Texas Democrats are tired.

The Texas Democratic Party has lost every statewide race since 1994.

The Texas Senate has been in Republican hands since 1996.

The Texas House? Since 2002.

Why do we keep losing? Get a focus group of ten Democratic activists in a room and you’ll get fifteen responses:

• It’s a messaging problem! We aren’t speaking to rural communities!
• It’s a messaging problem! We’re not speaking to people in the cities!
• We’re too liberal!
• We’re not organized!
• We need to speak to kitchen table issues!
• We need to engage Gen Z!
• The state is too gerrymandered!
• It’s because of voter suppression!

While all of these challenges may (or may not) have merit, I would contend that one of the major overlooked causes that can truly be solved and agreed upon is the electoral organizing model… which is currently more broken than Greg Abbott’s moral compass.

Campaign-Driven Campaigns: Our Broken Organizing Model

“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”

-Will Rogers

Here is how most electoral organizing works:

The incumbent party in a given seat engages in what equates to a natural around-the-clock campaign schedule. They give speeches in their district and at the Capitol. Their staff puts out press releases about recently filed bills. They take pictures and send them out through their government-sponsored newsletters. They can call any media station or submit an editorial to any newspaper and secure earned media with very little effort. They are in constant campaign mode by virtue of their position.

The non-incumbents — in Texas that’s usually us, folks — campaign much differently. Usually, the community follows the lead of the campaign. A few diehards (like me, and some of you) get involved in the primaries, but most Democratic door knockers are basically in hibernation until the dust has cleared and the primary voters have nominated their candidates. If any issue-based groups become interested in the race, they have to either pick a side in the primary, work in isolation, or take a pass because the district is simply too dadgum complicated to work on.

Then, finally, the ground game effort begins, led by the victor in the primary. Activists who met through hand-to-hand political combat during the primary are expected to bury the hatchet immediately and bond on the spot so they can rally around the winner. Insights into specific areas and the needs of disengaged or persuadable voters are collected on the fly.

If the candidate wins, the people who supported it become the fanbase of the newly elected official. If it fails, the campaign disbands, the community disconnects, and we repeat the process all over again two years later. All of the infrastructure, energy, connections, and other resources collected and built from the previous campaign fall apart. Activists who were involved in the last cycle often decide it just isn’t worth it this time around; they’ve got lives to live, and neither their time nor the gasoline that powers their vehicles are free. Next time, instead of knocking doors, making calls, writing postcards, protesting, or writing checks to campaigns, they may do something else.

Like a sandcastle, any infrastructure or activist energy from the cycle simply blows away.

The good news is that no matter what your concerns are as a donor, precinct chair, operative, activist, or reliable voter, there’s a better way to do things, a model that has worked in other states and individual districts to change the dynamic.

This model can not only support us in winning down ballot, but also unlock opportunities to sweep statewide seats.

More importantly, it can equip us with the infrastructure we need to win long term victories, and even hold leaders accountable after they enter elected office, thus building a better world (which is the point of winning elections in the first place).

District Action Councils: A Model for High Octane Organizing

District Action Councils are coalitions of grassroots organizations, local Democratic clubs, labor unions and PACs (Political Action Committees) working together and sharing a common, web-based calendar of events designed to engage voters to flip seats.

District Action Councils bring everyone to the table to discuss their agenda in a way that allows them to unify their power while still focusing on their individual interests.

As an activist once told me, “Groups in coalition march in their own direction, but strike as one.”

District Action Councils empower coalitions to strike more effectively.

Why?

District Action Councils empower groups to come together at a local or state level far before the primary ever takes place.

As a result, progressive groups can start building infrastructure, raising money, messaging to their neighbors, and forming relationships on peaceful, collaborative ground, with a headstart on the election.

If issue groups become interested in the area, they don’t have to contact primary campaigns or the local nonpartisan neighborhood club. They also don’t have to move forward on their own, risking major organizing mistakes by entering neighborhoods they know nothing about.

Instead, these issue groups and grassroots activists can contact a growing table of community leaders who know their neighbors and have an understanding of local culture and institutions, including the physical geography of the area, the weather, neighborhood influencers, legal restrictions, and other key elements that would be overlooked on a shorter timeline.

Members of District Action Councils meet one another based on common ground: they all want to make a difference and win the general election. They may differ in the primary, and perhaps things will still get heated, but there is more room for healing after the primary than there is in a traditional organizing model because the members of the council meet under circumstances of peace (pre-election organizing) rather than war (primary elections).

If the candidate wins, the community can hold them accountable and continue to apply pressure regarding issues they care about. If the newly elected official does a good job, the elected will have even more support than your average incumbent when they run for reelection.

If the candidate loses, the District Action Council can stay together, advocate, and continue to build on their progress until the next election cycle, when either that same candidate or a new primary winner can take another shot with an electoral infrastructure that is stronger than ever.

Has Texas tried District Action Councils?

Kinda… but not really.

Over the last six years, I have heard a lot of folks in Harris County discuss the need for us to coordinate and work together more. From 2016 through 2020, our county party did a good job of holding meetings that brought activists to the table. During that time period, several rolling coalition meetings brought groups together on various issues such as democracy concerns or criminal justice reform.

In 2018, a large group of leaders met up thanks to Sri Preston Kulkarni and RideShare2Vote to discuss exactly the kinds of issues that District Action Councils are intended to solve… but followup meetings with all parties were infrequent, and leaders never quite closed the loop on some of the more specific operational mechanics that might have pushed people across the finish line. This problem persists across Texas, where communities continuously find themselves building up and tearing down efforts based on electoral cycles.

The best example in Texas of a coordinated effort that is similar to a District Action Council was the race for Texas’ 7th congressional district (TX-07), which had been in Republican control since 1966, when George H. Bush took the newly drawn district out of Democratic hands.

By 2016, the incumbent Republican John Culberson had been in office for eight terms. A strong Trump supporter and inflammatory rightwing rep, Culberson failed to realize that his district had been slowly shifting ideologically from the right toward the center.

Several groups became heavily engaged long before a nominee was selected. Notably, Swing Texas Left and Indivisible Houston coordinated to host forums, execute blockwalks, protest, and engage in other communications efforts to inform the community of Culberson’s failure as a representative. These efforts led to enhanced turnout for events, and impactful ground game on par with some of the most impressive efforts in recent American history.

In spite of a combative seven-way primary, volunteers rallied to support the nominee Lizzie Fletcher. In a district Culberson had won in the previous cycle by nearly 13 points, Fletcher won by five. The first group she thanked after winning was Swing Left.

The efforts of the grassroots in TX-07 had positive residual impacts both statewide and in down ballot and inter-district areas. Fletcher won the race with nearly 128,000 votes, the overwhelming majority of which were in Harris County.

Many of the areas of focus for Swing Left TX-07’s ground game were in neighborhoods that were traditionally overlooked, such as my precinct, which has nearly 7,000 residents in more than fifteen apartment complexes. Many of those voters were engaged for the entire Democratic ticket, which meant extra votes for Harris County judicial candidates, including Lina Hidalgo, as well as statewide candidates like Mike Collier and Beto O’Rouke.

It would be silly to argue that the activists in the 7th were the only thing that helped the county candidates win or the statewide candidates get close; such a claim would vastly discount the efforts of grassroots activists and down ballot candidates who put in the work to help themselves win in other parts of the county and state. But the TX-07 activists definitely contributed significantly to victory.

A model similar to District Action Councils has also been used in Texas by rightwing organizers. The Texas Tea Party and its affiliated groups have used a similar strategy for years.

A former Tea Party activist-turned-Indivisible member out of Dallas once told me that various groups would connect on a regular basis and plan meetings to pressure local electeds.

“We were effective because we went to every county judge and asked whether or not they would let Obama take our f***ing guns,” he said. “Then, when election time came around we’d coordinate to knock doors and sweep every seat we targeted.”

In other words, conservatives have been doing something like this in Texas for a longtime, with pretty good success.

Where have District Action Councils worked?

Perhaps the best and most closely detailed example of a successful District Action Council comes from California. While California may be a left-leaning state, the region on which the example is based is far more purple, not unlike TX-07.

The same cycle when Fletcher defeated Culberson, activists in Southern California successfully took on five congressional districts where flips were possible (CA-25, CA-39, CA-45, CA-48, CA-49), the largest mass pickup opportunity of congressional seats anywhere in the country.

As was the case in many other regions, activists formed tons of new organizational chapters (Indivisible, Sister District, Swing Left, etc). They were all focused on similar goals, but they weren’t connected… at first.

A social activist in the area of CA-49 developed a plan to flip the district, then founded the Flip the 49th PAC. She brought together grassroots groups, SEIU, various Democratic clubs, and the San Diego Democratic Party. The CA49 Action Council began deep canvassing a year before the primary.

Around the same time, a group of Indivisibles in CA-33 started a subgroup called Swing SoCal Left, which focused on flipping all five SoCal districts. The organization started a community calendar, then sought out groups in the area with whom they could initiate meetings and introduce that calendar. Action councils were set up soon after in the other four districts, all of them launching canvassing in the context of community rather than the context of campaigns.

All of the councils focused on their own district, but welcomed assistance from surrounding areas as well, tapping into the energy of activists from nearby safe seats who wanted to help.

The Action Councils were able to channel this energy appropriately. Oftentimes, outside help can fail to make an impact or even set back local efforts because outside activists are not acquainted with the area. Thanks to the Action Councils, outsiders were able to pitch in effectively, and in-district activists were able to leverage reinforcements, a win-win for all involved.

The Action Councils did not always all agree on the issues; infighting is an inevitability of progressive coalitions. But through a shared calendar, a regular channel of communication, and consistent sitdown meetings, these groups were able to target their energy appropriately, stay focused on their goals, and win.

In 2018, the Democrats took the house by gaining 41 seats. More than 10% of total pickups came from this one effort: all five swing seats in Southern California turned blue, transforming a congressional region that had previously been ⅔ Republican into one that was 100% Democratic.

OK, but that’s California. This is Texas. Would District Action Councils work here?

Yes! The TX-07 effort demonstrates that District Action Councils can work in Texas. And similar models have worked in other areas of the country:

• In 2017, Jon Ossoff lost the special election for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District to Karen Handel by more than 9,000 votes, a spread of 3.6% in the election. Despite Ossoff’s loss, grassroots groups stayed committed to booting Handel from office. The very next election cycle in 2018, Lucy McBath vanquished the incumbent by more than 3,000 votes.
• In 2016, Arizona infamously voted for Trump by approximately 90,000 votes, or 4% of the population. In 2020, grassroots activists were able to deliver Arizona for Biden by about 10,000 votes, thanks largely to the hard work of Latino activists in the Mi AZ coalition. Mi AZ included groups like Lucha, which formed in response to the Show Me Your Papers law. The effort increased Latino turnout in key precincts by up to 20%. You can read about it in more detail here. The campaign also heavily benefitted from the work of Native American activist organizations such as Four Directions and the Rural Arizona Project, who busted barriers to voting that are common on reservations. These groups coordinated heavily throughout the cycle.
• In 2016, Michigan infamously voted for Trump by about 10,000 votes, partly due to low Black voter turnout in Detroit. Groups like Detroit Action and We the People worked diligently through the next cycle and the one following, increasing Black voter turnout to secure victories throughout the state and flipping Michigan back into the Democratic column for the presidential race.

You will notice that all three of these cases featured major shocks to the system that lit a fire under activist efforts:

• Arizona passed SB1070, a bill that empowered racial profiling and mass deportation of immigrants, a precursor to Trump’s DHS policy on family separation.
• Michigan suffered through the Flint Water crisis and the collapse of the auto industry.
• Georgia underwent one of the most significant slides toward anti-democratic fascism of any state in the country thanks to Brian Kemp running his own election for governor.

Each of these issues spurred community conversations, and that’s without considering the massive wave of people who became activists in response to the Trump Administration.

Texas has had very real and clear trauma of its own for a generation:

• Our waterways have been poisoned by corporate polluters for years in virtually every region of the state. Recently, polluters tried to send toxic water from the Ohio train derailment to Houston, a move only blocked when the EPA got involved.
• Greg Abbott has been using migrant families and Latino communities as a political pawn for decades. He has bussed them to random locations in other states, sent the Texas national guard to the border, and installed buoys and razor wire along the border, all part of an ongoing campaign of deadly political stunts. In 2017, he signed a Show Me Your Papers Law which enabled law enforcement officials to demand proof of immigration status regardless of whether a crime was being committed. The law also coerced local law enforcement into pledging assistance to Trump’s ICE department, which oversaw the deaths of multiple migrants in Texas facilities. The outcome? A decrease in reporting of domestic abuse, all as the result of a fear of deportation.

• Our power grid failed in 2021 during a winter storm, killing hundreds of Texans. It still hasn’t been fixed. The grid remains vulnerable to failure in both extreme cold and extreme heat.
• Multiple bills demonizing gay and trans kids passed the Texas Legislature in 2023, including bans on drag shows and gender affirming care. These bills were passed with full knowledge that trans kids face higher risk of suicide.
• DPS recently militarized Austin policing as part of a partnership with the city. They ended up harassing Black and Latino Austinians, and pulling a gun on a 10-year-old kid.
• Multiple mass shootings have taken place over the last decade. 2023 was particularly bloody. In 2022, 19 kids and two teachers were shot at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. In 2019, a shooting in El Paso killed 23 and injured 22. The El Paso gunman left a manifesto decrying “Hispanic invasion,” parroting language from the Trump White House’s common propaganda practices.
• In the 2023 legislative session, Harris County’s right to govern and hold free and fair elections was explicitly targeted by the state. Senate Bill 1750 eliminates our county’s nonpartisan election administrator’s office. Senate Bill 1933 allows the state to take over county elections if someone, like a candidate or a political party leader, lodges a complaint. These bills were written to apply only to Harris County, which is no accident. Currently, several Republican candidates, including Alexandra Mealer, are attempting to pull a coup through the courts after our 2022 election. Mealer has been nakedly political in her interests in the case, using the phrases “Hold Harris County, Hold Texas” and “Hold Harris County to keep Texas from turning blue” in fundraising pitches to support her case. Mealer has gone so far as to peddle that narrative to Gateway Pundit, a known conspiracy outlet that supported overturning the 2020 presidential election and a wide variety of other false narratives related to vaccines, voting, and school shootings.

• Houston Independent School District, one of the largest districts in the country, has recently gone through takeover by the state. In the short period of time that Texas has colonized our school district, they have appointed a board of managers that includes a member who lost her election to one of our duly elected trustees; turned libraries into discipline centers; appointed a charter CEO as superintendent who recently coerced kids into helping him sell a hollow story at a district-sanctioned event…

And that’s the tip of the iceberg of any of these individual issues. I could go on and on about trauma from storm damage, lack of healthcare, further colonization of counties and cities, abuse of people with disabilities, a massively racist system of incarceration, lack of housing, depressed wages, and plenty more, but you get the idea. No matter how you slice it, Texas has had its fair share of shocks to the system.

Where do we start?

There are 149 seats in the Texas house. The Democrats currently control 64, which means the Democrats have to pick up 11 seats (assuming all of those Democrats caucus together and we have no sellouts… so it may be worth it to get a few more, just for insurance).

There are 17 seats that can be flipped if we can switch ten percent of the vote or turn out enough new voters to make up that 10%. We have until 2030 to make that happen; in that session, Texas will draw new maps, and a Republican majority will want to gerrymander Texas for another generation.

Let’s take a look at those seats:

If you’re looking at the board and thinking, “That looks pretty hard,” let me just say: you have a point. If the proverb, “Nothing worth doing is ever easy” were a visual aid, it would be this chart.

But there are a lot of reasons why the margins alone are misleading.

First, ten of these seats are within a 15 point range, which was the exact swing TX-07 activists achieved to topple John Culberson. And every single seat features a range smaller than the swing in vote totals that allowed Lina Hidalgo to defeat Ed Emmett for Harris County Judge. And that’s if you skip a cycle, as Emmett did not even have a challenger in 2014.

Second, some of these reps are absolute ninnies. They make terrible decisions. They have sex and hate speech scandals. They engage in election fraud. They hire extremist Christian Nationalists as staffers. They carry water for the Texas Republican Party in a state that is, albeit slowly, shifting in its attitudes and behaviors. They are thoroughly beatable.

Third, we have had our shocks to the system. People are pissed off and they’re not going to take this stuff anymore. As organizers, we have the opportunity to lift people up so they can channel their anger and energy into payback of the people who hurt them.

Fourth, we have more than one cycle to make this happen. Some seats may take time to flip, but all of them are flippable.

Fifth, we have a new model to try out that can specifically benefit our efforts through a regional focus. These 18 seats are in nine counties. Several counties have three seats, so we can harness collaboration and pick up energy from nearby activists to assist in knocking reps out of office.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly: no one is tougher than Texas activists. We love our families, our communities, and our homes. We have been through major challenges and continued to fight.

With the right strategy, we’ll be unstoppable, no matter what any MAGA-brained street Nazi or Christian Nationalist Lt. Governor has to say about it.

Let’s save the world.

If we change Texas, we can change the nation.

If we change the nation, we can get a handle on democracy and climate change.

If we save democracy and reverse climate change, we can save the world.

Let’s save the world.

To get started, sign up to volunteer with the GAP Network’s District Action Councils project.

You can also donate to GAP Network. To support work in Harris County, donate to Indivisible Houston.

About the Author

Daniel J. Cohen is an advocate in Houston. As one of the most active pro-democracy Houstonians since November of 2016, he has grown a volunteer army of more than 2,000 democracy advocates across the Houston area; led successful grassroots communications efforts to flip federal, state, and county seats (TX-07, HD-134, County Judge); secured earned media through traditional and social media channels estimated at more than $50 million in value with an all volunteer staff and an annual budget of less than $25,000; built coalitions with organizations, independent community leaders, and media at the local, state, and national level; and organized, promoted, and led some of the largest marches in the history of Houston.

Cohen has been published or quoted by Houston Chronicle, Texas Signal, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, WAPO, and other major media.

Yesterday, Greg Abbott stated that he plans to “reopen” Texas businesses potentially within the next week. He offered no details of the plans to do so (we’re supposed to get those later), but the implication is that some businesses currently closed by ordinance could reopen. It doesn’t take too much of a reach to be concerned that he wants to relax restrictions to an extent that would end essential physical distancing measures.

To rephrase lightly: it looks like a mistake. Health experts warned for months before the first massive wave of Coronavirus cases in the United States that we needed to implement measures to separate ourselves physically from one another. They have also told us over and over that we need widespread testing and careful tracing of cases in order to slow and eventually get in front of COVID-19 and that we need to practice social distancing for a while from here. We probably need therapeutic relief at the minimum and more than likely a vaccine to move to the final step where we can say we got past this thing.

What’s certain is that any premature end to social distancing makes the problem worse both economically and medically. It’s not going to help us in terms of either our health or our pocketbook to do that. Sick and dying consumers and workers don’t make for an economy that works. You can’t stimulate a broken engine. (I wrote about this last week).

The entire idea is based on a misguided metaphor in the first place because…

You can’t turn an economy off or on.

Economies don’t operate via light switch, and this is not a semantic quibble. Saying you want to “turn the economy back on” makes it seem as though economic activity is in a zero sum relationship with medical mitigation; it’s not. Some economic activity is happening now an will continue. An economy is “on” if there is trade. Trade = an economy. It’s what it is. People want stuff, other people have it, they trade.

In spite of the failure of that metaphor and the fair warning of both economists and health experts about the damage bringing us all physically together could do, the idea of turning something that is already “on” back “on” still persists. It’s a line of thinking that hurts us now and in the future and prolongs our misery. We don’t need to think of the economy as it was before COVID; we need to think of it as it is now and in years to come.

The Economy Must ADAPT

Instead of saying we want to “turn on” the economy, we should *adapt* it. There are ways to create work that is reasonable, and new ways to look at social programs and spending that are reasonable, too. Some of the most obvious elements of the new economy are in the delivery and healthcare space. Makerspaces are figuring out how to print new equipment, scientists all over the world are testing potential treatments, and people are making masks and ventilators in their garages and living rooms. The online space just became bigger; that means there’s more need for infrastructure there. There’s more need for delivery. Education technologies are now ripe for huge movement. Basically anything referenced by the Department of Homeland Security’s GUIDANCE ON THE ESSENTIAL CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WORKFORCE document will be around in the near future.

Consumer markets are also ripe for potential adaptations. Anything that assists people in staying healthy, from exercise programs to equipment to dietary supplements, at-home treatment of any kind, all just became ripe for purchase by people with money in their pocket. So did anything in emerging markets. In particular, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens with marijuana markets. On the one hand, it’s bad to smoke marijuana when it comes to potentially getting Coronavirus. On the other, it is also bad to be stressed when it comes to potentially getting Coronavirus, and marijuana can be consumed in edible form. But that’s neither here nor there; the truth is people will still want it, and want it to be clean, and there are jobs there still be had in the majority of American states and territories.

Entertainment leaves another field open for adaptation. There are certain VERY specific engines, such as entertainment, that can be streamed out CAREFULLY and may be able to be adapted to this environment, too. It dawned on me today that if you could safeguard about 300–500 people in one space with a guarantee of cleanliness, theoretically you could turn on the NBA (NOTE: I AM NOT SUGGESTING THIS AND THIS IS THEORY THUS FAR; it is simply meant to prove a point about how a lot of this is a matter of logistics and redesigning how we think). Since cartoons are limitless in what they can represent, they may become a popular avenue for entertainment. On the other hand, maybe people will find creativity in the constraints of the virus and develop interesting cinematography through editing together individually filmed shots from a (social) distance.

I realize a lot of this sounds more hopeful than maybe it should. Some people think a Great Depression scenario is on the way. They may be right. I don’t really know.

What I do know is that you can’t just open up the salons and churches. That doesn’t work. But you can adapt. You may be able to do some retraining and severance while we’re at it (I know that’s never a universal answer; some union members call it burial insurance when their jobs get shipped).

The Governor and his gang don’t want to talk this way. They feel safer saying “let’s turn the economy back on” because they can wink and nod to animal-abusing egotistical casino/restaurant/hotel with a reputation for personal intimidation of people at all levels about how they’re going to be OK. They also want to imply to people that they’re going to be at a block party before summer is out. Basically, they don’t want to spook people, so they sell false hope and implied dreams. They oversimplify at best, and lie at worst.

But you can’t get the economy back “on” because it was never off. What you’re really talking about is adapting the economy. Not all industries or businesses will survive that. Hell, some will be washed out of their respective markets by an influx of new competitors. But thinking about how to adapt is the best at-large solution.

I’m all ears for adaptations you see and ways to implement them. Whether it is good judgment or not, I believe in humanity getting through this, and I believe in the power of collaborating to take on these challenges.

Donald Trump, known for both mismanagement and catch phrases, displayed both of those talents recently by popularizing the extremely silly perspective on COVID-19 that “the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself”. His implication was that the damage and death toll from crashing markets resulting from a lockdown might be more damaging than the death toll from Coronavirus. Unfortunately, the idea is a falsehood in the first place; any response or strategic planning surrounding COVID-19 that does not involve lockdowns and eradicating the disease will make matters worse.

This is not an opinion. It is a fact. It’s an obvious one at that. All economic damage is worsened by a deadly disease. Hours and time are lost when people are sick. We move more slowly, forget more things, do our tasks sloppily, reducing efficiency and increasing duplication of work. We get more people in our hospital system; the system is more likely to crash. Families are more likely to lose breadwinners to the disease. We strain our short supply of medical resources. We lose more healthcare workers.

But if one needs more “expert” analysis to understand this better as opposed to me simply drawing out more scenarios, take it from the economists.

Not just some of them.

All of them.

A panel put together by Chicago Booth of many of the leading economists from institutions around the United States unanimously agreed that ending lockdowns early would result in worse economic fallout than waiting through the appropriate amount of time. Confidence in that assertion was almost unanimously beyond uncertainty, too.

As Professor Neale Mahone puts it:

So why is there so much discussion of trade-offs? I’m worried that the debates are not about real economic trade-offs but instead are about shortsightedness, or providing a fig leaf for corporate cronyism.

Those who think we should start relaxing coronavirus-suppression measures such as shelter-in-place orders are severely shortsighted. There are no reasonable discount rates whereby the economic benefits of lifting such measures now can be rationalized relative to the harm experienced in future months from the increased spread of the disease.

Some might counter that the lockdown itself has economic costs that would go unseen otherwise, but each of these considerations are made worse by COVID-19.

Worried about depression and suicide from isolation? Isolation will have to return to the standard as people die, and more people dying will lead to worse depression.

Worried about riots and crime waves? Consider riots and crime waves with even more people sick and dying on both the offender side and the victim side of the equation.

Worried about small businesses going under? Imagine what happens when their staff and consumers get sick, die, or have to take care of others who are sick and dying.

There is no scenario whereby we end the lockdowns and improve our status as a result.

The argument has other, glaring issues, at face value, starting but not nearly ending with the way it treats human beings. Weighing our death tolls in one situation versus our pocketbook in an alternative scenario, as many are doing in weighing public health against the almighty dollar, is undoubtedly immoral.

But even if we are to accept the premise that there might be some amount of money that’s worth it, it’s not an option for us. There is no cure worse than the disease. There are only boneheaded false hope attempts to cure the disease, and actual cures that minimize the damage and get us back on our feet faster. The former will bankrupt and kill more people. The latter is our only option, and will saves lives by both beating Coronavirus and restoring markets as quickly as possible.

TX-02 Candidate Elisa Cardnell has officially suspended her congressional campaign just as we were headed into runoff season. Cardnell was looking at long odds against frontrunner Sima Ladjervarian in an effort to replace Dan Crenshaw in November.

Per the campaign:

When we began this campaign no one thought this race was possible. Every rating had Dan Crenshaw in a safe seat with no chance of flipping, but we knew that wasn’t true. We organized, we built a movement here in Houston, and showed that voters across the spectrum want to hold their leaders accountable. That’s what this race has always been about, putting country over party and holding Dan Crenshaw accountable.

Our movement is strong. We received over 5,000 contributions to our campaign. We received over 17,000 votes, more than the past Democratic nominee for TX-02. But unfortunately, after a hard look at the numbers, we do not have the resources and clear path to reach a majority in the runoff. That is why today I am suspending my campaign for the US House of Representatives for the Texas 2nd district.

This is not the outcome any of us were hoping for, but ultimately it is the best thing for our party so the fight against Dan Crenshaw can start today, not in May. Dan Crenshaw has built a multi-million warchest funded by private prison groups, Big Pharma, the Koch’s, and other corporate donors. He has voted with Trump over 93% of the time and is the 5th most frequent Congressional visitor to the Trump properties. If we are going to hold him accountable, we need to start that work today instead of giving him more time to build a corporate war chest.

I am deeply humbled by the support we have received. The fight for working class representation in DC doesn’t end here. I’m not done fighting for universal healthcare, a living wage, a green economy, safe schools, our veterans, and ending the influence of money in politics.

I hope you’ll join me in supporting

Sima for Texas

in this fight against Dan Crenshaw and his corporate donors.

I respect her decision. Cardnell is right; we need to immediately start the fight against Crenshaw, who has been a rubberstamp for the Trump Administration and a mouthpiece for harmful policies. Given how much she put into the race to be the candidate to take him on headfirst, her willingness to step aside and read the writing on the wall is extremely commendable. Crenshaw has to go, and she didn’t have the resources to make it happen. Had she done what it would have taken to run the primary or even make it close, we would have likely had a damaged candidate with drained coffers emerging in May. Instead, Houston gained a strong, smart, tough activist and organizer in Cardnell, and consolidation of primary support for the all-but-guaranteed presumptive nominee.

This news also shines a lot on our process. Cardnell points out that she didn’t have the resources to continue. While some people might chalk this up to the game and accept that running for office will always take a ton of money, that perspective accepts that democracy itself can never be expanded to reasonably include more than a handful of working class candidates.

If the only way to run for office is to appeal to super donors, spend an immense personal fortune or go bankrupt, then the system is classist, full stop. We should not miss out on good leaders because they’re working class. Publicly funded campaigns and other campaign finance reforms aren’t just ideas worth considering because they will help expand democracy. They are essential to the future of democracy in the United States.

A man unfurled a Nazi banner at a Bernie Sanders rally yesterday.

It is absurd unto itself to have to explain why unfurling a Nazi banner is anti-Semitic. We don’t have to coat anything to make the case clear; they’re Nazis. They’re murderous. They want to torture, imprison, and kill people. They’re the villain we see in our stories because in spite of having been born a person, they murder and kill other people.

They’re scum. Fuck them.

Yet Washington Post, with its Bezos-sized war chest walking around with its chest puffed out, decided to make this act more normal by downplaying the public’s reaction, reducing it to a “mere appearance” while labeling any pushback as an “outcry”.

“Mere” is meant as a synonym for something insignificant. A glance at Google’s synonyms tells you everything you need to know about how reductive it is for a fucking Nazi flag:

Washington Post would have to be negligent to the point of uselessness to not realize that they played into Nazi activism’s strategy here by amplifying and downplaying the event. Normalizing Nazi messages is what Nazis do. They try to get the Overton Window to accept hatred, a strategy in precise concert with how Trump operates, too.

Washington Post proclaims that “Democracy dies in darkness”, implying we should follow them to the light.

What they did today enabled hatred and mouth-pieced for Nazis.

Something always stands out to me about the first past the post bipartisanship frame that is imposed on us by both our legal system and the propaganda machine in the United States:

A lot of the people who pay attention to politics talk about it like sports.

I’m not talking about the fierce flag-waving for our teams, which certainly is something that happens. More like the way the punditry goes down. We tend to talk about who can beat who, as if “the Lakers are playing the Cavs and the starting forward for the Cavs is hurt but the Lakers have a worse record and you know how they struggle at home and do they have the size to rebound”, which mirrors very closely “Elizabeth Warren is smart and sharp and has good fundraising but she lost New Hampshire which is right next door to Massachusetts and will she be able to win the debates?”

But there’s a really key difference between the wide world of sports and the politics we punditrize about. (Actually there are several, but I’m going to pinpoint on one).

In sports, our outcomes are not personal in ways that could hurt us as much as they are personal in ways that can help us. When “we” lose in sports, the team loses. *We*-save for the few best athletes on Earth and the people who actually help them stay fit and get better- don’t actually *do* anything. The fans’ actual winning or losing is a mirage in sports; they sit in the stands. They’re not on the team.

In elections, we’re on the team. You and me. Right now. We’re not nearly the starters, but we make sure they get what they need and we help however we can. We can knock doors and research and birddog and scrape. We can use our education and grit and life lessons to change perception, increase turnout, cut turf. We can boycott and buycott and organize rallies. We can commit civil disobedience or register voters. We play directly in the game.

Morale is important in our game. It seems to me that one important thing to do as a team, if you will, is to believe in ourselves, especially since a lot of people won’t. The pundits are going to have doubts and opinions about our team.

They’ll doubt.

They’ll catastrophize.

They’ll say our quarterback has a weak arm or won’t prosecute terrorists or something like that.

But we don’t have to be the pundits, or anything like them. We are not them. We are on the team.

And when you’re on a team, your job is not to doubt your chances.

Your job is to believe you can win.

A lot of people will probably take that as a commentary on viability; that’s not how I intend it. My belief in probability is that the most uncomfortable option-agnosticism- is the most commonsense one. We don’t know who can win; we can usually see that someone can’t meet a minimum manufacturing requirement for victory if they, you know, do heroin on the network news. But generally, I don’t think we’, as humans, are good at prediction. We prophesize and look, what, what do you know it, the wind has blown in another direction and what we knew before no longer applies.

What I mean to say, rather, is that if you are on the team… which is to say if you are trying to make social difference of *any* kind in the face of authoritarianism… that betting on *you* is important.

I bet on you. I bet on us. We are a very, very, very strong movement. We are smart. We have people who have crawled through hell, people with advanced degrees, people who are hungry for change because they know everyday institutions aren’t serving them, and they are fighting. They are playing a role in the larger organization of a mass movement, pushing their part forward, coordinating with one another.

*We* are capable of playing selflessly, to carry the analogy, of sharing the ball, of putting in work. Even more, we are capable of scoring victories faster than ever thanks to the technology and fervor of an active generation.

Many of the best people I have met in life, I met after the 2016 Election. As frightening as that can be (and it’s OK to be scared sometimes… I get it), there is something to be said for us. This White House brought out the worst, but many of the best answered.

That’s special.

So if you’re working for an equitable world this year, and you’ve been doing it for a few years or more at this point please remember to take note that you are among the best. You did it. You’re going to keep doing it. We’re going to keep doing it, together, and none of us have to do it all ourselves.

It doesn’t matter as much who our top leader is in a given movement because it’s not about them. It’s about you, about us.

*We* are vital to democracy.

*We* are immeasurably powerful.

And *we* are going to win.

And as we move toward victory, I make this promise to you:

I will never, ever bet against us.

Last week, Democratic Party Social Media Land spent a lot of time talking about the decision by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to withhold payment from the DCCC, instead opting to use her money to support candidates in specific races. AOC is one of the only House incumbents to refuse to pay the money.

She made the right decision.

The frame of the story peddled by most major media on this particular topic displays the inherent bias toward the Establishment paradigm and against AOC’s decision. Many outlets referred to these payments as “dues”, as if AOC is required to join the DCCC membership when she got into Congress.

On the contrary, we all know that most early politicians and framers in the United States were wary of parties. Even today, there is no law or heralded tradition to be a part of the DCCC. And the DCCC itself attacks Democrats all the time.

It’s important to take note of what the DCCC truly is and how it operates. The DCCC is one of several arms of the Democratic Party. It is not the DNC or the Democratic Caucus as a body, but rather its own organization.

What does the DCCC do?

It’s a campaign arm for incumbent House Democrats staffed by Democratic strategists. It claims that it is there to “protect and expand the Democratic majority”. However, what is missing from that description is a series of behaviors that actually hurt the effort to uphold our professed party platform, win elections, and expand the Democratic Party’s tent. Because of its behavior, the DCCC actively works against our interests.

The DCCC Aids and Abets Trump Dems

The DCCC’s position on Democratic House incumbents is essentially to defend them no matter what their policies are.

Since the DCCC protects House incumbents, you might be wondering:

What happens when a Democrat violates our party values or votes for the Trump Agenda? It’s one thing for a party to have a big tent; it’s another for an officially sanctioned Democratic House team to embrace Trump-like reps.

Does the DCCC support them or pull the rug out?

The DCCC has run into just this scenario, and the unfortunate answer is that they will support the incumbent no matter what. Yes. When the chips were down, the DCCC has used money paid to them through House Democrats’ membership dues and Democratic Party donors to support right-wing Democrats such as Dan Lipinski and Henry Cuellar.

Lipinski (IL-3) is so right-wing he was the only Democrat to vote against the Affordable Care Act. He voted against the DREAM Act. He was on the wrong side of gay marriage until the day the Supreme Court ruled it was constitutional. He refused to endorse Barrack Obama for the presidency in 2012. He is also distinctly anti-choice and opposed to stem cell research funding; notably, he also does not pay dues to the DCCC because he doesn’t want his money going to pro-choice Democrats (which is to say, almost all of them).

Cuellar, like Lipinski, has a similarly atrocious policy track record. A darling of the private prison industry, Cuellar has sided consistently with John Cornyn on the issue of family detention, an alarming position for any Democratic politician. Last cycle, he supported private prison Repo John Carter at a congressional fundraiser. In the last Congress, he voted with Trump 69% of the time. He is one of the only Democrats not to cosponsor a comprehensive labor bill known as the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a well-designed and thoughtful support bill for a wide variety of labor fights. He also has a history of supporting the predatory loan sharks, and has taken thousands of dollars from the NRA. Oh, and his environmental policies poison our air and water and cook the Earth like a pancake.

Thanks to the general power of the DCCC and its role in the political system, these men are protected in spite of being challenged by young, progressive candidates with real resources and capabilities. Yet when Nancy Pelosi was asked whether or not she is supporting Cuellar at a panel at TribFest last year, she was quick to offer her endorsement:

Texas Tribune on Twitter

@SpeakerPelosi says she is supporting @RepCuellar, who is facing a primary challenge from @JCisnerosTX. #TribFest19 https://t.co/365pEc5z9p https://t.co/j7W7BJ9Ykw

Similarly, House Democratic Leadership rallied to the aide of Lipinski last cycle, helping him squeak through reelection by just more than two points. Thankfully, progressive pressure has frightened the DCCC enough to get them to shy away from some of the stronger support they may have provided this time around.

AOC sees that her DCCC money would go to Cuellar and Lipinski. Based on their Trumpian voting records and the fact that Democratic challengers who adhere to the party platform are willing to take them on, she refused to give them the money they need to fend off their challengers.

And if that were all there was to it, that would be reason enough.

But there’s more.

The DCCC Meddles in Democracy

House Leadership’s defense of Lipinski and Cuellar is already a thumb on the scale of primaries in places that are quite a drive from the Beltway. Their involvement in those seats is basically them reaching their giant claws into tiny localities to affect the outcomes of congressional races by injecting free media and big cash into what should be a local competition.

However, the DCCC’s meddling in democracy at the local level is even more direct than that. Last election cycle, the organization notably launched a nuclear assault on candidate Laura Moser in 2018. They consistently recruit candidates for races, essentially selecting a horse in the primary instead of letting the primary voters within the party decide the outcome of the election.

This cycle, the DCCC has stuck its nose into TX-10. Mike Siegel, a strong progressive candidate who ran last cycle and is taking another shot, managed to cut the district to a five point deficit. He now faces two primary challengers that did not run before. One of those challengers, Shannon Hutcheson, appears to be receiving the DCCC’s de facto support. It is worth mentioning that Hutcheson also has a long rap sheet being on the anti-progressive side of several court cases, defending a private prison guard who assaulted an immigrant woman in civil court, conducting a borderline sham of an investigation into unwanted sexual advances by a university president, criticizing the Obama Administration’s enforcement of basic labor law, and covering for a whole host or corporate bad actors against claims of racial and sexual discrimination and deceptive marketing tactics.

(Hutcheson defenders have rested on an old argument that Hutscheson’s defense does not mean she agrees with the morals of her clients, and that everyone deserves a reasonable defense. However, Hutcheson chose to take these cases on as the co-founder of her firm, and certainly any average Democratic primary voter would find fault in a Democratic candidate taking on, say, the Charlottesville organizers, as clients. CCA and the other clients Hutcheson has handled are hardly any better if not in many ways worse).

That’s not the only race where recruitment is taking place. Progressive candidate Kara Eastman-the previous winner of the Democratic primary to represent Omaha, Nebraska in Congress- came within only a few percentage points of winning her general election in 2018. That year, she had to defeat an anti-choice Democrat recruited by the DCCC, Brad Ashford, in the primary. This year, the DCCC is again looking for a Democrat to challenge Eastman, and per The Intercept:

Sam Barrett, who managed Ashford’s 2016 campaign, is now working for the DCCC. Ashford lost his primary bid to Eastman in 2018, and his wife, Ann Ashford, is now competing against her for Congress. (On Wednesday, Ann Ashford announced on Facebook that she had been endorsed by six former elected officials, including her husband.)

Perhaps worst of all, the DCCC shot itself and anyone interested in a Democratic House right in the foot in NJ-5, backing an NRA-approved anti-choice Democrat named Jeff Van Drew in 2018. Van Drew was facing several progressive primary challengers, but the DCCC wanted him, presumably because they believed he would have a better shot in the more conservative district. If Van Drew’s name sounds familiar to you, it’s because he decided to become a Republican in late 2019, going so far as to pledge “undying support” to Trump. Van Drew was richly rewarded for his treason, given a coveted spot on Education and Labor. The DCCC agreed to hire all of Van Drew’s former staffers after the defection and the district is now back on the organization’s target list… so the DCCC meddled in the primary to get a candidate who literally became a Republican and now are raising money to take his seat back from him.

If someone took your friend’s money and funded the opposite of their interests in a space in which they didn’t belong, would you write them a check?

The DCCC Disproportionately Hurts Women and People of Color, and the Next Generation of Democrats

One of the worst policies the DCCC has trotted out recently is its vendor blacklist. The blacklist prevents any consultant or other vendor who serves incumbent campaigns from also servicing primary challengers. As a result, relationships, resources, and campaign talent are flowing ever further away from challengers over to incumbents.

Marie Newman-Lipinski’s challenger-has felt the impact of this policy this cycle, losing four consultants once it was announced. And certainly, the vendor blacklist does further meddle in democracy and protect Trumpian Democrats by drying up resources for challengers.

It also reinforces a systemically bigoted position from a party in which many voices call for representation and equitable treatment. Newman and Jessica Cisneros-the young progressive taking on Henry Cuellar in the primary-must now find alternative talent to the usual pool, putting two women at an immediate disadvantage in their primary campaign. Women are already underrepresented in Congress, even on the Democratic side of the aisle, as are people of color. Now, women and people of color running for Congress will face the disadvantage of having less vendors available and an uphill fight to match up financially with the DCCC’s support for the white-skewed, majority male incumbency in the party.

It’s not just the candidates who get hurt; it’s also anyone looking to start a career in politics who cannot get hired on with an Establishment campaign. These new operatives will have to either join the DCCC Empire or face shunning on the job market. And just as House incumbents skew white, the DCCC has its own inclusion problem. In 2018, members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus called out DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos for cutting black and brown staffers out of high level meetings.

To add a little hypocritical icing, the DCCC has NOT blacklisted vendors who work with Republicans; they’re A-OK with you if you work with incumbent Democrats as well as people in direct political opposition to the Democratic Party. Several DCCC-approved vendors have actively targeted Democrats (so much for “defending and expanding the Democratic majority”).

The message is clear: join us, switch careers, or good luck paying your rent.

AOC, on the other hand, is actively fighting this problem. By donating directly to campaigns, she bypasses the DCCC and can help bolster the support of challengers who need all the help they can get to tackle the DCCC monster. She’s also creating a PAC to fight back against the vendor blacklist.

In Summary:

• The truth is that the DCCC wants control of the money. That’s why they collect “dues” and hold it against members when they break ranks.
• The DCCC is not the party as a whole.
• The DCCC is not the people in the party.
• The DCCC is not here to uphold party values.
• The DCCC, in fact, actively behaves in ways that hurt the values the party stands for.

Basically, the only thing the DCCC is good for is money and other resources.

The only thing they can do to help is pay up. Fund candidates once they’ve won the primary, then stay out of the way.

That’s it.

In the meantime, follow AOC’s lead and give directly to campaigns.

If the DCCC calls you to raise money, hang up on them.

Today, more than 200 congressional representatives filed an amicus brief calling for the United States Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade. The brief itself listed all of the representatives, but not in any sensible order.

Here is everyone who signed on, separated into Senate and House and placed in order of the state and seat they hold within each listing.

I’ll make note of one specific representative, Dan Lipinski, as he is a conservative Democrat who has been protected by the DCCC as a House incumbent and came a shade over two percentage points from losing his last Democratic primary. Newman is running again.

See if your rep is on the list so you can call their office and chew on them about this.

US SENATE

John Boozman (AR)
Tom Cotton (AR)
Marco Rubio (FL)
Chuck Grassley (IA)
Joni Ernst (IA)
James E. Risch (ID)
Mike Crapo (ID)
Mike Braun (IN)
Todd Young (IN)
Jerry Moran (KS)
Pat Roberts (KS)
Rand Paul (KY)
Bill Cassidy, M.D. (LA)
John Kennedy (LA)
Roy Blunt (MO)
Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS)
Roger F. Wicker (MS)
Steve Daines (MT)
Richard Burr (NC)
Thom Tillis (NC)
John Hoeven (ND)
Kevin Cramer (ND)
Ben Sasse (NE)
Deb Fischer (NE)
James M. Inhofe (OK)
James Lankford (OK)
Rob Portman (OH)
Pat Toomey (PA)
Tim Scott (SC)
John Thune (SD)
Mike Rounds (SD)
Marsha Blackburn (TN)
John Cornyn (TX)
Ted Cruz (TX)
Michael S. Lee (UT)
Mitt Romney (UT)
Ron Johnson (WI)
John Barrasso (WY)
Michael B. Enzi (WY)

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Bradley Byrne (AL-01)
Martha Roby (AL-02)
Mike D. Rogers (AL-03)
Robert B. Aderholt (AL-04)
Mo Brooks (AL-05)
Gary Palmer (AL-06)
Rick Crawford (AR-01)
French Hill (AR-02)
Steve Womack (AR-03)
Bruce Westerman (AR-04)
Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ04)
Andy Biggs (AZ-05)
David Schweikert (AZ-06)
Debbie Lesko (AZ-08)
Doug LaMalfa (CA-01)
Tom McClintock (CA-04)
Paul Cook (CA-08)
Kevin McCarthy (CA-23)
Scott Tipton (CO-03)
Ken Buck (CO-04)
Doug Lamborn (CO-05)
Matt Gaetz (FL-01)
Neal Dunn, M.D. (FL-02)
Ted S. Yoho, D.V.M. (FL-03)
John Rutherford (FL-04)
Michael Waltz (FL-06)
Daniel Webster (FL-11)
Ross Spano (FL-15)
W. Gregory Steube (FL-17)
Brian Mast (FL-18)
Francis Rooney (FL-19)
Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25)
Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (GA-01)
A. Drew Ferguson, IV (GA03)
Austin Scott (GA-08)
Doug Collins (GA-09)
Jody B. Hice (GA-10)
Barry Loudermilk (GA-11)
Rick W. Allen (GA-12)
Tom Graves (GA-14)
Steve King (IA-04)
Russ Fulcher (ID-01)
Mike Simpson (ID-02)
Daniel W. Lipinski (IL-03)
Mike Bost (IL-12)
Rodney Davis (IL-13)
John Shimkus (IL-15)
Adam Kinzinger (IL-16)
Darin LaHood (IL-18)
Jackie Walorski (IN-02)
Jim Banks (IN-03)
James R. Baird (IN-04)
Greg Pence (IN-06)
Larry Bucshon, M.D. (IN-08)
Steve Watkins (KS-02)
James Comer (KY-01)
Brett Guthrie (KY-02)
Andy Barr (KY-06)
Roger Marshall, M.D. (KS-01)
Ron Estes (KS-04)
Hal Rogers (KY-05)
Steve Scalise (LA-01)
Clay Higgins (LA-03)
Michael Johnson (LA-04)
Ralph Abraham, M.D. (LA05)
Garret Graves (LA-06)
Andy Harris, M.D. (MD-01)
Jack Bergman (MI-01)
Bill Huizenga (MI-02)
John R. Moolenaar (MI-04)
Tim Walberg (MI-07)
Paul Mitchell (MI-10)
Jim Hagedorn (MN-01)
Tom Emmer (MN-06)
Collin C. Peterson (MN-07)
Pete Stauber (MN-08)
Ann Wagner (MO-02)
Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-03)
Vicky Hartzler (MO-04)
Sam Graves (MO-06)
Billy Long (MO-07)
Jason Smith (MO-08)
Trent Kelly (MS-01)
Michael Guest (MS-03)
Steve Palazzo (MS-04)
Greg Gianforte (MT-AL)
George Holding (NC-02)
Gregory F. Murphy, M.D. (NC-03)
Virginia Foxx (NC-05)
Richard Hudson (NC-08)
Mark Walker (NC-06)
David Rouzer (NC-07)
Patrick McHenry (NC-10)
Mark Meadows (NC-11)
Ted Budd (NC-13)
Kelly Armstrong (ND-AL)
Dan Bishop (NC-09)
Jeff Fortenberry (NE-01)
Don Bacon (NE-02)
Adrian Smith (NE-03)
Christopher H. Smith (NJ-04)
Lee Zeldin (NY-01)
Peter T. King (NY-02)
Markwayne Mullin (OK-02)
Steve Chabot (OH-01)
Brad Wenstrup, D.P.M. (OH-02)
Jim Jordan (OH-04)
Robert E. Latta (OH-05)
Bill Johnson (OH-06)
Bob Gibbs (OH-07)
Warren Davidson (OH-08)
Michael R. Turner (OH-10)
Troy Balderson (OH-12)
Anthony Gonzalez (OH-16)
Kevin Hern (OK-01)
Tom Cole (OK-04)
Daniel P. Meuser (PA-09)
Scott Perry (PA-10)
Lloyd Smucker (PA-11)
Fred Keller (PA-12)
John Joyce, M.D. (PA-13)
Guy Reschenthaler (PA-14)
Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson (PA-15)
Mike Kelly (PA-16)
Joe Wilson (SC-02)
Jeff Duncan (SC-03)
William Timmons (SC-04)
Ralph Norman (SC-05)
Tom Rice (SC-07)
Dusty Johnson (SD-AL)
Phil D. Roe, M.D. (TN-01)
Tim Burchett (TN-02)
Chuck Fleischmann (TN-03)
John Rose (TN-06)
Mark E. Green, M.D. (TN07)
Louie Gohmert (TX-01)
Dan Crenshaw (TX-02)
Van Taylor (TX-03)
John Ratcliffe (TX-04)
Lance Gooden (TX-05)
Ron Wright (TX-06)
Kevin Brady (TX-08)
K. Michael Conaway (TX11)
Kay Granger (TX-12)
Randy Weber (TX-14)
Bill Flores (TX-17)
Jodey C. Arrington (TX-19)
Chip Roy (TX-21)
Pete Olson (TX-22)
Roger Williams (TX-25)
Michael C. Burgess, M.D. (TX-26)
Michael Cloud (TX-27)
Brian Babin, D.D.S. (TX-36)
Rob Bishop (UT-01)
Chris Stewart (UT-02)
John R. Curtis (UT-03)
Rob Wittman (VA-01)
Denver Riggleman (VA-05)
Ben Cline (VA-06)
Dan Newhouse (WA-04)
Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05)
Brian Steil (WI-01)
F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (WI-05)
Glenn Grothman (WI-06)
David B. McKinley, P.E. (WV-01)
Alex X. Mooney (WV-02)
Liz Cheney (WY-AL)
Carol D. Miller (WV-03)

Welcome to the year 2020, everyone. If you’re anything like my old ass, you spent it at home with loved ones and possibly with your pets. And if your pets are anything like mine, they spent it getting spooked, hiding under blankets, or otherwise freaked out by the assortment of loud POPS and BANGS from fireworks…

And guns.

It’s that second thing I want to talk about for a second, not because fireworks can’t possibly be dangerous, but because last night, I did not hear (yet, at least) of an apartment building burning down from fireworks or someone blowing their thumb off. What I did hear about was a 61-year-old woman in Harris County-described by local press as the “matriarch of her family” and a leading nurse in her field-who was shot down, likely by celebratory gunfire, as she was celebrating New Year’s Eve outside with her family.

Celebratory gunfire isn’t the most common cause of death, but it is one of the most preventable causes. It’s also an absurd death, in so many ways. In looking up past deaths from celebratory gunfire last night prior to hearing about this particular death (this is New Year’s Eve for me), I found one that one Gazan was killed and three wounded from gunfire celebrating a ceasefire between Israelis and Palestinians, as if the situation in the Middle East needed another odd hot potato tossed into it to make it more senseless than it already is. A ceasefire celebration that kills people is not fitting; it is senseless.

A friend of mine posted an article last night with a message chastising Crimestoppers for encouraging tips on celebratory gunfire on the grounds that it would inject police into situations around the city and could lead to even worse situations on the ground. I am actually sympathetic to that argument. And there’s plenty to talk about related to our gun supply here, too.

But those are longer conversations, so for now, let me simply say this:

Stop firing your gun into the air, assholes.

By choosing to aim a firearm at the sky and pull the trigger, you’re putting everyone else at risk so you can take pleasure in pumping a few rounds off. You’re showing yourself to be more obsessed with loud noises, explosions, and power than you are considerate of the well-being of others.

You’re being an inadvertently violent asshole.

Stop doing it.

My heart goes out to the family of Philippa Ashford. May people reflect on their decisions so in the future we protect and respect one another rather than callously firing projectiles into the air that cannot stay there forever.

Houston has put yet another city council election season in the books. Most of the city hardly noticed, as only 18% of us went to the polls. It seems election fatigue (we literally have two special elections for the state legislature coming next year as well as a delayed election for City Council District B, and we just finished two rounds of voting on local races) combined with the fact that local elections take place in odd-numbered years has made for low turnout.

That aside, these elections still had major cultural and political implications for our city. Each race told us something about the candidates and about cross-sections of the city.

Let’s look one by one:

MAYOR’S RACE

Sylvester Turner trounced Tony Buzbee handily in our mayoral race. This was not guaranteed, but it seemed to be the most likely outcome, even after Turner squeaked into office in his first mayor’s race and missed the cut for avoiding the runoff in November.

Most striking is that Buzbee turned out to be exactly what the Left had been saying he was for the entire cycle: a Trump-backed bigot. The day before the election, his campaign sent out an anti-trans mailer worthy of Steve Hotze, a hit piece leveraging pseudo-Christian discontent from rabid right Repos toward the trans community. That same day, Trump (who Buzbee has given hundreds of thousands of dollars) sent out a text encouraging voters to back Buzbee. When asked about the text, Buzbee said he was facing a “corrupt politician” and would take all the help he can get”.

Taking help from a corrupt racist politician to take on another corrupt politician doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but that’s all water under the freeway. At this point, Turner is Mayor, catalyzing a recent common sentiment in cities across the United States: relief at the defeat of rabidly rightwing neofascist candidates coupled with disappointment at yet another neoliberal victory. Sometimes, you run out of options; that’s just how elections work.

The Left flank of the Democratic Party and Mayor Turner can now return to fighting among themselves and occasionally working together, though there is less leverage on Turner given that he is term-limited and has even more support on City Council than he had before the election. Activists will still pressure him over homelessness, group home ordinances, confederate monuments, the city building a bridge to be crossed by charter school advocates from City Hall to HISD, baby jails, the environment, and other issues. But in the meantime, for at least a little while, everyone will celebrate just a bit of relief from the prospects of Tony Buzbee packing City Hall with bigots.

AT-LARGE 1

Mike Knox winning a citywide election by 12 points is senseless on paper. Harris County’s Democratic sweep in 2018 was emphatic, and the City of Houston voted bluer than the county as a whole.

And yet here is Knox, a hard right former HPD officer who voted against census outreach and the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, cruising to reelection.

Here are a few choice Mike Knox quotes:

“When associations and alliances between friendly gangs are shown in a diagram, the diagram appears as a contemporary model of veins. Before the rise of this system of gang organization the police had an effective impact on gangs by the use of “zero tolerance,” which is the saturation of a troubled neighborhood with police officers, who put everyone in jail who commits the most minor infractions of the law.”

-Mike Knox defending Broken Windows Policing

“The “gangsta look” is popular among our youths because rebellion is popular among young people. I rebelled when I was a teen and you probably did too. Perhaps your rebellion or less severe than the next person’s but nevertheless you did rebel. Rebellion is at the core of the “gangsta look.” The baggy clothing is a statement about the morals and values of the older generation. Just as the long haired flower child look of the 1960s was repulsive to many older-generation members, so too is the gangsta look offensive to many adults today. A gang member i deal with regularly told me about how he had tried to get a job at a local business. I will try to quote him accurately in the following passage. “Yo, offisa Knox, I ben tryin’ to gets me a job. I went to the store and said, ‘Give me an app, I wants a job, cuz.” then the man, he say how he wasnt hirin’ right now. Two days later I seen this geek due working there. He didn’t hire me ’cause i’m black. See when yew is a brotha everybody be down on you, cuz. You can’t git no whare.” I asked my little gangster friend how he presented himself to the store owner and was told “like this, man” as he stretched his arms and did that cute little gangsta pirouette thing.

He had on a bold blue and black plaid long-sleeve shirt buttoned all the way to the throat. The shirt was so large that it could have covered three of him. A pair of extremely baggy black Dickies pants hung so low on his skinny hips that I was convinced that a hard wind would expose him to the world. A blue bandanna, carefully folded, starched, and ironed to razor sharpness, hung from his rear pants pocket, a pair of black and white “gangsta Nikes,” and the appropriate amount of gold jewelry, patterned after various handguns, rifles, and shotguns, adorned his body. I stood looking at this picture of modern rebellion and rage and i told him he was wrong. The store owner refused to hire him because he looked like a gang member; his skin pigment had nothing to do with it. Joe businessman was probably relieved he didn’t get robbed during the interview. I explained to this angry young man that appearances and communication skills are very important in the real world. I had to agree that it is not fair, nor is it necessarily right, but nevertheless it is a fact of life. I suggested that he change his appearance and speak in proper English sentences. He could have picked his job.”

-Mike Knox being racist as fuck

““Prison should be a place where social deviants at first lose all freedom. The resolve of the community not to tolerate criminal conduct should be made abundantly clear to the prisoner. There is no good reason why prisoners should have access to television sets, libraries, newspapers, telephones, etc. Likewise there is no reason a prisoner should not be expected to earn his way by working for the state, to offset the costs of housing and caring for him. The idea put simply: When you violate the rights of another you forfeit your own rights for a period of time established by a jury of your peers.””

-Mike Knox giving a pitch for a corporate Prison Industrial Complex

“Many of these youths are experienced criminals in their own right because of antiquated juvenile laws. Legislation needs to be enacted that removes investigative barriers from law enforcement organization pertaining to juvenile records. Laws such as denying the police the opportunity to maintain fingerprint and photographic records of juveniles allow some children to commit numerous and serious crimes without detection…The prohibition against using juvenile records in an adult court during the punishment phase of a trial should be lifted.””

-Mike Knox backing up methods of mass incarceration

“Denial by state and federal legislators lead to laws that encourage the conduct and reduce the accountability of gang members. A good example occurred with the 1993 Texas legislature. Texas had been experiencing a prison-overcrowding problem, so its legislators decided that decriminalization would effectively correct the problem. The state reduced the penalty range for auto theft, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, and certain kinds of drug possession charges. Gang members like to steal cars and sell drugs. Now they can steal cars and sell drugs and face lighter penalties if they are caught in Texas.””

-Mike Knox defending the Drug War

“Adult and juvenile laws need to allow for the prosecution of every gang member present during the commission of a crime. Additionally, juvenile laws must allow the police to maintain local files, records, and photographs of juveniles, of any age, who commit felony offenses. Parole, probation, good time, and fancy formulas designed to reduce overcrowding must be stopped for adult and juvenile correctional facilities. City and county officials must take equally bold action.”

• Mike Knox basically arguing to abolish parole or any guidelines to adjust a prison sentence

These quotes are all disqualifying in a county where cash bail was recently abolished and the urge for criminal justice reform stands strong against over-policing.

For good measure, take a look at Knox’s immigration “policy”:

…

So why did Knox win?

Raj Salhotra, Knox’s opposition, ran into some trouble throughout his campaign. Although his ground game efforts were some of the strongest in the city, he had trouble connecting with black voters. Part of his challenge came from what some claimed was an implied alliance in council races and charges of tone policing, but it went beyond that: Larry Blackmon and Georgia Provost both backed Knox in the race. Their decision was poor, and questioned by activists, but it was enough to help Knox shore up support from conservative Dems in the black community, and likely led to some undervotes.

What was hardest to shake, however, were career connections to charter schools. Raj’s ties to charter programs and TFA play fine with ed reformers in Houston, but they make public education advocates currently mired in a fight against TEA takeover nervous. Tepidness from left activists in a D vs. R runoff can be a problem.

Raj has his spots-he’s an ICE abolitionist-and I expect to see him run again. We’ll see if things go differently next time around. If they’re going to, the white left center and other supporters will have to deepen their understanding of Houston, and the Left is going to have to figure out a way to engage enough people to break the Establishment’s general stranglehold on our city when a candidate like Knox runs for reelection, and Raj will have to build some bridges.

(****UPDATE****
From a friend:

“My only criticism about your piece is on Raj. Provost and Blackmon backing Knox had nothing to do with it. Knox was in our neighborhoods, at our events, and talking to us months before Raj started pandering for our vote.”

So there’s another perspective).

AT-LARGE 2

This race was not a surprising outcome given the Mayor’s margin of victory. Robinson has an extensive campaign network and this isn’t his first rodeo. Willie Davis was the candidate of the hard social right wing in Houston.

Robinson- like the Mayor or anyone else in the class of Establishment Democrats still on council- must still be challenged and held accountable, and pushed to stay active on issues and to build progressive power in Houston. Incumbents tend to rest at all levels of government. It’s a thing. As one of the most tech-literate members of council, he’s in a position to do some good and should do so by reexamining body cameras, municipal internet access for all Houstonians, improving transit, and taking steps toward open and transparent government with better informational indexing of Houston City Council meetings and city statistics. The Open Government movement has been somewhat friendly to the City of Houston; taking the time to get a real understanding of what their agenda is worth the Councilman’s time.

I’ll say this: Robinson and other incumbents could likely have put a bit more weight behind a broader cut of candidates and potentially made some differences in these races if they had gotten out early and campaigned hard. We’ll never know how things had gone if there has been a concentrated, two year push as opposed to a mad dash into the community in 2019. Maybe 2023 will be a chance for some incumbents to rectify that.

AT-LARGE 3

Michael Kubosh is arguably the savviest politician in the City of Houston, punctuated by his margin of victory. I am hardly the first to say this, but I fully expect to see him run for Mayor in four years.

Kubosh rose to power by taking on red light cameras, a measure that broke party lines. He learned from that experience and often finds such political and cultural wedge issues he can use to create odd bedfellow coalitions. Kubosh opposed Houston’s ban on feeding the homeless partly because he knew groups like Food Not Bombs would come to his side. He had a similar relationship with some factions of Occupy Houston.

Janaeya Carmouche-the former community relations director for Rodney Ellis- seemed to have hadtrouble gaining the traction necessary to mount a strong challenge against Kubosh this cycle. To be fair, Kubosh is hard to beat in spite of his flaws. He has a network across the city, he’s popular in white churches and black churches, and he is firmly connected to the hard right, whose consistent obsession with regulating private parts and what happens in your bedroom turns out a small but dependable group of Houston voters. It didn’t help that the Chronicle endorsed Kubosh based on his constituent work in spite of his anti-trans rhetoric (something they even acknowledge throughout their perplexing, wrong-headed piece), but there’s more to it. Kubosh has connections with radio stations like Magic 102 and TV hosts like Isiah Factor. He has friends and has built a false impression of himself, somehow even managing to escape his biggest and most immoral attribute: his career as a bail bondsman.

Now, I’m a forgiving person-as much for myself as I am for others, because I don’t like to carry all that weight around with me while those I feel have done wrong get to dance lightly through the night. So if a bail bondsman would like to admit the error of their ways and move on… well, I’ll listen. I’m not saying I’m going to wipe it away, and I don’t know that I even have the right to do so at the highest level, because I have not been hurt by the bail system and a LOT of other people have. But given the violence of our system, some contrition would be worth something, because much of what we do for money involves some level of unfortunate harm in the United States and most of the world thanks to the ugly mechanics of our economic setup.

But a bail bondsman? I consider them to be slavers. And when the cash bail system in Harris County was on the ropes in the middle of 2018 before a new electoral wave led by Lina Hidalgo and a wide cut of new judges destroyed it for good, Kubosh not only was on the wrong side, but also did everything he could to keep the system in place. He wrote an editorial arguing tired old debunked racist talking points packed with scare tactics to spook the public out of supporting bail reform in spite of the overwhelming evidence of its harm, discrimination, and artificial mass incarceration, all robbing life from many of Kubosh’s own voters. A lawsuit by bail bondsmen even alleged earlier this year that they had a “right to make a living”. The judge didn’t buy it,

Seriously. They believe they have a right to imprison the poor for not having enough cash… because it’s a job.

It’s an argument hit men could use just as easily.

So will Kubosh be our next mayor? That all depends: on who runs, on whether the Left figures out how to organize Houston, and whether tossing Kubosh Bail Bonds t-shirts from the back of a float is as acceptable a few years from now as it has been for the last two decades.

AT-LARGE 4

In the race that kept me up at night, Letitia Plummer defeated Anthony Dolcefino by less than 7,000 votes. This race was way closer than it should have been.

Plummer drove up her name ID as a candidate in TX-22 last cycle, making it to the runoff in that race. This cycle, she ran on progressive issues at the city level. Plummer was one of the candidates in this cycle’s elections who did a good job addressing gentrification. One Democratic club leader said she was the only one to do a good job answering the question “What does a progressive Houston look like?” at an At-Large candidate forum. She gained respect as the race went on, ran ground game, and closed the deal. Her experience as a dentist gives her unique insight into medical needs and health disparities in Houston, which is badly needed. She is a new potential bright spot on council.

Anthony Dolcefino certainly benefited some from the family name; his father is a well-known piss-yellow flack with a career that combines political consulting, some legitimate investigative journalism, and some questionable political press hit jobs. He has worked for candidates of both parties, but his rhetoric has started to match the right-wing ultra-nationalist racists of Breitbart, 4chan and the White House. He went absolutely ballistic when the Chonicle endorsed Plummer merely because they mentioned her diverse background and gave a nod to the diversity of Houston. There’s only one reason that should bother a person as much as it bothered Dolcefino, and it’s not positive.

Fittingly, the younger Dolcefino spent much of 2018 as a right-wing troll, going so far as to offer Breitbart apologetics for Katie Hopkins, a speaker brought to UT by the college’s chapter of Turning Point USA. Hopkins has a long history of quotations as racist as any others you could find; a hate crime has even been closely tied to her rhetoric. Essentially, we had a hard right hyper-nationalistic troll running for City Council, and Houston media ignored it entirely. I had to write my own damn piece on Medium to inform as many people as I could.

Dolcefino has pledged to stay in “activism” and he will be back. I don’t expect Houston media to get its shit together, so he remains as a racist sympathizer who has never answered for his behavior and could one day make his way into office.

Let’s hope he doesn’t.

AT-LARGE 5

Sallie Alcorn is headed to City Council, giving the Dems another win in a city council race. She ran on issues that worked, and her years of building capital among the wealthy elites helped her immensely in raising funds for her campaign. She was Chief of Staff for Greg Travis and received the support of a few conservative PACs. She also invested heavily in memberships at the GLBT Political Caucus, a common but smelly tactic to win endorsements that has now been curtailed thanks to rule changes after the first round of elections. (I backed Ashton Woods in the first round; he and his supporters bore the damage of that systemic disgrace).

Does this inevitably mean Alcorn will carry a conservative agenda? I would expect more of a business-as-usual city agenda, to tell you the truth. The business Democrats have run Houston City Council for quite some time, and while the Repo Party would directly wreak extreme havoc and drive inequalities in our city just as they do through the Texas Legislature and at the federal level if they were to take charge of City of Houston government, the business Dems are perfectly capable of ignoring poverty issues outright.

Let’s hope I’m wrong; thirty years at City Hall suggests otherwise.

Dick is cut from a similar mold to Kubosh in that he often finds strange bedfellows. He stuck up for Judge Bill McLeod, crossing the aisle to argue in favor of the judge keeping his seat after an inadvertent resignation last year. Dick is also the lone Repo Party rep on the board of the Harris County Department of Education to oppose shuttering the department. On the other hand, he echoed some of the same talking points as Tony Buzbee (or Buzbee echoed him)… sometimes word for word:

( SOURCE: https://twitter.com/jaspscherer/status/1205980068067061761)

DISTRICT C

Abbie Kamin won her race comfortably. Given the sweeps of the evening for the de facto Turner slate, this outcome was not surprising. Shelley Kennedy picked up some insurgent support, but as a friend of mine pointed out about District C, this was the district that voted for Ellen Cohen but chose Bill King over Sylvester Turner. Any resident can bellyache all they want about how they vote based on “person over party”, but let’s be real: Ellen Cohen is closer ideologically to Turner than King, and the only thing she has in common with King is being white.

District C-once a left haven in Montrose- has started gentrifying, and moderates who consider themselves enlightened sometimes swing their votes in that race. In this case, that racism wouldn’t necessarily affect the outcome directly, as it was a face-off between two white candidates, but it did play an indirect role I will touch on in a moment.

For Kennedy’s part, some questions arose surrounding endorsements on her page and in the news from right-leaning folks such as Maryjane Smith and the Texas Conservative Review. I have to be honest, though: if you look through the full endorsement list, you’re going to find a broad cut of endorsements, including Lina Hidalgo and Sylvia Garcia. A conservative voice among a sea of progressives does not seem to counter balance the program or call into question those progressives. The Texas Conservative View endorsement raises my fuzzy eyebrows; I would tie this to the Firefighters’ endorsement. (I couldn’t possibly get into the Firefighters right now and all the dynamics that come with them).

Is posting Smith the best form or a bad political call? I’ll leave that to the consultants, but after considering everything, it doesn’t matter a ton to me. As I am not in District C, my opinion did not directly affect any voting totals.

The uncovered story of the race in this case was a photo that surfaced of Kamin from college showing her in an antebellum era dress alongside boys in confederate outfits and one version of the rebel flag:

I have asked Abbie about this specifically and she mentioned owning it in past activist discussions and provided a screenshot of her addressing it on Facebook in 2016, as well as a series of posts of her supporting tearing down Confederate statues and denouncing the insidiousness of the Confederate South. However, I find it relevant that the Facebook post referenced was set to Friends only.

This was the post:

Is this enough? That’s up to the black community, the progressive community, Houston as a whole and the voters to decide, all in different contexts (the voters already did). For me, the answer is no, and I say this because black activists specifically throughout Houston did not know about this image and the issue was never publicly addressed even at the demanding of several. It still has not been publicly addressed.

If you want to run for office, you have to take on that you are asking people for systemic power, the kind of power that remakes their lives. If you want that kind of power, you’re going to go through an uncomfortable analysis of your life. It sounds awful, honestly, and I think many politicians convince themselves they are doing it for service, or even are doing it partly for service, but not to the extent that they think they are.

To dodge a difficult discussion of racism because you “don’t want it to be a campaign issue” may be good political strategy… but it’s really morally questionable. It’s the easy way out, which is one of the many reasons we are where we are today.

This honestly echoes a frustrating theme for me with Turner Democrats.

ICE Abolition?

“That’s a federal issue,” they say.

Education?

“That’s not our purview” (the most ironic thing you can say given that the mayor and allies literally tried to charter schools last year and that there’s an education subcommittee under economic development on Houston City Council).

Denouncing murderous dictators?

“We are a welcoming city that is open to dialogue with…”

Snoooooooooore.

At every turn, mainstream politicians avoid the hard dialogue. And maybe that’s what makes sense for them from a “political capital” standpoint.

But let’s be real: it’s not our job to capitulate for them, to do their work, to give them credit for guts when we had to drag them by the hair and yank their teeth.

Abbie worked for ADL; on paper that’s mostly respectable. But if she’s not willing to start having tough conversations, she’s got some growing to do, even now as she has her hands on power. She promised action on climate change as a top priority and that she’ll be an ally on racial justice; let’s see if she’s willing to make noise about the I-45 expansion. She says she addressed the picture from college; let’s see her knock down the Spirit of the Confederacy statue.

She won; it’s up to her to prove me and a lot of other people wrong.

DISTRICT D

In the race most-watched in the nation, District D voters decided that they wanted an establishment politician over a guy whose seriousness was in question by choosing Carolyn Evans Shabazz over Brad “Scarface” Jordan.

Shabazz won by about 5,000 votes. I have my differences with her; I liked a bunch of candidates in the first round and backed Travis McGee.

But I can appreciate that the district emphatically rejected what looked like a celebrity attempting to win the race with a track record that was of question inside the district.

I hope Shabazz can find the same spirit she had when she argued for litigation to fight school takeover and bring that to City Council. She later walked much of that position back, but she should not have in my opinion. She’s best when she’s full-throated in favor of fighting back as opposed to accepting the system.

DISTRICT H

In the nail-biter of the year, this race is still outstanding and headed for a recount at only a 12 vote differential. Karla Cisneros benefited greatly, it seems, from institutional support, including but not limited to the Houston Chronicle. She has had some major challenges and bumps over the last couple of years, and earned ire from individuals who seem to agree only on their disagreement with the Councilwoman.

She faced a strong challenger in Isabel Longoria. A former staffer for Congresswoman Garcia when she was in the Texas Legislature, Longoria knows District H well, and brought a measured assessment of issues to the table. And she has one of the most positive attitudes of ANYONE I have met in politics. Her team ran hard and had to get past another tough challenger to make the runoff in Cynthia Reyes-Revilla. I endorsed Longoria openly.

Provisional and overseas ballots are still outstanding, and a recount may be in order at this point. It looks like Cisneros may hold on.

I would request that Councilmember Cisneros-should she be lucky enough to retain her seat- please follow through on the review of our city’s group home ordinance with January Advisors. Housing restrictions for people on parole create recidivism and do damage to families. She could also work to fight the vast environmental degradation that has impacted her district more than others in some cases.

I’m positive Longoria will continue to work for a better world no matter what.

DISTRICT J

District J is my home district. I openly backed Sandra Rodriguez. Sandra was head of the Gulfton Super Neighborhood. She grew up in the district. She has worked on programs fighting poverty and domestic abuse, and she understands the needs of those seeking affordable housing. She also, like Longoria, would have been a strong Latina voice on council, something that is desperately needed.

Sandra faced Edward Pollard… and he won. A coalition of enough Democrats and all of the Republican voters in our heavily Democratic district was enough to win. The Repos voted against the Latina candidate in favor of the conservative Democrat.

This is a seat that has essentially flipped into Republican hands. Pollard is opposed to Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance, and his issue page on “Inclusion” tells you a lot if you read between the lines:

The page says… well not very much about how he would govern. It does seem to indicate we should be more concerned with listening to someone no matter their viewpoint than it is promising any protections for people based on their identity, which is something we actually need in Houston, and is a tangible goal we could strive to achieve.

Pollard also ran a robocall falsely implying he had the endorsement of Sylvester Turner; endorsed Republican Jim Bigham in a past election, a straight-up Trump Republican; and once photo-opped with Rick Perry.

There’s also this:

I don’t always agree with Beth, but she’s not a BS artist.

This race also featured unusual sign removals and a bizarre hit mailer campaign on several candidates in the race… the source of which is unknown.

I’d love to see Pollard come around on issues and flesh out something actually inclusive; however, I fear a 20 point victory isn’t cause for pressure, at least not today.

Some final notes before closing this out:

• Houston turnout isn’t where it needs to be. It was around 18%. That means most of the city is still being cut out of the process. Part of this is on the voters, but part of it is on us as activists to make turnout better. It’s hard to increase turnout for every election, but it still needs to be done.
• District B still will not have a representative for a while because of the bizarre debate and court case over the candidates. Read more about it here.

I’ll say this: those constituents deserve representation, and it sucks that they will not get it for a while. (Disclosure: I backed Tarsha Jackson).

• You should call these council members and tweet at them once they are in office. If they never hear from you they will assume you do not exist.
• Progressive activists have not had a great year at City Council or in the City Council races. That’s not unusual either for these times or in this city, but it is the case. There is still a lot to do.
• The county Democratic Party sort of stayed back for a lot of this election cycle. I don’t know how I feel about that, but one thing they did that I disagree with was take Tony Buzbee’s money, accepting $5,000 from the candidate for a fundraiser luncheon. Politically, it looked kind of questionable, and the headache probably wasn’t wort 5K in mailers, but to me it’s more a matter of making an emphatic statement against bigots and fascists. I understand the other side of that decision to be something like “we’ll take his money and kick his ass with it”, which is kind of what happened, but I would have made the opposite decision.
• Most importantly: Houston deserves a progressive working class Mayor, or at least a Mayor who will stick up for the working class. We deserve someone who recognizes people without homes deserve dignity, who will push for public health policies, and who will use brass knuckles to take on industry. We deserve someone who will oppose the brutal measures taken by HPD against our fellow Houstonians by demanding pre-arrest diversion. We deserve someone who will cut off gun shows at GRB or at least strictly limit them. We deserve someone who will fight for affordable housing instead of criminalizing the homeless and cutting down on group homes (which is exactly what City Council did). We deserve someone who will investigate paid sick leave, even if Austin and the courts will fight us on it tooth and nail. We deserve someone who will roll back the strong mayor system. And we deserve someone who will actually fight corruption (not a bunch of bullshit artists who use it as a talking point).

Houston has four years to find that person and to put them in office. The Mayor will run Houston until that system changes.