Chairman Boyd Richie: Vote Now! Vote Bell!

I was going to make one more final post on the SD 17 special election with a reiteration of the essential information, but now I find that Boyd Richie has done my work for me. Here is what I found in my email inbox from TDP Chairman Richie

Dear fellow Democrats,

Election Day for the Senate District 17 runoff between Chris Bell and his Republican opponent is TOMORROW, Tuesday, December 16th. Chris and his supporters have been working tirelessly by knocking on doors, making phone calls and talking to voters across the district. Chris can win this race, and we can return responsible leadership to Senate District 17, but only if we get each and every one of Chris's supporters gets to the polls on Election Day. Below is information about voting in the runoff election.

Election Day for the District 17 runoff is Tuesday, Dec. 16.

Where to Vote
Click on your county to find a list of polling places, by precinct and by Zip Code:
Brazoria
Fort Bend
Galveston
Harris
Jefferson

When to Vote
On Election Day, Dec. 16, polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Problems?
Report problems immediately at (713) 667-8990

Need A Ride?
Call (713) 667-8990 or Email lindsay@chrisbell.com

Have a Ride to Share?
If you would like to volunteer or help get people to their voting place, call (713) 667-8990 or Email lindsay@chrisbell.com

For more information visit the Chris Bell Website or call (713) 667-8990

Let's help Chris finish strong. Working together, we can overcome Republican cronyism and take back this State Senate seat. Thank you for your continued support, and thank you for being a Texas Democrat.

Your friend and fellow Democrat,

Boyd L. Richie

Chairman

Texas Democratic Party

Low Voter Turnout in SD 17 Special Election

You have to give them credit. When the Republican deciders who still plague Texas government at every level decide to run an election that will guarantee a low voter turnout, they generally get their wish.

It’s such an easy task. All you have to do is schedule the election within two weeks of Christmas, hold early voting for 5 days only and none of those days a weekend day, and have the polls open on three of those 5 days only between 8 AM and 5 PM, when most people have to work.

And then on top of that, have one of the polling locations located outside the district’s own boundaries.

That last one was a nice little touch courtesy of Fort Bend County government.

The early vote numbers are in at the Fort Bend County elections website, all except for the final day, today.

As of yesterday, Thursday, 2242 voters have cast their ballot in the SD 17 special election runoff, and 919 requested mail in ballots have been returned. That’s a grand total of 3161 voters out of approximately 95,000 Fort Bend County voters eligible to vote in the SD 17 election.

That’s a 3.33% turnout so far.

Now it’s beyond the data predict what would have happened had the runoff election taken place on December 2nd, as it did in Georgia for their US Senator, where they had a 57% voter turnout. There was a lot at stake in that election, what with the magic number of 60 being approached. But I am willing to bet that had they held that election on the 16th instead of the 2nd their turnout numbers would have been considerably less.

The attention span of the average voter is about one month. That’s all the politics they can stand.

So while the late election date does its expected damage, what effect, I wonder, are all of the other machinations that our deciders have decided on, doing to voter turnout in Fort Bend County?

So for your edification, or for my sheer love of asking “what if?” I’ve crunched some numbers to see the effects of what the curtailed hours and the poor choice of a polling location did to the totals.

It is clear that the early vote poll hours for Monday through Wednesday, when the polls were open only during 8 to 5 business hours did do a number on turnout. Witness the huge jump in the number of votes cast between Wednesday and Thursday. An across the board jump of between 42% and 62%. Had the polls been open from 7 to 7 for all 5 days, using Thursday as the go-by, the early vote totals as of yesterday could have easily been 65% higher than what they are as of now.

And a slightly improved 4.6% turnout.

If you look at who is showing up to vote where, you see that the Rosenberg Annex, a location found squarely within the SD 18 state senatorial boundaries, you see that this singularly poor choice for a location performed by far below par compared to the 4 other polling locations that are all located within SD 17’s district boundaries.

A grand total of 88 voters appeared at the Rosenberg Annex location in the 4 days we have data. That’s 3.9% of the total turnout. Compare that to the 4 other locations which accounted for between 18 and 32% of the turnout (24% per location on average). If the Fort Bend deciders picked a fifth location within SD 17’s boundaries, and it performed as well as the least performing polling location among the other 4, an additional 316 votes might have been cast, increasing turnout from 3.33% to 3.6%.

Imagine that. The Annex doing so poorly, when during the General Election early voting, it was among the top performers in terms of voter attendance.

What if I combine the effects of both voting hours and poor choice of a polling location? The combined effect of both together might have meant an additional 1500 or so votes by yesterday, or a turnout rate of 4.8%.

The Bell campaign is engaged in a Herculean effort to get voters out. The campaign office in Fort Bend is abuzz every day and volunteers are using their virtual phone bank system to call from their homes. It’s still not to late to get in on this action.

There is still an effort to get out the vote on Election Day.

What else were you planning on doing this weekend? Go Christmas shopping? I hear it’s best to wait until December 18th and go shop online where the vendors will offer free shipping.

So save your Christmas fund and go make calls for Chris.

Joan Huffman Pulls a Shelley

And here I was moping around the Half Empty Hovel because we didn’t have Shelley Sekula “Draculac__t” Gibbs to kick around any more. Out comes Joan Huffman, the often unnamed opponent (on this blog) to former Congressman Chris Bell in his heroic effort to take one more Texas Senate seat in a low-turnout special election.

Huffman, a district court judge, by the way, purposely held a barbecue luncheon at the Tracey Gee Community Center in west Houston. The Tracey Gee Community Center is a voting location for early voting in Harris County. This is a violation of Texas Election Code Chapter 61.001, and is punishable by a 500 dollar fine. It's a class C misdemeanor.

According to this article by Alan Bernstein of the Houston Chronicle, the political event took place in a room in the same building that a vote was being conducted. An event where Joan Huffman along with Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve “Toilet Plunger” Radack, urged attendees to vote for her.

Now Shelley Sekula Gibbs did exactly the same thing in 2006 when she entered an early voting location in Sugar Land in her successful run to finish Tom DeLay’s unexpired term in the Texas CD 22 seat. Well not exactly the same thing. She was electioneering outside the limits set by chapter 61.001 of the Texas Election Code, when, it was reported she felt the need to relieve the pressure building up in her bladder. However, on her way to the restroom, inside the First Colony Conference Center, she stopped by several voters and introduced herself to them.

This isn’t exactly what Huffman did. What Huffman did was a 1000 times worse. It was calculated electioneering on the premises of an early vote location. Sekula Gibbs was, at least, sneaky and sly about it as a good Republican, Huffman was in deliberate violation of the law, and quite frankly, didn’t care.

Is this the kind of person we need in public office? One who violates the law whenever it suits his or her needs? Haven’t we after all had just about enough of this?

The Bernstein article reports that one voter complained about the rally to a poll worker, but the poll worker simply told the voter that it would be up to him to complain.

In the 2006 crime, a complaint was lodged but the County Elections administrator of the time, J.R. Perez, declined to follow up on the complaint, and there it sat. With a Harris County Republican DA coming into office, I doubt we will have a better result this year, and Huffman’s crime will probably go unpunished. Should this happen, then it will be clear that in Harris County it is still a place where your Republican political affiliation allows you to violate the law at will.

Special Election Early Voting Begins Tomorrow

My guess is if you are reading this blog and have not stumbled over this site by Googling “Giving Head” or “Class C Misdemeanor” (my two most common Google hits) you well-know that the early vote for the special election runoff to get a 13th Democratic state senator to Austin begins tomorrow, and Chris Bell could sorely use your vote.

This election has been engineered to be a low turnout election. Early voting hours on Monday through Wednesday are 8 AM to 5 PM, eliminating everyone in SD 17 who still has a job and has to be at work during those times. No weekend early voting days have been scheduled. And Election Day is December 16th. Nine days before Christmas.

However today the Houston Chronicle gave the Chris Bell campaign a big lift. They endorsed this Democratic candidate over his Republican opponent. Again.

“With the 81st legislative session looming next month in a weakening economic climate, residents of District 17 need an experienced public servant with a firm grasp of spending priorities. With his commitment to bolstering public education, reining in college tuition increases, and controlling skyrocketing insurance premiums, the Chronicle believes that Chris Bell is the best candidate to represent the diverse district in the Texas Senate.”

There may be those out there that don’t know if they live in Senate District 17. The answer to that is simple. Just think back to the General Election. You live in SD 17 if the first thing you saw on your ballot was the SD 17 Special Election with a field of 6 candidates running. If you don’t recall, then there is another way. Go to this Texas Secretary of State website and fill in your home address in the boxes and click the “submit” button. You will get a list of all of your government representatives, from US Senator to School Board member.

But then again, my 6 readers are fairly well-informed and know what to do. The thing to do then is to make sure that others know to go out and vote. It will come down to just a few hundred votes to decide the victor, I think, if the turnout is as low as the Republicans who have fixed the election times and dates hope. It is critical to get Democratic voters back to the polls. So plan to help out this week. Help Chris Bell get to Austin. Help to remind Democrats that there is one more election this year. One more victory to be had.

And the campaign has made it very easy for you to help. You don’t even have to go to a campaign headquarters. You can call from your own home via their “Virtual Phone Bank.” Click here to sign up.

Chris Bell: One More Vote for Reform

Have you seen what our choices are in the SD 17 special runoff election? Well, if you haven’t yet, it’s in a new You Tube video on Chris Bell and education reform.

Chris Bell’s Republican opponent is clueless on education issues.

Clueless.

A Republican judge may be great at throwing the book at accused felons, but you really have to question whether that is a really good background when the issue is improving the quality of education in Texas. When I briefly discussed with him the looming issues in science education a couple of weeks ago, Bell demonstrated to me a depth of knowledge and an appreciation for what will lie ahead for Texas public schools.

The Republican opponent has gone on record as saying that Texas is “very generous in our funding of public education.” No, not really. If you want to know which state is “very generous” toward public education, you need look no further than the state of New York. At $14,119 spent per student per year, New York is very generous. Not Texas, which spends $7,267 per student per year, or roughly half of what would be considered “very generous.”

The video speaks for itself. A vote for Chris Bell is a vote for education reform in Texas.

SD 17 Special Election Early Voting Locations Are Up

Well, not up at the county elections office website, anyway. Not yet anyway. But I got a call this evening advising me that the commissioners court was indeed apprised of the voting locations – my previous informer was misinformed by the elections office worker – and it actually appears on yesterday’s agenda, Item 30 on yesterday’s agenda.

On viewing the meeting video, I could see some of the thoughts that went into assigning voting and early voting locations. The county reports that there are 95,000 active voters in Fort Bend County who may vote in the special election. They are spread over 54 precincts, however due to the fact that “customary locations are unavailable due to holiday scheduling” total Election Day voting locations were “clustered down” to 27 locations. So, yes, voters need to know where their polling locations are going to be because maybe half of them will be going to a new location.

For early voting, 4 early voting sites were originally allocated, one in each precinct, but 1st Methodist Church on Eldridge was added yesterday due to anticipated heavy traffic from holiday shoppers who are expected to flock to the nearby Sugar Land mall.

Anyway, here is the list of five, yes you read that correctly, five early voting locations in Fort Bend County for the SD 17 special election.

• Fort Bend County Rosenberg Annex (that’s right, centrally located in SD 18) 4520 Reading Road Rosenberg [map]
• Meadow Creek Clubhouse 2410 La Quinta Dr. Missouri City [map]
• Meadows Place City Hall One Troyan Dr. Meadows Place [map]
• Sugar Land City Hall 2700 Town Center Blvd North, Sugar Land [map]
• Sugar Land 1st United Methodist Church 431 Eldridge Rd., Sugar Land [map]

Early voting locations will be open between 8 AM and 5 PM from Monday December 8th until Friday December 12th.

These convenient voting hours courtesy of your Fort Bend County Commissioners Court and the Fort Bend County Elections office.

Governor Proclaims SD 17 Special Election Runoff Date

Well you could have knocked me over with a feather. Three minutes after I uploaded last night’s posting, out comes the announcement that the SD 17 runoff election was set for December 16.

This is what I thought it would be, but not hearing of any proclamation at 30 days out I figured Perry was going to take this election up to the ridiculous date of Christmas Eve Eve.

Don’t get me wrong, December 16 might as well be Christmas Eve for all of the damage it is going to do to voter turnout.

Anyway, also shown on the proclamation, found here, are the early voting dates. Early voting for the special election runoff will begin on Monday December 8th, and extend to Friday, December 12th (sorry, no weekend voters need apply). There is yet no information at the Fort Bend County Elections website on which polling locations will be open for early voting, but there is a notice that the ballot position drawing on the Fort Bend County ballot will be held at 4 PM on November 20th at the Election Administrator’s office.

What, at this point, would be the Get Out the Vote strategy? Well, it’s obvious to me. First and foremost, get out the base. This will not be a race over whether there are more Democrats in SD 17 or Republicans. This race will have such a low turnout that the race will be over who can best rouse their base.

And the challenge could not be more difficult.

Democrats have been lulled into a sense of accomplishment. We elected the top of the ticket. That’s all that has been in the news. It is going to be very hard getting Democrats to go back to the polls after all of that excitement.

This is in contrast to Republican voters who have been shown the door. What I cannot fathom, though is whether being shown the door is something that will give Republicans impetus to come back and try for another local smackdown, or whether the whole thing has dispirited them, and Joan Huffman won’t be able to buy a vote.

So the challenge is difficult and the outcome is uncertain.

At least we have the uncertainty this time.

In SD 17, that’s saying something.

Chris Bell Opens a Fort Bend County Campaign Office

Keeping a high profile as we zero in on a yet undesignated special election runoff date, Chris Bell has opened a campaign office in a strip mall in Stafford, Texas this week. I was just there myself this afternoon delivering yard signs that formerly bedecked the walls of the Fort Bend Democrats Rosenberg headquarters.

It’s a classic campaign HQ. Bare walls, folding tables and chairs, computers in various states of set up.

If you want to go down there to volunteer on their phone bank, here is the address.

869 Dulles Avenue, Suite E
Stafford, TX 77477

Here’s a map.

Here’s what the strip mall looks like from Dulles Ave as you are passing it and completely missing the single driveway entrance.

When you do get into the parking lot, keep going toward the back, past the coffee shop and look for the glass door with the Chris Bell campaign sign on it.

Better still, why not go down this Saturday for the Grand Opening? The event begins at 1 PM Saturday November 22nd, and goes until 3 PM. They tell me that they are getting several elected officials in the area to come and show their support, including Commissioner-Elect Richard Morrison and State Rep. Dora Olivo. Former congressman Chris Bell will be there to whip up the crowd.

And the word is, they even want to feed you.

If you have questions, call the headquarters at (281) 208-1990, or email Garrett Graham at Garrett@chrisbell.com.

While we are on the topic, what is your pick for the day that Governor Perry will proclaim the special election runoff? There is no guarantee that it will occur this year. Last time there was a special election runoff it occurred on January 16, 2007, several days after the 80th Legislature convened.

If past performance is any measure, Governor Perry will select an election date that will guarantee a low voter turnout. This is the ultimate in voter suppression tools, but it has served Republicans well in the past.

Example, in 2006 Perry called for a special election to fill the vacant seat resulting from the death of Glenda Dawson. That election was called for on December 19th.

Six days before Christmas.

As a result, the one Democrat who was running in the four-candidate field, Anthony DiNovo, got just 22.4% of the vote in a district that usually draws 40% of the vote for the Democratic candidate.

So how about December 23rd?

It would not surprise me.

Chris Bell Has a Stalking Horse Opponent in the SD 17 Special Election

Republicans love their little jokes. Like when Rush Limbaugh exhorted his ditto-heads to go out and vote for Hillary Clinton in the Texas primary. Like when a man named Tom Morrison ran in the CD 22 2004 contest as a Libertarian against Tom DeLay and Richard Morrison, the Democrat on the ballot, giving TV stations the opportunity to announce that Richard Morrison was a Libertarian.

I could go on and on.

And now, it appears that Tom Craddick ally, former Democratic State Rep. Ron Wilson has recruited a woman to run in the special election. A black woman.

Wilson even escorted Simmons to file her candidacy papers and paid her filing fees.

Stephanie Simmons filed to run in the SD 17 special election minutes before filing deadline on August 29th. A day earlier she filed an address change on her voter registration from her former residence outside of SD 17’s boundaries, to Missouri City.

Chris Bell filed suit. The candidate, he argued, had not lived within the district for a year as is required by state law.

Yet the woman claims to have moved to her present address on November 2nd 2007, just enough to qualify for a 1 year residency within the district, and testified to that effect in court.

The judge didn’t believe her story.

But that didn’t prevent him from dismissing Bell’s case. Case dismissed, said the judge, because Bell’s team failed to produce “single witness or piece of paper.”

So it’s OK to lie under oath in court, as long as you get away with it. What the heck, what’s good for Scooter Libby should be good for Stephanie Simmons.

Simmons’ lawyer fees, by the way, were paid by Ron Wilson.

This is such blatant manipulation. So very Republican in every aspect. Just as the McCain campaign has recruited a woman to be his VP running mate, in hopes of garnering the votes of some former Hillary supporters, Ron Wilson and Tom Craddick think that by putting a black woman on the ballot that African-American voters in SD 17 will flock to the polls and vote for the black candidate.

Polls have shown that McCain’s gambit has failed. Democratic women realize that a vote for McCain/Palin runs against their own self interests. SD 17 residents likewise realize that this candidate is a sham, someone put up by Republicans, a stalking horse to dilute the Democratic votes for Bell.

Bell will not appeal the decision. Justice is simply something that is not delivered in Texas . . . yet. So this will stand and Simmons’ name will remain on the ballot.

But one thing this day in court produced was a public look under the rock that Republicans live under. Light was cast on them as they scurried about in their exoskeletons doing their best to look like honest upstanding citizens.

All along knowing that the truth is out.

Chris Bell: Why I Am Running For Texas Senate - Part 2

Here is Part 2 of Chris Bell’s conversation with the assembled masses at the Fort Bend Democrats’ Labor Day campaign kickoff fundraiser. Here Chris stresses his views on health care, calling it a “moral crisis,” and stem cell research which Bell supports both personally and politically. On ethics reform. Bell emphasized that “we have got to get rid of the ‘Pay to Play’ atmosphere that currently exists.”

Then you get to hear the campaign’s amazing recent poll results.

You have got to hear this.



Lastly remember that this is a special election. Chris Bell will appear with 5 other candidates for SD 17 at the top of the ballot in all counties. So you can vote for Chris, and THEN for Barack Obama and Rick Noriega and every one else down the line.

Chris Bell: Why I Am Running For Texas Senate - Part 1

First let me say this one more time. People who say that Chris Bell is too bland for their political tastes don’t take the time to listen, really listen, to one of his speeches. Sure he is not king of the sound bite, and if sound bites are your thing, then maybe Chris Bell is not.

What Chris Bell is, is the king of the most subtle form of humor known to man or woman. His humor is one that builds. He takes punches at himself as well. See if you agree with me by clicking on the You Tube embedded video below.

The video was shot by yours truly at the Fort Bend Democrats’ Labor Day campaign kickoff in Sugar Land only yesterday. He spoke for about 11 minutes, which is 1 minute over YouTube’s 10 minute time limit. So I found a place roughly halfway through his speech and cut it at a transition. So this is Part 1 of 2. Look for Part 2 tomorrow.

Hey, don’t blame me, this takes a lot of time.



By the way, The Houston Chronicle this morning reported that a total of 6 people were in the SD 17 special election. There was a rumor circulating that the Republicans were recruiting a “Democrat” to split the Democratic vote and force a run-off. Well that seems to have happened. Whoever this person is, isn’t a resident of Fort Bend County.

I checked.

A Texas SD 17 Special Election Before November? Don't Count On It

Now you would think that with State Senator Kyle Janek stepping down before the end of his term we would be having a bunch of candidates coming out of the woodwork to vie in a non-partisan special election to fill the empty seat.

And in that you would not be wrong. Trouble is, the fix is in and I wonder if anyone is going to be giving up their State House seats to gamble on a 3-way or 4-way election in a race against Janek’s “anointed one”: Austen Furse.

Oh, you say you don’t know who Austen Furse is? No matter. According to this piece in the Chron you don’t need to know, because he has been hand-picked by Kyle Janek to be his successor.

Who is Austen Furse? Well, first, the guy has never held political office. He’s a Harris County-based businessman with connections to local politics. As a whippersnapper right out of Yale, Furse served as a director of White House policy planning in the Bush-41 presidency.

All of that and he has another thing going for him: he doesn’t have to give up his current job to run for this seat.

See, while Kyle Janek has known about his impending exit for some time now, he hasn’t actually handed in his resignation to Rick Perry, and won’t. Originally he was going to resign by March 10th, allowing Perry to replace him during the next regularly scheduled election day, on May 10th.

But no.

If that happened the floodgates would have opened and we would have seen a veritable multitude assemble to take the spot. No, because you see, people are starting to wonder whether SD 17 is as rock solid Republican as it has been. According to the Chron:

“Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama received more votes in this year's primary than Janek received in his general election victories in either 2002 or 2006, non-presidential years.”

No, what you want to do, then, to guarantee a Republican win in SD 17 in a special election is to limit the challengers, and what better way to do that than to put off the special election until November, when State Representatives are all running for re-election? At least two State Reps whose district boundaries overlap SD 17’s were looking at this. One is Sugar Land’s Charlie Howard (R – HD 26), the other is Houston’s Scott Hochberg (D- HD 137). State law forbids a person from appearing twice on the same ballot for the same election on the same day. Both Hochberg and Howard would have to give up their seats to run in the special election.

Furse doesn’t have that problem.

So if anyone was wondering about the change-up we saw last February, and what would cause that, now we have our answer.

Now that appears to be the ploy. It makes you wonder, though if this seat coming available is just too good to pass up.

Scott Hochberg, the only Democrat currently rumored to be considering this race is still weighing his options. While the presidential primary numbers impress, Hochberg is more impressed by the recent showing for Democratic Supreme Court candidate Bill Moody:

“Hochberg said that statistic is less convincing to him that the district is trending Democratic than the fact that Texas Supreme Court candidate Bill Moody got 46 percent in the district with no Democratic get-out-the-vote effort.”

Makes you think, doesn’t it? Will Furse get opposition from Charlie Howard? I can think of a few who will absolutely rejoice at that. Will those two fight over the dwindling Republican vote in SD 17 letting Hochberg take the Democratic vote plus independents to win?

Seems like a better plan.