Another early endorser, the Central Labor Council in Austin has met and issued endorsements in the following races.
Mayor: Lee Leffingwell
Place 1: Perla Cavazos
Place 2: Mike Martinez
Place 5: Bill Spelman
Place 6: Sheryl Cole
Someone pointed out these two crazy similar pictures from today's office openings. (The McCracken one being from Michael Bartnett of the Austin Chronicle.) I unfortunately wasn't able to make any of them because my bike got a flat and I was dealing with that today.
And here is some video from today's McCracken office opening.
So I've run through all the campaign finance reports for the reported candidates for office. Mike Levy, while much rumored, hasn't filed to run, and Oak Hill resident Sandy Baldrige is saying she wants to run against Bill Spelman, but no action to actually follow up those claims on the finance front. In any case, below are a couple of different measures of how you can compare the candidates. Incumbents running for re-election to their own offices are in bold.
Cash on Hand
The only thing order-wise that changes if you sort by total funds raised during the period is that incumbent Sheryl Cole moves from 4th to 2nd and incumbent Mike Martinez moves from 2nd to 4th.
Overall: I was mostly right in what I've said to friends that I doubted anyone would end up having more than $25,000. I was wrong about Carole Strayhorn but I didn't think she would end up deciding to run. And while Chris Riley didn't end up with more than $25,000 cash on hand, he did raise more than $25,000 so congrats to him.
Mayor: Overall, I'm a little surprised to see Brewster's fundraising more on par with that of the Place 1 candidates and lagging behind that of Carole. Of course, that could just be because his main fundraiser isn't until later this month, but still, it makes the argument against Leffingwell rather irrelevant (that his delay in getting in will put him far behind in the money race). The Draft Lee PAC certainly is not acting as a real shadow campaign in terms of fundraising, but remember, it cannot transfer funds to Lee's Mayoral account once he files so there is no use in building up tens of thousands of dollars on it that would have to be spent independently of the official campaign. Of course, I also think that Strayhorn and Levy could spent lots of money and get far fewer votes than McCracken and Leffingwell so it could just all be a wash. This report tells us very little in the Mayor's race.
Place 1: My ballpark guess in this race was that the fundraising order would be Riley, Cavazos, then Cofer with totals around $20k, $15k, and then $10k. Both Chris Riley and Rick Cofer exceeded those expectations by a reasonable amount and in the end, they indeed are separated by no more than $10,000. Cofer was the last candidate in this race to announce, and with only 2 weeks to fundraise with Christmas killing about a week of that, nearly tieing Cavazos is worthy of note. I should clarify this point as all 3 candidates filed in the 2nd week of December. What I was trying to get at was that Chris was actively exploring this race and making calls months before he filed (I got an early call when I was in the Strama office before the November election) and Perla was actively talking about it in November, whereas I know Cofer didn't make the decision to run until the first week of December, shortly before he filed because he texted me about it.
Does this report create a frontrunner? I don't know. Last year, in the open Place 4 race, the first report went Morrison, Galindo, Cravey with $21k, $14k, and $12k. Randi Shade led incumbent Jennifer Kim $69k to $44k. Of course all of those were running earlier and in this period, the fundraising period was truncated by a presidential election, late filing, and a bad economy (even though the max contribution limit has increased from $300 to $350).
But if convention wisdom must be set, than I figure it's Cofer and Cavazos competing more with each other to secure a spot in a runoff with Chris Riley.
Place 5: This is all about Bill Spelman. Which is pretty easy to say since there is no sign of his "declared" regional opponent as of yet from Oak Hill. A lot of the same caveats apply as in the Place 5 race (Bill filed with about 3 weeks to fundraise) and it's a hard sell to get people to give you money when (at the time) there was no opponent. So this could end up like the Leffingwell-Meeker race in 2008. Lots of bluster from the 2nd tier candidate, but probably not a whole lot of electoral action with a healthy win.
Other Places: Mike Martinez doesn't have a declared opponent. Sam Osemene is running against Sheryl (he ran for Place 4 against Morrison/Galindo/Cravey last year) but he hasn't filed any report as he appointed his treasurer in January; but if he runs like last time, he won't be a factor other than a repository of votes for people who don't want to vote for Sheryl.
Here are some other interesting breakdowns.
Disclosure: I am listed as having donated $300 of in-kind website development services to the Spelman campaign.
Tonight Wednesday, January 14, 2009
5:30pm - 7:30pm
Nuevo Leon Restaurant
1501 East 6th Street
Austin, TX
From Mike's Facebook event:
Food will be provided and there will be a cash bar. It's going to be a great time so please come out. This will also be our first time back to Nuevo Leon since our wedding night party on November 8th. I couldn't think of a better and more appropriate location to launch my re-election bid to Place 2 on the City Council.
Kate Morton of the Austin American Statesman wrote that two of Austin's most eligible bachelors are now off the market.
Council Members Mike Martinez and Brewster McCracken are both engaged and plan to wed in November.
All of us at Burnt Orange Report want to congratulate McCracken and Martinez and we wish them the best of luck. In other news, KT and I have now moved up two notches in the race to be Austin's most eligible bachelors.
While most of the speculation about next year's election has centered around current councilmen Lee Leffingwell and Brewster McCracken, they may not be the only prominent names eyeing the race.
Of course, we have reported before about the rumblings of Carol Strayhorn entering the race for her old job. Now, KVUE's Elise Hu has a video on YouTube that once again confirms OTG is considering the race.
I know it is early, but who do you see yourself supporting -- or definitely not supporting -- for Mayor next year?
Happened to run into newly sworn in Austin city councilman Mike Martinez who was sporting some casual wear for the evening. Which reminds me, another councilman's website news got updated this weekend.
Other short notes from around the state- did you know that Tom DeLay had a brother named Randy? Did you know that said brother also gave $20,000 to sleazy Todd Staples?
Well, all the great reporting over at the Don't Get Stapled blog apparently has caught the eye of some staffer of Toddy's as DGS noted yesterday. Well hey, we know it's not easy working for a guy that has no interest in the job he's running for.
Polls will be open 7am - 7pm. If you need to find your polling location (which you must to in order to vote today) click here to match up your precinct with where to vote.
Election Results tonight will come in online here. Travis County election is managing the results for a whopping 32 juristictions, including for some juristictions extending into Williamson county. They will be partitioned into 3 categories available online here.
You may wish to review the Burnt Orange Endorsements for City Offices as well as AISD & ACC races. To recap...
Mayor: Will Wynn City Council Place 2: Mike Martinez City Council Place 5: Brewster McCracken City Council Place 6: Sheryl Cole
AISD Place 7: Robert Schneider AISD Place 8: Annette LoVoi AISD Place 9: Karen Dulaney Smith ACC Board Place 8: James McGuffee ACC Place 9: Ana Mejia-Dietche
All of Austin's Democratic Club endorsements are listed in the extended entry. Various election night victory parties are listed here in the BOR events calendar.
These are our 2006 endorsements.Click here for our current 2009 endorsements.
Halfway through Early Voting for municipal elections here in Travis County, I've finally gotten around to getting things together for some BOR endorsements. So we'll start with the big races and then hit the Propositions and ACC/AISD candidates after that in separate posts. Keep in mind that these are all fairly low turnout (and low interest) elections and I only received input from 2 other writers for endorsements. Let's get started.
This is easy. While Austin's Mayor may have been elected in a whirlwind of moderation and mediocrity three years ago, there is a certain charm about him that has shown through in past couple of years. A hard worker, believer in downtown density (of which I'm a big fan since I'll probably live there soon enough), and tireless promoter for the City of Austin, its industries, and its people, Wynn should not only be re-elected, but fully deserves a second term. And considering his competition this year, there is no question in our eyes that Wynn has earned our endorsement and votes. We want Wynn, again.
If you feel that you want to keep Austin weird, you could always vote for perennial candidate Jennifer Gale. We understand. But please don't vote for outgoing councilman and candidate Danny Thomas, as we're not even sure if he knows why he's running. Austin doesn't need to be that weird.
While more contentious earlier in the race, this one has become clearer to us as time has gone on. Martinez, after winning most every local endorsement, recently picked up the Statesman and Chronicle nods. A native of East Austin and president of the Austin Firefighters Association, Martinez led the successful public campaign to win collective bargaining rights for Austin firefighters which we also supported.
This is not to say that his opponent Eliza May is unqualified- far from it. She has received support from the West Austin groups as well as the local Spanish papers and would certainly be an active voice on the council. But we feel that Martinez has proven leadership skills and will not back down for his community on the council while being the most able to work to bind people east and west of I-35. Libertarian Wes Benedict is also running.
The endorsement for incumbent McCracken is not as enthusiastic as for incumbent Wynn but the two are similar in style, ideology, and we won't be surprised when McCracken announces for Mayor in 3 years. His opposition is mostly token, but certain interests have spurred them into the race, partly on the issue of Tolls. While we're no fan of them, what we find even more annoying is it used as a single issue interest group. In fact, I find it as the singlemostannoying one in Austin. (I have to laugh that their only acceptable single issue option in the Mayor's race is Jennifer Gale, ha!)
Cole, like Martinez, is the frontrunner for their respective places for City Council. If elected, she would be the first African American female ever to serve on the Austin Council. Endorsed by the Chronicle (the Statesman endorsed Darrell Pierce), Cole has racked up most all the local endorsements, save the few that DeWayne Lofton has picked up. Each of the three candidates is worthy of a seat on the council in their own right, but Austin's "gentleman's agreement" to reserve one black and one Hispanic seat in order to keep free of federal Voting Rights Act interference has also more or less made these 'reservations' caps as well.
As the seat considered to be the most likely to go to a runoff if one should, the real battle will be between Lofton and Pierce to claim the 2nd spot. Personally, I voted for Pierce, but an argument has been made for Lofton in the journals.
Other short notes from around the state- did you know that Tom DeLay had a brother named Randy? Did you know that said brother also gave 
Today is Election Day in Travis County! 