Thursday, October 03, 2019

Turner's challengers roast him in #HouMayor debate


Mayor Sylvester Turner’s opponents came out swinging at the first televised mayoral debate of the election, accusing him of mismanaging a pay dispute with Houston firefighters, slow-walking flood recovery and overseeing a culture of corruption at City Hall -- charges the mayor emphatically denied.

With his opponents criticizing him on nearly every question, Turner defended his approach to the firefighters’ push for pay parity with police and said the sluggish pace of Hurricane Harvey recovery largely stems from delays within the federal government.

On the corruption allegations, pushed most aggressively by Tony Buzbee, Turner said the millionaire lawyer and businessman -- who is self-funding his campaign -- is “trying to buy City Hall.”

The mayor then issued a fresh attack, criticizing Buzbee for an incident in which a federal judge removed Buzbee’s law firm from 85 cases involving a judge who maintained close ties with Buzbee and his law partners.

You can watch that exchange here:


Update: You can view the hour-long debate here.  For a few short video takes, see here.

I did not get the sense that Turner or Buzbee, the polling leaders, helped themselves last night.  Bill King and Sue Lovell looked and sounded more 'executive', shall I say.  And I'll posit that any Democrats inclined to consider not voting for Mayor Sly might feel better about a Dwight Boykins or a Lovell vote after watching ... unless they are of that scared variety of Donkey that doesn't want to see two Republicans in the runoff.

In other words, a vote for Turner being sorta like a vote for Joe Biden.

As for the remainders and their lawsuit ... *ahem*

Though 12 candidates are running for mayor, a moderator said the host networks -- ABC 13 and Univision 45 -- narrowed the field to the top five fundraisers: Turner, Buzbee, King, Boykins, and Lovell. The state of the race has recently come into sharper focus with a poll that found Turner leading the field with 37 percent of the vote, followed by Buzbee at 20 percent and King at 10.

As I mentioned back here, I'm still deciding between Lovell and Derrick Broze.  I have a few more weeks to choose.
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Wednesday, October 02, 2019

"Sorry to disappoint..."



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Twenty Twenty Update: Money Matters

The mother's milk of consultants, spinmeisters, pollsters, and those that love them has the punditocracy all squirming for a teat this week.

But maybe we should consider impeachment first?

Americans are about evenly split over impeaching President Donald Trump and removing him from office, as support for that move has risen among independents and Republicans, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS after the announcement of a formal impeachment inquiry by House Democrats last week.

About half, 47%, support impeaching the President and removing him from office, up from 41% who felt that way in a CNN poll in May. The current level matches the high point for impeaching Trump in previous CNN polling -- 47% said they felt that way in September 2018.

Indeed the tide and the sea has changed, quickly, and continues to do so even as this is blogged.  And we'll wait to see if the next debate spends too much time talking about it, at the expense of -- in my and Ted Rall's opinion -- more important topics.

-- With respect to Cory Booker and Julian Castro, the two candidates who threatened to leave us last week if they didn't meet their cash targets ...

(Booker) raised more than $6 million over the last three months, with a third of that coming in the past 10 days after he warned he would have to drop out of the Democratic presidential race if he didn't take in more cash by Monday's fundraising deadline.

Despite that flood of money, Booker says he still needs more. His campaign is pressing donors to contribute $3 million in the month of October alone to help cover a budget they predict will surpass $7 million for the final quarter of the year.

So the "Going Out of Business" sale will last at least another thirty days.


Psyche, all you Castro donors.

-- Something's Berning.


Somebodies don't like it.





Have we had enough of that?


-- That's enough obsessing over filthy lucre for me, but let's note this.


Also note that all these people are Jewish, and we're in the middle of the High Holy Days.


I just don't have any words.

-- Happening today:


Note that the times listed are Pacific.  Underneath this is a tweet from Mark Charles requesting inclusion, and another listing the Libertarian potential nominees.  I'll leave that to your discovery.

-- Should we be surprised?


Another update on Friday, with more on the next debate.
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