Ed Martin's Take: "Realize How Good This Was"

My bias is as follows: Ed Martin knows all. Hence, it's probably not a shock that I agree with him on his dissection of the results in Harris County.

In particular:

The early vote vs. E Day [Election Day] pattern was not unique to Harris Co., so that is a false criticism. Check out Travis, Dallas, Tarrant and the whole state - a huge majority of voters statewide voted early. I wasn't on the ground in Harris Co. on E Day, but the county party had at least 7 or 8 satellite offices all over the county and there was phone, mail, TV and radio communications. I know I was emailing them a radio spot cut down to a sound truck tape for use in precincts that were not performing early on E Day, so there were folks out working on E Day.

...

So ... add up all the statewide, national and countywide races on the ballot and see Dems carrying over 80% of them in a much tougher county than Dallas where we weren't sneaking up on anyone, and given that we started at zero, it's a remarkable achievement by Harris County Democrats. Of course, there is always room for improvement and areas where we must do better in 2010, but that does not diminish what was achieved in 2008.

OK, so put me down as a question mark on the effectiveness of a "sound truck," but Ed's grasp on the challenge of Harris County as well as recognizing the overall impact of the wins we do have is spot-on by my standard.

Going into Early Voting, my hunch was that we'd win a couple of the administrative spots and about half the judicial spots. I'm downright giddy to report how wrong I was. I heard every complaint about what a slow day E-day was for us, but the numbers don't lie ... it was a great day since they still had to count the votes we banked early.

The same post has a somewhat shorter take by Matt Angle, which is good for an overview:

Harris County Republicans were not caught off guard. They raised and spent more than Democrats. They simply got outworked and outmanuevered.

Harris County has moved from being a Republican County to one where Democrats have a marginal advantage. It will take continued work and commitment by local Dems to grow and lock in this advantage.

See my conclusion in this post for how I think we do that.