voting. Also turns out an uncomfortable number of those districts aren’t so safe when the state as a whole becomes competitive. As Dave Wasserman notes, the GOP will probably have to draw another safe Dem Congressional district in Central Texas just to soak up Democratic votes that are now imperiling multiple incumbents. The 2020 election may complicate things further, especially if the Dems can demonstrate that this year was not a fluke but a step towards even higher ground. Regardless, the strategic question is going to be the main driver of the action. Do the Republicans aim for the maximum again, and risk a future wipeout should the tide rise again, or do they hunker down and shore up what they have at the expense of adding to it? I have a hard time seeing them be pragmatic, but you never know. In the meantime, let’s make that decision as hard as we can for them.

(Yes, I’m assuming the Republicans will have full control over the redistricting process. It’s possible the Dems could take over the State House in 2020, but the Senate is out of reach, as there aren’t enough competitive seats on the ballot then, and of course the statewides are in place through 2022. Whether via the Lege or the Legislative Redistricting Board, one way or another they’ll be drawing the maps.)

(Also, too: What are the two GOP-held districts that Trump carried but Beto won? Seems likely from context that one is CD24, but what’s the other? CD23 was carried by Hillary, so it’s not that. We’ll know once the statewide numbers are published, but I’m more than a little annoyed the story didn’t provide that tidbit.)

Change Research: Cruz 49, O’Rourke 49

Nov 4th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Make of this what you will.

I don’t know anything about Change Research and I don’t recall seeing earlier polls from them. They give some more info in that Twitter thread, but there’s no link to a polling memo or any other details, so take this with a modest amount of salt.

On a related note, the ongoing NYT/Siena “live poll” in CD32 is showing a tight race with a small edge for Colin Allred; at the 400 call mark, he was up 45-43. Lizzie Fletcher trailed 46-45 in polling done between October 19 and 25. An earlier poll in CD23 had Rep. Will Hurd up by the frankly unbelievable margin of 53-38 over Gina Ortiz Jones; the sample showed Hurd getting a relatively huge amount of support from Democrats. There’s a lot of late money pouring into that race, so who knows what’s going on.

CD32 “live poll”: Sessions 48, Allred 47

Sep 26th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Another on of these polls, another close result.

Colin Allred

Incumbent Republican Pete Sessions and Democratic challenger Colin Allred are in a dead heat in the much-anticipated race for Dallas County’s 32nd Congressional District.

According to a New York Times/Siena College poll completed Monday night, Sessions leads Allred 48 to 47 percent, with 5 percent of those surveyed undecided. Pollsters talked to only 500 potential voters, so the margin of error is plus or minus 4.8 percent. The Dallas Morning News is part of the New York Times’ effort to make the political polling process more transparent.

“Our poll result is about what was expected. But remember: It’s just one poll, and we talked to only 500 people,” an introduction to the results state. “Each candidate’s total could easily be five points different if we polled everyone in the district.”

[…]

The poll shows 52 percent disapprove of Trump’s performance, while 44 percent approve and 5 percent don’t know.

Trump endorsed Sessions earlier this month, while former President Barack Obama is backing Allred.

Potential voters overwhelming rejected Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum by a 50 percent to 39 percent margin, with 11 percent undecided, the poll revealed.

[…]

The incumbent has campaigned heavily on the 2017 tax cuts pushed by Trump and approved by Congress. To that point, the polls reveals that 53 percent in the district support the tax cuts, compared to 39 percent that disapproved and 8 percent that didn’t know.

Perhaps even more significant for Sessions, 54 percent agree that Trump’s policies have made their economic situation better. And the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was supported by a 50-41 percent margin.

Sessions is hoping voters feel good about Republican policies and Trump’s judicial appointments.

Those surveyed were nearly equally divided over which party should control the U.S. House, with 48 percent favoring Democrats and 47 percent wanting Republicans to maintain control. Six percent were undecided.

The 32nd Congressional District still leans Republican. The outcome of the race could be decided by a base fight in a county dominated by Democrats. Those Democrats hope Rep. Beto O’Rourke of El Paso, in a close Senate race against incumbent Republican Ted Cruz, will help the entire ticket.

But the poll shows that Cruz and O’Rourke could have similar coattails. O’Rourke was favored by a 48-47 percent margin, reflecting the overall competitiveness in the congressional district.

See here and here for previous “live poll” results, from CDs 07 and 23, and here for the full NYT writeup. An internal poll released in August had it as 47-45 Sessions, while Patrick Svitek tweeted about just-released PPP results that had Allred leading 47-42 and Lizzie Fletcher leading 47-45 in CD07. The disconnect between the disapproval of Trump and the approval of the tax cuts and Brett Kavanaugh could be a sign that people want to exert a counter-force on Trump even if they like some of the things he’s done, a sign that one side or the other is over- or under-performing in the district, or just random noise. Far as I know, these are the only live polls planned for Texas. I wish they’d dip down into some of the second-tier races – I’d kill to see what they might find about CD31, or CD22, or CD21 – but we should be happy we got this much.

Three different views of how competitive Texas Congressional districts are

Sep 25th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

You are by now familiar with The Crosstab and its 2018 Congressional forecast, as I’ve referred to it multiple times in recent months. G. Elliott Morris, the proprietor of The Crosstab, now works at The Economist, and they have their own midterm forecast, based on a different model. And of course you are familiar with FiveThirtyEight, which (guess what) also has a 2018 Congressional forecast. What do we like to do when we have multiple data sources? We compare them, that’s what. Here are the forecasts for the Texas Congressional districts of interest:


Dist   XTab   Econ    538
=========================
CD02   15.1   50.0    9.3
CD03    6.4   29.0    0.9
CD06   16.5   40.0    7.3
CD07   50.3   27.0   46.6
CD10   21.0   13.0    2.6
CD14    6.4    1.0    1.3
CD17    4.4    1.0    0.5
CD21   20.3   50.0   20.3
CD22   20.5    8.0   14.8
CD23   66.3   83.0   49.4
CD24   29.0    9.0    4.5
CD25   11.3    0.0    7.0
CD27    6.5   20.0    0.3
CD31   11.2    4.0   20.1
CD32   47.4    1.0   17.4

Left to right, those are the projected percentage chances of a Democratic win in the given district from the Crosstab, the Economist, and 538. I have a hard time taking the Economist’s model seriously so I’m not going to say anything more about it. The other two provide an additional piece of data that’s worth looking at, which is a projection of the margin between the candidates in each district. Let’s look at that as well:


Dist   XTab    538   2012    2014   2016
========================================
CD02  - 9.1  -10.6  -26.9   -33.7  -20.3
CD03  -12.9  -20.6  -30.8   -37.1  -25.7
CD06  - 7.1  - 9.8  -16.7   -21.3  -15.2
CD07    0.1  - 0.6  -19.9   -31.4  -14.0
CD10  - 6.0  -15.9  -18.7   -22.6  -16.5
CD14  -12.4  -19.0  -15.2   -22.8  -21.3
CD17  -13.2  -22.5  -19.8   -28.9  -22.7
CD21  - 5.6  - 6.3  -22.0   -26.0  -18.7
CD22  - 6.2  - 8.5  -25.1   -33.3  -16.3
CD23    3.2  - 0.2  - 3.1   -15.5  - 1.2
CD24  - 4.0  -13.4  -23.3   -30.9  -15.9
CD25  - 9.0  -11.7  -20.0   -22.5  -21.5
CD27  -13.4  -25.4  -19.1   -30.3  -24.4
CD31  - 9.2  - 5.9  -21.0   -27.7  -19.3
CD32  - 0.4  - 6.6  -15.4   -23.7  -12.2

These numbers are all as of the September 23 update. They may have drifted a bit since then, one way or the other. I can tell you that in the few days that it took me to get my act together and finish writing this post, Democratic odds dropped a bit across the board, with the exception of an uptick in the 538 model in CD32. I have no idea if the loss in SD19 had anything to do with that, or if it was just reflecting whatever ebbs and flows their equations pick up on.

Note that 538 provides a range of possible vote shares for each candidate. In CD07, for example, they forecast a high of 55.1% and a low of 45.5% for John Culberson, with a high of 54.5% and a low of 44.9% for Lizzie Fletcher. The margin is the difference between the average forecast, which as of September 23 was 50.3% for Culberson and 49.7% for Fletcher. They take third party candidates into account as well. The Crosstab isn’t quite that granular, they just provide a forecast for the margin. Again, these numbers will drift around some.

The two points of interest here are where the forecasts differ – 538 is more bearish overall for Dems, though more optimistic in CD31 and considerably more pessimistic in CD32 – and how the current margins compare to previous years, which I show in the last three columns. As is my custom, I’m using judicial numbers for those margins, and for this I used one of the statewide judicial races. I don’t remember which one I picked for each year – did I mention that it took me a few days to write this post? – but it really doesn’t matter that much, they’re all within a point or so of each other. Look at the comparisons in the Harris County CDs – 02 and 07, which are entirely within the county, and 10 and 22, which are partially so. Everywhere you look, the indicators are for a rough year for the Harris County GOP. Never take anything for granted, of course, but dismiss the data at your peril as well. The postmortem here is going to be something.

CD32 poll: Sessions 47, Allred 45

Aug 18th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Another internal poll, another close race.

Colin Allred

Texas Rep. Pete Sessions’ re-election race is looking increasingly competitive, with Democrat Colin Allred polling close to the longtime Republican lawmaker, according to a new internal Democratic survey.

The Dallas-area 32nd District is traditionally GOP territory. But this year’s race is considered competitive, in part because the 32nd is one of three Republican-held districts in the Lone Star State that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates the race a Toss-up.

Sessions led Allred 47 percent to 45 percent in the initial head-to-head matchup, according to the polling memo shared first with Roll Call.

The poll, conducted by GBA Strategies, also showed both Sessions and President Donald Trump with low favorable ratings. Forty-one percent of those surveyed viewed Trump favorably while 38 percent had a favorable view of Sessions.

Twenty-three percent viewed Allred favorably, but only 15 percent viewed him unfavorably, signaling that respondents might not have strong opinions of the Democratic nominee or know much about him.

Standard disclaimers about internal polls apply, and as always it’s just one data point. The main thing I take away from these and other Congressional district polls is that they offer corroborating evidence for the statewide polls we have seen and the closer-than-usual environment we are in. I hope we get enough of these to get a feel for what the trendlines might look like as well.

Trump’s Texas beneficiaries

Aug 15th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Interesting.

Six Texas Republican in Congress received a show of financial support from their party’s leader this week.

President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign announced Thursday that it was donating the maximum contribution possible to around 100 House and Senate Republican candidates ahead of midterm elections in which multiple polls suggest Democrats could be poised for big wins. Republican National Committee spokesperson Christiana Purves confirmed Friday that six of those candidates are incumbents from Texas: U.S. Reps. Michael Burgess of Lewisville, John Carter of Round Rock, Michael Cloud of Victoria, Mike Conaway of Midland, John Culberson of Houston and Pete Sessions of Dallas.

Three of those Republicans – Carter, Culberson and Sessions – recently learned they had been outraised by their Democratic challengers in the second quarter of the year, the latest sign that Democrats are aiming to compete in more Texas congressional districts than they have in a generation.

[…]

Burgess and Conaway are somewhat more surprising picks for being singled out by Trump as both represent solidly Republican districts.

Conaway is the biggest head-scratcher on this list. He has $1.5 million on hand, his opponent has $42K on hand on $48K raised (which to be fair, is a record-setting amount for a Dem in CD11), and is running in a district that Trump won by a 77-19 margin in 2016. There’s literally no definition of “incumbents who need financial support from their president” that includes Mike Conaway.

Even more curious is the omission of Will Hurd, the third member of the “toss-up trio” in Texas. Hurd likes to polish his image of being independent of the president (so don’t go looking at his voting record), and he’s a good fundraiser on his own. My guess is that if Trump’s money was offered rather than thrust upon these recipients, Hurd would probably have said “thanks but no thanks”. Nonetheless, it would be nice to understand the process here.

Stalking Sessions

Aug 4th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

It sure would be sweet to beat Pete.

Rep. Pete Sessions

The man who engineered the 2010 Republican takeover of the House is racing to save himself in his own election this year — and he admits, in so many words, that President Donald Trump isn’t helping.

Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, a longtime party leader and former House GOP campaign chief, is confronting a treacherous political landscape back at home — a well-funded Democratic opponent with a boffo résumé, a rapidly diversifying and more liberal district, and, perhaps most critically, a constituency of well-educated and upper-income suburban voters who increasingly are turning on the president.

His predicament underscores the grave danger confronting Republicans this fall. As the party braces for an electoral drubbing that threatens to wipe out the majority they won eight years ago, the list of incumbents under duress is growing ever longer — and even powerful lawmakers like Sessions, a sharp-elbowed tactician who hasn’t faced a serious reelection contest in over a decade, are suddenly trying to survive a Trump-fueled bloodbath. In Texas alone, Democrats are targeting three Republican incumbents who’ve been in office for over a decade.

In an interview this week, Sessions, who was first elected in 1996, was careful not to overtly criticize the president — he praised some aspects of Trump’s record, including on national security. But the Texas congressman pointedly declined to say whether he’d campaign as an ally of the president, who narrowly lost Sessions’ North Dallas district in 2016. And he appeared to concede that some in the business-friendly area — which is home to a number of prominent country club-style Republicans, including former President George W. Bush — have soured on the bombastic commander in chief.

[…]

It’s a far cry from 2010, when Sessions, then the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, helped to orchestrate a historic 63-seat wave that catapulted his party into power.

Sessions took a startlingly aggressive approach to target powerful Democrats long seen as politically untouchable, recruiting challengers against powerful committee chairmen and other veteran lawmakers who hadn’t faced tough races in years. Many were caught flat-footed and either lost their races or chose not to seek reelection.

This time, the roles are reversed — and it’s Sessions, now serving as the gavel-holder on the influential Rules Committee, who’s under siege.

The prospect of exacting revenge on the Texas congressman has thrilled national Democrats. A super PAC allied with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi plans to spend over $2 million on TV ads in support of Sessions’ opponent, Colin Allred, a former NFL player-turned-attorney and ex-Obama administration official. Major party figures, including former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, are flooding into the district to campaign with the 35-year-old upstart.

We know Sessions hasn’t faced a serious challenger since the 2011 redistricting. As it happens, the best-funded opponent he’s had since defeating Martin Frost in 2004 was in 2010, when Grier Raggio raised $669K. Still, add that to the totals of his 2008 and 2006 opponents, plus the ones from this decade, and it’s still less than what Colin Allred has raised so far. Money isn’t everything, of course, and CD32 was still basically a 12-point district in 2016 outside of the Presidential race. G. Elliott Morris currently gives Dems a 40.7% chance of winning there; for comparison, he has CD07 at 51.2% and CD23 at a whopping 84.7% to flip. Sessions is a big fundraiser and has a reputation as a tough campaigner. Beating him won’t be easy. But it sure would be awesome.

Dems keep posting very strong finance reports

Jul 17th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Wow.

There are few bigger warning signs for a member of Congress that their re-election may be in doubt than when a challenger outraises them. In Texas, it just happened to seven incumbents, all Republicans.

Since last week, when U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, revealed that he had raised a stunning $10.4 million between April and June in his bid to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a wave of Texas Democrats running for U.S. House seats similarly blasted out their own unusually strong fundraising numbers.

The numbers only became more striking when compared to their rivals: Some Democratic challengers raised two, three or even four times what their Republican incumbent rivals posted. All congressional candidates were required to file their second-quarter fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission by Sunday.

Along with Cruz, the six congressional incumbents who were outraised are delegation fixtures: U.S. Reps. John Carter of Round Rock, John Culberson of Houston, Will Hurd of Helotes, Pete Olson of Sugar Land, Pete Sessions of Dallas and Roger Williams of Austin.

In the 21st Congressional District, where Republican U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith is retiring, GOP nominee Chip Roy trailed his Democratic rival, Joseph Kopser. Several other Democratic candidates running in Republican strongholds across the state also posted abnormally large six-figure fundraising hauls.

One of the biggest red flags for Republicans came from Carter’s once-safe 31st District. Thanks to a successful viral video, veteran MJ Hegar raised more than four times Carter’s second-quarter sum – the biggest split among the races where Democrats outraised GOP incumbents.

[…]

Hardly anyone in Texas will suggest that incumbents like Olson and Williams are in any significant electoral trouble because they were outraised. But the cumulative effect of so much strong Democratic fundraising is unnerving to many Texas Republican insiders.

One anxious Texas operative suggested these fundraising numbers are merely a first alarm bell. The second may come once incumbents go into the field en masse and poll. But two GOP sources say many incumbents have been reluctant to poll their districts amid what feels like a chaotic political environment and are waiting for a more stable period to get an accurate read of the electorate.

You know most of the names already, but to reiterate, the Dems who outraised their opponents this quarter are Lizzie Fletcher in CD07, Joseph Kopser in CD21, Sri Kulkarni in CD22, Gina Ortiz Jones in Cd23, Julie Oliver in CD25, MJ Hegar in CD31, and Colin Allred in CD32. And there are more dimensions to this as well.

Jana Lynne Sanchez, who is running for the Tarrant County-area seat left open by disgraced Representative Joe Barton, has been steadily raising money and currently has a cash-on-hand advantage against former Barton staffer Ron Wright.

The Democratic fundraising tear has even reached into southeast Texas’ 36th Congressional District, which is rated as a +26 Republican district, one of the most conservative seats in the entire country. Longtime radio host and Democratic nominee Dayna Steele, who has pledged not to take corporate PAC money, raised $220,000 in the latest quarter, trailing ultraconservative incumbent Brian Babin’s haul by just $5,000.

Following Beto O’Rourke’s lead, many of these lesser-known candidates — running without national support in districts deemed too red for a blue wave — have sworn off corporate PAC money and are relying on small-dollar contributions. Sanchez says she has a total of 9,000 donors who have made an average contribution of $42.

All of these Democratic candidates have raised far more than past challengers in these districts — if a Democrat even bothered to run.

Keep that last bit in mind, because I’ll have more on it in a future post. And even where there’s a bright spot for the Republicans in CD02, where Dan Crenshaw reported a big haul, he’s facing Todd Litton with $843K raised and $435K on hand. It’s safe to say it’s been a long time since the Republicans have faced this many well-funded opponents.

Not all the reports are available yet on the FEC page, but when they get there I’ll have a post summarizing it all. Do bear in mind that even with all these strong numbers, Dan Patrick has also raised a bunch of money, and Greg Abbott has already booked $16 million in TV time for the fall. So celebrate the good news, but don’t get overconfident. What we’ve done here is approach parity, and the other guys may well have another gear to shift into. Keep the momentum going.

Monday “day before reports start showing up” campaign finance roundup

Jul 16th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Good things keep happening to MJ Hegar.

MJ Hegar

EMILY’s List, a powerful organization that backs female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights, is putting its support behind Hegar, an Air Force veteran who has shot to national prominence in recent weeks following the release of a widely praised campaign video.

This is a long-shot race in a deeply Republican district against U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock. But EMILY’s List is a fundraising juggernaut in congressional politics and this endorsement could deliver even more money to an already well-funded campaign.

“MJ is running against incumbent Congressman John Carter, a Tea Party extremist who hasn’t faced a tough re-election fight in years,” EMILY’s List president Stephanie Schriock said in a news release.

“MJ’s candidacy changes that. Voters in the 31st District finally have the opportunity to elect a representative who will fight for their interests, not special interests. Let’s show this military hero and champion for change the full support of the EMILY’s List community and do everything we can to help her flip this seat.”

That viral video and all the cash it helped Hegar raise keeps paying off. I wonder if we’ll start seeing CD31 being viewed differently by the prognosticators. Hegar is the fifth candidate from Texas to get the Emily’s List endorsement, following Veronica Escobar, Sylvia Garcia, Gina Ortiz Jones, and Lizzie Fletcher.

As of yesterday, there were a few completed Q2 reports available on the FEC page. One in particular caught my eye. I’ll let Patrick Svitek tell the story:


Dayna Steele ends Q2 with $516,859 raised, and $342,527 on hand. I don’t have the adjectives to express how insane that is, but let me put it to you this way: Dayne Steele has outraised the totals for the last three cycles combined in every Republican-held district except for three – CDs 14, 23, and 27. The former is because of Nick Lampson’s campaign in 2012, and the latter is because we thought we’d be able to win back the seat Blake Farenthold fluked into in 2010, despite it being (illegally, I don’t care what SCOTUS says) redistricted to be safe for him. There’s a decent chance that Dayne Steele will top $1 million raised in this 70% Republican district by the time all is said and done. If I had any mind left, it would be blown to smithereens.

Once more to Twitter, from Abby Livingston:


Livingston had previously noted that Democrat Colin Allred had outraised Rep. Pete Sessions in CD32, though Sessions still has a cash-on-hand advantage. It’s a longstanding complaint among Texas Dems that we perennially serve as an ATM for the rest of the country. Well, that’s also true for the Republicans, but that’s been less of a problem for them since they haven’t generally needed that much money given all their other advantages. Not so much this year.

I’ll be rounding up these and other finance reports as they appear, so look for more in the coming days.

We are going to get some Congressional polling soon

Jul 13th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Nate Cohn on Twitter:


In case you can’t tell from the picture, CDs 07, 23, and 32 are included among the districts that will be – actually, probably are already being – polled. We have one poll from CD07 done by the DCCC a month ago, and it showed a two point lead for John Culberson. I’m not aware of any polling in either of the other districts, but I’ll be very interested to see what we get here. Cohn mentions that he thinks the writeups of these polls will be out next week. I can hardly wait.

Three more Dems top $1 million in Q2

Jul 10th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

In the morning there was Gina Ortiz Jones.

Gina Ortiz Jones

Gina Ortiz Jones, the Democrat running against U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, raised more than $1.2 million over the last three months, a huge haul that far outpaces the fundraising by her party’s previous nominees in Texas’ most competitive congressional district.

Jones’ campaign, announcing the figure this morning, also said she has about $1.1 million cash on hand.

Hurd hasn’t shared his fundraising numbers for the second quarter yet but faces a Sunday deadline to report them to the Federal Election Commission. He reported having $1.6 million cash on hand after the first quarter, when he took in $395,000.

Jones’ second-quarter haul means she has now raked in $2.2 million since entering the race — already more than the 2016 Democratic nominee, Pete Gallego, raised from start to finish. By comparison, Gallego pulled in $327,000 during the same period of the 2016 cycle, which put his total raised at that point at roughly $1.3 million.

Ortiz Jones joins Lizzie Fletcher in the million-dollar-quarter club. In her press release, she notes that no Democratic candidate has raised more than $2.7 million for CD23 since the district was redrawn in 2006. I think it’s safe to say she will surpass that amount. And she may not be the only one who does.

Then in the afternoon we got MJ Hegar.

MJ Hegar

In the 10 days after long shot Democratic candidate and veteran MJ Hegar published her widely praised viral video, her campaign to unseat U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, raised $750,000. It’s only the latest large fundraising figure reported by a Democratic U.S. House candidate from Texas, but it shows a stunning surge of interest in Hegar’s candidacy.

Hegar will report raising $1.1 million in the second fundraising quarter of the year, her campaign told the Tribune. Most of that came about from the attention drawn to her candidacy by her biographical ad, “Doors,” which has been viewed more than 2.5 million times.

The Hegar news came amid a cascade of robust fundraising numbers from Democrats vying to unseat Texas Republicans in Congress.

[…]

If past is precedent, these candidates will deploy much of this money in fall television ad wars.

Hurd is a perennially strong fundraiser and Sessions is the former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee – a position that entails raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the national GOP House campaign. Culberson has improved his fundraising over the last year as the viability of the Democratic offensive in his district has taken form. None of these incumbents have released their second quarter numbers. Fundraising reports are due on July 15.

Hegar, however, is in a different category. Her race encompasses conservative areas along Interstate-35 and in the northern Austin suburbs. Carter, the incumbent, was first elected in 2002 and has never faced a serious general election campaign.

But $1 million hauls for individual House campaigns isn’t the status quo in American politics. In past cycles, candidates who raised $300,000-$400,000 were considered top fundraising performers.

Wow. I figured Hegar had a good shot at topping $1 million, but I assumed that would be by the end of the cycle. I didn’t expect her to hit that mark in a single cycle, but then that was one amazing ad. I don’t know how much her haul changes this race – it’s still a considerably redder district than the top tier – but it’s safe to say that CD31 is not a district the Republicans can take for granted. Not this year.

And finally in the evening there was Colin Allred.

Colin Allred

Texas Democratic candidates in four House races are reporting large fundraising hauls for the second quarter of this year, including Colin Allred, who is challenging Dallas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions.

Allred’s campaign said it would report raising almost $1.1 million between April 1 and June 30 for his run for the 5th Congressional District, leaving him with $900,000 cash on hand. Sessions has not yet released his contributions. The filing deadline is Sunday.

The second quarter marked a dramatic increase in Allred’s fundraising. During the first quarter, Allred reported raising $395,286 with $219,627 cash on hand. Allred’s fundraising began to pick up steam after he finished first in the March primary among seven candidates. He defeated Lillian Salerno in the May runoff.

During that period, Sessions reported $605,730 in contributions and $1.5 million cash on hand, according to federal filings.

Remember how I said that Democratic fundraising was way up from 2014, even if that wasn’t apparent from the non-Beto statewide candidates? (We haven’t heard from any of them yet, so that story line could change as well.) I trust my point has been sufficiently illuminated. We also haven’t heard from Joseph Kopser or Todd Litton yet, not to mention Dayna Steele, Jana Sanchez, Sri Kulkarni, Lorie Burch, and Mike Siegel. Fundraising isn’t destiny, but it sure is nice for our candidates to have the resources they need to compete.

Pot versus Pete

May 30th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

I love this story.

Marijuana reform activists have created a new super PAC aimed exclusively at defeating Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions, the House Rules Committee chairman who has blocked cannabis reform legislation from reaching the House floor.

Marijuana Policy Project founder and former Executive Director Rob Kampia is leading the effort, which he said is crucial to legalizing medical marijuana federally and affirming federalism for recreational pot, two policies supported in principle by President Trump.

“Everyone knows who he is and that he’s our biggest problem on Capitol Hill. Half of my job has already been done by Pete Sessions himself,” Kampia told the Washington Examiner. “All I’m going to do is pass the hat.”

[…]

Kampia left MPP last year and now leads the Marijuana Leadership Campaign, a small group with a narrower agenda. He recently registered the super PAC, called Texans Removing Outdated and Unresponsive Politicians, ahead of a Wednesday donor meeting in New Orleans.

“[Sessions] is in fact what I call a sphincter who is constipating the process,” Kampia said. “The reason we haven’t won is just process; it’s not content.”

Kampia aims to raise $500,000, which he believes he can do after “having raised $4 million a year for this issue” at MPP, where he oversaw a variety of state efforts, including a major role in Colorado’s 2012 recreational legalization campaign.

In addition to the super PAC, which can independently spend unlimited amounts, Kampia plans to bundle contributions for the Democrat who wins a May 22 runoff primary and provide support for Libertarian candidate Melina Baker.

“I am going to bundle a whole bunch of checks and send them to the Democrat without talking to the Democrat. You are going to see a bunch of $2,700 checks flowing from the same people who you’re going to see on our [super PAC] reports,” he said.

The district’s two Democratic contenders, Colin Allred and Lillian Salerno, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Although he believes their positions are acceptable, Kampia said, “It doesn’t matter if they are good on marijuana — we just need him out.”

I noted this in my Congressional runoff report, but didn’t get around to running this until now, when we know that Colin Allred is the runoff winner. I just want to say that “Legislative Sphincter” is now the name of my Butthole Surfers tribute band. No joke, though, Pete Sessions is seriously anti-pot – just read the quotes in that Examiner story. As D Magazine noted, both Democratic candidates in the runoff favored medical marijuana, so there was a winner either way for this PAC. I can’t wait to see the ads that Texans Removing Outdated and Unresponsive Politicians produces. The Dallas Observer has more.

The Republicans’ risk factors in 2018

May 28th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

The Cook Report’s Dave Wasserman comes up with a system for evaluating Republican Congressional incumbents who may have some trouble in their future.

Armed with fresh FEC data, we have created a table listing seven “risk factors” to gauge Republican incumbents’ political health and readiness for a wave election. In the past, those incumbents with a high number of risk factors have typically been the ripest targets, while those with fewer risk factors could still be vulnerable but may be better able to withstand a hostile political environment.

The seven risk factors are:

1. Sits in a district with a Cook PVI score of R+5 or less Republican.
2. Sits in a district that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.
3. Received 55 percent of the vote or less in the 2016 election (or a 2017 special election).
4. Voted in favor of the American Health Care Act in the May 4 roll call vote.
5. Voted in favor of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in the December 19 roll call vote.
6. Raised less money than at least one Democratic opponent in the first quarter of 2018.
7. Has a Democratic opponent with at least $200,000 in cash on hand as of March 31.

Only one incumbent, Rep. Steve Knight (CA-25), has all seven risk factors. Eight incumbents have six risk factors, 23 incumbents have five, 23 incumbents have four and 32 have three. This is not a hard and fast list, and over the next quarter, many incumbents will add or subtract factors based on their own and their opponents’ progress.

What we care about are the Texans on this list, so here they are:

Six risk factors – Will Hurd, CD23

Five risk factors – Pete Sessions, CD32

Four risk factors – John Culberson, CD07

Three risk factors – John Carter, CD31; Brian Babin, CD36

Two things to note here. One is that this list is limited to incumbents, so open seat races are not included. Two, these risk factors do not necessarily correlate to the electoral prospects of the district in question. The Cook House ratings report includes CDs 07, 23, 32, and open seat 21, but not 31 and 36.

That latter one really stands out, as it’s a 70%+ Trump district. The risk factors for Brian Babin are the AHCA and tax cut votes – we would need to see some district-specific polling to know how risky those were to him, but it’s not crazy to think those actions would not be terribly popular – and having been outraised in Q1 by Dayna Steele. Babin still has a large cash on hand advantage, not to mention being in that deep red district, and Steele had a competitive primary to win, but as I said before, the fact that Steele has been able to raise that kind of money in that kind of district is nothing short of amazing.

Dallas Observer Q&A with CD32 candidate Lillian Salerno

Jan 1st, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Once more to the Dallas Observer’s Q&A machine.

Lillian Salerno

Earlier this month, you spoke at an anti-monopoly conference in Washington about your experiences in the health care industry. Why is it so hard for innovative products to get into the health care market, and how does that harm health care workers and Americans seeking health care?

I was on a panel discussing what we call corporate concentration, which is why, in so many sectors of the economy, we only have one or two players. In telecom, we have Comcast and Verizon, and there’s no one. In platform technology, it’s Google, Facebook, and they own the information highway. What happens is, when you’re innovating, if you go to sell your device or idea or app, you can only go one place because there’s only one or two players. That’s very unhealthy for an economy, and it’s very unhealthy for a democracy.

We’re a country based on small business and entrepreneurship. I worry — and it’s the issue I want to work on when I’m elected — I worry that we created an economy that has never been this consolidated, and we’ve got to start unpacking that, and we do that by enforcing the laws. Both Republicans and Democrats have failed us on this issue, and they haven’t really funded the Federal Trade Commission or funded the Department of Justice and given investigators and lawyers the tools so they can start going after companies that are violating competition laws.

So if it’s not just an unsolvable systemic problem, what do you do to fix it? Is it just through enforcement of existing laws, or is it creating new regulations and new laws?

We have laws on the books which were passed because of stuff like the railroads. Railroads, yes, good idea. Bad idea, one guy running all the railroads. So we had laws put on the books that would make it so if you own a certain percentage of the market, you, by definition, are under a different obligation than the small company that only has a certain percentage. If you own a certain percentage, then you can’t lock up all the markets so the new guy or gal can’t get into the market. But those laws have not been enforced, so up until the ’80s, companies used to look over their shoulder and even call regulators and say, “Hey, we’re thinking about merging” or “We’re thinking about buying this company — give us an opinion.” Look how many mergers and acquisitions we have every single day.

That’s because we’ve had the Department of Justice and the FTC asleep at the wheel. The Obama administration did a horrible job. By the time we started getting our head around it right at the end of the administration, it was too late. We keep putting the wolf guarding the henhouse, so the head of the anti-trust commission then goes and works on the biggest company in telecom, and in a different administration, they come back and they’re head of the FTC. We can’t have that anymore. We can’t have people that go and regulate and enforce and then they go work for the very companies that they cut a deal with. We gotta stop that. I saw that — we’ve seen that since the Clintons, since Bill Clinton all the way through Obama and then all Republicans between those.

It’s not a Democrat or a Republican problem; it’s a we gotta clean up our politics kind of problem. Everybody’s finally waking up to what I’ve experienced as a small business person. We’ve allowed too much consolidation in this country. It’s not about we need to go and regulate. When people violate, laws we need to find them, and sometimes you have to put people in jail.

As always, read the whole thing, and then go read the Q&A with Colin Allred and the Q&A with Ed Meier, too. I really appreciate the Observer doing this, because as we well know there are a crapload of candidates and only so much time before actual voting starts. I’m going to do what I can to interview candidates here, but I’m one person and again, there’s only so much time. The more outfits out there talking to candidates and getting them on the record about things, the better. At the very least, it can help separate the people who know what they’re talking about from those that don’t.

A third PPP Congressional poll in Texas

Dec 26th, 2017
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

Here’s a Public Policy Polling Twitter thread of interest. I’ve highlighted the specific relevant tweets.

 

The Culberson and Sessions results we knew about. The CD31 poll between Carter and MJ Hegar is news to me. Let me expand a bit on the numbers from 2016 that PPP cites:


2012

Carter      61.3%
Wyman       35.0%

Romney      59.4%
Obama       38.1%

Keller      57.8%
Hampton     36.8%


2014

Carter      64.0%
Minor       32.0%

Abbott      61.5%
Davis       36.0%

Richardson  61.3%
Granberg    33.6%


2016

Carter      58.4%
Clark       36.5%

Trump       52.6%
Clinton     40.1%

Keasler     56.8%
Burns       37.3%

So forty percent is basically the high water mark for a Dem in CD31 this decade. (Barack Obama got 42.5% there in 2008.) That’s good, and it does tend to show a higher level of Dem engagement, especially compared to 2014, but we’re still a ways off. The 46% for Carter is more interesting, as it is a big dropoff from every non-Trump Republican. The question is whether this represents a bunch of undecided respondents who will come home next November, or it’s a genuine indicator of low enthusiasm. Also, the HD31 poll involves a specific opponent to Carter, one who will have to win a primary first, rather than a “generic Democrat” as in the CD07 and CD32 surveys. It’s possible the 40% level for MJ Hegar is lower than a “generic Dem” level might have been. As with any other poll, file it away for later when we have more data.

PPP polls show “generic Dem” winning in CDs 07 and 32

Nov 19th, 2017
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Via Daily Kos, Public Policy Polling sampled a number of targeted Congressional districts for 2018, including two in Texas, and the results are encouraging, to say the least.

TX-07

In Texas’ 7th Congressional District, Republican incumbent Congressman John Culberson has an approval rating of 31%, and 55% of voters say they disapprove of the job he is doing. President Trump has an approval rating of 37% and a disapproval rating of 59% in Culberson’s district, while 12% of voters say they approve of the job Congress is doing and 83% say they disapprove. Speaker Paul Ryan is also unpopular with 29% of voters saying they approve of the job he is doing and a majority (65%) responding that they disapprove. These percentages, along with a hypothetical matchup between Culberson (39%) and a “Democratic opponent” (49%), indicate that Culberson is quite vulnerable in his upcoming re-election. The new tax plan is not popular in his district, and a majority (53%) of voters indicated they would be less likely to vote for Culberson if he voted in favor of the Republican tax plan.

TX-32

In Texas’ 32nd Congressional District, Republican incumbent Congressman Pete Sessions has an approval rating of 36%, and 52% of voters say they disapprove of the job he is doing. President Trump has an approval rating of 39% and a disapproval rating of 58% in Sessions’ district, while 6% of voters say they approve of the job Congress is doing and 85% say they disapprove. Speaker Paul Ryan is also unpopular with 27% of voters saying they approve of the job he is doing and a majority (66%) responding that they disapprove. These percentages, along with a hypothetical matchup between Sessions and a “Democratic opponent,” where Sessions has 43% of the vote and his Democratic opponent has 48%, indicate that Sessions is quite vulnerable in his upcoming re-election. The new tax plan is not popular in his district, and a majority (51%) of voters indicated they would be less likely to vote for Sessions if he voted in favor of the Republican tax plan.

As the Kos post warns, there are ample reasons to maintain a healthy level of skepticism about such polls. It’s way early; polling at this time in the 2014 cycle looked pretty good for Dems, too. “Democratic opponent” has no record to defend or campaign to execute, and may have to survive a rough primary. We have no idea what the question wording was, or what the assumptions were about the partisan makeup of the districts. All that said, if Dems are leading the national Congressional preference poll by double digits, it stands to reason that districts like these would at least be competitive. As always with polling, we’ll see if subsequent results affirm or contradict this one.

Opinions differ about Congressional prospects

Nov 14th, 2017
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

I’m gonna boil this one down a bit.

Todd Litton

Moments before the polls closed in Virginia’s Democratic sweep, Houston-area Republican Ted Poe, across the Potomac River on Capitol Hill, announced his retirement in 2018 after 14 years in Congress.

Poe cast his move Tuesday night as a personal decision: “You know when it’s time to go,” he told the Chronicle. “And it’s time to go, and go back to Texas on a full-time basis.”

But a wave of retirement announcements from Texas Republicans in both Congress and the Legislature already had sparked a lot of speculation that the pendulum of power might swing against the GOP, even possibly to some degree in a deep red state like Texas.

Poe and other Republicans dismissed that notion, arguing that their prospects in 2018 are strong, particularly in the Senate, where 10 Democratic incumbents face the voters in states won by President Donald Trump.

Democrats, however, celebrated Ralph Northam’s victory over Republican Ed Gillespie in Virginia’s hard-fought governor’s race as the start of an anti-Trump wave that could only grow as the president’s approval ratings continue to sink.

However coincidental, Poe’s announcement – following those of Texas U.S. Reps. Lamar Smith, Jeb Hensarling and Sam Johnson – seemed to add to the buzz.

[…]

Democratic hopeful Todd Litton, a nonprofit executive in Poe’s district, has raised more than $256,000 for the race, outpacing Poe’s fundraising in the three-month period between April and June.

Poe, however, called the suggestion that he is running away from a tough reelection “nonsense.” He noted that he won reelection last year with 61 percent of the vote, a substantially better showing than Trump, who won 52 percent of the district’s vote for president.

“I don’t appeal to people on the party label,” said Poe, a former teacher, prosecutor and judge. “I appeal based on who I am.”

[…]

David Crockett, a political scientist at San Antonio’s Trinity University, said the question lingering after Virginia’s election results: Is this the beginning of something different?

“Texas is still pretty red, but the result of all these retirements could be opportunity for a Democrat in the right circumstances,” he said. “It’s always easier for an opposition party to pick off an open seat … but I still think we’re a decade away from any significant change.”

Texas Democrats, for the most part, have their sights set on Hurd, Sessions and Culberson, whose districts went to Clinton in 2016. Recent internal polling also has bolstered their hopes of flipping the suburban San Antonio district where Smith is retiring.

Around Houston, it would take a pretty big wave for Poe’s 2nd Congressional District to fall into the Democratic column, but in the current political climate, some analysts say, who knows?

“I wouldn’t go to Las Vegas and bet on it,” said Craig Goodman, a political scientist at the University of Houston in Victoria. “But every election cycle, there’s always one or two districts where you’re like, ‘Wow, how did that happen?’ Maybe the 2nd would be that district.”

CDs 02 and 21 were more Democratic in 2016 than they were in 2012, and the retirements of Ted Poe and Lamar Smith will make them at least a little harder to defend in 2018 than they would have been. They’re not in the same class as CDs 07, 23, and 32, but a sufficient wave could make them competitive. Another factor to keep in mind is who wins the Republican primaries to try to hold them? Some candidates will be tougher than others, and in this day and age it’s hardly out of the question that the winner in one of these primaries could be some frothing Trump-or-die type that no one has heard of who might have trouble raising money and turn voters off.

There’s another point to consider, which is that some of the candidates who run for these now-open Congressional seats may themselves be holding seats that would be more vulnerable without an incumbent to defend them. For instance, State Rep. Jason Issac has announced his candidacy in CD21. Isaac’s HD45 went for Trump by less than five points and with under 50% of the vote; it was typically more Republican at the downballot level, but still shifted a bit towards the Dems from 2012 to 2016. Erin Zwiener is the Democratic challenger in HD45. As for CD02, it is my understanding that State Rep. Kevin Roberts, the incumbent in HD126, is looking at CD02. HD126 was about as Republican in 2016 as CD02 was, so if Roberts changes races that will open up another Republican-favored-but-not-solid seat. We’ll know more when the filings come in, but that’s what I’d keep my eye on. Candidates matter, and the Dems have been rounding them up for months now. Republicans are just getting started in these districts. They have less margin for error.

October campaign finance reports: Congress

Oct 31st, 2017
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Here are the Q2 fundraising reports for Texas Democratic Congressional candidates. I’ll sum up the data below, but here’s the Trib with some highlights.

After Democratic challengers outraised four Texas Republicans in Congress earlier this year, some Republicans recaptured fundraising momentum in the third quarter – but not all of them.

Campaign finance reports for federal candidates covering July through September were due on Saturday. The reports show signs of of Democratic enthusiasm continuing, though U.S. Reps. Pete Sessions of Dallas and Will Hurd of Helotes, both Republicans, posted strong third quarters.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, barely outpaced his challenger, U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, and two GOP congressmen saw Democratic challengers raise more money.

Hurricane Harvey may have depressed fundraising overall, with many incumbents and challengers posting lukewarm quarterly hauls.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate and certainly not tasteful to raise money from people who’ve been devastated and lost everything,” said U.S. Rep. John Culberson, a Houston Republican who was outraised by two of his Democratic challengers.

Democratic numbers were also smaller, suggesting candidates who announced earlier this year picked off the low-hanging donors in their previous campaign reports. And candidates who entered races only recently had less time to raise money.

But also, there was a larger dynamic at work. Ali Lapp is the operative who oversees the super PAC that supports Democratic House candidates, said donors are holding back from challengers because of the crowded nature of the Democratic primaries.

“With so many good Democratic candidates running in primaries, it’s no surprise that many Democratic donors are waiting to give direct candidate donations until after the field shakes out a bit, or even until after the primary is concluded,” she said.

The Chron focuses in on CD07, which has the largest field and the most money raised so far. We’ve seen the aforementioned dynamic in other races, where some people and groups want to wait and see who the frontrunners or runoff participants are before jumping in. The danger is that the candidate or candidates you like may not then make it into the runoff, but that’s a bit esoteric right now. The fact remains that we haven’t had this level of activity in Democratic Congressional primaries since Dems were the dominant party in the state. That’s pretty cool.

So without further ado, here are links to forms of interest and a summary of who did what:

Todd Litton – CD02
Ali Khorasani – CD02

Jana Sanchez – CD06

Alex Triantaphyllis – CD07
Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Laura Moser – CD07
Jason Westin – CD07
James Cargas – CD07
Joshua Butler – CD07

Dori Fenenbock – CD16
Veronica Escobar – CD16

Joseph Kopser – CD21
Derrick Crowe – CD21
Elliott McFadden – CD21

Jay Hulings – CD23
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23

Christopher Perri – CD25
Chetan Panda – CD25

MJ Hegar – CD31
Richard Lester – CD31
Christine Mann – CD31

Ed Meier – CD32
Colin Allred – CD32
Lillian Salerno – CD32

Dayna Steele – CD36
Jonathan Powell – CD36


Dist  Name             Raised    Spent    Loans   On Hand
=========================================================
02    Litton          256,222   26,250        0   229,872
02    Khorasani         8,904    8,555        0       348

06    Sanchez          75,113   56,169        0    16,439

07    Triantaphyllis  668,300  132,792        0   535,507
07    Fletcher        550,833  147,634        0   403,198
07    Moser           401,675  129,689        0   271,986
07    Westin          252,085   95,046   10,365   167,393
07    Cargas           46,752   43,091        0    10,078
07    Butler           28,685   25,352        0     3,332

16    Fenenbock       499,262  193,800  100,000   405,462
16    Escobar         332,836   35,780        0   297,056

21    Kopser          417,669  198,249        0   219,419
21    Crowe            69,443   45,068        0    24,375
21    McFadden         49,614   29,923        0    19,690

23    Hulings         200,207   10,752        0   189,455
23    Ortiz Jones     103,920   30,238        0    73,681

25    Perri            61,868   42,603    7,140    26,405
25    Panda            59,853   42,200        0    17,652

31    Hegar            93,459   39,789        0    53,670
31    Lester           52,569   33,061        0    19,507
31    Mann             21,052    8,764        0         0

32    Meier           585,951  147,537        0   438,414
32    Allred          242,444  180,791   25,000    86,653
32    Salerno         150,608   30,870        0   119,737

36    Steele          105,023   62,699    1,231    43,555
36    Powell           50,653   20,817   10,000    39,789

Notes:

– Unlike other campaign finance reports, the FEC reports are cumulative, which is to say that the numbers you see for Raised and Spent are the totals for the entire cycle. For all the other races we look at, these numbers represent what was raised and spent in the specific period. It’s useful to have these totals, but you have to compare to the previous quarter if you want to know how much a given candidate raised or spent in that quarter.

– There are eight candidates in this summary who were not in the Q2 roundup – Khorasani, Escobar, Hulings, Ortiz Jones, Panda, Hegar, Lester, and Salerno. Christopher Perri filed for CD21 last quarter but is shown in CD25 this quarter. Not sure if one or the other is an error – he wasn’t listed as a candidate in a recent story about CD25 – but do note that Congressional candidates are only required to live in the state, not in a particular district. Debra Kerner had been listed in CD07 before but she has since ended her candidacy.

– Not all candidates in all races are listed. I pick ’em as I see fit.

– It’s really hard to say how much of an effect Harvey may have had on fundraising. As the Trib story notes, it may be that many candidates have largely tapped their easiest sources, and it may be that some donors are keeping their powder dry. We may get some idea when we see the Q4 numbers in January. In the meantime, remember that there’s a long way to go.

– One candidate who does appear to have had a change of fortune, and not for the best, is Colin Allred in CD32. No idea why, again we’ll want to see what the next report looks like.

– Still no candidates of interest in CDs 10, 22, or 24. Sure would be nice to either have someone with juice file, or for someone who is already running to step it up.

One more in CD32

Sep 19th, 2017
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Meet Lillian Salerno, the third major candidate to take a crack at Rep. Pete Sessions in CD32.

Lillian Salerno

Lillian Salerno, who served as President Barack Obama’s deputy undersecretary of rural development for the Department of Agriculture, [officially launched] her candidacy for Congress on Tuesday at Randall Park in Dallas.

“I have the ability to bring people together, find common ground and make sure the vulnerable are protected,” Salerno told The Dallas Morning News. “If you’re going to beat Pete Sessions, the people of the district have to believe that they’ve got somebody who’s got their back.

Salerno, 56, was born at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas and raised in East Dallas. She moved back to the city this year after serving under Obama from 2012-2017. She’s a small businesswoman who led a company that developed retractable needles to protect health care workers from being stuck and infected by diseases like HIV.

Salerno, who has had a long career in politics, said that it was time to run for public office and that Sessions’ policies on health care and other issues made Congressional District 32 the right fit. “Sometimes you just do it,” she said. “The people are so much better than the politicians. … I knew I would get back to Texas.”

Salerno joins a crowded field for the Democratic nomination, including civil rights lawyer and former NFL player Colin Allred and nonprofit executive and Hillary Clinton campaign senior adviser Ed Meier.

Salerno’s webpage is here and her campaign Facebook page is here. The Dallas Observer has done some good Q&As with Meier and Allred, so I look forward to them doing the same with Salerno. In the meantime, if you want to get to know her a little better, I found this Washington Post op-ed she wrote while vying for a Democratic seat on the Federal Trade Commission, entitled “Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies.” Read it and see what you think.

On a side note, I am encouraged by the number of women who are running high profile campaigns for Congress in Texas. The two frontrunners in CD16 to succeed Beto O’Rourke are women, and races in CDs 06, 07, 23, 31, 36, and now 32 have leading female contenders as well. There are thirty-six members of Congress from Texas, of whom three – three! – are women. The last time a woman was elected to Congress in Texas was 1996, when Kay Granger won in CD12. Sheila Jackson Lee was elected in 1994, and Eddie Bernice Johnson in 1992. I hope we can all agree that this is maybe just a teeny bit out of whack. Before someone posts the usual tiresome comment, I’m not saying that anyone deserves a vote for being female, nor am I saying that we “have to” elect some number of women to anything. I am saying that 1) women are grossly underrepresented in Congress, both nationally and in Texas; 2) one good way to do something about this is for quality women to run for Congress and for people of good will to give them a fair hearing; and 3) at least the first part of #2 is happening this year, of which I approve. Whatever happens in this cycle, we need for that to continue to happen in 2020 and beyond.

Dallas Observer Q&A with CD32 candidate Ed Meier

Sep 17th, 2017
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Also a good read.

Ed Meier

You’ve spent a lot of time traveling around the world, starting by growing up in Africa as a missionary kid. What keeps bringing you back to Texas and Dallas specifically?

I was born in Dallas. Lived north of Inwood Village and lived up in North Dallas with my family. I’ve always had a tremendous amount of Dallas pride. If you ask any of my local friends or friends outside of Dallas, [they] will tell you. It’s just something about being Texan; I think Native Texans have a tremendous amount of pride in where we’re born and where we’re from.

I always had this connection back here. We’d come back from Nigeria, where my parents served as medical missionaries in a teaching hospital. We’d come back home to Dallas, and I just loved the community and love the people here. I always felt like it’s home.

After grad school, I returned home to Dallas and worked for Regina Montoya when she ran for Congress against Pete Sessions. Then went down to Austin and worked for a Dallas legislator, Helen Giddings at the state legislature. After UT Law School, I really wanted to come here and start my family in Dallas.

I love the city and love the community. The more and more you start to invest yourself in a place, the more and more you want to stay invested in that place. There have been times that I’ve gone to D.C. and served the country. I had the opportunity to go and work in the state department, President Obama’s administration, and most recently was working for Hillary Clinton as a senior adviser, helping her on the campaign and then her pre-election transition team.

In all those times in between, I’ll always come back home to Dallas. This is where we started our family. We’ve got a daughter and a son, and we’re instilling in them good Texas values. Love the Texas sports teams, too.

What was it that made you decide that this was the time to run against Pete Sessions? Was running for office something you always intended to do?

I’ve always been committed to public service. I’ve always been interested in politics. In 2004, my wife worked for Lupe Valdez when she became sheriff for Dallas County. I was a lawyer at the time. I’d spend my nights and weekends canvasing. I always had a passion for public service and the importance of politics.

I never thought I would necessarily run. It was after the election, after Nov. 8, when that really was apparent. My daughter looked at me and asked me, “Is Donald Trump going to do all the mean things he said he was going to do?” It was after the inauguration, we started to see. Yeah, he’s going to implement a lot of awful policies with those executive orders the first week.

It really was a moment I realized I wanted to be home. I wanted to be back in Dallas. I wanted to fight for what I believe in. Fight for working people. Fight for treating people with dignity and respect. That’s what I believe in. That’s how I was raised. I love Dallas. There was no better place to be and no better thing to do then to be in the fight and take on Pete Sessions, who was standing up for Donald Trump 100 percent of the time.

It sounds like you feel passionate about taking on Pete Sessions specifically.

With Sessions, there’s a couple of pieces. One is, for me personally, I have a lot of experience in working with foreign policy, working on federal policy issues, on domestic economic and foreign policy issues at the federal level. These are issues I’m passionate about. I’m knowledgeable about it. I’ve experienced it.

It was really the opportunity to come home. Take on Pete Sessions, knowing that we can beat him. He’s been in Congress for 20 years. Again, he is standing up and pushing Trump’s agenda through the House as chairman of the Rules Committee. Everything that ends up on the House floor comes through Pete Sessions and his committee. When Trumpcare landed on the House floor without a CBO [Congressional Budget Office] score, then we saw that 23 million people were going to be kicked off of health insurance.

This is somebody that needs to be removed from Congress. I’m passionate about the issues. Passionate about folks here in Dallas. It makes sense that this was the place where I could have the greatest impact. Really take my public service to the next level.

This is a companion to their Q&A with Colin Allred, who are the two main contenders for the nomination in CD32. Like Allred, Meier is an Obama administration alum who like many other people has felt compelled to take action following the November electoral disaster. I kind of have a hard time imagining there being a similar storm of former Trump staffers running for office after his tenure ends, if only because they have been so lackadaisical about hiring anyone, but I hope we get to find out beginning in 2021.

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