We have debates

-- Cumbersome versus LPF, as a warm-up to MNF.

GOP incumbent John Culberson and Democratic challenger Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, candidates for Houston's 7th Congressional District, will debate on Monday, Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. at the University of Houston's Student Center Theatre.

The race has escalated into a slew of personal attacks over health care issues, a potentially decisive issue in the race. The Cook Political Report considers the race a toss-up. The event will be streamed online at abc13.com and Univision.

#TeamLizzie is hosting a couple of far west side potluck watch parties.

Update: Culberson's been in the hospital so this debate might not happen.

New: #TX07 campaigns working to reschedule Monday debate after @JohnCulberson spent 10 days in hospital following surgery for complicated diverticulitis. Letter today from Culberson campaign to @Lizzie4Congress campaign: https://t.co/dnqx7DOo9U

— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) October 11, 2018

-- Beto versus ... Not-Tough-Enough-to-Show-Up Ted Cruz.

.@CNN announces new details re: Oct. 18 town hall with @BetoORourke: 9 p.m., McAllen Performing Arts Center, moderated by @DanaBashCNN. News release says @TedCruz "declined CNN’s invitation to participate in the town hall." #txsen #RGV

— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) October 9, 2018

The still-ongoing NYT poll gives the Zodiac Killer an eight-point lead.  Sometimes it's difficult to comprehend how so many Texans can be so willfully ignorant about something so obvious as the glaring fraud that is Cruz.

-- A week ago, HPN covered a debate between TX02 challengers Todd Litton and Dan Crenshaw which occurred the week before that.  In this excerpt, you'd be somewhat hard-pressed to tell which one was the Democrat and which one the Republican.  I'll just black out their names and you can check the link to see.

“Nobody seriously thinks that we’re going to put a wall across every single inch,” Xxxxxxx said. “It’s just a geographic impossibility. ... ”

“Government should be staying out of the doctor’s office,” Xxxxxxxx said. “We don’t want government in the doctor’s office telling women, or anybody, what they can and should do ...”

This district will either get redder or bluer in 2022, after the Census and depending on what the Texas Lege looks like following the presidential election.

In past cycles, such a contest in Texas’ 2^nd Congressional District wouldn’t even be close. Poe regularly won reelection by double digits. But in 2018?

“It is competitive, I think,” says David Branham, a professor of political science UH-Downtown who attended the debate. “You have to do well if you’re a Republican if you expect to win. If you run poorly, I think there’s a very good chance that you could lose this district.”

The district includes wealthy, conservative suburbs in northeastern Harris County, like Kingwood. It also has more liberal Houston neighborhoods, like Montrose.

“But in that center part, where it connects in the northwest side, I think you’re going to see a lot of change in that part of the district,” Branham says. That’s because the district’s demographics are changing. Hispanic residents now make up about a third of the population, and that percentage is growing.

This is also an area hit especially hard during Harvey. Rice University political scientist Bob Stein says Litton has been aggressive in courting the votes of flood victims.

“I’ve seen some of his public meetings where he goes around telling people, ‘Have you gotten your small business loan application in? Have you gotten your FEMA money in?’ He’s sort of kind of replacing, ′cause there’s no incumbent here, what Ted Poe would normally do as a congressman,” Stein says.

Crenshaw certainly hasn’t ignored the issue of Harvey. During his debate with Litton, Crenshaw said he’d seek a seat on the House Armed Services Committee, where he could pressure the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete flood infrastructure projects. But that’s not the central message of his campaign.

“The campaign has played up, ‘I’m a Republican, I support the party, and I support Donald Trump,’” Stein says. “That may be enough, but it’s not enough, I think, to kind of inspire what I will call a heavy turnout in the district.”

Even with a lower than usual turnout, Stein says Republicans probably hold the edge for now, “but nobody’s putting a lot of investment in the future. Nobody thinks this district is going to be here in 2022.”

Why? In between now and 2022 is the next census. “We’re going to get three new congressional seats in Texas, and they’re going to have to go somewhere,” Stein says.

It will most likely be Republicans who will decide where those seats go during the next round of redistricting. But in drawing safe GOP seats, they’ll still have to work around growing minority populations that are more likely to vote Democratic.

“The configurations will be to protect longer-term (Congressional) veterans,” Stein says. “If Crenshaw wins this time, he’s not high on the seniority list.” Which means that Crenshaw needs to do more than just win this November if he’s hoping to last in Congress. He needs to win big.

-- And way back before Labor Day, Joseph Kopser and Chip Roy, TX21's combatants to replace Lamar Smith, went head to head.  The Libertarian in this race is at least interesting.