Friday, March 14, 2014

Wendy Davis' new communications director

Appears to be just what she needs.

Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis’ campaign for governor has hired U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s former communications director.

Zac Petkanas, Davis’ new communications director, most recently was senior communications adviser for the Nevada State Democratic Party.

Before that, Petkanas was Reid’s communications director, and he was deputy communications director for Reid’s re-election campaign.

Not the 'Harry Reid' part.  This 'smashmouth' part.

In just the last few days, some members of the Capitol Press Corps have noticed a shift in how the Davis campaign is interacting with us. It also seems, for the moment at least, that the Davis folks are more nimble than before in reacting to events and seizing on chances to drive their narrative in the press.

[...]

After joining the Davis team, one of Petkanas’ first online statements about GOP nominee for governor Greg Abbott was that after the AG “campaigned with sex predator & fought equal pay for women, no wonder new GOP PAC hitting panic button in Texas." That’s apparently a reference to a new political action committee called Red State Women. As the name suggests, it’s an effort aimed at women here. It is also, one could argue, an attempt to counter any chance Davis might have at convincing GOP women to cross over and vote for the Democrat in November.

Even better is seeing the press releases this week also.

-- "Davis: Abbott took huge pay increase but fights equal pay for equal work" (on March 12, the same as his Tweet linked above)

-- DAVIS CAMPAIGN SLAMS ABBOTT’S SILENCE ON POTENTIALLY UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR ON CPRIT BOARD (yesterday)

The campaign Tweeted this to emphasize the first one, and Wayne Slater at the Dallas News wrote this in response to the second one.  So I would say Zac is off to a fast start.

Davis is in Beaumont today pumping up her volunteers, and my mother wants to go, so maybe I'll get a word or a photo with the candidate.  If I do, you'll hear about it.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Ted Cruz blames missing Malaysian jetliner on Obamacare

I'm sure there's more important headlines -- like Rick Perry getting booed on Jimmy Kimmel's SXSW remote, or Buc-ees desperately working to insure that the .1% of their customers who are registered to vote clearly understand that they are bipartisans, or even that the NSA has pretended to be Facebook as they tricked you into downloading malware -- but as winter finally breaks into a lovely spring (locally, at least), we'll go with this news.

BEIJING—The mystery surrounding the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jet over the weekend took a sinister turn today, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R—TX) revealed that two of the passengers on board had recently signed up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

“Although we cannot prove that this tragedy was caused by the White House’s misguided efforts at health-care reform, the math doesn’t lie,” said Cruz at a combined Tea Party/lobotomy convention. “Experts have said that the probability of two people getting Obamacare insurance and boarding a plane, and then having that plane crash, is less than one in a million.”

Cruz said it would be inappropriate to speculate on the exact mechanism by which health insurance could have caused the disaster, but noted that “crash” and “healthcare.gov” had appeared together in news articles more than ten thousand times in the last six months. “Everywhere we look, we see the President’s fingerprints on this,” he added.

In related news, the White House offered its condolences to the families of those presumed dead on the missing jet. “What makes this tragedy even worse,” said spokesman Jay Carney, “is that one of those passengers was supposed to make the final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline.”

Find more riveting stories like that here, and now in the perpetually updating blogroll at the right.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

The CIA can't cover their tracks

Nothing really bothered me more -- in the early blogging days -- than to come to the realization that the United States, represented by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, was kidnapping and torturing people in the wake of 9/11.  And close behind that, what we came to quaintly call warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.


A decade has passed and there remains no proper accounting for either of those atrocities.  The NYT op-ed board presents the state of that union today. (My emphasis throughout.)

It was outrageous enough when two successive presidents papered over the Central Intelligence Agency’s history of illegal detention, rendition, torture and fruitless harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects. Now the leader of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, has provided stark and convincing evidence that the C.I.A. may have committed crimes to prevent the exposure of interrogations that she said were “far different and far more harsh” than anything the agency had described to Congress.

Senator DiFi, both long and recently a staunch defender of the surveillance state as it evolved over the past 12 years, has flip-flopped.  Her transformed thinking came about as a result of her discovery this week that yes, the CIA spies on senators too, just like it does the rest of us.  David Corn at Mother Jones immediately recognized the constitutional crisis, but you can read about that in a moment.

Feinstein’s speech detailed the lengths to which the C.I.A. had gone to hinder the committee’s investigation, which it began in 2009 after senators learned the agency had destroyed videotapes of the interrogations under President George W. Bush. Under President Obama, prosecutors exonerated the officials who ordered those tapes destroyed.

Feinstein said that when Senate staff members reviewed thousands of documents describing those interrogations in 2009, they found that the C.I.A.’s leadership seriously misled the committee when it described the interrogations program to the panel in 2006, “only hours before President Bush disclosed the program to the public.”

When the Senate staff compiled a still undisclosed 6,300-page report, it described these acts and also concluded that the C.I.A. had falsely claimed that torture and other brutality produced useful intelligence. The report has been going through the snail’s pace review and declassification process since December 2012. The C.I.A. disputed some of its findings. But Feinstein publicly confirmed on Tuesday that an internal review by the C.I.A. had reached conclusions similar to those in the Senate staff report. 

Almost flushed down the memory hole, but like a massive dump in a low-flow toilet, the CIA couldn't plunge fast enough.

It was the committee staff’s possession of that internal review — which the C.I.A. has refused to give to the Senate — that spurred what Ms. Feinstein said was an illegal search of computers (provided to the Senate staff by the C.I.A.) that contained drafts of the internal review. 

Ms. Feinstein said that staff members found the drafts among the documents that the C.I.A. had made available to the committee. She said she did not know whether the drafts were put there inadvertently, or by a whistle-blower. The Senate’s possession of the documents was entirely legal, she said.

Are we all caught up now?  This isn't an episode of Homeland, or 24, or House of Cards.  No teevee show can concoct a plot this nefarious.  It would be rejected as too outlandish by the producers.

The Justice Department now has a criminal investigation to conduct, but the C.I.A. internal review and the Senate report must be released. Feinstein called on President Obama to make public the Senate report, which he has supported doing in the past. She said that this would “ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.”

The lingering fog about the C.I.A. detentions is a result of Mr. Obama’s decision when he took office to conduct no investigation of them. We can only hope he knows that when he has lost Dianne Feinstein, he has no choice but to act in favor of disclosure and accountability.

Mo Dowd breaks it down for you if you're still not feeling any sense of urgency.

In his mad odyssey through the dark side — waterboarding, secret rendition, indefinite detention, unnecessary war and manipulation of C.I.A. analysis — Dick Cheney did his best to vitiate our system of checks and balances. His nefarious work is still warping our intelligence system more than a decade later.

Barack Obama, the former Constitutional law teacher who became president vowing to clean up the excesses and Constitutional corrosion of W. and Cheney, will now have to clean up the excesses and Constitutional corrosion in his own administration. And he’d better get out from between two ferns and get in between the warring Congressional Democrats and administration officials — all opening criminal investigations of each other — because it looks as if the C.I.A. is continuing to run amok to cover up what happened in the years W. and Vice encouraged it to run amok.

Langley needs a come-to-Jesus moment — pronto.

One last bit.

In June, Brennan had issued a 122-page classified rebuttal to the still-classified $40 million, 6,300-page Senate report. But Feinstein said on the floor that she found the C.I.A. riposte “puzzling,” given that the Panetta internal review admitted to what the C.I.A.’s rebuttal objected to. Given the C.I.A.’s 2005 destruction of videotapes showing the torture of two Al Qaeda operatives, Feinstein said she has now locked up in the committee vault in the Hart Office Building the parts of the (former CIA chief) Panetta review that her staff had printed out before it disappeared. She has also requested in writing that Brennan turn over a complete version of the review to the committee.

She said she has received no answers from Brennan, who is no fan of Congress or the media, to her formal questions about the agency’s actions and no response to her request for an apology. She was clearly appalled by the nerve of the agency’s acting general counsel, Robert Eatinger, in making a criminal referral to the Justice Department suggesting her staff is guilty of wrongdoing.

She noted that Eatinger, whom she identified only by job title, worked in the Bush administration as a lawyer in the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center, which carried out the notorious detention and interrogation program. She observed archly that Eatinger’s name was cited more than 1,600 times in the Senate report.

In 2007, The Times’s Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane reported that when a C.I.A. official trashed those interrogation videotapes, he told superiors that two C.I.A. lawyers had signed off on it. One was Eatinger. In a Q. & A. at the Council on Foreign Relations just after Feinstein’s floor speech, Brennan told Andrea Mitchell that he is in no way trying to “thwart” the Senate. He denied that the C.I.A. hacked into Senate computers, noting that it was beyond “the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.”

But is anything beyond the scope of reason for the C.I.A. anymore? Shouldn’t someone have gone to jail now besides the guy who blew the whistle on waterboarding? It’s typical that Langley, which has bungled so much for decades, couldn’t even spy on the Senate properly without getting caught. 

Another appropriate question: was the CIA too busy spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee to notice that Vladimir Putin was about to usurp the Ukraine?  To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we apparently are going to have refight the Cold War with the spies -- and their lawyers -- that we have, not the ones we wish we had.

And I don't trust any of those fuckers one little bit.  To David Corn, as referenced above.

What Feinstein didn't say—but it's surely implied—is that without effective monitoring, secret government cannot be justified in a democracy. This is indeed a defining moment. It's a big deal for President Barack Obama, who, as is often noted in these situations, once upon a time taught constitutional law. Feinstein has ripped open a scab to reveal a deep wound that has been festering for decades. The president needs to respond in a way that demonstrates he is serious about making the system work and restoring faith in the oversight of the intelligence establishment.

We'll stand by patiently as we wait for the president's bold, firm, authoritative response.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

More GOP journamalism, local edition

Good ol' Fort Bend Republican flack Burt Levine -- I've mentioned him here before a time or two -- has a piece in Houston Style about Kesha Rogers and her bid to be the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in November.  It's somewhat lacking in reality-based information, not to mention one of the elementary standards of journalism, however.

The article presents Rogers in favorable light, especially considering her demonstrative track record of abject lunacy.  That Burt wants to make a little mischief in the May primary runoff between Rogers and David Alameel is not the biggest problem, though.

The original included a quote from Harris County Democratic Party chair Lane Lewis praising Rogers.  The article you see now at the link I posted above has been been edited for removal of Lewis' name and mention of the HCDP.  Lewis clarified his non-participation in this Facebook status update yesterday.  As it turns out, Levine not only misattributed something said about Rogers to the wrong Harris Dem chairman and the wrong election, he also cut and pasted the bio data used in the story from Rogers' Wiki page.

I'm going to save Burt further embarrassment if he can prove himself himself capable of acknowledging his mistakes later today, but there are a few screenshots I can post, especially if any further edits to the Style piece are made.  You can follow the links I've embedded -- and read the comments at them -- to get the gist of it.

Burt: I hear Breitbart Texas has an opening.  You're qualified.

Update: the article has had another online revision without notification, adding this graf.

The former Chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party has said, "One of the things the Rogers at 37 years old is able to do is to engage young people. If she can turn out young people to vote for Democrats it is all the better."

That is indeed former HCDP chair Gerry Birnberg speaking in 2010, as previously linked.  Except that in 2010, Rogers was 33 years old.  And Birnberg did not reference Rogers' age at all in the Chronicle's account.

Breitbart Texas runs off the rails

And not in the way we would have thought.  After the pimping Texas Sparkle gave them... well, "nobody" (except Christopher Hooks at the Texas Observer) could have seen this coming.

It’s been a little under a month—how is Breitbart Texas doing so far in bringing its investigative reporting background to clean out the partisan snake-pit of Texas media?

For the most part, Breitbart Texas’ output has been a mishmash of rote news aggregation, announcements that seem like transliterations of press releases in support of favored candidates, and an eclectic assortment of dispatches from the Breitbart contributor network, who receive $100 per post, according to the Daily Caller.

One such contributor, who goes by the twitter handle @OutOfTheBoxMom, wrote an article that consists of a list of participants and contributors to the South by Southwest Education conference. Another wrote an 88-word piece headlined “HOUSTON: SON SETS MOM’S APARTMENT ON FIRE FOR REFUSING TO BUY MARIJUANA.” It has more than a hundred comments. The source of the article—presumably a Houston Chronicle article from the same day—is not mentioned or linked to.

Then there’s the fact that Breitbart routinely runs articles written by Michael Q. Sullivan, like this lengthy jeremiad against House Speaker Joe Straus, without properly identifying Sullivan or his organizations.

That relay is pretty farcical, so it's hard to imagine how it all blew up in their faces.

But that all pales in comparison to the rift that’s recently developed in Breitbart Texas caused by the recent firing of Lee Stranahan, a Breitbart veteran who had quit the organization last fall, before rejoining Breitbart Texas as it launched last month. Stranahan, one of the $100-a-piece contributors, was working under “bureau chief” Brandon Darby, who made his name by running with anarchist and far-left groups and  passing information on them to the FBI. Stranahan’s beat: the “institutional left” and “corruption.”

Stranahan, according to the Daily Caller, was a comparative old-timer at Breitbart, who felt ill at ease with the direction the site has taken in recent years. He was among those who miss the leadership Andrew Breitbart provided for the organization and the movement in general. Stranahan quit the website last fall in part because of qualms about the site’s direction—but he signed up again with the launch of Breitbart Texas. He needed the money.

That all fell apart last week, when a simmering rift between Stranahan and Darby spiraled out of control. Stranahan alleges Darby killed a number of stories that reflected unfavorably on individuals Darby had ties with. One of them had to do with an attorney named Dan Backer, who Stranahan says was funneling money from tea party groups to “establishment” Republicans like Mitch McConnell. When Darby wouldn’t publish that story, Stranahan began tweeting details from the killed piece. That’s when Darby took the remarkable step of attacking his own reporter’s ethics, tweeting that Stranahan had once solicited money for a documentary he was making from Dan Backer.

“Person asks group for $. Group says no. Person then attacks the group without mentioning they tried to get $ before attacking,” wrote Darby in a since-deleted tweet.

Annnnd there's more.

The whole thing might have faded away after that, except for the fact that someone began forwarding emails from the fight to the Daily Caller’s Betsy Rothstein, a Washington, D.C.-based gadfly who trades in media gossip. The exchanges display a remarkable level of dysfunction within the organization, and some embarrassing anecdotes. Stranahan accuses Darby of being a “coward” and “pigheaded” and even alleges that Darby once cooked up a plan, as part of a long-running inter-office rivalry, to accuse one senior conservative journalist of having a attraction to the late Andrew Breitbart’s under-age son:
“Also; please confirm that a bit over a year ago, you told me in no uncertain terms that you had a plan to file false police charges against Jeffery Scott Shapiro, with the knowingly false claim that he had a sexual interest in Sampson Breitbart.”
The whole thing is unbelievably sordid and embarrassing, for all parties. To make matters even worse, Stranahan, who took stories that got killed by Darby and published them on his own website, recently had to append a major correction to one of his stories when a big part of his case against Backer’s PAC—the fact that the group had donated money to a Democratic congressman from North Carolina—turned out to be a financial reporting error.

And at the link, Stranahan has some comments attempting to rebut Wilder, while "Stranaham" rebuts him.  It's like watching the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals play roller derby.

The parts I didn't excerpt included David Dewhurst's laudatory kudos of BBTX on launch, just a month ago.  What a coincidence that they are both flaming out at the same time.

That was schadenfreude so rich and creamy that I had to take extra insulin after reading it.

Monday, March 10, 2014

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is always springing forward as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff points out that the Texas Tribune's pollsters forget or ignore their own past data in analyzing the polls they have done for 2014.

Horwitz at Texpatriate bids farewell to all the dirtbags we won't have to kick around anymore after last Tuesday's primary.

Bernie Sanders might run for president in 2016 -- as a Democrat, or a Green, or an independent. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs really doesn't care which it is; he's all in.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson after last week's primaries gives some initial 2014 primary thoughts.

Neil at All People Have Value said seemingly contradictory things such as ice in Houston while the world is warming are easily true. Neil said we should be flexible and open and not rigid. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme knows Greg Abbott must be delusional. Not to mention arrogant for saying he'll get more than 49% of the Hispanic vote. Not. Going. To. Happen.

====================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Better Texas analyzes the final rules for ACA navigators.

Juanita Jean will not be posting Steve Stockman's mugshot, nosirree.

The Lunch Tray says it's not crazy at all for chicken to be shipped to China for processing.

Offcite tries to balance Houston's prosperity and air quality.

Texas Redistricting tells us what the primary does and doesn't tell us about voter ID.

BOR documents the legislative primary runoffs that will be on some people's ballots in May.

The Queso sets your schedule for SXSW.

And finally, he's not a Texan but The Slacktivist's explanation of how four religious conservative North Texas legislators got scammed by one of their own is well worth your time to read.

Friday, March 07, 2014

Bernie Sanders for President

I'm all in.

In some senses, Sanders is the unlikeliest of prospects: an independent who caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate but has never joined the party, a democratic socialist in a country where many politicians fear the label “liberal,” an outspoken critic of the economic, environmental and social status quo who rips “the ruling class” and calls out the Koch brothers by name. Yet, he has served as the mayor of his state’s largest city, beaten a Republican incumbent for the US House, won and held a historically Republican Senate seat and served longer as an independent member of Congress than anyone else. And he says his political instincts tell him America is ready for a “political revolution.”

In his first extended conversation about presidential politics, Sanders discussed with The Nation the economic and environmental concerns that have led him to consider a 2016 run; the difficult question of whether to run as a Democrat or an independent; his frustration with the narrow messaging of prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton; and his sense that political and media elites are missing the signs that America is headed toward a critical juncture where electoral expectations could be exploded.

Keep reading that piece or watch this interview with Bill Moyers.



I don't care which party he runs in -- Dem, Green, or as an indy -- he's got everything I can give him in terms of money, time, shoe leather, and unlimited cell phone minutes. As for where he shows up on the ballot, these tea leaves suggest that, while still undecided, he's leaning blue.

If and when you do start a full-fledged campaign, and if you want to run against conventional politics, how far do you go? Do you go to the point of running as an independent? That’s a great challenge to conventional politics, but it is also one where we have seen some honorable, some capable people stumble.

That’s an excellent question, and I haven’t reached a conclusion on that yet. Clearly, there are things to be said on both sides of that important question. Number one: there is today more and more alienation from the Republican and Democratic parties than we have seen in the modern history of this country. In fact, most people now consider themselves to be “independent,” whatever that may mean. And the number of people who identify as Democrats or Republicans is at a historically low point. In that sense, running outside the two-party system can be a positive politically.

On the other hand, given the nature of the political system, given the nature of media in America, it would be much more difficult to get adequate coverage from the mainstream media running outside of the two-party system. It would certainly be very hard if not impossible to get into debates. It would require building an entire political infrastructure outside of the two-party system: to get on the ballot, to do all the things that would be required for a serious campaign.

The question that you asked is extremely important, it requires a whole lot of discussion. It’s one that I have not answered yet.

Hand to heart, I'd like to see him run as a Green.  That's where he fits best, and he could really help build the GPUS into the kind of player it is in Western Europe (particularly Germany).  A thriving democracy needs more options, but it just won't happen until we get the money out of our system, and there is simply too much entrenched opposition -- from the media, consultants, and even the electeds who profit from it -- for that to happen in my lifetime.  In a craft beer world, it's a shame that Americans only have Bud and Bud Lite from which to choose politically.

But if Sanders ran as a Democrat, he would disrupt the stale conventional wisdom and quake the so-called liberal party to its foundation.  And that also needs to badly happen.

Let's be clear: after yet another long, loud, somewhat divisive Democratic presidential primary season in 2016 -- as in 2008 -- Hillary Clinton would emerge as the nominee.  Not wounded either, but battle-hardened.  And Sanders will have accomplished as much of his task as is possible: pulling the establishment away from the right and back to the left.  And perhaps a few other beneficial things as well.

Good thing, because we're in for a couple of miserable years, as I take reckoning today.  Greg Abbott is more likely than not to be the next governor of the Great State, with Dan Patrick running the state Senate as lieutenant governor.  The Texas Legislature will be 2/3 majority in both houses, which gives the worst conservatives in the country carte blanche to do whatever they like.  The United States Senate stands a better than 50% chance of flipping red after November 2014, leaving Barack Obama without a working phone but with a pen he will have to use to veto every bill he gets from Congress.

We ain't had no gridlock until you see what that looks like, folks.  No SCOTUS justices confirmed (to say nothing of appellate courts and Cabinet nominees), debt ceilings fail to get raised... just your basic governmental apocalypse, that's all.  Thanks, Tea Party!

But in 2016, another Democrat will get elected to the White House and the US Senate will flip back to blue.  Hell, the moderate Republicans may have even iced Ted Cruz by that time, after he loses to Hillary in an electoral landslide.  He returns to being a loud-mouthed backbencher in the upper chamber, though, so not exactly the most fortuitous outcome.  You can't have everything.

Bernie Sanders running for president shakes up the Etch-A-Sketch a little.  Not enough, but it's as close to a revolution as America is capable of.

Thursday, March 06, 2014

A couple of post mortem thoughts

-- Wendy Davis' perceived weakness in South Texas (it's only perceived by those who use the hashtag #tcot and read Breitbart) isn't.

As for South Texas,  there’s no contest. In the big three South Texas counties – Cameron, Hidalgo and Webb – Davis got 35,954 votes to Abbott’s 8,853. Or more than four times as many votes as the Republican attorney general. As we reported today, both candidates are already in general election mode, already making a pitch for Hispanic voters and suburban women – two important voter groups. There were few contested statewide races on the Democratic side Tuesday, but several on the GOP side to motivate Republican votes to go the polls Tuesday. Still, results in seven top South Texas counties in Tuesday’s primary finds that Davis got nearly five times more votes than Abbott.

-- Turnout was lame, but turnout is always lame in non-presidential primaries.  BGTX is playing a long game, and it's working.  More in similar vein from Ed Sills at QR.


Reynaldo “Ray” Madrigal got 20.94 percent of the vote. Also, they suggest an “excitement deficit” for Democrats, as Davis got only 432,000 votes, compared to 517,487 for gubernatorial candidate Bill White in the 2010 Democratic primary.

Turnout was light, in part because of bad weather, a lost day of early voting on Presidents Day and voter procrastination. But in larger part, turnout was light because the statewide Democratic matchups were so low on the marquee that they had to be squeezed in with tweezers. Republicans were on TV, it seemed, more than erectile dysfunction ads. Even Democrats’ attention was distracted in the fashion of spectators witnessing a car wreck.

The Democratic Party in Texas still has a mountain to climb, but neither the primary numbers nor the expectations game adds much insight in reading the November crystal ball.

Sills provides more rationale behind the paywall, but I'll leave it at this.

For Democrats looking for any evidence of “excitement,” there is this nugget: Davis’s vote total of 432,000 was just 19,000 short of the vote total for Leticia Van de Putte, who received the nomination for Lieutenant Governor with no opposition. Nearly 100,000 Democrats appear to have stopped voting after the governor’s race. Even the U.S. Senate race, above Davis on the ballot, had 40,000 fewer votes. 

In March, the Davis machine turned them out for her.  In November, they had best be turning them out for everybody on the ticket.

-- Kuff joins the chorus of critics of the Texas Tribune's pre-election poll.  He came in behind RG Ratcliffe, posting again at James Moore's Don't Grow Texas.  Bashing the TexTrib has gotten awfully popular lately, and it's approaching pile-on status.  So... since I led the way on this criticism almost five years ago, I'm going to take the initiative and back off them a little.

Yes, they did get a couple of things correct.

In their defense, they hit the fairway on several races, as well. They hit the Abbott win for governor down to the percentage, and came only a few points of hitting Cornyn-Stockman on the screws (they had it 62-16). They had a bit of a miss on the Davis primary win, forecasting a much bigger win over Ray Madrigal. But blowouts are tough to hit on the percentage to begin with, and the outsized polling margin might've hinted at an undercount of Latino voters, which was Madrigal's best demographic last night.

[...]

So, what happened? Two things can be cited as causes for the errant numbers. Neither of those factors necessarily acquit UT entirely, but do offer valuable context.

First off, the poll is actually a little bit older than one might think. It was released early last week, but it was already a week old when it was released: It was in the field from Feb. 7-17. This means that the respondents missed the late campaign efforts of the candidates, which certainly played a role in the Democratic Senate primary (where Alameel did run ads late) and may have done so in the other downballot affairs, as well.

Second, turnout sucked. Both the Republican and Democratic primaries saw turnout that, at last check, was 150,000 voters fewer than came to the polls in 2010.

As for the other pollsters being held to account: The short answer is that there weren't many others to assess. Perhaps due to the genuine lack of competitive races of interest (with due respect to Alameel or Rogers, the Democratic Senate primary is all but assumed to be a battle for who will lose by 20+ to John Cornyn in November), only two other primary polls were released. One, a December poll by a GOP pollster interested in the Senate race, was too early to "judge," but was pretty close to correct, anyway (they had Cornyn leading Stockman 50-6). The other, a Gravis poll from last month, was an air ball. They had Stockman at 28 percent, and they had Cornyn well under the runoff threshold (43 percent). Not. Even. Close.

There was no other polling conducted except the two dubious ones mentioned above, and neither of them fared any better.  Let's put the blame for that squarely on the corporate media in Texas -- the newspapers, the broadcast outlets -- which have completely relinquished this responsibility.  They are content to rake in the assloads of campaign cash spent on advertising, but not deliver any news on the races in exchange for the windfall.  Hearst, with its slew of papers large and small across Texas, and Belo, all but a monopoly in the Dallas market, are due for significant shaming in this regard.

So yes, the TexTrib should be conducting better polling.  But the media giants that used to do it, even in conjunction with one another to share the cost, have abandoned it altogether.  That's the real disgrace.

Update: Now if you want to see another bullshit poll, look at this one.  And Kuff also has some advice for the TT on how to improve their polling.

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Easy on the WTF and not so much SMH (Harris County and across Texas)

As Charles has noted, there's good news here.

-- Kim Ogg over Lloyd Oliver for District Attorney, Steven Kirkland over Lori Gray for Judge of the 113th Civil District Court.

Sanity prevailed.  Ogg breezed with 76% while Kirkland built on an early-vote lead and hit 54%.  The good guys and gals won and the bad guys lost.

-- The biggest news locally was the Harris GOP chair going down in flames.  Paul Simpson, the challenger to Jared Woodfill, crushed the longtime incumbent 53-37 (with third candidate Wendy M. Berry getting the other 10).

I watched this play out over the last few days on Big Jolly's blog, and ony saw Woodfill coasting to re-election.  In working my precinct over the past couple of weeks -- when my health allowed -- I saw more signs for Paul Simpson than for anyone else (though Wendy Davis and Jerry Patterson ran a close second and third).  You know the old saying, though; yard signs don't vote.

It was Jolly's posts that fascinated me: his endorsement of Woodfill over Simpson (despite having denounced Woodfill repeatedly in posts in the past), his strident condemnation of the gay hatred running rampant among Woodfill-ites, his appearance at the Hate the Gay Marriage rally at HCRP HQ on Monday, particularly with this line...

The HCRP’s crazy uncle (Dr. Steven Hotze) even smiled at me – I winked at him – he blushed. No telling what he’s thinking right now.

You have to read all of that if you want to get a glimpse into the ironies, contradictions, cognitive dissonance, and outright hypocrisy that permeate the local Republican chapter.  Considering that the Harris County GOP is one of the largest in the country, not just the state, what's roiling and boiling them over is that the moderates seem to still have the upper hand.  Ed Emmett gambled big and won.  Two of the other county commissioners and a host of other GOP highlifes lost.  Emily Deprang at the Texas Observer...

Earlier (last night), I called Harris GOP chair candidate Paul Simpson the conservative Punxsutawney Phil because a win for him could signal moderation afoot. Simpson ran against 12-year incumbent Jared Woodfill for the third time on a platform of broadening the party base and easing off social issues—and he won. With nearly all precincts reporting, Simpson took 53 percent in a three-way race. Woodfill got just 37. This wasn’t a fluke, either. Simpson got a boost from big names like Harris County Judge Ed Emmett and raised $145,000 for a position that doesn’t pay a dime. It does, however, influence the state party’s direction. This should be interesting.

There is moderation among urban Texas Republicans; not so much the suburbanites and rurals.  Sarah Davis, the most liberal Republican in the Texas House, won her primary against her from-the-right challenger by 2-1.  That the Tea Party still holds sway outside the big cities is evidenced by all of the incumbent GOP state legislators who lost their primaries across the state.  Paul Burka:

On the Senate side, Bob Hall pushed incumbent Robert Deuell into a runoff. Konni Burton leads Mark Shelton into the runoff. Donald Huffines is leading incumbent John Carona. So far the only Empower Texans-endorsed candidate not to push through is Mike Canon, who lost to Kel Seliger.

As for the House, of the 20 or so key races I was following, the majority of those supportive of the leadership won (some key knockoffs were Linda Harper-Brown, a committee chair, Ralph Sheffield, Bennett Ratliff, and Diane Patrick). Of those incumbers backed by Empower Texans who were being challenged, Jonathan Stickland, Charles Perry, and Matt Schaefer won their races. Stefani Carter is in a runoff after coming in second (and running a poor campaign). Several Empower Texans candidates pulled through in the open seats as well--T.J, Fabby and Ted Seago led their races into the runoff, and Mark Keough won outright.

The Lege is going to get more red, but not because of Republicans in the metros.

Finally, some Congressional races to take note of.

-- CD-36 has a GOP runoff between Woodville mayor and dentist Brian Babin and Houston businessman and Tea Party favorite Ben Streusand.  One of these two will (probably) succeed Steve Stockman in Congress.  Once again, read all about them both at Big Jolly.  The Libertarian-turned-Democrat is Michael Cole, and there's also a Libertarian and a Green and an independent running.

-- CD-7's Democratic primary had a more predictable outcome: James Cargas over Lissa Squiers.  Cargas, one of the lousiest persons (not to mention aspiring politicians) I have ever encountered in any party, ran again this year just to spite his primary opponent.  He abandoned some of the sneaky, underhanded dirty tricks he pulled two years ago, and instead smeared a whole new truckload of slime.  Cargas underperformed the Democratic ticket in Harris County in 2012, and also underperformed the Democrats who have run in the district going back ten years, with 36% of the vote.  He managed that in an Obama presidential election year, too.

The over/under for Cargas' rematch with John Culberson in November is 33.3 -- the same number that John Martinez got in 2004.  I'm betting heavily on the under.  And as in 2012 (if I don't undervote it, that is) I'll cast a ballot for the Libertarian.

Just a dash of WTF (statewide races)

But a lot of SMH.  The no-surprises:

-- Wendy Davis, John Cornyn, and Greg Abbott.

There was no discernible effort by TeaBagger Country to send a statement in the top races on the Republican ticket. They saved their best for down-ballot.

The OMGs:

-- David "Money to Burn" Alameel led the field with 50%+ in early returns but finished at 47, pushed into a May runoff with Impeacha Rogers, who got 22%.  This is worse than a disaster for Democrats.  I can vote for Emily "Spicybrown" Sanchez (and I hope a lot of Latino Democrats in the RGV do the same) with a clean conscience, unlike Gadfly.

-- Dan Patrick (R-LG) over The Dew 41-28, Ken Paxton (R-AG) leading Dan Branch 44-33, Glenn Hegar (R-Compt.) apparently beating Harvey Hilderbrand and Debra Medina without a runoff (Update: or maybe there will be a runoff), Jim Hogan (D-Ag Commish) ahead of Kinky Friedman 39-38, and Sid Miller (R-Ag Commish) besting a field of five with 35% but in a runoff with Tommy Merritt.

Dan Patrick led nearly every urban county. He steamrolled Dewhurst and will finish him off in May. For comparison's sake, Dewhurst led Ted Cruz 45-34 in 2012's US Senate primary, and Cruz won the runoff with 56-43.  Dewhurst actually lost almost two percentage points in the runoff.

Paxton and Branch are both North Texas statewide legislators, one (Paxton) slightly more socially conservative than the other (Branch).  Both spent heavily on TV ads and sent ultra-RWNJ Barry Smitherman to the sidelines.

"Guns" Hegar's TV ads paid off and embarrassed the TexTrib's poll badly.

"No Name Means Everything" Jim Hogan, who raised no money and spent less than $5K of his own -- but none of it on a website -- led The Kinkster into a runoff for the Democratic nomination for Agriculture Commissioner.  The best candidate in the race, Hugh Fitzsimons, ate their dust.  It gets worse, however, because...

Sid Miller, who authored the sonogram law, who pulls his quarter horses behind his truck -- and not inside a trailer -- and who has Ted Nugent as his campaign manager, leads the Republican side for ag commissioner.

I'll be proudly voting for the Green, Kenneth Kendrick, in November no matter which of these exceptional blue and red morons prevails in the spring.

-- Last, Wayne "I am the Most" Christian leads Ryan Sitton into a runoff for Railroad Commission on the Republican side, 43-31.  State Impact notes that like so many other Republicans in contested primaries, they ran on an anti-Obama platform and not oil and gas issues.  And in a nutshell, that's why my friend Prairie Weather misses the mark here.  You can't understand Texas politics by reading DC and NY media.  Update: Talking Points Memo does seem to get the nuances in the TXGOP dynamic (but that's because Ed Kilgore wrote it).  And Booman has his take on both Kilgore's and John Fund's reaction to yesterday.  Note this at the very end.

Kilgore notes that even insofar as the Establishment had a decent night, they accomplished it by moving (or being pulled) to the right. How that works in detail depends on the issue you're concerned with. When a candidate has merely given lip service to a radical position, that's one thing. When they've felt compelled to make radical pledges and promises, that's another.

The Republican Establishment in Texas may remain distinguishable from the howling horde in some substantive ways, but the way they present themselves to the nation is now just plain frightening.

The GOP's biggest delegation looks and sounds just like Louie Gohmert. The smarter ones look and sound just like Ted Cruz.

That's going to be a problem for the national party going forward.

Charles and Ted have more, and some Harris County results coming up in a moment.

Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Election returns are going to outlast me

With Travis County holding their polls open until 9 pm, and with Clerk Stanart already warning he's going to be slow with Harris County, I'm going to leave analysis of the results to the experts who are night owls.  See y'all in the morning -- if I'm not still exhausted, that is.  In the meantime, here's a few toons (with the first two overheard at a GOP watch party tonight)...