Donald Trump

Mayor Turner says “No!” to the child detention warehouse

Jun 20th, 2018

Mayor Sylvester Turner

Mayor Sylvester Turner called on the owner of a building east of downtown Houston and the nonprofit hoping to operate the former warehouse as a detention center for immigrant children separated from their families at the nation’s southern border to reconsider their plans.

The mayor also said he is in no rush to issue city permits at the site, and called on the state not to issue a childcare license to the 54,000-square-foot facility two blocks north of BBVA Compass Stadium for use by federal contractor Southwest Key Programs.

Turner, flanked by numerous nonprofit, religious and political leaders, said he wanted to show a unified front to protest the “unjust and immoral policy” the Trump administration began enforcing in April, when a “zero tolerance” approach began driving up the number of children removed from their parents upon crossing the border illegally.

[…]

Turner said he respects the work Southwest Key has done in the past, noting that he worked with the group’s leaders during his time in the Texas Legislature, but the mayor said these circumstances are objectionable and proclaimed he will not “be an enabler” in this process.

“I’ve done my best to try to stay clear of the national dialogue on many issues. I’ve done my best to try to focus on the issues that confront the city of Houston, recognizing that we need the partnership of the national — the feds — the state, working with the city,” Turner said. “This one is different. There comes a time when Americans, when Houstonians, when Texans have to say to those higher than ourselves: This is wrong. This is just wrong.”

You know how I feel about this. The city can take all the time it wants, double- and triple-checking on the permit, because Lord knows the state doesn’t give a damn. Everyone on Council should be behind the Mayor on this as well. It shouldn’t be that hard for anyone to do, since even a bunch of Republican members of Congress are not happy with the forced separation of children from their parents – not that they’ll do anything about it, of course – with the notable exception of that paragon of virtue, Ken Paxton. Just don’t be fooled by Ted Cruz. The Trib and Texas Monthly have more.

UPDATE: The longer version of the story suggests how the city might slow-walk this.

Asked by a reporter if he planned to “slow-walk” the permitting process, Turner smiled. He said city fire inspectors have not visited the property and that health inspectors have yet to grant a food service permit. Code enforcement officials already have granted a certificate of occupancy, affirming that the facility meets the minimum requirements to operate as a “dormitory/shelter,” though Houston Public Works spokeswoman Alanna Reed said the paperwork connected with that application made no mention of Southwest Key, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement or the plan to house children at the site.

Health department director Stephen Williams said there are “certain deficiencies” at the site that would need to be corrected before a permit is issued. Fire Chief Sam Pena said switching from housing adults to housing children will require a more thorough review than what the city fire marshal’s office conducted when the facility served as a shelter after Harvey.

“If it’s primarily children, having enough people there to ensure proper evacuation, proper access, because you’re dealing with a different type of juvenile person,” Pena said. “We’re going to be meticulous and judicious as far as our inspections, especially for the proposed use of this, but it’s nothing different than what we’d do for any other business.”

These things do take time, you know.

Say “No!” to warehousing “tender age” children

Jun 17th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

87 comments

We cannot allow this.

The large vacant warehouse in downtown Houston has housed women and families who were once homeless and adults displaced by Hurricane Harvey.

Until now, however, it has never sheltered small children who are on their own in a strange country, many of them separated from their parents who were jailed after illegally crossing the southern border.

Southwest Key Programs, a Texas nonprofit that has a lucrative contract with the federal government to care for thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children, confirmed Friday it has signed a lease with the owner of the warehouse at 419 Emancipation Ave.

Its application with the state requests a general residential operating license to hold up to 240 children between the ages of “0 to 17.” Several stakeholders who work with immigrant minors said they have been told the facility would largely serve “tender age” children who are younger than 12, as well as pregnant and nursing teenagers.

[…]

Federal officials said Friday about 2,000 children have been separated from their parents between mid-April, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the new zero-tolerance policy, and the end of May.

The sudden surge has overwhelmed the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which now has more than 11,400 children in their care in about 100 shelters across the country that are almost full. The ORR has issued calls to agencies that run such facilities for the government to see if they can increase their capacity and are considering housing children in tent-like structures on military bases, including in Texas.

“They are being required to house increasingly large numbers of very young children … who should have never gone to (the agency) in the first place,” said Jennifer Podkul, director of policy for Kids in Need of Defense, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group that provides services to unaccompanied minors.

Keeping such young children in a residential facility like the one proposed in Houston would represent a sharp shift from previous practice.

“My understanding is that the kids would be sleeping at this facility in Houston, and that’s surprising and would be a different structure than we’ve ever seen before for this type of population,” she said. “This would be the first one.”

Small children and pregnant teenagers are usually placed with foster parents who work with specialized organizations that contract with the federal government to provide such care. The minors spend their nights in a foster home and their days in a licensed facility for children, where they are provided services such as medical and legal screenings.

“Traditionally the government has relied on families and supported homestays for this population because of their special needs,” Podkul said. “Very young children can’t sleep through the night all the time. They have physical limitations because of their size. … I don’t know how you provide for that in such a large facility.”

This so-called “shelter” would be one of these:

In South Texas, pediatricians started sounding the alarm weeks ago as migrant shelters began filling up with younger children separated from their parents after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

The concerned pediatricians contacted Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and she flew to Texas and visited a shelter for migrant children in the Rio Grande Valley. There, she saw a young girl in tears. “She couldn’t have been more than 2 years old,” Kraft says. “Just crying and pounding and having a huge, huge temper tantrum. This child was just screaming, and nobody could help her. And we know why she was crying. She didn’t have her mother. She didn’t have her parent who could soothe her and take care of her.”

The number of migrant children in U.S. government custody is soaring — partly the result of a policy decision by the Trump administration to separate children from their parents who are being prosecuted for unlawful entry. Hundreds of the children being held in shelters are under age 13.

Medical professionals, members of Congress and religious leaders are calling on the Trump administration to stop separating migrant families. They question whether these shelter facilities are appropriate for younger children.

[…]

Pediatricians and immigrant advocates are warning that separating migrant children from their families can cause “toxic stress” that disrupts a child’s brain development and harms long-term health.

At the facility in South Texas, Kraft says, the staff told her that federal regulations prevented them from touching or holding the child to soothe her.

While shelter managers and other experts say there is no such rule, Kraft says the confusion underscores why these shelters are not the right place for young children — especially kids who have fled dangerous countries and who have just been separated from their parents. “By separating parents and children, we are doing irreparable harm to these children. The long-term concern of what we call toxic stress is that brains are not developed efficiently or effectively,” Kraft says. “And these children go on to have behavior problems, to have long-term medical problems.”

This is cruel and inhumane, and it is being done as a matter of deliberate policy. What kind of people want to separate parents from their children like this? CM Robert Gallegos, in whose district this would be, wrote this on Facebook:

The mayor will host a press conference early next week regarding the federal government’s proposal. While the City was not involved in the decision or notified beforehand, we will advocate for these children and do all we can to ensure they are cared for with compassion and dignity. Children should be with their families, not warehoused in a detention center hundreds of miles away from their parents. The Trump administration’s inhumane policy of separating families is shameful and goes against the very values our nation was founded on.

Sen. Sylvia Garcia released this statement:

This week it was discovered that federal authorities, in conjunction with contracted private partners, have signed a lease to open a baby jail to detain child immigrants just east of downtown Houston. State Senator Sylvia Garcia issued the following statement in reaction:

“Now is the time to gather together to stop this baby jail before a single child seeking refuge is locked up in our city. The Trump administration has made it clear that it will rip children away from their parents despite legal and child development experts telling them that it is unnecessary and known to cause lifelong harm. No law requires this. Humanity demands compassion. We must say as a community with one voice that jailing children away from their parents is wrong, it should not happen anywhere, and we as Houstonians will not allow it to happen here. Not now. Not ever.”

We need to hear from all of our elected officials. This is an abomination, and we cannot let it happen.

Where CD02 and CD07 stand

Jun 14th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

No comments yet

The race in CD02 gets a little attention from the Chron.

Todd Litton

The demographic elements that make the 7th Congressional District in Houston one of the hottest midterm elections in the nation also run through a neighboring area that has some Democrats dreaming of picking up not one, but two Republican-held congressional seats in Harris County this year.

While the 2nd Congressional District has not received anywhere near the focus of national Republicans or Democrats as the neighboring 7th, the similarities in the districts’ changing demographics – particular the growth of non-white and college educated voters – has Democrats optimistic as they anticipate a national wave election that could sweep Democrats back into power on Capitol Hill.

Both districts have slightly more women then men, nearly identical median ages (35) and median household incomes ($72,000). According to U.S. Census data, both have about 98,000 black residents and about 245,000 Hispanic residents.

But there is one big factor so far keeping the 2nd from becoming a hot race like the battle between Democrat Lizzie Pinnell Fletcher and Rep. John Culberson, a Houston Republican, in the 7th District: Trump.

In 2016, both the 7th and 2nd saw less support for President Donald Trump than what Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney received four years earlier. Romney won over 60 percent of the vote in both districts against President Barack Obama in 2012. But in 2016, Trump won 52 percent in the 2nd Congressional District and just 47 percent of the vote in the 7th, where Culberson has faced few serious challengers.

Those 5 percentage points mean everything to national forecasters who say Trump’s performance in the 7th revealed a major problem for Republicans. There are 20 seats in the House held by Republicans that Clinton won in 2016.

It is true that the difference in performance from 2016 has the forecasted odds for a Democratic win in CD02 lower than they are in CD07. It’s a similar story elsewhere – Cook Political Report and Real Clear Politics have CD07 as a tossup, while Sabato’s somewhat outdated Crystal Ball has CD07 as Lean R. None of them have CD02 on the board. I think that slightly underestimates the chances in CD02. The Morris model puts Litton’s odds at roughly one in six, which seems reasonable. If the wave is high enough, and if Harris County has shifted more than people think, it’s in play. Frankly, the fact that we’re even talking about it is kind of amazing.

Litton has the advantage over Lizzie Fletcher in that CD02 is an open seat. Ted Poe has generally been a more congenial member of Congress, which to some extent may just be a function of having had fewer general election opponents, but it’s fair to say this race would be farther off the radar if Poe were running for re-election. On the other hand, Fletcher gets to run against John Culberson’s record on health care, gun control, flood mitigation, Donald Trump, and so on, all in a year when being an incumbent may not provide the edge it usually does, while Litton will have to work to define Crenshaw before Crenshaw can establish his own identity. Crenshaw and Fletcher had to survive runoffs while Litton and Culberson have been able to focus on the fall since March, but the lengthened campaigns gave the former more exposure to their voters. Litton has the cash on hand advantage over Crenshaw for now, though I don’t expect that to last for long. Fletcher trails Culberson in the money race, but the total raised by Dems in CD07 has far exceeded Culberson’s haul, and now Fletcher isn’t competing with three other high-profile candidates. She will have to deal with outside money attacking her, while if the national groups have engaged in CD02 it’s surely a sign of great things for the Dems and a large helping of doom for the GOP. Overall you’d rather be in Lizzie Fletcher’s position because of the 2016 performance and the general makeup of the districts, but being Todd Litton has its advantages as well.

Justice Department won’t defend DACA, either

Jun 10th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

20 comments

Even less of a surprise.

Agreeing with a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas against the Trump administration to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the U.S. Justice Department told the courts late Friday the program should be terminated.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the administration May 1, alleging the Obama-era program was unconstitutional.

[…]

The Department of Justice said in its filing Friday that DACA is unlawful because it violates the U.S. Constitution in the same way the ill-fated 2014 Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, did. That program that was never implemented after Texas and a coalition of states successfully challenged it in court.

“In sum, as the [U.S.] Attorney General correctly advised DHS, DACA is unlawful because it is an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws that shares the same legal defects that DAPA (and expanded DACA) did,” the filing states.

The DOJ asks that if Texas’ request to halt the program is granted, that the court delay its ruling for two weeks to seek immediate relief from the other court rulings that have mandated the federal government keep the DACA program.

“The DACA litigation brings into sharp focus the problems with nationwide injunctions, and the United States continues to maintain that injunctions that are broader than necessary to redress the plaintiffs’ own injuries are improper,” the DOJ attorneys wrote.

See here for the background. The complaint about nationwide injunctions is kind of precious, since that’s what Paxton is seeking here and has sought in other litigation, which is why he picked this particular court for his filing. This is now the second major Paxton-filed lawsuit that the Justice Department has washed it hands of. MALDEF was allowed to intervene in this lawsuit on behalf of a group of DREAMers in May, so DACA will be defended, no doubt more vigorously than the Justice Department would have done anyway. It’s still a crappy and dangerous thing to do, to pick and choose what laws are worth defending.

On a side note:

In total, the seven states that are part of the lawsuit would lose an estimated $6.9 billion in annual gross domestic product loss by kicking DACA recipients out of the labor force in the respective states. The bulk of these losses would be concentrated in Texas, which stands to lose $6 billion from its annual GDP.

[…]

The seven states suing the Trump administration stand to lose an estimated $369 million annually in state and local tax revenue they currently receive. Texas would lose the most at $313 million in revenue annually.

You know, just in case you needed another reason to think that killing DACA is a really bad idea. Link via Daily Kos.

Who’s willing to tell Trump he’s all wet?

Jun 9th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

8 comments

Not Greg Abbott or Dan Patrick.

During a visit to Pinkerton’s Barbecue on Friday afternoon, gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez said Gov. Greg Abbott failed to forcefully refute the president, who said on Wednesday that some Texans “went out in their boats to watch the hurricane” and that it “didn’t work out too well.”

Abbott told the Chronicle that he had “no information one way or another about that,” comments Valdez said were intended to avoid confronting the president.

“The heck with Trump… what are you doing taking care of somebody else?” Valdez said of Abbott. “Take care of your own people.”

[…]

[Lt. Governor candidate Mike] Collier said Trump’s comments were “one of the more offensive things I’ve ever heard.” He said that Texas’ elected Republican leaders have refrained from criticizing Trump’s comments because they want to protect the president.

See here for the background. Look, this is a layup, even for a craven Republican like Abbott or Patrick. “I’m not sure what the President saw, but the rest of us saw many people going out into the storm to help their neighbors, because that’s what we do in Texas”. Joe Straus got it right. It ain’t rocket science. Now, I do appreciate Abbott and Patrick giving Valdez and Collier a chance to dunk on them, but don’t these guys have advisers? Whatever, keep up the good work, fellas.

If I had a boat…

Jun 8th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

18 comments

…I wouldn’t have used it to go Harvey-watching. Where does he get this crap?

President Donald Trump praised the Coast Guard for its heroics during Hurricane Harvey Wednesday, but credited the high number of water rescues to people taking their boats out to watch the storm roll in, baffling first responders.

Trump was on a conference call with state and federal leaders in preparation for another dreadful hurricane season. During the call, Trump thanked the Coast Guard for their service in helping save 16,000 people after Harvey, Hurricane Maria and other storms. The Coast Guard doesn’t “get enough credit,” Trump said.

“Sixteen thousand people, many of them in Texas, for whatever reason that is. People went out in their boats to watch the hurricane,” Trump said. “That didn’t work out too well.”

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez took umbrage with the president’s remarks, crediting civilians with making an “extraordinary effort” with their own boats to rescue neighbors, relatives and pets as Hurricane Harvey flooded the Texas coast with 52 inches of rain last year.

“I didn’t see anyone taking the approach that would reflect his comments,” Gonzalez said. “I’ll be sure to invite the president to ride out the next hurricane in a jon boat in Galveston Bay the next time one approaches,” he added.

No one could explain the president’s comment.

When asked by the Houston Chronicle to confirm if Texans were out on boats gawking at the storm, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he had “no information one way or another about that.”

Coast Guard Petty Officer Edward Wargo said: “I don’t know how we would go about confirming that,” when asked for evidence.

“I don’t even know how to respond to that,” said Marty Lancton, president of the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association.

In another reality, I’d just assume Donald Trump is stoned. In this world, there’s no point in trying to explain anything he says or does. He lies and he makes shit up, and that’s all there is to it. The Associated Press has more, but I can’t leave it like this. I need something to cleanse my palate.

There. Much better now.

Harris County poll: Hidalgo 53, Emmett 47

Jun 1st, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

16 comments

From the inbox last week:

Lina Hidalgo

The Lina Hidalgo campaign for Harris County Judge today released the results of its first county-wide poll, showing the Democratic challenger leading the Republican incumbent by a stunning six percentage points; among Harris County voters who plan to vote in the County Judge race, 53% plan to vote for Lina Hidalgo and 47% say they will vote for Ed Emmett.

The poll, conducted by Texas Democratic Party-authorized polling firm, Change Research, surveyed more than 1700 registered voters in Harris County on May 11, 12, 13, 19, and 20, and has a margin of error of +/- 3%.

“This poll supports what I am hearing as I travel to every corner of Harris County – that people are ready for new, authentic leadership for the future,” said Hidalgo. “In spite of the poll’s heartening results, I plan to campaign every day as if we are six points down, not six points up. I will work my heart out to make sure that every voter in Harris County feels heard and included.”

Other poll findings of note include:

94% of Harris County voters report feeling more interested (56%) in or equally as interested (38%) in the 2018 election as they have felt about prior elections.

President Trump is viewed unfavorably by 60% of Harris County voters

Voters report that the three issues that will drive their voting behavior most in November are:

1. Government transparency
2. Education
3. Jobs

Like me, you probably had a lot of questions when you saw this. I went ahead and emailed the Hidalgo campaign to get more information about the poll, and they graciously provided me this executive summary and this spreadsheet with the questions and answers broken down by race/age/gender/etc. I think the best way to present the fuller data set and discuss the points I want to raise are to go through the questions and responses in the spreadsheet. So with that said, here we go.

Question: Which of the following best desribes you? “I live in Harris County, am registered to vote, and identify as a”:


               All  Trump  Clinton  No vote
===========================================
Democrat     41.6%   1.2%    74.9%    23.2%
Republican   33.5%  78.9%     2.0%    14.2%
Independent  24.9%  19.9%    23.1%    52.6%

Question: Do you plan to vote in the November 6, 2018 elections?


               All  Trump  Clinton  No vote
===========================================
Yes          81.4%  89.9%    87.9%    56.8%
Maybe        16.5%   8.8%    11.4%    30.0%
No            2.2%   1.2%     0.7%    13.2%

Question: How interested are you in the election in 2018 compared to previous elections?


               All  Trump  Clinton  No vote
===========================================
More         56.3%   46.5%   69.1%    39.8%
Same         38.0%   50.4%   26.2%    37.4%
Less          1.9%    2.2%    0.8%     9.5%
Unsure        3.7%    0.9%    3.8%    13.3%

First things first, all responses are given as percentages rather than number of respondents. You can reverse engineer that, of course, but I think it’s more illustrative to provide both. That will especially be the case with some later questions. I sent a separate email to the contact for the polling firm about that; I’ll update if I get a response.

In the questions above, “Trump” and “Clinton” refer to the subset of people who said they voted for Trump or Clinton in 2016, while “No vote” are the people who said they didn’t vote in 2016. There isn’t a question asking why someone did not vote in 2016, so it could be the case that they were not eligible – too young, or not yet a citizen – or not registered. Basically, this says there are more people who identify as Democrats in Harris County – I don’t think that is a surprise to anyone – and a larger share of self-identified Republicans voted for Trump than Dems voted for Clinton. As for questions 2 and 3, it sure seems like everyone is excited to vote this fall, with Democrats perhaps more so. Needless to say, that remains to be seen. How true these sentiments are will be the million dollar question for candidates, pollsters, and loud-mouthed pundits.

Question: In the 2016 election, did you vote for:


Trump      36.8%
Clinton    48.7%
Johnson     2.8%
Stein       2.4%
No vote     9.4%

As a reminder, 53.95% of voters in Harris County actually voted for Hillary Clinton, while 41.61% voted for Trump. Gary Johnson took 3.03%, while Jill Stein had 0.90%, which means this poll oversamples Jill Stein voters. Make note of the date, you may never see that again. Another 0.43% wrote in Evan McMullin, and a further 0.09% wrote in someone else. If you go back to question 1, that’s why the Trump/Clinton/No vote subsets didn’t add up to 100%.

(Yes, I’m jumping around a little. This is how I want to present the data.)

Question: On a scale of 1-10, how do you feel about President Donald Trump today? 1 = strongly oppose, 10 = strongly support


               All  Trump  Clinton  No vote
===========================================
1            39.7%   0.3%    71.8%    35.5%
2            10.0%   0.0%    18.3%     3.5%
3-8          20.3%  15.2%     9.5%    47.9%
9             5.6%  14.2%     0.0%     4.3%
10           24.4%  64.1%     0.4%     8.8%

Allow me to point to this tweet by Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report to explain what this means.

You can’t understand/predict 2018 election w/out appreciating the role of “intensity” or ‘enthusiasm gap.” The intensity of negatives feelings toward Trump isn’t equally matched by intensity of positive feelings. Watch this number going forward… pic.twitter.com/C1qKBibNeq

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) 4:21 PM – 24 May 2018

90.1% of Clinton voters have the strongest negative feelings about Trump, while 78.3% of Trump voters have the strongest positive feelings about him. ‘Nuff said. Oh, and the non-voters mostly don’t like him, too.

Question: For whom do you plan to vote in the 2018 election for US Senate?


                 All  Trump  Clinton  No vote
=============================================
Ted Cruz       42.0%  93.4%     3.6%    31.2%
Beto O'Rourke  49.3%   2.1%    90.5%    52.2%
Neal Dikeman    1.9%   1.1%     0.7%     4.1%
Bob McNeil      6.9%   3.4%     5.2%    12.5%

Neal Dikeman is the Libertarian candidate. Bob McNeil is an independent who could be fairly classified as farther to the right than Cruz. He’s also not yet officially on the ballot yet, as he has to turn in some 47K petition signatures to the Secretary of State by June 21. Good luck with that. His presence in the question is basically noise, so don’t be too distracted by it. There won’t be a Green Party candidate. The 3.6% of Clinton supporters for Cruz is a reminder that there were a non-trivial number of Republicans who crossed over to vote for Clinton in 2016. Note here that all the numbers add up to 100, which is something that never happens in polls. You will see a possible mechanism for this in the next section.

Oh, and as for that Quinnipiac poll, don’t try to reconcile these two results. I think it is unlikely that O’Rourke could win Harris County by seven points while losing the state by double digits, but that doesn’t imply in any way that one poll is more “valid” or “correct” than the other. They are their own separate data points.

Question: For whom do you plan to vote in the 2018 election for Harris County Judge?


                 All  Trump  Clinton  No vote
=============================================
Ed Emmett      34.3%  74.9%    13.9%    14.0%
Lina Hidalgo   33.5%   2.8%    63.5%    30.4%
Won't vote     32.2%  22.4%    22.7%    55.6%

Question for undecided voters: If you had to choose for whom to vote for Harris County Judge in the 2018 election, who would you select?


                 All  Trump  Clinton  No vote
=============================================
Ed Emmett      24.7%  67.9%     9.8%    14.6%
Lina Hidalgo   44.7%  14.8%    74.7%    45.1%
Won't vote     30.7%  17.3%    15.5%    40.4%

Totals excluding undecided voters:


                 All  Trump  Clinton  No vote
=============================================
Ed Emmett      47.2%  93.7%    16.7%    28.5%
Lina Hidalgo   52.8%   6.3%    83.3%    71.5%

And here is how we get to the headline number. I don’t care for this construction. Having “won’t vote” as a choice rather than the more standard “don’t know” is a weird decision, one that casts some doubt on the “enthusiasm for voting” question. Regardless, any way you look at it, one may reasonably conclude that these voters as a group may be less likely than those who picked a name. As such, you can’t add them together. It’s my presumption that the pollster went through a similar exercise in the US Senate question (this might help explain the bizarrely high percentage for the candidate who probably won’t be on the ballot, who I’d bet none of the respondents had ever heard of – basically, he’s the “none of the above” choice), though they didn’t show the individual steps for how they got there.

I mean look, Ed Emmett has to be the best-known politician in the county, while Lina Hidalgo – who was unopposed in March and didn’t have much money as of January – surely has low name recognition. The fact that she was within a point of him in the first question, assuming the sample is reasonable, is pretty encouraging on its own. It’s a reflection of the partisan split in Harris County – remember, Emmett gets a significant number of crossovers – and demonstrates that Hidalgo has a lot of room to grow, as surely a decent number of those “won’t vote” respondents are actually likely Dems who just don’t know who she is yet. I don’t understand the need to push it further than that. And in thinking about it, I’m a little concerned that the O’Rourke/Cruz first-question numbers were a few points closer, with the “but if you had to choose” question being the reason for the larger gap.

So what do I make of this? As I say, it’s a data point. Maybe it will be in line with others – I’m sure we’ll see other polls – and maybe it won’t. I expect we’ll see plenty of conflicting results – again, so much of this depends on who shows up in November, and right now no one knows how that will look. We’re guessing. Some will guess better than others, and will base their guesses on better data. I think this particular result is optimistic, but reasonably so. Plausibly so. I’ll feel better if and when I see more results like it, or results from other races that correlate with it. But it’s one result, and the Quinnipiac experience reminds us again to not put too much stock in any one result.

The crossover question

May 10th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

From G. Elliott Morris, reviewing the recent AZ-08 special Congressional election:

The second thing to learn from AZ-08 helps explain the first: if Democrats aren’t winning because of differential turnout (or, not solely because of differential turnout), why are they? The only explanation is that Republicans are crossing over to vote for Democrats](https://twitter.com/geoffreyvs/status/988982464524750853). This is clear as day in the early voting numbers from Arizona’s 8th.

Here are the data: In the 155,000 early/absentee mail-in ballots cast in last night’s contest, Republicans ran a 21-point margin in party registration. One would assume (perhaps naively, as candidates from one party aren’t wed to that candidate) that this would give them a 21-point margin in actual ballots cast for either ticket. As I explained on my blog this assumption could go wrong for many reasons:

Early voting data are not “real results,” per se, despite what some analysts would have you believe, since partisanship does not equal vote choice. Though they are very correlated in modern America it is not a safe bet to assume all GOP ballots are for GOP candidates, and vice versa for Democratic voters and candidates. Such assumptions would have led us quite astray in the Texas primaries where Democrats cast more early votes than Republicans for the first time since 2010, but cast just 40% of total votes in the D or R primaries.

Indeed, the early vote did mislead. Debbie Lesko won these “R+21” early votes by just a 6-point margin, meaning there was enough persuasion of Republicans to Tipirneni’s side to move the needle fifteen points. That is certainly (or, at the very least, it ought to be) enough to make many Republican elected officials shake in their boots.

There is an extra point to be made here: even in a contest where 75% of ballots are cast early, our analysis of those results can often go wrong. Stick (though not exclusively) to the polls, folks; Emerson College pegged Lesko’s lead at 6 points. She won by 6.

Hold that thought, because Harry Enten was thinking along similar lines.

Republicans turned out in this election. The relative difference between Democrats and Republicans in registration among those who voted was about equal to overall registration figures. The number of people who voted in the special is fairly close to the number who voted in the the district during the last midterm election, in 2014. That’s not surprising because it is easy to vote early and by mail in Arizona. This allowed Republicans, who perhaps might have be been uninspired, to cast ballots without too much hassle.

It also means, however, that poor turnout is not an excuse for Republicans in this race. One common reason to be cautious of the special election results so far has been low turnout. Yet this election, like Pennsylvania 18 last month, saw turnout close to or exceeding 2014 levels, and Republicans trailed greatly behind the partisan baseline of these districts.

Finally, Republicans had a good candidate in Lesko. She had no major scandals and raised plenty of money. One of the excuses in previous elections that Republicans lost like Alabama US Senate (with Republican Roy Moore) and Pennsylvania 18 (with Republican Rick Saccone) was that the Republican was either scandal plagued or didn’t know how to raise funds. Lesko wasn’t either of those, and there was still a significant shift to the left.

Martin Longman and Ed Kilgore also discuss this evidence from the special elections that some non-trivial number of people who had identified (or registered, in the states that do that) as Republicans have not been voting for Republican candidates. Kilgore notes that national polling indicates that independents are pretty heavily negative on Donald Trump, which I will note is in line with that Quinnipiac Texas poll that had some people loudly complaining.

Now as always, it’s hard to say how much the national atmosphere applies to Texas, though it’s pretty clear that the state was an accurate reflection of said mood in 2006 and 2010 and 2014. To the extent that Democrats have a shot at winning races here that they haven’t won before, the formula starts with a boost in base turnout, because being outvoted by a million people statewide is not a good recipe for success. But if more Democrats showing up can put certain candidates in range, then a sufficient number of crossovers could put them the rest of the way over the top. To cite two recent examples, about 300,000 people who otherwise voted Republican voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and for Bill White in 2010. Neither candidate won, but in a context where base Democratic voting was higher, they could have.

How much of this happens this November, statewide and in the various specific districts of interest, is anyone’s guess right now, but may become clearer as we get more polling results. The point I’m making here is that there is evidence of it happening with Republicans elsewhere, and that this has been a part of the Democratic improvement in recent elections. In the absence of more polls like that Q-pac poll we can’t assume it’s happening here, but in the absence of more polls that aren’t like that Q-pac poll we can’t assume it’s not happening, either.

Greg Abbott, Russian stooge

May 4th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Heck of a job, Greggie.

A former director of the CIA and NSA said Wednesday that hysteria in Texas over a 2015 U.S. military training exercise called Jade Helm was fueled by Russians wanting to dominate “the information space,” and that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to send the Texas State Guard to monitor the operation gave them proof of the power of such misinformation campaigns.

Michael Hayden, speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe podcast, chalked up peoples’ fear over Jade Helm 15 to “Russian bots and the American alt-right media [that] convinced many Texans [Jade Helm] was an Obama plan to round up political dissidents.”

Abbott ordered the State Guard to monitor the federal exercise soon after news broke of the operation. Hayden said that move gave Russians the go-ahead to continue — and possibly expand — their efforts to spread fear.

“At that point, I’m figuring the Russians are saying, ‘We can go big time,’” Hayden said of Abbott’s response. “At that point, I think they made the decision, ‘We’re going to play in the electoral process.’”

You can read the rest, and you can listen to the Morning Joe podcast – Gen. Hayden was also on The Gist with Mike Pesca on Wednesday, though he wasn’t specifically talking about Jade Helm. I just have two things to add. One is that from now on, any time Greg Abbott criticizes anyone for any reason, the response should be along the lines of “Well, at least [whoever] didn’t fall for Russian propaganda”. And two, from the Observer:

Meanwhile, another Jade Helm-style exercise is planned for San Angelo in June. Oddly enough, now that Trump is president, there’s a notable lack of freaking out this time.

Well, the Russians aren’t trying to goad idiots like Greg Abbott into peeing their pants over it this time. Amazing what a difference that makes. ThinkProgress and the Lone Star Project have more.

Paxton sues to end DACA

May 2nd, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

This guy, I swear.

Best mugshot ever

Following through on a months-old promise, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Tuesday to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, leading a seven-state coalition against an Obama-era immigration measure that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants nationwide from deportation, including more than 120,000 in Texas.

Paxton first threatened in June 2017 to sue over the program if President Donald Trump’s administration had not ended it by September. After federal court rulings blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to end the program, Paxton wrote in January that he would consider filing suit if DACA still stood in June.

But a recent ruling in favor of DACA seems to have shifted up Paxton’s timeline. The announcement comes exactly a week after a federal judge in Washington, D.C. ordered the Trump administration to continue the program and reopen it to new applicants. That was the third — and by far the strongest — rebuke of Trump’s efforts to rescind the program. Judges in California and New York had previously ordered the administration to renew work permits for immigrants enrolled in the program.

[…]

Liberal groups and lawmakers quickly condemned Paxton’s lawsuit, with state Rep. Rafael Anchia calling it “not only bad policy, it’s bad politics.”

“Instead of wasting taxpayer funds to pick on these Americans without status, the Attorney General should join the bipartisan chorus calling on Congress to fix a broken immigration system that denies these kids their rightful place at the American table,” said Anchia, a Dallas Democrat who chairs the Mexican American Legislative Caucus.

Ending the program would cost Texas more than 100,000 workers and nearly billions of dollars in GDP losses, MALC said in a press release. Ending DACA will lead to “the separation of countless families,” said Cristina Tzintzun, the founder of Jolt Texas, a new group working to mobilize young Latino voters.

Paxton warned Tuesday that conceding the presidential power to establish a program like DACA sets a dangerous precedent that could allow executives to “ignore the will of the people” and set their own policies on a long list of policy points. Paxton also criticized “activist judges” in federal court for keeping in place an “unconstitutional” law.

See here for some background. There really is no dimension along which destroying DACA is a good idea, not that such things matter to the likes of Paxton. DACA also polls really well, including among Republicans, which may be why Paxton could only round up five co-conspirators this time. And you know, the guy who goes court-shopping for nationwide injunctions against laws he doesn’t like can take that “activist judges” crap and stick it where the sun don’t shine. I never thought I’d want to see someone get convicted of a felony more than I wanted to see Tom DeLay get convicted of a felony, but I really really want to see Ken Paxton get convicted of a felony. The Chron and RG Ratcliffe have more.

An article about Congressional race in Texas that doesn’t mention CD07

Apr 20th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Who knew that was even legal?

Gina Ortiz Jones

Several of the most truly competitive House races in the country are in Texas, which could wind up providing Democrats three or more of the 24 flipped seats that they need for control of the chamber. The state tells the tale of the November midterms as well as anywhere else.

The appeal of youth, of first-timers, of women, of veterans and of candidates of color will be tested here. And a bevy of compelling characters have emerged from the primaries on March 6 and are poised to prevail in runoffs on May 22.

There’s Gina Ortiz Jones, for example. Jones, 37, is almost certain to be the Democrat challenging Representative Will Hurd in the 23rd District, which sprawls from San Antonio to the outskirts of El Paso. Despite its large numbers of rural voters, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the 23rd by more than three points. (Clinton lost the state by nine.)

Jones was an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq. Like Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, she drew the support of the Serve America PAC, which promotes veterans as candidates on the theory that they can help Democrats forge a cultural connection with working-class voters in swing districts.

She’s Filipina-American. She’s also openly lesbian, and while Texas political analysts told me that they weren’t sure whether that would affect her bid, Jones has figured out precisely how to handle it: with brief acknowledgment and no special focus.

[…]

Colin Allred

Democrats also have an excellent shot at victory in the 32nd District, a collection of Dallas neighborhoods and suburbs. Its Republican incumbent, Pete Sessions, has been in Congress for two decades, but the district has become more diverse and less white over those years, and his likely opponent, a black civil rights lawyer named Colin Allred, should benefit from that.

Allred is 34. Like Jones, he’s making his first run for office. Also like her, he has an unconventional professional biography. Before getting his law degree at the University of California, Berkeley, he played professional football for the Tennessee Titans, and before that he was a football star at Baylor University in Waco and at a high school in his Dallas district. Many of its voters remember watching him play.

And more of them voted for Clinton than for Trump in the presidential election, a sign of the district’s evolution and an outcome for which Democrats were so unprepared that not a single Democrat challenged Sessions in 2016. This time around, seven Democrats entered the race. Allred got 38.5 percent of the votes in the primary, more than twice that of the second-place finisher.

[…]

Democrats are even eyeing a few districts that Trump won, like the 21st and 31st. The 21st attracted the party’s attention largely because its Republican incumbent, Lamar Smith, isn’t seeking re-election. He decided to retire after more than three decades in the House.

And the 31st? Well, it’s hard not to indulge in some optimism when your party’s leading candidate is a female war hero whose story is possibly becoming a movie, “Shoot Like a Girl,” starring Angelina Jolie. That candidate, M. J. Hegar, 42, did several tours of duty in Afghanistan as a search-and-rescue pilot and won a Purple Heart after she was wounded while saving fellow passengers when the Taliban shot down her helicopter.

Richard Murray, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, told me to keep an eye as well on the 22nd District, a largely suburban swath of the Houston area that he described as a microcosm of demographic changes that are making the state ever more hospitable Democratic turf.

“The suburban counties that led Republicans to dominance here 25 years ago are getting significantly less Republican fast,” he said, adding that Fort Bend County, in the 22nd, is roughly 20 percent Asian-American now. The first-place finisher in the district’s Democratic primary, Sri Preston Kulkarni, is Indian-American. Murray said that if Kulkarni wins his runoff, that could be a significant boost to Democrats’ chances to nab this House seat.

Couple things here. All these matchups are contingent on the outcome of the runoffs. While Ortiz Jones and Allred are solid favorites in May based on their performances in March, the others are less clear. Kulkarni led runnerup Letitia Plummer 31.9 to 24.3, which is far from insurmountable. Hegar drew 44.9%, better than either Ortiz Jones or Allred, but second place finisher Christine Eady Mann had 33.5%, so her lead is much smaller. And then there’s the 21st, where the more establishment (and big money) candidate Joseph Kopser trailed the less-heralded Mary Wilson by two points. It will be interesting to see how this one is perceived if Wilson prevails in the runoff.

There are other districts that author Frank Bruni could have included as well, mostly CDs 02 and 06, both of which are open seats. Plus, you know, CD07. It’s important to remember that with the exception of CD23, all these districts were drawn to withstand a strong Democratic year, though that will be tested in November. Candidate quality does make a difference in tough races, and the basic thesis that the Dems here have collected a quality slate is accurate. From here on out it’s all about execution.

Quinnipiac: Cruz 47, O’Rourke 44

Apr 19th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

Pretty good poll result, with the ever-present proviso that it’s just one result.

Rep. Beto O’Rourke

The closely watched U.S. Senate race in Texas is too close to call, with 47 percent for Republican incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz and 44 percent for U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, his Democratic challenger, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll released today.

There are wide party, gender, age and racial gaps, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN- uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds:

O’Rourke gets 87 – 9 percent support from Democrats and 51 – 37 percent backing from independent voters, as Republicans go to Cruz 88 – 6 percent;

Men back Cruz 51 – 40 percent, while women go 47 percent for O’Rourke and 43 percent for Cruz;

Voters 18 to 34 years old go Democratic 50 – 34 percent, while voters over 65 years old go Republican 50 – 43 percent;

White voters back Cruz 59 – 34 percent, as O’Rourke leads 78 – 18 percent among black voters and 51 – 33 percent among Hispanic voters.

Sen. Cruz gets lackluster grades, including a 47 – 45 percent job approval rating and a 46 – 44 percent favorability rating. O’Rourke gets a 30 – 16 percent favorability rating, but 53 percent of Texas voters don’t know enough about him to form an opinion of him.

Texas voters “like Ted Cruz as a person” 47 – 38 percent. Voters “like Beto O’Rourke as a person” 40 – 13 percent with 47 percent undecided.

“Democrats have had a target on Sen. Ted Cruz’s back, and they may be hitting the mark. Once expected to ‘cruise’ to reelection, the incumbent is in a tight race with Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll.

“The key may well be independent voters. O’Rourke’s 51 – 37 percent lead among that group is key to his standing today. But Texas remains a strong GOP state so O’Rourke will need the independent strength to pull the upset.”

[…]

In the Texas governor’s race, Republican incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott tops former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez 49 – 40 percent and leads entrepreneur Andrew White 48 – 41 percent.

Voters approve 54 – 33 percent of the job Gov. Abbott is doing and give him a 51 – 33 percent favorability. His challengers are largely unknown as 65 percent don’t know enough about Valdez to form an opinion of her and 72 percent don’t know enough about White.

“Gov. Greg Abbott has a modest lead over each of the two people vying for the Democratic nomination. But what is significant is that governors with 54 percent job approval ratings rarely lose,” Brown said.

Texas voters disapprove 52 – 43 percent of the job President Donald Trump is doing. Republicans approve 85 – 13 percent. Disapproval is 90 – 8 percent among Democrats and 64 – 28 percent among independent voters.

President Trump will not be an important factor in their U.S. Senate vote, 43 percent of Texas voters say, while 26 percent say their vote will be more to express support for Trump and 27 percent say their vote will be more to express opposition.

The poll was of “1,029 Texas voters”, which I assume means registered voters. For comparison, the earlier poll results we have re:

PPP: Cruz 45, O’Rourke 37
Wilson Perkins: Cruz 52, O’Rourke 34

Not too surprisingly, this one has one of the lower approval ratings for Donald Trump, which is no doubt correlated to the overall numbers. What stands out the most to me is that all three Democratic candidates score at least forty percent even though their name ID is quite low – in the questions about favorability, the “haven’t heard enough about them” choice is 53% for Beto, 65% for Valdez, and 72% for White. I’d usually expect that to be in conjunction with a “vote for” number at best in the low 30s. The fact that it’s higher suggests to me this is another piece of evidence for the higher level of engagement.

Another thing that would suggest more engagement will be poll numbers that are consistently at least in the high thirties and forties. That may not sound like much, but look on the sidebar at the numbers from 2014 and 2016. I did a little figuring, and I found that Hillary Clinton had a 38.53% poll average across 19 polls,with a high score 46 (twice) and a low score 30. Wendy Davis in 2014 had a 36.87% poll average across 15 polls. Her high score was 42, and her low score was 32 (twice). One poll number above those totals doesn’t mean anything – remember, the first two results we saw in the Senate race had Beto and 34 and 37 – but a string of them would.

I say all that as a way of trying to put this into perspective. I’ve seen some good poll results before – again, look at that sidebar. It’s just that for each good one, there are four or five not so good ones, so we fixate on the good ones. These are good numbers, but if you read the whole poll memo, you see that Cruz beats O’Rourke in all the “who do you prefer on this issue” questions, and Abbott as noted has a shiny approval rating. Plus, you know, we Texas Democrats don’t exactly have a track record for turning out in the off years. By all means, take this as something positive, but for crying out loud don’t take it as gospel. The Observer, the DMN, RG Ratcliffe, Mother Jones and the Trib have more.

Are Texas Republicans really worried about Trump for November?

Apr 18th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

I mean, I guess they are. They’ve seen what has happened around the country, in other elections and other red places. I don’t know how worried they are, or how worried they should be.

This is a Red State where Trump remains popular among most Republicans and even some Democrats, a state that he won in 2016 by a slimmer margin that Republican Mitt Romney had four years before. And while political consultants for both parties agree he will be a drag on Texas Republicans in November, the growing question is just how much.

Fact: For the first time in a decade, Texas Republicans are having to worry about the vote drag their president could have on elections, much as Democrats suffered through eight years of Barack Obama, whom Texas Republicans loved to hate.

“Trump won’t be as much of an effect as he is in some northern states, but he will have impact here,” said Mark Jones, a Rice University political science professor who has been monitoring the “Trump effect” in Texas races for months. “In some of the down ballot races in Texas, the strategy you’re seeing is a modest embrace of Trump. … Republicans with strong brands like Abbott are not going to tarnish themselves by agreeing with him.”

Even so, Abbott confidantes privately acknowledge he likely will be re-elected by a slimmer margin than four years ago, when he beat Democratic rising star Wendy Davis by 20 points. They blame Trump.

“It’s not a question about whether there will be a Trump drag in Texas, the only question right now is how big it will be — and how many Republican incumbents will be in trouble,” said Harold Cook, a political consultant who is a former executive director of the state Democratic party.

“If you’re a member of Congress or state Senate or House incumbent who has a credible Democratic opponent, and you’re in districts that went for Trump less than 7 or 8 … points, you better be out working your ass off to get re-elected.”

I don’t disagree with any of this, but it’s hard to contextualize. The last two midterm elections in which there was a Republican President were 2002, when Dubya Bush was very popular, and 2006, when his approval rating had crashed and Rick Perry was fending off multiple challengers. The former was a great year for the GOP here and the latter was a lousy year for them (downballot, at least), but neither is a great comparison for this year. In the limited polling we have, Trump’s approval ratings are good with Republicans, terrible with Democrats, and not great with independents. How that compares with 2002 and 2006, I couldn’t say.

I think everyone expects Democratic turnout to be up this fall from previous midterms. The problem is that Democratic turnout has been so consistently crappy in previous midterms that there’s a lot of room for turnout to improve without making that much difference. We’d need to boost our baseline offyear performance by about fifty percent, to get to around 2.7 million, to really see significant gains. The good news is that basically everything would be competitive at that point, from the statewide races to a half dozen or more Congressional seats to enough legislative seats to make 2019 look like 2009. The bad news is that we’ve never come withing hailing distance of such a total, and Republicans have every reason to feel confident that it’s all just talk since we’ve never done anything like it.

So I just don’t know. I’m optimistic in general, and I really think good things will happen in Harris County and other areas that have been trending blue. I wish I knew how to quantify it, and I wish I knew how confident to feel beyond that.

The Ted Cruz brand

Apr 3rd, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

8 comments

It takes all kinds.

Not Ted Cruz

While some Republicans may fret about Trump’s shaky approval ratings or their party’s brand among disappointed conservatives, Cruz seems to occupy his own space in the political firmament. Launching his 2018 reelection campaign in Houston on Monday, he can fall back on his own tried-and-true persona: an unreconstructed conservative born of the party’s grass-roots base.

It is an identity that also could serve in some degree as a bulwark against the anti-Trump wave that has propelled his Democratic challenger, El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke, who launched his long-shot campaign a year ago Saturday.

Whatever the president’s fortunes in a tumultuous and often chaotic White House, Cruz, once Trump’s fiercest GOP critic, appears ready to stand on his own.

“He’s certainly not a Trump Republican,” University of Texas government scholar Sean Theriault said. “He’s a Cruz Republican, and I mean Cruz in all caps. He definitely marches to the beat of his own drummer.”

[…]

Although Cruz has smoothed over his differences with Trump since their bitter 2016 GOP primary rivalry, it always has been clear that Cruz represents a much more orthodox strain of conservatism.

From Cruz’s perspective, Trump’s decisive advantage was his cross-over celebrity appeal, an unforeseen X-factor that may or may not still drive voters to the polls.

“The percentage that Trump has that like him, they’re not political people,” said GOP strategist Rick Tyler, who worked on Cruz’s presidential campaign. “They’re not going to show up for other Republicans, and never have. So, the idea that Trump is going to drive people to the polls in Texas is not there. But I don’t think Cruz relies on those people.”

Indeed, all the early signs point to a familiar Cruz strategy of focusing on his conservative base and it die-hard tea party and evangelical activists.

I agree with Sean Theriault that Cruz is a TED CRUZ Republican, whose thoughts and instincts are always about himself and his own interests. I don’t agree that this means that Cruz is a not-Trump Republican, because the only time Cruz has ever opposed Trump, even to the minimal and mostly performative extent of other Republicans when they clutch their pearls over some horrible thing Trump has said, is when he was still running for President. I think he doesn’t like talking about Trump because that takes away from talking about himself.

For sure, this election is about base turnout, and if I were somehow in the position of advising Ted Cruz I’d tell him to focus on making sure his people are engaged. Given Cruz’s lukewarm poll numbers – really, most people just don’t like the guy – it’s an interesting question how big that base is. The Venn diagram of “Ted Cruz Republicans” and “Donald Trump Republicans” surely has a lot of overlap, but I’d bet the not-overlapping part of that set is significant. He’s the favorite to win because he starts out with more voters, but one way or another we’ll get a better idea this year just how much support he really has. The Trib has more.

Everybody should be counted

Mar 30th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

7 comments

The 2020 Census has big challenges, especially in Texas.

But even two years out from the 2020 count, local officials, demographers, community organizers and advocates say they are worried the census could be particularly tough to carry out in Texas this go-around.

They are bracing for challenges both practical — Hurricane Harvey displacement, internet accessibility and fewer funds with which to knock on doors — and political, namely anti-immigrant rhetoric and fears that a citizenship question will be included in the census questionnaire. Those issues aren’t insurmountable, officials say, but they will probably make Texas, which is already hard to count, even tougher to enumerate.

An accurate census is critical to the state. It is used to determine how many representatives Texas is entitled to elect to Congress. And the Texas Legislature and local governments rely on the data to redraw corresponding political boundaries.

The census also serves as a roadmap for the distribution of billions of federal dollars to the state and local communities, including funding for low-income housing, medical assistance and transportation projects.

But those working toward an accurate count in Texas are, in many ways, starting from behind. Massive in both size and population, Texas is home to millions of residents who fall into the categories of people who pose the biggest challenges for the headcount — immigrants, college students, children younger than 5 years old, to name a few.

After the 2010 census count, the U.S. Census Bureau found that most Texas residents live in areas that may be harder to count. Using a “low response score,” which is based on the likelihood that residents will not self-respond to a questionnaire, the bureau found that most Texas residents live in census tracts — geographic areas that include 1,200 to 8,000 residents — that exceed the national average for low response scores.

That’s particularly evident in areas with large shares of Hispanics and residents living in poverty, which are prevalent across the state.

“Certainly, we have populations that are hard to count — people whose first language isn’t English, people who have lower levels of educational attainment, people who move frequently,” state demographer Lloyd Potter said. “You have both recent immigrants and then, certainly, people who are unauthorized who are going to be wary of anyone who is knocking on their door and asking questions.”

That’s the chief concern among those working toward an accurate count in Texas.

Almost 5 million immigrants live in the state, and it’s estimated that about two-thirds are noncitizens — legal permanent residents, immigrants with another form of legal status or undocumented immigrants. Additionally, more than 1 million Texans who are U.S. citizens live with at least one family member who is undocumented.

Local officials, advocates and demographers for months have expressed grave concerns about the reception the 2020 census will receive among Texas immigrants who have likely followed years-long heated national and local debates over undocumented immigrants, immigration-enforcement laws like the one passed by the Texas Legislature last year and immigration crackdowns.

“Anyone close to this issue is really concerned. It’s an anti-immigrant environment,” said Ryan Robinson, demographer for Austin, which is home to 167,000 immigrants. “It’s always hard to count immigrants, but this is really going to be a tough issue.”

The fact that preparations for the Census are being done now by the understaffed and under-competent Trump administration isn’t making this any easier. Remember that the reason Texas got those four extra Congressional seats in the 2010 Census was our rapid growth due in large part to immigration. It would be quite ironic if we missed out on getting a seat or two because of a Census undercount that was the result of Republican legislative priorities. The Trib, Mother Jones, Texas Monthly, and Erica Greider have more.

Chron overview of CD07 runoff

Mar 23rd, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

I have three things to say about this.

Lizzie Fletcher

Democrats looking for a ray of hope in Houston’s Republican-leaning Seventh Congressional District have their sights locked on an apparent upset victory in a conservative Pennsylvania district that President Donald Trump won by 20 points in 2016.

But the lessons learned from Conor Lamb’s surprise 600-vote win – barring legal challenges – could mean very different things to the two Houston Democrats squaring off in the May 22 primary runoff to face nine-term Republican incumbent John Culberson.

In a race that Democrats see as one of their best pick-up opportunities in the nation, the two rivals, attorney Lizzie Pannill Fletcher and writer-activist Laura Moser, both have started fundraising off Lamb’s victory.

[…]

Rice University political scientists Mark Jones notes that although Trump lost the district to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by nearly 1.5 percent, it still remains decidedly GOP ground that routinely favors Republican candidates by wide margins.

To Jones, who once worked for former Missouri U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, what that means is that Culberson will likely downplay Trump in the election – if that’s possible. And for Democrats, given their recent upsets in Alabama and western Pennsylvania, it suggests a tack to the middle.

“Actually, there does seem to be a formula,” Jones said. “The formula is, give Republicans somebody they don’t feel uncomfortable voting for.”

Laura Moser

Moser, in a Chronicle interview before the primary election, said she doesn’t see it that way. “We have tried something over and over in Texas politics, which is to run to the middle and to the right, and it’s not working,” she said. “So why not stand firm for the values that we share? I’m progressive, but I don’t think that the things I stand for are out of keeping with what the majority of this district believes.”

Other Texas Democrats see merit in trying to harness the party’s new-found energy since Trump’s election. Some argue that much of that energy comes from the left with groups such as Our Revolution, a spinoff from Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign that has endorsed Moser.

“Midterm elections are base elections,” said Ed Espinoza of Progress Texas, a group that represents the liberal wing of the state’s Democratic Party – but which remains neutral in the Moser-Fletcher runoff. “Your task is getting more of your people out than they can get of their people.”

The March 6 primary, however, offered up some sobering math for Houston Democrats. Some 38,032 voters cast ballots in the Seventh District’s GOP primary, a sleepy affair in which Culberson faced just one largely-unknown challenger. In contrast, only 33,176 people came out to vote in the Democratic primary, a seven-way contest with at least four well-financed contenders.

Though turnout on both sides can be expected to increase in the November general election, Jones argues that a base-election strategy for Democrats can only work in a truly swing district – which the Seventh is not. “Even if the base is super-enthused, you’re still going to lose by five or 10 points,” he said.

But to Espinoza, the likelihood of flipping anti-Trump Republican voters in the Seventh District seems remote. “Republican voters have either embraced the crazy, or they’ve jumped ship and they’re going to stay home,” he said. “Any voters who have left the Republican Party, they are not looking for Trump-lite. They’re looking for Trump-opposite.”

1. In the matter of the “turnout or persuasion” debate, the correct answer for this district, and likely some (though not all) others, is “both”. Mark Jones is correct that CD07 isn’t really a swing district, at least not based on 2016 results, in which the average Democratic judicial candidate received 43.5% of the vote. Trying to win here on increased turnout alone is a heavy lift, one that depends to some extent on a factor you can’t control, which is the other side’s turnout level. On the other hand, the fewer voters you need to persuade to cross over, the better. If you can boost turnout enough to make this, say, a six-point district instead of a 12-point district, you have a much better shot at getting a sufficient number of crossovers, if they are there to be had. What the proper mix is, and how to maximize them simultaneously, is the challenge.

2. I’ve already expressed my skepticism about the primary turnout/November turnout connection. For what it’s worth, of the roughly 39K total votes cast in the Republican primary in CD07, over 8,700 people voted for Scott Milder instead of Dan Patrick, and about 6,000 people voted for a Senate candidate other than Ted Cruz. Make of that what you will.

3. I hope all of the other Democratic runoffs that cover part or all of Harris County get as much press combined as CD07 is likely to get by itself.

Ted Cruz has your personal data

Mar 21st, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

20 comments

Hope that doesn’t creep you out.

Not Ted Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz is under fire for his connections with a voter targeting firm that used data taken from 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge.

The Cruz presidential campaign touted its collaboration with Cambridge Analytica as a sign of a cutting edge run for the White House, allowing the Texan to carefully identify likely supporters. The firm shifted allegiance to Donald Trump once the Texan dropped out of the GOP primaries.

Both campaigns pumped millions into the company, controlled by billionaire Robert Mercer — a key patron first of Cruz and then Trump in 2016.

Cruz continued work with Cambridge Analytica for six months after allegations surfaced in December 2015 that the firm was using Facebook data it had received illicitly. Recent revelations show the data harvesting was far more extensive than previously suspected, and possibly among the biggest privacy breaches in history.

“It was a grossly unethical experiment because you are playing with the psychology of an entire country… in the context of the democratic process,” whistleblower Christopher Wylie, a data scientist who worked for Cambridge Analytica, told The Guardian. “It is a full service propaganda machine.”

Texas Democrats blasted Cruz on Monday for benefiting from a “massive invasion of privacy” and demanded that Cruz explain when he knew the company had engaged in “deceitful activity.”

“Ted Cruz will stop at nothing to weasel his way into power, even if it means weaponizing stolen information to manipulate people to like him,” Texas Democratic Party deputy executive director Manny Garcia said in a press release. “Cruz’s campaign exploited personal information to create psychological profiles on millions of Americans. All to keep lining the pockets of Cruz’s billionaire super PAC donors — like Robert Mercer, who funded this propaganda machine.”

Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier declined a request for comment on Monday.

Boy, when was the last time Ted Cruz didn’t have something to say? (He has since offered a statement that puts all the blame on Cambridge.) There’s plenty more out there about Cambridge Analytica if you want to keep reading. If you’d like to ask Ted Cruz to give you your data back, you can call his office at (202) 224-5922. I look forward to seeing this subject explored in more detail in campaign ads later this year. RG Ratcliffe and the Dallas Observer have more.

No observers for ADA violations

Mar 6th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

This is interesting.

Only days before a crucial state primary, the Justice Department has halted its effort to send observers during the election to assess whether Harris County polling sites are accessible to disabled voters.

The observer request was made as part of an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit spearheaded by the civil rights and disability rights division in Washington, D.C., alleging Harris County’s voting sites are in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Among the concerns Justice department identified in its claim are the lack of appropriate parking, proper ramps, navigable sidewalks, passageways and voting space, and other mandatory accommodations.

U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett in Houston told the county at a hearing in April that the scope of accessibility violations at polling places could be so vast that a special master might be needed to sort them out.

As the final days of the early voting were underway, the Justice Department withdrew its earlier request to inspect voting sites during the March primaries, and canceled two related court hearings scheduled for earlier this week.

Devin O’Malley, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, declined to comment about why the attorneys canceled two scheduled hearings this week in Houston.

But Douglas Ray, managing attorney for the public law practice group at the Harris County Attorney’s Office, which represents the county election office, said it’s possible that the lawyers in Washington determined they couldn’t prevail in their motion requesting to send observers to the polls.

See here, here, and here for the background. Another possible explanation is that the original lawsuit was filed by the Obama administration – there were observers in place for the 2016 general election – and the Trump Justice Department is not terribly interested in pursuing any of the actions they initiated. I’m not sure what to make of this, but I’ll say again, I do believe the county could fix an awful lot of these problems if it wanted to without to much fuss. Surely that would be less problematic than fighting the litigation.

Rural Dems

Mar 4th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

They still exist, and they’re making some noise.

Trish Robinson was dropping off supplies for Hurricane Harvey relief efforts in Liberty County, about 40 minutes from Houston, when a handful of people scowled at her left-leaning political T-shirt.

David DeLuca, head of the Fayette County Democrats, said he recently introduced himself to a Republican volunteer poll worker, but the woman declined to shake hands.

And during a Tyler County town hall hosted by Senate hopeful Beto O’Rourke on a recent Friday in February, multiple people thanked the Democrat for coming to the Republican stronghold.

[…]

As a result, many of the remaining rural Democrats say they’re leery of making their political views public.

Now, as national and state party leaders talk a big game about a blue wave this November, some Democrats in rural East and Central Texas say they’re working to overcome a drag on local momentum ahead of the primary: stigma.

[…]

Something changed after Trump’s election. Through social media, Democrats in rural areas began finding each other and organizing in small but meaningful ways. County chapters have dusted off their welcome signs and other Democratic-leaning groups have emerged, both publicly and privately.

Robinson said she began the Liberty County Indivisible chapter after reading the handbook published by its national founders, which gives guidance on anti-Trump grassroots political organization.

“That sort of fed into what I believe and how I felt, and what I wanted to do,” she said. “Liberty County [Democrats] need to know there’s options for them, too. We shouldn’t always have to leave the county to feel like we belong or have a purpose or can speak up.”

She began with a Facebook post, and then held meet-ups at local restaurants. Sometimes, only one person showed up. But “if one person comes every time, I feel like that’s progress,” she said. The group has since grown to about 40.

This isn’t exactly profound, but the main thing these folks can do is believe that their votes matter, so that they actually do show up and vote in November. Dems have made big gains over the past several cycles in the big urban and suburban counties, but there are a lot more small and rural counties, and the steady degradation of the vote in those places has largely canceled those gains out. Compare the 2012 and 2012 Presidential results on a county-by-county basis sometime – it’s a thousand votes here and a thousand votes there, but in a state with 254 counties that can really add up. This is basically what the Beto strategy is all about: Narrow the margins in the unfriendly places enough so you can bridge the remaining gap in the big counties.

So having local candidates to vote for, even in uncompetitive districts, helps. Having the statewide candidates remember that these places exist helps, too. I don’t pretend to know when Dems might be able to truly contest these places, nor do I know what issues might hasten that day, but I believe the Republican Party is doing its best to marginalize itself, and the effect that has will not remain limited to the cities and the suburbs. In the meantime, let’s run candidates in races we can win – city councils and school boards and the like – and put some resources into figuring out how to make common cause and gain ground with voters in the small and medium-sized cities in these counties. I believe the opportunities are there, and we’ve taken the important first step of showing up. Let’s keep it going.

Hey, let’s file another lawsuit to kill Obamacare!

Feb 28th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Sure, why not?

It’s constitutional – deal with it

Texas is suing the federal government over President Barack Obama’s landmark health law — again.

In a 20-state lawsuit filed Monday in federal court, Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that after the passage of the GOP’s tax plan last year — which also repealed a provision of the sweeping legislation known as “Obamacare” that required people to have health insurance — the health law is no longer constitutional.

“Texans have known all along that Obamacare is unlawful, and a divided Supreme Court’s approval rested solely on the flimsy support of Congress’ authority to tax. Congress has now kicked that flimsy support from beneath the law,” Paxton said in a statement Monday. “With no remaining legitimate basis for the law, it is time that Americans are finally free from the stranglehold of Obamacare, once and for all.”

Texas has sued the government more than 60 times since 2008, and those efforts haven’t ceased since the Obama administration gave way to that of President Donald Trump last year.

I couldn’t find any other stories about this, so I can’t tell you if any actual legal experts think there’s merit to this. But you know, if Super Legal Genius Ken Paxton thinks it’s a winner, then who am I to argue?

UPDATE: Ian Millhiser calls it “risible” and “‘Gotcha’ litigation”, but notes it was filed in the court of that judge who has issued national injunctions based on Ken Paxton’s flights of fancy before, so who knows.

UT/TT poll: Trump approval more or less the same as before

Feb 20th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

A tad bit more positive than last time, but still nothing to write home about.

With the usual disclaimers about partisan imbalance, President Donald Trump’s job approval ratings are holding steady, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.

Overall, equal numbers of Texas voters approve and disapprove of the job Trump is doing. Beneath that, the poll found, Republicans are highly supportive, with 83 percent saying they approve, while 84 percent of Democrats say they disapprove. The president’s numbers are remarkably similar to those in last February’s UT/TT Poll — the first survey after Trump took office. Then, as now, Republicans were solidly behind him and Democrats were solidly against him, making the blended numbers appear balanced.

[…]

The contrasting voter impressions of the state’s two Republican U.S. senators continue. John Cornyn had approving marks from 29 percent of all voters, 47 percent of Republicans and 10 percent of Democrats. Overall, 38 percent of voters disapprove of the job Cornyn’s doing as the second-highest-ranking member of the Senate majority’s leadership. That’s driven by the disapproval of 59 percent of Texas Democrats.

Ted Cruz, who is up for re-election this year, gets about the same number of good grades — 40 percent — and bad ones — 41 percent. As with other officeholders, it’s about party, but only Trump’s numbers are as strongly divided on those lines. Cruz’s high grades from 72 percent of Republicans are offset by his bad grades from 73 percent of Democrats.

In another question, voters were asked their opinion of Cruz, which yielded similar results. Overall, 40 percent said they have a favorable impression of him and 42 percent have an unfavorable one. It’s a party thing, with 71 percent of Democrats holding negative opinions and 70 percent of Republicans holding positive ones. Fewer than one in five said they had no opinion at all.

Contrast that with his likely general election opponent, U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke. The El Paso Democrat has never been on a statewide ballot, and it shows, with 58 percent of all voters saying they have neither a favorable nor an unfavorable opinion of him. Among Democrats, 52 percent have a favorable opinion of O’Rourke, 4 percent have an unfavorable opinion and 44 percent have no opinion at all. Among Republicans, 8 percent were favorable, 22 percent were unfavorable and 70 percent were neither positive nor negative.

Gov. Greg Abbott remains the most popular elected state official, if job assessments are the measure. Overall, 46 percent said he’s doing a good job and 31 percent said he’s not. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s numbers almost break into three equal parts: 36 percent approval, 33 percent disapproval and 31 percent neutral. And House Speaker Joe Straus, who is not seeking another term, remains the least well-known high official in Austin: 27 percent approve of the job he’s doing, 24 percent disapprove and 48 percent remain neutral.

For comparison purposes:

UT/Trib, February 2017, 46 approve/44 disapprove
UT/Trib, June 2017, 43 approve/51 disapprove
UT/Trib, October 2017, 45 approve/49 disapprove
UT/Trib, February 2018, 46 approve/46 disapprove

There are other pollsters that have shown poorer results for Trump in the past year. For apples to apples purposes, the numbers above all come from the UT/Trib poll. This was Trump’s best showing since last February, and it may represent the passage of the tax bill, the onset of primary season and the partisan stirrings that brings, random variations, some combination of the above, or something else entirely. I think his numbers are more likely to sag a big going forward than improve, and there’s always the chance that some factor like the Mueller investigation could cause him to crater. Overall, though, I think this is more or less what we should expect.

What does it mean? Well, overall probably not much. Not because of anything having to do with this poll or any other poll, but because for November purposes I don’t think the right questions are being asked, or more to the point I don’t think the right people are being asked. We all know this election is about who will turn out, so why not focus on the voters who are the biggest variables in that? What I’d love to see are surveys of 1) Democratic voters who turned out in 2016 and 2012 and 2008 but not 2010 or 2014; 2) people who voted for someone other than Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in 2016 and who have a history of voting in the off years; and 3) Republicans who voted for Clinton in 2016. Ask them what their plans are for this year, and maybe you’ll get a better idea of what to expect in 8.5 months.

And on a related note:

Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are far ahead of their Republican primary opponents in the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, but the Democrats running for those two high offices face more difficult paths to their party’s nomination.

Two other statewide Republican incumbents — Land Commissioner George P. Bush and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller — have the support of a majority of likely primary voters, but with a caveat. When those voters had the option of saying they weren’t ready to make a choice, 44 percent listed no preference in the land race and 60 percent said the same in the agriculture race.

With high numbers of undecided voters, Bush led his primary with 36 percent of the vote, and Miller led his with 27 percent. Only when they were asked how they’d vote if they had to make a choice now did the majorities appear for the incumbents.

[…]

The Democratic primary for governor is a muddle, with two clear frontrunners and no candidate close to enough votes to win without a runoff. Former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez had the support of 43 percent of likely primary voters responding to the poll, while Andrew White of Houston had 24 percent. If no candidate gets a majority, the top two finishers will go to a May runoff. Grady Yarbrough and Tom Wakely each got 7 percent in that primary poll, Adrian Ocegueda and Jeffrey Payne got 5 percent, and Cedric Davis Sr., Joe Mumbach and James Jolly Clark each got 4 percent or less.

The Democratic race for lieutenant governor won’t end in a runoff — there are only two candidates. But their names are similar — Mike Collier and Michael Cooper — and their numbers are close. Collier, whose name was on the statewide ballot four years ago when he ran for comptroller, got 55 percent in the latest UT/TT Poll. Cooper got 45 percent.

“You have two lieutenant governor candidates whose names are very similar to one another, who have received very little public attention and who are not very well known,” Henson said.

The Trib’s primary polls from 2014 were, in a word, trash. They were worse than useless, and they didn’t have a strong track record in Democratic primary polls before that. Their November polling has been good, but I emphatically advise you to take any and all of their March numbers as being strictly for entertainment purposes only. You have been warned.

Trump’s lousy approval ratings in Texas

Feb 2nd, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

According to Gallup.

President Donald Trump’s job approval rating averaged 38% throughout the U.S. in 2017, but at the state level it ranged from a high of 61% in West Virginia to a low of 26% in Vermont.

Trump averaged 50% or higher approval in 12 states in total, primarily in the states where he received the most votes in the 2016 election. In addition to West Virginia, the states where at least half the respondents approved of Trump included several western states (Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Alaska), several southern states (Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas) and two Midwestern states (North and South Dakota).

Trump earned between 40% and 49% approval — above his national average — in 20 states. These were predominantly in the Midwest and South, and included several of the key rustbelt states that were critical to his 2016 victory: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Fewer than 40% of respondents approved of Trump in the remaining 18 states, 14 of which are located in the East and West — his worst performing regions in the election. In addition to Vermont, his ratings were particularly low — below 30% — in Massachusetts (27%), California (29%) and Hawaii (29%). Maryland, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island round out the states where fewer than one-third of the respondents approved.

Texas fell into that latter group, with 39/54 approve/disapprove totals. That’s worse than in some states carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. For comparison with other polls:

UT/Trib, February, 46 approve/44 disapprove (poll of RVs)
Texas Lyceum, April, 42 approve/54 disapprove (poll of adults)
UT/Trib, June, 43 approve/51 disapprove (poll of RVs)
PPP Senate poll, January, 45 favorable/48 unfavorable (poll of RVs)

The Wilson Perkins poll did not have any publicly available favorability/approval data. Favorable/unfavorable is not quite the same as approve/disapprove, but it’s what we’ve got for that PPP poll. This Gallup result is quite in line with the Lyceum result, with slightly lower approval, and it’s not far off from the later UT/Trib survey. Polls of adults are the loosest screen, and thus contain the largest number of likely non-voters, but that’s a function of motivation, and it sure looks like the anti-Trump faction is more full up on that. The standard disclaimers apply as always, my point here is simply to keep these numbers in mind when we see things like other poll results, as Trump’s favorability is certain to be a factor in how they shake out. Ed Kilgore has more.

So where do we stand with handing over voter info to the Trump commission?

Jan 4th, 2018

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

The DMN asks the question.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Have state officials turned over Texas voter information to the federal government?

In short, not yet.

A lawsuit by the Texas NAACP and the Texas League of Women Voters has halted the state’s release of that information to the commission after a Travis County district judge granted the groups a temporary restraining order in October. But the state has taken its case to an appeals court, arguing the lower court has no jurisdiction.

The appeals court has given no timeline on when it will rule on the matter, but until then no voter information will be shared with the fraud commission, which agreed in September to halt its request until the jurisdiction question was resolved.

[…]

Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said it is unclear whether the commission is subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, so Texas should think twice about handing over its voter roll information. But if it’s not subject to that law, the commission may be under other constraints about what information it can request and how it can do so.

“That’s what the federal lawsuits are about. It’s an open question,” said Levitt, who oversaw voting rights battles for the Department of Justice under President Barack Obama.

Until those questions are resolved, Levitt said, there is nothing obligating Texas to turn over the information.

“This is just a request,” he said. “There’s nothing in Texas state law and nothing in federal law that I’m aware of that would force Texas to give the data over.”

See here, here, and here for the background. The lawsuit from which the injunction came was filed in state court, but as noted later in the piece there were federal lawsuits filed as well. And just as I was prepping to queue this post up for publication, this happened.

President Trump signed an executive order late Wednesday disbanding his own election integrity commission after less than eight months, saying he didn’t want to waste taxpayer money fighting with state governments over their voter data.

But the co-chairman of the panel, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, said the investigation into alleged voter fraud would continue — and could pick up speed without the formalities of a commission.

Trump said the commission’s work will now go to the Department of Homeland Security.

“Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry,” Trump said in a statement through his press secretary. “Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action,” Trump said.

Good riddance, I say, though it sounds like we’re not quite out of the woods yet. Keep up the good fight against this travesty. Think Progress, Daily Kos, and Mother Jones have more.

Early polling on the AG race

Dec 18th, 2017

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

It looks sexy, but keep your salt handy.

Justin Nelson

The 2018 election for the job of the state’s top lawyer could be a tight race if voters go to the polls knowing about Attorney General Ken Paxton’s criminal indictment, according to a Democratic pollster.

GBA Strategies, a Democratic polling operation based in Washington D.C., surveyed 500 likely Texas voters and found Paxton, the Republican incumbent, enjoyed a 7 percentage point lead over Austin attorney Justin Nelson, a Democratic newcomer, the firm reported in a memo Wednesday released by the Nelson campaign.

Once voters were informed of Paxton’s 2015 felony indictment and attacks on Nelson, respondents shifted their support, giving Nelson a 1 point lead, according to the firm. The survey, which was conducted Oct. 9 through Oct. 12, has a 4.4 percentage point margin of error and 95 percent confidence interval.

[…]

The poll also found Texas voters split on whether they approve of President Trump, finding 49 percent approve and 49 percent disapprove.

You can see Nelson’s statement about the poll here and the polling memo here. The key passages:

• Paxton starts with a narrow lead against a largely unknown opponent. Paxton carries 46 percent of the electorate in the initial vote with Justin Nelson garnering 40 percent. After undecided are asked which way they lean, Paxton leads 50 – 43 percent. Given Texas’ Republican leaning and Nelson being unknown, this is a weak starting point for Paxton.

• Paxton’s corrupt behavior is very damaging and moves Justin Nelson into the lead. When voters are informed about Paxton’s indictment, 62 percent say it raises serious doubts about him. After voters hear positive statements about both candidates and learning about Paxton’s indictment, the race moves from a 7-point Paxton advantage to a 5-point Nelson lead (49 – 44 percent). The additional information dramatically shifts Independents to Nelson’s side, while he also makes inroads with Republicans. Even after voters hear attacks against Nelson, he maintains a 1-point lead.

This is an internal poll and there’s no detailed data available, so the skepticism level is high to begin with. A few specific things to note:

– The number of undecided voters in this sample is amazingly low. For a point of comparison, look at the UT/Trib poll from June of 2014. They surveyed all of the statewide races, as the primary runoffs had concluded in May. I quote: “In the race for attorney general, Republican Ken Paxton leads Democrat Sam Houston 40 percent to 27 percent, with 27 percent undecided.” That’s a lot more undecided voters, in a poll conducted six months later into the race. With all due respect to Justin Nelson, not nearly enough people know who he is to get to forty percent in any poll.

Now to be sure, people are way more engaged than they were at this point in the 2014 cycle, and given that Paxton has been a high-profile miscreant since even before he was officially nominated. It may just be that people are expressing a strong level of disapproval of Paxton, which translated into a higher than usual amount of support for a newbie candidate like Nelson. I can’t discount that possibility, but I’ll want to see similar numbers from other polls before I buy it.

– The 49/49 approval numbers for Donald Trump are noteworthy, and as I’ve said before the fact that we’re operating in an environment where Democrats have more intense opinions about the President than Republicans do should have a real effect on 2018. That said, these numbers are actually a little better for Trump than what we’ve seen before – he was at 45/49 in an October UT/Trib poll, and at 42-54 in an April Texas Lyceum poll. I don’t want to read too much into any of this – different polls, different methodologies – but that’s very much a factor to watch.

– Finally, note the “when voters were informed” bit in the polling memo. You know what it takes to inform voters? Money, to fund an effective communications strategy in a big state with more than two dozen media markets. Of course, Ken Paxton goes on trial for a felony charge next year, with more charges in reserve depending on how that trial goes, so there’s a chance that Nelson will get a big, free assist in communicating that information. Or Paxton could beat the rap and turn that liability into a big ol’ rallying cry.

Anyway. I do think Ken Paxton is vulnerable, and I’m glad to see Justin Nelson be aggressive right out of the gate. But I would like to see some other polls before I get too excited about this one.

From Alabama to Texas

Dec 15th, 2017

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Here are two numbers from Sen.-elect Doug Jones’ victory over garbage human Roy Moore: 92.0% and 49.3%. Jones received 92.0% of the total vote that Hillary Clinton received in Alabama in 2016. Moore received 49.3% of Donald Trump’s vote total. Put that together and you see what you get.

Now of course Alabama was an extreme case, and there were some number of Republicans who voted for Doug Jones. We can’t really say how many since there weren’t ant other elections on that ballot for comparison, but it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that in Alabama, like in Virginia and New Jersey and multiple special elections around the country, Democratic turnout has been stronger than Republican turnout. In some places that was enough to push Democrats to victory, in others it merely reduced the gap. But it’s there, and it’s been there all year. Remember all those special Congressional elections, where Dems came close but couldn’t quite overcome the large Republican advantage in each? Here’s how they look by that metric of comparing candidates’ results in 2017 to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016. All Congressional data comes from Daily Kos.

Kansas 04:

James Thompson, 62.2% of Clinton
Ron Estes, 38.4% of Trump

Montana at large:

Rob Quist, 93.7% of Clinton
Greg Gianforte, 67.9% of Trump

Georgia 06 runoff:

Jon Ossoff, 80.5% of Clinton
Karen Handel, 84.1% of Trump

South Carolina 05:

Archie Parnell, 35.4% of Clinton
Ralph Norman, 25.6% of Trump

Utah 03:

Kathie Allen, 43.7% of Clinton
John Curtis, 45.7% of Trump

Not every election had this characteristic – GA-06 was an outlier because Republicans were able to get their voters out, while I don’t think anyone outside Utah even noticed the UT-03 race – but most of them were, and the same was true in non-Congressional elections, too. This dKos spreadsheet has tracked every election since November of 2016, and documented the partisan shift in each, with a bonus comparison to 2012 as well. The overall trend is clear.

My point for bringing all this up is simply this: The national environment, and the resulting effect on enthusiasm levels for Democrats and Republicans, is and will be a factor in the 2018 election in Texas, just as it was in 2010 and 2014 to Republicans’ benefit and 2006 and 2008 to Democrats’. Alabama may be the most shocking example of this – well, the most shocking example since last month’s elections in Virginia, anyway – yet it seems to be discounted in the discussion of how the 2018 elections may play out here. It’s easy to talk about the lack of “name” candidates at the statewide level for Dems, and the amount of money that people like Greg Abbott have, and so on and so forth, but the bottom line is that base turnout level has been the Dems’ biggest problem in Texas, going back to 2002. I’ve harped on this multiple times, as you know. If that problem is solved, or at least mitigated, in 2018, in part by Democratic motivation to repudiate Trump and in part by a conscious decision noted by RG Ratcliffe to go bottom-up rather than top-down, then that’s a big step in the right direction. Yes, yes, yes, all the usual caveats apply. All I’m saying is that the national mood affects Texas, and right now that is working hard in Democrats’ favor. We all need to keep that in mind.

Some pushback on Jeff Mateer

Dec 14th, 2017

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

A small bit of sanity.

Even as President Donald Trump rushes to fill federal judge openings across the nation, a top Senate Republican is urging the White House to put the brakes on an outspoken nominee from Texas.

Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday that he told Trump to “reconsider” two controversial judicial nominees:

Jeff Mateer of Texas and Brett Talley of Alabama.

“I’ve advised the White House they ought to reconsider,” Grassley told CNN. “I would advise the White House not to proceed.”

Mateer, a top aide to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, was nominated by Trump to be federal judge in Texas. He has faced bipartisan criticism for a series of speeches in 2015 on homosexuality, including a reference to transgender children as part of “Satan’s plan.”

Talley, a Justice Department lawyer and candidate for a federal judge position in Alabama, has come under fire for urging readers in a 2013 blog post to join the National Rifle Association while attacking gun control legislation after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre as “the greatest attack on our constitutional freedoms in our lifetime.”

With no previous judicial experience, Talley became the third judicial nominee since 1989 to receive a unanimous rating of “not qualified” from the American Bar Association, a move that Republicans have decried as partisan.

See here for some background. That appeared on Tuesday, and by Wednesday Sen. Grassley had had enough.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican said Wednesday that two of President Trump’s nominees for open seats on the federal bench will not be confirmed, just a day after urging the White House to “reconsider” them.

U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, said that based on his discussions with the White House, the nominations of Jeff Mateer and Brett Talley would not move forward through the confirmation process. The decision comes after reports that both nominees made public comments celebrating groups or policies that were discriminatory.

Good. Look, if you’re a Republican, surely you can see that you can do better than these two clowns. There are plenty of severely conservative potential judges out there who are also well-qualified for the job and are capable of acting like normal human beings. It’s really not much to ask, even from Donald Trump. Well, maybe it is too much to ask from Trump. In which case, voting losers like Mateer and Talley down might get the message across. Advise but don’t consent, in other words. Score one for a smidgeon of sanity.

That sexual harassment day of reckoning in Texas politics has begun

Dec 8th, 2017

by Charles Kuffner.

27 comments

The Daily Beast follows up its initial reporting about the secret sexual predators of Texas politics with a story that names names. Two names, in particular. Rather than excerpt at length, allow me to quote the Texas Monthly Daily Post summary of the article:

Two Texas state lawmakers face new sexual harassment allegations. Democratic state Representatives Borris Miles and Carlos Uresti were both named in detailed claims of sexual harassment by several people, including former staffers and interns, in a story published by the Daily Beast late Wednesday night. One woman said that when she was a Texas legislative intern, Miles approached her and offered her cash, saying, “Bitch, you want to fuck with me tonight?” In a separate alleged incident, a Democratic state representative said that he witnessed Miles leaning out of a bus and loudly cat-calling women on the streets of downtown Austin. A former legislative staffer said he saw Miles forcibly kiss a woman at the W Hotel in Austin. “He offered to buy her a drink, kept trying to kiss her, and she kept trying to push him away,” the staffer told the Daily Beast. “He kept laughing about it. It was so creepy, and he had this big smile . . . He also has a tendency to call women out of their name when they turn him down. ‘Bitch,’ ‘ho,’ ‘whore.’ He doesn’t like being told ‘no.’” Uresti, meanwhile, apparently had gained a reputation for harassing women. “[Uresti] was one of the worst,” former Texas political reporter Karen Brooks told the Daily Beast. “He would check me out all the time . . . He gave me inappropriate hugs. He put his hands on me, he ogled me. I would not get in an elevator with him. If members were having dinner and he was going to be there, I stopped going.” Another former reporter said Uresti “put his tongue down my throat” without her consent after they went out for happy hour drinks. Uresti denied the allegations to the Daily Beast; Miles’s office did not return requests for comment.

Go read the whole thing. It’s clear these two are not the only offenders – Wendy Davis mentions but does not name a Republican legislator who groped her at the Capitol, and there are strong implications that there are many horror stories about lobbyists to be told, all just for starters – but for now we must reckon with Sens. Miles and Uresti. The fact that this story came out on the same day that US Senator Al Franken announced his resignation in response to allegations that were not as harrowing as the ones made here should not be lost on us. I’ve known Sen. Miles since he first ran for the Lege in 2006 against Al Edwards. I’ve never met Sen. Uresti, but I was glad to see him defeat the late Frank Madla in 2006. Both of them were improvements over the incumbents they ousted, and both have done good work in Austin. But both of them need to be held accountable for their actions. Both of them need to resign, and the sooner the better.

It brings me no joy to say any of this, but here we are. There are no excuses or justifications for their actions. It’s an eternal stain on all of us that the system in place at the Capitol allowed this sort of behavior – which, again, is very much not limited to Borris Miles and Carlos Uresti – with no consequences for anyone but the victims. Resigning won’t undo what has been done and it won’t give justice to those that Miles and Uresti are alleged to have harassed and assaulted, but it will at least be a small step in the direction of bringing those days and those ways to an end. We as Democrats and as decent human beings have a responsibility to the people our officials represent and to ourselves to lead the way on changing behavior. If it grates on Sens. Miles and Uresti, as it did on Sen. Franklin, that they are being pushed out when the likes of Donald Trump and Roy Moore and Blake Farenthold seem to be getting a pass, I understand. That is indeed an injustice. But this is what I have the power to affect right now.

Of course, nobody really cares what some guy on the Internet thinks. For the right thing to happen, Democratic elected officials and other high profile individuals must act as well. Annie’s List got the ball rolling by urging the two Senators to resign. Others need to follow their lead. The people who are peers and colleagues and donors and other influencers of Sens. Miles and Uresti need to use that influence and give the same message to them. Their behavior was completely unacceptable. They need to step down. And note that on a practical level, neither is on the ballot this year, so simply not filing for re-election in 2020 isn’t enough. The right answer is to step down now, so successors can be elected in time for the beginning of the 2019 session. Both Miles and Uresti have since put out statements denying the allegations, so this isn’t going to happen without a fight. It’s ugly and it’s discouraging, but there’s no other choice.

Harvey’s lingering health effects

Dec 7th, 2017

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It’s going to be a long time before we can really say we have put Hurricane Harvey behind us.

Three months after Hurricane Harvey, local health officials now are beginning to see the storm after the storm.

In Harris County and the other hardest-hit regions of Texas, 17 percent of those who had houses damaged or suffered income loss report that someone in their household has a new or worsening health condition. A sweeping new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Houston-based Episcopal Health Foundation shows a similar proportion feels their own mental health has worsened.

“We’re not anywhere near the end yet,” cautioned Dr. Cindy Rispin, a family physician with the Memorial Hermann Medical Group in League City.

Researchers surveyed more than 1,600 Texans in 24 affected counties to gauge their personal recovery. The report released Tuesday found a region still reeling in ways obvious and hidden.

[…]

More than four in 10 residents surveyed for the “Early Assessment of Hurricane Harvey’s Impact on Vulnerable Texans in the Gulf Coast Region” report said their homes had hurricane damage. Three percent reported their homes were destroyed.

Among those whose homes were damaged, nearly half said they had homeowners’ or renters’ insurance, but only 23 percent had flood insurance.

“We’re going to see foreclosures hit. It will probably be people that financially were in a tight spot already,” real estate agent Matthew Guzman said in a recent interview.

Perhaps most ominous is the quiet toll Harvey is still taking, months later, on people’s physical and mental health.

Worse, many storm victims were already uninsured in a state that leads the nation in those without coverage. Even those with coverage complained they cannot afford health care, especially as longtime doctors are no longer nearby when people become displaced. About six in 10 say they have skipped or postponed needed treatment, cut back on medication or struggled to get mental health care.

An executive summary of the poll, with links to all the poll data, is here. Some sobering facts from the summary:

About half of those who have applied for disaster assistance from FEMA or the SBA say their application is still pending or has been denied, and many of those who were denied say they were not told the reason for the denial and were not given information on how to resubmit their application. About a quarter of those whose homes were damaged say they had any flood insurance. Four in ten of those who were affected say they expect none of their financial losses to be covered by insurance or other assistance.

The financial situations of most people affected by Harvey are tenuous. About half of affected residents say they have no savings whatsoever, and another quarter say that if they lost their job or other source of income, their savings would be exhausted in less than 6 months.

Nearly half of affected residents say they are not getting the help they need to recover from the hurricane. Particular areas that stand out where residents say they need more help include applying for disaster assistance and repairing damage to their homes.

Local, county, and state governments receive high marks from residents for their response to Hurricane Harvey so far. Residents are more mixed in their views of how the U.S. Congress has responded, and responses tilt negative when it comes to President Trump’s response. Four in ten affected residents are not confident relief funds will benefit those most in need.

I wish I could say people are being needlessly pessimistic, but I can’t. ThinkProgress and the Trib have more.

Smokey Joe will not run for re-election

Dec 1st, 2017

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Another one bites the dust.

Rep. Joe Barton

Embattled U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, announced his retirement from Congress on Thursday.

“I am very proud of my public record and the many accomplishments of my office. It has been a tremendous honor to represent the 6th District of Texas for over three decades, but now it is time to step aside and let there be a new voice.”

“I am announcing today that I will not seek reelection in 2018,” he said. “To the people of the 6th District, thank you for your support and friendship.”

Barton’s decision was first announced by The Dallas Morning News.

The decision came after a tumultuous week for the congressman, after a nude photo of Barton surfaced on social media.

The drumbeat for Barton’s exit came from local officials, including state Sen. Konni Burton, R-Colleyville, and Tarrant County GOP Chairman Tim O’Hare.

His retirement sets off a race to replace him, a race that is all but certain to be determined in the GOP primary.

Two Republicans, perennial candidate Monte Mitchell and former Navy pilot Jake Ellzey, entered the race in recent days. As Barton’s problems mounted, a movement got underway to draft Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector Ron Wright, a former Barton staffer. He did not immediately return a call after Barton’s announcement.

See here and here for the background. A subsequent report about pervy text messages sent by Barton to a local Republican activist probably pushed him in the direction of this decision. I quibble with the Trib’s “all but certain to be determined in the GOP primary” characterization. I’d classify CD06 as Strong Republican, but not Safe Republican. The GOP will be a big favorite, but they can’t take this one for granted, especially in a year as bad as 2018 is threatening to be.

It should be noted that Barton is not resigning. Unless he has a further announcement to make, he’ll serve out the rest of his term. Nonetheless, the fact that he felt compelled to step down causes Think Progress to castigate national Democrats for their failure to put the same kind of pressure on Sen. Al Franken and Rep. John Conyers. It’s entirely possible there’s more to the Barton story than what we know now, just as it turned out there was more to the Franken story than what first came out, but they make a good point. At the very least, all of these incidents, and no doubt more of them to come, show just how badly Congress needs a sexual harassment policy and process in place that works for the victims.

(And just as a reminder: Donald Trump is still President, Roy Moore is likely to be elected Senator, and Clarence Thomas, who is oddly overlooked in the ongoing conversation about sexual assault and harassment, remains on the Supreme Court, having been appointed by a President who turned out to have his own gropiness issues. It’s harassment all the way down.)

As for the field in CD06, the Star-Telegram updates us:

Republican Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector Ron Wright — a former chief of staff and district director for Barton — said he will file to run for the 6th Congressional District, which includes most of Arlington and Mansfield and all of Ellis and Navarro counties.

[…]

Republican J.K. “Jake” Ellzey, a Texas Veterans Commission member who lives in Midlothian, also has filed to run for the post.

Several Democrats are in the race, including Ruby Faye Woolridge of Arlington, who ran against Barton in 2016; Jana Lynne Sanchez, a public relations specialist from Arlington; Levii R. Shocklee of Arlington; and John W. Duncan.

As I noted before, there are a couple of other Dems who have filed finance reports for CD06 and have campaign webpages up. On the Republican side, State Sen. Konni Burton, who is up for re-election but hasn’t filed yet, could jump over to this race. Nothing like a fleet of Congressional retirements to shake things up at the lower levels. RG Ratcliffe and Daily Kos have more.

Hey, how about another opponent for Ted Cruz?

Nov 28th, 2017

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Sure, why not?

Not Ted Cruz

At first blush, it appeared that former La Marque Mayor Geraldine Sam filed as a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate because she was mad at incumbent Ted Cruz. As a delegate to the Republican National Convention last summer, she unloaded on Cruz when he made a prime-time speech and declined to endorse Donald Trump as the party nominee. Instead, he urged delegates to vote for their conservative principles.

“You lied to me. You lied and said you were going to support the party nominee, and you won’t. Then you lied to me. And I’m very upset at this time,” Sam told a reporter at the convention. “I came to this convention as a Cruz delegate, and I’m leaving supporting Donald Trump as the party nominee.”

Cruz did endorse Trump two months later, and Sam has since forgiven him. “After a while I started looking at things as to why Ted was angry and did not endorse Trump at that time,” Sam told me. During the presidential campaign, Trump had called Cruz “lyin’ Ted,” insulted his wife’s looks, and said Cruz’s father was involved in a 1963 plot to kill President Kennedy.

Now, Sam’s anger is directed at Trump. “I just look at some of the things the president is doing, and I just don’t agree with those things. I want him to be presidential. I want him to stop tweeting at all hours of the morning, calling mother’s children SOBs. Those are things a lot of us don’t agree with.”

Sam told me she was particularly bothered when Trump recently claimed that the parents of three UCLA basketball players jailed on shoplifting charges did not show him enough gratitude when China released them. “I should have left them in jail!” Trump tweeted after the fact.

“When you do things for people, you should do it out of the goodness of your heart, and not as a Godfather figure expecting them to bow down to you,” Sam said.

Perhaps, like me, you are slightly confused by now. So, to recap: Sam was mad at Cruz, but she isn’t anymore. She’s now mad at Trump, but she’s going to show it by running against Cruz in the Republican primary.

Makes perfect sense. Sam has an interesting history as a candidate, and as Mayor of La Marque – you should click over and read about it, with a bit more background here. I should note that Sam was actually the first candidate of either party to file for Senate; Beto O’Rourke officially filed yesterday. Cruz has two other primary challengers – Dan McQueen has abandoned his campaign, thus leaving the “underqualified former mayor who did not finish their first term” slot in the race to Sam. It’s good to know there will be at least one election we can follow for the sheer ridiculous joy of it.

Federal court permanently blocks Trump “sanctuary cities” order

Nov 24th, 2017

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Good.

A federal judge has permanently blocked President Trump’s efforts to bar cities that limit cooperation with U.S. immigration forces from receiving funding, the most decisive blow yet to the White House’s efforts to crack down on so-called sanctuary cities.

In a ruling issued Monday, U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick ruled Trump’s January executive order seeking to cut off sanctuary cities from federal funding unconstitutional. The same judge put a hold on the executive order in April.

“The Constitution vests the spending powers in Congress, not the President, so the Executive Order cannot constitutionally place new conditions on federal funds,” Orrick wrote in the latest decision. “Further, the Tenth Amendment requires that conditions on federal funds be unambiguous and timely made; that they bear some relation to the funds at issue; and that they not be unduly coercive. Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the President disapproves.”

Orrick called Trump’s move “unconstitutional on its face.”

See here for the background. This is not directly related to the SB4 litigation – among other things, this lawsuit didn’t originate in Texas – but it is a mark against the attempt to force cities to enforce immigration law. It’s also good news on its own. Let’s hope it stands up on appeal. The Washington Post has more.

There’s scared and there’s strategy

Nov 21st, 2017

by Charles Kuffner.

5 comments

What we’re seeing from the GOP is some of both.

Republicans are beginning to worry that a “blue wave” of Democratic voters angry with the Trump administration could crash into the 2018 election, even in the deep red state of Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s top campaign adviser and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are both sounding the alarm: Texas Republicans would be remiss to ignore sweeping Democratic victories on Election Day in Virginia. On Friday, The Cook Political Report, an independent nonpartisan election newsletter, weighed in, declaring Republican Congressman John Culberson’s Houston district a toss up.

Although some GOP leaders in Texas are warning that Republicans could feel the weight of a grass-roots surge by Democrats outraged by the Trump administration, many political analysts and operatives here say Republicans here have little to worry about.

“Even if the election becomes a tidal wave, Texas will remain solidly red,” said Mark McKinnon, a former media adviser to former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, both Republicans.

But McKinnon thinks it’s smart politics for Abbott and Patrick to warn of a wave. “It helps raise money. And if it doesn’t happen, nothing wrong with running up the score,” he said.

[…]

Pointing to the major Democratic wins in Virginia earlier this month, Patrick told party members in Waco on Thursday that they have a challenging election year ahead and the GOP should take nothing for granted. The Houston tea party favorite is considered a shoo-in for re-election.

“Recently in Virginia, Republicans turned out in record numbers, but it made no difference. A blue wave prevailed,” Patrick said, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald. The paper said Patrick went on to ask Republicans to each get at least 10 voters to the polls, and said Democrats are “howling” about Trump and are now “coming after us.”

Texas’ politics are different from Virginia’s, said Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, a politics professor who studies political behavior and teaches at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Virginia is a swing state and moderate, far from Texas as a Republican stronghold with several conservatives at the helm.

Patrick’s not actually worried, she added. It’s a strategy.

“I would tell Dan Patrick to say the same thing,” she said. “It’s number one in politics: always run scared and never feel safe, even if you’re Dan Patrick. That’s textbook. I wouldn’t expect him to say anything else.”

See here for some background. Let’s stipulate that the Republicans have legitimate reasons to worry about next year. Let’s also stipulate that they have a lot of structural advantages – favorable districts, tons of money, a 20+ year statewide winning streak, that sort of thing – that will buffer them against a lot of adversity. They could have a pretty bad year, losing Congressional and legislative and local offices, and still remain firmly in control of state government.

The X factor in all of this remains enthusiasm, and the level of turnout that results from that. I was on a panel after this election talking about what happened this year and what it may mean for next year, and one of my co-panelists noted that Democrats were pretty excited at this time in 2013, when Wendy Davis had announced her candidacy for Governor, and we know how that ended. I’ve been thinking about that, and my response is that the energy Davis had generated was largely tied to a singular event and issue, and that wound up being impossible to maintain. Reproductive freedom does animate a lot of Democrats, but not all of them, and it didn’t do much outside the party. The energy this year is all about Trump, which is more unifying since pretty much every non-Republican hates him. Could that burn itself out? Sure, and that’s one of my biggest worries, but so far it looks like this energy has been building on itself. Aren’t there still divisions among Democrats, and don’t they need to work on a coherent message? Yes and yes, but the same could easily have been said about Republicans going into 2010. This is the advantage of being the out party. Have Democrats finally figured out how to increase turnout in an off year? That remains to be seen. It’s the key to nearly everything, and maybe having a large number of viable Congressional candidates will have an effect that we haven’t seen before. Or maybe it won’t, and the lack of a viable candidate for Governor (assuming nothing unexpected happens) blunts the edge of the hoped-for wave. We’re all guessing at this point. Ask again in a few months, and again a few months after that, and we’ll see what we’re saying then.

The First Amendment remains in effect in Fort Bend

Nov 21st, 2017

by Charles Kuffner.

8 comments

For now, at least.

Karen Fonseca, the owner of a white truck at the center of a social media dispute with Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls, is considering a civil rights lawsuit against the sheriff’s office.

Fonseca’s attorney, Brian Middleton, made the announcement during a press conference on Monday. Middleton added that the American Civil Liberties Union has also expressed interest in a possible lawsuit.

“We should not allow Sheriff Nehls to intimidate people into silence,” Middleton said. “This is wrong and we will not let it stand.”

The threat of legal action stems from controversy over a Facebook post Nehls made on Wednesday, Nov. 15, regarding Fonseca’s truck, which bears a sticker that reads “F— Trump and f— you for voting for him.”

Nehls threatened to charge Fonseca with disorderly conduct over the sticker. A day later, Fonseca was arrested on a pre-existing fraud warrant out of the Rosenberg Police Department.

Middleton and State Rep. Ron Reynolds allege that Nehls’ public dispute with Fonseca is a politically-motivated attack designed to gain attention as Nehls considers a campaign against Rep. Pete Olson, who represents the 22nd District of Texas.

“I demand an apology from Sheriff Nehls for targeting (Fonseca) and making her life and her family’s life a living nightmare,” Reynolds said in a statement.

Fonseca has since added a new sticker that reads “F— Troy Nehls and f— you for voting for him.”

I hadn’t covered this before now, but I’m sure you’ve seen the stories; some earlier Chron articles are here and here. To be perfectly honest, I don’t much care for the Fonseca’s bumper stickers. They’re tacky, and as a parent I have sympathy for anyone who would prefer their kids not see that. But clearly, they have a right to decorate their truck in that fashion, and Sheriff Nehls has grossly abused his office by arresting Karen Fonseca, against the advice of the Fort Bend County District Attorney. He deserves to get his hat handed to him in court for this. Pull up a chair and enjoy the show, this ought to be good.

That decline in international students is here

Nov 21st, 2017

by Charles Kuffner.

6 comments

We knew it was coming.

UHCL is among several universities around Texas that this year have seen a sharp drop in international enrollment, as the number of international student applications to four-year public universities has plummeted by more than 10,000 after three years of growth, according to recently compiled data.

Experts and college administrators blame a number of factors, including President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric during the 2016 campaign and in office, as well as the global economy.

The decline is significant because regional universities such as UHCL depend more on tuition revenue amid uncertain state funding from Texas lawmakers. International students pay higher tuition than in-state students, and their decline is forcing some Texas campuses to question if – and how – to recruit them moving forward.

“When we were seeing heavy (enrollment by) international graduate students, we had a lot more revenue,” said Jean Carr, UHCL’s executive budget director. “Now, seeing the decline, we’re having to figure out how to cover that shortfall.”

[…]

Universities tried to stem the decline in international students. Colleges extended deadlines, offered more support in the application process and launched marketing campaigns that told prospective students that they were welcome in Texas.

It wasn’t enough.

Overall, about three-quarters of four-year public universities in Texas saw declines in international student enrollment this fall, a Houston Chronicle review of preliminary university data found.

About 23 percent of the 35 institutions saw an uptick in international students. Two institutions either reported no change or did not report preliminary enrollment figures.

From 2013 to 2015, international student enrollment in reporting Texas schools grew from 36,703 to 45,609 students. International student enrollment declined slightly in 2016 and then dropped by more than 2,000 students this fall.

Some of the sharpest declines came at regional universities that lack the name recognition of universities with large-scale athletic programs or top-of-the-line research heft.

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley lost more than 100 international students, a 14 percent decline. Texas A&M University at Commerce saw a drop of more than 180 students (a 22 percent drop), while Lamar University in Beaumont lost more than 350 international students (a 37 percent reduction).

Meanwhile, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin saw small increases in international student enrollment of less than 2 percent each.

See here for the background. This is one of those things that I fear once we lose it we’ll never get it back, at least not to where it was before. At the national level, and at the state level, we have made ourselves worse off for no good reason and no benefit in return. This is just one example of far too many.

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