GregsOpinion.com

Upon watching what passed for a Mayoral debate of sorts on KUHT last night (ok, a few hours ago), a few things are apparent. Full disclosure ... I'm rooting for Bill White, but I share the general scepticism of being able to break through the Greanias Threshold of 17%. For White to make the runoff as the Great White Democratic Crossover Candidate Hope, he'll need to rake in about 25% or more of the vote. Tough to do with a black Democrat and an Hispanic Republican in the mix.

The pretext of this debate, something left out unless I was snoozing ... that Gov. Perry has endorsed Orlando Sanchez. The GOP squabble didn't seem all too bad, and for that, I was shocked. Michael Berry made his standard GOP boilerplate comments here and there, but Sanchez never seemed to take him on (and vice versa for that matter). Sanchez stuck to reminding people that he had fled a communist country about as often as John Kerry reminds voters that he served in Vietnam. I counted three mentions of that in ONE closing statement, in fact. It's insane.

Michael Berry came across as the earnest well-intentioned right winger that he is. Got a problem in life? Michael Berry will cut a tax till it's better. Outside of that, he borrows heavily from the old Lanier playbook of simple government ... keep the streets safe, paved, and clean. Of course, in the later segment, they gave the candidates $100 in $1 bills, and asked them to portion it off to the segments of the city budget as they saw fit. The idea was to get a sense of what priorities the candidates had, and whether they had a freakin clue about what was appropriate to spend on what areas. Berry was a big spender on the category that favored infrastructure, but low (ironically) on public safety. So while the streets will be paved over, this will allow for fleeing criminals to get away quicker.

Going back to Sanchez on this $100 gambit ... man did this guy ever even wake up for a budget meeting? His balance of expenses was fairly close to being inline with one of the two oddball candidates. He also had the single stupidest idea of anyone on the stage ... he's going to make Houston traffic better by making sure to enforce the currently unenforced law of requiring contractors to post their permit on construction sites. You see, as a single dad who fled a communist country, he drives by countless road construction projects where this is the case, and since it's wrong, he's going to enforce that rule. Apparently, since the tradeoff would be that these construction crews would be fired otherwise, this would somehow ... magicly, even ... improve the road construction woes we so love here in Houston. If any of that made one iota of sense to you, then PLEASE vote for Orlando Sanchez. Otherwise, pat yourself on the back ... because you're sane!

Sylvester Turner came across as the slick pol that he is. More full disclosure ... I supported Sly in 1991. He was a young State Rep. (I lived in his district) that I recall from his days of bucking the occassional party orthodoxy (he endorsed a few Reps prior to becoming a State Rep.), making Texas Monthly's Top 10 list, promised to serve only 6 years, was a Coog, and a proud success story of Acres Homes. Since then, he's made his way to Texas Monthly's worst 10 list, broke his promise to serve only 3 terms, and has clung to power any way imaginable. Also saw him in defense of the downtown arena that I was opposed to. He couldn't take an argument head-on if his life depended on it. Oh, and in 1991, there was all that mess about insurance fraud, money laundering, and rumors of why his wife was going to divorce him after the campaign. Ghastly business, that. I've gone from having a pretty sizable respect for him to pretty much despising the very ground he walks on. This performance didn't change anything, but it's worth pointing out that his political skills are not to be underestimated.

I'd love for the consensus among many to be that Sly is a washed up has-been who never was. But with the early support he's gotten, I can't quite keep THAT much hope alive. Garnet Coleman will see to it that Sly is reacquainted with the black precints that nearly got him the mayor's job in 1991. Sly's message in this debate was pretty simple ... I'm a Democrat, and a bigger Dem than Bill White. He also took some pointed jabs at White, notably that he wasn't going to spend as much as White. In pointing out the nobility of this, perhaps Sly hopes that White is not a rerun of Lanier so much that it's with White's deep pockets (and well oiled Rolodex) that another last minute round of negative ads does him in.

In getting to Bill White, I think what came across were the reasons why White *may* break the Greanias Line, as well as why he may succumb to it like so many other good candidates. White is the smartest one on the stage ... hands down. If there was any doubt, he should have shelved it when they got to the $100 game. White didn't spend all of his money, keeping some as a reserve. Smart move. The message is clear: while I'm a Democrat, I've also run a business, run a major governmental agency, and I'm tight with your tax dollars. His acumen and positioning as a candidate are uncanny. As the show documented the various candidates' expenditures, I eagerly awaited a screen full of footnotes explaining how White's reserve impacted the show's apples-to-apples comparison of the candidates' priorities.

The bad news for Bill? He's about the driest (nay, ARID) public speaker on that stage. The words he says ... brilliant. The means of delivery ... subpar. He comes across as earnest and well intentioned. No harm there. But there's not a sign that what he says is a conviction. I know enough about White to know he's not a wishy-washy moderate, centrist, middle-of-the-road, too scared to do anything candidate ... but who else does? When you're on an uphill climb to win the job, you've got to be a little more forceful. In the course of this debate, Bill has a tendency to make Joe Lieberman look like a pit bull.

A little more on Bill ... one thing he did a masterful job on was getting the debate to focus on issues he wanted to talk about. He has an occassional tendency to be sanctimonious, but in asking fellow candidates to take pledges, he puts them on the defensive. He's also done enough early legwork to make HIS pledges get at the center of debate. The point of the pledges is relatively meaningless ... the point is Bill's the one driving the show. To the extent he can sustain that, he's gonna have a shot at breaking the Mendoza Line of Houston politics.

The two oddball candidates didn't seem to match prior election crank cases. Laverne Crump Smith wasn't too sharp on a wide array of issues, but she's otherwise harmless. Raymond Hans Rodriguez is actually a likable candidate at first glance. Still suffers a bit for want of a little polish as a candidate (not to say he has to be slick, but sheesh, a little dab'll do ya!). But he's at least a little better versed on a wider range of issues than some of the prior contestants. His campaign finances, however, are somewhat lacking. If the two of them combine for 5%, I'll be shocked. But if they do, it should also be good news for Bill White, so I'll at least be pleasantly shocked.

In preparation for this, I also wanted to look at a few other races. Namely the City Controller race and my Council District F race. According to a look at the finance reports, Annise Parker is running away with the Controller's race (95k on hand, and allegedly she's moved over $72k from her prior campaign funds). No shock there. Bruce Tatro isn't doing poorly ($88k on hand), and my own candidate of choice ... Mark Lee is still in the mix ($66k on hand). Any way you slice it, the question will be to see if Annise can win this in November.

District F seems to be a foregone conclusion as M.J. Kahn is running away with the money race ($121k raised, only candidate with any real money in hand). The district, I've yet to break down closely, but looks to be a nominal-to-solid GOP district (Mark Ellis is the current incumbant). It also encompasses the residential Chinatown of Houston, and Khan is obviously well positioned to take advantage of that. John Shike has raised $14k, but he's spent $15k ... I see his signs up on the way to work, too. They're hand-painted on big wooden slabs. Not a real slick one here. If you want a longshot possibility, I'll give you one ... Derrick Wesley. He's raised all of $6,850. But he's the only Dem in the race, and a black Dem at that, in a district with some sizable areas that could get him a pretty hefty bang for the buck. Money may yet do the talking here, and it's easy to see Khan pulling down 70% of the vote based on that. But if Wesley has any capacity to raise (and spend wisely) some money, he may have a shot at maximizing the areas favorable to Dems. In all honesty, I tried to overlay the District with my uber-Harris County map of Red/Blue precints. My PC wasn't up to the task as the Photoshop file that has the map is causes most any PC to grind to a halt. Maybe I'll do some homework on that tomorrow.

One final stealth candidate (well, maybe not anymore) that George Strong points out in the earlier link, is that Peter Brown is a name to watch.

Peter Brown raised more money in the first six month of this year then any other non-Mayor candidate. His $217,000 raised this year was even better then any Council incumbent and he beat his opponent Council Member Sekula-Gibbs by about $70,000. The Gossips think this is not a good sign for the incumbent. Brown has picked up the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, General Contractors and Tejano Democrats.

ADD-ON: Alex has a humorous romp with the debate, although it's a little technically incorrect.