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November 13, 2006
Taking Stock
We are now nearly a week removed from the 2006 midterm election -- a remarkable one, to be sure. As the sleep-deprived slowly return to reality, we begin to blog again (finally!) and take a look at what actually happened on November 7th.
Nationally, it was quickly clear that the middle of the electorate stood up and said, enough. That the GOP got itself to this point has always been a bit of a mystery to us. After the tragedy of 9/11, the country craved unity from its elected officials. Reasonable governing from the middle would have nearly guaranteed Republicans continued control of the American political system. Instead, the pursuit of radical, ideological foreign and domestic policy landed the GOP in the Congressional minority.
Karl Rove's vaunted strategy of playing to the "base" left his team in the dugout for the remaining two years of George W. Bush's presidency. Let the quacking begin.
Here in Texas, the story is more mixed. Unpopular Republican governor Rick Perry limped into another term, mostly because the underfunded Democratic nominee could never reach enough Texas voters to even let them know he was on the ticket. For two successive gubernatorial election cycles here, major Democratic donors have bet wrong. Many were sold a bill of goods this year that a repeated party-switcher with no real base could dethrone Governor Good Hair. 0 for 2, guys... Maybe time to reconsider the advice you're getting?
On the plus side, Texas Democrats defended every incumbent member of the Legislature and gained 5 State House seats to boot. This is real progress, and in our judgment a large share of the credit goes to the combined efforts of the Texas Democratic Trust, the state party, the House Democratic Campaign Committee, and Annie's List. They all recognized early on that taking seats in the State House offered the best chance to make gains, and they put their money behind those efforts. Boy, did it pay off. So for everybody who loves to bad-mouth what the state Democratic leadership is doing, look past the governor's race debacle to these successes. (The Statesman just ran this excellent piece on the subject.)
Locally, there were big successes as well. Nick Lampson took Tom DeLay's 22nd District Congressional seat, looking like a genius after taking a long shot race on a year and a half ago. By winning a 52% majority in this Republican-leaning district, Lampson signaled he may not be as easy to vanquish in two years as GOPers would like to think, particularly if they can't come up with a better candidate than Shelley Sekula-Gibbs to run against him.
The hottest inside the Loop race this year was for State House District 134, where newcomer Ellen Cohen soundly thumped incumbent Republican Martha Wong. The combination of a strong challenger opposing a controversial, personally acerbic imcumbent in the most educated and affluent district in the state, along with a bad year nationally for Republicans spelled doom for Wong, who's campaign got worse and worse with every day. Kudos to Team Cohen for running a great race.
Further to the southwest, House freshman Hubert Vo handily beat back a pathetic return to glory attempt by Talmadge Heflin. Heflin ran a disgracefully racist and bigoted campaign, and deserved to lose. I think we've seen the last of Mr. Heflin as an elected official.
Now that we've covered what went right in Harris County, let's talk about what went wrong. Turnout was down significantly from the 2002 election (from about 650,000 to 590,000), particularly in base Democratic areas. Even so, Democrats nearly won several countywide seats for the first time in over a decade. Even a modest effort countywide to improve turnout would almost certainly have resulted in some judicial wins for the Democrats, so an opportunity was lost.
In reading Gary Polland's latest Conservative Review newsletter, it is clear that local Republicans noticed just how close Democrats got in Harris County last Tuesday, and they have already begun planning for 2008. The question is, will local Democrats? We must begin now to recruit quality countywide Democratic candidates for 2008, and to put the resources in place to turn out our base vote and win countywide seats in two years.
Read it here, folks. Harris County should be completely Democratic by 2010. Will we accept the challenge and make it happen, or still be making excuses afterward for why it didn't? The numbers are there, and it's up to all of us to make it a reality. It was a good night on Tuesday, for the first time in long time. But now is not the time to rest. There is much work yet to be done.
Posted by houtopia at November 13, 2006 06:55 PM