BurntOrangeReport.com Releases First Mayoral Ad- "Laughter"
Welcomes Carole Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn (D, R, I, NP) to Austin Mayor's Race
Inspired by Tony Schwartz's political ad entitled "Laughter", produced in 1968 in reaction to Richard Nixon's selection of Spiro Agnew for Vice President, Burnt Orange Report has released an updated version of the classic ad, the first of the 2009 municipal elections, as the political website welcomes candidate Carole Strayhorn to the Austin Mayor's race.
The original 1968 ad made fun of Agnew, but suggested that the election would be no laughing matter. Tony Schwartz, the creator, was best known for his work on the "Daisy Girl" commercial for Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
"I feel our updated ad best reflects the feeling of the Austin electorate to today's announcement by Carole Strayhorn that she's bringing the 1970's back to City Hall," Karl-Thomas Musselman, Publisher of the Burnt Orange Report said. "The firsthand experience she brings the dias having presided over the VHS vs. Betamax debate during her first stint as Mayor of Austin could prove to be useful knowledge as the city faces a 21st century transition in its tech based economy."
Burnt Orange Report has purchased contextual search advertising on the Internet for the Austin area to coincide with today's announcement. The political website hopes to reach out to older voters who may be confused by Stayhorn's campaign and seek confirmation that this is indeed still the year 2009.
Burnt Orange Report is not aligned with any candidate or campaign in the Austin Mayor's race at the time of this release. A high-quality version of Burnt Orange Report's ad is available for download here.
There is always a guessing game of who is working for who in the races. Here is what we know and what we hear about who is working for who in their campaigns. In fact, we are constantly getting praise and criticism for campaigns we don't work for. So let's clear the air and shed some light on the process.
Team McCracken:
Christian Archer: Bill White, Phil Hardberger, Mikal Watts, Dawnna Dukes '08 primary, Juan Garcia, Bexar County candidates, Julian Castro in 11/09, former Archer Nathan partner.
William Yarnell: Patrick Rose, Hays County candidates, Capitol Lobbyist
Mario Bravo: Juan Garcia campaign manager, Mikal Watts
Local attorney Martha Smiley is Brewster's treasurer Mikal Watts, childhood Corpus friends with McCracken
Team Leffingwell (anticipated):
David Butts: Every current and recent past City Council member but McCracken, every current and recent past County Commissioner, every current and recent past District Judge, most Austin ISD and ACC board members, Laura Morrison, Woodie Jones and Karen Huber in '08
Mark Nathan: Every current City Council member but McCracken and Morrison, Bill White and Phil Hardberger (with Archer), Lloyd Doggett '04, Austin Bonds '06, Anti-Prop 1 & 2 '06, Anti-Prop. 2 '08, Travis Dem. Coordinated consultant '08, Randi Shade '08, frequent Butts partner, former Archer Nathan partner
Nancy William: Leffingwell aide, former Executive Director of Texas Democratic Party, longtime local Democratic activist
Other key players expected to emerge after likely Leffingwell announcement in mid-January
Longtime labor activist Kitty Clark has been Lee's treasurer in '05 and '08 and will likely be again in '09
Team Levy (anticipated):
Sandra Ramos: Kirk Watson, Travis Dem. Coordinated '06, Sarah Eckhart aide, Started with Karen Huber '08.
There are also rumors that Jack Martin (Public Strategies) is involved in the campaign.
Team Keaton-Rylander-Strayhorn-McClellan (anticipated):
This one is more speculation and rumor than fact. We guess this will be a family affair and Scott and /or Dan McClellan will be involved. Thornton Keel has been CKRSM's campaign treasurer in the past and Louise Epstein is treasurer for CKRSM's "exploratory" committee.
Council Races:
Place 1 (Lee Leffingwell incumbent)
Rick Cofer - manager David Nerio, consultant David Butts
Chris Riley - manager Katherine Haenschen
Perla Cavazos - manager Laurie Felker Jones
Kathie Tovo - consultant Mark Yznaga
Place 2 (Mike Martinez incumbent)
Mike Martinez - consultants David Butts and Mark Nathan
The campaigns between Democrats and Republicans are over (at least for another year). The campaign focus to run toward the center or demonize the other party ended Tuesday but there are still campaigns on the horizon.
Across the state campaigns for city council and mayor are gearing up, and once the holiday cheer fades the spotlight will shine a little brighter on these men and women.
Here is a little holiday guide to what we already know about some key races.
Back in July, David discussed the future San Antonio Mayor's race. Super popular Mayor, Phil Hardberger is term limited, which usually creates the political climate apt for a lot of candidates to get in one race (just think U.S. Senate race if Kay Bailey steps down).
David wrote almost 5 months ago that Julián Castro, Diane Cibrian and Fernando Reyes were all eyeing the race.
Speculation was almost proven right. To date, PR consultant Trish DeBerry, Former Councilman Julian Castro, and Councilwoman Diane Cibrian have all entered the race.
Julian Castro is the favorite in this race.
Castro first ran in 2005 and lost by about 3,000 votes after being down over 10,000 in Early Vote. Castro closed the margin, ran a tough campaign, and made a strong case for his vision for the city and his qualification.
Beyond campaign experience, Castro is the only candidate with a website and the site includes video endorsements from San Antonio State Senator Leticia Van de Putte and Henry Cisneros. Two high profile endorsements in a low turnout election.
For more information about San Antonio politics and San Antonio races, visit Dig Deeper Texas and check out their fine work or the aptly titled San Antonio Mayor Blog.
While the race for Mayor of San Antonio seems cut and dry, the races in Austin seem to be crowded and confusing.
By statute, city council places 2, 5, 6, and the Mayor's office are all up and voters will have to cast a vote in all of them. In addition to these , place 1 may be vacated by Lee Leffingwell if he chooses to run for Mayor. This will create an interesting dynamic since the only two people not running and not on the ballot are newly elected council members Laura Morrison and Randi Shade.
While place 2 and 6 are on the ballot, no serious candidates have emerged to take on either Mike Martinez or Sheryl Cole.
In the place 5 race, Brewster McCracken's current seat, only one candidate has emerged, former city council member and current UT Professor, Bill Spelman.
Spelman already appears to have a large and diverse coalition of supporters surrounding him. It is hard to imagine any candidates trying to challenge Spelman and its even harder to imagine Spelman losing.
While places 2, 5, and 6 already seem to have front-runners, place 1 and the race for Mayor are totally up in the air.
The irony to this is, place 1 isn't on the ballot unless Lee Leffingwell decides to vacate it and run for Mayor and unless Lee runs for Mayor, a lot of candidates won't have a place to run.
Let's start with the assumption Lee Leffingwell runs for Mayor (as is suspected), then the place 1 race looks like it will be Chris Riley, Perla Cavazos, Rick Cofer, and Kathy Tovo. Not quite as easy to manage as the place 5 race, but still interesting.
This race nearly guarantees a runoff. With four candidates who draw from 4 distinct, unique bases it hard to see how anyone will win this in the first round. It also means endorsements and supporters will have a massive impact. Not to mention the always-important fundraising numbers. Unlike any other race, this one is wide open.
Of course, the campaign for place 1 hinges entirely on who runs for Mayor.
Even in the exploring phase, Strayhorn's past is hurting her. It's hard to see how Strayhorn wins even with a small, more conservative electorate. As KT once pointed out, looking at her Governors bid, her base is 21% of the general election vote. This electorate will be closer to 50,000 people and even with a smaller voting population its hard to see how Strayhorn gets to 50% plus 1.
Especially with Mayor Pro Tem McCracken running and former Texas Monthly editor Mike Levy.
While the field is predictably crowded, it is also diverse. No two candidates appear to have similar backgrounds or messages. Leffingwell and McCracken get close, but their priorities in the council have differed. Leffingwell has been an environmental leader and Brewster has focused on women's issues. It's an over simplification, but shows the contrast in policy priorities.
If Facebook groups and supporter lists are any indication on who the front runners are, this race is between Leffingwell and McCracken.
All in all, the city council races look to be very interesting this year.
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.
Rumors are circulating with a possible entry into the race for U.S. Senate. It's not former candidates Barbara Radnofsky or Chris Bell. It is not a currently elected official like Bill White, Pete Gallego or Rick Noriega.
It is Democratic lightning rod and former Lt Gov of Texas and Texas Speaker of the House. Ben Barnes.
Right now Quorum Report is the only news or blog buzzing with this rumor, but where Quorum starts many will soon follow.
A meeting was supposedly held in recent days where supporters pitched Barnes. Dollar amounts for a campaign were discussed. The consensus was that it would take $25 million to do the job and, according to one of our sources, supporters at the meeting committed to $10 million. By himself, Barnes is credited with being able to write a seven-figure check. Besides his own personal wealth, Barnes is one of the national Democrats' leading fund-raisers.
Barnes is an interesting "choice" for the Democratic option for U.S. Senate. His career was originally ended in the early 1970's because of the Sharpstown Scandal.
Barnes was one of eight people who raised half a million dollars, so his pockets are deep. The real question is whether democratic voters in a democratic primary will forgive both Sharpstown and raising $20 million for gubernatorial candidate and former republican and democrat Carole Keeton Strayhorn.
Texas Nate has a recent interview with Lt Gov Barnes. At the time of the interview, it struck me that Barnes, a strict institutionalist, embraced blogs at all.
Philip Martin subtly shows the difference between Barnes idea with the netroots manifesto, "Crashing the Gates".
"Crashing the Gate" - The Bible for progressive bloggers, CTG is an extraordinarily enlightening read, and an interesting one given the events of the November elections. If you ever want to know why bloggers spend so much free time toiling away at their computers, read this book. As a side note, I should mention that the Texas Netroots are raising money to buy every member of the Texas SDEC and TDP a copy of Crashing the Gate. Learn more about that effort here. 4 out of 5, strongly recommended.
"Barn Burning, Barn Building" - A personal memoir and political history, Ben Barnes writes an interesting book on the history of Texas Democrats. Chapters that detail the tragedy of President Kennedy and the rise of President Johnson, not to mention the Sharpstown scandal, are an excellent primer for those who love to learn the history of Texas politics. Though the closing chapters and recommendations are the same advice everyone has offered ad nauseum, the book is an enlightening view of what Texas Democrats once were. 3 out of 5, recommended.
As Philip hints, Barnes is about history and classic strategies. Barnes is known for loving current institutions and running to the center to win traditional voters. This is a nice way of saying he is not known for using new technology, new tactics, or mobilizing new voters.
Regardless of whether Barnes is really in, the Barnes Buzz continues to show how vulnerable Cornyn is. Why would Barnes eye the race if Cornyn couldn't be defeated?
This brings the possible candidate list to John Sharp, Barbara Radnofsky, Nick Lampson, Bill White, Rick Noriega, Pete Gallego, Ron Kirk, and Ben Barnes.
A new report from the Republican controlled Comptroller's office says undocumented workers contributed nearly $18 billion in the last fiscal year.
That right billion with a "b".
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that the United States had 11.1 million undocumented immigrants in 2005. Of these it said Texas accounted for between 1.4 million and 1.6 million.
"The absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our gross state product of $17.7 billion," said Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn.
The report says that would be a loss of 2.1 percent to the state's gross domestic product, which is the broadest measure of all goods and services produced in the state.
"Undocumented immigrants produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $1.16 billion in state services they received. However, local governments bore the burden of $1.44 billion in uncompensated health care costs and local law enforcement costs not paid for by the state," Strayhorn added.
The net increase to state revenues came from payments such as sales taxes and user fees.
The report indicates a clear flaw with the radical right-wing agenda. In August, Republican Mega-Donors indicated their dissent with the party they fund and nearly 4 months later this report confirms a need for realistic solutions instead of a holistic, "keep 'em out" philosophy.
In what had to be the dumbest endorsement this cycle, TSTA, the state's largest teachers union, endorsed Carole granny Strayhorn for governor. Strayhorn is known to us as a pure opportunist, a shill for whatever special interest puts up the meoney to fund her self-serving, unprincipled career. I know because I've followed her career since her first run for mayor of Austin, when she had only one last name, and was the willing tool of the downtown business interests, against the Progressives of the day. This cycle, the "old girls netrwork" at TSTA took her bait. And lost us the governorship.
Last month, I split Texas into nine areas, and I made the following comments on the gubernatorial race here:
Due to the huge split, it is very likely that Bell will win more than 17 counties.
Turns out that Bell did win 34 counties. Which is the one thing I got right about this race.
Chris Bell gets the ignoble prize of having the worst percentage showing of any Texas Democratic Gubernatorial candidate in history. Or at least in the last 130 years.
According to Dr. Rausch, “(t)he site will have a series of exit poll links with different surveys for Randall and Potter counties, Amarillo, Canyon and for people outside of Randall and Potter counties. The surveys will include questions about property tax freeze initiatives and the changes to the Amarillo City Commissionas well as questions about the Texas gubernatorial elections.”
The links have been active since early voting started on October 23. I urge all across Texas to go here and take the exit poll. Let’s help Dr. Rausch see how well they work and how accurate they are. Make sure, though, if you are in Potter or Randall Counties, that you take the polls specific to your region.
(And this just breaking, the Halloween Peeps have withdrawn their endorsement! - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
AUSTIN – Supporters of entertainer turned politician Kinky Friedman expressed shock and disappointment Tuesday night after they spent a fruitless evening in pumpkin patches from El Paso to Texarkana.
“I was sure that the Great Pumpkin would rise over the pumpkin patch and give us candy,” one Friedman supporter said. “We spent hours trolling internet message boards and voting for the Great Pumpkin multiple times in unscientific on-line polls,” he explained, “I can’t believe the Great Pumpkin didn’t rise.”
When asked whether the campaign focused on registering new voters for the Great Pumpkin, Laura Stromberg said, “no, but have you seen how many out-of-state MySpace and Facebook accounts we have generated among 14 to 17 year olds?”
While supporters of Kinky Friedman are universally disappointed in the failure of the Great Pumpkin to rise this Halloween, they remain confident that Friedman will prevail on November 7. When asked to comment, one Friedman supporter summed up the crowd’s sentiments. “We’re totally not throwing our vote away on a fictional candidate or a novelty campaign,” he said, adding “Dude, can I share some of your Halloween candy?”
