I'm finally getting back in the groove of blogging having been off more or less the last week. And I've realized I have a lot of thoughts on a lot of things.
As we know in Texas, just when you think an election is over, really, the next on has just begun. And of course, we recognize that Burnt Orange Report needs to be there to satisfy the needs of the thousands of elite political animals who hunger for the next big thing, which obviously, will be the Legislature and Austin Municipal elections!
On that note... the return of CKMRS or C4N3P (Carole 4 Names, 3 Parties) is a major boon to profits here at the Report. While she has a decent shot at making a runoff, I think she's deluded into thinking she'll return to be Mayor.
As the Statesman pointed out today, she wasn't popular the last time her name (one of them at least) was on the ballot here in Austin.
In the 2006 governor's race, when there were four major candidates for governor, Strayhorn finished third in Travis County with 13.7 percent of the vote. She almost finished fourth - she edged out Kinky Friedman for third by just 571 votes. Democrat Chris Bell captured 45 percent of the vote and Republican Rick Perry got 26 percent.
Obviously a May mayoral race is a completely different ballgame than a November gubernatorial election for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the mayoral election will be just in Austin, not all of Travis County. Still, it's interesting to see that she doesn't seem to start with a lot of built-in loyalty from voters.
My guess was that Carole probably did ever worse in just the City of Austin. So, you know, I actually looked it up.
In the City of Austin, Carole did even worse, getting just 13.2% placing 4th behind Bell, Perry, and Kinky. That's a grand total of 21,204 votes inside the city limits. Carole's best precinct performance was 26.1% while Chris Bell's worst precinct performance was 28.4% in Austin.
In the more or less uncontested Mayor's race in 2006 there were just under 52,000 votes cast and in the 2003 slightly more contested Mayor's race there were over 57,000 votes cast. Now certainly, given the population growth and the fact this is an open Mayoral seat, I think it is entirely reasonable to think we could see 70,000 voters or maybe more (though I think 100,000 is out of reach). But the catch is that the higher the vote goes (as Carole suggests she wants to see), the smaller her 21,000 Gubernatorial votes would be as a share of the electorate.
I don't discount that Carole is one of those figures you'd typically see the media fawn over as a character in politics. The problem is, the local media knows her very well (and Burnt Orange Report and the Chronicle probably not counted among her fans). She's a political creature, one that has shifted her positions, party, and values more times than we can track.
Austin's a growing, young, vibrant city with real issues and concerns. It doesn't need an old granny whose been out of touch with the city for decades to come back in and spruce up the town with a few throw pillows and stitch the city's budget back together with embroidery floss.
