politics in Harris County and Texas
I haven’t talked much about Houston City Council member Helena Brown this year. But if it isn’t clear to conservative voters in District A that she is the best candidate for the job, the email that I just received should clear that up real quick.
Holy moly! Brenda Stardig is a “Sylvia’s Choice”. If that doesn’t make a conservative cringe, nothing will.
Get the heck up off the couch and go vote for Helena Brown. Than’s an order!
Mary Katharine Ham of Hot Air fame served as my inspiration for summing up the state of the 83rd Lege.
One takeaway from the 83rd Lege is Democrats have established a framework to leverage bills passed out of the Texas House and Senate. Once the bill is signed into law by Governor Perry (or vetoed by him), they try to make a name for themselves outside their hometown, fundraise…then rinse and repeat!
First up was the June 25th filibuster of the abortion bill by Texas Senator Wendy Davis. Hardly a household name outside of Dallas let alone Texas, the Big Three Networks, as noted by the Media Research Center, by way of Life News, gave more coverage of stories devoted to Davis over a 19 day period than they did to the entire 58 days of the Kermit Gosnell trial:
“In the 19 days since her June 25 filibuster, ABC, CBS and NBC have devoted 40 minutes, 48 seconds of their morning and evening news programs to stories including Davis. That’s more than three times the 13 minutes, 30 seconds they gave Gosnell during the entire 58 days of the murder trial”
How much did Davis rake in from the publicity at the end of a campaign finance reporting quarter? Nearly $1 million in political donations.
Next up is Texas Senator Sylvia Garcia. The 83rd Lege passed HB 950 which Governor Perry wisely vetoed because it duplicates Federal law (and IMHO would have been a bonanza for trial lawyers). A no-name outside Houston, both the Houston Chronicle (oopsie, link is now broken) and the Huffington Puffington Post fecklessly attempted to catapult Garcia to national fame through her phony outrage against Macy’s and Kroger.
Macy’s and Kroger (which is a United Food & Commercial Worker union BTW; that’s for you LOFO Texas Organizing Project peeps) and the rest of us entry level pay for entry level work folks support Governor Perry’s veto. Not sure who Garcia’s consultant is, but publicizing this stunt as Texas goes into its Back to School tax-free weekend was a dumb move.
We’ll check back at the end of the Q3 reporting period to see how much campaign cash Garcia raised but the framework is clear…..
Bill. Name. Fundraise, Rinse. Repeat.
I’m searching for one more example of this framework to create a trifecta
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.
The Student Government Association of the Houston Community College’s main campus hosted a forum yesterday for the candidates running for the Texas Senate District 6 seat. Five of the eight candidates in the field answered questions before a packed room of HCC students. The moderator, Vladimir Davidiuk, did a great job in allowing the candidates to fully answer questions, setting a “soft” time limit of three minutes per answer. This format was much better than the last forum I attended and the audience got a real feel for the candidate’s positions.
I thought it was interesting that the Vice President of the Student Government Association, Thomas Williams, read complete bios for the candidates, including those that were not in attendance. Hey, if you don’t bother to show up, I wouldn’t bother to mention your name. But that’s just me. Mr. Davidiuk announced that he received an email earlier that morning from the Garcia camp letting him know that she couldn’t make it. Too bad, this would have been a great opportunity to speak to young, urban voters of all races.
Because the candidates were given time to provide in-depth answers, there were only four questions asked, plus a closing statement from each candidate. But, the questions were very good and forced each candidate to put some thought into their answers. I know that “politicians” get joked about and aren’t held in high esteem these days, but I have to say that listening to the passion from the five candidates made me feel pretty good about the future of the state, even if three of the five were Democrats and one was from the Green Party.
The five that showed up were, from left to right: Rodolfo “Rudy” Reyes, RW Bray, Joaquin Martinez, Rep. Carol Alvarado, and Maria Selva.
Once again, I was impressed with Joaquin Martinez and I think that we’ll hear from him again in the future. Ms. Selva did a good job putting Green Party issues on the table: police abuse, tar sands oil, environment. Mr. Reyes did much better in this forum than the last and will get a few votes.
I want to focus on Rep. Alvarado and RW Bray. This was my first time to see Rep. Alvarado in person and I came away more impressed than I thought that I would, although she certainly carried the Democratic Party leftist message. I guess her experience in the Texas House of Representatives has shown her that she must work with Republicans because, while she talked about budget cuts and the need to “restore” them, she didn’t use the type of rhetoric that I heard from Sylvia Garcia, the type that will make R’s tune you out and be ineffective. She acknowledged that to get things done, you have to build consensus and work across party lines – remember, Garcia says that she is going to “fight” the Republicans. I’m guessing that if Garcia wins, and takes that attitude to Austin, SD6 will be a do-nothing district again.
Rep. Alvarado had briefing notes that she used but one of the questions caught her offguard – number three, about human trafficking. The easiest way to tell she wasn’t prepared for that one was the brevity of her answer, just under a minute. Take a listen. But her preparedness and passion shined on the fourth question, when she talked about the bills she’s already introduced and about her perception that women’s health had, in her words, “taken a beating” in the last session and she would work to reverse that. Impressive answer.
As for RW Bray, he was once again the conservative that I remember. No loving on METRO, no dissing Republicans for budget cuts, just good old fashioned conservative Republican speak. I had to laugh when the first words out of his mouth were, “I like to give it to you straight, no chaser” – that is Apostle Claver of Raging Elephants’ line, so I guess Bray has been spending some time with the Apostle. He was very passionate on the question on sex trafficking, telling the audience that it was time to put “piousness and Godliness” back into society. He also isn’t afraid to bring race into the conversation, stating that New Orleans had 18 children killed and no one cared, but when it happened at a school in Connecticut, the media went ballistic. Overall a good forum for him from a conservative point of view.
Here are the questions and Alvarado and Bray’s answers:
1. Three people were injured in a shooting yesterday at the North Harris Campus of Lone Star College. What is your view of the Texas School District Security Act, a bipartisan proposal which gives districts more options to increase law enforcement and other security measures in school?
Carol Alvarado First Question Answer
[audio:http://www.bigjollypolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/hcc-sd6-forum-carol-alvarado-first-question_DS300091.mp3] [audio:http://www.bigjollypolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/hcc-sd6-forum-rw-bray-first-question_DS300091.mp3]
2. Texas has become one of the few states that have been held up as a budget success. what policies and proposals will you put forward to insure that the budget gains are not lost while insuring that priorities like funding for education are met?
Carol Alvarado Second Question Answer
[audio:http://www.bigjollypolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/hcc-sd6-forum-second-question-carol-alvarado_DS300091.mp3]RW Bray Second Question Answer
[audio:http://www.bigjollypolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/hcc-sd6-forum-second-question-rw-bray_DS300091.mp3]
3. Houston has gained a reputation as a major hub for human trafficking. What action will you take or what legislation will you propose that can address this crisis?
Carol Alvarado Third Question Answer
[audio:http://www.bigjollypolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/hcc-sd6-forum-third-question-carol-alvarado_DS300091.mp3] [audio:http://www.bigjollypolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/hcc-sd6-forum-third-question-rw-bray_DS300091.mp3]
4. One of you, or one of the candidates not present today, will become the next State Senator from District 6. Which bills do you intend to propose after taking office and how do they reflect your legislative priorities?
Carol Alvarado Fourth Question Answer
[audio:http://www.bigjollypolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/hcc-sd6-forum-fourth-question-carol-alvarado_DS300091.mp3]RW Bray Fourth Question Answer
[audio: http://www.bigjollypolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/hcc-sd6-forum-fourth-question-rw-bray_DS300091.mp3]
Many thanks to Vladimir Davidiuk and the HCC Student Government Association for putting this forum on. I hope that they have an opportunity to do the same for the runoff – with this format, we could get a real feel for the candidates.
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UPDATE: Vladimir Davidiuk contacted me to let me know that I erred in my original post about the host of this event. The event was actually hosted by the Omega Sigma chapter of Phi Theta Kappa in conjunction with the Student Government Association. I apologize for any confusion.
Yeah, I know, everyone is talking about the large amount of money being raised and spent in the SD6 race but I’m not sure that people are seeing the whole picture. On the surface, Rep. Carol Alvarado outraised and outspent former Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Sylvia Garcia and most have certainly noted that. But the biggest difference is in the amount of cash raised by the two candidates when you take away the In-Kind donations that Garcia has reported.
Running the numbers from the day after the November election until the last day of the year, here is what it looks like:
So in hard cash, Alvarado outraised Garcia better than 2-1. I certainly didn’t expect that. In-kind contributions are notorious for being inflated. Obviously Alvarado is benefitting from her status as a sitting state legislator – the big money knows that she is going to have a vote whether she wins or loses. It looks like Garcia transferred about $550,000 from her old Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner campaign account, and should have another $130,000 or so to draw from if her fundraising doesn’t pick up.
Alvarado’s largest single contributor is the HILLCOPAC, which is largely funded by Republicans. See this report that Steve Miller and Mark Lisheron did a couple of years ago for Texas Watchdog to learn more about that PAC. She also received three $10,000 contributions from three different Lawal’s that list their employer as CAMAC Energy, Inc., a Nigerian oil and gas company. Interestingly, our old friend Lee P. Brown sits on the Board of Directors of CAMAC. Speaking of former Houston mayors, Bill White also gave Alvarado $10,000. Republican big-wig Bob Perry gave Alvarado $10,000 but that was back in August of last year, so it is not included in the numbers listed above.
Neither of the Republicans in the race raised or spent substantial money. What I don’t understand is why RW Bray’s report doesn’t list In-Kind donations from Raging Elephants. I get at least one email a day supporting his candidacy from the Apostle’s group, stating that it is a political ad paid for by Raging Elephants. The last few days, the Apostle has been begging people to get to HCRP headquarters for phone banking. Now, we already know that Raging Elephants doesn’t bother with filing campaign finance reports but if a miracle were to happen and Bray somehow sneaks into a runoff, he’s going to have some ‘splaining to do. I mean, someone is paying for all that phone banking they have going on out of the Harris County Republican Party headquarters. Right?
But after talking to Dorothy Olmos last week, I’m not so sure that Bray is going to sneak in or even get more votes than she will. She gave me a breakdown of the vote from November when both she and Bray were on the ballot. In common precincts, i.e., those precincts that had her on the ballot for the SBOE and Bray on the ballot for SD6, she received roughly 5,000 more votes than he did. And that advantage held in Republican precincts, those in which the R’s beat the D’s. She has a lot of name recognition in the East End, not only because she has run for office six times, but because of her family history there.
She asked me an interesting question, one that I could answer but won’t. She wants to know why the Harris County Republican Party is supporting a guy that relocated to Texas from New Orleans after Katrina, has no roots in the party or SD6, and refuses to support Gov. Perry or the budget that came out of the legislature in 2011, over her, noting that she has carried the Republican message in the East End for a decade. Why indeed.
So that’s the campaign finance picture in the SD6 race for today. It’ll change tomorrow when the eight day out reports are filed.
The International Longshoreman’s Association has walked away from federal negotiations talks. By way of Michelle Malkin’s site,Joe Bonney of the Journal of Commerce reported the “ILA walked out of NY-NJ local contract talks today, objecting to proposed changes“.
Why is the threat of a strike by the ILA relevant to the Texas SD-6 race?
Because the ILA is the warehouse local at the Port of Houston and The Port of Houston is located in Texas SD-6.
25{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of all beef shipped out of the United States (through an ocean port) goes through…yup, you guessed it..the Port of Houston. US pork exports would also be affected by a strike at the Port of Houston.
Maybe we shouldn’t be too concerned about Texas beef & pork producers; the candidates speaking at the SD-6 forum certainly weren’t.
…after all, these businesses only provide JOBS to fellow Texans.
..and it’s not like the pork producers support events like the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, right?
Some Texas beef & pork producing businesses could get pretty mad at Sylvia Garcia if word got out in the yard that she’s got the endorsement of the Harris County AFL-CIO and the Longshoreman…