Rick Perry vs World

18 November 2013

Wendy Davis cashes in

May as well cash in on her popularity with the far left:

Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator whose 11-hour legislative filibuster of an abortion bill gave her instant fame in the Democratic Party, is about to take the next logical step in her political ascent: writing a memoir.

Ms. Davis, a candidate for governor in Texas, has signed with Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, to write a book about her personal life and career, the publisher said on Thursday.

She's an ardent liberal running in a conservative state whose campaign has been marked by a series of missteps. May as well try to make some money on the deal, I guess.

Posted by Evan @ 11/18/13 12:05 AM | Comments (0)

16 November 2013

Those funny stereotypes

This is what Wayne Slater thinks is "funny and familiar" to Latinos.

As for speaking directly to Hispanics, she can be funny and familiar.

"I still live in the barrio. And if I get lost I can find the gang signs on my way home," she said recently. "The closest gated community to my house is the jail."

Hilarious.

Posted by Evan @ 11/16/13 04:11 PM | Comments (0)

09 November 2013

John Weaver got paid well to mismanage Ben Hall's campaign

When I read in early August that Ben Hall had hired John Weaver to run his campaign*, I knew Annise Parker would be re-elected as Houston's mayor. I said so on Twitter:

Annise Parker looks to be safe for re-election if this is who Ben Hall hires for his campaign team http://t.co/9B4nmzLife #hounews
— Evan PVW (@PerryVsWorld) August 3, 2013

John Weaver has called himself a Republican. He's also called himself a Democrat. While he seems to be calling himself a Republican again now, he spends most of his time criticizing Republicans as if he were still a Democrat. Over the course of Weaver's career, there is no detectable ideological consistency. But the one constant is that John Weaver gets paid. If there is one thing John Weaver is good at, it is finding deep-pocketed candidates. In fact, I said that back in August:

@PubliusTX if there is one thing John Weaver is good at, it is finding deep-pocketed candidates.
— Evan PVW (@PerryVsWorld) August 3, 2013

I took a quick tour through the City of Houston's campaign finance reports this morning. Here are the payments from Hall to John Weaver or to John Weaver's consulting firm*:

7/2 3750
7/3 22470
7/31 10k
8/2 129,515
8/30 10k
9/20 100k
9/30 100k
10/1 10k
10/18 150k

That's a grand total of $535,735. Ben Hall received just 46,775 votes for under 28% of the vote. Hall paid about $11.50 per vote to John Weaver/Weaver's firm for a campaign that was terribly strategized and poorly executed.

To be fair, some of those big payments to Weaver's consulting firm were for media buys. We don't know how much Weaver's firm made on those ad buys. However media buyers often get about 5% of media buys. If Weaver made 5% on the ad buys, then he made $80,000 (and $1.71 per vote) from four months of running Ben Hall's campaign into the ground.

* Mark Sanders' firm was also involved in the race.
** Those were just the payments I found in a quick check of the reports. I wouldn't be surprised if I missed some payments, so the actual amount could be higher.

Posted by Evan @ 11/09/13 02:01 PM | Comments (0)

06 November 2013

From the same playbook

Jason Johnson makes the same points this afternoon that I made in this morning's post.

Posted by Evan @ 11/06/13 06:19 PM | Comments (0)

Early returns on Ted Cruz vs the establishment

Last night's gubernatorial results do not reflect the apocalyptic-style predictions made by some in the GOP establishment about the electoral consequences of #DefundObamaCare.

1. Chris Christie cruised to re-election in NJ. His team looked to be patterning his re-election bid on George W. Bush's 98 effort, but the politician Chris Christie most reminds me of is John McCain. Christie benefited from sucking up to Obama during Sandy, but clearly NJ's solidly Democratic electorate did not hold the R by Christie's name against him.

2. McAuliffe squeaks by Cuccinelli in Virginia. This augurs pretty well for Republicans since 1) McAuliffe was outspending Cuccinelli 25 to 1 on the air, and even 10 to 1 in the closing days (per PoliticoLive last night), 2 liberals bankrolled a libertarian who got 7% by peeling off votes from Cuccinelli, and 3) Cuccinelli wasn't a stellar candidate. And exit polls even showed Virginia voters held Obama equally as responsible as Republicans for the government shutdown.

As for Texas angles:
1. With Wendy Davis and Barack Obama leading the way, 2014 should be a tough year for downballot Democrats.
2. I wonder if John Cornyn regrets his vote to not Defund ObamaCare? Someone should ask him.
3. Those overblown predictions made a few months ago do not look very smart nor perspicacious.

Posted by Evan @ 11/06/13 09:17 AM | Comments (0)

31 October 2013

Houston mayoral elections comment

A strange paragraph from Robert Miller:

An analysis of the City of Houston vote by Kyle Johnston of Johnston Campaign estimates that through the first five days, the ethnic breakdown of those casting Houston ballots is African American 32%, Hispanic 12%, Asian 1%, and Other (Anglo) 55%. Mr. Johnston also finds that of the City of Houston voters, 61% have a Democratic primary history, 34% have a Republican primary history, and 5% have no primary history. This partisan breakdown provides further evidence that the time has passed when a candidate running as a Republican can be elected Mayor of Houston.

This is a strange paragraph on multiple levels.

First, partisan ties are much weaker in big city municipal elections so the right candidate can always win. How else would NYC go 2 decades without a Democratic mayor?* Houston's elections are non-partisan by law, but Houston is obviously a less Democrat-dominated city than Los Angeles. That didn't stop Dick Riordan. You could probably even point to Sam Katz in Philadelphia, who came very close in a much more difficult partisan environment than Houston. Of course finding the right candidate isn't so easy, and often good political talent doesn't work in political races (or it doesn't get hired because candidates are very poor at selecting consultants), which leads me to my second point.

You can't project a D vs R election when this is a Democrat vs Democrat election. There are no Republicans running for mayor. It's not surprising that Democrats are more motivated to turn out to vote in a battle between two Democrats. Ben Hall has occasionally tried to speak to Republicans, but he made the mistake of hiring John Weaver. Maybe Weaver is calling himself a Republican again these days (it's tough to keep track of his party and ideological switches) but he really hasn't run a good campaign that would motivate Republicans.

Third, when was this mythical time when Republicans could be elected mayor of Houston (in Miller's mind)? Are we going back to Jim McConn and counting him? In 2001, Orlando Sanchez ran a pretty good campaign against a weak, bumbling Lee Brown in the height of post-9/11 Republican turnout. He lost, despite some big GOP endorsements and robocalls in the finals days from Giuliani and George HW. To go back to my first point, he could have won the open seat in 2003, but rather inexplicably he didn't do the necessary work to win in a difficult environment.

* For purposes of this post, I'm going with the nominal truth that Mike Bloomberg isn't a Democrat.

Posted by Evan @ 10/31/13 11:28 PM | Comments (0)

21 October 2013

The Texas outside of 360

Paul Burka:

I consider myself to be as much a representative of a true Texan as anybody I know, but I have to confess to one shortcoming: I just don't get the gun culture, and I don't think I ever will. . . . I don't own a gun and have no plans to get one.

With all due respect to Paul, he grew up in Galveston, went to Rice and then has lived his entire adult life in Austin. He doesn't own a gun.

I doubt many people outside of Travis County consider Austinites who don't own guns to be "representative of a true Texan."

Posted by Evan @ 10/21/13 10:53 PM | Comments (1)

20 October 2013

Eltife and Geren want to decide who gets freedom of the press

I saw last week that AgendaWise is suing to be allowed to livestream the Texas legislature.

In July 2013, AgendaWise began respectfully requesting access to capitol server closets to install equipment that would enable live streaming of the legislature. AgendaWise made the requests after learning that other organizations had been given access to the closets for the same purpose. The group's letters went unanswered. After the four defendants were contacted by AgendaWise's General Counsel, State Senator Kevin Eltife and State Representative Charlie Geren responded in a joint letter denying AgendaWise access.

Time Warner Cable, Grande Communications, AT&T, and the Texas Tribune all currently have the capability to stream live unedited footage from the Capitol.

I get that Eltife and Geren are both moderates who battle against AgendaWise's conservative views during the session. But it is terrible policy to discriminate against more livestreaming of the legislature.

Government doesn't get to decide who gets freedom of the press. It's even worse when they discriminate against organizations solely because they have been criticized by them.

Posted by Evan @ 10/20/13 10:12 PM | Comments (0)

17 October 2013

Exactly why Leppert worked so hard and got so little traction

Tom Leppert shows why he garnered 13% of the vote:

Former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, a longtime CEO and one-time candidate for Senate, said it's even simpler.
"If you ran a business and stepped before the board on a big issue to say, 'I'm here to make a speech but don�t have any solutions for the problem,' you wouldn't last long," Leppert said. "The people we have sent to Washington care far too much about giving speeches and too little about getting results."

"There is real concern that the Republican Party is not looking at solutions," Leppert said.

What a shocker that Texas Republicans didn't vote en masse for a guy who likes to echo Democratic talking points.

Posted by Evan @ 10/17/13 07:56 AM | Comments (0)

16 October 2013

Dewhurst's fundamental problem

David Dewhurst called for Obama's impeachment:

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst called for President Barack Obama�s impeachment during a Tarrant County Tea Party candidate forum, The Texas Observer reported first.

Dewhurst's spokesman confirmed to the Texas Tribune that the lieutenant governor said Congress should impeached the president for taking his role too far on issues like immigration and Obamacare, as well as mistakes following the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Dewhurst's fundamental problem is that he spent his first 10 years in Austin trying to convince everyone that he was a moderate Republican. For the last year and a half, he's trying to convince people that he's really a conservative. It is doubtful that inflammatory rhetoric will outweigh 10 years of record.

Posted by Evan @ 10/16/13 06:33 PM | Comments (0)

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