If they mayoral runoff leaves you cold, there will be other races to settle in December as well. The Comptroller’s race is down to Annise Parker versus Bruce Tatro. Parker had 42%, Tatro 21%, and three other candidates had between 10 and 15% each. Two items of interest: One, even though this article has a 1:57 AM time stamp and the one on the Mayor’s race is from 6:51 AM, this one specifically names December 6 for the runoff, while the more recent article says nothing. Make of that what you will.
Two is about the candidate who came in fourth and was running fifth early on.
[Gabriel] Vasquez, who changed his political affiliation to the Republican Party earlier this year, is still trying to establish his conservative credentials. He has been threatened with censure by the local GOP, however, after he voted in October against a tax cut the party supported.
Vasquez, who has served two terms on City Council and could have run again under city term limits, risked his virtually guaranteed district council position to run for controller.
Although Vasquez said he had no intention of running for higher office, Tatro contended that it was “no small secret” that Vasquez was running for Congress and was using the controller campaign to test his viability as a Republican candidate.
I’ve heard the same rumors about Vasquez. Under either of the Congressional maps, he currently lives in Sheila Jackson Lee’s district, and he has about as much chance of beating her in a race as I do. Before the new lines were drawn I thought he might try his luck against Chris Bell, but the talk I’ve heard says he wants to go against Gene Green, whose district is heavily Hispanic. I wouldn’t give him good odds there, either, but at least it would be nonzero. He still has to move in either case. If I were his campaign advisor, I’d tell him to take a look at At Large #1 or #4, either or both of which will be open in 2005. He can only serve one more term in Council, but another citywide run will surely give him some of the extra exposure he’ll need for a future Congressional race.
Speaking of the At Large races, there appear to be two more runoffs. Unfortunately, the article has very little hard data, so we go instead to the County Clerk and scroll to Page Four, where we see that Mark Ellis, Gordon Quan, and (sigh) Boy Wonder Berry have won, while Shelley Sekula Rodriguez Joyner Kersee Cougar Mellencamp Gibbs and Bert “Love Potion #9” Keller have to do it again, against Peter Brown and Ronald Green, respectively.
Finally, there will be more runoffs in the Council district races. The one I care about most is District H, where for once there will be an election where I can’t possibly lose as Hector Longoria failed to make the cut, leaving Adrian Garcia and Diana Davila Martinez to face off. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that whoever spent all that money mailing out hit pieces against Garcia (and I got another one on Monday) spent it in vain.
We did have a great result here in District H, where those anti-Garcia fliers appear only to have helped Garcia, if they had any effect at all.
The Garcia campaign estimates that those three negative, anonymous fliers cost $75,000 to produce and mail. What a sorry investment by the outsiders who were the apparent source of the money.
We got one of those anti-Garcia mailers from New Jersey. The one with three white punks dressed for cold weather in the bad parts of South Philly. I agreed with Garcia that these guys weren’t going to terrorize my neighborhood, because they were dressed for the weather a thousand miles northeast of here…
I may not live in Houston, but why would I not be surprised if the theme song for Longoria’s party / concession speech last night was Debroah Harry’s minor 1980’s hit “Backfired”? 😉