Yesterday we wrote about a Texas Poll Watch poll, perhaps too soon. After a day of looking at numbers and talking to pollsters, we should not have printed the poll because none of the numbers seem correct.
To take the poll on face would mean that Garcia is - 4.94% in Aransas, - 1.16% in Calhoun,
- 3.15% in Nueces and - 22.61% in San Patricio.
As Kuff pointed out in the comments, "Garcia won San Patricio County by a huge margin in 2006 (7142 to 5350, or 57.2% to 42.8%), so any poll that shows him trailing there by double digits is a little suspicious to begin with. San Patricio did go mostly R in 2006 overall, though Bill Moody won it with 52%, but the downballot statewide Rs didn't do so well, with Todd Staples and Elizabeth Ames Jones getting only a plurality. My guess is that this is a small subsample with a large MOE, and as such probably not very useful."
To add to this, because of the huge swings in San Patricio and Aransas, it looks like Texas Poll Watch is under sampling Hispanics and over sampling Nueces. The combination of the two would skew any poll dramatically and is an amateur mistake when weighting and creating the methodology.
Ed Martin echoes both points in the comments.
In 2006, an excellent Democratic/Hispanic field effort at the end of the campaign helped drive those San Patricio numbers to 57% for Garcia. In this district, San Patricio's 12.5K votes in a House race in an "off" year make it a major county. Unless a pollster knows how to test an accurate and representative sample of Hispanic voters, their preference will typically be under-represented in most polls in South Texas counties like San Patricio. Bottom line: If you flip the San Patricio numbers, this is still a close race that could go down to the wire, but not one that has Hunter ahead, especially by 8 points.
The most important part is this poll both fails to take in unlikely voters that Garcia's campaign will obviously target and new voters identified by the 2008 presidential primary.
In Aransas that is 873 voters. In Calhoun that is 2,653 voters. In Nueces that is 4,271 voters. In San Patricio that is 6,639 voters.
In 2006, Garcia won with 17,607 votes. The Democratic primary alone has identified 14,436 votes compared to 2006 when Garcia had 5,401 2006 primary voters identified. This poll would not touch a large segment of this 14,436 because it is an automated phone system with no live dials. That same system would disproportionately hit men, voters over 35 years old, and excludes minorities.
Just looking at the county by county numbers this poll is strikingly off, and a correction in San Patricio would completely eliminate the 8 point lead Hunter has in this apparently faulty poll.
Can't get enough of chubby 60-something men making painfully off-color anecdotes at legislative events? Been awhile since you've watched the iconic footage of Gene Seaman's now-legendary floor speech on Viagra?
This week House challenger Todd Hunter managed to forge the bonds of creepiness with Seaman in an appearance at a candidate’s forum in Corpus Christi.
Asked about the relative value of seniority in the Texas Lege, Hunter thought the appropriate response would be "size matters." As the footage from the event shows, the audience of Leadership Corpus Christi alumni react with a stunned and deafening silence.
It gets even better.
After the Corpus Christi Caller-Times wrote a Sunday piece describing the bizarre awkwardness of the moment, the Hunter campaign's nimble response was to release an 843-word press advisory desperately trying to spin the concept that this had nothing to do with sexual innuendo. They pathetically try to point out the term "size matters" could have meant all kinds of things, and as examples, they refer to the use of the term "in title of a Playstation 2 video game; it’s the name of a clothing store for big and tall men in Philadelphia; it is a album title by the band Helmet"
Well here's album cover from Helmut (it has no sexual innuendo at all, right?):
As local political scientist Bob Bezdek told the Caller-Times in yet another story on this bizarre incident, "My God, why would you put that much effort into it? If I had said something I didn't mean to say, I'd apologize."
What's with these creepy old guys and their obsession with their junk? Shouldn't Hunter, who endorsed Seaman last cycle, raised money for him, hosted events for him, and took part in his TV ads, shift his focus to thinking about how he's going to defend taking nearly $4 million dollars as a windstorm lobbyist when the Coastal Bend is paying the highest windstorm rates in the nation?
We aren't trying to write about HD-32 every day, but man Todd Hunter is bad guy and horrid candidate. In three days, he has made at least three major errors-- lying to voters, attacking a decorated veteran, and concealing important documents from voters.
In the same week that Nueces County GOP Chair Mike Bertuzzi questioned the "worthiness" of State Rep. Juan Garcia's donation to the Center for the Intrepid (the nation's premiere rehabilitation facility for our most seriously injured, burned and maimed service personnel) because, get this, the facility is not in Rep. Garcia's District (not joking, see the Caller Times), challenger Todd Hunter showed how little regard he holds for military service.
During their first head-to-head debate, the two were asked by an audience member whether they would make their tax records available to the media. Garcia immediately committed to unconditionally releasing the tax records. In a bizarre answer captured on video, an indignant Hunter snarled "you won't get my wife's" (reminiscent of Garcia’s last opponent and Hunter’s supporter Gene Seaman and his hiding of a luxury Town Lake condo kept in his wife's name but paid for with campaign contributions), and then made the release of his own tax returns conditional on Rep. Garcia releasing his military records.
Hunter never served in the military, but has no shame in apparently searching for ways to turn someone else's service against them. Ironically, Garcia, a decorated naval aviator who spent 13 years on active duty and continues to serve as a naval instructor pilot in the reserves at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, will be promoted to the rank of Commander in June, and was just selected to take command of the VT-28 Squadron Augment Unit in October.
District 32 contains NAS Corpus Christi, Naval Station Ingleside, the Corpus Christi Army Depot, and many residents who commute to nearby Naval Air Station Kingsville. They honor military service. A big part of Garcia's 2006 victory was due to the reality that the bonds of sacrifice and service run deeper than partisan affiliation. Chickenhawks like Bertuzzi and Hunter are further proof that this GOP has lost touch with voters and that Garcia is going to win again.
Sour grapes are funny things. After the amazing victory by Juan Garcia over Republican Gene Seaman in the Coastal Bend in 2006, local republican officials just cannot come to grips with reality. Repeatedly, the Nueces County GOP apparatus continues to swing wildly into the air, hitting nothing and looking like fools.
First, since his win, four frivolous ethics complaints againt Rep. Garcia filed by local GOP officials have been dismissed by the Ethics Commission.
Second, former Nueces County Republican Chair Joel Yowell filed a massive public information request of Rep. Garcia’s State Representative office, including every email, phone call and employee document ever generated by the office. After Garcia's staff was forced to burn dozens of taxpayer-paid man-hours complying with his request, Yowell sent the records back unopened, simply changing his mind. Yowell gave no reason for his sudden change of heart. I suspect he is afraid of what happens if we peer into his house.
Third, in an even more bizarre episode, Republican staffer and campaign consultant, Todd Gallaher, got caught using state computers for campaign work, created an email account designed to look like it was from Rep. Garcia and tried to blackmail a sitting Coastal Bend Sheriff. Later, he lied to an ethics watchdog group who filed a complaint against his boss by claiming to be Dallas Morning New reporter.
This week, Mike Bertuzzi, current Nueces County Republican Chair, sent out 20,000 mailers attacking Rep. Juan Garcia for not returning campaign contributions given by Corpus Christi businessman Mauricio Celis. Not surprisingly, Bertuzzi, the ring leader of this bumbling "gang that couldn't shoot straight", didn't bother to check his facts.
Last January, Garcia donated the Celis money to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which serves severly injured American service personnel from South Texas.
The “Center for the Intrepid” serves military personnel who have been catastrophically disabled in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and veterans severely injured in other operations and in the normal performance of their duties.
Here is clip of Rep. Garcia addressing the local media on the false mailers:
As of 2:40 a.m., with eight precincts yet to report, Juan Garcia was down by 250 votes in his race to unseat incumbent Rep. Gene Seaman in Corpus Christi and surrounding counties. However, reports are that the one remaining precinct is heavily Democrat, and that without about 1/3 of those ballots counted, Garcia is leading (and expected to hold). Though not official yet, Democrats might have picked up a net of five seats.
Every incumbent House Democrat won, as well. Reps. Hopson and Cook held onto their rural seats, as did Reps. McReynolds, Homer, and Farabee. Rep. Vo held off Talmadge Heflin in Houston -- a tremendous protection for Democrats. And in our two open seats, Joe Heflin held onto Speaker Laney's seat in a race many prognosticators had written off as a loss for Democrats. Heflin held on to defeat Landtroop, and Farias held Rep. Uresti's seat in San Antonio.
We all knew that Gene Seaman is a crook and creepy, so it doesn't surprise us that he is also a pervert.
On January 18, 1988, Karen Biles (office manager of MONY Financial Services) sent a letter to Mike Kaplan with MONY Services complaining about Seaman's behavior.
The letter states that Seaman called Biles into her office to question her loyalties to him and forbade her from seeing people outside the office whom he didn't like. He also told her that if she planned on getting married before he retired then she should just quit right there. He also questioned her spiritual life and suggest that they "should get to know each other on a spiritual level."
A few months later, he called her into the agency library and grabbed her ass and asked her how she was feeling. Three days after that, Gene Seaman, in front of most of the office, "picked [her] up off the floor, even though she complained loudly and rubbed his entire physique against [her]. As he set [her] down, he patted [her] posterior."
Biles attorney told her to consider it sexual harassment.
The runs directly with the well-known rumor that Seaman is not allowed to get massages from the Corpus Christi Athletic Club. One can only assume why a member is not allowed to get a massage.
Once again Seaman is shown to lack the moral character to be a State Representative. How he ever stayed there so long is beyond our belief. From our understanding, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
(This just goes to show that the discontent over Seaman was a long time coming. - promoted by M. Eddie Rodriguez)
Lance Bruun, the lawyer representing Gene Seaman in the Condo-gate scandal, accused Seaman of unethical and illegal conduct back when Seaman first ran for District 32.
This news item describes Lance Bruun's current relationship with Seaman:
Three local television stations have refused state Rep. Gene Seaman's request that they stop broadcasting a political commercial ... ABC affiliate KIII, NBC affiliate KRIS and CBS affiliate KZTV, said Wednesday they will continue to air the ad. ...
The ad, which started running this week during primetime, associates Seaman with former congressman Tom DeLay, who resigned in an ethics scandal. The commercial criticizes Seaman for using campaign funds to pay rent on an Austin condo owned by his wife, and for a homestead exemption granted on the condo when the couple's primary residence is in Corpus Christi....
From the Texas Observer with a hat tip to Democratic Underground where I saw it.
When Garcia appeared on the South Texas political scene in 2004, no one had heard of him. But it didn’t take long for Corpus Christi’s Democratic political groupies to begin whispering about the man who seems to carry all the credentials for an epic political career. They thought he would appeal to just about everyone–not just the Democrats who dominate Corpus Christi politics, but also to the Republicans in the coastal towns outside Corpus. With Election Day only weeks away, Democrats are still energized, and, anecdotally at least, many Republicans are considering abandoning ... 10-year state Rep. Gene Seaman (R-Corpus Christi) in District 32. In a state where every statewide elected position belongs to the GOP, Garcia seems to embody everything the Democrats need to take some of that power back. He’s a veteran Navy pilot. He has worked at the White House. He surfs. He created programs for at-risk children. He leads a photogenic family of six (eight-year old twins, a five- year-old, and a three-year-old). [Disclosure: One of Garcia’s cousins serves on the nonprofit board that publishes The Texas Observer.] And he has two diplomas from Harvard, a law degree and a master’s from the John F. Kennedy School of Government. ... The man with the dream résumé has stirred up an unusual amount of excitement for a lowly South Texas state representative race. It’s not as much about the boilerplate promises to work toward improving education and broadening health benefits that rally Garcia’s followers. Rather, it’s the desire to get on board the political express elevator at the ground floor. His supporters–who include former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, former presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark, and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama–see a budding political star. And they’re counting on Garcia’s universal appeal to move him quickly through the ranks of politics and government. The leadership of the Democratic Party of Texas also must have seen something; he was tapped to introduce Chris Bell, the party’s choice in the race for governor, at the state convention this past June.
Great ad that shows just how bad we need holistic change in the state house. Have I mentioned that Juan Garcia is our Texroots candidate? Well he is...
