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November 20, 2008
Thoughts On November 4 In Harris County
Now a little more than two weeks removed from the most remarkable election cycle in recent American history, we take a moment to survey the settled dust.
It was a good, but not great night for Democrats in Harris County. Barack Obama narrowly carried the county for president, and Democrats built enough of a straight ticket vote lead, particularly in early voting, to withstand a mediocre Election Day performance.
Democrats won most countywide races, including all but a handful of the judicial seats, and about half of the administrative offices, including sheriff, county attorney and district clerk. They were unsuccessful in contests for county judge, district attorney and tax assessor-collector.
One local Democratic congressman lost his seat -- Nick Lampson in CD 22 -- while two challenges against GOP incumbents in the 7th and 10th Congressional distrcts came up short. Democrats gained one State House seat in Harris County - Kristi Thibaut in District 133 (disclosure: Houtopia ran this race), and Chris Bell is now in a December runoff for a State Senate seat.
Bottom line: the decade-plus local drought for Democrats was broken on November 4th, and in a big way, as nearly 1.2 million county voters cast ballots in the election. A decidedly good evening.
It could have been better. Election Day turnout among Democrats was lackluster, particularly in the Latino community. Traditionally Latino precincts here actually underperformed their 2004 level, while most other boxes showed increased participation over four years ago.
Cynics will say that the poor Latino performance here simply underlines the hopelessness of waking that sleeping electoral giant. Evidence from other parts of the country, however, disputes that notion. Consider New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada.
These are three west-southwest states with substantial Latino populations that historically underperformed in voting strength. All three states showed substantial increases in Latino participation on November 4th over their 2004 levels, and Obama carried them all (after Bush won them 4 years ago.)
So why did the Latino vote perform well in those states and not in Texas? One simple answer: resources. New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada were all presidential "battleground" states; therefore tremendous resources - money, staff, media -- were poured in. Texas was not deemed competitive, so we got no resources. The self-fulfilling prophecy continues.
However, there may be hope. This recent piece in the LA Times notes what many of us who live here have believed for some time -- Texas is a potential political battleground. It will, however, take a significant investment of resources for that potential to be realized.
When it is, local Democrats could get used to having great election nights, instead of merely good ones.
Posted by houtopia at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)