There’s an obvious question to ask about this story, but I don’t see it being asked. After a couple of high profile job-poaching trips to California and Illinois, Gov. Rick Perry is planning a new raid — this time on the Big Apple. And he’s putting big money behind the state’s big mouth: $1 million [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Election 2016’
Many questions at the redistricting hearing
From the Trib: The Legislature is currently considering whether to ratify maps drawn by the three federal judges and used in the 2012 elections. It became clear during Wednesday’s hearing that the judges and the lawyers in the case agree that the Legislature probably can’t make changes to the maps during the special session — [...]
Abbott is gearing up for Governor
I have two things to say about this. Gov. Rick Perry hasn’t yet said whether he’s running for re-election — but Attorney General Greg Abbott doesn’t appear to be waiting for him to make up his mind. Abbott is collecting résumés and assembling a gubernatorial campaign team. He’s shaking hands, giving speeches and edging his [...]
Another Battleground Texas story
There are three points of interest in this Statesman story about Battleground Texas. Point One: They’ve convinced the people who most needed convincing, the money people and the dedicated volunteers. Battleground Texas quickly won the allegiance of Steve Mostyn and Mary Patrick. Mostyn is a Houston trial lawyer who, with his wife, Amber, is the [...]
From the “Simple Answers To Simple Questions” department
Is Rick Perry the next Comeback Kid? Americans love a comeback story. Tiger Woods has clawed himself back on top of the pro golf tour after a nasty scandal involving nightclub waitresses, lingerie models and his wife swinging a 9-iron near his head. But the whole golf world is watching to see if he can [...]
Pushing back on Perry
I don’t really believe that Rick Perry is running for President again, and if he is I don’t expect he’ll be taken very seriously. I’m not even sure if he’s running for Governor again. But if he does run for something, or more than one something, in the future, I hope stories like this are [...]
Trib poll shows Perry leading Abbott
Make of this what you will. Gov. Rick Perry would defeat Attorney General Greg Abbott by a nearly 3-to-1 margin if a Republican gubernatorial primary were held today, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll. Such a contest might never come: Neither man has declared for that 2014 race, with each saying he [...]
Precinct analysis: Comparing 2012 and 2008, Senate and SBOE edition
To follow up on my previous examination of how the 2012 election returns looked in State House districts compared to the 2008 returns, I now have the data to look at other types of districts as well. You can find it as well on the Texas Legislative Council’s webpage – here are the reports for [...]
Messing with the primaries
It’s like deja vu all over again. State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, has filed a bill to move up the primary one month in even-numbered years, to the first Tuesday in February. Patrick said people in both parties should support the measure because it would give Texas a greater say in presidential elections. “I’m tired [...]
Is Hillary the key to turning Texas blue?
Maybe, but it’ll take more than this to convince me. The Lone Star State is headed blue — the only question is WHEN Texas becomes a Democratic state. If Hillary Clinton runs for president, she will have a fighting chance of carrying Texas, which shares revolutionary demographic trends rewriting the rules of politics, and of [...]
Plaintiffs want to proceed with new redistricting maps
Texas Redistricting: Plaintiff groups in the Texas redistricting litigation in San Antonio told the court that it should go ahead and start the process of drawing remedial state house and congressional maps for use in 2014, but disagreed slightly about the timing of the process. Under proposals from two plaintiff groups, the state would have [...]
Precinct analysis: Metro
The first rule of precinct analysis, at least as I do it, is that you really can’t learn much by doing it on lopsided elections. The Metro referendum, which passed with 78% of the vote, is Exhibit A of this phenomenon. Here’s how the vote went in the State Rep districts for the Metro issue: [...]
We know the potential, but what’s the plan?
I trust we’re all familiar with the basic points that Eva Longoria and Gilberto Hinojosa make in Politico about Texas’ potential to become a swing state, perhaps by 2016. There’s nothing that Nate Silver didn’t address, and I could just refer to my response to that and leave it be, but there is one more [...]
Yet another reason to expand Medicaid
Grits: A friend forwarded me a handout being circulated at the Harris County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council detailing a pair of studies of “Kendra’s Law” out of New York, which provides court-ordered outpatient mental health treatment to a small subset of probationers in the “most desperate need for psychiatric treatment.” According to the handout, “Taken [...]
From the “How can we miss you if you won’t go away?” files
Rick Perry is doing his best to make us miss him. After almost six months away from the state to campaign for president, Rick Perry has barely returned to his Capitol office since arriving back in Austin, state records show. In the first 16 days since he dropped from the race, covering Jan. 19 through [...]
State objects to court-drawn maps
No surprise. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office on Friday slammed an interim redistricting map proposed by a three-judge panel in San Antonio, saying the federal jurists overstepped their bounds in redrawing House and Senate district lines that could cost Republicans a half-dozen seats next year. “Contrary to (a) basic principle of federalism, the proposed [...]
Fourteen and counting
That’s fourteen lawsuits related to redistricting. At least 14 lawsuits have been filed against the state’s recent redistricting efforts, with more likely on the way. Every decade, Texas lawmakers are responsible for redrawing political boundaries in light of population changes. The matter always ends up in court. A wide range of groups and voters hope [...]
Two other views of Texas redistricting
Here’s a fascinating paper from the Harvard Election Data Archive that attempts to project how many Congressional seats each party will win based on statewide performance. Based on the 2008 presidential election results, twenty-two of the twenty-three current Republican members of Congress will be in districts in which Republicans are expected to receive 55 percent [...]
Prioritizing the target list
So now that we’ve had a tour of the possible targets for the Democrats in 2012, how would I prioritize them? Let’s start with the districts I’d call the Must Haves, and the Really Nice To Haves: Dist Incumbent County ============================= 034 Torres/Scott Nueces 035 Aliseda multiple 041 Pena Hidalgo 078 Margo El Paso 101 [...]
Senate map is out, controversy precedes it
Before we had a State Senate map, we had a brawl brewing over one proposed district on it. Accusing the state Senate’s Republican leaders of a “shameful partisan attack,” Sen. Wendy Davis said Tuesday that a new redistricting map for her Tarrant County senatorial district violates the federal Voting Rights Act by ripping apart a [...]
New map, new opportunities: Harris County
For our last stop on this tour we look at Harris County, which provided several pickup opportunities for Democrats last decade. How will they fare this time around? Republicans started the last decade with a 14-11 advantage – they intended it to be 15-10 after drawing Scott Hochberg out of his seat, but he moved [...]
Senate says “good-bye” to Railroad Commission
Something like this has been talked about for a long time, now we’ll see if it actually happens. The Senate approved a bill [Monday] that would change the name of the Railroad Commission to the Texas Oil and Gas Commission and reduce the size of the commission from three elected members to one elected commissioner. [...]