PDiddie reports:
Some Democrats — I am one — are getting late-night robo-calls (11:00pm-2:00am) about ethics complaints against an unnamed candidate in the SD-17 runoff. Since this slime is NOT coming from the Chris Bell campaign, it’s obviously the latest effort by the usual shadowy group of Republicans who used the same tactic of smear calls and websites on Huffman herself in the general election. The purpose is not to encourage support for Huffman but to simply discourage Democratic voters from going to the polls. The website mentioned in the call, www.texasethicsreport.com, is a poor ripoff of Drudge and is quite visibly shoddy and hastily thrown together. It contains a sham ethics complaint against Bell.
Several people who were at our house last night for Lights in the Heights reported receiving one of those calls as well. It’s a crappy and cowardly thing to do – probably illegal, too, though no one will ever suffer any consequences for it, even if the callers are ultimately identified. Just know that if this happens to you or to someone you know that it’s being done to Chris Bell, not by him.
Tuesday is Runoff Day for this race. Here’s how the early vote went:
County Total EV % of EV Harris 6,623 49.61% Fort Bend 3,101 23.23% Brazoria 2,006 15.03% Galveston 676 5.06% Jefferson 945 7.08% Total 13,351 100.00%
Here’s how those numbers compare to the November results:
County Total votes Vote % ================================ Harris 119,759 53.63% Fort Bend 62,095 27.83% Brazoria 21,218 9.50% Galveston 9,209 4.12% Jefferson 11,014 4.93% Total 13351 100.00%
Bell dominated in Jefferson, where he won a clear majority, and Galveston, where he won a near-majority, so the early vote totals in those counties are good news for him. Huffman was the leading vote-getter in Brazoria, so that’s good for her. Bell led in Harris and Fort Bend, so he would prefer to have those numbers get up a bit. Whatever the case, you still need to vote for Bell if you live in SD17, and exhort everyone you know who lives there to do so as well. You can also still make a donation or a phone call to help out. If not now, then when?
Doesn’t look like a sham complaint to me. It looks like a complaint that was filed with TEC. One of how many filed last month against the usual suspects in both parties?
Who is Jim Doyle?
As for the calls, has anyone hit *57 to activate call trace? Not sure who you would ask AT&T to forward the information to but at least there would be a record somewhere of who made the calls. Maybe. Not all calls are traceable.
Candidates, by the way, who make an issue of ethics should walk their talk. This will be dismissed as some error someone made. Still, well, it doesn’t really reflect well on Chris Bell.
Your numbers aren’t accurate. There were 8,885 early and absentee votes cast in Harris County through Friday.
In Jefferson the vote was 1,362 through Friday.
Republicans are acting offly bubbly about this race.