CM Karla Cisneros
Strolling through Independence Heights one recent cloudy afternoon, Councilwoman Karla Cisneros encountered reminders of the issues facing her district: a stray dog roaming from home to home, illegally dumped trash blocking a drainage ditch, a constituent still patching up damage from Tropical Storm Imelda.
Flooding and the stray animal population are among several issues Cisneros wants to continue tackling on city council if voters award her another term. Standing in her way is Isabel Longoria, a 31-year-old former legislative aide and city planning commissioner who has mounted a spirited campaign against the first-term incumbent.
In the first round, Cisneros secured 38 percent of the vote — enough to lead the four-candidate field, but short of the majority needed for an outright win. Longoria finished second, with 27 percent, and faces Cisneros in a December runoff.
While in office, Cisneros, who chairs city council’s economic development subcommittee on education, has focused much of her attention on education and workforce development.
“We need to be growing our own, because we have a huge population of young people who could be doing these jobs,” Cisneros said on the recent block walking session. “And if we don’t, then they’re not going to be contributing. They’re going to be a burden. And there’s no reason that they shouldn’t be what our city is built on.”
Longoria, meanwhile, has cast herself as the more progressive candidate and claims to be more in touch with district activists. She does not hide her wonkish approach to politics, running in the vein of presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren as the one with the plans to turn her ideas into policy.
At the core of Longoria’s pitch for change is her argument that Cisneros has not been adequately proactive about key issues in District H, an L-shaped area that takes in Independence Heights, Near Northside, East End and Woodland Heights. Longoria contends that Cisneros, a former school teacher and HISD board trustee, has focused her attention too squarely on education and workforce development to the detriment of other topics.
“I’m not one who backs down from confrontation,” Longoria said. “I think confrontation is a warrior fighting for their community. And I don’t think Karla has that same warrior spirit. I think she’s a teacher, and that’s great. But we can’t teach our way out of this problem.”
Cisneros, 65, sees things differently, arguing that she deserves another term based on her record over four years.
Here’s the thing: They’re both good. There are current members of Council that I will be happy to see the end of, but CM Cisneros is not on that list. You can read the story for the arguments for and against her, but she’s a perfectly decent Council member. Longoria is a wonk after my own heart, and there’s no question in my mind she’ll be terrific. I said in an earlier post that I hadn’t noticed a lot of Cisneros yard signs in the blocks around where I live – my dog likes going on long walks, so I see all the houses sooner or later – but that is no longer the case. She’s winning the yard sign race at this point. Looking at the official canvass, Cisneros got 52% in Precinct 0003, and 46% in Precinct 0004. In 2015 she got 53% in 0003, and 62% in 0004, so about the same in one part of the neighborhood and some slippage in the other. I don’t know what if anything that may mean for this year, but there you have it.