Well, almost. Yes, I did give the edge going in to Sylvia Garcia, as did most people, but Carol Alvarado surprised most people with a much stronger showing than expected. Which makes this part of Doug Miller of KHOU’s recap on the election confusing:

Even some of Alvarado’s closest political allies privately concede defeating Garcia will be difficult, especially after trailing in this weekend’s election. Garcia’s lead in the general election will help her attract campaign funds from contributors hoping to buy favor with the next state senator.

If anything, Alvarado’s camp should be buoyed by her showing. Garcia had a huge advantage because of her previous stint as Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner, plus she was able to transfer her old warchest over to this race, giving her a huge campaign finance advantage. Which she needed, because without Steve Mostyn, she proved unable to raise money.  Take a look:

That represents total funds raised by both candidates through their last report. As you can see, Garcia needed Mostyn’s help just to be respectable. Of that $227,939 of In-Kind Contributions, Mostyn was responsible for $211,970, mostly with contributions to the Texas Organizing Project PAC. In fact, look for more from him on the next report because he gave TOPPAC $132,500 on December 27, 2012 and then on 1/1/2013, he pledged to give them another $132,000. Kinda makes you wonder why he has a bug up his butt about Alvarado – both candidates have very similar policies.

Now that it is down to a runoff between the two, and Garcia has spent much of the “free” money she brought in from her old warchest, will contributors really rush to buy favor from Garcia, favor that Mostyn owns lock, stock, and barrel? I wouldn’t bet on it.

And I wouldn’t bet against Alvarado taking this seat in the end. Her campaign “feels” like it has a lot more energy behind it. Sure, Mostyn can pay people to go door to door again (heck, there’s probably another hurricane windfall in his future) but have you met any of those workers? They don’t care who they are handing out cards for, as long as they get paid. Go by any trash can in any McDonald’s near a neighborhood they’ve worked  – guess what you’ll find? I guess they are worth something but $25 a vote on the low side? Not a chance. If Alvarado is able to raise money, as she has already proven, and if she can motivate her base, she can take this thing.

Right now, the ball is in Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart’s hand as to when the runoff will happen. He has ten days to try and get the count right, let’s hope that’s enough and that no midnight boxes appear as in earlier elections. After Stan gets through counting, Gov. Perry will take a few days to set a date – I’d guess it will be later rather than earlier.

And about those Republicans. Yeah, those ones. Everywhere I went, Republicans were sure to tell me that RW Bray had a real shot. Jared Woodfill made robo calls for him to supposed R primary voters. The Apostle emailed me every day, begging for $6 to help Bray get over the top because R’s could take it! If only this, if only that.

Fact is, he never had a chance and neither did Dorothy Olmos. First thing, if you can’t raise money, you can’t win in politics. Second thing, no matter how many robo calls Jared made, it cannot make up for years of neglect. I checked out the canvass report from the November SD6 election – of the top 40 precincts in SD6, Republicans have 25 precinct chairs, a vacancy rate of 37.5{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}. That really isn’t too bad considering their overall vacancy rate of 50-55{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}. But when I took the bottom 80 precincts, in terms of total ballots cast in November, Republicans only had 7 precinct chairs, a vacancy rate of  91.25{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}. And forget trying to tell me the old line about “there are no voters in those precincts” – in fact, there are 27,501 registered voters in those precincts. You cannot neglect an area and expect them to vote for you.

And third, noise is just noise without action. Here is a real life example. Saturday morning, I get my usual email from the Apostle begging me to phone bank for Bray. About that time, I get a Facebook message from Jason Baldwin, who has been pushing Bray for months, asking me if I think he has a chance. No, I tell him, but we’ll know soon. He predicts a second place finish or a strong third. A couple of minutes later, I get a comment on my post about the forum at HCC from the very same Jason Baldwin, admonishing me for…well, here, you decide:

Wow this is the worst blog I have ever read. You call your self a conservative but basically sit here and lay it for the d’s in the race. You have just lost a reader.

So I’m like, yeah, whatever, goodbye, and chalk it up to a passionate supporter of Bray, working hard for his guy, working the polls or phone banks, mad at the world for not seeing how great his guy is and for not working just as hard.

Uh, no. Not that, I guess. A few minutes later, I see this from him on Facebook:

 Jason Baldwin

Saturday at 10:20am via mobile ·

Catching up on American idol and I have to say nicki minaj is a joke!

Noise is just noise without action folks. If Republicans want to win in minority districts, they are going to have to stop with the noise and start with the doing stuff. Catching up with American Idol on election day isn’t going to cut it.