Ben Bentzin (R) - 9,281 - 42.38% Donna Howard (D) - 12,618 - 57.62%
Total Votes - 21,899
Precincts Reported: 39 of 39 Precincts
Thanks to Kuff, Vince and others who have pointed out that this picture is on the Statesman homepage right now! -kt
Good work, Austin. We're up to 64 seats in the state house. Let's make it 65 in two weeks. Katy Hubener's special election is coming up on Tuesday, Febraury 28th. Donate here.
I'm preparing this post for later tonight where it will serve as your place for the latest results on the election in HD-48.
The Secretary of State will have their numbers coming in here. Travis County will be reporting them online here. Our first round elections results thread is located here.
Update: Early vote totals
(R) Bentzin - 3,658 votes, 44.14%
(D) Howard -- 4,629 votes, 55.86% Early Turnout - 8.4%
Howard wins 28 of 39 early vote precincts to Bentzin's 10 with 1 not reporting for some reason.
7:37 Donna enters the building to a standing ovation! She's just been given some flowers and is giving a short speech "so far so good, an incredible journey, absolutely a team effort, catiously optimistic ...and so are we someone yells"
Early Vote Precincts with a turnout over 10%...
Pct. # // turnout // (D)%
The Daily Texan has endorsed Donna in their op-ed today.
The polls are open from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM Tuesday. (polling locations) Make sure to cast your ballot for positive change, then please consider any of the following ways to help send Donna to the State Capitol to represent our community's mainstream values.
* Put a Donna Howard sign in your yard * Make phone calls to your friends and neighbors to make sure they vote * Provide a ride to the polls * Work a polling place for a few hours * Block walk with others in your community
Call Donna's campaign at 512-971-9488 to find out how you can help.
And from a TCDP email...
You can use the website at Friendsvote.org to find out which of your friends and neighbors are eligible to vote for Donna Howard on Tuesday, and send them a reminder and a link to a map to the specific polling place they should go to on Tuesday. The site shows whether they have already voted early, as well as whether they voted in January.
A lot more people are going to vote in the runoff than did in the January election. 7,668 people voted early, a 68% increase despite a much shorter early-voting period -- the final turnout might double. We cannot afford to assume that the good January results will automatically repeat.
About 2,600 of the early voters were people who did not vote in January. Of these new voters, there were almost 200 more with Republican-primary history than with Democratic-primary history, and over half had no party-primary history. We need to catch up on election day by getting known friendlies to the polls -- YOU can help make it happen.
Now, as far as numbers go, I have been told that through Wednesday last week, it wasn't the 50/50 this e-mail says. It was more...
40% Democratic History
25% Republican History
20% Mixed History
15% No History
In any case, today is the day. Do everything you can.
In the "Say What?" category. According to an article in The Daily Texan, the Travis County Libertarian party is claiming that a Susan Combs PAC gave money to Bentzin illegaly.
Committees listed as specific-purpose groups are prohibited from contributing to another candidate's campaign unless they have amended their records to show they are a general-purpose PAC, according to Title 15 of the Texas Ethics Commission election code.
It is difficult to determine the motivation behind one candidate's contribution to another, said Tim Sorrells, deputy general council for TEC.
The problem is determining whether or not the Combs committee, which is registered as a specific-purpose committee with TEC, was acting as a general-purpose committee without being listed as such, Sorrells said.
The committee last registered as a specific-purpose committee with TEC in September of 2004, but did not change their committee purpose to supporting Bentzin, according to TEC.
In Bentzin's reports filed with TEC Feb. 6, Friends of Susan Combs is listed 30 separate times as a contributor, including one entry of $6,107 for office supplies.
Bentzin's campaign could be held responsible for knowingly accepting illegal contributions, even though the complaint did not list him.
Money from Friends of Susan Combs was not given directly to Bentzin's PAC, but was used to pay for mailing expenses, phone expenses, office supplies and professional services for the campaign, according to the TEC document.
Is this a big deal? Does this hurt Bentzin (like he needs the help hurting himself) or Combs?
According to a press release sent out by the Texas Democratic Party, Ben Bentzin has understated the values of two homes he has built by 50% or more.
From the press release:
Bentzin contracted to build a custom home off of City Park Road in 1996 for $437,750. He took another loan for $210,000 for additional expenses related to building this home. Adding these expenses and the value of the lot, his total appraisal should have been nearly $700,000. Instead, he paid taxes on a value $244,046 beginning in 1998. The application he filed with the city set the value at a concocted amount, $200,000.
This same pattern continued in 2000, when Bentzin contracted to build a second custom home for a price of $3,318,550, an amount that did not include the cost of the lot, which is located in an exclusive gated community. Lots in this neighborhood typically sell for at least $700,000, according to county records and information from local realtors.
Rather than pay the taxes he owed on the actual value of his current house, Bentzin falsified the value on the permit application again and claimed a value of only $1,750,000, more than $1.5 million below the cost...
Had Bentzin paid the taxes on the actual values of his properties, he would have owed an additional amount of more than $100,000.
Charles Soechting, current Chair of the Texas Democratic Party, asked, "How can we trust his judgment during a special session that will deal with property taxes when he can’t be trusted to pay his own taxes?”
Anyone who knows anything else about this should feel free to comment below.
On another issue, Howard said she opposes teaching intelligent design in public schools. "We are trying to increase our standards for math and science to compete in the global economy that we have," Howard said. "To bring in some nonscientific theories and put them into our classrooms is so counter to what we're trying to accomplish."
Bentzin left the door open for talking about intelligent design in schools, provided that it is discussed as a scientific theory and not in religious terms.
"At this point there doesn't appear to be a lot of scientific consensus about whether or not intelligent design really is a scientific theory that is mainstream and acceptable," he said. "I don't think we're ready for that in the 80th Legislature in 2007, but I think that's a debate and discussion that needs to continue."
Check out the Statesman for the audio recording of today's debate between Donna Howard and Ben Bentzin for the HD-48 Runoff. Click the banner up top to check out early voting locations or to do some phonebanking from your home.
"The governor was saying we're not going to do any (school) reforms this session," Wentworth said, despite calls by House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for changes in how education dollars are spent.
With some narrow school finance votes behind him and two Democratic pickups likely between now and the start of the special session (all the more reason to swing some cash towards Katy Hubener and Donna Howard), it looks like Perry has decided that doing nothing on school finance will look better than a couple of failed attempts to pass something this year.
Glad to know that in our governor's book, your best Zoolander trumps actually paying to educate children in this state.
According to Texas Weekly, Donna's spending in the first round came to an efficient $10.43 for each vote she received, compared to the whopping $51.26 her opponent spent for each of his.
Please call the campaign at 512-971-9488 to donate, contribute online here, or send a check to Donna Howard for State Rep, PO Box 2124, Austin, TX 78768-2124.
Now, on top of that, Howard's 8 day report details more than 600 contributions totaling $146,476.33. And if you happened to catch a copy of the Daily Texan last week, you would have seen the ads taken out by Bentzin, as he was hiring paid blockwalkers. Talk about having to buy your support...
Update:
The Statesman endorses Donna Howards, again. And to any of you worried about wanting to sign Kinky or Carol 4-Names petitions...
Registered voters in the district who didn't cast a ballot in last month's special election may vote in the runoff. Also, voting in the runoff does not disqualify anyone from signing a petition for independent gubernatorial candidates Kinky Friedman or Carole Keeton Strayhorn.
So don't let anything stop you, get as many votes in for Donna as you can now during Early Voting. Let's crush Bentzin a second time, so that this fall the Republicans may give up in favor of other opportunities.
The Republican Party of Texas, trying to save their losing candidate Ben Bentzin in the HD 48 race, has sent out their first attack on Donna Howard. The mail piece (front and back) attacks Donna Howard for supporting a bond proposal that would have put a second high school in Eanes when she was on the school board, saying that the school would have "wasted taxpayer dollars."
Why is this ad such a failure? Because when the second high school proposal came out, Karl Rove, Maragaret LaMontagne (now Maragret Spellings, President Bush's Secretary of Education), and Karen Hughes all agreed with Howard. In fact, it was Jerry Hughes (Karen's husband) that made a motion to build a second Eanes high school in the first place. Not only did those three Republican leaders agree with Howard, they signed a letter of support (PDF) for a second high school.
What does all this mean? It's politics as usual for the Republican Party of Texas, which means pulling out dirty smear campaigns to try and taint the only candidate in the HD 48 race that will put people ahead of politics.
Be sure to visit Donna Howard's website to support a candidate that wants to stop playing politics as usual and start delivering real improvements to our public schools.
Ben Bentzin (R) - 9,281 - 42.38%
