In GOP runoffs for the Texas House, viability in November is a leading concern

                    By Patrick Svitek and Cassandra Pollock

                    July 7, 2020

                    Texas Republicans are set to soon finalize their nominees for three state House seats that will likely be competitive in November, races that have elevated debates over who is the most viable for the general election.

With the Tuesday runoffs, the GOP will select nominees to take on two Democrats who flipped seats in 2018: Reps. Vikki Goodwin of Austin and Erin Zwiener of Driftwood. Republicans will also make their pick for the seat of retiring Rep. Rick Miller, R-Sugar Land, who saw an unexpectedly close race two years ago.

Top Republicans are especially focused on the runoffs to challenge Goodwin and fill Miller’s seat as Democrats hope to flip the House for the first time in roughly two decades. In the primary, Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed a candidate to replace Miller, former Fort Bend County GOP Chair Jacey Jetton, and the governor more recently picked sides in the runoff to take on Goodwin, backing Austin police officer Justin Berry. Last week, the Republican State Leadership Committee, a national group focused on state legislative races, endorsed Jetton and Berry and announced it would help them as part of a $200,000 investment across five Texas House runoffs.

Campaign finance reports released Tuesday show that Berry and Jetton easily out-raised — and outspent — their runoff opponents over roughly the last three and a half months, with Berry ending the period with more cash on hand than his rival. Abbott's campaign pitched in $37,000 in in-kind contributions for Berry and $34,000 for Jetton.

“Our thought is we need to get candidates who have real-world experiences different than the average candidate and people who have the communication skills and the policies and the personality that can get them to reach out to win independent, swing voters in the fall,” said Dave Carney, Abbott’s chief political strategist. “It’s always the idea to get the best nominee out of the primary for these seats.”

In addition to the Republican runoffs for the Goodwin and Miller seats, Carrie Isaac and Kent “Bud” Wymore are facing off to take on Zwiener. Isaac, executive director of an Austin-based nonprofit and wife to former state Rep. Jason Isaac, R-Dripping Springs, got close to winning outright in the three-way March primary, garnering 48% of the vote to Wymore’s 41%.

While Isaac and Wymore, former chair of the Hays County Republican Party, duked it out in the primary, the runoff has been quieter, and GOP leaders and groups seem less concerned with who emerges as the nominee against Zwiener than they do in the districts held by Goodwin and Miller.

Still, the theme of viability in November has at times surfaced in the race. In a recent email to supporters, Isaac pointed to her list of endorsements from elected officials, saying “they know I’m the strongest candidate that gives us the best chance to win in November" to work on cutting property taxes and securing the border, among other things.

Like Berry and Jetton, Isaac also posted a significant fundraising advantage in her runoff Tuesday, easily out-raising and outspending Wymore and entering the final week with more in the bank.

In another Austin-area House seat, Berry and Austin attorney Jennifer Fleck are facing off for their party’s nomination to take on Goodwin. Berry advanced to the runoff after earlier results had the candidate finishing third, and thus missing the overtime round, by just one vote.

Since that March contest, the contrast between Berry and Fleck has sharpened considerably, with Berry’s campaign seizing on what Fleck has said and done during the coronavirus pandemic. In mid-March, as the virus was hitting the state, Fleck traveled to the beach for what she characterized on social media as an already-planned spring break trip with family. Then, in April and May, Fleck attended rallies in Austin, joining activists calling on Abbott to begin reopening parts of the state.

“She self-destructed and disqualified herself in the last 12 weeks,” Craig Murphy, a spokesperson for Berry’s campaign, told the Tribune. “People took one look and, without any doubt, knew she would have no chance to win in November."

Fleck, who on social media has often downplayed the danger of the virus, has aligned herself with hardline conservative groups such as Texas Right to Life and Gun Owners of America, earning support from both in her bid for the House seat. She has also picked up endorsements from two of the three other Republican candidates in the March primary: former Austin City Council member Don Zimmerman, who is now seeking a seat in the Texas Senate, and Austin lawyer Aaron Reitz.

Fleck has also brushed off Abbott’s endorsement of Berry, often invoking the hashtag #FleckTheEstablishment in posts on social media.

“Please tell me,” she wrote in a recent post on Facebook, “Why on God's green earth would this man endorse against me in a contested primary runoff that I lead and spend money to subvert the will of the people?”

Fleck’s track record has also caught the attention of Associated Republicans of Texas, a prominent GOP group supporting Berry. In a recent mail piece, the group contrasted the two candidates by casting Fleck as the candidate “focused on fringe issues” and Berry as the one with experience and electability on his side.

“While Justin Berry has focused on core conservative issues, Fleck has focused on fringe issues that will make her unelectable in November,” a line in the mailer reads. “With Democrats spending millions to make the Texas House like Nancy Pelosi’s U.S. House, we cannot risk this seat on Jennifer Fleck.”

Fleck, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story, addressed the mailer on social media in June, saying it was sent out “on behalf of my sneaky opponent.” Responding to the “fringe issues” criticism, Fleck said in a Facebook post, “If fringe issues are protecting children, families and parental rights, then YES I am fringe. I am very electable. Judge for yourself.

“You can’t risk choosing any other candidate but me,” Fleck wrote. “I am a fighter and I will be your champion! Stop wasting your money trying to beat me dolts. The People will decide.”

Meanwhile, the Republican nominating process for Miller’s seat has been a rollercoaster since the primary.

The incumbent was initially running for reelection last year and had drawn three primary challengers: Jetton, Leonard Chan and Matt Morgan. But after Miller suggested to the Houston Chronicle late last year that Jetton and Chan were running against him because they are “Asian,” Abbott rescinded his endorsement of Miller and the lawmaker decided against a reelection campaign.

Abbott endorsed Jetton in the run-up to the March primary — and Miller got behind Morgan, a Richmond insurance agent, four days later.

Despite Abbott’s involvement, Morgan almost won outright in the three-way primary, getting 49.7% of the vote to 40.7% for Jetton. The third candidate, Leonard Chan, has since endorsed Morgan.

Morgan said he sees himself as the better choice for the general election because he has stronger connections to the district. He said he has lived there “basically my entire life” and has gotten to know so many residents — “and some that are Democrats that will come out and vote for me in November.”

“I have crossover capabilities with those deep roots,” Morgan said in an interview.

Jetton said in an interview that the debate over general-election viability “hasn’t been a huge part” of the runoff but noted he has been on the front lines of the fight to keep Fort Bend County red. He said he has “been voting in Republican primaries and been part of the party for the last decade,” contrasting himself with Morgan, who Jetton said has been not as “involved in a lot of the work that’s been done to try to” hold the GOP line in the politically changing county.

“I’ve been in the trenches working on this for a long time,” Jetton said.

Morgan’s lack of a Republican primary voting history before March has drawn fire in the runoff, and a recent mailer against him said, “With so much at stake, we can’t gamble on a REPUBLICAN IN NAME ONLY.” Morgan took to Facebook to denounce the mailer last week.

Miller has remained a factor in the race, given his support for Morgan. The candidate said Miller’s controversial remarks from last year do not come up much on the campaign trail and that he does not believe they would be an issue for him in the general election.

“Should I win this runoff, I’m obviously a different person than Rick Miller,” Morgan said. “Because he supports me doesn’t necessarily mean I support everything he’s done or said.”

Noting he is “not a believer of cancel culture,” Chan said in an interview that he has spoken with Miller several times since the controversy and believes Miller understands why his words were wrong. Miller’s support for Morgan was “not a factor” in Chan’s post-primary endorsement of Morgan, Chan added.

There is also a Democratic primary runoff for Miller’s seat, between L. Sarah DeMerchant, a Sugar Land IT executive who lost to Miller by 5 percentage points in 2018, and newcomer Suleman Lalani, a Sugar Land physician. DeMerchant and Lalani finished close in the four-way March primary, getting 30% and 32% of the vote, respectively.

Democrats will also lock in their nominees next week for two other battleground state House districts. Tom Adair and Lorenzo Sanchez are competing to challenge Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, while Akilah Bacy and Jenifer Rene Pool are vying for the seat of retiring Rep. Dwayne Bohac, R-Houston.

Bohac’s seat is expected to be particularly competitive in November after he won reelection in 2018 by just 47 votes. Republicans already picked their nominee for the seat, Lacey Hull, in the March primary.

                    "In GOP runoffs for the Texas House, viability in November is a leading concern" was first published at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/07/texas-house-runoff-elections/ by The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state.                 

Analysis: A rising commotion in Texas’ scattershot response to the pandemic

                   By Ross Ramsey

                    July 1, 2020

DIY pandemic responses seem to be flourishing in Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott is trying to reinstate some of the coronavirus safety measures he put in place in late March and then mostly erased in May. He’s meeting a lot of resistance — a fair amount of it from the people in his GOP base.

Abilene initially said it wouldn’t enforce the governor’s close-the-bars order, and then apologized, sort of: “The City of Abilene never intended to imply an intention to disregard the Governor’s Executive Order, or support any kind of action by citizens or business owners in contradiction to the Executive Order. The City apologizes for any lack of clarity in earlier messaging on the matter.”

The city still won’t enforce Abbott’s order, leaving that to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and others, but said it will encourage its businesses and citizens to “use common sense” and to do what the governor says “to the best of their ability.”

Bar owners from all over the state are suing for the right to stay open during the pandemic. Here’s a choice quote about the governor from their lawyer, former Harris County GOP Chairman Jared Woodfill: “Why does he continue unilaterally acting like a king? He’s sentencing bar owners to bankruptcy.”

State Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, took a swipe at the governor in a weekend tweet: “Pain. Frustration. Sadness. Confusion. Desperation. Anger. Just a few emotions I am hearing from East Tx business owners suffering from shutdown orders. @GovAbbott is taking their livelihoods with no compensation. Add me to the angry list. ENOUGH!”

Another, state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, tweeted his sentiments just after noon Sunday: “If I owned a bar, I would open it.”

Cain was one of the lawyers who represented Shelley Luther, the Dallas hairstylist who defied the governor’s business-closing orders in April and briefly went to jail for it. That stunt prompted Abbott to tell local officials they couldn’t jail or fine anyone for defying the governor’s own orders. Luther has been among the outspoken protesters on social media in recent days, saying the governor shouldn’t be closing bars and other businesses like this.

The clamor isn’t limited to drinking. That’s just the latest flash point.

Local officials in hot spots around Texas — big places like Houston and Dallas and smaller ones like Laredo, where there’s a new curfew in place — are straining against the governor’s proclamation that his orders prevent them from imposing stricter measures than the state has in place.

They’re pressing him to cut back on business reopenings and to allow them to impose stay-at-home orders. Some of them would like to require masks in public — another of the unexpectedly political controversies of the pandemic.

What a circus.

The governor’s bumpy ride of the last several weeks has engendered offers of unsolicited advice.

State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat, wants Abbott to call the Legislature back to work on COVID-19 responses and contends the Republican governor has stretched his emergency powers too far and for too long. Martinez Fischer is only one of 181 lawmakers, and he’s a Democrat, so you can read that either as a genuine offer to help or an opening criticism for the political cycle and next year’s legislative session.

On another front, a dozen and a half prominent education, business and civic groups are asking state leaders to put together a task force, presumably with their members on board, to figure out how to run public schools during a pandemic. They want to talk about everything from funding to teacher support to broadband and laptops and tablets for students at home — the whole enchilada.

The coronavirus seems to have vexed the state’s leaders, and it looks like everybody has an idea of what to do about it.

                    "Analysis: A rising commotion in Texas’ scattershot response to the pandemic" was first published at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/01/texas-scattershot-response-coronavirus/ by The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state.

Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen suggests ordering 5% budget cuts for state agencies

                    By Cassandra Pollock

                    April 22, 2020

                     Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen has reached out to fellow state leaders to initiate conversations about the state’s economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that the lower chamber would like to discuss a directive to all state agencies “to immediately identify and execute 5% budgetary savings.”

“It has become apparent that the time to engage in long-term economic planning is now,” the Angleton Republican wrote in an April 9 memo to Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, which was obtained Wednesday by The Texas Tribune. “While it is true that we do not have an immediate funding need or a lack of COVID-related emergency funding, all indications are that we will most certainly have a future state revenue concern due to lagging economic conditions statewide.”

In the memo, Bonnen also wrote that he would like to begin conversations about settling on instructions for legislative appropriations requests for budget planning for the 2022-23 cycle. The memo was shared last week with the House Appropriations Committee and its staff.

It’s unclear whether Bonnen’s fellow Republican leaders responded to the letter. Spokespeople for Abbott and Patrick did not immediately return requests for comment Wednesday.

The state's economy has been reeling for the past several weeks over the virus. In Texas, oil prices have plummeted, more than 1 million people have filed for unemployment relief over the past month and businesses across the state have shuttered in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus. Those shutdowns will be reflected in sales tax revenue, the state's largest source of funding, that is collected in the coming months.

Bonnen, who will retire at the end of his term, wrote that “a small 5% course correction now, with nearly 17 months for implementation … is a far more achievable goal than having to attempt a much larger cut with a much shorter window for execution.”

“In pursuing this course of action, it would be imperative that we give agencies maximum flexibility,” he wrote. “Enabling agencies flexibility to enact a 5% reduction gives them the opportunity to identify savings they view as the most prudent and efficient while allowing them to safeguard mission-critical functions."

Bonnen also noted that “additional cuts may be warranted” after Comptroller Glenn Hegar provides his revised fiscal forecast, which is expected to happen in July. Hegar has said that the state is in a recession due to the pandemic — but that he does not yet “know how deep or how wide it’s going to be” and that it will be at least a couple of months before his agency has a good idea of the data from the economic fallout.

Still, Hegar said during an interview with the Tribune earlier this month that his agency had already told other agencies to begin considering cuts and that the comptroller's office was working on providing recommendations to state leadership about it.

"It's better to ask agencies to reduce their budgets for a longer duration than a shorter duration," Hegar said, "so you're better to go shallow for long and still attain a significant savings for this biennium and next biennium than waiting six more months and [having] to go deeper."

Hegar also said that some state agencies were having to increase their spending due to the pandemic and that the comptroller's office was working with those entities "to track those dollars."

                    "Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen suggests ordering 5% budget cuts for state agencies" was first published at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/22/texas-house-budget-cuts-coronavirus/ by The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state.

Analysis: In an important election year, politics takes a back seat

                    By Ross Ramsey

                    April 20, 2020

 Politics are not on most people’s minds right now. It’s just noise, a distraction from the pandemic, family, friends and work.

As it should be.

But 2020 is still an election year, and it has become an even weirder one than you might have suspected.

The primary runoffs have already been delayed. Super Tuesday might seem like a million years ago, but Texans left a large number of races undecided in the March 3 party primaries. Those races were on their way to May 26 runoffs when the coronavirus intervened; as Gov. Greg Abbott was putting social distancing restrictions into place, he delayed those runoff elections until July 14.

The rest of the candidates — those who won their party nominations and are putting together their general election campaigns — are also in a pinch. They would like to be raising scads of money right now, as they’re normally doing at this point in an election cycle. They have kept up the trickle of “Send me $3!” emails, but not at the clip you would expect with runoffs approaching and a presidential election less than seven months away.

For all but the most talked-about candidates — a category pretty much confined right now to Donald Trump and Joe Biden — it’s hard to get voters’ attention in an election year. It’s harder when a pandemic has made it difficult for even top-of-the-ballot candidates to attract notice. Bernie Sanders didn’t do as well as he hoped in the March elections, but the rising pandemic made it impossible for him to stage a comeback.

Imagine what it’s like to be a relatively unknown candidate for the Texas House, with a race pages down from the presidential, U.S. Senate, congressional and statewide contests. That’s a hard spot on the ballot in a good year, and this is not a good year. The economy is hurting everyone, including people who ordinarily give to candidates. Public officials who aren’t directly involved in responding to the pandemic — the ones who aren’t having daily news conferences — are out of sight and out of mind. That’s fine for the rest of us, but electoral politics depends on an audience. Out of sight and out of mind is a political candidate’s nightmare.

Democrats, out of power in Texas, have pushed for years to turn out the Texans who register to vote and then don’t go to the polls. At the moment, they want to make it easier to vote by mail in Texas, and they're hoping the pandemic gives them a strong argument.

Even with runoffs delayed into July, they argue, voters might still be wearing masks in public, hovering near their homes and staying a couple of meters away from everyone but family.

The fight over whether to change how we vote — to broaden voting by mail to try to limit spreading the virus — is moving through the courts. Right now, voting by mail is only allowed for voters who won’t be in their home counties during the elections, those over age 65, eligible voters who are in jail and voters who are disabled. A state district judge in Austin issued a ruling Friday that would allow more people to vote absentee under the "disabled" exception because of the pandemic; the state’s attorneys have said they’ll appeal.

Cap all of that election uncertainty with the Trump administration’s recent proposal to delay the 2020 census, a postponement that would also delay next year’s redrawing of the districts represented by members of the congressional delegation and the Legislature. That’s for next year, really — the people we elect this year are supposed to draw those maps in 2021. But it puts a political spin on the delivery of the census, marks another side effect of the pandemic and contributes to the overall confusion about this political cycle.

What’s usually a political season, with upcoming runoffs and political conventions, has become a pandemic season instead. The political people are thinking about all of those things, but the audience — Texans who vote — isn’t listening.

                    "Analysis: In an important election year, politics takes a back seat" was first published at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/20/coronavirus-election-politics-voting-texas-back-seat/ by The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state.

Analysis: In special Texas House election, Democrats bit off more than they could chew

                    By Ross Ramsey

                    January 29, 2020

If the result in House District 28 is the harbinger for 2020’s elections, Texas Democrats are in for a hard, hard winter.

Their high-visibility play for a blue win in red territory failed in the worst way, giving Republicans a generous public relations boost and a strong counter to the Democrats’ claim that Texas is becoming a swing state.

The biggest takeaway is not that Democrat Eliz Markowitz lost the race to replace Republican John Zerwas, or that Republican Gary Gates won it. It’s not even that the win was huge, which it was: Gates beat Markowitz by 16 percentage points. What happened in this Fort Bend County race was more or less predictable, given the district’s history.

But the Democrats made such a national spectacle of their impending upset victory that their late attempts to call it a noble-but-unsuccessful effort to win on hostile ground fall flat.

The results were scarcely different from the first round of the special election, when Markowitz got 39% against a field of Gates and five other Republicans. In the runoff against Gates, she got 42%, while Gates was getting almost the same share that went to the whole field of Republicans in round one.

Between the two of them and their supporting casts, estimated spending topped $2 million. That’s a lot of money for a race to fill the remaining year of a two-year term in the Texas House, which isn’t even scheduled to meet again until next January. What was at stake here? Bragging rights, which would have been considerable after a Democratic win in Republican territory — and which have become considerable for the other side in the wake of a win in the face of the Democratic hype about the race.

Without all of that, this would have been a run-of-the-mill Republican win in a special election in a Republican Texas House district. Because of the buildup, the story is that all the Democrats’ horses and all the Democrats’ spin couldn’t put this seat in their column again.

The Republicans are having a field day.

The race got the attention it got because of the 2018 election results and the continuing political changes in Fort Bend County, a former Republican stronghold where Democrats have turned most of the electorate their way.

House District 28 hasn’t been part of that flip. Donald Trump won in the district while losing the county to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Ted Cruz won in the district while losing the county to Beto O’Rourke in 2018.

When Zerwas resigned before his term ended, it set up a test for both parties — an early look at whether a Republican district in a Democratic county had become more competitive.

It hasn’t, but amid the increase in expectations, with Democrats in Texas and beyond calling it a bellwether and a sign of the future, the result is more important than it might have been.

Democrats turned what should have been an expected loss — look at the recent history — into an embarrassing loss. Republicans turned a predictable result — history, again — into a cause for celebration.

Texas Democrats and Republicans won’t face off again in a big way until November, when Markowitz will have another shot at either Gates or Schell Hammel, his Republican primary opponent. Both parties have been preparing for the general election — with voter registration drives, engagement efforts and fundraising — as you would in a competitive political state. That’s new in Texas, where Republicans have been dominant for the last two decades.

Both parties were looking for good news along the way, and this special election — with help from the Democrats — gave the Republicans something to crow about.

                    "Analysis: In special Texas House election, Democrats bit off more than they could chew" was first published at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/01/29/special-texas-house-election-democrats-bit-more-they-could-chew/ by The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is proud to celebrate 10 years of exceptional journalism for an exceptional state.