Bio:
I am a 27 year old Govt graduate of UT-Austin. I became politically active due to Howard Dean. I've worked with Travis Coordinated Campaigns, Rick Noriega, Mark Strama, Get Austin Moving, and ActBlue.
The Texas Stonewall Democratic Caucus (TSDC) Executive Board voted to endorse openly gay former State Representative Glen Maxey for an open seat on the Democratic National Committee (DNC). If elected at the state convention in June, Maxey will succeed openly lesbian former Houston City Councilwoman Sue Lovell, who has held this seat for many years. Lovell announced earlier this year that she was not seeking re-election for another term on the DNC.
Maxey is one of two candidates who have announced for this seat. The other candidate, Zephaniah "Zeph" Capo of Houston, is a current member of the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC) from Senate District 15. Like Maxey, Capo is openly gay and is a public school teacher who is actively involved with the labor union movement.
Both candidates were asked to complete a candidate questionnaire and to participate in separate telephone interviews with members of the TSDC Executive Board. Following the candidate interviews, Board members voted 19-3 to endorse Maxey.
There are ten (10) DNC seats from Texas that are elected by the delegates to the Texas Democratic Convention every four years. They are divided evenly by gender. Two of the seats are designated to represent African-Americans, two for Hispanics, one for non-urban areas of the state and one for labor. The other four (4) seats are considered "at large" seats, although one of them is generally regarded as a seat for youth, another for LGBT and the other two are divided by gender as at-large seats. The DNC Chair also has the discretion to appoint other Texans to the DNC.
Although the DNC seat currently held by Lovell is not "officially" designated an LGBT seat, Maxey intends to make that his goal if he is elected at the State Democratic Convention, which takes place on June 7-9 in Houston. Recently elected President of Stonewall Democrats of Austin, Maxey believes that "it is imperative that the DNC have openly gay, fearless leaders" and "I shall continue to be one". He is also committed to working with the newly elected State Democratic Party Chair to "rebuild the Texas Democratic Party from the ground up" and to focus on unregistered voters and registered voters who do not vote, because "those folks are our folks". Texas has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the nation.
The TSDC is the official LGBT Caucus of the Texas Democratic Party and has approximately 1,000 dues-paying members from Stonewall Democrats chapters in Austin, Dallas, Denton County, El Paso, Houston, the lower Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio and Tarrant County.
Among all of the endorsements that one can receive in Austin City Council elections, the endorsement of the Travis County Republican Party isn't one that usually precedes actually getting elected to council. Nonetheless, candidates for city council Laura Pressley, Dom Chavez, and Shaun Irelend were the beneficiaries of a paid political mailer written by Travis County Republican Party chair Rosemary Edwards.
And it doesn't stop there. Laura Pressley's campaign is spending its own money touting the support of even more Republicans. The following mailer was sent last week by the Pressley campaign.
It's difficult being a Republican voter in city-wide elections in Austin because you are often forced into voting for the "least liberal" versus the "most conservative" candidates running since an actual conservative can't get elected citywide. It's also the reason why some Republicans strongly support the 10-1 geographic representation proposal because they see an opportunity to win up to 3 council seats that way.
No matter what the cause, the simple fact that the local Republican Party is advocating for these candidates as the best choice for conservative voters will probably give pause to some Democratic voters (of which there are typically many more of, even in low-turonut city elections).
I've just finished running my models for estimating turnout of the City of Austin municipal elections. There is very little variation in the grand scheme of things other than to say we are on track for yet another low turnout election.
This election 'feels' like the 2006 mayoral re-elect for Will Wynn (against Danny Thomas and Jennifer Gale), and according to the data, that's the level of turnout we are experiencing right now. Wynn's re-election had just under 18,000 early votes cast in it, not unlike the roughly 20,000 we are expected to see this year.
Problem is, in 2006 a full 67% of the vote was cast on Election Day. This year, the Election Day vote will make up less than 50% of ballots cast. The folks I trust with numbers seem to think E-Day will be just 46% of the vote. That's how we get to just 37,726 total votes cast, or 9.2% projected turnout of the 408,000 City of Austin voters (which is under-registered as it is).
So that means the Leffingwell-Shea-Dafoe contest isn't ginning up voter excitement on even a Wynn-Thomas-Gale level!
In terms of raw votes cast, our TOTAL turnout in 2012 is flirting with the total number of votes Roy Butler received (34,099) in Austin's first direct election of its Mayor in 1971. Or, if you aren't a Butler fan, the 33,992 votes cast in favor of the measure on the same ballot, to put fluoride in our water supply.
The two elections really do provide a certain poetry to this election, the beginning and the end of a system of government and an odd fixation with fluoride. A city whose registered voter base grew by over 435% during this time, saw the number of municipal voters actually drop by 35%. A rather large percentage of the municipal electorate is made up by those who regularly vote, including some who have probably voted in every election for Mayor since 1971. In fact, I'm willing to bet that the number of votes that Dr. Laura "Fluoride" Pressley gets is damn near close to the number of votes against fluoridizing the city's public water supply in 1971. That number would be 12,893, which would hypothetically give her about 34% against Mike Martinez.
There's another way to put the current turnout in perspective visually for you. Check it out below the fold.
An inflammatory video produced by Kesha Rogers for US Congress (TX-22), calls for the execution of President Barack Obama. More specifically, the lyric in question is "His doctor should administer some pentothal of sodium". Sodium Pentothal is a chemical used in lethal injections. Watch the video below and judge for yourself. The song is styled off of Mary Poppin's "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."
Kesha Rogers is directly affiliated with Lyndon Larouche, whose political movement has a history of violent rhetoric, anti-Semitism, and ties to radical groups. The Kesha Rogers campaign has compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler, and accused the Obama administration of being a puppet of the British Empire.
If it wasn't already apparent, the numbers below really highlight the extent to which the City of Austin and Travis County have been carved up and the extent to which the City and County are outvoted by the other parts of each congressional district.
Travis County enjoys a plurality of the population of only one of its five congressional districts, District 25, where it accounts for just over one-third of the district's population. Harris County accounts for over one-third of District 10 (Travis County is essentially on equal footing with Harris County), McLennan County accounts for one-third of District 17, Bexar County accounts for over one-third of District 21 and nearly half of District 35.
This week Burnt Orange Report turned 9 years old. 9 years. Wow. Let that sink in for a bit.
We've had a lot of discussions over the years about how to fund the work that we do as bloggers, especially covering state level politics where we don't always have the steady stream of national news to drive our readership. It's been an annual topic at the Netroots Nation conference and will again make an appearance at this June's Netroots Nation in Rhode Island.
Here in Texas, we have spent the better part of this year rethinking how to do exactly that. I want to review what we have already done, and why donating $9 for the remaining 9 months of 2012 is so important for the future of BOR and other blogs like us.
Earlier this month, we completed our first fundraiser which netted over $15,000, allowing us to prove that there is a base of support for the work we do.
We've held GOP Debate Watch parties and primary results watching parties that have drawn hundreds of guests (and sponsors) and generated local news stories.
We have set up a Texas G-PAC that allows us to more transparently engage in direct political activity to support Democratic candidates.
We've created a statewide Progressive Vendor Page whose annual paid listings are not only an additional revenue stream, but help give some smart political firms better exposure.
And for the first time since 2008, we are once again able to incentivize our writers with pay.
After 9 years of writing for this site, I hope you believe our work is a valued asset worth investing in. That's why I'm asking you to become a recurring donor through our 9-9-9 Plan which means giving $9 a month for the remaining 9 months of 2012 in honor of our 9th Birthday.
If we are successful, our plan is to present this model at Netroots Nation as a real, tangible example of how to make state blogging and local activism real and sustainable for the dozens of others of sites like ours across the country. Whether or not that happens, depends on the generosity of people like you.
Fort Bend County Representative Ron Reynolds was arrested yesterday and charged with violating Texas' barratry law which prohibits the solicitation of clients by lawyers in certain circumstances. He was released after posting a $5,000 bond shortly after midnight.
His first court appearance is scheduled for tomorrow at which point more details as to the specific charges will be available.
Reynolds is a Democrat who defeated incumbent Rep. Dora Olivo in the 2010 primary 58%-42%.
If it wasn't clear before that the Texas Democratic Party has lost it's mojo, it's clear now. Party leaders who urged former State Representative Paul Sadler to enter the US Senate race when Lt. Gen. Ric Sanchez dropped out in December accomplished getting a candidate, but little else.
In his recently released FEC campaign finance report for the first quarter of the year, Sadler reported raising just $72,800. Having spent $39,226 of it this quarter, his cash on hand stands at just $33,574. Sadler loaned his campaign $5,000 and has $25,987.50 in debt to Fletcher Rowley for campaign management. He had 38 individual itemized donors. Just under 25% of Sadler's total, $17,500, came from four union PACs. For comparison, in 2007, US Senate candidate Rick Noriega raised $570,000 in his first fundraising quarter from 1300 donors, with $158,000 of that raised online.
"It's shocking. It's absolutely shocking to me," Sadler said. "We're in uncharted waters. I don't think we've seen a primary where there was basically no money given. And that's basically where we are."
...
"There's a lot of donor fatigue," Sadler said. "I think they're just tired of getting hit on."
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"Some candidates can sit in an office for 10 hours a day asking for money," he said. "That's just not who I am."
This report is more sad than shocking. Ever since the 2010 elections decimated the Democratic ranks in the Texas House and in county courthouses, the Party has been found it difficult to fundraise for itself and has dramatically downsized its staff. No one has really talked about these issues openly, though hopefully Democrats will ask questions and demand a plan from their candidates for State Party Chair in Houston in June.
That said, for those in Austin, Sadler is having a fundraiser tonight. You can stop by to help give him the basic resources needed to bear our Party's standard, assuming he is able to get the nomination- not a sure bet (we'll likely have to wait until after a runoff to find out).
Friday, April 20th
6:00PM to 7:30PM
El Sol y La Luna
600 East 6th Street, Austin, Texas
I will begin this post by happily disclosing the fact that I was an inaugural member of Democratic Representative Mark Strama's Campaign Academy in 2004. Four years later, I was Strama's campaign manager and directed the 2008 Campaign Academy which supported the Travis County Democratic Party's efforts. For the 5th cycle in a row, Mark Strama is putting out the call for high school and college applicants to join him in spending a month this summer learning the ins and outs of campaigns as part of the 2012 Campaign Academy.
This program over the years has trained over 100 young people on the basics of campaigns, many of whom have gone on to be activists in our party. This program has an excellent history of speakers and leadership development for high school and college students who have an interest in learning about how politics works from the inside.
Because Strama is unopposed this election, 2012 Campaign Academy participants will have the opportunity to work not only with his campaign, but with the Travis County Coordinated Campaign in a Presidential election year. Participants will be able to engage and interact with campaigns up and down the ticket from Barack Obama to the local level. The program will run during the following dates and times, likely concluding with Strama-Rama, an annual fundraising tradition for Mark's re-election campaign.
Date: June 4, 2012 - July 6, 2012
Daily Schedule: 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM (lunch provided)
Special accommodation may be made for students with part-time summer jobs who wish to participate less than the required 8 hours per day. Check out this 2008 report by KVUE news on the program. Interested applicants can apply online here.
Maxey is one of two candidates who have announced for this seat. The other candidate, Zephaniah "Zeph" Capo of Houston, is a current member of the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC) from Senate District 15. Like Maxey, Capo is openly gay and is a public school teacher who is actively involved with the labor union movement.
