Alvarado declares for SD-6

An aggressive move, probably to deter Sylvia Garcia (or at least make her pause).

The morning after his posthumous victory party, the late state Sen. Mario Gallegos, D-Houston, got his dying wish when his choice to succeed him announced her intention to seek the seat he held since 1994.

State Rep. Carol Alvarado, who was re-elected to her House seat without opposition Tuesday, announced her candidacy for the Senate seat in an email Wednesday.

Gallegos posthumously won re-election against Republican challenger R.W. Bray. His victory means that Gov. Rick Perry will have to call a special election to determine who will represent the voters in Senate District 6.

Here's the link to my prior speculation.

Alvarado's campaign will be managed by Marc Campos, who is -- in a word -- shit. But Alvarado shines like the sun, and so does her future. She can overcome the selection of a lousy campaign operative. Especially if she can successfully claim the mantle of inheritance and inevitability.

Alvarado is expected to formally announce her candidacy at an event with members of Gallegos' family on Monday.

I don't think this move clears the field for Alvarado, but that is certainly their (her and Campos') intention. Garcia has been unemployed so long and is holding so many IOUs that I just don't think she sits it out. I also expect Jarvis Johnson to enter this contest, and there will likely be Green and Libertarian candidates as well, since it is an open primary.

No rest for the wicked.

Update: The African American TeaBagger who lost to the dead guy earlier this week is going to take another shot at the race. Hey, he got about 30 percent, and if Democrats split between two or more candidates, he could make the runoff. That's his story at least, and I'm sure he'll stick to it.

More Good, Bad, and Ugly

Good:

-- Harris County bond proposals all passed with flying colors. In the midst of the caterwauling about being broke, it's heartening to know that some conservative voters understand the need for progress.

-- Barack Obama appears to have carried Harris County by two votes. Out of almost 1.2 million cast. There are still provisionals and a few mailed stragglers to be counted, so the outcome of which party controls elections in two years is still to be determined. We're split right down the middle here, folks.

I suppose somebody might choose to blame their losing on one of the two third parties.

-- Texas House Dems gained seven seats in the Lege, with Craig Eiland holding on to retain his Galveston-area seat. Gene Wu is the brightest star in that freshman class of 2013.

-- County Attorney Vince Ryan turned back Crazy Bob Talton 51.5-48.5. Maybe that stripper donation business cost him. Sheriff Adrian Garcia's race was closer (53-45) than it should have been, and not because of Remington Alessi (2%). Dr. Diane Trautman beat the Republican incumbent to claim a win for Harris County School Trustee.

-- Harris County Democratic incumbent judges Al Bennett, Larry Weiman, Kyle Carter, RK Sandhill, Michael Gomez, Jaclanel McFarland, Mike Engelhart, Robert Schaeffer, Alexandra Smoots-Hogan, Ruben Guerrero, David Mendoza, and Maria Jackson were all returned to the bench. Elaine Palmer, who defeated Judge Steven Kirkland in the May primary, also was elected.

D incumbents Josefina Rendon, Shawna Reagin, Randy Roll, Herb Ritchie, Erica Graham, and Damon Crenshaw and challengers Tracy Good, Donna Roth, Vivian King, and Mack McInnis all fell short.

All of these contests were decided by 3 percentage points or less, mostly on the strength of straight ticket voting. But the undervotes also played a large part in the demise of the Dems who lost. Apparently 60-70,000 voters who did not vote straight party didn't make it down the ballot to their races.

-- The two unopposed (by any Democrat) Greens on the statewide ballot, Josh Wendel running for TRC and Charles Waterbury for SCOTX, earned 10% in Harris County and 8% across Texas. Other Greens in downballot races performed to this level in statehouse races: David Courtney (SD-17, no Dem running) got 9%, Chris Christal (SD-26, against Dem incumbent Leticia Van De Putte) got 6%. Matthew Britt, the only candidate running against the odious Phil King in HD-61, gathered 11%. Herb Gonzales ran against a Dem incumbent in HD-124 and picked up 15%. Closer to home, Art Browning got nearly 10% as the sole challenger to Allen Fletcher. And Henry Cooper ran hard against Jessica Farrar, getting 14%.

These are foundational numbers for the Texas Green Party, and can be built upon in the future.

-- That said, the Libertarian Party of Texas approximately doubled the numbers of the Greens across the state. They have a better idea about how to secure continuous ballot access, running someone everywhere. They pose a greater long-term threat to Texas Republicans than do Texas Democrats, in my humble O.

(This last barely qualifies as good, in case you were wondering.)

Bad:

As mentioned last night, Texas Democrats have at least ten points of ground to make up with the electorate statewide. Keith Hampton's 55-41 defeat to Sharon Keller is particularly bitter. The appeals court wins were concentrated in the San Antonio-based 4th district, and the winners had Latino surnames. The two Harris County CCA, First and Fourteenth, saw Democratic challengers like Nile Copeland and Barbara Gardner lose by 5 to 7 points (53-46). Justice is still red as a baboon's behind in the Lone Star State.

-- Jill Stein got three-tenths of one percent of the Texas electorate. Disappointing to say the least. Gary Johnson got almost four times as much and that's underperforming for him compared to the rest of the country. I'll have more to say about this in the coming days.

-- Ann Harris Bennett lost her race for tax assessor/collector by 2,400 votes out of over 1.1 million total. There were almost 49,000 undervotes in that tilt.

Ugly:

There's some, but I'll hold it until later.

Charles Kuffner's wrap from last night covered a lot of this ground, and South Texas Chisme excerpts the Brownsville Herald's executive summary graf.

More added to this post as responses and analysis trickle out today.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good:

-- After a contentious couple of hours -- during which Karl Rove attempted to get Fox News to rescind its call of Ohio and the subsequent re-election of President Obama -- Mitt Romney conceded just before midnight, Central time. The electoral college turned almost exactly as I projected two weeks ago. The only exception would be Florida, which is leaning to Obama.

-- In the US Senate: Chris Murphy, (CT), Sherrod Brown (OH), Joe Donnelly (IN), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Claire McCaskill (MO), Angus King (ME), Tim Kaine (VA), Tammy Baldwin (WI), and Martin Heinrich (NM) represent a significant progressive upgrade, and an upper chamber shaping up as 53-47 if Jon Tester in MT hangs on, a net gain of two for the Blue team.

As The Great Orange Satan summarized, over the past two election cycles...

7:32 PM PT: Teabaggers have now cost Republicans Senate seats in Missouri, Indiana, Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada.

Those five seats would've given the GOP the majority.

-- In the US House: Tammy Duckworth (IL), Alan Grayson (FL), Beto O'Rourke (TX-16), Pete Gallego (TX-23), and maybe even the fellow running against Michele Bachmann -- we'll see in the morning -- clean up some trash in the Congress. Update: Nope, but just barely.

-- Wendy Davis prevails in her state Senate race. In the Texas House, Joe Moody (HD-78), Mary Ann Perez (HD-144), Phillip Cortez (HD-117), and Abel Herrero (HD-34) represent Democratic flips.

The Bad:

-- The winning margin in statewide Texas races is still in the neighborhood of 55-41, with Romney and Ted Cruz performing slightly over than that and the Republican statewide judicials slightly under.

-- Ann Johnson came up well short of Sarah Davis in HD-134, 55-45.

The Ugly:

-- Randy Weber over Nick Lampson in CD-14, Steve Stockman over Max Martin in CD-36.

I'll have more tomorrow.

These toons close at 7 p.m. this evening

Obama 303, Romney 235 and last-minute details

-- The only changes from October 23 are giving the two remaining tossups, CO and NH, to the President. Here's what the map will look like later on this evening. This site has it the same. So does this one. Or you can go with Dick Morris' version. If you're on LSD.

-- Senate prognostications are gelling around a pickup of one to three seats for Democrats. Nobody is predicting the House changes hands. Republicans will feel justified in continuing obstruction if the President doesn't win the nationwide popular vote. They will obstruct anyway, naturally.

-- Outside of Harris County, the two Congressional races most worth following are Nick Lampson's and Pete Gallego's. I never mentioned them before because I focused on the county and statewides here, but if there's a small blue wave as in '08, they will be carried into office. Hope that happens; they'll both be outstanding Congressmen as compared with their counterparts.

Here again -- if anyone still needs some progressive bipartisan suggestions -- are the Brainy Endorsements, Part I for federal and statewide races, and Part II for the statehouse and the courthouse. Thanks to Neil Aquino at Texas Liberal for linking to them frequently as well. Update: Charles has a good aggregation of late breaking local news to note, none of which is duplicated here.

Speaking of Harris County... the news gets better. I am not attributing this source for confidentiality, but am excerpting his e-mail.

The numbers (from Harris County VAN data, of EV and mail ballots)  look quite good -- especially if our people voted Straight-D or at least went through the ballot and if VAN correctly scored people as Democrat vs. Republican.  The "hard" and "soft" Democrats accounted for 43.9%, the "hard" and "soft" Republicans accounted for 30.6%, and the "non-partisans" accounted for 25.5% of the early voting/mail-in ballots.  The Democrats outvoted the Republicans by nearly 100,000 and there are not enough Republican voters left in Harris County who haven't voted (~70,000) to make up the difference.

And if this news doesn't soothe you, then -- as the therapist suggested here -- practice your breathing exercises, draw a hot bath, have a Xanax and a glass of wine, and read Nate Silver again. Reality has a pronounced liberal bias.

-- I would like to see Jill Stein get to 3% in Texas and 5% nationally. That last number will qualify the GP's presidential nominee for federal matching funds in 2016, an important and historical milestone. Five percent for any statewide Green earns the party ballot access again in two years, and I think that's assured.

-- Also can't wait to see what effect Libertarians have on a few races locally, in Texas, and across the country. When the GOP melts down after their losses hit them, it could spell the end of the Republican Party as anything except a fringe far-right movement, and the Libertarians stand to benefit the most. Oh well, I suppose some moderate Republicans might become Democrats, too. A consolidation of conservative corporatists in the mushy middle.

The Texas iteration of Republicanism might be poised to exert itself nationally, given its strength here. Lone Star conservatives are under the impression they are doing everything right, and could decide to try to take over. That's a delicious recipe for electoral disaster, as the TeaBaggers -- from Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell in 2010 to Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin in 2012 -- have repeatedly demonstrated. Hope that happens, too.

-- Nick Anderson and Jeff Greenfield speak for me: "Hey undecided voters, how about you just sit this one out":

It’s a plea directed to those of you who are still uncertain about which way to vote. And it’s as simple as it is heartfelt: Stay home.

[...]

The overwhelmingly likely reason (you're still undecided) is this: You have the reasoning power of a baked potato.

OK, I grant that you may be of the small minority of concerned citizens who are genuinely torn and who have not yet evaluated the relative worth of health care reform notions, the vagaries of the tax proposals or the respective approaches to the increasing power of the renminbi.

But I wouldn’t bet a nickel on it.

The odds are you’ve just been too busy obsessing about the misfortunes of the Kardashians, or the quality of your ringtone, to spend any time thinking about who might be the better president.

Well, that’s your right. Unlike the Australians, we don’t compel people to vote, and it would likely be a First Amendment violation if we tried. A refusal to vote can be seen as a statement that the electoral system is rigged, meaningless or so thoroughly corrupt as to deserve contempt. (“I never vote,” one citizen said long ago. “It only encourages them.”)

Kris G, I'm looking at you.

Men and women in my lifetime have died fighting for the right to vote: people like James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered while registering black voters in Mississippi in 1964, and Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1965 during the Selma march for voting rights. In these days of early voting, we’ve seen people waiting in line for hours to exercise the franchise. Countless others, who have never had to fight for it, have spent real time either trying to decide how to cast their vote or donating their time to persuading others.

So if you’re one of those folks who have stayed utterly disengaged through all of this, do the honorable thing: Honor those for whom the vote really matters by staying home.

You’ll be doing yourself—and the country—a favor.

No shit.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance marks the end of another long election season with a reminder to cast your ballot tomorrow -- or to call your neighbor and remind them to do so -- as it brings you this week's roundup of the best of the left of Texas from last week.

Off the Kuff asks whether Texas Latinos are like Latinos elsewhere ... or not.

Harris County is a swing county based on the numbers from the experts, and whomever can get those who haven't voted early to the polls on Tuesday will likely eke out a very close win... if PDiddie at Brains and Eggs (and the two experts) can be believed.  

BossKitty at TruthHugger could not resist the significance of eye-opening events reinforcing climate change discussions along the east coast of the United States: URGENT: Impending Health Crisis After Sandy. And maybe the Tea-Publican mantra about "entitlements" can be redefined now: “Evil” Entitlements Soar As Hurricane Sandy Redraws America’s Map.  

WCNews at Eye on Williamson says the problem with education is not how we finance it, it's poverty, in Poverty and Public Education.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders why it is that when mail-in ballots are so heavy, voters must be reassured that they will be delivered regardless of postage.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote that Texas House District 134 Republican incumbent Sarah Davis is a Tea Party extremist. Neil sure hopes that Ms. Davis will lose this Tuesday to Democrat Ann Johnson.