I’m writing this at about 11:30 PM, with 169 of 450 voting centers reporting results. One race is very much in the balance, one other could possibly swing. Keep all that in mind.
John Whitmire led 65-35 in Harris County in early voting, and there was no suspense after that. Congratulations to Mayor-elect John Whitmire. There will be a special election in SD15 to finish out his term, as well as the Democratic primary for that office.
Chris Hollins had a 59-41 lead in early voting for Controller, and there was no suspense after that. Congratulations to Controller-elect Chris Hollins.
Most of the City Council races had clear leaders after early voting. Willie Davis has a 55-45 lead in Harris County as of this writing, and he also dominated in Fort Bend. He’s pretty much a lock at this point. Twila Carter has a more modest lead in AL3, about 52-48 and 4,000 votes counting Fort Bend. Barring a surprise, she’s in. CM Letitia Plummer has a bigger lead, about 53-47 and over 7K votes, and it would be a much bigger surprise for her to fall behind. In the district Council races, CMs Carolyn Evans-Shabazz and Mary Nan Huffman had clear leads, as did Mario Castillo in H. Congratulations to all the winners.
The closest race by far is in AL1, where Melanie Miles has about a 300 vote lead, thanks to her support in Fort Bend. I don’t know how safe that is, as Julian Ramirez had a 1,500 vote advantage in Harris County as of this juncture. If the E-Day vote continues for him like this, he ought to be able to surpass her. I don’t know which results are in and which are still out, so it may be that the remainder will be more favorable to Miles. We’ll have to wait and see.
I’ll post any updates as needed in the morning. Until then, this is what we know. Oh, and kudos to commenter DR for a fairly accurate set of predictions in the previous post.
UPDATE: It looks like Julian Ramirez nosed ahead of Melanie Miles by about 400 votes. That’s in recount territory, but as we know that very rarely makes a difference. Turnout on Election Day was a bit under 67K, which was about one third of total turnout, which was about 197K. Not at all robust, to say the least.
How depressing is this ? <215K folks voted for a Mayoral candidate ??? I don't wanna hear sh** from anyone who couldn't get out to pull a lever (metaphorically speaking, of course) over a week-long period.
Props to Chris Hollins, for sure.
Called this. Republicans have flipped a seat and now have six votes on council. In City wide at large positions the only Dem to win last night was Plummer.
Twila Carter and Willie Davis performed really well in black districts showing republicans have made strong gains in the black community. This aligns with the polling showing blacks flipping to Trump and a big part of why Trump is now winning in the polls bigly. Don’t say you’re surprised in 2024. All the signs are there.
DR,
I am not surprised.
Fascism is on the rise. “All the signs are there.”
Sorry DR has nothing to do with the Black community turning toward Trump. It has to do with stupid Democrats not paying attention, and the Chronicle is certainly responsible for Ramirez.
Republicans were pushing all the Republicans plus Whitmire. One mailer I saw was the “Taxman” (Bettencourt) pushing for all of them. I also received a few others because of my Latino last name or maybe because I used to vote in Republican primaries.
Democrats did not do a city-wide mailer; Republicans did, several of them.
If you subscribe to the Chronicle, you would have noticed that they went out of their way to paint Miles as a Republican who changed party to win.
You had Democrats like Robert Gallegos endorsing Ramirez and former LULAC officer Johnny Mata. LULAC Officers endorsed Morales.
Dist. J resident here. Only two of the candidates for whom I voted in the run-off won, Plummer and Collins. All the alarm about Democracy being at death’s door rings hollow when such a massive percentage of the voters can’t be bothered to vote.
@#! typos and failure to proof-read: HOLLINS
That is how Democracy dies, with a whimper.
For the poor who live paycheck to paycheck, what difference does it make if it is a dictator or a duly elected president? Those were elected presidents that sent young men to die in Vietnam. The young men couldn’t even vote at that time.
Do you really think it makes a difference to the vast majority of people who the mayor will be? An old black woman or an old white man.
I am as old or older than either of them.
@Manny…I can’t speak for anybody but myself. The people who did vote would probably say it matters. For the record I am not having anxiety attacks over democracy “dying”. It worked just fine and here we are talking about it!
People had plenty of time to vote if they had wanted. It’s not suppression or fascism . The fact is folks are just not enthused or motivated to come out and vote.
If party affiliations had been printed on the ballot next to the names, I expect the result would have been different. Most voters probably didn’t have any idea who was D and who was R.
@J, given the frontrunners have been highly visible in elected office for decades, anyone who didn’t recognize them as Democrats should refrain from voting. Most of the others clearly campaigned as such or had enough coverage and ties to the party that even a quick look would show them as such as well. The two professed republicans were not endorsed by any of their slates or the local republican headquarters from what I saw either.
Representative Lee and State Senator Whitmire both had built in constituencies acquired over all those years in office that none of the others approached as observed from the polling and election results. Congratulations to mayor-elect Whitmire, not my first choice but always recognized as the likely winner by many voters. Congresswoman Lee can continue serving in office as it suits her, her supporters haven’t gone anywhere.
Freeman, I Don’t know if the link will work; it goes to Facebook.
It has Paul Bettencourt endorsing Whitmire and the other five Republicans.
I received several Republican pieces pushing for the five Republicans.
https://scontent-hou1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/406507968_887239556137825_6643214783052073310_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_p526x296&_nc_cat=104&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=dd5e9f&_nc_ohc=S3DmY3gE9ZIAX89c_dp&_nc_ht=scontent-hou1-1.xx&oh=00_AfAUcxo9ZA_d0eu-W4LwwDqQVymxUx9Qz90_rjiCIbtfrg&oe=657C3AF0
I didn’t pay much attention to the discussions here about the at-large races (my bad), and in the end I went to the Manning spreadsheet to figure out who was who. I suspect many Dem voters assumed the other races on the ballot were Dem vs Dem like the mayor’s race. It was a bad oversight that no mailer went out from anyone clearly identifying the Democrats in the other races.