We move now to the Democratic primaries for Governor and Lt. Governor. I did not analyze any of the other Democratic statewide contested primaries, mostly because they were sufficiently low-profile that I didn’t think there was anything of interest to be learned. My view of the Senate primary is here if you missed it. First up, the Governor’s race:
Dist Valdez White Davis Others
=====================================
CD02 6,779 16,271 2,163 3,738
CD07 6,626 19,479 2,150 4,217
CD08 463 808 224 336
CD09 3,326 10,582 4,018 4,106
CD10 1,837 3,420 883 1,248
CD18 5,780 17,951 5,844 6,518
CD22 762 1,587 343 563
CD29 5,620 6,785 1,569 3,485
CD36 1,880 4,397 513 1,378
HD126 1,026 2,293 610 820
HD127 1,240 2,638 752 939
HD128 780 1,747 239 593
HD129 1,511 3,635 475 1,021
HD130 1,044 2,244 468 739
HD131 1,161 4,365 1,775 1,709
HD132 1,475 2,399 812 1,077
HD133 1,597 5,369 358 945
HD134 3,251 12,319 384 1,283
HD135 1,360 2,646 810 1,051
HD137 804 1,526 366 561
HD138 1,276 2,677 396 824
HD139 1,285 4,526 1,664 1,754
HD140 839 944 273 610
HD141 699 2,406 1,358 1,282
HD142 1,019 3,059 1,568 1,582
HD143 1,385 1,780 482 1,004
HD144 860 930 74 499
HD145 1,760 2,174 224 766
HD146 1,547 5,337 1,685 1,871
HD147 2,380 6,969 1,515 1,939
HD148 2,591 4,913 265 1,027
HD149 890 1,885 489 728
HD150 1,293 2,499 665 965
Andrew White
I don’t have the room to display nine candidates’ worth of results, so I’m just showing the top three, with the other six aggregated into the last column. Harris County was by far Andrew White’s best county – he won over 51% of the vote here, and nearly thirty percent of his statewide total came from Harris. Most of the other counties he won were our neighbors – Fort Bend, Brazoria, Montgomery, and Galveston were all in his column. As such, I don’t want to draw too broad a conclusion from the numbers you see above. This is White’s home turf, and it’s probably where he did the most campaigning, and it worked for him. If he wants to have any hope for winning the runoff, he’s going to have to do well here in May. The fact that there are also runoffs in CDs 07 and 22, plus in countywide races, helps him, but then there are also runoffs in places like CD32, so it’s not like he has all the advantage. My advice to him would simply be to do more of what he did here elsewhere in the state.
Lupe Valdez
As for Lupe Valdez, again I don’t want to generalize from atypical data. She won in all of the other big urban counties, she won in the big suburbs of Collin, Denton, and Williamson, she won in South Texas, and she won in places like Lubbock and Ector and Midland. There’s a good case to be made that she doesn’t need to do anything special to win in May, and should concentrate on fundraising and sharpening her message against Greg Abbott instead. But as I said before, there were still a lot of people who chose someone other than her or White, and many of them will be in the Congressional districts that have runoffs. This is the only statewide runoff, and that means it’s the main attraction for the next eight weeks. She shouldn’t view invitations to debate Andrew White as opportunities for him to gain ground on her, but as opportunities for attention to be focused on Democratic candidates, Democratic priorities, and Democratic messages. When was the last time we had that?
Lastly, Cedric Davis was the one other candidate in this race that had won an election before, and he did have some traction with African-American voters. If he cares to make an endorsement for the runoff, it could carry some weight. If Valdez and White have not been reaching out to him, that’s a bad decision on their part.
Now for the Lite Guv race, for which there were two candidates and thus no runoff concerns:
Dist Cooper Collier
=======================
CD02 11,197 16,416
CD07 12,166 18,092
CD08 929 833
CD09 12,682 8,621
CD10 3,676 3,495
CD18 18,698 15,785
CD22 1,693 1,449
CD29 9,333 7,082
CD36 3,545 4,333
HD126 2,541 2,071
HD127 2,836 2,575
HD128 1,633 1,585
HD129 2,853 3,574
HD130 2,118 2,220
HD131 5,308 3,448
HD132 3,150 2,488
HD133 2,704 4,953
HD134 4,203 11,439
HD135 3,163 2,512
HD137 1,541 1,567
HD138 2,310 2,653
HD139 5,006 3,863
HD140 1,566 966
HD141 3,623 1,901
HD142 4,401 2,548
HD143 2,661 1,748
HD144 1,192 1,010
HD145 2,131 2,441
HD146 5,401 4,557
HD147 5,667 6,506
HD148 2,871 5,381
HD149 2,222 1,671
HD150 2,818 2,429
Collier won Harris County with 50.70% of the vote; he did better statewide, getting 52.37% of the total. Neither he nor Michael Cooper had any money, but Collier’s campaign was visible to me while Cooper’s was not. I got Collier’s emails, I saw his posts on Facebook, and I saw posts from friends about him on Facebook. Looking at where Collier did well in Harris County, I’d say he did well with other voters like me who probably saw evidence of his campaign as well. Collier did very well in some counties, like Travis and Bexar and Williamson, as well as the Dallas suburbs, but trailed by a little in Dallas and Tarrant, and by more in El Paso and the South Texas region. The not Dan Patrick crowd seems to be on board with him. I suspect that’s mostly a matter of making sure his campaign is visible to them as well.
Cedric already endorsed White. I think that was pretty big, if it pays off for him.
FYI Cedric Davis endorsed the Andrew White campaign. See Chron: https://www.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/Jeffrey-Payne-decliner-to-endorse-in-Dem-gov-12741092.php