Four days of Early Voting remain including today and in Harris County, the GOP has a 59% share and the Dems a 41% share. I repeat, this is not three to one.
ELIZABETH KOH of the Dallas Morning news has a take on the CD 29 race here:
WASHINGTON — For years, Houston has been the most heavily Hispanic city without a Latino U.S. House member. That could soon change.
Gene Green, who has represented the 29th Congressional District since he was first elected in 1992, is being challenged by former Harris County sheriff and erstwhile ally Adrian Garcia, who filed a last-minute bid after failing to make the Houston mayoral runoff last year. Also running is Dominique Garcia (no relation), a real estate agent who is a first-time candidate.
The battle between Green and the former sheriff is a far cry from the political partnership that once lifted both men’s careers. Garcia’s father supported Green, 68, in his first campaigns, and Green readily reminds others that he supported Garcia in his bids for the Houston City Council and Harris County sheriff.
Adrian Garcia, 55, has emphasized his Latino background in the district, which is 77 percent Hispanic, saying he wants to give Latino voters the chance to be represented by one of their own. But Garcia has also attacked Green vigorously for not voting on a 2014 bill that would have limited the deferred action program for unauthorized youths, voting with corporate interests on the environment and opposing gun control measures such as the Brady Bill. The former sheriff has also pointed to the district’s poverty rates and lack of educational attainment as proof Green has failed to achieve progress in Washington.
“We have nothing to be proud about in this district, and the community wants change,” Garcia said.
Green, who has pushed back against Garcia’s attacks, has touted job fairs, immunization efforts and citizenship advice for immigrants as ways he has worked to improve the district.
“I’ve been here and I’ve done a lot of service in the district,” he said. “We do a lot of things that would bring services home to the community.”
Green has also hit back at the assertion that being white detracts from his service. “You don’t have to be Hispanic to understand Hispanic issues and vote with Hispanics,” Green added. “If you provide services that help them where they live, they remember it.”
Green has also suggested it is not Hispanic representation that prompted Garcia’s bid.
“I don’t think he had any place else to run — he didn’t make it into the runoff for mayor, he gave up the Harris County sheriff’s job, so the next thing up was a congressional seat.”
But Garcia says his campaign is strictly about the community and its needs.
“It is the democratic process to talk about issues and concerns,” Garcia said. “If you can’t have a tough conversation with your friend, then you’re in the wrong business.”
The presidential contest playing out nationally has also raised the stakes for this year’s election in the solidly blue district, said Jason Casellas, a political science professor at the University of Houston. Garcia’s progressive positions are likely to appeal to more of the district’s voters, and he stands to benefit from the higher turnout common in presidential primaries.
“The people [who] are going to be more active are going to be the ones who are more liberal, if he can try to position himself to the left of Green,” Casellas said.
Still, Green has a slight edge given his endorsements from congressional and local Hispanic leaders and his incumbent status, Casellas said. Garcia has struggled to win over local leaders and notably lost the endorsement of the Harris County Deputies’ Organization — which he once supervised as sheriff — to Green.
Despite the emphasis on ethnicity, winning is likely to come down more to each candidate’s history, Casellas warned.
Voters “want to make sure that someone is qualified,” he said. “Not just any Latino candidate will do.”
I will say this. More and more folks are letting me know that they are rooting and voting for Adrian. We will see.
How many MLB teams have Spring Training in Florida and how many have Spring Training in Arizona?
A new Trib poll says Secretary Hillary Clinton is leading Bernie Sander in Texas 54% to 44%. Here is from the Trib:
Clinton has a formidable base of black and Hispanic voters, while Sanders is doing better with Anglos. She leads 70 percent to 27 percent among black voters and 60 percent to 37 percent among Hispanic voters. Sanders, meanwhile, has the support of 55 percent of white voters to Clinton’s 44 percent. Clinton’s advantage, the pollsters said, could swell if her campaign can boost the numbers of Hispanics voting in the state.
Meanwhile, WCVI weighed in who won Nevada’s Latino vote. See this:
(Los Angeles, Feb 22) After hearing about disputes between the Sanders and Clinton over the Edison Entry Poll Survey results on the Latino vote in the Feb 20 Primary Caucuses WCVIundertook a review of the publicly disclosed data.
WCVI concludes that the survey results are statistically consistent with the margin of victory of Hillary Clinton on Feb 20. The main dispute among pundits and between campaigns has been the assertion that it is statistically impossible for Hillary Clinton to narrowly lose the Latino vote (45% to 53% with Latinos representing 19% of the voters) and narrowly lose Whites (47% to 49% with Whites representing 59% of the voters) and still win the election by 5.3%.
However WCVI concludes the Clinton margin of victory is adequately explained by the large margin of victory Secretary Clinton won among African American voters (77% to 23% with AA’s representing 13% of the voters).
Simply put there is no relevant statistical inconsistency between Edison’s Entry Poll results for Latinos, Whites, and Blacks and the overall election results. Based on this fact WCVI concludes that there is no statistical basis to question the Latino vote breakdown between Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders.
We note that some analysts have said that Secretary Clinton’s victories in heavily Latino precinct proved that she won the Latino vote. However, the methodology of using heavily Latino or “barrio” precincts to represent Latino voting behavior has considered ineffective and discarded for more than 30 years due to non-barrio residential patterns common among Latino voters since the 1980’s.
Lost in this controversy is the fact that the data shows a record high Latino vote share in the Democratic Caucuses with Latinos representing 19% of the vote compared to 13% in 2008.
WCVI is a non-profit, non-partisan Latino public policy and research organization founded in 1985 with offices in Los Angeles and San Antonio.
15 MLB clubs have Spring Training in Florida and 15 in Arizona of course.
The Rocket is in camp today.
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