Wrapup roundup

A few more election wrapup pieces to finish off the week...

Joe Trevino talks to Carolyn Feibel about how he made it to the runoff in At Large #5.

I asked Trevino who he thought his supporters were. He identified three voting blocs that he cultivated:

* HISD teachers and staff: Trevino worked 32 years in the district, so he placed calls to former colleagues and union leaders. That seems like a good strategy, considering the HISD bond proposal drove many voters, and presumably HISD workers, to the polls.
* East Side voters: For much of his career, Trevino worked for schools in the heavily Hispanic East Side, including as principal of Austin High School. "There was a lot of name recognition out there," he said. "I was the principal that handed them their diploma." Presumably, voters who came out in District I for the Rodriguez/Marron race also recognized Trevino's name.
* Runners in Memorial Park: Talk about a simple campaign strategy. On the weekends, at least half a dozen times, Trevino set up a little table, stocked an ice chest with water and beer, and greeted runners.

"Right now is the marathon season, so a lot of people are out getting ready," he explained. "Most marathoners are educated people who vote."

Number 3 is my favorite reason, and a pretty good idea for a fairly low-money campaign. Number 1 seems like the biggest driver of votes, especially since as Marc Campos notes, Latino voters did their job in helping to pass the HISD bond. I don't know what the turnout numbers look like yet, and I confess to being a bit skeptical about the District I race being that big a factor. Fewer than 8000 votes were cast there, compared to over 98,000 in AL5; if you assume half of them voted for Trevino (in such a big field, it's a stretch to assume anything higher), that's barely 20% of his vote total. If you subtract that entire amount, he still places ahead of Tom Nixon. I'm not trying to discount Trevino's performance in the East End - I've no doubt he did well there - I'm just saying it was only one piece of the puzzle. He'd have had to do well all over the city to really compete, and clearly he did just that.

The Caucus Blog notes that with the exception of Kevin Hoffman and his close loss in the HCCS Trustee race, every candidate and proposition endorsed by the Houston GLBT Political Caucus won or made it to the runoff. I'd say their support of the HISD bond was the biggest victory for them. The Caucus has gotten a lot of good results for its endorsements lately; they should be proud of what they did this cycle.

Finally, Miya Shay attends a Greater Houston Partnership postmortem of the election and gets a few good quotes from the assembled panel. Check it out.

UPDATE: Two more of interest, from Burka on HD97, and Grits on the failed Smith County jail bond.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on November 09, 2007 to Election 2007