Houston council candidates on hallucinogens

In their own words. Chris Carmona, who got doubled up by Melissa Noriega 55 -26 yesterday, posted this on her Facebook wall:

"congratulations melissa. this has been a fun experience. i look forward to working closely with you over the next two years to make it all the more easier to transition into the seat in 2013. congratulations! "

Not a single capitalized letter. Impressive.

Louis Molnar, who garnered almost 11% in his AL4 bid against Amy Price (21%) and C.O. Bradford (68%):

Thank you to everyone who supported me in this race. It was a tremendous win! What a ride! I now hold a new title: Hon. (Ret.) Louis Molnar and am off to my next set of challenges. Stay tuned! :)

Molnar, whom everyone has presumed to be Latino all this time, turns out to be Hungarian. When he says "I come from an immigrant family," he means his family came over the Canadian border.

And one blogger:

Mayoral Margin. Given the review done in the previous post, I’m willing to up my margin and say that Annise Parker goes over 60% today. If I were bolder in my guesstimating, I might even suggest 65%. We’ll see soon enough how close to accurate that is.

Whew. Yes, we did. The online poll came closer. (Teasing the big man. His progs are usually better than mine, which is why I stopped making any.)

And one elected official. This is more TeaBagger psychosis than it is pharmaceutically-induced mania:

Stanart: aside from turnout, election day went smoothly

"Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?"

Elections usually DO go smoothly when only ONE out of every ten registered voters shows up to vote, you moron. Maybe if you stopped making sure every single piece of paper distributed to election judges gets your name printed in BOLD on it, your office could correct misinformation in election manuals instead of having to print 4 pages of corrections. Stop wasting OUR taxpayer money on YOUR mistakes, STAN STANART.

I could continue with additional insanity, but it's a beautiful day and I'm going to spend some of it outside.

Fifty point eight percent (and ten)

Against token opposition, Parker barely avoided a runoff. With all votes counted, the incumbent mayor garnered 50.8 percent of the vote over five underfunded and little-known challengers despite spending more than $2.3 million. Her predecessor, Bill White, won 86 percent of the vote in his last race for mayor in 2007.

Parker actually received fewer than 50 percent of the votes cast on Election Day but she rolled up greater tallies in early voting and absentee ballots cast.

A little humility might go a long way for the Mayor as she continues to "fix things" in her second term.

In her first term, Mayor Annise Parker consolidated departments, laid off city workers, raised fees, negotiated labor contracts with all three city employee unions, undertook historic designation of several neighborhoods over the opposition of those rallying around property rights, redrew the city’s political map, pushed for the addition of two Council seats and implemented two controversial voter-approved propositions to turn off the city’s red-light cameras and start charging a monthly drainage fee.

Upon winning a second term Tuesday, she said the work isn’t done.

“I’m going to continue to tackle every tough problem that I can find and fix things,” Parker told the Chronicle at her Election Night headquarters at Union Station.

If she can get some workers hired to begin projects funded by the drainage fee -- which had an "Against" slate in yesterday's races that was miserably defeated -- then she will do better in '13.

But this news last night is an inauspicious beginning: while Parker partied, seven Occupy Houston participants were arrested (three more were detained and then released) for refusing to move a tarp.

At approximately 11:00 PM, HPD arrested 10 Occupy Houston participants as a result of a dispute over a tarp being used to protect equipment belonging to Occupy Houston from inclement weather.

Police confronted one of the Occupy Houston participants about the placement of a tarp in Tranquility Park and requested its removal. The participant refused to remove the tarp on the grounds that it was necessary to protect equipment vital to the participants’ well-being. The participant discussed the matter with officers over a period of approximately 20 minutes, during which time HPD presence at the occupation site escalated dramatically, reaching a total of 27 officers and 19 police cruisers.

After failing to reach a resolution, police insisted that an arrest would be made if the tarp were not removed. The aforementioned participant remained steadfast in his position and 5 additional Occupy Houston participants indicated their willingness to be arrested on these terms as well. HPD then proceeded to arrest the participants and confiscate the tarp and other equipment belonging to the occupiers.

Four additional Occupy Houston participants were detained during the course of the arrests. Three individuals who were filming the event were detained for jaywalking after attempting to cross Walker St. at Bagby, where a police cruiser was obstructing the crosswalk. Another participant was arrested while requesting the name and badge number of one of the arresting officers. Three of the detained persons were released after a period of time, while the remaining 7 participants were booked into the municipal jail facility located on Lubbock. Video of the arrests may be viewed at Occupy Houston’s YouTube channel.

This confrontation occurred about two hours after Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee addressed the general assembly. An Iraq War veteran, Shaun Crump, was among those arrested.

Not a good way to start, Mayor Parker.