Posts Tagged ‘2014 Election’
Saturday, March 8th, 2014
Ace of Spades, showing considerable time, effort, and a somewhat shaky grasp of MS Paint, has produced a single, superginormous .PNG that will annoy everyone without a 30″ Apple Cinema Display that shows, in great detail, why Wendy Davis is doomed.
It’s essentially a color-coded county-by-county breakdown map of Texas that shows negligible voter growth in the most heavily Democratic counties since the Ann Richards—Clayton Williams gubernatorial election of 1990, while East Texas has flipped Republican and the big suburban Republican counties have grown tremendously as of the 2010 Rick Perry-Bill White gubernatorial election.
“The GOP margin out of Montgomery Co ALONE almost completely negates that of the D’s in Harris, Travis, and Bexar Cos combined, falling just 1300 votes short!” [all sic from the PNG]
For those outside the state who may not immediately twig to what that sentence is saying: A single suburban county north of Houston has enough of a Republican margin to negate the Democratic advantage in Houston, Austin and San Antonio combined.
Red areas have gotten redder, blue areas have flipped red or gotten pink, even deep urban areas are less Democratic than they were two decades ago, and the few counties in the Rio Grande Valley who have stayed deep blue have barely added new voters.
All that adds up to Wendy Davis being slaughtered in November.
And Ace’s map only goes up to 2010. Since then, things have gotten even worse for Democrats.
Hey Ace: Is there any reason you couldn’t have stacked the two Texas images vertically? Are you in the pay of the Big Monitor Lobby? Inquiring minds want to know!
Tags:2010 Election, 2014 Election, Ace of Spades, Ann Richards, Bill White, Clayton Williams, Rick Perry, Texas, Wendy Davis
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, March 7th, 2014
When last we checked, Glenn Hegar was on the edge of winning the Republican nomination for Comptroller outright, but he ended up garnering a frustrating 49.99% of the vote.
Thankfully, primary opponent Harvey Hilderbran has aceeded to reality and announced he’s withdrawing from the race, saving everyone a lot of money and effort for contesting a race that was already a foregone conclusion.
Hegar will face (and most likely obliterate) Democrat Mike Collier in November.
Tags:2014 Election, Elections, Glenn Hegar, Harvey Hilderbran, Republicans, Texas
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 5th, 2014
Will Franklin has an interesting piece up detailing just how poorly Democrats did in primary turnout on Tuesday, noting that both the Democratic Party total, and Wendy Davis’ numbers compared to Bill White, were down significantly from 2010. By contrast, “Abbott received 1,219,831 votes, or 91.50% in a four-way primary race. 1,333,010 Republicans voted in the 2014 primary.”
For all the money BattleGround Texas is pouring into the state, Democrats are doing worse than they did in 2010.
Although Franklin doesn’t go into the 2012 numbers, I’d also like to note that overall Democratic votes are down from 590,164 in 2012 to 546,480. Normally a presidential election year will have higher numbers, but there were no big-money, hotly contested races at the top of the Democratic ticket that year. Turnout should have been up this year. It wasn’t.
More Will Franklin:
In short, there is a partisan enthusiasm gap in Texas, and Republicans are winning it. Democrats have years of soul searching and retooling to do before they’ll even sniff winning their first statewide race since the early 90s. Anointing someone known almost exclusively for filibustering on behalf of elective late-term abortion post 5 months of pregnancy may have set the Democrats’ plan back at least one full election cycle, if not more.”
Read the whole thing.
Tags:2014 Election, 2014 Governor's Race, Bill White, Elections, Greg Abbott, Texas, Wendy Davis, WILLisms
Posted in Elections, Texas | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, March 5th, 2014
A very brief look at last night’s primary results:
John Cornyn won, but couldn’t break 60% against a field of underfunded challengers.
The Democratic Senate runoff is going to be between the big-spender David Alameel and the LaRouche candidate Kesha Rogers.
As expected, both Greg Abbott and Wendy Davis won their gubernatorial primaries. But Abbott garnered 91% and over 1.2 million votes, the most of any candidate for any office. By contrast, Davis got 432,000 votes and won 79% of the vote against underfunded challenger Ray Madrigal, indicating a distinct enthusiasm gap despite Davis’ nationwide MSM cheer-leading corps.
Dan Patrick’s early lead over incumbent David Dewhurst in the Lt. Governor’s race held up. Patrick pulled in 550,742 votes for 41.5% of the vote, while Dewhurst got 376,164 votes for 28.3%. Maybe Dewhurst can carpet-bomb the runoff with money, but that’s an awful big gap to make up. We knew that Dewhurst losing to Cruz in 2012 hurt him; now we know how much.
Ken Paxton takes the lead into the runoff with 566,080 votes over Dan Branch’s 426,561.
Glenn Hegar is hovering right at the threshold of beating Harvey Hildebran outright in the Comptroller race.
George P. Bush garnered 934,501 to win the Land Commissioner primary…or over twice as many votes as Wendy Davis.
Sid Miller (410,273) and Tommy Merritt (248,568) are heading for a runoff for Agricultural Commissioner, leaving Joe Straus ally Eric Opiela out in the cold.
All the Ted Cruz-endorsed Supreme Court incumbents won their races.
Super-tight runoff in U.S. House District 23 between Francisco “Quico” Canseco and Will Hurd to face Democratic incumbent Pete Gallego. Canseco held the seat before Gallego, and whoever wins the runoff has a good chance of taking the swing seat back.
Katrina Pierson was unable to unseat Pete Sessions in U.S. House District 32, garnering 36.4% of the vote. As I feared, Sarah Palin’s endorsement came to late to truly capitalize on it in fundraising.
Matt McCall did even better, where he and another challenger kept Lamar Smith at 60.4% in U.S. House District 21. Though they won their primaries, Sessions and Smith might be vulnerable to further challenges in 2016.
As far as I can tell, every U.S. or statewide incumbent Republican either won or is leading their race. Except David Dewhurst.
Tags:2014 Election, 2014 Governor's Race, Dan Branch, Dan Patrick, David Alameel, David Dewhurst, Elections, Eric Opiela, Francisco "Quico" Canseco, George P. Bush, Glenn Hegar, Greg Abbott, John Cornyn, Katrina Pierson, Ken Paxton, Kesha Rogers, Matt McCall, Pete Sessions, Republicans, Sid Miller, Ted Cruz, Texas, Tommy Merritt, Wendy Davis
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 4th, 2014
Most people were expecting to see a David Dewhurst-Dan Patrick runoff for Lt. Governor. however, you’d be hard=pressed to find anyone who would predict that not only would Patrick garner more votes in the primary than Dewhurst, but also do so by a significant margin. Right now, with 59% of the vote in, Patrick is ahead of Dewhurst by over 100,000 votes, garnering 41.8 of the vote, while Dewhurst is getting 28.3%.
People we’re saying that Patrick was lucky Jerry Patterson and Todd Staples were the race, ensuring a runoff. Now it appears that Dewhurst should be thankful they’re keeping Dan Patrick from winning outright…
Tags:2014 Election, 2014 Lt. Governor's Race, Dan Patrick, David Dewhurst, Republicans, Texas
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Monday, March 3rd, 2014
Since I live in Williamson and have received a ton of flyers on local judicial races, I should probably get together some semi-coherent thoughts about the race and post them here.
Fortunately, Holly Hansen has already done the heavy lifting.
County Court at Law Judge Doug Arnold has been challenged by GOP newcomer Tallion Taylor (Taylor used to vote Democrat, but recently switched to the Republican party).
Three candidates have filed to replace retiring Williamson County Treasurer Vivian Wood: Leander City Councilwoman Michell Cantwell, Jerri Jones, and Ralph Pruyn. As I’ve previously written, Jones is an alleged Republican who publicly supported a Democrat for District Attorney in 2012.
Indeed, I emailed Taylor to see if he wanted to deny reports of formerly being a Democrat. He never replied.
And now the tl;dr recommendation from Holly:
Let me also state my skepticism of those who still view the Michael Morton case as a universal “get into office free” card. Yes, it was a miscarriage of justice. No, that doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore your past record of supporting Democrats or lack of conservative credentials to vote for you. In fact, from now on I’m going to vote against those using the case in their attack mailers just on general principle. That means you, Ryan Larson.
Tags:2014 Election, Austin, Doug Arnold, Elections, Holly Hansen, Judicial Elections, Ryan Larson, Tallion Taylor, Texas, Williamson County
Posted in Austin, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Monday, March 3rd, 2014
With primary voting upon us tomorrow, it looks like I’ve run out of campaign to cover. Here then is a quick, scatter-shot batch of snippets on various races:
Wendy Davis is super popular…just not in Texas. “27 percent of the money Davis raised in the last filing quarter came from donors outside Texas, compared to just 2 percent of Abbott’s total.”
In the Comptroller race, Glenn Hegar seems to have have racked up the lion’s share of conservative endorsements, and is also winning the money race over Harvey Hilderbran (who has mostly racked up the endorsements of business groups, newspapers, and “shill” groups like Steve Holtz’s “Conservative Republicans of Texas“). 2010 Gubernatorial hopeful Debra Medina is also polling strongly despite having raised relatively little money, I didn’t think she was ready for primetime in 2010, but Comptroller is probably a great spot for a Libertarian. I’d vote Hegar over Medina, but I’d vote both over Hilderbran.
The Agricultural Commissioner’s race is easier to narrow down with who not to vote for, namely J. Allen Carnes, who voted Democratic until 2012, and “donated to Texas Democrats Pete Gallego, Henry Cuellar, and Ciro Rodriguez.” Also who to vote against: Eric Opiela, AKA Joe Straus’ lawyer. By contrast, Sid Miller seems to have racked up an impressive list of endorsements.
In the Land Commissioner race, George P. Bush does have a primary opponent in David Watts, who has actually racked up a fair number of endorsements. Plus Paul Burka isn’t impressed with George P. Bush’s campaign (and Burka may even be right for a change).
Lt. Governor race roundup. if the Chronicle paywall won’t let you in, search for the first sentence on Google news. Here’s some damning-with-faint-praise for Todd Staples: “‘Staples becomes a plausible alternative if you don’t have Dewhurst in the race,’ Henson said. ‘My impression is that he is well-liked in the Capitol special-interest community.'” Ouch!
Here’s your biannual reminder that Texas mainstream media outlets almost always endorse the most liberal candidate.
Tags:2014 Election, 2014 Lt. Governor's Race, David Watts, Debra Medina, Eric Opiela, George P. Bush, Glenn Hegar, Greg Abbott, Harvey Hilderbran, J. Allen Carnes, Joe Straus, Media Watch, MSM, Paul Burka, Republicans, Sid Miller, Steve Holtz, Texas, Todd Staples, Wendy Davis
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Monday, March 3rd, 2014
I haven’t been covering the primary race between incumbent Pete Sessions and Tea Party favorite Katrina Pierson for a couple of reasons. First, it’s not my district. Second, when it comes to incumbent Republicans drifting too far left, Sessions (with an ACU rating of 97%) doesn’t even rank among the top 100. Even though I was on the other side of the battle over defunding ObamaCare. I didn’t regard inter-party tactical disagreement as a reason for excommunication.
However, a lot of news has been popping up on the race:
First, Sarah Palin endorsed Pierson, which is a huge, huge boost for her. Unfortunately, it came fairly late in the primary season, making it difficult for Pierson to capitalize on it for fundraising. The fact that Pierson has also been endorsed by Freedomworks, Rafael Cruz and Instapundit Glenn Reynolds won’t hurt either.
Pierson rasied over $68,000 this year, which is not chicken feed, but is pretty low to take out an incumbent with over $1 million cash on hand.
Then it came to light that Sessions doesn’t actually live in the district:
But in the weirdest twist, Sheriff Joe Arpaio endorsed Pierson, then unendorsed her later the same day and endorsed Sessions, saying Pierson has misled him about Sessions being a supporter of illegal alien amnesty. (You would think Sheriff Joe would do a bit of research before offering an endorsement.)
Will the Arpaio kerfuffle blunt her momentum? Maybe, but Sessions more than 10-1 fundraising advantage will be a much steeper obstacle to overcome against an entrenched incumbent…
Tags:2014 Election, Elections, Katrina Pierson, Pete Sessions, Republicans, Texas, video
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas, video | No Comments »
Monday, March 3rd, 2014
Given Senator John Cornyn’s deviations from conservative orthodoxy, many Tea Party supporters were relieved when Rep. Steve Stockman finally stepped up to primary him at the last minute. Stockman was a solid conservative, and people hoped he could at least give Cornyn a run for his money.
That hope proved short-lived.
Stockman has run a very poor campaign. He has missed numerous campaign events. I would say his fundraising has been poor, except the most recent FEC report I have been able to find doesn’t show him having raised any funds at all. (This is not the first time Stockman has had problems with filling out FEC forms.) His missing-in-action campaign is a sharp contrast with Ted Cruz’s smart, disciplined underdog campaign in 2012.
Other revelations about his past haven’t helped either. Records show that Stockman hasn’t voted in a primary in 10 years.
Given the dysfunctional nature of the Stockman campaign, it’s not a surprise that Tea Party supporters have largely given up on him as well.
I thought that Stockman got into the race too late to have real chance to beat Cornyn, but I didn’t expect him to do such a miserable job.
Tags:2014 Election, 2014 Senate Race, Elections, John Cornyn, Steve Stockman, Texas
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »