Burnt Orange Report

The Trailer Trash Vote and Dan Ellis

By Byron LaMasters

Also known as "How Dan Ellis Lost". After all, I correctly called 149/150 state representative races. Why was I wrong on the Ellis / Otto state representative race?

Well, first off, I don't pretend to be an expert on east Texas politics. I can usually gauge how the urban/suburban races in the Houston, DFW, Austin and San Antonio areas are going. But I'm just not nearly as well connected with the rural races -- I grossly overestimated Max Sandlin's support in CD 1 as well. So, fortunately, I had the chance to speak with a friend very connected in east Texas politics while I was in Dallas for the weekend. I'll analyse the Sandlin/Gohmert race later this week, but the Ellis / Otto race is quite interesting. I crunched the numbers comparing the percentage of the vote per county that Dan Ellis got in 2002 versus 2004. Here's what we get:

Clearly, Ellis had problems districtwide. Ellis lost by about 4400 votes, and his 2004 numbers were down by about 4-5% in both Liberty and Montgomery counties -- and Ellis couldn't afford to drop more than 3% districtwide. But the big problem for Ellis was his drop in his home county of Polk. Why did Ellis drop over 11% in Polk county from 2002 to 2004?

Two words: Trailer Trash. And no, I don't mean that in any derogatory sense. But those two words uttered by Dan Ellis's wife, Bea Ellis is what got Dan Ellis in trouble. Bea Ellis is a member of the Livingston (the county seat of Polk County) School Board and she was interviewed by the Fort Worth Star Telegram in June for an article on a story about multiple incidents of sexual impropriety between educators and students in the Livingston school district:

"Livingston has white trailer trash and an upper middle class and not much in between," said Bea Ellis, vice president of the Livingston school board and the wife of state Rep. Dan Ellis. "So if you can walk the walk and talk the talk, you're good" in students' minds.

Oops. Apparently, within several days t-shirts appeared in Livingston reading "I'm trailer trash and I vote". Instead of apologizing, the Ellis's went on a vacation and did not adequately respond according to people familiar with the race. The quote was the perfect gift for the John Otto campaign, who won because of that Ellis gaffe, and also because, as Andrew noted, Otto worked his butt off. Anyway, that's how this race snuck up on a lot of us Democrats that didn't expect for any Democratic incumbent state representative other than John Mabry to have much of a scare.

Update: Two more reasons for Ellis's loss mentioned in this article straight-ticket GOP voting in a presidential year, and Democrats' efforts to attempt to disallow "escapee" voter registration (see the article for details).