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Runoff races, part 1: Congress

May 13th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

I looked at most of these races after the filing deadline here and here. Here’s a reminder about who’s still in.

Lorie Burch

CD03

Lorie Burch – Finance report
Sam Johnson – Finance report

First round: Burch 49.61%, Johnson 28.68%

Burch was above fifty percent for most of the evening on March 6, but eventually fell less than 250 votes short of the mark. She was endorsed by the DMN for the primary. This North Texas Gazette story has a bit about these candidates, as well as those in the CD06 and CD32 runoffs.

CD06

Jana Lynne Sanchez – Finance report
Ruby Faye Woolridge – Finance report

First round: Woolridge 36.95%, Sanchez 36.90%

It doesn’t get much closer than this – fifteen votes separated Woolridge and Sanchez in March. Woolridge is a rare candidate in these races that has run for Congress before – she was the Dem nominee in 2016. She has the endorsements of the DMN and the Star-Telegram, though I can’t find the link for the latter. Sanchez has been the stronger fundraiser. Here’s a KERA overview and a Guardian story about female Congressional candidates that focuses on this race and on CD07.

CD07

Lizzie Fletcher – Finance report
Laura Moser – Finance report

First round: Fletcher 29.36%, Moser 24.34%

I feel like you’re probably familiar with this race, so let’s move on.

CD10

Mike Siegel – Finance report
Tawana Cadien – Finance report

First round: Siegel 40.00%, Cadien 17.96%

Cadien is another repeat candidate; this is her fourth go-round. She emphasized that she’s been there all along, when no one paid any attention to CD10, in this AusChron story. She doesn’t appear to have done any fundraising. Siegel has the Chron endorsement and picked up the HGLBT Political Caucus endorsement for the runoff.

CD21

Mary Wilson – Finance report
Joseph Kopser – Finance report

First round: Wilson 30.90%, Kopser 29.03%

The CD21 primary was the original “establishment/centrist versus outsider/lefty” primary, though the role of the latter was initially played by Derrick Crowe. Mary Wilson kind of came out of nowhere – if you want to posit that she benefited by being the only woman in the four-candidate race, I won’t stop you – and has been receiving some catch-up media coverage since. The Statesman did profiles of both candidates – Wilson here, Kopser here – and Texas Public Radio has more.

CD22

Sri Kulkarni – Finance report
Letitia Plummer – Finance report

First round: Kulkarni 31.85%, Plummer 24.29%

My interview with Kulkarni is here and with Plummer is here. I referenced the news stories I could find about them in those posts, and there ain’t much since then. Kulkarni got the Chron endorsement in March.

Gina Ortiz Jones

CD23

Gina Ortiz Jones – Finance report
Rick Trevino – Finance report

First round: Ortiz Jones 41.56%, Trevino 17.38%

Like CD21, this runoff has an “establishment/outsider lefty” narrative, but it wasn’t supposed to be that way. It started out as a battle between establishment factions, but that crashed to earth in March when the Castro-backed Jay Hulings came in fourth. I said my piece about this one a couple of days ago, so let me just add that Gina Ortiz Jones has the potential to be a star if she can win and win again in 2020. She’s already probably the most-covered candidate (non-Beto division) in the state, and her combination of youth, background, and willingness to speak bluntly is a good recipe for continued attention from the national press. If she wins and can get re-elected, I don’t think it would be crazy to imagine her getting touted as a statewide candidate in the near future, perhaps in 2022 for Governor or 2024 for Senate if Beto can’t knock off Cruz.

CD25

Chris Perri – Finance report
Julie Oliver – Finance report

First round: Perri 32.79%, Oliver 26.44%

I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to this race, as CD25 is a notch or two down on the competitiveness list. It’s not out of the question that this could be competitive in November, but if it is Democrats are having a very, very good day. The AusChron and the Statesman have a couple of good recent profiles of this race the the two remaining candidates, both of whom look perfectly acceptable. According to Ed Sills’ email newsletter, Julie Oliver recently joined Laura Moser and Mike Siegel in having their campaigns get unionized, a trend that I approve of. Whoever wins, I hope he or she puts up a good fight against empty-suit-with-Rick-Perry-class-hair Roger Williams.

CD27

Roy Barrera – Finance report
Eric Holguin – Finance report

First round: Barrera 41.23%, Holguin 23.30%

I had some hope in this one early on, but that pretty much dissipated when Ducky Boy Farenthold was able to slink off into the sunset. With boring generic Republicans in the running for the nomination, this is a boring generic race in which the Rs are heavily favored. I don’t have much expectation for the special election in August, as the multiple Democratic candidates on the ballot will likely split the vote enough to produce an all-R runoff. There are plenty of other races out there to get invested in.

CD31

MJ Hegar – Finance report
Christine Eady Mann – Finance report

First round: Hegar 44.93%, Mann 33.51%

Hegar is the high-profile candidate in this race, and she has been the much stronger fundraiser. She’s got a great story as a Purple Heart recipient and advocate for women who’s published a book on her experiences and gets invited to participate in things like the Texas Monthly Women’s Voices Project, but Mann was in the race earlier and picked a pretty good year to run for Congress as a doctor. Like Gina Ortiz Jones, I think Hegar has star potential, but her road to Congress is a lot rougher. The AusChron and Killeen Daily Herald have brief overviews of this race.

CD32

Colin Allred – Finance report
Lillian Salerno – Finance report

First round: Allred 38.43%, Salerno 18.35%

Another runoff where the script deviated from what we might have originally expected. Ed Meier, an Obama administration alum and the top fundraiser going into March, fell short as Allred ran well ahead of everyone else in the field. I have to think he has the edge just by the numbers, but Salerno has been no slouch at fundraising, and female candidates as a group did very well in March, so don’t go counting chickens yet. The Dallas Observer did some good Q&As with these candidates before the primary – here’s Allred, here’s Salerno – and there are more recent Q&As from the UTD Mercury with Allred and the Preston Hollow People with Salerno. The DMN, which endorsed Allred, has a runoff overview here. And my favorite news bite on this race: A Marijuana Super PAC Is Targeting Pete Sessions. Smoke ’em if you got ’em, y’all.

I’ll round up the legislative runoffs tomorrow.

A primary runoff threefer

May 11th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

It’s getting chippy in CD02.

What started off as a relatively cordial campaign between two Republicans who want to represent parts of Houston in Congress has gotten downright testy as early voting looms.

Eight weeks ago, Dan Crenshaw and Kevin Roberts were publicly declaring their respect for one another and making plans to visit a gun range together. Now the men are accusing each other of twisting words to score political points ahead of early voting, which begins May 14. Election Day is May 22, two weeks from Tuesday.

[…]

Over the last several days Crenshaw and his supporters have accused Roberts of disrespecting the his experience and that of all U.S. military veterans — something Roberts called “an absolute lie.”

That came just days after Roberts said Crenshaw demeaned Christianity in a Facebook post years ago, a claim Crenshaw called false and a “new low even for a politician like Kevin.”

The heightened intensity between the two shows how in a tight Republican primary in which candidates hold many of the same core philosophies, personalities inevitably become a key part of the race.

You can read the details as you see fit. It’s petty and personal, which as noted in that last paragraph is usually how things go. Lord knows, there are plenty of people on my side who are MORE THAN READY for the primary season to be over about now. One thing the story doesn’t note is the TV ads that are once again sullying my live-sports-watching experience, as some shadowy deep-pockets group accused Crenshaw of being insufficiently toadying to Donald Trump. They’re not as bad as the Kathaleen Wall ads, because nothing will ever be as bad as the Kathaleen Wall ads, but they’re bad.

Meanwhile, in CD21 there are two sets of runoffs keeping everyone busy.

With just a week remaining before the start of early runoff voting, the two Republicans and two Democrats vying to succeed longtime U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-San Antonio) pressed the flesh at a candidate forum Monday in San Marcos.

More than 50 people attended the “meet and greet” event organized by the League of Women Voters of Hays County at the San Marcos Activity Center, taking the opportunity to hear from the congressional candidates in advance of the May 22 runoff. Each candidate had five minutes to give an introductory speech to the audience and provide his or her qualifications for public office.

The GOP ballot has Boerne business owner Matt McCall squaring off with Chip Roy, a former chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) who lives in Dripping Springs. The Democratic runoff is a contest between two Austinites – businessman and U.S. Army veteran Joseph Kopser and Mary Street Wilson, an educator-turned-minister.

[…]

McCall and Roy have cast themselves as conservative Republicans who advocate limited government, a free market economy, a strong military, better border security, and a pro-life approach to reproductive rights.

In his remarks to the audience, Roy made an appeal to Democratic, GOP, and independent voters in the crowd.

“Fundamentally, I believe we have an opportunity right now to reunite this country around our shared values,” said Roy, who also has worked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and former Gov. Rick Perry. “I think we’ve got an opportunity to get back to the things we all care about on a non-partisan basis.”

Roy said that all people should care about the ever-growing national debt, rising health insurance premiums, a flawed immigration system, and ill-equipped military personnel.

“We have disagreements on how we get to the solutions, and that’s fine,” he said.

Roy, who most recently worked for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an Austin-based conservative think tank, said he agrees with the federal government handling fewer national issues, and letting states address most other issues, such as health care.

“Let California be California and let Texas be Texas,” he said. “Let us be able to figure out these things at the local and state level.”

Roy almost sounds reasonable there, doesn’t he? I don’t buy it, but compared to what he could be saying, it’s not terrible.

And finally, look at the underdog in CD23.

On the last Wednesday in April, things are not going as planned for Rick Treviño. He has just driven two-and-a-half hours from San Antonio, where he lives, for a local Democratic event, only to find that it’s been rescheduled for later in the week. So, he decamps to a McDonald’s inside a Walmart here in Eagle Pass, a border town that’s in the far southeastern corner of Congressional District 23, the sprawling West Texas district that Treviño is gunning for as a Democrat. Frustrated and with five hours to kill until a meet-and-greet event in the evening, Treviño called an audible. He was going to knock on some doors.

Using the McDonald’s Wi-Fi, he logged onto his account with the Texas Democratic Party’s voter database to, as he puts it, “cut turf” on the fly. With the help of a campaign volunteer over the phone, he quickly pulled together a list of a few dozen homes in Eagle Pass.

“This is a grassroots campaign, man,” he tells me. And this, Treviño says, is how — with next to no money — he squeaked into the Democratic runoff, beating three other candidates, including Jay Hulings, the Castro brothers’ favorite who raised more than $600,000. “I win when I’m at the doors. I win when I’m talking to people.”

It’s also how he plans to win his runoff against Gina Ortiz Jones, a former Air Force intelligence officer who won the crowded five-person primary with a commanding 40 percent of the vote. Treviño trailed Ortiz Jones by more than 10,000 votes.

But Treviño doesn’t see Ortiz Jones as his only opponent in the May 22 runoff. He says he’s running against the entire Democratic Party establishment and its hackneyed approach to politics. After the March 6 primary, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) placed Ortiz Jones on its Red to Blue list of top-priority candidates, citing her long list of both local and national endorsements.

[…]

His bid has support from the phalanx of new groups like Our Revolution, the Sanders’ campaign offshoot, Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress that are promoting anti-establishment candidates in congressional races around the country.

“He’s the new populist candidate in the old populist state of Texas,” says Jim Hightower, who heads Our Revolution Texas. “Candidates like Rick have a genuine message not developed in a think tank or by political consultants but out of his heart and his gut. And he conveys that with great conviction to voters and potential new voters.”

These groups have helped bring in small donors and door-knocking volunteers. But for the most part, Treviño’s campaign is a one-man show.

Emphasis mine. I bolded that section because a peek at Treviño’s campaign finance report shows what this means in practice. Click on the Browse Receipts button, and you will see that Treviño has taken in a total of ten donations for the runoff. One is from Justice Democrats and one (a max $2,700 contribution) is from someone in Colorado, so in all eight individuals have donated to him since he placed second in the primary. A tsunami that ain’t.

As for Ortiz Jones, who gets her own fawning profile from the Current, had 42 contributions from ActBlue among the first 100 in her report. A lot of PAC money in there too, to be sure, but many many times as many individual donations. I’ve got nothing against Rick Treviño, who seems like a good guy who’s working hard in this race. I just wonder about the definition of “grassroots” sometimes, and who gets to define what it means.

April 2018 campaign finance reports: Congress

Apr 23rd, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Here are the Q2 finance reports, here are the Q3 finance reports, here are the January 2018 finance reports, and here’s the FEC summary page for Democratic Congressional candidates in Texas. Let’s get to it.

Todd Litton – CD02

Lori Burch – CD03
Sam Johnson – CD03

Jana Sanchez – CD06
Ruby Faye Wooldridge – CD06

Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Laura Moser – CD07

Mike Siegel – CD10
Tawana Cadien – CD10

Joseph Kopser – CD21
Mary Wilson – CD21

Letitia Plummer – CD22
Sri Kulkarni – CD22

Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Rick Trevino – CD23

Jan McDowell – CD24

Christopher Perri – CD25
Julie Oliver – CD25

MJ Hegar – CD31
Christine Mann – CD31

Colin Allred – CD32
Lillian Salerno – CD32

Dayna Steele – CD36


Dist  Name             Raised    Spent    Loans   On Hand
=========================================================
02    Litton          546,503  304,139        0   242,363

03    Burch           104,700  116,639   25,649    14,085
03    Johnson          62,473   59,143    3,100     6,490

06    Sanchez         241,893  188,313        0    56,456
06    Woolridge        75,440   45,016   15,000    47,708    

07    Fletcher      1,261,314  874,619        0   391,899
07    Moser         1,067,837  975,659        0    92,177

10    Siegel           80,319   65,496    5,000    19,823
10    Cadien            

21    Kopser        1,100,451  846,895   25,000   278,556
21    Wilson           44,772   51,041   26,653    20,384

22    Plummer         108,732   99,153        0     9,578
22    Kulkarni        178,925  158,369   35,510    56,067

23    Ortiz Jones   1,025,194  703,481        0   321,713
23    Trevino          16,892   20,416    3,285     3,915

24    McDowell         33,452   16,100        0    17,470

25    Perri           139,016  133,443   24,890    30,603
25    Oliver           78,841   37,812    3,125    40,860

31    Hegar           458,085  316,854        0   141,240
31    Mann             56,814   58,856    2,276         0

32    Allred          828,565  608,938   25,000   219,626
32    Salerno         596,406  439,384        0   157,022

36    Steele          294,891  216,030    1,231    80,061

For comparison purposes, here’s what the 2008 cycle fundraising numbers looked like for Texas Democrats. Remember, those numbers are all the way through November, and nearly everyone in the top part of the list was an incumbent. Daily Kos has some of the same numbers I have – they picked a slightly different set of races to focus on – as well as the comparable totals for Republicans. Note that in several races, at least one Democratic candidate has outraised the Republican competition, either overall or in Q1 2018. This is yet another way of saying we’ve never seen anything like this cycle before.

As of this writing, Tawana Cadien had not filed her Q1 report. Christine Mann’s report showed a negative cash balance; I have chosen to represent that as a loan owed by the campaign. Everything else is up to date.

I continue to be blown away by the amount of money raised by these candidates. Already there are five who have exceeded one million dollars raised – Alex Triantaphyllis, who did not make the runoff in CD07, had topped the $1 million mark as of March – with Colin Allred sure to follow, and Todd Litton and MJ Hegar on track if Hegar wins her runoff. In some ways, I’m most impressed by the almost $300K raised by Dayna Steele, who has the advantage of being a well-known radio DJ and the disadvantage of running in a 70%+ Trump district. When was the last time you saw a non-self-funder do that? I’ll be very interested to see how the eventual nominees in the districts that are lower on the national priority lists do going forward. How can you ignore a CD06 or a CD22 if the candidates there keep raking it in? It will also be interesting to see what happens in CD21 going forward if the runoff winner is not big raiser Joseph Kopser but Mary Wilson instead. Does she inherit the effort that had been earmarked for CD21, or do those resources get deployed elsewhere, not necessarily in Texas?

Republican candidates have been raising a lot of money as well, and national groups are pouring in more, with CDs 07 and 23 their targets so far. We may see more districts added to their must-protect list, or they may make a decision to cut back in some places to try to save others. It’s worth keeping an eye on.

The DCCC elsewhere in Texas

Mar 26th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

I’m OK with this.

Colin Allred

The U.S. House Democratic campaign arm may well be at war with another Texas Democrat.

Lillian Salerno, a Democratic House candidate in the Dallas-based 32nd Congressional District, pushed out a fiery news release on Thursday afternoon when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee telegraphed its preference for her primary rival, former NFL football player Colin Allred.

“Folks here are sick and tired of a bunch of Washington insiders trying to make their decisions for them,” she said. “But I’m not scared — I’ve stood up to power and fought for what’s right my entire life.”

“Texas hasn’t elected a new woman to Congress in twenty-two years, and we’re not taking it anymore,” she added. “The DCCC would do well to remember: Don’t mess with Texas women.”

[…]

At issue was a new list the committee released called “Red to Blue” candidates. The designation serves to signal to donors and DCCC allies which candidates the committee believes should be top recipients for contributions.

Red to Blue is not technically an endorsement from the DCCC. But DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján heaped praise on Allred in a committee news release on Thursday.

“Raised by a single mom who taught for 30 years in Dallas’s public schools, Colin Allred has never lost touch with the community that shaped him,” said Luján.

“Now, after representing his community on the football field and standing up for working people’s dignity in the Obama administration, Colin is running to put everyday Texans before special interests. Colin’s experience and new ideas will give North Texas a fresh start as they look to replace a politician who’s spent 20-years too many in Washington.”

In past cycles, the DCCC has named districts to its Red to Blue program, rather than specific candidates, to avoid these kinds of flare-ups.

The committee also named retired Air Force Intelligence Officer Gina Ortiz Jones to the program, who is running to take on U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes. Like Allred, she is in a runoff for her party’s nomination. Both Allred and Jones significantly outpaced their closest rivals in the first round of the primary contest.

She carried 41 percent of the vote in her district, compared to rival Rick Treviño’s 17 percent. Allred won 39 percent of the vote to Salerno’s 18 percent.

Here’s the full list of supported candidates so far. CD07 is not there yet, which seems like a bit of delayed discretion. What makes this different than the DCCC’s previous incursion is pretty simple: They have taken a position for a candidate, instead of against one. Both Allred and Ortiz Jones can reasonably be called the frontrunners, too, though anything can happen in a runoff. One can certainly argue that the DCCC should have waited these races out before getting involved, but if these are the candidates they want to support, then the case for working with them to ensure they get nominated is pretty clear. I sympathize with Trevino and Salerno, who has the support of Emily’s List, but that’s politics. I say don’t get mad, prove ’em wrong and make ’em support you in November instead.

On a side note, while Salerno is correct about the paucity of women elected to Congress from Texas, we’re going to get at least two more of them this year. In addition, if you look at that red-to-blue list, eighteen of the 33 candidates being supported by the DCCC at this time are women. And assuming the DCCC eventually supports the nominee in CD07 – yeah, that might mean making nice with Laura Moser; politics is full of such opportunities – then two of the three Texans they support will be women, too. I get why she’s unhappy and I don’t blame her, but I get what the DCCC is doing in these races, too.

2018 primary results: Congress

Mar 7th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Sen. Sylvia Garcia

Statewide Dem totals
Statewide GOP totals

Harris County Dem totals
Harris County GOP totals

(Please note that all results were coming in very slowly. I expect there will still be some precincts not yet reported by the time this publishes. So, I’m going to be less specific than usual, and may have to make a correction or two by Thursday.)

Barring anything strange, Texas will have its first two Latina members of Congress, as Sylvia Garcia (CD29) and Veronica Escobar (CD16) were both over 60%. I for one approve of both of these results. Now we can have that important debate about whether one of them is officially the “first” Latina or if they both get to share that designation; I lean towards the latter, as you know, and it appears that the Trib is with me as well. Maybe this will be a short debate. In any event, my congratulations to both women.

Veronica Escobar

Todd Litton was over 50% in CD02 with about a third of the precincts in. Lizzie Fletcher and Laura Moser were headed towards the runoff in CD07 with just under half of the precincts reporting; Jason Westin was within about 850 votes of Moser, but he was losing ground. I will note that Fletcher, who led Moser by about seven points overall, led her in absentee ballots by 36-18, in early in person votes by 30-23 (nearly identical to the overall tally), and on E-Day 28-27. Maybe that’s the DCCC effect, maybe Fletcher has earlier-by-nature voters, and maybe it’s just one of those random and meaningless things.

Other Dem Congressional results of interest:

– Gina Ortiz Jones was at 40% in CD23, so she will face someone in the runoff. Judy Canales and Rick Trevino was neck and neck for second, with Jay Hulings trailing them both by about two points.

– Colin Allred was also around 40%, in the CD32 race. Lillian Salerno, Brett Shipp, and Ed Meier were competing for runnerup, in that order.

– Joseph Kopser and Mary Wilson were right around 30% for CD21, with Derrick Crowe just under 23%.

– Jana Sanchez and Ruby Faye Woolridge were both around 37% in CD06.

– MJ Hegar and Christine Eady Mann were well ahead in CD31.

– Jan Powell (53% in CD24) avoided a runoff. Lorie Burch (49% plus in CD03) just missed avoiding one.

– Sri Kulkarni was at 32% in CD22, with Letitia Plummer and Steve Brown both around 22%. In CD10, Mike Siegel was up around 43%, while Tawana Cadien, Tami Walker, and Madeline Eden were in the running for the second slot.

– Dayna Steele was winning in CD36 handily. This is one of those results that makes me happy.

– On the Republican side, Lance Gooden and Bunni Pounds led in CD05, Ron Wright and Jake Ellzey led in CD06, Michael Cloud and Bech Bruun were the top two in CD27. I have only a vague idea who some of these people are. Ted Cruz minion Chip Roy led in the CD21 clusterbubble, with Matt McCall and William Negley both having a shot at second place. Finally, Kevin Roberts was leading in CD02, and while Kathaleen Wall had the early advantage for runnerup, Dan Crenshaw was making a late push, leading the field on E-Day. Dear sweet baby Jesus, please spare us from two more months of Kathaleen Wall’s soul-sucking TV ads. Thank you.

– I would be remiss if I did not note that Pounds has a decent shot at being the third woman elected to Congress from Texas this year; if she prevails in the CD05 runoff, she’ll be as in as Garcia and Escobar are. Wall’s path to that destination is a bit cloudier now, but unless Crenshaw catches her she still has a shot at it.

– Some of these results were changing as I was drafting this. Like I said, I’ll likely have some cleanup to do for tomorrow. Check those links at the top of the post.

Trib overview of CD23 primary

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

Definitely a key race.

Gina Ortiz Jones

Now, CD-23 is faced with its most crowded Democratic race in decades to determine who will duke it out in November in what is regularly ranked as one of the country’s most competitive districts. It spans San Antonio to El Paso and includes hundreds of miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, a massive, largely rural area with a predominantly Hispanic population.

Four Democrats are seriously vying for the seat in the March 6 primary: Judy Canales, a former Bill Clinton and Barack Obama appointee from Eagle Pass; Hulings, a former federal prosecutor from San Antonio; Gina Ortiz Jones, a former Air Force intelligence officer from San Antonio; and Rick Treviño, a former high school teacher from San Antonio who unsuccessfully ran for city council there before entering the TX-23 primary last year. A fifth Democrat, Angela “Angie” Villescaz, filed for the seat but does not appear to be running as active a campaign as the others.

With a week and a half until Election Day, much attention has centered on Hulings and Jones, who appear poised for a runoff if neither can garner over 50 percent of the vote on March 6. Propelled by EMILY’s List, the influential national group that helps elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, Jones has shown serious fundraising momentum, raking in $282,000 in the first 45 days of 2018 — more than three times Hulings’ total over the same period. She entered the homestretch of the race with a more than 2-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage over Hulings, $217,000 to $101,000.

Jay Hulings

The two are drawing their support from distinct corners of the Democratic universe. Hulings enjoys the support of Democratic congressional leaders such as House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, as well as political figures well known within the district, including his law school classmates, the Castro brothers. Hulings, who is Mexican-American, also has the backing of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the moderate Blue Dog Democrats.

Jones, meanwhile, is being backed by veterans and LGBT groups, in addition to EMILY’s List. She has also been endorsed by two of the most prominent women in Texas Democratic politics: Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte, two former state senators — Van de Putte is from San Antonio — who were the 2014 nominees for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively.

[…]

Waiting at the finish line of the Democratic primary is an increasingly well-positioned Hurd, who faces minimal opposition in his own nominating contest. Since his 2016 re-election, he has amassed a $1.2 million war chest and built a national profile as a rising-star Republican willing to break with his party’s president, Donald Trump.

In recent months, both Democratic- and Republican-aligned polling has found Hurd’s popularity far outpacing Trump’s in the district. So while his Democratic opponents certainly have their beefs with him — chief among them is that his voting record is not nearly as independent as his image suggests — they appear to have found a more galvanizing target in the president for now.

We’ve discussed Gina Ortiz Jones before. She got into the race late and was behind originally in fundraising, but she’s been a machine since December, blowing right past Jay Hulings. None of the other candidates are near their weight class. Doesn’t mean they’ll finish in the top two, but they do have all the advantages going in. As for Will Hurd, he has certainly done what he can to position himself well, but I feel like he could be the Lincoln Chafee of 2018 – liked by the voters, to the left of his partymates, but still voted out by an electorate that wanted to send a message to his President. I imagine he won’t have too many restful nights this year.

The Socialists are coming

Feb 27th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

To a primary ballot near you.

The revolution will be down-ballot. Or such is the implicit promise of Franklin Bynum’s campaign for Harris County misdemeanor court judge. A 35-year-old former public defender, Bynum said he’s seen Houston’s criminal courts routinely railroad the poor into convictions that drive them further into poverty. Now, after nearly 10 years subject to the whims of conservative judges, he’s aiming to take the gavel for himself.

“Who are these courts being operated for? Right now, it’s the police, the bondsmen and the prosecutors, and people are just the raw material to be chewed up,” said Bynum, who’s running as a Democrat for Harris County Criminal Court at Law 8. Bynum’s platform includes expanding the use of personal recognizance bonds, waiving certain fees for the poor and reducing mandatory appearances, which he said are used only to “coerce” guilty pleas from defendants out on bail. “A democratic socialist judge would make the courts work for the people,” he said.

Bynum is one of at least 17 members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) running for office in Texas in 2018, including candidates for the U.S. House and offices ranging from governor to county treasurer. The DSA, which now counts more than 30,000 members nationwide, has grown explosively since Trump’s election and boasts at least 10 chapters in Texas. The group tends to prioritize issues on the left edge of the Democratic Party, like single-payer health care and a $15 minimum wage. There’s no official candidate list, but the Observer reached out to DSA groups around the state to compile this running tally. (Not all the candidates have been endorsed by DSA.)

Some of the candidates, like gubernatorial hopeful Tom Wakely — who styles himself the “Berniecrat with a Panama hat” and lost a 2014 congressional bid by 20 points — face the sort of uphill climb usually found in the Himalayas. But others stand a fighting chance, said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones. Jones pointed to congressional hopefuls Derrick Crowe, in District 21, and Rick Treviño, in the always-competitive District 23, as viable primary challengers.

“With Treviño and Crowe, it’s sort of the mirror image of what we saw with the tea party,” Jones said. “The advantage the establishment candidates have is money, but the tea party’s shown us that sometimes money can lose to these grassroots activist campaigns.”

In District 23, which stretches from El Paso to San Antonio and is currently represented by moderate Republican Will Hurd, Jones said a left wing platform that plays well with primary voters might fall flat in the general election. Hillary Clinton carried the swingy district by 3.5 percent in 2016, and Hurd’s margin of victory was just over 1 percent. But Treviño, a San Antonio high school teacher, is bullish: “[District] 23 is always described as a conservative district where ideas like Medicare for All or a living wage will turn off voters; that is absolutely false,” he wrote in a Facebook message to the Observer. “Across the district, these ideas are resonating, especially Medicare for All.”

There’s a list of DSA candidates at the bottom of the story and on this Google doc, which includes statements from some of them. As the story notes, some of these folks have a clearer path than others. Bynum has no primary opponent, so he’ll rise or fall with the rest of the countywide slate here in November. Danny Norris in HCDE Position 6, Precinct 1, Chito Vela in HD46, the two Travis County judicial candidates – if they win their primaries, they’re in. Derrick Crowe has raised a decent amount of money but lags Joseph Kopser by a wide margin in that primary. A win in March by Crowe would be a big feather for the DSA’s cap. I’m much more skeptical about Rick Trevino, who has two well-funded and establishment-backed primary opponents, and is in a district that isn’t exactly conducive to blockwalking. It’s not just about fundraising, either – if you look at their campaign Facebook pages, Gina Ortiz Jones has more than three times as many followers as Trevino, while Jay Hulings has more than double his total. I don’t know what the best way is to measure “grassroots” support, but the measures I can find don’t corroborate the notion that Trevino has an underestimated level of backing. We’ll know for sure in a week.

On a side note, I’d observe that there’s less difference between the DSA position and the “establishment” position than you might think, at least on some issues. Look at what Bynum says about his priorities for the misdemeanor court he’s running for, then compare the judicial Q&As I ran for Harold Landreneau and Armen Merjanian. Bail reform – which is supported by the likes of DA Kim Ogg and Sheriff Ed Gonzalez – and finding alternatives to incarceration are pretty mainstream these days. Sure, there are some differences, and there are different priorities, but to a sizable degree a lot of it is about strategy and rhetoric, much as it is the case with the Tea Party and the “establishment” Republicans.

January 2018 campaign finance reports: Congress

Feb 4th, 2018
by Charles Kuffner.
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Here are the Q2 finance reports, here are the Q3 finance reports, and here’s the FEC summary page for Democratic Congressional candidates in Texas. The Trib summarizes some of the highlights.

For many Texas congressional races, Wednesday was the most consequential day yet on the primary calendar.

That was the deadline for U.S. House and Senate campaigns to file finance reports covering the last three months of 2017. Those watching the races closely are sure to pore over the mishmash of donations and expenditures to separate viable candidates from the long shots.

And that weeding out process could be more intense than past years. Of the eight Texans in Congress who are not running for re-election, six waited until the fall to announce their decisions, prompting late scrambles for those open seats.

Over in the U.S. Senate, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was easily outraised by his leading Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso.

Texas is hosting the first statewide primaries of 2018 on March 6. Early voting begins on Feb. 20.

As before, here are links to individual reports of interest, with a table showing the important bits below.

Todd Litton – CD02
Ali Khorasani – CD02
Silky Malik – CD02
J. Darnell Jones – CD02

Adam Bell – CD03
Lori Burch – CD03
Medrick Yhap – CD03

Jana Sanchez – CD06
Ruby Faye Wooldridge – CD06
John Duncan – CD06
Levii Shocklee – CD06
Justin Snider – CD06

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

Mike Siegel – CD10
Tami Walker – CD10
Richie DeGrow – CD10
Tawana Cadien – CD10

Dori Fenenbock – CD16
Veronica Escobar – CD16

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

Letitia Plummer – CD22
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Mark Gibson – CD22

Jay Hulings – CD23
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Judy Canales – CD23
Rick Trevino – CD23

John Biggan – CD24
Jan McDowell – CD24
Todd Allen – CD24

Christopher Perri – CD25
Chetan Panda – CD25
Kathi Thomas – CD25
Julie Oliver – CD25
West Hansen – CD25

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

Ed Meier – CD32
Colin Allred – CD32
Lillian Salerno – CD32
George Rodriguez – CD32
Brett Shipp – CD32
Dani Pellett – CD32

Dayna Steele – CD36
Jonathan Powell – CD36


Dist  Name             Raised    Spent    Loans   On Hand
=========================================================
02    Litton          362,364   77,577        0   284,786
02    Khorasani        12,674   11,849        0       825
02    Malik            14,464   12,803        0     1,660
02    Jones            10,802      160        0    10,642

03    Bell             24,313   23,066  175,000   180,247
03    Burch            66,082   43,993      649    22,994
03    Yhap              1,350    6,384    6,700     1,665

06    Sanchez         137,832   94,452        0    43,379
06    Woolridge        75,121   62,104   17,000    37,139
06    Duncan           21,143   15,377        0     5,765
06    Shocklee          4,721    8,401    3,707        26
06    Snider           11,312    6,891        0     5,605

07    Triantaphyllis  927,023  293,314        0   633,709
07    Fletcher        751,352  319,190        0   437,366
07    Moser           616,643  287,151        0   329,491
07    Westin          389,941  140,286   10,365   249,655
07    Cargas           63,123   57,272        0    12,268
07    Butler           41,474   37,542        0     3,932

10    Siegel           22,731   14,971    5,000    12,760
10    Walker           14,864   18,424   20,000    16,440
10    DeGrow            6,061    5,944        0       117
10    Cadien              500       48   31,243       209

16    Fenenbock       563,853  412,726  300,000   451,126
16    Escobar         619,490  217,886        0   401,604

21    Kopser          678,527  341,189        0   337,337
21    Crowe           120,406  100,067        0    20,339
21    McFadden         70,944   58,107   15,000    30,997

22    Plummer          69,346   51,550    2,350    17,796
22    Kulkarni         41,102    8,598      244    32,504
22    Gibson            5,895    9,034    6,645     4,006

23    Hulings         410,257  128,831        0   281,425
23    Ortiz Jones     316,972  147,508        0   169,463
23    Canales          17,085   20,113   10,000     6,972
23    Trevino          12,337   17,000    3,285     2,776

24    Biggan           41,269   22,113        0    19,156
24    McDowell         19,686   13,955        0     5,849
24    Allen            10,924    8,652        0     2,272

25    Perri            85,637   61,387   16,890    41,279
25    Panda            99,336   79,253        0    16,942
25    Thomas           31,201   27,038    3,082     3,478
25    Oliver           18,796   10,297    3,125    11,624
25    Hansen            5,600    4,472   11,477     9,223

31    Hegar           194,859  114,007        0    80,852
31    Lester          106,682   58,698  100,000   148,149
31    Mann             30,751   26,192        0     4,294
31    Clark            10,926    6,584    6,300     5,423

32    Meier           803,738  303,369        0   500,369
32    Allred          404,660  302,406   44,978   127,638
32    Salerno         312,062  155,035        0   157,026
32    Rodriguez        92,034   68,791        0    23,273
32    Shipp            46,969   29,778    9,000    26,191
32    Pellett          15,976   14,220        0     1,816

36    Steele          155,265   97,258        0    58,006
36    Powell           58,920   37,402   20,000    41,896

Here’s a Trib roundup of reports, which includes Republicans. I only looked at the Dems, and there were a few candidates who didn’t have any to see as of Saturday, so those folks are not represented above. Here are a few thoughts:

– Damn, this is a lot of money being raised. As I observed before, in 2016 there was only one Democratic non-incumbent who raised as much as $100K over the course of the cycle. With nearly a year to go in this cycle, eighteen candidates have topped that mark, with four others above $70K. Republicans are still going to lead the money race in most districts, but there’s no reason why any Democratic candidate must be outclassed.

– There’s about to be a lot of money spent, too. All four of the top raisers in CD07 are or are about to be airing TV ads, and they have been sending mail, too. We’ll see the scope of this in the next report, for which the deadline is March 31, after the primary is over.

– While there’s a lot of money in the Republican primary for CD02 – Kathaleen Wall has given her campaign some $2.7 million – Todd Litton has raised more from actual donors than any of them.

– In my previous update, I noted that Gina Ortiz Jones hadn’t had much time to do any fundraising. She had a pretty good Q4, though that was effectively even with Jay Hulings. She did demonstrate she has the chops, which was what mattered.

– For all the money that has been raised overall, I feel like Dems are not maximizing their potential as yet. We could use more resources in CDs 03, 06, 10, 22, and 24. Sure, most of these races are longer shots, but the point is that if this is a strong year for Dems, the margin between winning and losing in a district like those could be whether or not the challenger has enough resources to put up a real fight. There are going to be a number of people who wake up on March 7 as former candidates and who will still have six figures in the bank. I would strongly encourage these people to redirect some of their campaign cash to the nominees in other districts. Trickling some of it down to the state races would not be a bad idea, either.

– Do you live in one of these districts? If so, have you seen or heard from a campaign? Leave a comment and let me know.

I’m working on similar posts for the other race types. There’s a lot to go through but I’ll get there. John Coby has more.

Filing roundup: Other Congressional races, part 2

Dec 28th, 2017
by Charles Kuffner.
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See part 1 here, and the spreadsheet with all the Democratic Congressional filings here. These are the races that are objectively most likely to produce a flip, so there are fewer of them. Let’s dive right in.

Jana Lynne Sanchez

CD06

So long, Smokey Joe. Hope to see a whole lot less of you from here on out. There are, I kid you not, eleven Republican candidates vying for this seat, and it could have been thirteen but two hopefuls had their applications rejected. Lord only knows what will happen on that side. I have mentioned the five Democratic candidates before, back when we were first learning about Smokey Joe’s peccadilloes. Decision Desk had this as only a 15% chance of a pickup in November, but that was pre-scandal and retirement. Those odds are better now.

Jana Lynne Sanchez
Ruby Faye Woolridge
Levii Shocklee
Justin Snider
John Duncan

Jana Lynne Sanchez has been a political consultant and fundraiser, and worked as a journalist after that. She’s a Rice graduate and an aspiring country singer. If she makes it to Congress, maybe she can collaborate with Sen. Orrin Hatch. Ruby Faye Woolridge is a retired educator who has run for office several times, including for CD06 in 2016. Levii Shocklee is a Navy veteran who doesn’t tell us much else about his biography. Justin Snider is a locksmith and served as a national delegate for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016. John Duncan works for the largest local non-profit HIV/AIDS service organization in North Texas.

Joseph Kopser

CD21

Boy, you only think there’s a cattle call for the Republican nomination in CD06. There are eighteen – EIGHTEEN! – Republicans that have filed to fill Lamar Smith’s pollution-loving immigrant-hating shoes. They include Chip Roy, former Chief of Staff to Ted Cruz; Jason Isaac, the State Rep. in HD25; Quico Canseco, who lucked into a term as Congressman in CD23 in the 2010 wave; Susan Narvaiz, a three-time loser to Rep. Lloyd Doggett in CD35, and fourteen more. One way to look at this is that is the vote were to be split evenly among all the contenders, they’d each get about 5.6%. Fifteen percent may well be enough to make it to the runoff. There’s a non-zero chance that the nominee could be some random nobody. Which makes it all the more important that the Democratic candidate is someone who has an A game to bring in a district pegged at a 43.4% win chance and 49.0% performance.

Joseph Kopser
Derrick Crowe
Elliott McFadden
Mary Wilson

This race is interesting and worth watching on just about every level, and that begins with the primary. Joseph Kopser is an Army veteran and businessman who made news for out-fundraising Lamar Smith back in Q2. He’s also racking up endorsements – Garry Mauro, House Democratic Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, as well as nonprofit STEM organization 314 Action – and can fairly be characterized as the establishment candidate. Derrick Crowe, who has been a senior staffer on Capitol Hill and now works in the nonprofit sector, also has an impressive array of endorsements including Our Revolution, Democracy for America, and the UT University Democrats. He was the first Democrat I heard of in this race, citing Smith’s terrible environmental record as his inspiration to run. And then there’s Elliott McFadden, the Executive Director of Austin B-Cycle and past Executive Director of the Travis County Democratic Party, who has his own set of endorsements, and Mary Wilson, a math teacher and minister. They all look like terrific candidates, so my main hope at this point is that the primary doesn’t get too nasty.

Gina Ortiz Jones

CD23

Here’s a list of Congressmen from CD23 since 2002:

Henry Bonilla (R)
Ciro Rodriguez (D, elected in 2006)
Quico Canseco (R, elected in 2010)
Pete Gallego (D, elected in 2012)
Will Hurd (R, elected in 2014)

And there’s a 69.2% chance (according to Decision Desk as of November) that we’ll have another person in there next year. After that who knows – this district was ruled illegal by the federal district court and could be redrawn for 2020, and regardless of that it will be redrawn again for 2022. You know what they say about change being the only constant? This district is the poster child for that.

Angela Villescaz
Gina Ortiz Jones
Jay Hulings
Judy Canales
Rick Trevino

Gina Ortiz Jones served in Iraq as an Air Force intelligence officer, and continues to work in national security, intelligence, and defense. She’s one of several female veterans running for Congress as Democrats this cycle – note that article doesn’t appear to count MJ Hegar, so it is necessarily incomplete – and has racked up an impressive array of endorsements, from Emily’s List and Vote Vets to the Asian American Action Fund and the Victory Fund. Jay Hulings is a former federal prosecutor and has served in the House as Counsel to the House Intelligence Committee and Legislative Director to former Rep. Jane Harman. Judy Canales was appointed by President Obama in 2013 to be the Texas State Executive Director for the USDA Farm Service Agency. Rick Trevino is a teacher and Secretary of the Bexar County Democratic Party who served as a national delegate for Bernie Sanders in 2016.

I’ve covered other Congressional races in the Harris County and surrounding county writeups, and of course there’s great interest in CD16 to succeed Beto O’Rourke, but that race will be decided when the primary winner emerges. I’m busy doing interviews in CDs 07 and 02, and we’ll see how much more I wind up doing. Again, it is important for all of us to know who our candidates are and to pick the best one to represent us, on the ballot and hopefully in Washington. I hope this has been useful for you.

No re-rematch for Gallego against Hurd

Sep 4th, 2017
by Charles Kuffner.
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The third time is not a charm, mostly because there won’t be a third time.

Pete Gallego

Former U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, has decided not to try again to reclaim his old seat in Congress.

“Know that my public service is not done, but that for the present, I have decided to forego another run in the 23rd District,” Gallego said in a statement Friday. “I continue to explore options that will allow me to give back to San Antonio and the rest of this great state which has given me and my family so much.”

[…]

Gallego had set up an exploratory committee for the seat in July. At the time, he said he was “energized about 2018,” citing a new level of Democratic enthusiasm in the district following the election of President Donald Trump.

In recent weeks, Gallego tried to raise money for his would-be congressional campaign, according to those plugged in with the Democratic establishment donor community — but found resistance after losing twice.

See here for the previous update. On the one hand, Gallego won in 2012 against an incumbent Republican in a district carried by Mitt Romney and every statewide Republican. He led the ticket in a tough loss in 2014, but then failed to win the seat back in a year where Hillary Clinton won the district. He was a fine legislator and he’s a good person, but with the emergence of some other interesting candidates, I can see why the donor community might have wanted to go another direction. Gallego is young enough to run again for something if he wants to – hell, he’d make a pretty good candidate for Governor if he wanted to give that a try and if the Castros figure out what they’re doing. Seriously, someone ought to talk to him about that. Anyway, this probably means the field in CD23 is set, but someone could still jump in.

Two more for CD23

Aug 22nd, 2017
by Charles Kuffner.
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Officially a crowd now.

Jay Hulings

Jay Hulings, a federal prosecutor from San Antonio, said Sunday he could no wait no longer to launch a challenge to U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes. Hulings is an ally of the Castro brothers — U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, and former U.S. Housing Secretary Julián Castro.

“Washington is so broken and Congress is so broken,” Hulings said in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “There are times when you can sit on the sidelines. This not one of them. I decided I have to get in the fight.”

Hulings is moving quickly to establish himself as a top-tier candidate in what’s expected to be a crowded primary field. His last day at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas was this last week. He’s working with the Castros’ political team, and he is expected to soon begin rolling out endorsement from prominent Democratic officials.

Hulings’ entrance into the race was first reported by the San Antonio Express-News.

On Friday, Hurd got another Democratic challenger: Rick Treviño, a teacher from San Antonio who ran for its City Council earlier this year and narrowly missed a runoff. He had the backing of Our Revolution, the group aligned with former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Hulings and Treviño join Gina Ortiz Jones, a former Air Force intelligence officer, in vying for a shot at Hurd in 2018. A number of other Democrats are still looking at the race, including former U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego, the Alpine Democrat who represented the district from 2013-2015.

See here for more on Gina Ortiz Jones, and here for more on Pete Gallego, who is very busy sending campaign emails for someone who has not officially entered the race. Hulings has been mentioned in every “who might run in CD23” story I’ve seen, but this is the first mention of Treviño I’ve encountered. Of course, Jones wasn’t in those stories either, so make of that what you will. Hulings was one of the US Attorneys in the Crystal City corruption case; I can’t find any web or social media presence for him. Treviño is a bit of a challenge to Google because there’s a Grammy-winning country musician of the same name, but if you search for “rick trevino bernie sanders” you can find this bio of him. Even without a boost from the court, this is a very winnable race, and there will be national help for it. May the best candidate win.