Last thoughts before Election Day (maybe)

-- Kuff's Sunday morning post about voter turnout for Houston's elections is definitive, the best last word before Tuesday night.  He blew up the newspaper guy's numbers, paid homage to the paid politicos for their turnout prediction, and gave us HEROes a little glimmer of hope.  Surely not all Republican voters are hateful bigots, after all.

My takeaway?  Thirty-five thousand people voted last Friday, or about 18% of the 194K total.  That's kind of ridiculous.  That may be as many people as vote on Election Day proper.  I'm conflicted about hoping it's greater or smaller turnout tomorrow, because the conventional wisdom -- that high turnout aids the liberal side --  is flipped on its head this cycle.  The evidence suggests that the cons may have more to celebrate tomorrow night.  Old and white and Democratic has been the typical muni voter; how much will that meme change after we see what happens Tuesday night?

If that Republican vote already in the can is not monolithically anti-; that they, possibly more than some Democrats, see the threat to the city's business interests beyond lost major sporting events and conventions with a defeat of HERO, then we don't have to feel gloomy about the outcome.  Even kingmaker douchebags like Gary Polland and Terry Lowry seem to get that.

The most interesting thing to me is that while Big Jolly has harped on bathroom fears -- he knows better; he's just a cheerleader for the team -- he and others have attacked their own party chair, Paul Simpson, for saying Ben Hall was for HERO before he was against it.  The current chairman of the Harris County Republican Party is being shat upon for a sidebar argument, while the guy he defeated, Jared Woodfill, is out in front of the Hate Parade.  (Rumor has it he wants to be state party chair, and a win on Tuesday greases those skids.)

If there is some significant percentage of the swollen turnout in the conservative boondocks voting for Steve Costello and 'yes' on HERO, and some similar minority vote (no pun) among the high black turnout casting ballots for Ben Hall and 'no', maybe the poli-sci professors have oversold Bill King's prospects.  (Remember that the last poll conducted two weeks ago essentially found a four-way tie for second place.)  But if Sylvester Turner's voters are voting no on HERO, then we can surmise the ordinance has already lost.

The historical election data that supports the premise that Democrats are also homophobes comes from 2005, when just under 18% of the state's voters approved the Texas equivalent of DOMA with 76.25% of the vote.  In Harris County it was 72.5%.  That was more than just a solid Republican bloc codifying marriage discrimination into the state's constitution.  Tolerance has come a long way in the decade since -- mostly thanks to the SCOTUS ruling last summer -- but still has a long way to go here in Deep-In-The-Hearta.  We're about to find out exactly how far.

So in the post-election analysis I will be looking for evidence that a high percentage of Houston black Democrats voted 'no' on Prop 1.  (I would define 'high percentage' as a number at or above 33% of the total.)  You may recall that HBAD made no endorsement of either of the city's ballot propositions but did endorse the anti-HERO Republican incumbent in At Large 3 over three progressive candidates.  IMHO, and certainly absent a big turnout on Election Day in District C and Meyerland and other inside-the-loop, Caucasian-heavy Democratic precincts, that -- how the African American votes went for and against -- is where the ordinance's fate will turn.  Turner came in second to Chris Bell on my ballot for a very small number of reasons, the main one being the state representative's relatively late conversion to marriage equality.  If Turner's electorate puts him in the runoff but also helps knock down the ordinance... is he accountable for that?  What will the HGLBT Caucus say publicly if that should happen?  That the mayoral candidate they endorsed brought voters to the polls that killed HERO?

Update: At this blog's Facebook page, Noah Horwitz has called my attention to this FB post by Kris Banks w/r/t the Turner campaign's talking points on HERO.  So good on them for that.

One more thing, from the Chron link in the first graf:

Former Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia also spent $20,000 to advertise in the Texas Conservative Review and City Councilman Steve Costello paid $30,000.

Still think Adrian Garcia is a good Democrat?

-- Worth relinking: these two posts on tomorrow's Texas scorecard, from this morning's Weekly Wrangle... "If Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and Joe Straus are for it, the rest of us should vote against it".   And why is one HISD trustee candidate attacking another in a way-down-the-ballot race for a job which pays nothing?

And yet another newspaper's opinion on turning down all state props except for 2.

-- There are, of course, other elections going on around the country, and the governorships in Kentucky and Louisiana are the most interesting.  If you haven't been following the Amazing Bayou Tale of Diaper David Vitter's Collapse, it's a novella all its own.  And holding the Bluegrass State's governor's seat is also in the Democrats' reach.  The Daily Kos Elections Digest is a great place to get primed and then to watch the returns come in without turning on your teevee.

Get Your Vote On Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes everyone takes advantage of their opportunity to make their voices heard at the ballot box as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff noted that one way to improve turnout in municipal elections is to hold them in even-numbered years.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos, and contributing to Daily Kos, calls out Republican lawmakers for their cowardice in failing to pass a viable budget that will actually pay for things, in TX Prop 7: GOP asks voters to rob Peter to pay Paul.

SocraticGadfly notes that unless the Clinton Foundation completes a massive accounting cleanup in just two more weeks, Hillary (and the other Clintons) could face a problem far worse than her email server or Trey Gowdy, and that would be the IRS.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants the world to see the 27 immigrant women standing up for themselves at Hutto immigration center.

A few late-breaking developments in Houston's forthcoming elections were posted by PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.  And Egberto Willies smells something funny in the attack mailers in a contested HISD race between Dr. Ann McCoy and Jolanda Jones.

Texas Leftist blogged about Sally Field's endorsement of the Houston ERO.

jobsanger quoted a recent Rasmussen poll as indicating that 62% of Americans want government regulation of campaign contributions.

McBlogger linked to the NYT story about the ominous greening of Greenland.  And TxSharon at Bluedaze reminds you to smarten up before the arrival of the Grim Fracking Reaper (not limited to All Hallows Eve).

Neil at All People Have Value took a picture of recent high water in Houston. Everyday life is interesting. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

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

The Texas Observer has a moving and emotional photo essay entitled "The Things They Left Behind", which documents the possessions found with immigrants who died while making their journeys.

Trail Blazers reports that there were two Texas holdouts who did not vote for Paul Ryan to be Speaker of the House.

Somervell County Salon wonders why Hillary Clinton is so quick to play the 'sexist' card.

The TSTA Blog ponders the end of the standardized testing regime.

RG Ratcliffe names and excoriates the main climate villain at Exxon.

Carol Morgan notes the transformation of Texas into a Christian theocracy.

Paradise in Hell grades the last week's GOP debate.

Better Texas Blog highlights the second year of modest rate increases for the Texas health insurance marketplace.

Grits for Breakfast asks if Daylight Savings Time all the time would reduce crime.

And Fascist Dyke Motors has the West Gray Multi-Service Center blues.

Sunday Ghoulish Funnies

VICE: "How Houston is Being Duped by Bigots and Zealots"

Nails it right to a cross.

The first half of the article resets the history, the middle portion reveals -- as if we did not know this already, too -- what and who we are dealing with.  And Annise Parker's cogent analysis identifies the root of the problem: ignorance and fear.

"Most Houstonians, like most Americans, have gay and lesbian friends, family, and coworkers. Yet most people don't personally know a transgender person—at least that they know of," Mayor Parker told VICE via email in an attempt to explain the oppositions' effectiveness. "That lack of familiarity means that it can be easy for people to have questions, or concerns, or made to be afraid. People often respond that way to something they haven't experienced before. The fact that they are facing this attack affirms the need for this ordinance."

If you somehow missed it, there's been a national campaign to teach HERO's tolerance that went viral on social media the past month.

Chris Valdez is the co-founder of Primer Grey, a Houston-based design and marketing company that has joined the fight in support of HERO. Along with photographer Lauren Marek, Valdez is tapping social media with a powerful, image-heavy project called we are HERO. The project's goal is to shine a light on a diverse array of Houstonians who would be protected under HERO. They've seen much success since the website's October 1 launch. "Facebook has spread this project further than we could have ever imagined," Valdez says from his Houston office.

"... The main reason was that we had a stance as a company on this, and we knew that as communicators—and often times visual communicators—we had the tools in our toolbox to correct the story. We wanted to talk about the 15 different categories of people that are protected by HERO and what was at stake for them," he says. "We wanted to put faces to those stories and have them look people in the eye and tell them who and what was in jeopardy. It's a lot harder to tell people to their face that you're not interested in protecting them from discrimination. More specifically, we wanted to point out that the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance is a civil rights conversation; not about one group."

That last point is an important one, and something the mayor recognizes as well: "I don't believe the public is aware that half of the complaints filed during the time HERO was in effect were for racial discrimination," she told us.

[...]

"We'll win this," says Valdez. "It's a shame that we're putting equal rights on the ballot, but I know that Houston will come out on the right side of this, because that's the kind of city this is.

Support Houston Unites in any way that you can so that becomes a reality.  If all you can do is make a few phone calls to those who have not voted yet this weekend, while the rains keep us indoors, then that's enough.

(I would rather have fought on the "H-Town: Good for Bidness" turf, but we'll get to fight this battle again if the forces of hate win out.  It WON'T be over after next Tuesday, no matter the outcome.)

Local chattering class predicts HERO goes down

Not 'too close to call' as in the headline.

Turnout is up sharply from previous Houston municipal elections, with the largest increases occurring in predominantly Republican and African-American precincts, where a majority of voters are likely to oppose HERO, according to Bob Stein, a political scientist at Rice University. 

“I’ve actually looked at the scenario, and think [HERO] could go down, and go down by a big margin,” Stein said. “That’s the worst part. If it goes down closely, the council members and the mayor might try to amend it, but if it goes down by a big margin, it really becomes difficult to do much with.”

I've thrown rocks at Stein's polling conclusions and then been wrong before, and it's accurate that he called the Bill King surge -- though I still think he has oversold it.  Campos gets King's email and he's been bragging about "he and Turner pulling away" of late.  I'm hoping Stein's misreading the entrails, because even the city's worst political pundit is less committed to a HERO fail.

Mark Jones, another Rice political scientist, agreed that early voting returns, along with public opinion polls showing only a slim margin in favor of the ordinance, should be cause for concern for HERO supporters. 

“If I had to do an even-money bet, I’d say it may not pass, but I think it really is too close to call,” Jones said.

Not Dr. Richard Murray at U of H is less than sanguine also.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political scientist, said the rare ballot presence of a viable Republican mayoral candidate, Bill King, is driving up GOP turnout. Meanwhile, well-known Democratic state Representative Sylvester Turner, the mayoral frontrunner, is fueling an increase among African-American voters, who polls show as less likely to support HERO than whites, or Hispanic or Latino voters. 

“There are significant splits in communities that are otherwise inclined to vote more with Democrats or vote more liberally on HERO that create problems for its passage,” Rottinghaus said. “We’ve had kind of a perfect storm of alignment between conservative politics and conservative voters in a way we don’t normally see in Houston mayoral elections.” 

And finally some turnout analysis that makes sense. 

Through Wednesday, 133,594 Houston voters had cast early or mail-in ballots. With two days left in early voting, that figure was already nearly double the number who cast early or mail-in ballots in 2009, the last time the mayor’s seat was open.

HERO supporters suggest the increase in turnout is part of a historic trend toward more voters casting ballots early as opposed to on Election Day.

But Stein countered that much of the increase has been among “unexpected voters,” which he defines as those who haven’t cast ballots in at least two of the last three mayoral races. A significant number of those unexpected voters are from heavily GOP and black precincts.  

Stein said he now expects overall turnout to be as high as 230,000 of the city’s nearly 1 million voters, up from fewer than 180,000 in 2009. 

Charles thinks Stein's number is too high, at least from what I can tell.  But Stein definitely gets this next premise correct.

Stein said Houston Unites should have done more to highlight the potential negative economic consequences of repealing HERO, an argument the KHOU/KUHF also found to be persuasive, rather than trying to humanize transgender people or characterize the ordinance as “the right thing to do.”

I did my part in this regard.  So did Doug Miller at KHOU.  The LBGT folks focused on a Beyonce' hashtag, and that got them nothing.  Campos is already blaming Houston Unites for not buying teevee on Spanish-language stations.  (This FG always has a ready-made excuse for losing, and it's always because somebody didn't kiss enough Latino ass.  It's sickening how he so consistently plays the La Raza card.)

There's more gloom and doom at the link, but note this at the very end from Rottinghaus.

“How much can the Democrats push Texas to be more liberal?” he said, pointing to an anti-HERO TV ad from GOP Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. “The fact that he’s put his own money behind this shows there’s a growing concern amongst Republicans that as the demographics in Texas change, that some of the politics will change, and the Republicans need to find ways to counteract this progressive movement before it starts.” 

My humble O is that the liberal and progressive non-voters of Houston, Harris County, and the entire state of Texas simply aren't interested enough in the future of this city, county, and state to make the effort to move away from the conservative ways bidness has always been done.  And in my personal precinct mobilizing experience, they do not try hard enough to overcome the obstacles to voting that the TXGOP throws in their way.  Because of outfits like True the Vote, and all the way to the harshest photo ID law in country, too many potential liberal voters have just quit.

(If I'm wrong, please prove me so on Election Day next Tuesday.  It's your last chance.)

Nobody outside Texas is going to help us fix this fucking mess until it looks like we're trying to help ourselves.  Hillary Clinton/Julian Castro supporters need to keep this in mind for next year. 

Update: More scary stories from Texas Monthly.  At least the Texas Progressive Alliance's nonsequiteuse got quoted (though she is not upbeat either).

Update II: Charles throws a little shade on the professors too.