Showing posts sorted by relevance for query texas voter fraud cases. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query texas voter fraud cases. Sort by date Show all posts

Monday, October 29, 2018

Still Early Voting Wrangle

In breaking developments late last evening in the Texas House Speaker's contest, Rep. John Zerwas of Richmond -- probably the most moderate Republican in the unofficial race for the post -- announced his withdrawal.  Forty House Republicans declared their support for Angleton Republican Dennis Bonnen, who had previously told the Texas Tribune he wasn't running for the job.  There will be more news in the days ahead as Democrats are huddling today to determine their course.

And with that as an opener, the Texas Progressive Alliance wants you to be sure to encourage your like-minded friends to get to the polls this week since we know you've already voted yourself.


Ahead of the midterms, NPR notices that our indicted felon/state attorney general Ken Paxton gets busy chasing ghosts ramping up efforts to "combat voter fraud" (sic).

Voting experts say actual instances of fraudulent ballots knowingly cast are extremely rare, leading to accusations that the effort is intended to intimidate voters.

"I think it's all politically motivated," said Greg Westfall, a Texas lawyer currently representing a Hispanic woman who was charged this month with voter fraud. "If you look at the timing, that's what's breathtaking."

[...]

"The fact that there is this concerted effort in Texas to prosecute these cases to the full extent – particularly against people of color – is supremely troublesome," (Beth Stevens of the Texas Civil Rights Project) said. "And then we know what happens in Texas goes to the rest of the country as a model."

Zenén Jaimes Pérez, the communications director for the TxCRP, said the attorney general's own numbers show that his office was tackling an issue that wasn't a growing problem, as shown by the small number of cases in the many years before the crackdown.

"They have prosecuted an average of around 30 election violations since 2004," Pérez said in an email. "To be sure, the AG started the Election Integrity Initiative in without evidence of increasing elections violations," Pérez said.

Beto O'Rourke's plan to maximize the African American vote in H-Town hit high gear over the weekend, with Say Something appearances by musical artists at EV locations around town, the Souls to the Polls rallies, and other efforts accounted by Justin Miller at the Texas Observer.


Even as another 'Beto as Superman' mural was unveiled in Houston ...


... the first, in East Austin and mentioned in this 'scattershot' post from Brains and Eggs, was defaced by MAGA vandals shortly after it debuted.

Rogers’s mural has been defaced phrases like "El Paso gentrifier supports Israel" and "No hero” spray-painted onto the artwork in red and white.

Socratic Gadfly does some number-crunching on the early voting surge and offers a quick hot take on what it might mean for the Cruz-O'Rourke Senate race.

Progrexas carries the piece from the TexTrib about how the statewide judicial candidates will win or lose solely on the basis of their party affiliation.


If anyone is poised to spoil (yet another GOP) sweep, it’s R.K. Sandill, a long-serving Democratic district judge in Harris County who’s consistently outraised his opponent, Justice John Devine. In addition to an impressive cash-on-hand tally, an endorsement from the Houston Chronicle and victories in the Houston Bar Association and Texas Bar Association polls, Sandill faces perhaps the most controversial incumbent on the high court. Before being elected to the high court in 2012, Devine was sued for displaying the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. Devine has also boasted publicly that he was arrested 37 times protesting outside abortion clinics.

See also this post at Brains and Eggs for the 'vulnerable, least discussed' Republican -- Presiding Judge Sharon "Killer" Keller of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals -- if the blue wave crests high enough on November 6.

Rewire writes about how a federal court in Texas -- Judge Reed O'Connor's in the Northern District -- will shape the legal fight under way over transgender rights.

Brandon Formby at the Texas Tribune describes the collision of rural and urban values as the high speed rail line between Houston and Dallas continues to move ahead.

Think Progress has details on far-right activists and militia groups headed to the southern border to stop the caravan of Honduran migrants (that are still a thousand miles away).

Earlier (last) week, the U.S. Border Patrol warned landowners in Texas that they could expect “possible armed civilians” on their property because of the news about the caravan. The exact details of when and where the militia would deploy are unclear, but one militia leader told the Associated Press that they would have upwards of 100 members guarding the Mexico-Texas border.

David Collins added some thoughts to Nick Cooper's (he's the drummer for local band Free Radicals) about the border wall.

Stace at Dos Centavos reflected on his weekend of politics y cultura.

The TSTA Blog resorts to begging teachers to support public education at the ballot box.

Texas Standard updates the story of the city of Houston's legal tussle with Southwest Key, the operators of a proposed child detention facility on the northeast side, in reporting that the city has rejected a settlement offer from the company.

A political sign opposing Prop 2 -- the Houston firefighters' pay parity proposal -- was tastelessly posted at the vacant site where five died and thirteen were injured fighting a terrible motel fire just a few years ago.  Fox26's Greg Groogan captured the reactions of HFD union head Marty Lancton and Mayor Sylvester Turner.

"I don't know how you walk up here and see five flags flying, the thin red line and the 13 that were injured and not understand that this is not the place to show your disdain and your vindictiveness toward Houston Firefighters," said Lancton.

[...]

At City Hall, Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is bankrolling the PAC and leading the fight against pay parity, stopped short of an apology.

"I don't know who put it there. I'm just saying whoever put it there, it's important to be respectful and not just of places, but family members as well," said Turner.

Stephen Willeford, the Sutherland Springs "good guy with a gun", is profiled by Michael J. Mooney in Texas Monthly.

Dallas City Hall has stonewalled a pair of open records requests by Downwinders at Risk regarding a mysterious clean air fund and a Joppa polluter.

Jim Schutze at the Dallas Observer thinks it's great that a rec center was renamed for Santos Rodriguez, the boy who was killed by a Dallas policeman in 1973 (updated by the Militant in this Wrangle from August).

Sanford Nowlin at the San Antonio Current reminds us that some Christians do support progressive liberal ideas and politics.

CultureMap Houston describes how 'Old Spanish Trail', aka old Highway 90 connecting El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston and built over hundred years ago missed its intended history ... but created a new one that's now old enough for us to celebrate all its own, particularly in the Alamo City.

Grits came to Houston and took in a Contemporary Arts Museum collaboration by artists about the justice system (highly recommended).

Both CNBC and The Verge covered the news about the Sam's Club in Dallas which will be a cashier-less operation, similar to the five (so far) Amazon Go stores in Seattle and Chicago.

And Harry Hamid went out for a bottle of wine at midnight, took in the 'Trose scene, and got ready to tell another story.

Thursday, December 16, 2021

As the Filing Dust Settles Wrangle


Really am enjoying everything Nick Anderson and his gang are doing.

Beto's wave is building.


Candidly I've seen this before.  First in 2006 when David Van Os went to every single county courthouse in the state in his bid against Abbott for attorney general.  And nobody in my estimation had more momentum to defeat Governor Fish Lips than Wendy Davis in 2014, when she delivered a filibuster that shook the Capitol.  Literally, some will recall.

A lot of things have changed in the Lone Star State since then, not the least of which is that it's gotten redder and more extreme.  And now, of course, there's fresh gerrymandering and voter suppression to contend with.  So you'll have to forgive me if I don't deem this early enthusiasm all that contagious.


The marquee race remains, IMO, the state's attorney general contest, in both the GOP and Democratic primaries.  Just yesterday K-Pax was rebuked by the appeals court for overstepping his authority in prosecuting alleged voter fraud charges.

An election code provision granting the Office of Attorney General the ability to prosecute criminal election fraud cases is unconstitutional, the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in an 8-1 decision. The case arises from an alleged campaign finance violation by the Jefferson County sheriff, a case the county district attorney declined to prosecute.

Section 273.021 (of the Texas) Election Code provides that the “attorney general may prosecute a criminal offense prescribed by the election laws of this state.” The Court ruled that power properly resides with county and district attorneys, who are part of the judicial branch, and not the attorney general, which is part of the executive branch.

“Absent the consent and deputization order of a local prosecutor or the request of a district or county attorney for assistance, the Attorney General has no authority to independently prosecute criminal cases in trial courts,” wrote Judge Jesse McClure for the majority (PDF). “Any attempt to overlap the Attorney General’s constitutional duties with county and district attorneys’ constitutional duties in the sense of a Venn diagram of sorts is unconstitutional.”

The CCA is all Republicans.  And none of them are moderates.  They're death penalty freaks like Sharon Keller.  (Sidebar: Regarding the death penalty, there's good news on that front.)  So let's hope the TXGOP primary voter can scrounge around and find enough logic to follow their lead and rebuke Paxton themselves in March.


Without straight-ticket voting it might be easier than in the past to dislodge some of these squatters from office in November, but that's too far away to be concerned with just yet.  Focus on spring turnout, Ds.  Media will make hay if your numbers are lower than the Pachys'.

Stace reviews his favorites for the statewide Donkey races and also Harris County, linking to the Erik Manning spreadsheet.  The San Antonio Report profiles the race for Bexar County judge, sure to be as spirited as the one in Harris.

I have some catch-all items.


A couple of environmental headlines:


An expansive collation of border and immigration developments.


And the criminal and social justice news.


Two items regarding critical race theory.


And today's soothers.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Texas Republican overreach slapped down hard by feds

The maps drawn for the 2012 elections by the three-judge panel are a huge win, and in some cases are eye-popping.

Democrats could gain a half-dozen seats in the Texas House under an interim redistricting map a federal court released Thursday. [...]

The biggest changes in the proposed Texas House map, which was endorsed by two of the three judges meeting in San Antonio, appear to be focused in the Houston area and could cost the Republicans as many as three seats. Rep. Beverly Woolley's district was largely combined into Rep. Jim Murphy's, Rep. Ken Legler's reconfigured district is heavily Hispanic and Rep. Sarah Davis' new district was won in 2008 by President Barack Obama.

The two judges would also give Democratic state Reps. Hubert Vo and Scott Hochberg districts to run in, undoing the Legislature's combination of their districts. The U.S. Department of Justice said in a legal filing that combining the two districts violated the Voting Rights Act because it would reduce opportunities for minority representation.

Several Republicans got paired. Harvey K:

Under the House map proposed by the San Antonio judges, 12 districts will pair incumbents -- all Republican on Republican contests with the exception of two districts pairing an R with a D. No Democrats are paired in the interim map. It should also be noted that several incumbents on this list have either announced they are not running for re-election or running for a different office.

HD 2: Cain (R), Flynn (R)

HD 21: Hamilton (R), White (R)

HD 32: Hunter (R), Morrison (R)

HD 33: Scott (R), Torres (R)

HD 69: Hardcastle (R), Lyne (R)

HD 80: Aliseda (R), King, T. (D)

HD 85: Chisum (R), Landtroop (R)

HD 91: Hancock (R), Nash (R)

HD 109: Anderson, R. (R), Giddings (D)

HD 113: Burkett (R), Driver (R)

HD 114: Hartnett (R), Sheets (R)

HD 133: Murphy (R), Woolley (R)

Meanwile, here are the open House districts under the proposed interim House map:

HD 3, HD 14, HD 30, HD 35, HD 43, HD 57, HD 68, HD 88, HD 93, HD 101, HD 106, HD 107 and HD 136

Warrne Chisum is running for Railroad Commissioner, Will Hartnett and Beverly Woolley are retiring, and Joe Driver caught a felony indictment, so this isn't as bad as it looks at first blush for the Repugs.

More from Greg:

Some particulars of interest: Woolley’s old district (she’s retiring) is essentially folded into Jim Murphy’s. Scott (Hochberg) and Hubert (Vo) each have their own district. (Ken) Legler is toast. (Dwayne) Bohac would go another decade with a bullseye on his back. And HD134 (Sarah Davis) got bluer on the Obama numbers, so it looks like that one could come back to the D column. HD136 is outsourced to Waller County, so it’s a 24-district map for the county.

Even more impressive is a just-below 50-50 district in Fort Bend County that’s over 30% Asian. Beyond that, I’ve seen at least a couple of WD40 districts that might be regained. No time to get into Dallas, but I’m hearing three seats from there could come back.

And Wendy Davis gets her Senate district back.

All three judges agreed on what changes to make the Texas Senate map, essentially restoring the district represented by Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, to the configuration it had when she ran for election in 2008.

The redistricting plan transformed Davis' district, which was seen as heavily competitive, into a Republican-dominated district.

Frankly, I'm slack-jawed over these changes. If the Texas House had included Democrats in the cartographic process during the last session, the D's could not have done themselves this much good.

And Photo ID skids out of the turn and slams into the wall, bursting into flames:

The Texas voter ID law, one of Gov. Rick Perry's top priorities during the 2011 Legislature, has been stalled by the U.S. Justice Department, which is insisting on demographic information about voters that state election officials say is virtually impossible to provide.

Texas Republicans expressed dismay Thursday after Justice Department officials said they need voter information about race and ethnicity before they can approve the controversial law, which is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2012.

The ruling raises the possibility that the law will not be in place by the March 6 primary.

Information that Texas election officials have provided "is incomplete and does not enable us to determine that the proposed changes have neither the purpose nor will have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color or membership in a language group (required under the Voting Rights Act)," T. Christian Herren Jr., chief of the Justice Department's Voting Section, said in a Wednesday letter to Texas elections director Ann McGeehan.

Cue the whining.

The requested information will be virtually impossible to gather, said state Rep. Patricia Harless, R-Spring, House sponsor of the voter ID bill, SB 14.

"I am disappointed," she said. "I don't know that the Secretary of State can provide the information in the format that they want. I am not sure that we will be able to satisfy them. I think it's ridiculous."

World's tiniest violin playing beside the River of Tears and all that.

"I am pleased that DOJ is asking the probative questions, which indicates they suspect the real issue is voter suppression," (state Sen. Rodney) Ellis said.

That's MY Senator. More in brief from TPM. Charles' rejoinder is best:

It’s amusing that the DOJ slapped down the SOS again the same week that Republican State Rep. Patricia Harless, who had said that the DOJ’s initial request for more data was “reasonable” and that the SOS should be able to respond quickly, published a lame pro-voter ID op-ed that essentially boiled down to “it won’t suppress as many votes as the critics say” and “it polls well”. I mean, Free Ice Cream Day would probably poll well, too, but that doesn’t mean it would be good public policy. Notably, Harless snuck in a bit about how voter ID would protect us from “fraud”, but nowhere in her piece did she document any actual examples of fraud that voter ID would protect us from. We all know the reason for that, of course, but then Harless can’t exactly come out and admit that the actual purpose of voter ID is to make it harder for some people to vote, as that might sound scary. But a discriminatory law by any other name would still discriminate.

Good Friday, everybody.

Friday, December 04, 2020

Week-ending Lone Star Left Round-up

As I complete my own blog post on this topic, here's the aggregation of what I mentioned on Monday that was discussed yesterday online.


Will Texas Latin@s eventually turn the state from Republican red to Democratic blue? The answer to that question is complicated, says Cecilia Ballí, a writer-at-large at Texas Monthly, covering the borderlands of Texas, security and immigration.

Over the past year, Ballí, along with two colleagues -- anthropologist Michael Powell and sociologist Betsabeth Monica Lugo -- had one-on-one conversations with 100 Latin@s in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley. Their research, commissioned and funded by the Texas Organizing Project Education Fund, sought to better understand Latin@ voters and nonvoters in Texas.

Ballí -- who wrote about the study for Texas Monthly -- talked to The Texas Tribune on Instagram Live about their key findings. The conversation’s highlights are here. You can watch the full conversation here.

Heartfelt eulogies poured in for Latina activist Maria Jimenez from Judge Lina Hidalgo, Stace at Dos Centavos, and Angela Valenzeula at EEP & P in TX blog.


Voting and election related-developments since Monday include the following:


COVID updates are next.


Here's a couple of COVID-related "Texas Leaders Behaving Badly" items.


It sure seems as if Austin could do a lot more progressive than the guy who rushed to be first in the line to endorse Pete Buttigeig for president.

I have criminal and social justice posts, environmental news, and a non-socialist-leaning business news update next.


El Paso Matters reports that the incoming district attorney has fired several lawyers and staff as she prepares to take office in January, including the prosecutors on the Walmart shooting case.  Leif Reichstad at Texas Monthly explains how Austin was able to reduce spending on its police department by a third.  The family of Atatiana Jefferson, the Fort Worth woman shot and killed by a police officer in her mother's home while she baby-sat her 8-year-old nephew -- has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the ex-cop.  And the state's First Court of Appeals has reversed a legal victory for the city of Houston, ordering it to continue litigating the case of an HPD officer who rear-ended another vehicle while looking for a cellphone charger.  A few more social justice pieces ...


And on to climate justice.


KVUE has a story about Central Texas residents threatening to sue neighboring cities as a last-ditch effort to keep treated wastewater out of their Hill Country waterways.

The San Gabriel River winds its way from Burnet into Williamson and Milam counties, 50 miles through some of the most scenic parts of Central Texas -- and now hotspots for growth. But with the development are cries for help to keep this once-pristine waterway, and others like it, from being polluted. [...] (Upstream),the Liberty Hill wastewater treatment plant has permission from the state to dump 1.2 million gallons of treated wastewater discharge into the San Gabriel River every day.

Yet according to EPA records, it has exceeded permitted discharge limits 98 times since 2015, 15 times this year.

And despite more than 50 permit violations cited by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state now allows Liberty Hill to expand operations to dump 4 million gallons per day.

Much more at the link.

What the savviest of conservative populist politicians see here is an opportunity.  The same wedge issue is forming between supporters of high speed rail (cities, big business) and opponents (country folk concerned about their property rights).  Greg Abbott is the most opportunistic of politicians in the state; he sees it, understands it, and is unlikely to let someone like Dan Patrick get to the right of him on it.  The Texas Central Railway, thus, may go the way of the Trans-Texas Corridor.

That leads me to my business wrangle.


The old Sears building in Midtown Houston is undergoing a transformation, and slated to be a tech/innovation hub called The ION upon completion.



Meanwhile, JC Penney quietly left their Plano headquarters behind after exiting bankruptcy.  Their future remains uncertain.

Wrapping a long Round-up with some lighter items.

Monday, April 13, 2020

The Weekly 'Flatten the Curve' Wrangle *updates

The Texas Progressive Alliance remains committed to flattening the curve as it brings you the best of the left of, about, and from around the Great State over the past week.


Gerald Parker, who served in the Bush administration and is now at Texas A&M, says that we are just at stage two of this five-stage pandemic.


Phase Three would be (a second stage of) containment before we have a vaccine to deploy. I’m optimistic that in three to six months we’ll have (a better treatment for coronavirus symptoms), a therapeutic in our toolkit that can rescue those who become severely ill.

But it's going to be at least 18 months, I believe, before there's a vaccine available to deploy in any meaningful way.

While we wait for a vaccine, we’ll enter a second stage of containment. During this time, we need to restart our economy -- and we need to do it safely.

What's essential to go the next phase is greatly expanded lab testing -- both the antigen and the antibody lab testing -- so we can have a much better view of what's happening in our community. Despite the rapid advancement that's occurred in lab testing over the last month, we're still catching up. And without the lab testing, we're still almost blind to what's really happening in our community.

I think everybody is now familiar with the epidemiology curve -- the curve from “flattening the curve” -- and its peak. Once we’re on the other side of the peak, once we're seeing a decreasing number of cases, we'll be back in a position where we can attempt to contain the virus in our communities with surgically applied social distancing measures -- not community-wide social distancing measures.

We’re going to have to target new infections more aggressively. We’re going to have to isolate those and do contact tracing. It takes a lot of resources to do that.

Our public health authorities don't have the manpower to do this. We need a lot more public-health soldiers.




It's not just the statistics that are lacking ...


Some of our so-called leaders are short on empathy.


Perhaps we should send him a copy of the newspaper.


COVID-19 is not an equal opportunity infection.




And the discrimination goes far beyond the numbers.


In a second Wrangle coming tomorrow, we'll have the latest on the legal developments regarding Ken Paxton's outlawing of women's reproductive freedoms.

Ross Ramsey of the TexTrib via Progrexas asks the right question: is in-person voting during a contagion really the best we can do?

It’s plainly ignorant to tell people to stay away from one another and then to require them to gather in their precincts to cast votes.

Jim Malewitz, a former Texas Tribune reporter who now works for Wisconsin Watch, was on hand this month when that state required many of its voters to line up or shut up. He tweeted a Kenosha News photo of a voter outfitted for the occasion. You should go look.

Voting by mail is well established in other states, but you don’t have to look far to find politicians -- Republicans in particular -- who think it’s a bad idea. Start right at the top, with President Donald Trump, who voted by mail in the last election: “Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”

[...]

There are arguments, debunked by election experts, that voting by mail is more vulnerable to fraud. And some argue, with some evidence, that it could be difficult to handle a vote-by-mail election without big investments in voting processes.

That last one is just a good reason to start early instead of waiting until September to make some decisions.

[...]

Maybe it’s not the IQ of voters we’re testing here.


Scott Henson of Grits for Breakfast, feeling better and back on a regular blogging schedule, has the latest on Abbott's court battle to stop prisoners from being released due to the pandemic.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court of Texas on Saturday issued a temporary stay on Judge Livingston's temporary restraining order, meaning Abbott's order for now is back in effect. The court has requested briefings on the subject, with responses from the litigants due on Monday. See coverage from the Texas Tribune.


SocraticGadfly notes that the Freedom from Religion Foundation had a court win over Greg Abbott upheld on appeal, and as with the original filing, it's a case he wishes both could have lost.

The Texas Signal worries about the rise of anti-Asian racism.


And the TO announces their new EIC.


One of Ahtone's last pieces of work at High Country News -- along with several others -- detailed the appropriation of indigenous peoples' lands for public colleges.


And closing out this Wrangle with the lighter side ...

The Lunch Tray deconstructs stress eating and "anxiety baking".  It's Not Hou It's Me shows you where to pick up beer to go in Houston.

Monday, March 08, 2021

The Far Left "Texas is Messed Up" Wrangle



Kuff focused on the maskless mandate and the widespread negative reactions to it.  John Coby at Bay Area Houston is mad about the damage Republican political leaders have done to our reputation (?!).  Therese Odell at Foolish Watcher vents her spleen at Greg Abbott.

Could the worst be yet to come?


Let's take that as our segue to the coronavirus.


Isobella Harkrider for Reform Austin documents the COVID variants now in the state. Alison Medley at the HouChron spoke to Memorial Hermann Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. Linda Yancey about the pros and cons of the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and the effectiveness of all the shots compared to each other, and to the variants.

"When you compare efficacy data, Pfizer ranks at the highest with 95 percent effectiveness in preventing COVID-19, compared to Moderna at 94 percent.  The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was found to be 66 percent effective at preventing moderate to severe cases of COVID-19, and  85 percent effective if disease is critical.  The concern has been whether the current vaccines will hold effectiveness against new COVID-19 variants, including the UK, New York, California, South Africa and Brazil variants.

"This vaccine is still effective against all these variants, as well as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines," Dr. Yancey reassured. "If we can get people vaccinated as quickly as we can, the virus will stop spreading."

Let's shift to the Lege, which gavels back in this week with more on their plates than ever.  Still desperate to change the subject, Abbott is diving into the culture wars.


Former RRC candidate Chrysta Castaneda opines in the DMN that the Railroad Commission and the PUC should be folded into a new energy commission (and those commissioners should be elected instead of appointed).  Socratic Gadfly looked at the Census delay and wondered if that will make redistricting even harder and more of a fistfight in a Lege special session, including the possibility of internecine Republican fights as well as R-D battles.  And Charles Miller for Texas 2036 appraises the new federal Medicaid proposal, which could mean $3 billion more for Texas.

Next, in criminal and social justice updates ...


And in political and election headlines:


Nearly two dozen candidates filed for the special election to succeed the late U.S. Rep. Ron Wright (R-Arlington) in a district that has become increasingly competitive in general elections over the past decade. President Trump carried the district by 3 points over Joe Biden in 2020, and the average Republican won the district by just over 6 points. Trump won the district by 9 points over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Mitt Romney carried it over President Obama by 17 points in 2012.

This is not a general election, and turnout is expected to fall well short of the 69% of registered voters who came to the polls in November. The 2018 special election for CD27, which was held in June, drew 15% of the number of voters as in the 2016 general election. A similar result for CD6 would result in around 55K votes cast. All candidates run on the same ballot regardless of party, and the top two candidates advance to a runoff, regardless of party, if no one secures a majority vote. Given the number of Republicans (11) and Democrats (10) in the race, a runoff is almost certain. The question is, what will be the partisan makeup of the runoff?

The last time a field this size ran in a special election was 1993, when 24 candidates filed to win the unexpired term of former U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D). There were 10 Republicans, five Democrats including the appointed incumbent, one Libertarian, six independents and two other minor party candidates. The Republicans collectively received 58.2% of the vote to the Democrats’ collective 40.5%, and the minor party and independent candidates combined for 1.3%. Eighteen of the candidates each received less than 1% of the vote, 16 of which received less than 0.5%. That left three Republicans and three Democrats with more than 1% of the vote.

Comparing a statewide race from 27+ years ago to a north Texas Congressional special election is IMHO a failure of analysis (which TXElects rarely makes).  Special elections are about ground game, and the Democrats failed there in 2020, by their own declaration.  I expect them to do so again in this contest, despite having 60 days to gear up for it.  Too bad they can't blame the Green Party.

It appears that Ag Commissioner Sid Miller is preparing to challenge Greg Abbott for the Republican nomination for governor, from his right.


And some environmental updates.


Last month Environment Texas released bold environmental agendas for Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio.  In recent years these three cities have demonstrated their environmental stewardship, but now EnTx is challenging them to improve their clean energy initiatives, bolster clean air and water protections, and put wildlife over waste by banning the worst single-use plastics.

Texas wildlife indeed suffered mightily during the freeze, and will keep bearing the brunt of the Lone Star State's refusal to move away from fossil fuels to cleaner, sustainable energy sources.

Speaking of wildlife ...


Stopping here; more later this week.