Posted on 12/18/2003 10:29:09 PM PST by GOPcapitalist
Conservatives Suffer Major Setback in Houston Election - What The Heck Happened?
December 6, 2003 is a date that will be remembered as a disastrous day for conservatives in Houston.
How did we go from the prospects six months ago of electing a conservative mayor and controller and as many as ten conservatives to City Council to a major setback?
The "inside" story of what went wrong is both long and tragic with many factors that put us where we are today.
Let's start with the major race - Orlando Sanchez, a good man who really understands the city's problems and had common sense conservative ideas, lost big. The mistakes were many:
(1) Sanchez should have stayed with the Rains-Calabrese team from 2001 who got him 153,000 run-off votes and plenty of resources.
(2) The conservatives last spring should have been locked up for Sanchez. Instead, he had to deal with six months of criticism from Bill White and the "then" mayoral candidate Michael Berry. The base was never tied down as Bill White received around 35% of the GOP vote in the initial vote. This forced Sanchez to scramble till the end to lock down the base and that never let him go beyond the base.
(3) The Harris County Republican Party, unlike two years ago, was not as effective as it needed to be. Recall two years ago the HCRP locked down the GOP early (recall early polls that gave Chris Bell 25% of the GOP vote, but after a mail and phone program put together by the HCRP and GOP consultant Jeff Yates - Bell found himself at well under 10% and out of the run-off). This time the HCRP campaign was either mistargeted or ineffective or both. The Bill White "liberal" message (maybe its time to put this out to pasture) never got any traction beyond the hard core base that listens to KSEV. In the middle of all this the HCRP Executive Director was charged with assault on a pro-immigration activist which got prominent play in the media, possibly contributing to shifting Hispanic votes.
(4) The Bill White campaign and money machine was also important. Estimates are he spent $8 million plus - a new Houston record. He also co-opted early on key Bush supporters which should not have been allowed to occur. This made the obtaining of national GOP money more difficult.
(5) The turnout machine - that did not function. There were clearly more than enough Sanchez 2001 supporters out there. If you turned them out you would beat Bill White, lets look at the 2001 versus 2003 numbers:
Brown 165,275
Sanchez 153,894
White 136,617
Sanchez 81,824
The bottom line they didn't turnout. Why? The message of the 2003 campaign was not compelling - (neighborhood mayor?), it was time for Christmas shopping, Bill White seemed to be a good businessman with a similar message so we don't care who wins, and Sanchez had been cut to pieces over the summer by White and then candidate Berry and never recovered. At the end of the day this campaign flameout had multiple causes of failure.
What About The Other Races?
The Controller's race where a big spending Lee Brown minion and one of the leading alternative sexual life-style politicians in the U.S. crushed fiscal conservative Bruce Tatro.
What happened here? Tatro again could've won, but like the Sanchez race the base was never locked down, the campaign message never registered with voters and no attempt was made to let pro-family voters know that Ms. Parker's life-style also defines her politics (gay marriage, affirmative action for gays, etc).
Again, we were outspent and Ms. Parker to the average voter looked like an intelligent businesswoman, (sounds familiar) - it's the White message all over again. No one should be surprised, her votes followed White's.
As far as we could tell there was no compelling message in any independent campaign (HCRP, Harris County GOP PAC, Conservative Republicans of Harris County) and also it's important to remember that Houston is a lean democratic city and with all things being equal we don't win without obtaining some swing voters. In this race with so much to work with we didn't play the cards we had and were handed a landslide defeat.
City Council - The ultimate disaster, we were building for six years to obtain control of council and instead we are back where we were six years ago, six years of hard work, candidate recruitment and lots of dollars down the drain.
Let's review the body count:
Bert Keller, At Large Position 4 - Gone - Generally a solid pro-business conservative who voted against a 1 cent tax cut recently and was literally sacrificed by KSEV radio (Dan Patrick) for not being 100% with us. While I was disappointed in his vote too, I understand an 80% friend is better than a zero friend. Bert's a good man who voted wrong once and he deserved better. If we don't get rid of this mentality, conservatives will be irrelevant politically in this city. This is an election we gave away and where were the Republican leaders to defend Bert? Nowhere to be seen.
Jeff Daily, District G - Beaten - In a narrow defeat to moderate GOP'er Pam Holm, we lost one of the brightest and most innovative fiscal conservatives in the city. What happened? Holm was successful in muting their differences in the eyes of the voters and Daily's campaign failed to sell the voters on the significant differences between them. They called her a liberal but that doesn't get it done anymore. We lost a potential strong conservative leader on council in this race.
Gabe Vasquez, District H - Quit - I know he didn't run again - too bad. He'd never be a 100% but as a new GOP'er he could've provided a critical vote on some issues. Now we get another White clone instead.
Shelley Sekula-Gibbs - At Large Position 3 - She held off liberal Peter Brown. One hopes she becomes more outspoken in light of the reduced number of conservatives on council. It's of course easier to drop below the radar screen.
M.J. Khan, District F - A GOP oriented businessman won a hard fought battle with Terry McConn. Unfortunately, in the run-off the McConn campaign via consultant Allen Blakemore unleashed the nastiest mail piece of the cycle - "The Birds of a Feather" mailer that many call race baiting. Khan was disappointed that neither the HCRP or Chairman Jared Woodfill condemned it. His victory party did not have many key GOP'ers. Where were you? M.J. spoke at our Lincoln Day Dinner a few years ago and has been very supportive. Could some in the GOP be trying to push him into the White orbit? We need all the votes we can get, especially in the minority community. I hope we haven't lost him.
That is the run-off review - generally dismal results. The new council lines up with only a minority of GOP'ers and of these a few are focused on neighborhood issues, so essentially Mayor-elect Bill White has a majority for anything he wants and he can if he wishes, ignore the conservative GOP minority.
Of course, if things had gone as they should have, we would have had a council with a GOP majority with strong conservative leadership -Ellis, Daily, Keller, Khan, Sekula-Gibbs, Goldberg, Lawrence, Vasquez and Berry. The tragedy in all this is what we had and how it was thrown away.
(Excerpt) Read more at texasconservativereview.com ...
Well even THAT sounds better to me than some no-name who is relying on "the invisible hand" to create some weird WalMart-based McService economy.
What on earth are you ranting about? Your precious job issue was a non-factor in this particular election. NOBODY campaigned on it, NOBODY based their vote on it, and NOBODY paid any attention to it. As has been pointed out to you, the campaign was basically issueless. People voted on personalities and what they percieved to be personalities.
Maybe that's why the voters stayed home --- if there are really Conservative voters still left in Houston, they don't see enough of a difference. No one believes in cutting spending anymore anyhow.
Well that oughta tell you something right there, dummy.
Houston is getting a choo-choo because the people of Houston WANTED a choo-choo.
The GOP nincompoops LOST because they adhered to some kind of bizarre anti-choo-choo bigotry and bias.
They missed a golden opportunity to PROVE to the public that they can build a better choo-choo than the 'Rats. And they wound up getting tossed out on their butts.
Click on the link to read the rest of the excerpted article.
It's there at the very end, just like I quoted.
And try to stay on topic.
You've got that right. As I've told many people who purchase that newspaper, if you send them money you are financing abortions because the Chronicle is one of the largest annual givers to Houston Planned Parenthood.
From a journalistic stance, they are a veritable toilet of left wing demagoguery and corruption. They hate anything Christian, anything Republican, Tom DeLay, or anything that gets in the way of the criminal shenanigans of that sewer agency known as METRO.
The Chronicle's METRO adoration, or as it has been put, the Chron's METRO-sexuality, is particularly baffling. One explanatory theory came to me the other day: advertising revenue. The Chron is the only show in town as far as big newspapers go, and METRO dumps millions of tax money into advertising every year. When METRO has a referendum to push or an expansion to advertise this ammount shoots up tenfold. So the more METRO grows, the more ad revenue the Chronicle gets.
Yeah. And that's another news clip entirely. It has nothing to do with the excerpted portion, which is about the Houston elections. If you want to discuss that other clip then fine - discuss it. Just learn to keep it separate from your attempts to discuss the Houston election.
No we don't. We never voted for the one they are building. In fact METRO blocked us from trying to force a referendum on it.
The GOP nincompoops LOST because they adhered to some kind of bizarre anti-choo-choo bigotry and bias.
Wrong again. The most recent transit referendum (i.e. the one that was on the ballot during this year's city elections) passed on a tiny 51-49% split. It only passed because they packaged rail in it with road and bus service expansion bonds then outspent the opposition by about 10 to 1 (and that includes several million dollars in tax money that was illegally spent by METRO to "inform" voters of their referendum). There has never been an electoral mandate for METRO's version of light rail in Houston at any time in its history and as the most recent election demonstrates, there is significant opposition to it even when they package the rail with other stuff to alleviate the concerns of critics.
They missed a golden opportunity to PROVE to the public that they can build a better choo-choo than the 'Rats.
We DO have a better train proposal than them. It's being considered right now by Harris County, which has a GOP majority in its government.
And they wound up getting tossed out on their butts.
Tossed out of what? We were never in control of the city to begin with. The Dems are in office and have always been in office.
Once cure would be to make the elections less relevant, i.e., make the government smaller and less intrusive. Then you wouldn't care so much abot "the people who never learn" or "the people who are too lazy to vote."
How can you tell?
It immediately follows the rest of the analysis and immediately PRECEEDS the blurb about the author, Gary M. Polland. The only logical conclusion is that it is ALSO Mr. Polland's handiwork, and it is HIS opinion that the GOP needs to take action on this issue.
Gary Polland is a long time Republican spokesman, fund-raiser and leader who recently completed three terms as the Harris County Republican Chair. During his time as Chairman, Gary was described as the most successful county Chairman in America by Human Events. For six years, Gary put out a bi-weekly newsletter which he has continued due to requests from many Republican activists.As a lifelong conservative, I applaud Mr. Polland for raising this issue.
Good theory, but I don't think that's it.
Did you see the self-congratulatory documentary KUHT did on the integration movement in Houston in the early 1960's? The Houston Chronicle behaved in very much the same way, taking a walk on reportorial ethics to help organize a put-up job that would a) isolate the pro-integration demonstrators at TSU and b) shut off the white public from all knowledge that a monumental social change was being considered. In fact, the Chronicle led the way in bringing along the television and radio stations to join the news blackout -- that's what the documentary called it.
The interview quotes from publisher Philip Johnson (I think I have the right person) were especially revealing. He was opinionated, smug, self-congratulatory, and sneering. His contempt for the people -- the whites especially -- was manifest, as was his entirely wilful breach of his self-proclaimed duty to his readers.
I think the driver for this kind of behavior is social, it's class-consciousness, and it places on display people's antisocial and antidemocratic tendencies, the ones that prompt them to hoard information, mistreat others, form exclusive groupings to monopolize power, and eventually helotize the general population.
Regardless of publisher Johnson's specific position on the civil-rights issue, the way that he handled it, and the spirit in which he spoke of the people, convinced me that he and his paper were and are "part of the problem".
I think the sum in question was about $3 million.
Then they showed they'd been paying attention to Clinton politics in the 90's by promptly trying to put the opposition in jail.
Thirty years from now, we'll be reading about Arkancides in Houston.
My guess is that he's actually Engineer Bill from the Captain Kangaroo show I watched as a kid.
Cause it is a bi-weekly newsletter that goes out in the Houston area and it is ALWAYS formatted that way. It starts with a lead story followed by a collection of 3 or 4 news snippets. One of those snippets in this issue was the IBM one you quoted. That does not mean that IBM determined the contents of the main story or in any way impacted the Houston elections.
Exactly who is stifling his opinion on anything? If it weren't for me posting it, you wouldn't even know this article existed.
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