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Raj Salhotra

January 2020 campaign finance reports: City of Houston

Feb 8th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

We’re done with the 2019 Houston election cycle, but there are still things we can learn from the January 2020 campaign finance reports that city of Houston candidates and officeholders have to file. Other finance report posts: My two-part look at the State House was here and here, Harris County offices were here, statewide races were here, and SBOE/State Senate races were here.


Candidate     Raised      Spent     Loan     On Hand
====================================================
Turner       359,567    780,735        0     293,503
Peck           1,075     17,435    5,000          72
Davis          4,000     14,164        0     139,068
Kamin         24,158     93,810        0      18,717
E-Shabazz     14,394     18,965        0       2,145
Martin        14,600     48,754        0     148,989
Thomas        20,263     21,642        0      11,675
Travis         9,850     70,904   21,000      51,484
Cisneros      15,050     44,687        0      24,169
Gallegos      16,850     46,055        0      76,776
Pollard        4,525     25,007   40,000       1,882
C-Tatum       16,250      8,520        0      71,747
Knox           6,900     29,075        0       4,302
Robinson      11,625     82,515        0      40,735
Kubosh        14,770     31,570  276,000      94,540
Plummer       71,168     83,491   21,900      11,068
Alcorn        21,535     76,313        0      16,374
Brown          1,650    102,340   75,000      14,128

Bailey             0      2,400    2,600          70
Jackson       43,845     18,338        0      28,343

Buzbee         1,903    460,888        0      63,531
King          29,925    161,047  420,000      11,567
Parker             0     38,750        0      26,184
Laster             0     12,579        0     162,209
Salhotra      24,010     75,837        0       9,060
Sanchez       40,056     92,678        0      10,636
Edwards          499    109,812        0      89,987

HouStrongPAC       0     10,000        0      51,717

Nominally, this period covers from the 8 day report before the November election (which would be October 27) to the end of the year, but for most of these folks it actually covers the 8 day runoff report to the end of the year, so basically just the month of December. In either case, this is the time when candidates don’t raise much but do spend down their accounts, as part of their GOTV efforts. For those who can run for re-election in 2023, they will have plenty of time to build their treasuries back up.

Mayor Turner will not be running for re-election again, but it’s not hard to imagine some uses for his existing (and future) campaign cash, such as the HERO 2.0 effort or the next round of city bonds. He can also use it to support other candidates – I’m sure he’ll contribute to legislative candidates, if nothing else – or PACs. That’s what former Mayor Parker has done with what remains of her campaign account. Nearly all of the $38,750 she spent this cycle went to the LGBTQ Victory fund, plus a couple of smaller contributionss to Sri Kulkarni, Eliz Markowitz, and one or two other campaigns. Tony Buzbee has restaurant bills to pay, and those endless emails Bill King spams out have to cost something.

Others who have campaign accounts of interest: As we know, Jerry Davis has transferred his city account to his State Rep campaign account. I’ve been assuming Mike Laster is going to run for something for years now. The change to four-year Council terms may have frozen him out of the 2018 election, when he might have run for County Clerk. I could see him challenging a Democratic incumbent in 2022 for one of the countywide offices, maybe County Clerk, maybe County Judge, who knows. It’s always a little uncomfortable to talk about primary challenges, but that’s what happens when there are no more Republicans to knock out.

Other hypothetical political futures: Dave Martin could make a run for HD129 in 2022 or 2024, or he could try to win (or win back) Commissioners Court Precinct 3 in 2024. If Sen. Carol Alvarado takes my advice and runs for Mayor in 2023, then maybe State Rep. Christina Morales will run to succeed her in SD06. If that happens, Robert Gallegos would be in a strong position to succeed Morales in HD145. Michael Kubosh wasn’t on my list of potential Mayoral candidates in 2023, but maybe that was a failure of imagination on my part. As for Orlando Sanchez, well, we know he’s going to run for something again, right?

You may be wondering, as I was, what’s in Amanda Edwards’ finance report. Her activity is from July 1, since she wasn’t in a city race and thus had no 30-day or 8-day report to file. Her single biggest expenditure was $27K to Houston Civic Events for an event expense, and there were multiple expenditures categorized as “Loan Repayment/Reimbusement” to various people. Perhaps she has transferred the balance of her account to her Senate campaign by this time, I didn’t check.

Most of the unsuccessful candidates’ reports were not interesting to me, but I did want to include Raj Salhotra here because I feel reasonably confident that he’ll be on another ballot in the short-term future. The HISD and HCC Boards of Trustees are both places I could see him turn to.

Last but not least, the Keep Houston Strong PAC, whose treasurer is former Mayor Bill White, gave $10K to Move to the Future PAC. That’s all I know about that.

Council results

Dec 15th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

With one race still up in the air as I draft this:

With early voting tallies and most of Saturday’s Election Day results posted, Houston’s three incumbent at-large council members facing runoffs had won, while District H incumbent Karla Cisneros held the slimmest of leads over challenger Isabel Longoria. Four other incumbents already have reclaimed their seats, having won outright on Nov. 5: Dave Martin (District E), Greg Travis (District G), Robert Gallegos (District I) and Martha Castex-Tatum (District K).

At least half of the 16-member council will be new — five current members are term-limited and three vacated their seats: Dwight Boykins (District D) made a failed bid for mayor, Amanda Edwards (At-Large 4) is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, and Steve Le (District F) decided not to seek re-election.

One council race will not be decided Saturday: The third-place finisher in District B has filed lawsuits contesting the election and challenging the second-place finisher’s eligibility, citing her 2007 felony theft conviction and a state law that appears to bar candidates with such convictions from running for office. No election date has been set.

The simplest way to summarize what happened is this tweet:

With 367 of 385 voting centers reporting, Karla Cisneros had a 25-vote lead over Isabel Longoria. It had been a 14-vote lead with 323 centers reporting. Longoria had chipped away at Cisneros’ lead all evening. I have to think this one is going to get recounted, so whatever the final numbers are, expect this to remain an unsettled question for a little longer.

The At Large results could have been better, but they were sufficiently close in #4 and #5 that they also could have been a lot worse. When Mayor Turner puts forward a new version of HERO, he should have ten of sixteen Council votes in his favor. We’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, congratulations to all the winners.

8 Day runoff 2019 campaign finance reports

Dec 10th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

We start with a Chron story.

Mayor Sylvester Turner raked in more than $1.7 million from late October through early December and spent roughly the same amount, leaving him with almost $600,000 for the final days of the runoff, according to a campaign finance report filed Friday.

The total marked a fundraising surge for Turner, who was aided by newly reset donor contribution limits for the runoff, though he still was outspent by Tony Buzbee, a millionaire trial lawyer and the mayor’s opponent in the Dec. 14 contest.

Buzbee, who is self-financing his campaign and refusing all campaign contributions, put $2.3 million of his own money into the campaign last month and spent almost $3.1 million between Oct. 27 and Wednesday, leaving him with about $524,000.

With a week to go in the election, Buzbee and Turner have now combined to spend about $19 million in what has become easily the most expensive Houston mayoral race yet. Buzbee has spent $11.8 million of the $12.3 million he has put into his campaign account, while Turner has spent $7.2 million since the middle of 2018.

As an earlier story notes, self-funding has only occasionally been a winning strategy in Houston. I don’t expect it to be any different this time, but I do note that Buzbee’s basic strategy has changed. I still haven’t seen a Buzbee TV ad since November, but we’ve gotten a couple of mailers (someone needs to clean up his database if he’s mailing to me), I’ve seen a bunch of web ads, and he’s been littering the streets with signs. Gotta spend that money on something.

Here’s a summary of the 8 day reports for the runoff:


Race   Candidate     Raised      Spent     Loan     On Hand
===========================================================
Mayor  Turner     1,741,906  1,722,625        0     597,624
Mayor  Buzbee     2,300,000  3,076,360        0     524,420

A      Peck          38,075     39,252    5,000      15,373
A      Zoes           6,600      7,562    4,000       3,723

B      Jackson
B      Bailey           355        284      200          70

C      Kamin        180,528    137,396        0     173,370
C      Kennedy       35,160     18,343        0      25,995

D      Shabazz       31,490     28,575        0       5,009
D      Jordan        28,190     11,688        0      53,724

F      Thomas        
F      Huynh         

H      Cisneros      54,700     75,012        0      41,632
H      Longoria      36,945     32,906        0      20,946

J      Rodriguez
J      Pollard       38,016     47,147   40,000      22,864

AL1    Knox          69,710     49,857        0      16,073
AL1    Salhotra     128,672    121,736        0      64,150

AL2    Robinson     111,280    199,791        0     189,649
AL2    Davis         27,725     10,367        0      19,816

AL3    Kubosh        72,215     69,164  276,000     113,500
AL3    Carmouche     17,570     11,757        0       5,812

AL4    Plummer       41,915     44,501   21,900      12,443
AL4    Dolcefino     19,215     17,482        0       6,478

AL5    Alcorn       195,105    154,757        0      49,463
AL5    Dick           1,100     65,205   75,000       2,545

I think there must be some reports that have not been uploaded – the Chron story mentions Sandra Rodriguez’s numbers, but there was no report visible on Saturday. It and the others may be there on Monday. In the Council races, what we see here is a continuation of what we had seen before. Big fundraisers raised big money, others didn’t. Eric Dick did his spend-his-own-money-and-file-weird-reports thing. Most of the spending has not been particularly visible to me – I’ve gotten a mailer from Robinson and Turner, and that’s about it.

How much any of this moves the needle remains to be seen. As we know from the Keir Murray reports, the runoff electorate is very similar in nature to the November electorate. That’s obviously better for some candidates than for others. If you think of fundraising in runoffs as being like the betting markets to some extent, then we’re probably headed towards the expected results. We’ll see if there are any surprises in store.

Chron overview of the At Large #1 runoff

Nov 30th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

“Sharp contrasts” is a good description of this race. “Clear choice” also works.

Raj Salhotra

A runoff between a conservative incumbent and liberal challenger for one of Houston’s citywide council seats presents arguably the sharpest contrast of any race on Houston’s December ballot.

Councilman Mike Knox, an Air Force veteran and former police officer, is seeking his second four-year term but faces stiff competition from Raj Salhotra, a 29-year-old attorney and former high school math teacher making his first run for elected office.

Last month, Knox secured 36.5 percent of the vote in the five-person race, far ahead of Salhotra’s 22 percent but not enough to win the race outright.

In his bid to retain the At-Large, Position 1 seat, Knox is pitching himself as a persistent check on Mayor Sylvester Turner and a leading advocate of reining in city spending. He also has framed Salhotra as a “Beto socialist” and alleged his challenger would distract city council by pushing partisan issues.

“This is a race where we have a young person who’s aspiring to become a career politician, who believes that political agendas are the most important thing for Houstonians,” said Knox, 61. “And I disagree with that.”

Salhotra, meanwhile, is casting Knox as a tea party Republican, contending that the incumbent has served as an antagonist on council and taken positions that threaten to hinder progress on key issues. He rattles off Knox’s dissenting votes by memory: opposing Turner’s pension overhaul, voting against stricter floodplain regulations, voting not to join a lawsuit opposing Texas’ so-called sanctuary cities law, Senate Bill 4.

“This is a nonpartisan race, but I do think there are real philosophical differences between Councilmember Knox and myself, and we’re making that clear to voters through knocking on doors, phone banking, texting, mail, Facebook ads,” Salhotra said Sunday while block walking through a high-turnout precinct in the Heights. “The thinking goes, if we can explain his record to voters and my vision and core values, we feel confident they will make the choice to support me.”

My interview with Raj Salhotra is here, and my analysis of the precinct data from Round One is here. Salhotra has had the fundraising advantage, and he will need to use it to make sure people know who he is and what he stands for. As we’ve discussed before, all of the At Large runoffs are Republican versus Democrat, though some of the candidates in those races lean into that more than others. Mike Knox is all in on it, and that by itself would be enough to want to vote him out, even before you look at his record. Raj has a lot of votes to make up, but he will have a favorable environment in December. The rest is up to him.

Precinct analysis: 2019 At Large #1

Nov 22nd, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
13 comments

I’m going to take a look at the five At Large Council races as well, since all of them have interesting things to say about what happened. First up is At Large #1, where incumbent Mike Knox will face first time candidate Raj Salhotra in December.


Dist    Knox Provost     Raj     YNF    Bmon
============================================
A      7,587   1,465   2,482   2,730   1,108
B      1,952   5,515   1,856   3,485   2,473
C     14,652   2,129  15,043   4,713   1,547
D      3,148   7,214   3,719   4,185   4,266
E     13,721   1,711   3,257   3,140   1,942
F      3,405   1,116   1,522   2,119   1,004
G     18,030   1,836   5,034   2,845   1,585
H      2,869   1,352   3,578   5,080     847
I      1,982   1,323   2,329   4,381     781
J      2,300     685   1,487   1,393     631
K      4,237   3,285   4,396   2,985   2,798
					
A     49.36%   9.53%  16.15%  17.76%   7.21%
B     12.77%  36.09%  12.15%  22.81%  16.18%
C     38.47%   5.59%  39.50%  12.38%   4.06%
D     13.97%  32.02%  16.51%  18.57%  18.93%
E     57.72%   7.20%  13.70%  13.21%   8.17%
F     37.15%  12.18%  16.60%  23.12%  10.95%
G     61.47%   6.26%  17.16%   9.70%   5.40%
H     20.90%   9.85%  26.07%  37.01%   6.17%
I     18.36%  12.25%  21.57%  40.58%   7.23%
J     35.41%  10.54%  22.89%  21.44%   9.71%
K     23.94%  18.56%  24.83%  16.86%  15.81%

A couple of big-picture items before we get into the district numbers. Knox got 36.51% of the Harris County vote in 2019. He was the only Republican candidate in the race this year. He got 24.75% in 2015, but Griff Griffin was also in that race, and the two of them combined for 37.65% of the vote. The two Republican Mayoral candidates (Buzbee and King) combined for 42.79% of the vote this year. This is all very fuzzy and I wouldn’t put too much stock in it, I’m just trying to get a (very) rough idea of the overall Republican vote in the city.

At Large races are notorious for having a high undervote rate, largely because the candidates are usually not well known to most voters. In this case, At Large #1 had the lowest undervote rate of any of the At Large races, at 17.65%. The others ranged from 21.05% to 23.00%. By contrast, the Mayor’s race had an undervote rate of 1.59%. One possible reason for this is that four of the five At Large #1 contestants had been in at least one race before, and the fifth raised enough money to do some mailers.

Mike Knox showed strength where you’d expect him to, in Districts A, E, and G, and he did pretty well in C, F, and J. If he can repeat that kind of performance in the runoff, he can win. Like Tony Buzbee, he would have preferred for there to be runoffs in E and G as well, but unlike Buzbee he doesn’t have a ton of money to throw around to generate turnout for himself. The risk for him is that Buzbee will go down with a whimper and drag him and the other Republican runoff candidates as well.

Raj Salhotra carried Districts C and K, both by small amounts. He did pretty well for a first time candidate, but he has his work cut out for him. He has about a 29K deficit to overcome, and he has to win a lot of votes in districts like B and D despite having Georgia Provost and Larry Blackmon endorse Knox in the runoff. Honestly, I’d probably put whatever money he has into mailers and robocalls tying Knox to Buzbee and Trump, and hope for the best. Getting those Democrats who have been endorsing Mayor Turner to speak up on his behalf would help, too.

I admit, I expected Georgia Provost to be Salhotra’s main competition for the second runoff slot. She’s run before, she made the runoff in 2015, and she starts with a base of support. But she doesn’t raise money, and while she obviously does well in the African-American districts, she doesn’t do much more than just split that vote with the other African-American candidate on the ballot. In fact, she did better in 2015 with Chris Oliver also in the race than she did this year with Larry Blackmon, who is just a perennial candidate. You could muster up an argument that Blackmon cost her a shot at the runoff, as her total plus his would have outscored Salhotra, but the presence of Oliver in 2015 didn’t hold her back.

I was a little surprised to see Yolanda Navarro Flores do as well as she did. She was last on a ballot in 2013, and had not won races other than for HCC Trustee. She entered late and raised no money, but as you can see she did very well in H and I, she outpaced Provost everywhere except B, D, and K, and outpaced Salhotra everywhere except C, E, G, and K. An earlier entry and some actual fundraising, and she could still be in this race.

I’ll be looking at the rest of the races over the next few days. Let me know what you think.

Initial thoughts on Election 2019

Nov 7th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

All bullet points, all the time…

– Here’s my opening statement on the election returns debacle. We have more information about this now, but we still need more before we can go anywhere else with it.

– All incumbents want to win without runoffs, but for an incumbent that was forced into a runoff, Mayor Turner did pretty darned well. Including Fort Bend, he got about 12K more votes than Buzbee and King combined, and missed by about 2K outscoring Buzbee plus King plus Boykins. Suffice to say, he’s in a strong position for the runoffs.

– We are going to have a cubic buttload of runoffs. In addition to the Mayor, there are seven district Council runoffs, all five At Large Council races, two HISD races, two HCC races, and HD148. We might have had pretty decent overall turnout without the Mayor’s race included, but with it at the top it will be a lot like a November election. I’ll put the initial over/under at about 175K, which is roughly the 2009 Mayoral election runoff total.

– Among those Council runoffs are districts B and D, which along with HISD II and IV and HCC 2 will favor Turner. There are no runoffs in E or G, which would have favored Buzbee, and the runoff in A is almost certain to be a serene, low-money affair. Districts C and J went for King in the 2015 runoffs, but the runoffs in those districts involve only Democratic candidates. Turner has a lot more wind at his back than Buzbee does.

– For a more visual representation of the above, see this Mike Morris tweet. Nearly all of those Buzbee areas are in districts A, E, and G.

– In a sense, the main event in November is the At Large runoffs, all five of which feature a Republican and a Democrat. A Council that includes Mike Knox, Willie Davis, Michael Kubosh, Anthony Dolcefino, and Eric Dick is a Council that (including the members in A, E, and G) is fully half Republican, and could thus throw a lot of sand into the gears of the second Turner administration (or really grease the wheels of a Buzbee administration, if you want to extend the metaphor). Yes, I know, Council doesn’t really work like that, but the difference between that Council and one that includes three or more of Raj Salhotra, David Robinson, Janaeya Carmouche, Letitia Plummer, and Sallie Alcorn, is likely to be quite large. You want to have an effect on the direction Houston takes over the next four years, there you have it.

– Council could have been even more Republican, but at the district level it looks to remain at least as Democratic and possibly a little more so than it is now. Districts C and J may have gone for King in 2015 as noted, but Democrats Abbie Kamin and Shelley Kennedy are the choices in C (Greg Meyers and Mary Jane Smith finished just behind Kennedy), while Ed Pollard and Sandra Rodriguez are the contenders in J. (Yes, Pollard is considerably more conservative than most Dems, especially on LGBT issues. He’ll be the next Dwight Boykins in that regard if he wins.) District F has been (with a two-year break from 2013 to 2015) Republican going back to the 90s, but Tiffany Thomas is in pole position. She will no doubt benefit from the Mayoral runoff.

– I should note that in District C, the four candidates who were on a Greater Heights Democratic Club candidate forum I moderated in September – Kamin, Kennedy, Candelario Cervantez, and Amanda Wolfe; Kendra Yarbrough Camarena was also in the forum but switched to the HD148 race – combined for 55% of the vote in C. That’s a nice chunk of your HD134, CD02 and CD07 turf, and another illustration of how Donald Trump has helped kill the Republican Party in Harris County.

– Speaking of HD148, 69% of the vote there went to the Democratic candidates. Jessica Farrar got 68% in 2018, and she was on the high end.

– Remember when I said this about HD148 candidate Adrian Garcia? “It’s certainly possible some people will think he’s the County Commissioner, but whether they’d be happy to vote for him or confused as to why he’d be running for another office is a question I can’t answer.” I would say now the answer is “happy to vote for him”, because with all due respect I cannot see how he finishes third in that field if he was differently named. Low profile special elections are just weird.

– To be fair, name recognition also surely helped Dolcefino and Dick, neither of whom had much money. One had a famous name, and one has been a candidate multiple times, while littering the streets with his yard signs, so there is that.

– I’m just about out of steam here, but let me say this again: We. Must. Defeat. Dave. Wilson. Tell everyone you know to make sure they vote for Monica Flores Richart in the HCC 1 runoff. We cannot screw that up.

– If you still need more, go read Stace, Nonsequiteuse, and Chris Hooks.

Final results are in

Nov 6th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
9 comments

Here they are. Refer to my previous post for the initial recap, I’m going to be very minimalist. Let’s do this PowerPoint-style, it’s already been a long day:

Mayor – Turner fell short of 50%, landing up a bit below 47%. He and Buzbee will be in a runoff. Which, if nothing else, means a much higher turnout for the runoff.

Controller: Chris Brown wins.

District A: Peck versus Zoes.
District B: Jackson versus Bailey.
District C: Kamin versus Kennedy. Gotta say, it’s a little surprising, but quite nice, for it to be an all-Dem runoff. Meyers came close to catching Kennedy, but she hung on to second place.
District D: Brad Jordan had a late surge, and will face Carolyn Evans-Shabazz in the runoff. If Evans-Shabazz wins, she’ll need to resign her spot on the HCC Board, so there would be another new Trustee if that happens.
District F: Thomas versus Huynh. Other than the two years we had of Richard Nguyen, this seat has pretty much always been held by a Republican. Tiffany Thomas has a chance to change that.
District H: Cisneros verusus Longoria.
District J: Pollard versus Rodriguez. Sandra Rodriguez had a late surge and nearly finished ahead of Pollard. Very evenly matched in Round One.

At Large #1: Knox versus Salhotra. Both candidates will benefit from the Mayoral runoff, though I think Raj may be helped more.
At Large #2: Robinson versus Davis, a rerun from 2015.
At Large #3: Kubosh slipped below 50% and will face Janaeya Carmouche in overtime.
At Large #4: Dolcefino versus Plummer. We will have somewhere between zero and four Republicans in At Large seats, in case anyone needs some non-Mayoral incentive for December.
At Large #5: Alcorn versus Eric Dick. Lord, please spare me Eric Dick. I don’t ask for much.

HISD: Dani Hernandez and Judith Cruz ousted incumbents Sergio Lira and Diana Davila. Maybe that will make the TEA look just a teeny bit more favorably on HISD. Kathy Blueford Daniels will face John Curtis Gibbs, and Matt Barnes had a late surge to make it into the runoff against Patricia Allen.

HCC: Monica Flores Richart inched up but did not make it to fifty percent, so we’re not quite rid of Dave Wilson yet. Rhonda Skillern-Jones will face Kathy Lynch-Gunter in that runoff.

HD148: A late surge by Anna Eastman gives her some distance between her and Luis La Rotta – Eastman got 20.34%, La Rotta 15.84%. The Republican share of the vote fell from 34% to 32%, right on what they got in this district in 2018.

Now you are up to date. Go get some sleep.

2019 election results: Houston and Metro

Nov 6th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

Unfortunately, we have to start with this:

Results of Tuesday’s election could take until 2 a.m. Wednesday after the Texas Secretary of State issued a new regulation that upended plans by the Harris County Clerk’s Office to speed vote counting.

The first tubs containing electronic ballot cards from across Harris County arrived at central count just before 9:30 p.m., where election judges and poll watchers waited to see the vote count in action.

Dr. Diane Trautman said she had hoped to have votes come in from 10 countywide drop-off locations, fed in through a secured intranet site, leading to faster results on election night.

Instead, Secretary Ruth R. Hughs ordered on Oct. 23 that law enforcement officers would instead escort the ballot box memory cards from each of the 757 polling sites to the central counting station.

That change, made nearly two weeks before Election Day, led to a major delay that left voters wondering for hours how races up and down ballot would turn out.

Early election results trickled in shortly after 7 p.m., but remained virtually unchanged for hours Tuesday.

Here’s the County Clerk’s statement about that order. I don’t know what was behind it, but it sure did gum things up. In the end, final results were not available till quite late, with no more partial results after midnight because producing those was slowing down the input process. Here’s the later statement on when results would be expected. Suffice to say, this was a mess, and no one is happy about it all. Expect there to be an extended fight between the County Clerk and SOS offices.

Anyway. I’m still groggy from a late night, so I’m going to hit the highlights, and we’ll get final results later. Here we go.

Mayor: Turner leads, is close to a majority.

Mayor Sylvester Turner held a wide lead over Tony Buzbee in limited early returns late Tuesday and was within striking distance of an outright re-election win, though it was unclear at press time if he would secure enough votes to avoid a runoff.

Buzbee, a millionaire trial lawyer, jumped out to an early second-place lead that he appeared likely to retain over Bill King, an attorney and businessman who narrowly lost a 2015 runoff to Turner but struggled this time to compete financially with Buzbee, his main rival for conservative votes.

With a small share of Election Day precincts reporting, Turner remained a shade under the majority vote share he would need to avoid a December runoff against Buzbee.

Councilman Dwight Boykins, who competed with Turner for the support of Democratic and black voters, trailed in fourth place, while former councilwoman Sue Lovell was further behind in fifth. Seven other candidates combined for the remaining share of the vote.

Adding in the Fort Bend results, and we get the following:


Turner     63,359  47.28%
Buzbee     39,361  29.37%
King       17,878  13.34%
Boykins     7,848   5.86%
Lovell      1,433   1.07%
The Rest    4,121   3.08%

Three things to think about: One, Turner has at this point more votes than Buzbee and King combined, so if we do go to a runoff that’s not a bad position to start with. Two, the Election Day results reported so far came mostly from Districts A, C, E, and G, so they would be more favorable to Buzbee and King than the city as a whole. And three, the election polling was pretty accurate, especially at pegging the support levels for Boykins and Lovell.

Oh, and a fourth thing: Tony Buzbee’s drunken Election Night speech. Yowza.

Controller: Incumbent Chris Brown leads

It’s Brown 62,297 and Sanchez 54,864 adding in Fort Bend, and again with mostly Republican votes from yesterday (Sanchez led the Election Day tally by about 1,700 votes). Barring a big surprise, Brown has won.

City Council: Most incumbents have big leads, and there’s gonna be a lot of runoffs. To sum up:

District A: Amy Peck has 44.3%, George Zoes 16.8%
District B: Tarsha Jackson 21.0%, Renee Jefferson Smith 15.1%, Cynthia Bailey 13.7%, Alvin Byrd 10.7%
District C: Abbie Kamin 30.8%, Shelley Kennedy 15.8%, Greg Meyers 14.4%, Mary Jane Smith 14.0%
District D: Carolyn Evans-Shabazz 19.0%, Carla Brailey 12.3%, Brad Jordan 11.9%, Rashad Cave 11.4%, Jerome Provost 10.4%, Andrew Burks 10.3%
District E: Dave Martin easily wins
District F: Tiffany Thomas 39%, Van Huynh 24%, Richard Nguyen 18%
District G: Greg Travis easily wins
District H: Karla Cisneros 38.9%, Isabel Longoria 27.5%, Cynthia Reyes-Revilla 24.0%
District I: Robert Gallegos easily wins
District J: Edward Pollard 32.4%, Sandra Rodriguez 26.4%, Barry Curtis 19.7%
District K: MArtha Castex-Tatum easily wins

At Large #1: Mike Knox 38.1%, Raj Salhotra 21.1%, Yolanda Navarro Flores 16.3%, Georgia Provost 14.7%
At Large #2: Davis Robinson 38.9%, Willie Davis 28.8%, Emily DeToto 18.8%
At Large #3: Michael Kubosh 50.8%, Janaeya Carmouche 20.6%
At Large #4: Anthony Dolcefino 22.9%, Letitia Plummer 16.4%, Nick Hellyar 12.8%, Ericka McCrutcheon 11.3%, Bill Baldwin 10.5%
At Large #5: Sallie Alcorn 23.2%, Eric Dick 22.0%, no one else above 10

Some of the runoff positions are still very much up in the air. Michael Kubosh may or may not win outright – he was only at 46% on Election Day. Name recognition worth a lot (Dolcefino, Dick) but not everything (both Provosts, Burks). Not much else to say but stay tuned.

HISD: Davila and Lira are going to lose

Dani Hernandez leads Sergio Lira 62-38, Judith Cruz leads Diana Davila 64-36. Kathy Blueford Daniels is close to fifty percent in II but will likely be in a runoff with John Curtis Gibbs. Patricia Allen, Reagan Flowers, and Matt Barnes in that order are in a tight battle in IV.

HCC: No story link on the Chron front page. Monica Flores Richart leads the execrable Dave Wilson 47-34 in HCC1, Rhonda Skillern-Jones leads with 45% in HCC2 with Kathy Lynch-Gunter at 26%, and Cynthia Lenton-Gary won HCC7 unopposed.

Metro: Headed to easy passage, with about 68% so far.

That’s all I got for now. Come back later for more.

30 Day campaign finance reports: Incumbents and challengers for Council

Oct 19th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

As before, my look at the July 2019 finance reports for these candidates is here, and all of the finance reports that I have downloaded and reviewed are in this Google folder. Except for the reports that were filed non-electronically, which you can find here. Erik Manning’s invaluable spreadsheet remains my source for who’s in what race.


Candidate     Raised      Spent     Loan     On Hand
====================================================
Martin         8,150     20,389        0     147,952
Cleveland      5,682      5,330        0         352

Travis         9,800     20,193   21,000     121,297
Pletka         4,167      3,289        0           4
Baker              0        582        0           0

Cisneros      20,281     38,605        0      93,941
Longoria      49,639     20,243        0      23,589
ReyesRevilla  10,356      5,809        0      16,187
Salcedo

Gallegos      16,510     47,728        0     115,718
Gonzales       5,190      4,159    4,310       5,190

Castex-Tatum  15,850     11,568        0      44,409
Vander-Lyn       625          0        0           0
Sauke            100      2,008        0         130

Knox          32,188     35,540        0      24,990
Salhotra      81,218     67,748        0     180,947
Provost        4,850      4,775        0         468
Nav Flores       259        259        0           0
Blackmon

Robinson      52,008     48,267        0     255,938
Davis         20,665     29,110    3,000       8,832
Griffin        1,350        700        0         650
Detoto            24      3,124      500         439
Honey

Kubosh        40,035     39,076  276,000     122,578
Carmouche      3,975      7,156        0         708
McClinton     14,787     18,577        0       4,895
Gonzalez

Not a whole lot of interest here. There are multiple candidates who entered the race too late to have a July report who are showing up this time, but outside of Isabel Longoria in H none of them made much of an impression. That race continues to be the most interesting non-Mayoral challenge to an incumbent on the ballot. Karla Cisneros has plenty of resources available to her, but she’s in a fight.

Beyond that, as I said, not much to say. I wish Janaeya Carmouche had raised more money. Willie Davis and Marcel McClinton did raise a few bucks, but not nearly enough to make a difference in a citywide race. There’s just nothing else to say. I’ll have more reports tomorrow.

UPDATE: Because I’m an idiot, I overlooked the At Large #1 race initially. Raj Salhotra continues his fundraising superiority, while Mike Knox at least raised a few bucks, and no one else did anything of note. I see a lot of Raj signs in my neighborhood, but I think I’d feel better if I saw a TV ad or two from his campaign. Old-fashioned, I know, but it’s still the best way to reach a lot of voters.

Endorsement watch: Mistakes were made

Oct 19th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

A swing and a miss.

As a city council member, Mike Knox has not been afraid to clash with Mayor Sylvester Turner.

He voted against a $650,000 contract to boost participation in the 2020 Census, saying he had reservations about the “missions and agendas” of the firm chosen to do outreach.

He was one of six council members to vote against a contract that will pay up to $3 million over five years for musicians to perform live at Bush Intercontinental and Hobby airports — a program strongly endorsed by Turner.

And he was the only council member to cast a “no” vote on Turner’s historic pension reform proposal.

But Knox, 60,a former police officer running for a second-four year term in the At-Large Position 1 seat, is not merely a contrarian. Knox objected to the airport music contract because he thought the money could be better used for airport amenities, such as improved signage. He opposed an ordinance banning smokeless tobacco use by professional baseball players at Minute Maid Park, on the grounds that it violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Knox’s said he voted against Turner’s pension plan because the mayor did not provide a draft copy to review. “Now I’m not in the habit and I will not be in the habit of voting for things that I don’t know what I’m voting on,” he told the editorial board.

The editorial board has tended to agree with the mayor on many of these issues, but what’s important about Knox’s positions is his ability to dispassionately look at policy options and, when he disagrees, to be willing to offer an opposing view anchored by logic. “We make too many decisions based on emotion, situational ethics and also just the desire to make a political statement.”

Yeah, that’s baloney. It’s fine to have principles, as long as they lead you to doing the right thing. Voting against Census outreach, at a time when the state Republican leadership is openly hostile to cities, is in itself disqualifying, and no one who votes against the pension reform plan gets to call themselves “fiscally responsible” or “fiscally conservative”, no matter what the pretext was for the No vote. The Chron rightfully had nice things to say later on about Raj Salhotra, but said he needed “some experience under his belt”. If Mike Knox is what having experience looks like, then “experience” isn’t all that useful, either. No thank you very much.

Anyway. My interview with Raj Salhotra is here, and the July finance reports that include At Large #1 is here; the 30 day reports are on their way, I swear.

That odd decision was then followed up with the even more confounding endorsement of CM Michael Kubosh.

In the last municipal election cycle, this editorial board endorsed Michael Kubosh for City Council At-Large Position 3 with a significant caveat: His opposition to Houston’s equal rights amendment (HERO) and his use of fear-mongering rhetoric gave us pause.

“If HERO were the only issue on the agenda for City Council’s next term,” we wrote in 2015, “Kubosh’s actions would be reason enough to boot him from office.”

As reasons to look past his wrongheaded views on the gay and transgender community, we pointed to the political skills that helped him pass an amendment to the mayor’s budget, his success in getting the funds needed to fish abandoned cars from the city’s bayous in a joint project with Harris County and his knack for constituent services.

Four years later, we are again torn. Kubosh kept his promise to retrieve submerged cars, a project that has removed more than 80 vehicles from Sims and Brays Bayou. He has been spearheading an effort to bring an Astro World-like theme park to Houston, a project that Mayor Sylvester Turner hinted in a recent tweet may be on the horizon. He has advocated for distribution of Harvey relief funds to the victims most in need.

However, in a candidate screening, Kubosh several times expressed opinions that reminded us powerfully of the caveats the board felt when recommending him last time. He said it is wrong to fire someone because they are gay or transgender and cited his hiring of a gay lawyer as proof that he doesn’t hold anti-gay sentiment, yet he also maintained — misleadingly — that the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance would have allowed any man to dress up as a woman and go into a women’s restroom.

“At the very end I couldn’t vote with them to allow a woman’s privacy to be violated not by a transgender person but by a possible predator who learned that Houston will now let you in their restrooms if you dress as a woman,” he told the editorial board. The conflation of transgender women with predators is not only offensive, it has been thoroughly debunked. And to state the obvious: There are already plenty of laws making it a crime for anyone to sneak into a bathroom to harm or harass anyone.

Kubosh, 68, also described Drag Queen Storytime at the Houston Public Library as a showcase for “adult entertainment” that could potentially harm children. That mindset is troubling, especially for a council member who represents all Houstonians — including members of the gay and transgender community.

As one of Kubosh’s challengers, Janaeya Carmouche, rightly pointed out, being a city council member is “not just simply the day-to-day minutiae of the job or the machinations of the job. It is understanding that you have a platform and your voice and your opinion will be amplified.“

They then wistfully conclude that Janaeya Carmouche and Marcel McClinton, like Raj Salhotra, might be Council-worthy some day, but today they are too young and inexperienced, and then finish up by expressing the hope that Kubosh will somehow be a different person over the next four years than he has shown himself to be. Hey, remember when the Chron endorsed Ted Cruz in 2012 on the grounds that they hoped he would stop being Ted Cruz and magically transform into someone who would be more like Kay Bailey Hutchison? I sure do. How’d that work out? I don’t know who’s writing these endorsement editorials these days, but they sure seem to lack the basic experience needed to understand how human nature works.

Look, if the editorial board likes and agrees with Michael Kubosh, then by all means they should endorse him. If they think his accomplishments outweigh the things about him they find offensive and troubling, then endorse him. If they think there’s sufficient value in having him on Council to serve as a check on Mayor Turner, then endorse him. (Just curious here: do they think Kubosh, or Mike Knox for that matter, would serve as a check on Tony Buzbee or Bill King?) But endorsing their fantasy version of Michael Kubosh, especially when they have already demonstrated that trick never works, is delusional and a disservice to the readers.

A brief look at the Council incumbents who face contested races

Oct 1st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
8 comments

I think two, and hopefully three, of these races are truly competitive. The others, not so much.

Raj Salhotra

Asked how she would operate differently from City Councilwoman Karla Cisneros, the District H incumbent she is trying to unseat in November, Isabel Longoria did not mince words.

“What I would do different is … not be afraid to stand up to folks and say, here are the decisions we have to make — and not hide until the last minute because I’m scared to upset people,” Longoria, a former city planning commissioner and legislative policy aide, told the Chronicle editorial board last week.

Cisneros, a former HISD board president and first-term council member, shot back, “I’ve experienced this my whole life. I have a very feminine look about me, my voice is soft, and I can tell you that I am often underestimated. I’ve been called an iron fist in a velvet glove, for good reason.”

The exchange displayed the heightening intensity evident in many of the 16 Houston city council races, including eight involving incumbents defending their seats this fall. If any one of their challengers wins, the result would add to what already is guaranteed to be a seismic turnover on council, as half the current body is term-limited or not seeking re-election.

[…]

Aside from the District H race, which also includes real estate agent and neighborhood advocate Cynthia Reyes-Revilla and scientific researcher Gaby Salcedo, multiple challengers are hoping to force At-Large Councilmen Mike Knox (Position 1), David Robinson (Position 2) and Michael Kubosh (Position 3) into runoffs. Two district council members — Greg Travis of District G and Martha Castex-Tatum of District K — also face multiple opponents, while District E Councilman Dave Martin and District I Councilman Robert Gallegos each have drawn one challenger.

Knox, an Air Force veteran and former Houston police officer, generally is seen as one of the most vulnerable incumbents, thanks in part to a sluggish fundraising start compared to Raj Salhotra, one of his opponents. Salhotra raised $220,000 during the first six months of the year, compared to Knox’s $40,000 haul.

Still, Knox’s opponents — Larry Blackmon, Yolanda Navarro Flores, Georgia Provost and Salhotra — may have a tough time unseating him, depending on how many people turn out to vote. Knox would have the edge “if the electorate is the way it typically is in a municipal year — older and conservative,” [UH poli saci prof Brandon] Rottinghaus said.

Salhotra’s fundraising, and Provost’s strength among black voters — especially with competitive races in District B and D drawing voters — will counter Knox’s strengths, said Jay Aiyer, a public policy consultant and former chief of staff to Mayor Lee Brown. However, Aiyer added, Knox’s opponent in a potential runoff would need to draw at least some non-traditional voters.

“That’s one of the dangers when assessing the vulnerability of someone like Knox,” Aiyer said. “A lot of the younger candidates running social media-driven campaigns, geared toward energizing new or young voters — that’s a real uphill battle in a municipal election.”

Rottinghaus said the partisan nature of the race — with Democrats generally coalescing behind Salhotra and Republicans backing Knox — means the result will say a lot about the state of Houston’s electorate.

“This is really a story about the changing nature of the city. In a microcosm, this will be the most telling election — in addition to the mayor’s race — of how Houston and the region has changed,” he said.

Beating Kubosh, meanwhile, will require a mix of grass-roots support and a large war chest, Aiyer said. One of Kubosh’s opponents, Janaeya Carmouche, has built connections in progressive circles as a city council staffer and, more recently, deputy director of engagement for Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis. Carmouche also will have to report a significant fundraising amount in her next campaign finance report to be competitive, Aiyer said.

“I’m undaunted by the idea of incumbency, because I don’t believe in ownership of a position,” Carmouche said. “I believe that we have to earn that right every time.”

Also challenging Kubosh is Marcel McClinton, a recent high school graduate who has gained renown for his gun control advocacy after surviving a 2016 church shooting. He said he would push council to consider recommendations from the mayor’s commission against gun violence and prioritize climate change initiatives and flood control.

At Large #1 and District H, where I am, are definitely the ones to watch. Raj Salhotra has run a strong campaign and raised a lot of money, which he’s going to need to get his name out there to enough voters. I remain puzzled by Knox’s anemic fundraising totals. He’s a conservative Republican in a Democratic city, he’s not been very high profile on Council, and he has nowhere near enough money to run a robust citywide campaign. Maybe he figured he was playing with house money to begin with, maybe he just isn’t much for doing the dirty work, I don’t know. What I do know is that if Raj can get him into a runoff – he has to finish ahead of Georgia Provost, which is not a slam dunk – he can win.

As for District H, I don’t underestimate CM Cisneros, but I will note that in my neighborhood, which is also her neighborhood, I see a lot of Longoria and Reyes-Revilla signs. That doesn’t strike me as a great omen for her. I do see Cisneros signs, too, it just seems like her base has eroded. Looking back at the four-person race in November of 2015, she got 269 of 510 votes (52.7%) in Precinct 3 and 361 of 578 votes (62.5%) in Precinct 4, which combine to cover much of the Woodland Heights. I’m not feeling that for her this time. I could be wrong, and she can at least easily make it to a runoff even with a lesser performance in those two boxes. Outside of Knox, though, she appears to be the incumbent with the strongest opposition.

I’d like to add At Large #3 to this list, but I’m going to need to see a stronger finance report from Janaeya Carmouche first, and I’m going to need to see some evidence of actual campaigning from Marcel McClinton. (This isn’t quite what I had in mind, but it is impressive and laudable nonetheless.) Michael Kubosh hasn’t raised much money, either, but he has some self-funding capability, and unlike Knox has a fair amount of name recognition. He’s the favorite until and unless something changes.

The open seat races are more competitive, and much more chaotic overall. I have no idea what might happen in most of them. I presume we’ll get some overview stories on those contests in the next week or two.

Interview with Raj Salhotra

Sep 16th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Raj Salhotra

This week I will have interviews from two of the At Large races that feature challenges to sitting incumbents. First up is At Large #1, where candidate Raj Salhotra is among the four challengers to first-term incumbent Mike Knox. Salhotra is a native Houstonian, the son of immigrants, and another one of those younger candidates this year we keep reading about. A graduate of Rice University and Harvard Law School, he has taught high school math, worked on economic development policy with Mayor Turner, and co-founded a non-profit to help students get to and through college. Here’s the interview:

I never did get around to creating an Election 2019 page, in part because the Erik Manning spreadsheet has it all. My roundup of July finance reports that includes At Large #1 is here, my 2013 interview with incumbent Mike Knox, who was then a candidate for District A, is here, and my 2013 interview with candidate Georgia Provost, who was running for District D at the time, is here.

July 2019 campaign finance reports: Incumbents and challengers for Council and Controller

Jul 21st, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Let me start by saying that I began this post before Amanda Edwards became a candidate for Senate. I’m going to keep the AL4 race in here, in part to include Edwards’ June report totals, and in part because I’m just stubborn that way. I did add in the candidates who have jumped into AL4, so this is as up to date as I am. Feel free to tell me who I’ve missed.

As before, my look at the January 2019 finance reports for Houston candidates is here, and all of the finance reports that I have downloaded and reviewed are in this Google folder. Except for the reports that were filed non-electronically, which you can find here. Erik Manning’s invaluable spreadsheet remains my source for who’s in what race.

Dave Martin – District E
Sam Cleveland – District E
Ryan Lee – District E

Greg Travis – District G

Karla Cisneros – District H
Isabel Longoria – District H
Cynthia Reyes-Revilla – District H

Robert Gallegos – District I
Rick Gonzales – District I

Martha Castex-Tatum – District K

Mike Knox – At Large #1
Michelle Bonton – At Large #1
Georgia Provost – At Large #1
Raj Salhotra – At Large #1

David Robinson – At Large #2
Willie Davis – At Large #2
Emily Detoto – At Large #2

Michael Kubosh – At Large #3
Janaeya Carmouche – At Large #3
Marcel McClinton – At Large #3
Goku Sankar – At Large #3

Amanda Edwards – At Large #4
Christel Bastida – At Large #4
Tiko Reynolds-Hausman – At Large #4
Ericka McCrutcheon – At Large #4
Jason Rowe – At Large #4
Nick Hellyar – At Large #4
Letitia Plummer – At Large #4

Chris Brown – Controller
Amparo Gasca – Controller


Candidate     Raised      Spent     Loan     On Hand
====================================================
Martin        49,450     18,939        0     151,184
Cleveland
Lee

Travis        68,234     15,749   21,000     131,691

Cisneros      54,325      8,959        0     109,471
Longoria
R-Revilla     19,408      1,859        0      17,130

Gallegos      65,100     25,016        0     145,090
Gonzales         400      3,627    3,510         400

C-Tatum       37,200     13,664        0      40,128

Knox          40,295     45,555        0      41,171
Bonton
Provost
Salhotra     220,377     30,340        0     178,539

Robinson      88,616     27,043        0     262,221
Davis         10,250      3,051    3,000         807
Detoto         2,600      2,660      500         439

Kubosh        43,875     20,319  276,000     122,870
Carmouche      8,950      5,397    1,000       3,706
McClinton     25,823     21,739        0       8,675
Sankar

Edwards       73,807     42,179        0     192,791
Bastida        1,103         51      200         750
R-Hausman
McCrutcheon    5,100      7,225    5,000
Rowe               0          0        0           0
Hellyar       37,017     34,446        0      20,501
Plummer       64,519     36,356        0      43,795

Brown         66,611     36,522   75,000     234,350
Gasca

I know Tiko Reynolds-Hausman and Isabel Longoria entered their races in July, so they have no reports yet. That may be true for some others as well, but if so I’m not aware of them.

Let’s get the easy ones out of the way first. Greg Travis and Martha Castex-Tatum don’t have opponents. Chris Brown, Dave Martin, and Robert Gallegos may as well not have them, either. I know, there’s still a few months to go before the election, but none of the purported challengers appear to be doing much. Heck, only Sam Cleveland even has a website, though Ryan Lee and Rick Gonzales do at least have Facebook pages. So yeah, nothing to see here.

David Robinson and Michael Kubosh have opponents who have been a bit more active – Willie Davis is a repeat candidate, having run in 2015 against Robinson – but so far don’t appear to pose too much of a threat.

The threat to Karla Cisneros is greater, and potentially severe. I’ve already seen a couple of signs for her opponents in my neighborhood, and while Isabel Longoria hasn’t had a chance to post a finance report yet, Cynthia Reyes-Revilla’s totals are OK. Not terrifying if you’re the incumbent, but not nothing. Keep this one in your back pocket, and we’ll revisit when the 30 day reports are posted.

Had Amanda Edwards decided to stay in Houston and run for re-election, I’d have grouped her with the not-really-challenged incumbents. With AL4 now an open seat, and the field likely to expand further (*checks the Manning spreadsheet one last time to make sure no one else has entered the race*), it’s also open in the sense that there’s no clear frontrunner. Nick Hellyar and Letitia Plummer, who had started out in other races, have the early fundraising lead, but not enough to present a significant obstacle. Hellyar has picked up multiple endorsements from current and former elected officials, which ought to boost his coffers, but we’ll see what that means in practice. We really don’t know anything about this race right now.

And then there’s At Large #1. If you knew nothing about this election and I told you that Raj Salhotra was the incumbent and Mike Know was a challenger, you’d believe me based on their numbers. I can’t recall the last time an incumbent was so thoroughly outclassed in this regard. That’s great for Salhotra, whose biggest challenge isn’t Knox as much as it is Georgia Provost, who nudged past four better-funded candidates as well as ultra-perennial candidate Griff Griffin to make it into the runoff in 2015. She’s going to get her share of votes, especially if the voters don’t know the other candidates on the ballot. Salhotra is well on his way to having the resources to run a sufficient citywide campaign and introduce himself to the electorate. In what should be a prelude to another runoff, he just needs to finish in the top two. So far, so good.

I’ll break up the open seat races into two or three more posts. Did I mention there were a crap-ton of candidates this year? Let me know what you think.

Here come the youths

Jul 16th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

There are a lot of younger candidates running for Houston City Council this year.

Raj Salhotra

Inspired by the recent electoral success of millennial and Generation Z-aged candidates, more young people are running for Houston city council than ever before, a trend local politicos attribute to the potent national surge of activism stemming largely from President Trump’s election in 2016.

In last year’s midterm election, many of those new, young activists ran for office and won. Since the election, 29-year-old U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent voices, while locally 28-year-old Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo has led a dramatic political shift on Commissioners Court, which flipped to Democratic control for the first time in decades.

“I think we have to acknowledge the success in the 2018 cycle of millennials and very young candidates,” said education consultant Jay Aiyer, who served as former Mayor Lee Brown’s chief of staff at age 29.

A handful of candidates younger than 30, and at least a dozen more in their 30s, are seeking seats this year on Houston city council, the legislative body for the country’s fourth-largest city. Though council members have little formal power in Houston’s strong-mayor form of government, they approve an annual city budget north of $5 billion and handle constituent services for districts comprised of around 200,000 residents.

Among the youngest contenders are 18-year-old Marcel McClinton, a shooting survivor-turned-activist running for one of five at-large positions; 21-year-old Anthony Dolcefino, a candidate for District C; 24-year-old District D candidate Dennis Griffin; and 29-year-old Anthony Nelson, a Prairie View A&M University student running for District F.

[…]

Raj Salhotra, 28, is one of three candidates challenging At-Large 1 Councilman Mike Knox, a former police officer who is seeking a second four-year term. Also running are Michelle Bonton and Georgia Provost.

Salhotra is calling for the city to offer universal prekindergarten and more public transit, enforce more regulations on “pollutant-emitting plants” and require all new city vehicles be hybrid or electric.

Meanwhile, Knox repeatedly has pushed for the city to rein in what he calls “frivolous spending,” and to focus on core services — public safety, infrastructure, trash pickup — before thinking about anything else.

“The citizens of Houston want our government to spend money wisely and efficiently, and get the biggest bang for our buck,” Knox said. “My votes are designed to help the city stop its overspending habits and get back to focusing on our core responsibilities, and thereby staying within our means.”

Salhotra criticized Knox for, among other things, voting not to join a lawsuit challenging Texas’ anti-“sanctuary cities” law, and called Knox “really out of step with what the vast majority of Houstonians believe in.” Salhotra’s own policy views, he said, are rooted partly in his age.

“I think a lot about, how are the policies we put in place today affecting the next 30, 40, 50 years in Houston?” Salhotra said. “Because I’m going to be living here for the next 60 years of my life, God willing.”

[…]

The race for District C, which includes Montrose, Meyerland and Braeswood, has emerged as the most crowded contest: Thirteen people are running to succeed Cohen, who recently endorsed 32-year-old Abbie Kamin. Other candidates include Candelario Cervantez, 36, Nick Hellyar, 38, and the 21-year-old Dolcefino, son of former KTRK reporter Wayne Dolcefino.

“We’re living in a serious time, we’re at a critical juncture in this city, and certainly in the country, and it’s going to take everyone to be active and fighting — of all age groups,” Kamin said.

As is always the case, some of these candidates are more serious than others, and thus more likely to succeed than others. I’m starting to look through the campaign finance reports, which will give one indicator of how these and other candidates are doing. Turn your nose up however you like at the notion of fundraising being a proxy for candidate seriousness, the fact remains that it’s hard to get elected if no one knows who you are, and getting your name into the minds of voters doesn’t happen by magic or wishful thinking. It costs money to run a campaign, and that money has to come from somewhere.

Be that as it may, there’s another dynamic at play here that needs to be discussed. Historically speaking, at least, the voters in our city elections are old. How old? Here’s some research I did in 2015, which I’m just going to reprint here, as I think the numbers speak for themselves:


2013 voters

Range    Number    Pct
======================
18-30     9,786   5.6%
31-40    15,209   8.7%
41-50    23,508  13.5%
51-60    40,235  23.1%
61+      85,393  49.0%


2011 voters

Range    Number    Pct
======================
18-30     5,939   5.0%
31-40     9,488   8.1%
41-50    17,126  14.5%
51-60    28,601  24.3%
61+      56,664  48.1%


2009 voters

Range    Number    Pct
======================
18-30    10,021   5.7%
31-40    16,798   9.6%
41-50    29,664  16.9%
51-60    43,814  25.0%
61+      74,730  42.7%


2007 voters

Range    Number    Pct
======================
18-30     5,791   5.0%
31-40    10,599   9.2%
41-50    21,090  18.4%
51-60    28,633  24.9%
61+      48,728  42.4%

So yeah, when between two-thirds and three-fourths of your voters are over the age of 50 (a group that includes me now), it’s going to be that much more of a challenge for 20-something and even 30-something candidates to be taken seriously. It can be done – judging by the year of her college graduation as shown on her LinkedIn page, CM Amanda Edwards was 33 when she was elected in 2015 – but it’s a hurdle that older candidates don’t face. Let me know when someone writes a story about that.

Now of course, this calculus can be changed to some extent by simply getting more young voters to the polls. I don’t have the data for 2018, but there’s plenty of evidence nationally that younger voters were a larger part of that electorate than they were in 2016, and much more so than in 2014. That only goes so far, of course – there are only so many people between the ages of 18 and 40, let alone registered voters, let alone actual voters – and turning them out at a higher rate is much, much easier said than done. Perhaps some of the 2018 energy will carry over – I’d expect it to have some effect, though not much – but the fact remains that the regular, reliable voters are the ones who largely determine these elections. That’s the task all of these candidates, of any age, have before them. Good luck.

(Is it just me, or does everyone else always hear the word “youths” spoken in the voice of Joe Pesci?)

The 2019 elections

Jan 15th, 2019
by Charles Kuffner.
14 comments

We haven’t forgotten that there are some big elections on tap for us this year, have we? Let’s go a quick rundown.

May elections

Election campaigns are already in progress in the cities that have May elections, which includes big cities like San Antonio and Dallas, and smaller cities in our area like Pasadena, Sugar Land, and Pearland. Pasadena will be a hot zone again, with first-term Mayor Jeff Wagner up for re-election and local Democrats hoping to win the District A seat they came so close to in 2017, which would give them a 5-3 advantage on City Council. I don’t have much to say about these races yet, but I will note that my friend Nabila Mansoor is running for City Council in Sugar Land, so I wish her all the best with that.

Houston – Overview

This is the first city election since 2015, thanks to the change in the term limits law. It’s also the first city election since the election of Donald Trump, and the two high-turnout, Democratic-sweep elections in Harris County. How will that affect the course of this election? Normally, even if we have a hotly contested Mayor’s race, we’d be looking at 200 to 250K turnout max – less if the Mayor’s race was not contested – but with all the newly activated people from the past two years, will things change? The betting money always says No until events prove otherwise. The one other thing that may affect turnout this year is the Metro referendum, which itself will be conducted for the first time with no John Culberson in office. So many factors in play, so all I will say for now is don’t believe any firm, confident pronouncements. There’s a lot of room for variance and for doubt at this time.

Mayor

It’s Sylvester Turner versus Bill King, Round 2, with the extra zest (maybe) of Tony Buzbee. And maybe others, too – will anyone be surprised if Ben Hall manages to get a story published about how he’s “thinking about” taking another shot at it? The last Mayor to fail to be re-elected was Kathy Whitmire in 1991. Past performance does not guarantee future outcomes, but I figure there’s a reason for that. It’s Turner’s election to lose, and King doesn’t have his signature talking point from 2015 now that pension reform has been achieved, by Turner. He’s clearly going to attack Turner, but as to what he might campaign on beyond that, I have no idea.

City Controller

Honestly, I’ll be surprised if Chris Brown draws anything more than token opposition. Controller isn’t that sexy a job, and Brown hasn’t done anything to draw the bad kind of attention to himself.

City Council

Districts A, B, C, J, and At Large #5 are term limited. I’ve already received two invitations to like Facebook pages for District C candidates (Nick Hellyar and Bob Nowak), and I’m aware of at least two more such candidates (Shelley Kennedy and Abbie Kamin). Durrel Douglas listed some potential District B candidates a few weeks ago, and there are rumblings in the other slots as well. Raj Salhotra has announced a challenge to Mike Knox in At Large #1, while Laurie Robinson appears to be gearing up for another run in At Large #5. I’ll be reviewing the finance reports for January when they start to come out, which may yield a few more names. For now, let’s just say I expect a lot of activity, and not just in the open seats. Four years is a long time to go between city elections, and lots of people are in a mind to run for something.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that Sallie Alcorn, who had been Steve Costello’s chief of staff, has announced her candidacy for AL5.

HISD

Assuming we have HISD Trustee elections this November – we should know that for sure by August – the following Trustees are up in 2019: Rhonda Skillern-Jones, Sergio Lira, Jolanda Jones, and Diana Davila. Far as I know, all are planning to run for re-election. Lira was elected to fill out Manuel Rodriguez’s unfinished term in 2017, Skillern-Jones was forced into a runoff in 2015 and has had a rocky tenure as Board President, Davila upset Juliet Stipeche (now Mayor Turner’s education czar) in 2015, and Jolanda is Jolanda. I’m not currently aware of any opponents on the horizon, but I’m sure most if not all of them will draw someone. Assuming, again, we have HISD Trustee elections this November.

HCC

It will have been six long years, but we will finally have the chance to rid ourselves of the stain that is Dave Wilson, in HCC Trustee District 2, this November. Also up for election are Zeph Capo and Neeta Sane.

Metro

All of Harris County will have the Metro referendum, which is as yet unfinished, on their ballot in November. Again, I don’t have much to say about this yet, but this is one of my top interests for 2019. It will certainly be a component of the Mayor’s race as well. I figure if Metro could pass the 2003 referendum they have to be a favorite to pass this one, but you never know with these things.

That’s all I have for now. Next up will be the finance reports when they become available. If you know of any candidate announcements or other related news, leave a comment and tell us all.