Today was a beautiful day following yesterday's snow and ice, there were twelve full hours of early voting, and there were a total of 6,072 in-person ballots cast (no mail ballots today), which is almost indistinguishable from the first four...
Consistency, thy name is early voting runoff turnout. Here are the in-person totals for each of the days so far: Monday = 5,834 Tuesday = 5,726 Wednesday = 5,787 Thursday = 5,772 Flat as Houston itself. It'll be interesting to...
Here's the spreadsheet. Basically, three near-identical days for in person voting. At this rate, about 75,000 ballots will be cast before Election Day. I think it will be higher than that, but I don't think by much. For comparison, here's...
The early vote spreadsheet has now been updated to include Day Two. Short story, about the same number of in person votes, fewer mail ballots returned, two day total of 17,480. Again, not too shabby considering the crappy weather. Maybe...
I've updated my early vote spreadsheet from the first round to include the early vote totals for the runoff. Note that this is almost entirely City of Houston - there are a few Bellaire voters in there, and maybe a...
Today marks the start of early voting for all of the runoff elections, which include Houston, Bellaire, and HISD. Early voting schedule and locations can be found here; remember that EV locations outside of Houston city limits are mostly closed,...
It's what we've all been waiting for, and now it's on its way to a mailbox near you, as local hatemeister Steven Hotze has endorsed candidates in all six City of Houston runoffs and sent a mail piece out touting...
One underappreciated aspect of this year's election is that we may wind up with more than two new At Large City Council members. We started with two open seats, and with incumbents Sue Lovell and Jolanda Jones in runoffs, the...
Bill White isn't officially a candidate for Governor yet, but he's already picked up endorsements from State Sens. Kirk Watson and Eliot Shapleigh. I feel confident that many more such endorsements will follow, perhaps even before he commits to the...
Via press release from the County Clerk's office, some dates to mark on the calendar: IMPORTANT DECEMBER 12, 2009 JOINT RUNOFF ELECTION DATES First Day of Early Voting - Monday, November 30, 2009 Last Day to Apply for Ballot by...
As noted yesterday, the Chronicle endorsed Annise Parker for Mayor in the runoff election. With city tax revenues eroded by the continuing recession, the next occupant of the office must be a prudent fiscal manager as well as a leader...
And we have our first poll from a source other than one of the campaigns, but like those two before it, this one shows Annise Parker in the lead. The poll consisted of 500 telephone interviews with registered Houston voters...
The Texas Lottery Commission is fixing to bring Powerball to Texas. The commission unanimously voted to publish rules for the game for public comment. If the panel gives final approval to the rules early next year, the first Powerball ticket...
We've seen Gene Locke's poll, which showed him trailing Annise Parker by four points, 43-39. Now here's a poll from Parker that puts her up by 13. The polling memo: A recent Lake Research Partners survey of likely voters in...
Annise Parker put out a strongly worded press release today that calls out Gene Locke for his work with the Andrews Kurth law firm, which has done a ton of business with the city, some of which was done by...
Moving away for the moment from ridiculous homophobic scare tactics in the Mayor's race runoff to an issue of actual substance, we have the matter of the Dynamo Stadium deal and where the respective candidates stand on it. [Annise] Parker...
Via email from Bill King, who gave me permission to reprint it, comes word of a post-election poll done by Team Locke. I had it queued up for yesterday, but in light of yesterday's news, I put it off for...
I'm pretty much wrung out on precinct analysis for this election, but not everybody is. Go check out Greg's place for Mayoral Maps By Order of Finish and A Path To Victory: A Tale of Three Neighborhoods. Each of those...
Martha has a nice look at the 50 precincts inside the city of Houston in which the most votes were cast, and how each of the four contenders for Mayor did in them. I've copied the data into this Google...
We are about to find out who Peter Brown is backing in the Mayor's race. From the press release he sent out last night at 10:30: MEDIA ADVISORY: PETER BROWN ANNOUNCES ENDORSEMENT IN MAYORAL RUNOFF Peter Brown will host a...
Moving on to the At Large City Council races. I'm going to look at each of them here. First up, At Large #1: Dist Cook Litt Alls Cost Derr Rodr Perk Batt ============================================================ A 1,521 1,629 397 4,806 4,144 2,087...
Here are my numbers. As before, for maps, go see what Greg's got. Dist Green Khan Holm ============================= A 4,685 6,750 7,125 B 7,483 3,329 1,362 C 7,356 7,494 6,332 D 13,410 4,673 3,047 E 5,133 7,684 6,633 F 2,403...
I've got some preliminary precinct data from the County Clerk's office, and have been doing my usual spreadsheet action on it to get a handle of how the vote went this past Tuesday. What follows below is a look at...
Six questions that I can think of, anyway. 1. What will Peter do? Will Peter Brown endorse someone in the runoff? If so, how vigorously does he support that person? He's in a position to have an effect on the...
Council Member Mike Sullivan sheds some light on my confusion about runoffs in school board elections. As a former school board member, I know the answer well. In short, in the state of Texas, a candidate for school board has...
- I didn't note it last night, but all 11 Constitutional amendments passed. No surprise there, they almost always do. - Looking back at my turnout projections, the right number to go with was the 30% scenario. As it happens,...
- My skepticism of those earlier polls that showed Peter Brown in the lead has been justified. Especially in what wound up being a lower-than-expected turnout election, I just couldn't believe a survey of registered voters that was self-screened for...
You know the drill by now. You can find polling locations here, and you can see a Google map and download a spreadsheet of voting locations in the open Council districts at Greg's place. The Tax Assessor's office would like...
I've taken a look at spending on voter outreach in the Controller's race and in the At Large Council races, and was working on a similar post for the district Council races for the 30 days out reports, but never...
Friday was by far the heaviest day of Early Voting, with 17,072 ballots cast, which is nearly as much as Wednesday and Thursday combined, and also nearly as much as the final day of 2003. In the end, 71,368 in-person...
As with the Controller's race, I took a look at spending on voter outreach for At Large candidates in the 30 day out report. Given that some large number of people have no clue about who is running for these...
I didn't take a look at the Mayoral candidates' expenditures on voter outreach in the 30 days out reports, as this exercise is rather time consuming, but I figured I'd have a look at the 8 day reports, just to...
I had previously looked at how the Controller candidates were spending their money after the 30 day reports came out, and I figured I'd do it again with the 8 day reports. Along the way, I found a little surprise....
Another good poll result for Peter Brown. According to [an 11 News / KUHF Houston Public Radio] poll, 24 percent of likely voters in the Houston mayoral race plan to vote for Brown. This is up sharply from the five...
Many groups and individuals are supporting Proposition 4, which is the constitutional amendment to help create more Tier One universities in Texas. One local group in favor of Prop 4 is the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. I had a...
We head into the last week of Early Voting with a total of 30,463 ballots being cast so far; of those, 26,662 were done in person. That compares to 27,590 in person from 2003, and 31,440 total counting mail ballots....
As we know, Early Voting this year is running well ahead of recent years. In the first two days, 8295 in person ballots have been cast, compared to 6685 over the first two days in 2003. I've suggested that this...
Once again, Ree-C Murphy and I are here in the KUHT studio, getting ready for the start of another "Houston Have Your Say". The guests are here, the router is plugged in (amazing how much better your access to the...
Next up, we have an interview with Otis Jordan, who is running in District D. Jordan just retired as a captain in HFD after 30 years of service. Jordan is a graduate of Ross Sterling High School and TCU, and...
I know, I said I was finished with interviews. Turns out that wasn't quite the case, and so today we have a conversation with Adrian Collins, who is running for HISD Trustee in District IX against incumbent Larry Marshall. Collins...
Tuesday night, KUHF channel 8 will broadcast another edition of "Houston, Have Your Say", with the topic being health care reform. Here's what to expect: At 7 p.m. Tuesday, October 20th, HoustonPBS, in partnership with The Center for Houston's Future,...
I've mentioned candidate videos on my blog a few times, and it occurs to me that I ought to just do a search through YouTube to see what's out there for the people running in this election. So here you...
The Citizens Transportation Coalition has done a candidate questionnaire every election in which the hopefuls are asked a bunch of questions about various transportation-related topics. This year is no exception, and as always there are a lot of detailed questions...
We wrap up our 2009 interview season with a conversation with Annise Parker. Parker is serving her third term as Houston City Controller, having served three terms as an At Large Council Member before that. She is a native Houstonian...
Our next Mayoral candidate interview is with City Council Member Peter Brown, who is currently serving his second term as the Member from At Large #1. Brown is a Houston native and UH grad who served six years in the...
And we come to the end of the campaign interview season for 2009 with a conversation with each of the three leading contenders for Mayor. First up is Gene Locke, a native of East Texas and longtime resident of Houston...
I did this exercise for the Controller's race last week, let's see now what we can learn about the four contested At Large Council races. First, At Large #1: Candidate Amount Purpose ========================================================== Karen Derr 88.32 Advertising (Allen Jamail) Karen...
We know that this has been, relatively speaking, a low-dollar, low-profile election. I've been curious as to what the candidates' strategies for doing voter outreach have been. We'll probably know more when we see the eight-days-out reports, but for now,...
Wrapping up my interviews with candidates for Houston City Controller is Council Member Pam Holm, the incumbent in District G. Holm is a native Houstonian and a longtime citizen activist who serves fulltime as Council Member. She is Chair of...
Next among the candidates for Houston City Controller is Council Member MJ Khan, the incumbent in District F. Khan, a native of Pakistan, is a professional engineer who also has an MBA from Rice University and owns a real estate...
We begin the final two weeks of interviews with Council Member Ronald Green, who is the first of the City Controller candidates I spoke to. Like his opponents in the race, Green is term-limited out of Council, where he is...
Just a reminder that you can click on the 2009 Election tab at the top right of my blog index page to get a complete up-to-date list of all the interviews I've done for the November cycle. There's a total...
And we'll wrap up the HISD candidate interviews with Ray Reiner, who is also running for the open District V seat. Reiner is retired after a 40-year career in HISD, where he wore many hats, including three stints as a...
One last time into the HISD races with Mike Lunceford, running for the open Trustee seat in District V. Lunceford is a petroleum engineer and longtime HISD volunteer who has served as a member of the HISD Bond Oversight Committee...
Wrapping up my series of incumbent district Council member is Jarvis Johnson, who is finishing his second term in District B. Council Member Johnson has been one of the leading advocates for bringing wireless Internet access to various parts of...
Next we have Council Member James Rodriguez, who is serving his first term in District I. He's been busy on a number of fronts, including the construction of the Harrisburg light rail line and the pending Dynamo Stadium deal, as...
We begin Round 2 of the incumbent district Council members with Mike Sullivan, who is serving his first term in District E. As with his colleagues, there's been a lot of action in his district these past two years, and...
I know I said I was finished with Council candidate interviews, but I wound up with one more, and will have two more HISD Trustee interviews to run next week as well. Today's interview is a bit of a departure,...
Today's interview subject is Council Member Anne Clutterbuck, who is serving her second term in District C. There's been a lot of action in her district of late - the Ashby highrise, the rebuild of Kirby Drive, the Universities rail...
Next up is Council Member Wanda Adams, who is finishing up her first term in District D. Adams was an employee of the city who was the Go Green coordinator at the time of her election in 2007, and she...
I'm going to spend some time now with incumbent district Council members who are running for re-election. First up is my own Council member, Ed Gonzalez, serving his first term in office after winning a special election runoff in June....
Completing the series of HISD Trustee candidate interviews for District I, today we have a conversation with Linda Toyota. Toyota is currently the Chief Development Officer at YWCA Greater Houston, and has been the Sr. Vice President of Development at...
Next up is Anna Eastman, also running for Trustee in HISD District I. Eastman is a community activist and former social worker who co-founded along with her husband the 11 ½ Street Foundation, which recognizes and provides monetary awards for...
Moving on to the HISD Trustee races, we start with Alma Lara, who is running for the open HISD Trustee seat in District I. Lara is retired after a 35-year career in HISD in which she was a teacher, principal...
As I said last week, I do not expect to do any more interviews with City Council candidates. This week, I will be publishing interviews with HISD Trustee candidates, to be followed by interviews with incumbent district Council members, then...
For my last City Council candidate interview, we have George Foulard, who is running in District G. Foulard is a political newcomer who has worked in the international commodities industry and is currently employed as an options trader. He is...
My penultimate City Council candidate interview is with Dexter Handy, who is running in District G. Handy is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force where he had a distinguished 28-year career that included a stint as Chief of...
As we know, after the filing-deadline shenanigans in the HCC Trustee District 8 race, brother-in-law candidate Arturo Aguilar said he was withdrawing from the ballot. As I noted at the time, that meant there were no other candidates who had...
We are getting close to the end of my interview series. This week I will wrap up the interviews with non-incumbent candidates for City Council. Next week I will have HISD Trustee candidates, then incumbent District City Council members, and...
Richard Sedita is a candidate for District G. He is an Army veteran who served in the Korean DMZ from 1967-69 as a medic. Since then, he has been a registered nurse and has worked as an ER Director, ICU...
We don't get a lot of competitive Council race in Houston that don't involve an open seat. As I've noted before, we may get one this year for At Large #5. One of the candidates seeking to unseat incumbent Council...
Council Member Sue Lovell is running for re-election to her third term in At Large #2. She chairs the Quality of Life committee, from which the recent ordinances about billboards, signage, and attention-getting devices originated, as well as the Transportation,...
Today's interview subject is Rick Rodriguez, who is running in At Large #1. Rodriguez is a 24-year veteran of HPD, where he has worked in a variety of divisions and units, and is now in the Criminal Intelligence Division. He...
Next up is Mills Worsham, who is a candidate in District G. Worsham is the Houston Community College Trustee representing District 6, succeeding Jim Murphy after the latter's election to the State Legislature in 2006. He is a native Houstonian...
As noted last week, Peter Brown will be the first Mayoral candidate to start airing TV ads, which are set to begin running this week. A preview of the first ad, which doesn't appear to be embeddable yet, can be...
I feel like Council Member Jolanda Jones needs no introduction. She's got a fairly high profile these days, and if you follow Houston politics at all, you've probably got a familiarity with her and an opinion of her. Mine remains...
Moving back to District F, today's interview subject is Mike Laster. Mike is an attorney specializing in real estate, and was for six years a Senior Assistant City Attorney in the Real Estate Division of the City Attorney's Office. Mike...
Next up is Jeff Downing, who is running in District A. Jeff is an attorney who runs his own firm, after having been a prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney's office. He was an intern in the White House...
I'm speechless. The news this morning that former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will be a contestant on the upcoming season of "Dancing With the Stars" triggered a mixture of chortling and bemusement as it whipped through cyberspace. "Also: Denny...
One of the things planned to do with my interview series this year is include conversations with incumbent Council members. I've started on those and hope to get to all of them just as I hope to get to as...
We've certainly got a fascinating Mayor's race going on this year, with three viable candidates that can all plausibly claim a path to victory, but it seems to me that there's a lot of interesting stuff happening in the At...
Moving to a new part of town, today's interview subject is Robert Kane, who is running for City Council in District F. Kane is a relative newcomer to Houston, living here for four years after living in various parts of...
Moving back to candidates for office, today I bring you a conversation with Alex Wathen, who is running in District A. Wathen is an attorney who has his own firm, where he specializes in bankruptcy law. He was the Republican...
I've been busy interviewing candidates for various offices, but today I'm going to step away from that and interview a current officeholder who will not be on the ballot this November. I'm talking about Natasha Kamrani, who last week announced...
My next interview subject is Herman Litt, who is running for At Large #1. Litt is a rehabilitation counselor and hospital administrator who was elected to the HCC Board of Trustees in 1999 and served for awhile as its Chair....
Twenty years ago today, US Representative Mickey Leland died in a plane crash while on a humanitarian trip to Ethiopia. His widow Alison Leland and State Sen. Rodney Ellis remember his legacy in today's Chron. Twenty years ago our city,...
Next on the interview list is Amy Peck, who is running in District A. She is a UT graduate who got a ME.d in Counseling Psychology from the University of Houston at the age of 22. She works as constituent...
Moving over to District G, my next interview is with Oliver Pennnington. Pennington is a retired attorney, a partner at Fulbright and Jaworski, whose practice focused on municipal law, and a Rice alumnus. Pennington has lived in District G for...
The 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers. The 1978 Boston Red Sox. The 2010 Kay Bailey Hutchison for Governor campaign. U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison began this year as "Kay the Invincible." But as she prepares to officially launch her bid for governor...
And we return to District A for a conversation with Brenda Stardig. Brenda is a businesswoman and real estate broker who has served on the City of Houston District A Apartment Task Force as well as a number of boards...
That would be because she doesn't know what the hell she's going to do. Here's Kay, take one, from the Mark Davis radio show. Davis: So you'll be coming out at some point. When do you think its decision time...
Continuing with the At Large candidate interviews, today we hear from Noel Freeman, who is running in At Large #4. Freeman was a candidate for the At Large #3 special election of 2007, finishing seventh in the field of 11....
Yes! One more report on campaign fundraising, this time for HISD Trustees. These reports are online, but I didn't know where to look for them. Fortunately, School Zone did, and that's good because the July reports are still in paper...
Returning to the At Large races, the next candidate for this year's interview series is Lonnie Allsbrooks, who is running for At Large #1. Allsbrooks is the owner of the Beer Island bar in the Heights and has been in...
Peter Levine makes a mathematical argument for expanding the size of Congress, which is a subject I've mentioned before. It turns out that the size of legislatures around the world is usually the cube root of the size of each...
Moving on to the first district Council race of this interview cycle, today's subject is Lane Lewis, who is running for the District A seat currently held by Toni Lawrence. Lewis has worked as a social worker and has been...
Since I brought up the subject of Houston city candidates on Twitter last week, I figured I'd put together as complete a list of such candidates' Twitter feeds as I could, since I'd already gotten such a head start on...
Most of the electoral action this fall will be for City of Houston races, but there are also five HISD Trustee seats on the ballot, one of which will be open. School Zone reports on the two races that will...
Continuing with the At Large candidates, today we hear from Stephen Costello, who is running for At Large #1. Stephen is a civil engineer, whose firm has been rated one of the best places to work in Houston, and is...
I did a long post on campaign finance reports from city candidates last night. This is an update to that. You can look for candidates' reports yourself here. - Ronald Green's numbers for City Controller are now in - my...
