Scattershooting fear, Gary Johnson, and more blog updates

-- My Nextdoor (neighborhood social forum) is filled lately with posts about crime: burgled homes, gunshots, suspicious people driving or walking the 'hood.  It seems as if my neighbors are crapping their pants about everything, even packs of stray dogs roaming the streets.  Put this together with the weekend bombing in New York and the discovery of another pressure cooker bomb in New Jersey, Trump's ratcheted-up fascist rhetoric, the continuing escalation of war in Syria despite "cease-fire" agreements, repetitive micro-aggressions between the US and North Korea and China and Russia, the queasiness reflected by a lot of my old Democratic friends about Hillary's gaffes, prevarications, and stumbles that have squandered her polling lead, and I believe we're about one actual terrorist attack away from President Donald Trump in an eruption of panic by the electorate.

Buck up, Americans.  This is supposed to be the home of the brave.  Start acting like it.

And please stop with the updates on Rick Perry and the Dancing With The Stars and the indignant outrage directed at football players who aren't standing for the national anthem, or holding up their fists instead of putting their hands over the hearts.  Let's focus more on the things that matter and less on the ones that don't.

-- You may have noticed that the blogroll in the right-hand column is back to "latest posts".  And Blogger is canceling the "Slideshow", top right, so I'll see if there's something I can come up with that will appear shortly in that space.

-- The news lately has exposed, in embarrassing detail, the Libertarian presidential candidate as an intellectual lightweight.  It began with "What is Aleppo" last week, and continued Sunday night on 60 Minutes.  The man just looks to me as if he has smoked too much pot over the course of his life.

Position-wise, the Libs get it right on a few things: decriminalizing weed and normalizing work visas, for example.  But Johnson's stand on other issues is an exercise in Trump-Lite.

• He supports TPP.
• He supports fracking.
• He opposes any federal policies that would make college more affordable or reduce student debt. In fact, he wants to abolish student loans entirely.
• He thinks Citizens United is great.
• He doesn't want to raise the minimum wage. At all.
• He favors a balanced-budget amendment and has previously suggested that he would slash federal spending 43 percent in order to balance the budget. This would require massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and social welfare programs of all kinds.
• He opposes net neutrality.
• He wants to increase the Social Security retirement age to 75 and he's open to privatization.
• He opposes any kind of national health care and wants to repeal Obamacare.
• He opposes practically all forms of gun control.
• He opposes any kind of paid maternity or medical leave.
• He supported the Keystone XL pipeline.
• He opposes any government action to address climate change.
• He wants to cut the corporate tax rate to zero.
• He appears to believe that we should reduce financial regulation. All we need to do is allow big banks to fail and everything will be OK.
• He wants to remove the Fed's mandate to maximize employment and has spoken favorably of returning to the gold standard.
• He wants to block-grant Medicare and turn it over to the states.
• He wants to repeal the 16th Amendment and eliminate the income tax, the payroll tax, and the estate tax. He would replace it with a 28 percent FairTax that exempts the poor. This is equivalent to a 39 percent sales tax, and it would almost certainly represent a large tax cut for the rich.

Johnson got the full Mediaite snark for his appearance yesterday morning on CNN.  He's previously -- as in 2000, before the election that year -- had a good laugh with W. Bush about how ignorant both men are.

Since protest votes seem lately to be the preferred cudgel Democrats are using to beat those who aren't on the Hillary bandwagon, let's be certain your progressive friends aren't making this mistake.  Here's the whole 60 Minutes enchilada, video and transcript.  Greens are on when, CBS?

-- It is a surprise, as Kuff has noted, that the Chronic endorsed Ann Harris Bennett for tax assessor/collector on the basis of incumbent Mike Sullivan's epic fail on voter registration.  I had previously commented that it wasn't likely to happen, but if newspaper endorsements still mean anything, this one should.  This is the local race to watch on Election Night (Kim Ogg and Ed Gonzalez should win, Jenifer Pool ought to in a just world), as it will likely be construed by talking heads as a harbinger of the length of Hillary Clinton's coattails, the GOTV effort of the Harris County Dems and Repubs, and other morning-after armchair-quarterbacking like that.

Nate Silver says it's almost time for Democrats to panic

Might be time to refill those anti-anxiety prescriptions, Hillbots.

Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls has been declining for several weeks, and now we’re at the point where it’s not much of a lead at all. National polls show Clinton only 1 or 2 percentage points ahead of Donald Trump, on average. And the state polling situation isn’t really any better for her. On Thursday alone, polls were released showing Clinton behind in Ohio, Iowa and Colorado — and with narrow, 3-point leads in Michigan and Virginia, two states once thought to be relatively safe for her.

It’s also become clearer that Clinton’s “bad weekend” — which included describing half of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” on Friday, and a health scare (followed by news that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia) on Sunday — has affected the polls. Prior to the weekend, Clinton’s decline had appeared to be leveling off, with the race settling into a Clinton lead of 3 or 4 percentage points. But over the past seven days, Clinton’s win probability has declined from 70 percent to 60 percent in our polls-only forecast and by a similar amount, from 68 percent to 59 percent, in our polls-plus forecast.

That’s not to imply the events of the weekend were necessarily catastrophic for Clinton: In the grand scheme of things, they might not matter all that much (although polling from YouGov suggests that Clinton’s health is in fact a concern to voters). But when you’re only ahead by 3 or 4 points, and when some sequence of events causes you to lose another 1 or 2 points, the Electoral College probabilities can shift pretty rapidly. A lot of light blue states on our map have turned pink, meaning that Trump is now a narrow favorite there instead of Clinton:

Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida have all gone pink of late.  Give the polling time to catch up with popular opinion, and this time next week we'll see if this momentum of Trump surging and Clinton falling is sustained as the first debate -- Clinton and Trump only, as you may have heard -- looms on the calendar.

When a candidate has a rough stretch like this in the polls, you’ll sometimes see his or her supporters pass through the various stages of grief before accepting the results, beginning with a heavy dose of “unskewing” or cherry-picking of various polls. In this case, however, the shift in the race is apparent in a large number of high-quality surveys, and doesn’t depend much on the methodology one chooses. FiveThirtyEight, Real Clear Politics and Huffington Post Pollster all show similar results in their national polling averages, for example, with Clinton leading by only 1 to 3 percentage points over Trump.

This potentially ignores a more important question, however. Sure, Clinton might lead by only a percentage point or two right now — with a similarly perilous advantage in the Electoral College. But is that necessarily the best prediction for how things will turn out in November?

Silver goes on with the deep dive; I'm an executive summary kind of guy.

This is a complicated question, and one that we might want to revisit over the next couple of weeks. But the short answer is… I don’t know. We know that many news events — most notably, the political conventions — produce short-term “bounces” in the polls that partly or wholly reverse themselves after a few weeks. There were also some examples of this in 2012. Mitt Romney’s position improved by several percentage points following his first debate in Denver against President Obama, but his gains soon proved fleeting. Media coverage of the campaign — which tends to rally behind whichever candidate is gaining in the polls until it tires of the story and switches to scrutinizing the frontrunner — could also contribute to such swings back and forth.

So it’s plausible that Clinton’s “bad weekend” could be one of those events that has a relatively short-lived impact on the campaign. As if to put to the question to the test, Trump upended the news cycle on Friday by relitigating the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. (Trump finally acknowledged that Obama was born here, but only after falsely accusing Clinton of having started the “birther” rumors.) If voters were reacting to the halo of negative coverage surrounding Clinton rather than to the substance of reporting about Clinton’s health or her “deplorables” comments, she could regain ground as Trump endures a few tough news cycles of his own. Over the course of the general election so far, whichever candidate has been the dominant subject in the news has tended to lose ground in the polls, according to an analysis by Larry Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley.

All of this is tricky, though, because we still don’t have a great sense for where the long-term equilibrium of the race is, or even whether there’s an equilibrium at all — and we probably never will because of the unusual nature of Trump’s candidacy. Perhaps Trump isn’t that different from a “generic Republican” after all. Or perhaps (more plausibly in my view) he is very poor candidate who costs the Republicans substantially, but that Clinton is nearly as bad a candidate and mostly offsets this effect. Still, I’d advise waiting a week or so to see whether Clinton’s current dip in the polls sticks as the news moves on from her “bad weekend” to other subjects.

So is there anything that Clinton can do to take the initiative and regain the lead instead of just reacting to how awful Trump is, hoping that will somehow rally undecideds to her cause?  Two sources may have that answer.  First, Glenn Thrush at Politico, in "Five reasons Trump might fall in autumn" (I'm excerpting just the last two):

4. Terrified Democrats are Clinton’s secret weapon. This is the big one, the factor upon which the election truly hinges. Raw, small-mammal fear. Trump’s success might be the only thing that gets many Democrats (or anti-Trump moderates outside the party) to hold their noses and vote Hillary.

The wow in recent national polls is not Trump’s rise, but the fact that more Trump voters are psyched about their candidate than Democrats are jazzed about their less-than-exciting nominee. In the Times survey, 51 percent of Trump supporters were enthusiastic about him vs. 43 percent of Clinton supporters who were thrilled about her. But fear is as powerful an emotion as love in politics (it’s why negative ads work and the decision by Jeb Bush’s super PAC to dump tens of millions into positive ads was so bad) — and Democrats are panicking, in a way that could be good news for their underperforming nominee.

Ultimately, Trump Terror has been at the core of Clinton’s strategy since the end of the primary, and it’s why her comment about half of Trump supporters being in a “basket of deplorables” probably won’t do any long-term damage: It’s basically still a base election, and she needs to get them out to win. A more vexing problem is her continued meh performance with younger voters who are flirting in the 25 to 30 percent range with third-party candidates.

The endgame strategy, here, in a quote: I ran into a top adviser to Clinton at a social event earlier this week, and asked him how things were going. “How the hell do you think it’s going? We’re probably going to win, but there’s a 30- to 40 percent chance we are going to elect a f---ing madman for the White House.” Then the guy headed for the bar.

5. Gary Johnson? Really? Very, very few Clinton voters are leeching directly over to Donald Trump — but a substantial number are visiting the pot-loving, socially liberal, bean-bag decorated Libertarian halfway house run by 2016’s chilliest third-party candidate, Gary Johnson. Johnson is a smart ((Ed. note: LOL), iconoclastic critic of both candidates who has been making a broad pitch for Bernie Sanders’ supporters, and it now appears he’s drawing skeptical former Clinton supporters in substantial enough numbers to affect the race.

Clinton’s Brooklyn brain trust is in a quandary on dealing with this: Attack him, and Clinton allies have compiled oppo files on the former New Mexico governor, and raise his low profile; let him roam the firmament snatching up progressives in his VW van and lose votes.

Fortunately for Clinton’s team, support for Johnson seems relatively soft (as opposed to the smaller, but more militant following attracted by Green Party candidate Jill Stein), and Clinton’s team expects many to drift back to her cause, as third-party defectors often do in October and November.

Barring an unexpected Johnson boomlet, this will be their anti-Johnson strategy — claiming that a vote for the mild-mannered Libertarian is, in fact, a vote for President Trump.

That might work.

Just ask Al Gore, who made the same case against Ralph Nader in 2000.

Priceless.  Now Angry Bear, who's already freaking out.  Too long to excerpt in context, so here's the bottom line.

 I just desperately wish she would run a campaign that is grounded in the economic and anti-campaign-funding-corruption populism in tune with 2016.  A.k.a., a strong desire for change.  Instead she’s running a deplorable one and turning a lot of us former Sanders supporters into basket cases.

Turns out that a substantial percentage of millennials think there’s no difference between Clinton’s policy preferences and Trump’s.  Not all that surprising, I guess, given that Clinton spent the summer campaigning for Republican votes.  Brilliant idea!

Clinton has abandoned the hard-negotiated Sanders platform as if on cue.  The Democratic fear factor is one of the few options left for her to try to hang on and run out the clock.  A 'prevent defense', as the best football coaches say, only prevents victory.  And an inevitable coronation suddenly finds itself flailing.

I don't have any insights that Nate Silver doesn't already have, and he admits he doesn't know where this will wind up.  But to me it feels like the Titanic's unsinkable hull has been breached, and she is slipping under the waves.

Fear and loathing of the Green Party

"First they ignore, you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then ..."

Lots of atrocities to document this past week, probably stirred up by the GOP convention's scare-mongering and Trump's unvarnished fascism.  Fear of Il Douche leads to fear that Clinton won't be able to defeat him, which leads to "it's going to be the Greens' fault again, just like in 2000".

-- Famed sexologist Dan Savage led the way with a (somewhat dated in Internet chronology) screed from May.  The gist of his animosity seems to be rooted in "Greens need to start at the bottom".  He appears not to understand that they have, but even as his original premise bites the dust, he pivots to the old "a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump" trope.

Sad!

Frankly, Savage of all people should know better.  Let's help him along in his understanding so that he doesn't repeat his mistakes made supporting the Iraq War.

-- Savage's logic is essentially the same as Paul Ryan's and Chris Christie's.  Pretty certain Savage doesn't want to find out he's sitting at that table.

“This is not like a political science class. This is the real world. There is a binary choice here,” the New Jersey governor said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Donald Trump was not my first choice for president. I was, right? It didn't work out. And so as a result, you've got to decide, and I said this to Jeb Bush the other day: It's chicken or fish, man. It's one or the other.”

Actually you do have choices other than chicken (shit) and fish (piss).  And the Chicago Tribune's ed board, thankfully, has clearly explained it.

The existing two-party system has been the mainstay of American politics for a century and a half. But the discontent felt this year among Democrats as well as Republicans suggests there is an opportunity for the Greens and the Libertarians to establish themselves in the national consciousness in a lasting way.

Can either win? Not this time. But that's no reason Americans disgusted with the major party choices have to settle on either. It's not "wasting your vote," as the old bromide says, to cast a ballot for a long-shot candidate because he or she offers something valuable that mainstream candidates don't. Attracting voters is how small parties get bigger.

A strong showing by Stein, Johnson or both might not transform America's political landscape. But it could push a reassessment of old policies that have acquired immunity from reform. It could put provocative new ideas on the national agenda.

It also could force the major parties, which have disappointed voters so badly this year, to do better in 2020 and beyond. If so, Democrats and Republicans might thank Stein and Johnson for running.

And so "wasted vote" needs to be pinched off and flushed.

-- Last: Trevor Noah, who is clearly suffering some cognitive dissonance.  At least he's focusing on the "I won't vote" crowd.

Trevor Noah, comedian and host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” said people who would rather stay home on Election Day than cast a vote for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton are essentially giving their vote to presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

“If you’re a Democrat and you say, ‘I’m not voting for Hillary,’ then you are voting for Trump,” Noah told reporters at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. “Let’s not beat around the bush ― not voting is voting.”

Half right: not voting is voting, but it's a vote for none of the above.  Only.

Let's repeat: a vote for Trump is a vote for Trump, a vote for Clinton is a vote for Clinton, a vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson is an actual and meaningful protest vote against the two parties and their worthless nominees, and not voting -- whether you refuse to do so or leave the top race on your ballot blank or, worst of all, write in someone's name who has not "qualified" as a write-in candidate in Texas or several others states -- is a vote for nobody.

I give Noah a little credit for this.

This election ― which has left many saying they won’t vote for either candidate ― might force people to re-evaluate the United States’ “strange” two-party system, Noah added.

“You are not living in a two-party world,” he said. “There is not left or right, there are varying degrees, there is nuance.”

“If you’re a young person in America, this is your country going forward ― don’t be fooled by the fact that old people are running it now,” Noah said. “You will be dealing with the effects of what these people have voted for for the rest of your life, which is going to be hopefully much longer than the people that are much older than you.”

“There will be a time when you look back and go, ‘Wow, I could have changed that and now I live in a wasteland,’” he continued.

He's speaking to his millennial generation, so he's being a little obtuse (purposely, I believe, although that might be reading more into it than there is).

The Republicans and Democrats are making it easier every single day for people who think like me to step away from the two-party trainwreck, but let's not encourage our children and grandchildren to drop out by our own actions.  The legacy options are indeed the poorest they have been in a long, long time, but that's not a good enough reason to give up on the system.  We'll always have some time later for revolution outside the ballot box if we need to go there.

Winners and losers from last night's returns

-- It's the battle of the incompetent politicos with fortunate surnames for the right to regulate the Texas oil and gas industry (aka the Railroad Commission).  Grady not-Ralph Yarbrough not-Yarborough won his runoff against Cody Garrett, and will face off with Wayne Christian (from now on, appearing in this space as Xtian), who defeated 7-time loser (don't get any Mucus on you if you click this link) on the GOP side, Gary Gates.  The news that broke in this race:

Gates won Harris, FT Bend, Bexar, Monty, Dallas, Williamson, Galveston, Denton, @ChristianForTX won w/ rural vote in 146 counties #txlege

— Luke Marchant (@_Luke) May 25, 2016

This is another Hobbsian choice, a Sid Miller/Junior Samples rerun of a statewide contest. Your best option will be the Green Party candidate, Martina Salinas (though she should update her Facebook page, maybe get a website).

-- Ed Gonzalez will be Harris County's next sheriff after besting Jerome Moore in the runoff.  Rebecca Elliott at the Chronic refries the beans for the fall tilt ...

Gonzalez's victory set the stage for a potential replay of 2008, when former Sheriff Adrian Garcia, a mentor to Gonzalez, unseated longtime Republican Sheriff Tommy Thomas amid a Democratic resurgence led by Barack Obama.

Garcia resigned last May to run for Houston mayor, prompting members of the county's Commissioners Court to tap Ron Hickman as his replacement.

Gonzalez, who has called on the sheriff's office to help reduce recidivism through correctional education, boost transparency and increase jail inspections, distanced his leadership style from Hickman's.

"I think we can do much better," Gonzalez said. "He's had about a year to kind of make his mark on the agency, and I think there's been some questionable decisions that have been made, so I'm looking forward to a very contested general election battle."

Hickman, who sailed through the March 1 GOP primary, has touted improvements to agency morale and cost-savings initiatives. However, he has come under fire in recent months for understaffing and overcrowding at the jail, as well as the death of four inmates who were assaulted or suffered head trauma while incarcerated.

Gonzalez, for his part, is likely to face renewed scrutiny for taking home six homicide case files when he left the Houston Police Department in 2009. Police charged a suspect in one of those murder cases within two weeks of receiving the file years later.

Hickman starts with a sizable financial advantage over Gonzalez, with $227,000 in the bank in February, compared to Gonzalez's $43,000 as of mid-May. 

I voted for Gonzalez because he was the only candidate in the race who opposed 287(g), a callously inhumane Obama immigration policy.  And I was appalled by former sheriff Garcia's active prosecution of it.

Latinos have every right to demand -- and expect -- progress from a Hillary administration regarding this, and if the long-awaited Latino surge in voter turnout finally shows up to vote against Drumpf, Clinton and Gonzalez and many other Democrats in Harris County and Texas and the United States -- and as referenced above, perhaps even a Green Latina -- will be the beneficiaries.

-- Winning their elections but still losers in life include Jarvis Johnson (as predicted), Ron Reynolds (as predicted) and Judge Elaine Palmer and JP Hilary (ex-wife of former City Controller Ron) Green.  You had better options, voters, but the real blame goes to the 97% or so who couldn't be afflicted to participate in this runoff.  When you allow cronies, flacks, and insiders to pick your representatives, you get governed by your inferiors.

... Reynolds attracted support from an array of elected officials including Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green and the Democratic party chair of Fort Bend (Don Bankston). Reynolds noted that none of his legislative peers were calling for his resignation.

(Challenger Angelique) Bartholomew's campaign sought to capitalize on the criminal allegations involving Reynolds, as did Annie's List, a statewide group supporting progressive and pro-choice women that endorsed Bartholomew. "The pattern of wrongdoing is stunning!" one news release from Annie's List stated.

In a press release, Reynolds described that characterization of him as "negative smears."

As I have reminded the most ignorant of Clinton supporters, facts are not attacks.

Other events that trailed Reynolds included a ruling from a Harris County judge in April that ordered the representative to pay $504,000 in damages for failing to give a mother her share of a settlement in lawsuit related to her daughter's death in a car crash.

That same day, in Austin, the State Board of Disciplinary Appeals held a hearing to consider whether Reynolds could continue to practice law in Texas. According to an order subsequently filed, Reynolds was suspended pending the outcome of his criminal conviction.

This man is not qualified to serve, but only further convictions may deter him from doing so.  The Democratic voters of Fort Bend County certainly won't exercise due diligence in this regard.

So things are looking good for African American Democrats locally, as they swept nearly every single race across the region.  Harris County Latinos, similarly, have lots of bright prospects for the fall.  Despite my snark, Team Blue has a strong lineup to take back the county in a little over five months, and I'll hoist a glass in their general direction this holiday weekend.

Now that we'll shortly have more Democrats in office, how about some better ones also?

Update: Goodbye, Mary Lou.  The only time you will have been mentioned here, and with your Lord's help, never to be seen or heard from again.

Runoff voting period opens; P Slate isn't enthused

Readers made inquiries over the past few days, and I responded pithily that I wasn't all that interested in local Democratic politics, politicians, and low participation runoffs any longer.  But I realized we have to pick a county sheriff candidate, a state railroad commission candidate/ sacrificial lamb, and  a couple of county judges, so I took out my mailings and consulted a few folks online, then I went and voted about noon yesterday at the Fiesta on Kirby.

About fifty had already done so ahead of me; two or three came and went while I was there, which was less than 5 minutes.  It took me longer to walk in from the parking lot and to sign in than it did to cast my ballot.  According to the spreadsheet I got from Stan Stanart last night after the polls closed, that was half of the 104 who also showed yesterday at the grocery store and made their voices heard.

The only one I had to ponder was sheriff.  I was originally in the bank for Ed Gonzalez, but Cody Pogue wrote something thoughtful that made me consider -- but ultimately reject -- Jerome Moore.  He's a fine candidate and would make an excellent sheriff if elected, and so will Gonzalez.

I voted for Cody Garrett for RR, quite obviously.  Fredericka Phillips is a nice lady but she's already a vice chair in the TDP, a DNC member and allegedly an uncommitted superdelegate, and that's just too much establishment cred for me so I voted for her opponent, Julie Countiss.

I flipped a coin for the other judgeship on my ballot and it came up Rabeea Collier.

JoAnn Storey and Cheryl Elliott Thornton are running against two of the lousiest people holding office in Harris County (whom I won't name again, it just gets old having to mention electeds that seem to lack basic morals or values), so vote for these women and not the incumbents.

I don't get to decide between Jarvis Johnson and Kim Willis in HD-139, but if I did, Willis would be far and away the best choice.

Charles runs down the data you need to cast your ballot (you'll get some of these races but not all of them, like I did) and Stace lists his preferences.

Texas results only slightly surprising

This is the kind of scrum I avoided last Thursday evening, and not just because Ted Cruz is at the epicenter.

We won't go long or big here, as Charles Kuffner has posted the best of this work and you have the AP helping the Chronicle with the numbers.

-- Cruz emerged as the only option to Trumpf for the GOP nomination.  His big win here and in Oklahoma leaves him as the last man standing against a perceived November apocalypse, and the Pachyderms are besides themselves with anguish about it.

In the words of Billy Joel: go on, cry in your coffee but don't come bitchin' to me.

-- Hillary Clinton won big in Texas and everywhere else she expected to, with Massachusetts qualifying as a minor upset for her.  Bernie Sanders won enough states -- Colorado, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and his front-door Vermont -- to justifying staying in the race a while longer.  There's a Democratic debate this Sunday evening in Flint, Michigan (and the GOPers face off tomorrow night; it's a homecoming for Dr. Ben Carson).  Michigan votes on Tuesday March 8, a week from yesterday.  If Sanders can win the Wolverine State, he has justification to fight on to Super Tuesday II on March 15.  Black voters hold his fate.

In review of some of the contested races around the state and county...

-- The Texas Railroad Commission candidates who qualified for their primary runoff elections on May 24th are good ol' Grady Yarbrough (D), Cody Garrett (D), Wayne Christian (R), and Gary Gates (R).  Lon Burnham, the most qualified and most progressive, finished third in a weak field.  Kuff thinks it's all about the money he didn't raise, but IMO Burnham shouldn't have aligned himself with Wendy Davis and Bill White.  Texas Democratic voters always go for the easiest -- and least qualified -- name in this race for some ignorant reason.

Your best option in November is Martina Salinas.

-- There will be a statehouse runoff in HD-139 (incumbent Sylvester Turner is now mayor of Houston) and perceived best candidate Randy Bates missed it.  He'll watch Kimberly Willis and former city council member Jarvis Johnson go at it at the end of May.  Convicted ambulance chaser Rep. Ron Reynolds was returned to Austin will have to face Angelique Bartholomew in May, with Steve Brown well behind, in the night's SMDH result.

Speaker Joe Straus survived his primary and his right-hand man (not right enough for Midland oilman Tim Dunn, Empower Texas, and the Anybody but Straus Caucus, but that's a digression) Byron Cook did likewise.  We can count these as wins for the good guys, folks.  In bad news for the speaker, Rep. Debbie "Public Education is the Pit of Hell" Riddle was upset in her primary.  Her successor is probably worse, however, especially since she called Riddle part of the 'liberal establishment'.

Gilberto Hinojosa's daughter won the Democratic primary to succeed the retiring Elliot Naishtat, the most liberal Texas House representative after Burnham was defeated a couple of years ago.  This is probably the worst thing that Austin Democrats could have done, choosing nepotism over good governance.  If Noah Horwitz supports them -- he's been a lackey for the Hinojosas for some time now -- you can bet she's a lousy Clinton-wing Democrat.  Nothing personifies the creeping conservative failings of the Texas Democratic Party more than this race.

San Antonio Dems also re-elected the most conservative option in their state Senate tilt.  See you down the round, TMF.

-- Ed Gonzalez will run off with Jerome Moore for Harris County sheriff.  Kim Ogg vanquished Morris Overstreet and Lloyd Oliver in the Harris County DA's contest without a runoff, and Ann Harris Bennett swamped Brandon Dudley for tax assessor/collector/voter registrar in a poor showing for challengers in those last two races.  The black turnout dynamic that propelled Hillary Clinton's big wins in Texas, throughout the South, and well down the ballot here was nowhere to be seen in the DA's race.  Ogg had a superior ground game while Overstreet apparently relied on George Soros' mailers.  Money ain't everything, y'all.

Likewise, Adrian Garcia's bad loss and Gonzalez's failing to clear a runoff signal lame turnout for Harris County Latin@s.  Only a Spanish surname paired with Clinton's -- be it Castro or Perez or some other -- saves downballot Texas Dems in November.

-- Harris County judicial races have a few runoffs.  Just a couple I'll mention today: craptastic Judge Elaine Palmer got pushed into a showdown with Joann Storey in the 215th District Court race.  And Democrat-turned-Republican Nile Copeland didn't come close in his bid for the 178th, finishing third with less than 19% of the vote.

Somebody picked the wrong year to start sniffing glue.

The P Slate for the Texas D primary on March 1st

I'll be voting tomorrow morning, at the earliest possible moment in the Democratic primary, which will eliminate me from all but press credentials in terms of participating in the Harris County Green Party's county, state, and presidential nominating conventions (to be held this summer right here in H-Town).  Here's a few people who have earned a vote on my ballot, and some who've earned a thumbs-up from me that aren't, and a few that don't.  YMMV, and if you don't like my options, pick your own from the League of Women Voters' Guide.

I'm predicting the following two winners in the Texas presidential primaries:

I don't mean to imply that they're the same person; they're just the two people most likely to emerge victorious. Or if you prefer...

Scary, I know.

For President of the United States: Bernie Sanders.

Plan A is in effect.  Plan B is on deck.

For US Congress, Seventh District: Nobody.  I've expended too many disgusted pixels blogging about John Culberson and James Cargas.  Cargas is, in fact, one of the most significant reasons why I'm a DINO.  This is an undervote in the primary and in the general.

Not on my ballot but having earned my support for his personal outreach is Adrian Garcia over Gene Green.  Green is just too embedded in the establishment, too wedded to the fossil fuel operators that line the Houston Ship Channel, and much, much too conservaDem for my taste.  I have written a lot of very mean things about Garcia during his tenure as county sheriff and in his mayoral bid, but he never complained to me about it, never stopped following me on Twitter or unfriended me on social media.  After last year's mayoral election he sent me a kind note unrelated to politics via LinkedIn private message, and and I wished him luck in his race for Congress.

Garcia may or may not be a better Democrat these days, but he endorsed Sylvester Turner for Houston mayor while my choice, Chris Bell, endorsed Bill King.  That's good enough for me. Sometimes that's all it takes to earn a vote, folks.

For Railroad Commissioner: Lon Burnham.  I'll probably vote again for Martina Salinas, the Green candidate, in November because Burnham -- one of the most staunch progressive Democrats in the Lege until his defeat a couple of years ago -- has reached out to people like Bill White and Wendy Davis to help him get nominated.  As such, I'm voting for one of Burnham's primary challengers.  Not Grady Yarbrough; Cody Garrett.  Burnham is a good enough choice, as evidenced by this Dallas News op-ed; but he lost my vote when he could have held on to it.

For Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 2: Lawrence "Larry" Meyers. The Republican-turned-Democrat on the Court of Criminal Appeals lost in his bid for state Supreme Court two years ago and is running for re-election this cycle.  Democrats really need to turn out the vote for him in November, as he is the state's highest-ranking Democrat (by virtue of his party switch).  If he falls short in a presidential election year, with a Clinton-Castro ticket at the top ...

For State Senator, District 13: Rodney Ellis.  With much regret, as he no longer wants this job, preferring the high-dollar gig on Harris Commissioners Court.  Ellis, a longtime elected official, doesn't respond to my constituent e-mail and doesn't follow me on Twitter.  In most other cases I would not endorse or vote for that level of representation, and I might have to withhold voting for him for commissioner if I cannot get his attention any other way.  But I'm going to give him one last vote and see what happens.  Hellllo, Senator ...

For Sate Representative, District 146: Borris L. Miles.  Pretty much the same personal experience with him lately as Ellis.  If you search the archives here you'll find dozens of glowing reviews of Miles dating back to his first challenge to Al Edwards.  I've been his guest on a bus back and forth to Austin for opening day and for lobby days at least twice.  But he's gotten a little crazy over the past few years,  and when he voted to strike down Denton's fracking ban in the last session -- and then didn't return several of my calls to his office for explanation -- I had to step off.

Now he wants Ellis' job.  He won't get my vote for that if I don't see some greater effort trying to earn it, particularly since it's rumored he will have formidable opposition.

For Chief Justice, First Court of Appeals: Jim Peacock.  Peacock fell short of getting elected to the Harris County bench in 2014, collecting 45% of the vote in his bid for the 157th District Court against Randy Wilson.  This cycle he's stepping up to be the general election foe against Republican Sherry Radack.  If Hillary Clinton's coattails are long enough, there's a chance.

For Justice, First Court of Appeals, Place 4: Barbara Gardner.  Long favored and previously endorsed in this space, Gardner is top-shelf.  Let's take this once-every-four-years opportunity to get some Democratic representation on the Court of Appeals.

For Justice, Fourteenth Court of Appeals, Place 2: Jim Sharp.  I still like Sharp even though he's been a loose cannon, to understate the case.  Harold Cook -- whose political opinions I have disagreed with perhaps more than any other Democrat in Texas -- does not.

Between the two, Cook is the bigger egotistical jerk.  Vote for Sharp.

I'm undervoting the Place 5 CCA where Betsy Johnson is the late filer.  She's not qualified.  She was recruited at the last minute by the TDP so that the Green, Judith Sanders-Castro, wouldn't be unopposed in November.  That's bullshit (here's what I wrote about that back in December).

Read more about the candidates for Courts of Appeal in both major party primaries on your respective ballot from Bob Mabry.

Harris County

For District Judge, 11th: This contested primary is very close to call.  I'm going with Jim Lewis, whom the Chron recommends.  Stace has nice things to say about Rabeea Collier.

For District Judge, 61st: Dion Ramos.  I like Ramos over his two female challengers because he's been a district judge previously.  I have also snarked on him in the past (scroll to the end, watch the video), and his opposition is worthy, but Ramos has made the personal touch that the others haven't.  (You may be noticing a trend in my endorsements.)

Vote also for Democratic incumbent Judges Larry Weiman, Kyle Carter, R.K. Sandhill, Michael Gomez, Jaclanel McFarland, Mike Engelhart, Robert K. Schaffer, Alexandra Smoots-Hogan, and for former Judge Josefina Rendon over Ursula Hall. (Hall isn't as bright as she claims.)

I also like these candidates in contested and uncontested judicial D primary races: the Honorables (past and present) Hazel B. Jones, Shawna Reagin, Randy Roll, Steven Kirkland, Herb Ritchie, and Maria Jackson.  Like the Chronicle, I prefer JoAnn Storey over incumbent Elaine Palmer.  Palmer was bad news before she got elected.  I'm also taking Kelli Johnson over Lori Gray, who like Palmer is financially supported by the odious George Fleming.

The Harris County District Attorney's contested race features Lloyd Oliver, Kim Ogg. and Morris Overstreet.  I'm voting for Overstreet because I just don't think Ogg can beat Devon Anderson.  Anderson is covering all the Democratic bases, from indicting the Planned Parenthood sting videographers to collecting an award from the NAACP, for which that organization has been criticized.  The only question is how many Republican votes the incumbent DA stands to lose.  She's uncontested for re-election in the Republican primary.

County Attorney Vince Ryan, Harris County's highest-ranking Democrat, is unopposed and will face whichever Republican emerges from that party's contested primary: Chris Carmona or Jim Leitner.  Carmona has a handful of failed city council bids on his resume' while Leitner has an English surname, which appears to be his strongest advantage.  Murray Newman doesn't like Leitner but Murray Newman's pain-in-the-ass blogging antagonist certainly does.  Big Jolly's GOP endorsements spreadsheet has Carmona in the lead 4-1, with Leitner's lone backer being Dr. Steven Hotze.

(I report, you decide which Republican is worst.)

I'm voting for Ed Gonzales, Harris County's next sheriff.  I have no recommendation to make in the Justice of the Peace Precinct 7, Place 1 contested primary.  I can only winnow the field down to Not Hillary Green the incumbent, and Not Keryl Douglas.

That leaves County Tax Assessor/Collector, and I'll be supporting Ann Harris Bennett over Brandon Dudley.  This one was very simple: Dudley, as Rodney Ellis' chief of staff, never made sure my inquiries and entreaties to the senator's office got answered.  Dudley may be all that and a bag of chips, but I just wouldn't know.  Bennett, on the other hand, has long been this blog's preferred candidate, and she barely missed in 2012.

Sometimes votes are won and lost as easy as that.

I was wrong about Trump.

So admits Matt Bai of Yahoo as well, but we'll get to his take in a moment.  Here's what I wrote way back on November 13, six weeks ago.

Despite what I have said repeatedly about polls, I'm anxious to see what they reveal about a week or two from (the time Trump asked 'how stupid were the people of Iowa').  This feels like a turning point for a couple of candidates.   The conservative Borg has been completely unpredictable to this point, but a settling-out of the real lunacy of Trump and Carson to the regular loons of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio is somewhat overdue.

Ben Carson has indeed faded, but Trump's position in the polling has strengthened in the days since.  Over the Thanksgiving holiday, in time spent with family and friends, I asked the considerable number of conservatives and Republicans among our brood what they thought about the Donald.  All but one cringed and shook their head.  The one supporter -- who received his most recent book as a Christmas present and was delighted -- posed for a photograph at our Turkey Day meal at a Beaumont hotel ballroom, and just before the snapshot, I yelled, "Smile and say BERNIE SANDERS!"  A few minutes later she leaned over and told me quietly, "I get his e-mail; I like him".  I replied, "there's hope for you yet!"

So from an anecdotal perspective, I truly don't know what to make of the Trump phenomenon.  Matt Bai agrees with my status today, however ...

For many months now, like the anxious producers of some hot reality show, the American media has been waiting for Donald Trump to get up onstage and say the one thing that will lead to his swift and inevitable unraveling. (Waiting is not quite the same as hoping, but I’ll get to that in a minute.)

Sometimes it seems that Trump himself is trying frantically to find that edge of acceptable rhetoric and hurl himself over it, maybe because this business of running for president is a lot more tedious and exhausting than, say, crowning Miss Universe.

This week, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Trump told an audience in Michigan that Hillary Clinton had been “schlonged” in 2008 (a variation on the Yiddish word for penis that he seems to have invented on the spot, but that is now assured to outlive the Yiddish language itself), and he made fun of Clinton’s bizarre habit — “too disgusting to talk about” — of having to occasionally relieve herself in a bathroom.

He also clarified his difference with Vladimir Putin when it comes to these “lying, disgusting” reporters who cover him. “I hate some of these people, but I would never kill them,” Trump volunteered. “I would never kill them. But I do hate them.”

Well, that does it. If granting journalists a right to live doesn’t puncture Trump’s standing among conservative voters these days, then trust me, pretty much nothing will.

(By the way, note that Trump didn’t actually go so far as to condemn such violence, or even discourage it. He just declined to kill anyone himself. The man is busy.)

It’s time for me to admit I was wrong about Trump’s staying power. And it’s time for the rest of my industry to take a long look in the mirror and consider what we’ve wrought.

And so goes a fairly lengthy condemnation of the media coverage of Trump, which a week ago stood at approximately a 23-1 ratio to its coverage of Bernie Sanders.  I don't wish to enumerate once more all of the faults with corporate media news and politics coverage, especially since Bai does such a good job of it himself in the next excerpts.  He is most assuredly on point with the self-examination.

Because it’s clear now that Trump’s enduring popularity — his relentless assault on the weathered pillars of our public civility — is in no small part a reflection of an acid disdain for us.

Trump has always understood this. Look at the graphic terms in which he once attacked Fox’s Megyn Kelly. Or the way he viciously mocked Serge Kovaleski, a New York Times reporter who excels despite a physical disability. Or how he publicly berated Katy Tur, an NBC reporter, for sport.

Playing off the media isn’t novel, of course. When George H.W. Bush ran for reelection back in 1992, somebody — maybe it was his campaign, since in those days there weren’t any super-PACS — made a bumper sticker that read “Annoy the media. Re-elect Bush.”

For many years after Bush lost, you could still see those bumper stickers on any highway in America. It had little to do with the candidate.

They lasted on bumpers of pickup trucks in Midland, Texas (where I was) well into the mid-90's, as Bill Clinton's election began the Republican descent into fury and rage.  Nineteen-ninety four also marked the last year a Democrat was elected to a statewide office in Texas.

But that was a statement on liberalism and elitism, a kind of cultural homogeneity inside the nation’s largest media institutions. It was almost respectful. Bush would never have used the word “hate,” and neither would the people with the bumper stickers.

This is something more visceral, an emotion that’s been building in all segments of the electorate, to some extent, for decades.

This is a simmering reaction to smugness and shallowness in the media, a parade of glib punditry unmoored to any sense of history or personal experience. It’s about our love of gaffes and scandals, real or imagined, and our rigid enforcement of the politically correct.

It’s about the reflexive partisan fury we’ve been inciting in this country ever since the earliest days of cable TV, and more recently on the blogs and op-ed pages of newspapers that once set the standard for thoughtful deliberation but now need the clicks to survive.

This is dead on, and a little nauseating personally. 

And yet somehow, when the perfect and professional reality-show star comes along, utterly lost on policy but brilliant at harnessing resentment in long, incredibly watchable tirades, observers like me think his success must be short-lived. Why?

(And before you tell me Trump is more qualified to be president than a first-term senator from Illinois was, consider his final answer, after much evasion, when asked about the country’s “nuclear triad” in the last debate: “I just think nuclear — the power and the devastation are very important to me.”)

Trump is entirely different from a Barry Goldwater or a Pat Buchanan. He isn’t a conservative populist penned in by the outer boundaries of what’s politically constructive, bred ultimately to admire the same institutions he assails. I don’t think Trump has any fierce political conviction that couldn’t be abandoned overnight, just as fiercely.

Trump is an emotional extremist. He’s a pure performer, trained to manipulate the audience and mindful of no consequence beyond the ratings it produces.

Just don't believe the Facebook meme.

(I)t’s clear there’s a powerful symbiosis between Trump and the media. We need him for the narrative power, for the clicks and debate ratings and sheer fascination factor. He needs us for the free publicity and the easy, evocative foil.

Trump’s most useful opponent, the one who causes his most fervent following to stick, isn’t Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or even Hillary Clinton. It’s us.

So when I say there’s a difference between waiting and hoping, this is what I mean. This is the essential paradox that the American media has created for itself, and you can feel it becoming less and less tenable right now.

On one hand, we’re bewildered by the reality that a man can so debase our politics and continue to rise in polls, as if all the rules we’ve inherited and enforced are no longer remotely relevant. But at the same time, we need our standout contestant to hang around for sweeps week. He’s the star of the show.

We want to see Trump get “schlonged” for the same reasons we can’t bear to lose him, and he understands that dynamic better than anyone alive.

Do I think Trump is going to be the Republican nominee? No, I don’t. At the end of the day, I still tend to think he won’t win a single state. But I’ve been wrong about him so far, and I’ve very little confidence that I won’t keep being wrong for a while.

I think Bai is wrong: Trump shows no sign of losing momentum that I can discern.  The Washington Post's Jenna Johnson, via Prairie Weather, thinks the same as Bai, mostly because Trump's support includes a number of people without a clue as to how retail politics actually works.  If those two get it right, I'll refer back to this post in some future one with a plate of crow in front of me.

What I get from the WaPo article is that they're mad, but they're still not mad enough to get even.

(Randy and Bonnie Reynolds,) the West Des Moines couple who have two grown children, had never been to a political event before. Bonnie works in a mailroom; Randy is a press operator. They don’t live paycheck to paycheck, but it would take just one small catastrophe to push them there.

“In the end, everything that he’s saying might not happen if he is elected — but I’m willing to give it a shot,” said Randy Reynolds, 49, who used to vote for Democrats but switched to Republicans a decade ago. “I will give him 100 percent. . . . It would be amazing if the majority of things that he said would actually happen. That would be amazing.”

So, obviously, the couple plan to caucus for Trump on Feb. 1?

“We’re going to see,” Reynolds said. “With kids and grandkids and all this, it’s kind of hectic. . . . We’ll look into it. If our time is available, then yeah, maybe we’ll do it. Maybe. We’ll have to see.”

And ...

Linda Stuver, 61, said Trump is her top pick, although she also likes Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. During the last election cycle, she went to a rally for Mitt Romney, her first political event. The Trump rally was her second.

“This is only my second time I’ve ever been to one of these — that’s how annoyed I am with what’s happening to our country,” said Stuver, who lives in Des Moines and says she raised four children by cleaning houses and working other low-level jobs. “I can’t even have Obama be on TV anymore — I have to shut it off, that’s how irritated I am. Us old folks have seen a lot, and what’s happening in our country is not right.”

Is she annoyed and irritated enough to caucus?

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I never have.”

Caucuses have always rewarded the most committed activists, which is why Hillary Clinton and the Texas Democratic Party lackeys minimized the influence of precinct conventions in the Lone Star State after Obama won them, and a very slim majority of Texas delegates, in 2008.  Can't blame that one on Debbie Wasserman Schultz (her fingerprints aren't all over it, that is).

It could be that Trump's support is a mile wide and an inch deep, and if so, and Ted Cruz pulls the upset in Iowa because his crew outworked the Trumpers, then the establishment's last gasp might wind up being Marco Rubio or Chris Christie or even John Kasich in New Hampshire.

After that is South Carolina, and Cruz -- or Trump -- might be on too hard a roll to slow.

Refer back to here and consider how convoluted the circumstances might get if Trump or Cruz is the nominee, and the establishment withholds support and tries to broker a compromise candidate next summer.  And then Laugh Out Loud.

Update: Here's an interesting take from Eclectablog, who sees Cruz winning the nomination even as Trump maintains his lead in the polls.

DNC kills Texas Two-Step to protect Clinton from being Obama'ed by Sanders

That's my premise, anyway.

Seven years after Barack Obama earned the majority of Texas' delegates despite losing the primary to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic National Committee has put an end to the state's hybrid presidential nominating process, saying it "had the potential to confuse voters."

Under the two-step process, two-thirds of a candidate's convention delegates are awarded on the basis of the primary election results. The remaining third are chosen at caucuses, which are held after the polls closed on primary night.

Now, at the direction of the national party, delegates will be based solely on the primary results, a shift some party members lamented Tuesday.

"It's not the way we would prefer to do it," said Harris County Democratic Party Chair Lane Lewis. "I still think that there is plenty of opportunity for individuals who want to participate in the delegate process to be able to participate."

The Frontloading blog agrees with me.

As a side note, it hard to resist viewing the denied waiver request as a signal of if not the Clinton campaign's pull on the Rules and Bylaws Committee, then the reality that there are folks on the committee (Harold Ickes comes to mind) that are or have in the past been aligned with the Clintons. That comment is not meant as some form of conspiracy theory. That is how the Democratic process has worked: Surrogates of the various campaigns get involved in the rules process. Given that Clinton folks were not fans of the two-step (and for arguably legitimate reasons) after 2008, it is not a real shock that it would meet its end now.

But why now and not four years ago? Parties holding the White House tend not to tinker as much with their delegate selection rules. And by extension, those in the White House at the head of their parties often prefer to maintain the same combination of rules that got them to the White House in the first place. The denied Texas request is as much about the DNC transitioning to life after Obama as it is about Clinton (and company) not liking the two-step because of 2008.

Back in Part One of my thesis on Bernie Sanders' even-more-difficult-than-you-may-think path to the Democratic nomination (Part Two is still under construction), I mentioned that Democratic muckety-mucks would start jamming Sanders if he began to get traction.  Well, he's been getting some serious traction, and sure enough, they're changing the rules to protect HRC and thwart him.

If you think this is not the case, I'd like to read your argument against it in the comments.

Update: Still don't think the insiders are working against him?

Richard Trumka has a message for state and local AFL-CIO leaders tempted to endorse Bernie Sanders: Don’t.

In a memo this week to state, central and area divisions of the labor federation, and obtained by POLITICO, the AFL-CIO chief reminded the groups that its bylaws don’t permit them to “endorse a presidential candidate” or “introduce, consider, debate, or pass resolutions or statements that indicate a preference for one candidate over another.” Even “‘personal’ statements” of candidate preference are verboten, Trumka said.

The memo comes amid signs of a growing split between national union leaders — mindful of the fact that Clinton remains the undisputed favorite for the nomination — and local officials and rank and file, who are increasingly drawn to the Democratic Party’s growing progressive wing, for whom Sanders is the latest standard-bearer.

[...]

His message wasn’t anything new for the federation’s state leaders: They know that endorsement decisions belong to the national leadership. Still, it was unusual for Trumka to call them out in a memo. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one before like this,” said Jeff Johnson, the president of the AFL-CIO’s Washington state labor council.

Johnson agreed that it was important for the AFL-CIO to speak with a single voice. But “there’s a lot of anxiety out there in the labor movement,” he said, “and we’re desperately searching for a candidate that actually speaks to working-class values. The Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders camp is very, very attractive to many of our members and to many of us as leaders, because they’re talking about the things that need to happen in this country.”

Similarly, Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Steven Tolman said he agreed that Trumka had to lay down the law. More tellingly, though, he added: “Bernie Sanders has spent his life actually fighting for working people. He’s made no secret of it, and he’s used it as his mantra. And that I respect very much.” When asked about Clinton’s candidacy, Tolman was less effusive: “Who? Who? Please. I mean with all respect, huh?”

New sheriff in town

No, his name isn't Reggie Hammond (or even Allen Fletcher).

Pledging changes in the culture of the jail and greater transparency in the department, Precinct 4 Constable Ron Hickman was chosen Tuesday by Commissioners Court to take over as Harris County Sheriff.

Hickman, a 44-year veteran in law enforcement, replaces Adrian Garcia, who announced his resignation as Sheriff last week to run for mayor of Houston.

"The inmates, they're there to be detained while courts decide their ultimate fate," Hickman said after his swearing in. "I think we can do a little better job on how we treat people. We're going to be looking very strongly at what the culture is like."

He's moving fast on a few things.

Hickman also said that he will immediately launch an audit of the Sheriff's operations to see where changes need to be made.

One immediate change: A $1,000-per-day jail consulting firm hired by Garcia in a no-bid contract criticized as too pricey and for showcasing few results will likely be shown the door.

"I think there's so much controversy associated with that," Hickman said. "It's doubtful I'd want to pick up and continue that level of controversy."

The firm, Griffith Moseley Johnson & Associates, headed by former Jefferson County Sheriff and County Judge Carl Griffith, did not respond for comment Tuesday.

But some are already objecting to Hickman's appointment, and it's not the Republican-replacing-an-elected-Democrat part.

The family of Deputy Constable Frank Claborn, who was killed by a drunk driver while working an extra job in February 2004, said the commissioners should have picked someone else.

"Constable Hickman, on county letterhead, wrote a letter to the parole board asking he [the drunk driver] be released but said he'd keep an eye out on him because he's a good family friend. Served 17 months for killing my father. That's ridiculous in my opinion," Claborn's son Tim said.

Hickman responded saying he worked hard to have Claborn declared "killed in the line of duty” so his family would receive benefits.

"A lot of their stuff is distorted," Hickman said. "They're emotionally charged and I understand that. I don't take anything away from the fact they lost a loved one."

Hours after Hickman was announced as the interim sheriff, KPRC 2 News confirmed that he has already made changes, firing two high-ranking members of the sheriff's office.

Hickman tells KPRC 2 that he plans to run for sheriff in the March 2016 election.

Harris County Commissioners Court will next have to fill the now-vacant constable’s position in Precinct 4.

The vote was unanimous, and the lone Democrat went a little farther to stamp his approval..

Commissioner El Franco Lee said he considers Hickman "a proven commodity" who will respond and work well with Commissioners Court.

So we'll see how the FNG does, but he's already drawn Fletcher as a challenger in a 2016 GOP primary next spring.  And perhaps there's a Democrat waiting out there to give it a shot.

Update: Kuffner hears that maybe outgoing CM Ed Gonzalez will be enticed to run.