Campaign Blog: News & Updates

One more datapoint that shows Texas as being in play at the Senate level.

The most troubling sign in all of this for Cornyn is that his own number is hovering below 50 in both recent +4 showings. He's still got a sizable money advantage and I'd expect him to start showing some signs of genuine concern. It'll be interesting if he goes up on TV during the summer, when voters aren't paying much attention to campaigns.

As for Rick, I say just chip in a dime or two and see how far it goes.

As much as it physically pains me to do this, I'm going to have to agree with Paul Burka. In his take on the Rasmussen polling that showed Cornyn leading 47-43, the following can be said:

- there's reason for being sceptical of these numbers
- Rasmussen (and this poll) are still very credible, and hence there may be something to these results
- that something may have more to do with party affiliation than it does Noriega or Cornyn
- if nothing else, it may help Noriega raise the money to make a close race something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Really, the only tangible thing that's changed since the "Cornyn by 16" polling is that McCain has cemented the GOP nomination. Well, that and the bickering continues with no end in sight for our side. Noriega hasn't communicated much on his team's shoestring budget. Cornyn has hit the small-town circuit, but hasn't exactly been Captain Visibility for his part.

Though I'm still doubtful that it fully explains a double-digit drop in partisan enthusiasm and affiliation, this could be but one sign of the challenge in front of McCain. It could also just as well be a fleeting challenge for McCain (where else are dissatisfied social-issue Republicans going to go? ... Obama?). Whether it's enough to warrant a major concern on Cornyn's part remains to be seen with another datapoint. But, as Burka points out, there's not been much going right in GOP campaigns recently. So even if it's not an accurate snapshot, I'm guessing that Team Cornyn isn't taking it too lightly.

» Politico: Political Pros: John Michael Gonzalez (Daniel Libit)

I could probably spend a good solid week retelling every good thing I've heard about John Michael Gonzalez. But I'm pretty sure there's still a lot of it that ought to be saved for whenever he decides to tell it himself as a first-person account. For now, I'll simply link to this overview of one of Texas' best Democrats and offer a gentlemanly salute.

And maybe I'm being overly optimistic here, but I'd certainly hope that his time in Texas Democratic politics isn't completed yet.

RG Ratcliffe chats up the GOP side of the 17th Senate District potentials. And even though he's not interviewed on the public record here, Scott Hochberg's name keeps coming up. Gary Polland makes reference to a possible December election date, which would be interesting. Primarily because it would allow Scott to run without giving up his State House seat.

But what I'm really curious to see is if any of the candidates opt to poke a little fun at Janek's anointed successor's name. Listening to the interviews, it keeps sounding like they're talking about "Austin First." Could it be that a name like Austen Furse might be a detriment?

Briefly ...

» Mark Thompson for Railroad Commissioner ... someone explain that to me. Not that I'm overly concerned about his nomination in particular. My own advice to anyone on voting in these runoffs has been that it really wouldn't matter one way or the other for any of the runoffs we had. Here's hoping I'm correct in that because we have a complete unknown running for RR Commish.

» Weiman over Isenberg ... looks like the late (in more than one sense of the word) attacks on Weiman were all for naught. Might have helped if the other side had realized they were on the wrong side of the Funny Name Primary in this battle. Of course, it might also help if they worked with the party instead of against it. But that's another issue.

» On the GOP side ... Lykos over Siegler, 53-47. It's tempting to think that with a small margin like that, getting outted for cracking on the biggest church in the county might have had something of an impact. Given the geography of the primary outcome, it'll be interesting to see what changed from then till now. ... well, other than the massive dropoff in votes cast.

» Over in Ft. Bend County, interesting to see County Commissioner Tom Stavinoha get offed in a primary. Richard Morrison took care of business just fine, for his side. This one'll be interesting to keep an eye on for November.

» Among the interesting State Rep details, Buddy West got kneecapped in his own primary. Anyone even know if that's good or bad for his next door neighbor Rep, Tom Craddick? Pasadena is still looking for two precincts to settle the Leggler v Roberts runoff.

» Oh yeah ... and poor Shelley lost out in CD22. My sense was that she hit her ceiling in the primary and I don't think I'm alone in wishing I was wrong about that. But now the DC-Class Republicans here in Texas get their chosen one to run against Nick Lampson. At least Olson can't call Nick the carpetbagger in this contest. Welcome back to Texas, Petey!

» Lastly, my favorite candidate in the entire state has won a runoff against an incumbent County Commissioner in Leon County: Porkchop Ivey. He's one step closer to being Commissioner Porkchop now. I'm not all that well versed in what went down in Leon County, but I think Porkchop's winning message was the key.

Greg Ivey, 52, and Mark "Pork Chop" Ivey, 45, are both seeking to unseat Precinct 3 Commissioner Ray Gaskin in the March 4 primary election. The fact that the men are "some kind of cousins -- maybe fourth, fifth or sixth" is not an issue in the race, Greg Ivey said Tuesday.

Pork Chop Ivey targets the family lineage a little closer, estimating he and Greg Ivey are third cousins. Although the men have known each other for decades, "we've probably talked 20 words in five years," Pork Chop Ivey said.

The county commissioner's seat carries a four-year term and pays about $32,000. Leon County has four commissioners elected by geographic quadrants of the population who serve with the county judge on the commissioners court. They oversee road maintenance, approve policies and determine the budget and tax rate, according to the county Web site.

Incumbent Commissioner Gaskin, 60, has served two terms and is seeking another in the race against the Iveys. Gaskin could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Greg Ivey, who works for Leon County's Precinct 4 commissioner, said he has no criticism for the other hopefuls in the Precinct 3 race.

"I don't want to be derogatory toward the other candidates," he said. "I just think it's time for a change in Precinct 3. I've watched the slow deterioration of the roads."

The political newcomer said when he heard that a distant cousin also was seeking the post, it didn't affect his decision.

"We're not that close or anything, so that's really not an issue for me," he said.

Pork Chop Ivey, a truck driver, agreed that running against a cousin isn't a big deal.

"I need the money," he said when asked why he was running.

Give 'em hell, Porkchop!

Linkage for now, commentary to follow ...

» Politico: Dems seek Texas seat held by elder Bush

Some interesting math by Culberson in the article:

"President Bush's failure to secure the border and embrace of spending programs took every Republican across the country down around five to 10 points," Culberson said.

Five to ten, eh? Let's see ... Culberson won 59% in 2006. What's 59 minus 10?

UPDATE: Others taking an interest ....

» MyDD: TX-07: Michael Skelly is the Real Deal (Jonathan Singer)
» Kuff: Skelly in Politico (#35)
» Swing State Project: 1Q Fundraising Results Thread (DavidNYC)
» Burnt Orange Report: TX-07: Is This For Real? (RandyMI)
» TxMo-State of Mine: The Top Democratic Fundraiser is a Texan (Evan Smith)

The bandwagon still has room on it. Feel free to chip in $7/mo and do the world some good.

UPDATE 2.0: One more on the bandwagon ...

» DailyKOS: TX-07: The map keeps expanding (brownsox)

UPDATE 2.1: Booman Tribune also takes a passing interest in the flashy numbers Skelly's raised.

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Disclosure: Skelly's a client. So if you find yourself wondering why I'm not spending half the day blogging about the state of the world, it's likely because we're hard at work making Houston a better place to live, work, and raise a family.

» KHOU: Sheila Jackson Lee at odds with constituents

A few thoughts on this story. First, I can't claim to be unhappy to see Sheila catch a little grief from constituents over anything. I volunteered on two campaigns that would have kept her off of City Council and Congress.

Secondly, does it not speak to the class of folks outraged by a superdelegate going against their district's vote in the Presidential race? I mean, show me where Chet Edwards was booed for supporting Obama despite his district voting for Clinton.

Now, I'd love to believe that some of this means that there'll be an opponent running against Sheila in the 2010 primary. But it'll take a lot more than an endorsement of Hillary Clinton to undo Sheila's tenure.

But if Marcus Davis wants to think about running ...

SIDENOTE: Since when is it considered tasteful for KHOU News to air a comment like this?

"For her to standout against the wishes of her district and be a Clinton supporter, I guess pissed off our delegation,"

As expected, here's the Greater Travis County region: Hays, Travis, & Williamson counties. Easily Obama's best territory, which made the map-making very easy. Still, you can see a bit of the Obama fade in the rural areas on the north side of Williamson. It's worth pointing out that Obama won several of the Hill Country counties around these three. Ultimately, it'll be an interesting view to see what the broader map looks like in that context. But it'll have to wait till I have a statewide canvass.

w/o streets:

From Texas 2008 De...

w/ streets:

From Texas 2008 De...

Up next: the counties surrounding Harris County: Fort Bend, Brazoria, Galveston, Montgomery, plus Brazos and Jefferson. At some point thereafter, all I have to do is work in some time to do McLennan and Smith counties and I'm done with the canvass reports I've got on hand. Statewide canvasses tend to take some time before they're available online. Ultimately, that'll happen. But before then, I'll probably get to work on a Willett-Moody statewide map from 2006. Tell me I don't know how to have fun!

Two more suburban counties to the DFW area added to the mix. Obviously, I'm still protesting Denton County. But if the working draft of that county's map holds up, it stands out as one of the few counties in this region where Obama's support doesn't fade once you get to the more rural areas.

w/ Streets:

From Texas 2008 De...

w/o Streets:

From Texas 2008 De...

Nine counties to go. I've got enough of the counties surrounding Harris to give a nice parallel view to DFW, but I'm also itching to do Travis, Williamson & McLennan. If I get my hands on any canvasses that fill out the I-35 corridor any further, I'd love to include them. Unfortunately, Hays & Bell County's websites aren't all that helpful. Might have to email some folks.

UPDATE: Ask and ye shall receive ... Hays County canvass now in hand. Methinks an I-35 corridor mapping kick is in order now.

Collin County now mixed in with Tarrant & Dallas:

From Texas 2008 De...

From Texas 2008 De...

Rockwall & Kaufman to follow soon. Denton, maybe ... maybe not.

I've got 15 counties that I've got a canvass report on and can therefore map out for Clinton-Obama results here in Texas.

I've got next to zero time to squish all that into.

I did manage to map out Collin County. And I had some grand hopes of working in Denton, Rockwall, and Kaufman to get some uber-DFW overview. Minor problem ... the folks in Denton County have some serious mapping issues of their own. The precinct boundaries and numbers are different than the latest GIS shapefile I've got from the State. It's downright maddening, I tell ya.

At some point, I'm also curious to take a look at the local wins by Walle and Fletcher. But, for now, I've just dumped the Presidential maps into a Picasa gallery. Best bet is to sign up for the RSS feed as there's no telling how soon or slow it'll get updated.

If anyone out there is willing to do some spreadsheet work, that'd be the sort of thing that just might make life - the mapping portion of it, anyway - a tad easier.

Keepin' em rollin' ....

No streets:

With streets:

One more view of the Presidential contest. This time, Tarrant & Dallas counties. Both were won by Obama, as were the northern suburban counties of Denton and Collin. Ultimately, I'm hoping to have all of that drawn out. But for now, here's the two biggies. Again, dark blue = Obama; light blue = Clinton.

No streets to obscure things:

With streets to help navigate around:

ADD-ON THOUGHTS: Getting back to my "College Campus" theory, it's worth noting that Obama carried the precincts around TCU and SMU. But I'm happy to report that Tarrant County Junior College - Northeast Campus, where I attended for all of one semester, went Clinton Blue!

Finally, a bit of time for some more mapping. This one's a bit more complex of a look, so bear with me. I'll start off with the overall view of the county in the GOP 4-way for DA. Dark red is Kelly Siegler, Light red is Pat Lykos. The white boxes are zero boxes - a standard I'm gradually trying to perfect into my methodology.

Now, since this was a 4-way contest, here's some relevant numerical views of the race. First is the overall, intial outcome:

Siegler       58,149  (41.3%)
Lykos         43,935  (31.2%)
Lietner       23,824  (16.9%)
Perry         14,811  (10.5%)
-----------------------------
Total Vote   140,719  

This second view identifies those precincts where each candidate got 45% or better. Basically, just identifying particular areas of strength within each candidates' win column.

Some more number give an indication of what the picture means:

        |  Siegler-45     |  Lykos-45
N       |     110         |      31
Siegler |  18,407 (48.2%) |   2,959 (33.8%)
Lykos   |   9,813 (25.7%) |   4,238 (48.4%)
Rest    |   9,965 (26.1%) |   1,553 (17.7%)
TV      |  38,185         |   8,750  

If the overall map didn't make a strong enough statement, this combined map/math view should. For starters, Siegler won a plurality in many of the key GOP regions: Northwest Harris County, Kingwood/Humble/Atascocita, and a large chunk of the southeast part of the county. Lykos held her own in the areas where Bacarisse did well. But the question for the runoff is whether that's good enough of a toehold. What stands out in the math breakdown above is that Lykos performed worse in Siegler's strong areas than Siegler did in Lykos' strong areas. And given the geographic base that Siegler has, I've got to believe she's got the inside track for the runoff.

Lastly, here's a closeup of one of the more contested portions of the county in this race. For Lykos, the friendly turf centering around I-10 up through Spring Branch is going to be critical for her to expand on. The two basically split Bellaire & West U; Lykos appears to have done marginally better in the River Oaks & Greenway precincts. For Lykos to win, though, the map just basically has to change. So that means a lot of work in Clear Lake, Kingwood, the westside Villages, and Champions Forest is going to be critical.

It's worth adding that turnout will shift dramatically and this potentially helps Lykos a bit. For a clearer view, I Think it might be worthwhile to crunch some numbers of say, the westside precincts that looked like the two candidates split. Who knows whether I'll get around to that, though. In the meantime, enjoy the pretty pixels.

A mild conundrum to consider ....

I think it's natural that voters would consider it an outrage if Superdelegates overrode the will of what was rightly or wrongly perceived as a win among either pledged delegates or popular vote. But here in Texas, why would it be any less outrageous if the PLEDGED delegates overrode the will of the popular vote in the Texas Democratic Primary?

There's a high degree of commonality between the two scenarios. Now, it might be argued that the Texas Primacaucusgizmo rules are at least codified and they are ... the rules of engagement. Fine, but so are the rules that say Superdelegates can decide for their own sake who they support or don't support. There's really no difference there. In fact, I think a stronger argument could be stated that there is no difference whatsoever.

AP's Paul Weber highlights the Clinton Camp's efforts to highlight some of the insanity of our "rules." The BOR kids are outraged. Nevermind that challenges to the precinct caucuses are well within "the rules."

Gee, it's almost as if the rules are totally insignificant compared to whether or not a move or decision affirms the candidate a blog poster supports. Just wondering why it's so hard for some to confess as much.

» Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Noriega visits Waco today

Noriega, a five-term state representative from Houston, won 29 percent of the vote in McLennan County during the March 4 primary, but lost to perennial candidate Gene Kelly, whose name many voters confuse with the late legendary dancer from musicals of yesteryear. Kelly, who did virtually no campaigning, won 40 percent of the vote in McLennan County, showing that Noriega suffers from name ID problems in the Waco area.

Noriega's name ID issues aside, I'm curious if there's been one single, solitary reporter who has actually identified one single, solitary voter who actually thought they were voting for the dancer. The Gene Kelly narrative is totally off-base, I think. My bet is that the bulk of voters don't think they're voting for a dancer they never heard of ... but rather just remember seeing his name on a ballot a few times before. In a sense, it doesn't matter much if his name is Gene Kelly or Hank Thompson. As long as he's on the ballot each year, I'm sure there are just as many people who think he's the Senator from Texas as think he's a famous dancer.

Chris Bell rocks out in his latest column. I've commented a few times about how the sense from this big, urban/suburban county offered a very different feel for the Presidential campaign as it swung through Texas. The results, favorable as they were, were a nice reward for that belief. But going beyond Chris' points about the disparity between just Houston and El Paso, I think the results in East and Central Texas are just as significant.

I'm still moderately curious about Obama's returns in Texas' Red County/College Town regions. There were areas of notable success that I've harped on: A&M, SHSU, Tyler JC, and North Texas. And though smaller, I've only gotten a canvass in from Tom Green county to see what the map might suggest there. Dude only won 6 precincts in the entire county and they don't paint a portrait of him winning the region around the Angelo State campus, but rather the areas where African-American population is concentrated. Obama lost the county and I'm convinced that there's a missed opportunity in similar counties like these.

Mind you, Angelo State isn't the biggest such loss. That'd be Lubbock & McLennan counties. Nacagdoches, Tom Green, and Taylor would be the smaller of the bunch. I'll have to try and create some time to do a more systemic analysis of this at some point.

UPDATE: Ya just knew there had to be a map coming. Dark green is Clinton, light green is Obama. The middle Obama dot near San Angelo is (I believe) the main precinct for the Angelo State campus. But it was only won by Obama 68-62 on 131 total votes (vs 136 TV in the GOP primary) in a county of 10,222 total votes.

Same disclaimers for the previous map. But a bit more interesting. From a pro-Clinton perspective, the near sweep of Pasadena-to-Baytown is impressive. Mind you, this was a 56-43 Obama county. And there's a few other pockets of success that are a bit of a surprise to me: Garden Oaks/North Heights, Jersey VIllage, Sharpstown, Bellaire, most of Meyerland. What really stands out for me here is that if you would have shown me this map beforehand, I'd have felt pretty confident of how to expand it to a win. Hindsight, once more, is 20-20.

Here, I wanted to zoom in on my area of interest ... the southwest part of the county. Yet get a better sense of Sharpstown & Meyerland here. The more heavily Asian, African-American, and suburban Anglo ... the more Obama. An impressive part of Obama's coalition here? Gulfton breaks a bit toward Obama.

Mapping fun - round 2 - here. I've only yet to begin.

Looking over the results, I'm curious how much TV time was bought in the DFW market. It's the only one where the outlying counties didn't do poorly. What's odd is that the overall media market compares just a hair south of the Houston media market, where the outlying counties did do appreciably worse. The difference? Dallas and Tarrant just eked out over 50% while Harris county's 56.5% might have made up some of the ground lost in counties like Walker, Chambers, and Waller.

East Texas, though? Yikes!