Democrats turned it up

Voters delivered their first forceful rebuke of President Trump and his party on Tuesday night, with Democrats exploiting Trump’s deep unpopularity to capture the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey and make significant inroads into suburban communities that once favored the Republican Party.

Gillespie, the former RNC chair and Bush-ite, went for the Trump faction without invoking Trump's name.  The Commonwealth wasn't going for it.  The race was close but not as close as the polling predicted.  Gillespie is a two-time loser after getting eked out by Sen. Mark Warner in 2014.

Northam isn't at all progressive, and almost fumbled this win away in the closing days, so to exceed polling expectations reveals a superior ground game.  In other neoliberal news, Goldman Sachs replaced Fat Bastard.

In New Jersey, Philip D. Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive, won the governorship, according to The Associated Press, by a vast margin that brought an unceremonious end to Gov. Chris Christie’s tumultuous tenure.

In both Virginia and New Jersey, voters rebuffed a wave of provocative ads linking immigration and crime, hinting at the limitations of hard-edge tactics in the sort of affluent and heavily suburban states that are pivotal in next year’s midterm elections.

The blue team extended the gains down the ballot in Virginia.

Democrats won legislative races across the Old Dominion, putting control of the House of Delegates—not generally expected to be up for grabs—within Democratic grasp. Bob Marshall, a particularly outspoken anti-LGBT conservative, was defeated by Danica Roem, who becomes the first openly transgender legislator in state and U.S. history.

The guy that introduced a bill that would allow anyone who held a Virginia state license to be able to refuse service, on moral or religious grounds, to an LGBT person ... was defeated by a trans person.  By ten points.  I believe that's called karma.

Once more from the NYT.

Representative Scott Taylor, a Republican from Virginia Beach, said he considered the Democratic sweep in Virginia a repudiation of the White House. He faulted Trump’s “divisive rhetoric” for propelling the party to defeat, and said he believed traditionally Republican-leaning voters contributed to Northam’s margin of victory.

“I do believe that this is a referendum on this administration,” Mr. Taylor said of the elections. “Democrats turned out tonight ... "

... and in many other states.  The diversity of those elected was heartening.

A Sikh man was elected mayor of Hoboken.
An African-American woman was elected mayor of Charlotte
A trans woman was elected as a state rep in VA
An African-American man was elected mayor of Helena MT

I'm so down with this America

— Andy Lewis (@andyblewis) November 8, 2017

Seattle also elected their first female mayor since the 1920s, a lesbian.  And this:

A candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates whose fiancé was shot and killed on live TV ran and won on gun violence prevention.https://t.co/74vn4y79Q2

— CAP Action Guns (@CAPActionGuns) November 8, 2017

Houston and Texas' ballot initiatives passed with flying colors.  There'll be a runoff in my HCC trustee race between the Republican-voting auto broker, Gene Pack, and my choice, Pretta VanDible Stallworth.  If you want more on the local angle you probably know where to find it.  Of greatest significance to me, hyper-locally, is the result in The Woodlands Township Board of Directors, Place 7, which was won by Carol Stromatt over incumbent Laura Fillault.  Here's the report:

Stromatt, who fended off a fake campaign flier falsely attributed to her and a barrage of robocalls from the Texas Right to Life PAC during the last week of the race, said she credited her victory to "integrity, hard work, [and] people who care about this community."

[...]

Fillault, who lost by 312 votes, was emotional after the loss and refused to comment for this article. The incumbent was ousted from office after serving only one term. Fillault had drawn unwelcome attention to herself in the past several months after posting a series of questionable Tweets on her Twitter account, using foul and abusive language towards other Twitter users.

The Woodlands, for anyone unfamiliar, is baboon's-ass red.  The Montgomery County Democratic Party lists Stromatt as a precinct chair.  She won 53-47 over the deranged Republican who drew support from MQS and the statewide anti-choice lunatics who played the baby-killing card.

That is yuge.

Lupe Valdez 'approached' to run for governor

She's 'listening'.

Four-term Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez is considering challenging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott next November. If she throws her hat in the ring, she'll be the first major Democratic contender for the governor's mansion in 2018. If Valdez wins, she'll be Texas' third female governor, first Hispanic governor and first LGBTQ governor.

"Too much of one thing corrupts, and I'm a strong believer in a two-party system," Valdez, who said she's in the "exploratory process" of planning a run, told the Texas Tribune. "I'm hoping that enough people are seeing that too much one-sided is not healthy for Texas."

She'd be a lifesaver for the Donks if she chooses to run -- she's got a free shot; wouldn't have to give up being sheriff* -- and she checks all the 'identity politics' boxes.  Except as a law and order Democrat, she's likely not all that progressive.  But she would motivate their core constituencies to get to the polls, and is candidly the only person with a real shot at upsetting Governor Helen Wheels.

More from the TexTrib.

Abbott and Valdez have a history. In 2015, they clashed over her department's policy regarding compliance with federal immigration authorities — an issue that later came up in Travis County, which includes the state capital of Austin. Those debates drove support behind the "sanctuary cities" bill that Abbott signed into law earlier this year. (That law is currently the subject of a legal challenge working its way through the courts.)

[...]

The filing period for next year's elections opens Saturday and ends a month later.

It's nut-cutting time and Valdez holds the clippers.  If she enters the race, watch for the landslide of D filers right behind her.  She'd be the rising tide for all of their respective boats.  Valdez thus has the whole world -- not mention the fate of Texas -- in her hands.

* The srikethrough-as-correction reflects the fact that county officials in Texas, unlike state senators like Sylvia Garcia, must 'resign to run' for another office under state law.

The Weekly Wrangle

With the weekly blog post and lefty news roundup, the Texas Progressive Alliance really encourages you to cast a ballot tomorrow -- because with turnout like this, your vote is going to carry a lot more weight than usual.

Off the Kuff looks at the third quarter campaign finance reports for Texas Democratic Congressional candidates.

Socratic Gadfly offers his detailed take about the bombshell Donna Brazile dropped on the Democratic Party.

An Astros fan almost since birth, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs posts his 56-year remembrance of growing up with the team and celebrating their first World Series championship.  And Houstonia has pictures of the victory parade, which 700,000 were predicted to attend, but officials estimated a million people showed up.

 Texas Vox patiently explains the difference between "weather" and "climate".

The TSTA Blog chastises educators who punish flag protesters.

jobsanger has the charts and explanations for the massive Latina pay and gender gap.

Jeff Balke eulogizes the Houston Press.

The Lewisville Texan Journal has news about that city's Vista Ridge Mall being acquired and repurposed as a live entertainment venue 7 nights a week (and still a mall).

Neil at All People Have Value attended a rally in Houston to call for the release of 10-year-old Rosa Maria Hernandez.  Rosa was seized by ICE lowlifes as she recovered from major surgery in Corpus Christi.  Thankfully the pressure on this issue for all over the country made a difference and Rosa has since been freed. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

In other Texas news (and blog posts), just hours after the mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Think Progress reports that Attorney General Ken Paxton was on Fox News suggesting that more people bring their guns to church.

(Why can't Texas Democrats find anyone to challenge this guy?)

Energy Secretary Rick Perry made the ludicrous claim that fossil fuels were the key to ending sexual assault in Africa.  The Sierra Club called for him to resign "before he causes any more damage".

Grits for Breakfast lists six states that Texas should emulate when it comes to criminal justice reform and associated solutions.

Joseph Fanelli at the Houston Press saw Russian trolls behind both sides of a protest at an Islamic Center in downtown H-Town.

The Somervell County Salon finds a few recent examples of the church and the state collaborating on a few things, and complaining about it when they can't.  Rebuild that wall!

Juanita Jean at the World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon has had enough of John Kelly.

Therese Odell at Foolish Watcher is all about Indictment Day.

Shea Serrano at The Ringer finally gets the allure of baseball.

The Current introduces us to the San Antonio Satan Fish.

And BeyondBones gives the science on vampires.

Sunday Fall Back Funnies

Seeing the Forest:

Voter suppression, coherent message telling voters how their lives will be better, authenticity so they know you mean it, listening to and appealing to all components and regions of the traditional Dem coalition, outreach to new voters, keeping the other side from rigging things like voting machines and voter registration lists and illegal donations and activities and interference like Russia and Comey, and then delivering for your constituencies in order to help the constituencies AND the next candidate who runs. (Thanks, Obama.)

A Hollywood ending

So glad that I lived long enough to see it.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FRANCHISE HISTORY, THE #ASTROS ARE #WORLDSERIES CHAMPIONS! #EARNEDHISTORY pic.twitter.com/lTo9MNqzVR

— Houston Astros (@astros) November 2, 2017

In one of the most evenly matched, hard-fought and thrilling World Series of all time, it's fitting that fans were treated to a winner-takes-all Game 7.

In the end, it's Houston that gets to celebrate.

The Astros -- whose first season was in 1962 -- are World Series champions for the first time in franchise history, defeating the Dodgers 5-1 in Game 7 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and completing a Fall Classic for the ages.

"You know what, Houston?" Astros manager A.J. Hinch said in an interview on the FOX broadcast. "You're a championship city."

We knew that already, but it's nice to have bragging rights.

In January of 1962 I was a kindergartener.  About a hundred miles to the west, six men fired pistols into the dirt, less than five miles from where I live today.

That summer the Houston Colt .45s lost 96 games, completing their inaugural season 8th in a ten-team National League, 36.5 behind the San Francisco Giants, who won 103 but still finished in a tie with their longtime rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers.  A three-game playoff for the pennant was won by San Fran, which became the first NL champion in the 162-game/season era.

The Giants, led by Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda, and Gaylord Perry, and with two Alou brothers in the outfield, lost the 1962 World Series to the New York Yankees (Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, Tony Kubek, Joe Pepitone, and Jim Bouton, among others) in seven games.

Baseball history has a discernible symmetry.

That World Series of '62 was ending just as the 13 days of the Cuban missile crisis was beginning.  Mi esposa futura and her familia had emigrated from the island nation, illegally by the new rules of Fidel Castro's government, the year before (story here).  I was a first-grader in Mrs. Rafferty's class at Averill Elementary in Beaumont, Texas.  Our school held bomb drills, where we would take cover under our desks.  As I look back on it now, this must have been a ploy to calm children about the current events.  Surely our teachers were smart enough to understand the futility of hiding under a school desk in the event of nuclear attack.

In light of recent developments in our country's relations with North Korea, it's apparent that history at large also has some parallels.

The Astros' -- err, Colt .45s' best player in '62 was probably Bob Aspromonte, who began his career with his hometown Brooklyn Dodgers.  Their best pitcher, Bobby Shantz.  A friend of mine in Ambler, PA, where Shantz lives, reports that in his varied capacities as a municipal employee in that city, used to read Shantz's meter (gas, I presume).

The team began play in a rickety old stadium constructed on the northwest corner of the vast expanse of land -- most if not all of it belonging to R. E. "Bob" Smith -- that today incorporates NRG Stadium and the now-decrepit Astrodome.  If you drive north on Kirby between the Loop and Main and pause a bit before you reach the stoplight at La Concha (south of where the Holiday Inn sits to your right) and take a glance at the parking lot, you'll see a lightpost that is rumored to be the marker for home plate at Colt Stadium.

Tickets were pretty cheap and easy to come by in those early years.

In 1964, the year my kid sister was born, the team renamed itself Astros, after the country's budding space program, and opened the Dome.  Nolan Ryan once said that he would drive up from Alvin to stare at the giant hole in the ground as it was being constructed and wonder how baseball was going to be played in it.

By the time I was eight or ten, my Dad would drive us over for a game or two each year.  I was an Astros Buddy (Lee May).  I recall a few late night drives home after games.  Dad was a real fan to make that commute on a weeknight when he had to be at work at 7 the next morning.

One great memory of a game we attended in the late '60's was against the Cincinnati Reds and Pete Rose and Johnny Bench and all those great Big Red Machinists.  We had box seats down on the third base side, and a man who was the spitting image of Sergeant Vince Carter from 'Gomer Pyle USMC' -- right down to the tight square crew cut, wide eyes, flared nostrils -- was sitting behind us.  He was mostly quiet throughout the game, but when Rose came to the plate and crouched in that signature batting stance of his, Sgt. Carter would start screaming things like, "STAND UP, PETE! YOU'RE A BIG BOY!" and such as that.

I can't remember who won the game but my family laughed about that for years after.

Anyway, and to fast forward this reminiscence, when we married and moved away from Beaumont in the mid-'80's as my newspaper career began, there was no Astros baseball televised in places like Plainview and Midland -- cable's reach was weak then -- so I lost track of my Astros fandom and became more of a fan of the game (no particular team).  But when we moved back to Houston in '93 from St. Pete, Florida, my specific request to my wife as she searched for an apartment was that we be as close to the Astrodome as possible so I could go see games often.  She picked out a cute little loft on Holly Hall, which was the east feeder into what was then still called Astrodomain parking.  I could walk to the ticket office in twenty minutes.  Those were fun times; Killer Bs, Randy Johnson, so on.  Once the 'Stros abandoned the Dome for Enron Field/Minute Maid Park in 2000 I still managed to jump the Metrorail and get downtown for a handful of games until recent years, when my health has precluded it.  So watching these postseason games on television has, as you can probably sympathize, been stressful.  That brings us to last night.

Fortunately for emotionally worn-out fans, Wednesday's game didn't have the drastic ups and downs of Game 2 and Game 5 (or the complete downer of Game 6).

And helping calm the storm he caused, the Astros' 33-year-old Cuban rookie first baseman tipped his helmet on his initial at-bat to Yu Darvish, who proved to be the Dodgers' undoing in Game 7.

And the outcome wasn't in serious doubt, as the home team -- I know, technically they were the visitors last night -- salted it away early.  As nice as it was to see the Astros win their first championship, it was a little sweeter to watch All Star shortstop Carlos Correa take a knee and propose to his girlfriend, former Miss Texas Daniella Rodriguez.  I think she said yes based on their body language; there was a lot of noise and I couldn't hear for certain.

The Angelenos represent, to some, the Democrats: California, Dodger blue, Hollywood, liberals, you know.  The Astros?  Republicans: Texas, the two presidents Bush, country music.  So perhaps there are quite a lot of folks outside the state sneering at the Astros' good fortune and tremendous skills this morning.  All I know is that the Sports Illustrated cover jinx is as dead as a doornail.

The curse dates all the way back to Sports Illustrated's first issue, Aug. 16, 1954. The cover featured Eddie Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves. Shortly after the cover came out, the Braves had a nine-game winning streak broken ... along with Mathews' hand (he missed a week's worth of games with the injury).

Since then, the jinx has struck the likes of Super Bowl losers, Olympic non-medalists and knocked out boxers for the past seven decades.

No more.

Not only did the Astros win the World Series as predicted, but the issue's cover boy – George Springer – ended up crushing five home runs and winning the Series MVP. (The day the cover was released, Springer struck out three times as the Astros were shut out at home to the Braves.)

Maybe the jinx lives on if you're a Dodgers fan, however.  The August 22, 2017 cover:

When I was a kid, my Dad used to time his vacation every year in October for when the World Series was to be played (it was all day games then).  I expect he was as happy and relieved as I am, watching the game wherever he is.

Update: Glenn Smith at The Rag Blog has many similar memories ... and observations.

Scattershooting low turnout

It's safe to disregard Charles' deep-in-the-weeds spreadsheet mumbling about local turnout and go to the Chronicle (!) for the bottom line.

The latest early voting numbers in Texas show just 119,000 voters our of 9.8 million in the 15 largest counties have sent in ballots either by mail or voted at early voting locations over the first seven days of voting.

Two years ago, in a similar non-presidential election cycle, 210,000 through the first seven days of early voting in those constitutional ballot measures.

In Harris County, 29,000 people have voted out of 2.2 million people according to the Texas Secretary of State's Office. Two years ago after the first seven days of voting, 82,000 had voted out of 2.1 million registered voters.

My Harris County spreadsheet from Stan "Fire" Stanart shows 37.6K EV and mailed ballots as of last night.  Even a non-math major from a non-Catholic school can see that we -- not the royal 'we', as in 'Democrats' (pointedly excluding progressive Democrats, mind you) or 'Astros', but we Texans, or maybe just us Texans who care about civics -- are seeing around a one-tenth of one percent turnout after the first week of early voting, with five more days (two in the can) and election day to go, here in H-Town and across the state.

The only word for that is pathetic.

So it's time to ponder what might happen if some or all of Houston's bond issues fail.  The consequences of the pension reform proposition ('A') have been widely fear-mongered by Mayor Turner, and the Republicans in the Lege have succumbed to it, so I see little to no chance of that result causing widespread panic across town.  My barometer of vox populi, my Nextdoor neighbors (Westbury, Willowbend, Meyerland) seem heavily inclined to vote against the rest, which happens to be the conservative position.  Not a good outcome for Turner's policy or politics, but not cataclysmic.  The bond lawyers would have a less-Merry Christmas, and the mayor and council can probably find a way to shuffle incoming Harvey funds around where they think they need them.

So we'll see.  Update: The Chron's Lisa Falkenberg seems a little nervous about Prop A, and pulls out the pom-poms to push voters to support it.  If there is a quantifiable reason -- not some gut feeling based on ghastly low turnout -- that she would be worried enough about to opine in pleading fashion, then the city is in deep (Harvey-related contaminated) silt.

I need to blog about the Russians; that's coming.

Happy Halloween