Just for fun, I slipped an unannounced straw poll ballot into the hands of the attendees at Thursday night’s Harris County Republican Party Primary District Attorney debate. I didn’t announce it because the popular thing to do with straw polls is for a candidate to ask their supporters to come out and stack the poll. Obviously, the supporters of the DA candidates were there but beyond that, there were no coordinated campaigns. The other thing that has become popular is to sell tickets to your straw poll – tickets that give you extra votes. I’ve seen some organizations selling “sponsorships” for which the “sponsor” gets 10 votes per dollar. Not good. So I thought it would be interesting to see the results of a somewhat unbiased audience and it was.
As already noted, Mike Anderson easily won the poll for DA:
- Mike Anderson – 56{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}
- Pat Lykos – 44{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}
Also already noted, there were 102 ballots returned, with two of them having no vote for either Judge Anderson or Judge Lykos. Below are the results of the other races. In addition to tallying up who won, I cross-tabbed the votes with whomever they voted for DA.
Harris County Sheriff
Louis Guthrie took the most votes. I was surprised at the number of “No Vote”‘s cast.
Guthrie had a very good week and it has nothing to do with this straw poll, although any win helps. In his ongoing case against Adrian Garcia for his politically motivated firing, Guthrie received a favorable ruling this week at the appellate level. More on that later. Pittman also had a good week, I guess – he received the endorsement of the Houston Chronicle. Which is not so good if you consider their track record in Republican primaries. Hueszel received about even support from both DA camps. Guthrie looks to be in good shape as the frontrunner, the real race will be to see if he can push his numbers up to 50.1{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} and avoid a runoff. I saw Louis, Harold, and Ruben in attendance.
Harris County Tax Asseossor-Collector
Mike Sullivan was in attendance but it didn’t help with this crowd as Don Sumners won easily.
The high number of “No Vote”‘s in a two man race is interesting, with a large number of Anderson voters not picking a candidate.
Harris County Republican Party Chair
Neither Jared Woodfill or Paul Simpson was in attendance – if they were, I missed them. I can only hope, wish, and dream that this result is an indication of what will happen on May 29th:
Wouldn’t that be a great result for Harris County Republicans? Alas, I can’t bring myself to believe it just yet. I still think that Paul has to step up his campaign and sharpen his attacks on Jared. The party is in miserable financial shape and it seems as though anyone can buy their way into the party for a buck or two.. That is what happens when you cannot raise money from business groups. But for now, I’ll hope, wish, and dream that this is a good indicator.
Hey, I didn’t have anything else to do today so why not play with numbers? Plus, even though it is only a straw poll and a snapshot of the people that attended a specific meeting, I’d bet it is more accurate of what is going to happen than most straw polls are.