If Bill King doesn't win, it would be a surprise
On election night I tweeted:
If I had to set the odds right now, I'd actually make Bill King a very slight favorite to be Houston's next mayor. #HouNews #houvote
— Perry vs World blog (@PerryVsWorld) November 4, 2015A brief look at recent Houston mayoral elections might make that tweet seem crazy given that the Democratic machine dominates Houston municipal politics.
A couple days later, I started writing a version of this post. I never did finish it, in part because momentum kept shifting to Bill King.
This tweet steals the thunder from the post I keep procrastinating on finishing https://t.co/NDiSuIH9Os
— Perry vs World blog (@PerryVsWorld) November 26, 2015After a post-election lull, momentum would at the present time appear to be swinging in favor of @BillKingForHou #HouVote #HouMayor
— Mark P. Jones (@MarkPJonesTX) November 25, 2015Aside: Rice prof @MarkPJonesTX is definitely worth a follow on Twitter:
@KrisBanks @chronsnyder For some, others might prefer some combo of 'intercept shift', 'stochastic term' or 'temporal spline'
— Mark P. Jones (@MarkPJonesTX) November 25, 2015A few thoughts:
1. Turner has never shown that he can move beyond his base of voters...and the number of votes he's getting is moving in the wrong direction.
In 1991, Sylvester Turner got 114k votes. In 2003, Turner got 88k votes & missed runoff. In 2015...82k votes. #decline #houvote #HouNews
— Perry vs World blog (@PerryVsWorld) November 9, 2015That's definitely not going the right way for Turner, especially considering how much population the city of Houston continues to add every year.
Have we seen anything in this runoff that would convince a voter to switch from repeated votes against Turner to voting for him, despite Sylvester Turner's ethical baggage?
If so, I missed it. King is getting endorsements and fundraising help from Democrats. Heck, Sylvester Turner couldn't even keep Chris Bell neutral!
2. Nationalize and demonize
What worked for Democrats in the last 2 close mayoral elections between R and D was to make it a partisan election where they could nationalize the election and demonize the opposition.
It was easy to do it to Mosbacher - he was a national Republican figure. And Orlando Sanchez willingly brought in national Republican endorsements from George W Bush and Rudy Giuliani. But Democrats scored a nice blow there when Sanchez's campaign couldn't say that Sanchez and Giuliani had ever met.
They haven't been able to make the runoff a partisan election.
Is Bill King even a Republican? I'm not sure - maybe? His writing over the years suggested he was quite willing to criticize both parties. King calls himself an independent.
3. Turner's campaign looks and sounds desperate
Not quantitative by any means, but Turner's campaign looks desperate. Their messaging is all over the place. They are throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something will finally stick.
Turner's campaign has always been very light on policy, but in the runoff it's just all-out personal attacks.
Early in the runoff, Turner seemed to be trying to turn this into a partisan race, but it wasn't working, so he just decided to try slandering King instead. But the attacks so far are weaksauce. They don't like the name of the boat that he sold years ago?
Bottom line:
All of this adds up to one thing: an unhappy Democratic machine on election night. Maybe they can pull the rabbit out of the turnout hat, but at this point I would bet against it.
Posted by Evan @ 12/03/15 03:42 PM
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