The sender is a Democratic election official whom I knew when we were students at Rice University. These are his observations. I have edited some of them to remove material that I would describe as “over the top.” He writes:

I cannot speak publicly or for attribution from a partisan or official perspective right now. Actually, I am not sure I have a partisan perspective on this. It is a matter of the profound complicity of both party establishments – the ones we both find more alike than not.

This is an outrage by any patriotic standard I can think of. It is not enough that the cronies in our City-County government stuff people in jail and set up a death-penalty machine based on junk-science and systematic evidence-tampering. Behind their unctuous blather, they are contemptuous of and careless with elections. As others note, the GOP establishment fears their voters and the Democratic establishment does not want to have anything to do with theirs. Trust me, voters sense this.

So, the possibilities here in Harris County range from arson to what BP has taught us to refer to as gross negligence.

No elected official from either party should be able to wring their hands and wonder “who could have known?” For all the hoopla bout “growth,” we are working in Harris County within mid-eighties budget constraints for elections. Actually, the “elections industry” has been turned from a “cost-center” to a non-partisan “profit-center” for our debt-ridden, predatory government.

This has been a catastrophe waiting to happen since 2004, when I started complaining about storing uncounted ballots in the broom closet but calling it a “vault”. That is the whole story of the facility known by those of us as use it as the “Ballot Barn” at the “Dog Pound”. But, Commissioners Court has a fine-sounding label today: They call it the “Election Technology Center”. Yeah, right. They could save money on signage by calling it a sham.

By whatever label, it is just one metal building designed to hold the old Shoup voting machines. There used to be four of them, but the others were sold off to cronies many, many scandals ago, and everything needed to conduct anything but ballot-by-mail was stuffed into the one remaining building on cheap land no crony could commercialize. Even the ballot-by-mail department is shoved into a corner of the 4th floor….

The building beyond Fifth Ward has a great slab that can hold tons of heavy machinery, fork-lifts, and so on. But, it is now filled with wooden shelving, pallets, partitions, a false ceiling, plastic, cardboard, packing material, and … those computer batteries that get hot and catch fire.

Also, there are your sometime convict labor, and smokers, but none of the fire detection and suppression equipment that is required for the mission-critical electronic equipment and the high operational pace of election season. The County Clerk says the building had sprinklers, but she is not sure they worked. Indeed, they were probably shut off. You do not use water on electronic equipment that is stored in cardboard boxes. That could ruin everything even without a fire.

It does not take and, indeed, is not likely to require a “conspiracy” to burn-up all the voting machines and all the much more complex on-line ballot-qualification equipment on Canino Road. Yes, that is where everything required to conduct anything but absentee voting is stored. The most valuable and essential equipment is stored in cardboard boxes and wooden “goats”. The flashy stuff featured in promotional material is stored in plastic or aluminum cases that look snazzy and cost a lot: But, they burn like crazy.

All it takes is a cigarette flipped into a corner of half of the building filled with cardboard boxes and packing to start a smoldering fire that would “flash-over” in the wee hours of the morning. The wooden building inside of a steel one is perfect for the kind of fire that causes plastic to turn into flammable gas and aluminum to catch fire.

Forget building codes, replacement cost insurance and business continuity plans, or even rinky-dink fire inspections. No, the perpetually incumbent Commissioners’ Court “don’ need no stinkin’ elections” and spend as little as possible on critical personnel, facilities, and professional staff. They got themselves that general-purpose “sovereign immunity” — also complacent, docile Democrats, especially in the City of Houston, who pay a huge fraction of the cost of elections by writing a blank check and cowering at what skeleton [city secretary] Anna Russell might pull out of her closet, if any one of them dared to criticize her cronies and patrons at the Courthouse.

Just don’t call this a conspiracy: This catastrophic failure of what should be responsible, two-party government is “hiding in plain sight”.

So, what would the feds do? We don’t even have a US Attorney here. If we did, at least one of the prospective candidates for that office would know what to do with this fire – a more direct threat to republican democracy than even the Reichstag fire.

* * * *

As you can see, my correspondent can get carried away at times. But his description of the warehouse, and of the indifference of county government, rings true.

The continuing investigation into the origin of the fire that destroyed all of Harris County’s voting machines has not arrived at a conclusion. I’m not going to jump the gun. But I will say this: If arson proves to be the cause, the feds are going to be swarming into Harris County. With early voting less than two months away, the election has been seriously disrupted. If the fire was deliberately set, the immediate question is, who benefits from consequences of the fire, which will be long lines, changes in polling places, tens of thousand of people trying to figure out where they go to vote, and, possibly, the use of paper ballots and all the uncertainties that go with them? We could see a replay of Florida 2000.

No doubt the Democrats will feel that they are the losers in the fire. Bill White has been counting on a big turnout in Harris County to propel him to victory. The disruptions will surely depress turnout, but you can argue that two ways: (1) Republicans are more motivated than Democrats in this election cycle, so if turnout is depressed, Perry is damaged more than White. Or, (2) The confusion about polling places is more likely to depress turnout among minorities, who, of course, are likely Democratic voters.

Right now we are just at the beginning of this story. If the cause of the fire turns out to be bad wiring, much of the drama evaporates. But if it is arson, look out. Already Democrats have expressed concern that the courthouse Republicans who control the voting system will compress the number of polling places, making it more difficult for Democratic voters to find where to cast their ballots. This could get really ugly.

The level of political discourse in this campaign is about as bad as I have ever seen it. Take today’s communication from the Perry campaign:

Today is Day 171 of liberal trial lawyer Bill White refusing to debate. He also continues to refuse to release his taxes from his years in public service.

How is Bill White “refusing to debate?” I suppose the Perry camp would say, well, we said we wouldn’t debate unless he releases his taxes. So White is “refusing” to debate by not releasing all his tax returns. How does that make sense? Of course, as any campaign neophyte would know, White should have just released all his tax returns. He handed the Perry campaign a talking point.

The other recent development in the campaign has been the newspaper ads describing Rick Perry as a “coward” for refusing to debate. These were a big mistake. You just don’t call people a coward in our Texas culture. Perry has his share of shortcomings, but it would never occur to me to call him a coward. Them’s fightin’ words. This is the risk of independent expenditures: the campaign that is supposed to benefit from them can’t control the content of the attack unless it coordinates with the independent group–but coordination is illegal. I will be surprised if the attacks don’t raise White’s negatives.

White is still within single digits of Perry. That isn’t too bad a position to be in, considering the political climate for Democrats in this state, and the amount of time remaining in the race. White has taken a lot of shots from Perry, many of them unfounded (such as “hurricane profiteering”). He hasn’t gotten a lot of traction, but neither has he fallen off the radar screen. White came into this race with a good image. He should tell the trial lawyers who are attacking Perry to shut it down.

Tagged: bill white, rick perry

A marker honoring Charlie Wilson will be dedicated in the State Cemetery at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday. Charlie had an amazing life and he did his part to change the world. I’ll be there.

The race hasn’t budged since the last poll (July 14, Perry 50, White 41). What is significant is that White has spent buckets of money since the last poll and he hasn’t moved any numbers. Probably most Texans know how they are going to vote in this race.

Here is the report on the pollster’s Web site:

Neither major party candidate appears to be gaining any ground in Texas ‘ gubernatorial race, with Republican incumbent Rick Perry still holding a small lead.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the state finds Perry earning 49% support, while Democrat Bill White, a former mayor of Houston, receives 41% of the vote. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided.

The race remains Solid GOP in the Rasmussen Reports’ Election 2010 Gubernatorial Scorecard. [bold face added]

Last month, Perry held a nearly identical 50% to 41% advantage over White. In match-ups since February, Perry’s support has ranged from 47% to 51%. White has earned 38% to 44% of the vote in that same period.

White faces a tough race in a state that trends conservative Republican, especially given the national electoral mood.

Seventy-six percent (76%) of Texas voters consider Perry a conservative. Forty-two percent (42%) view White as a liberal, while another 29% describe him as a moderate.

Despite the perceived differences in ideology, 51% of voters in the state describe Perry’s political views as mainstream, and 52% say the same of White’s views. Thirty-three percent (33%) brand Perry’s views as extreme, and 29% think White’s are extreme.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Texas was conducted on August 22, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

Perry is favored by 72% of Republicans, while 84% of Democrats support White. Among voters not affiliated with either political party, the Republican leads by a 59% to 33% margin.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of voters in the state approve of the job Perry is doing as governor. Forty-five percent (45%) disapprove. These numbers, too, have held steady for months.

Twenty percent (20%) of voters in Texas have a Very Favorable opinion of Perry, while 20% view him Very Unfavorably.

White is regarded Very Favorably by 19% and Very Unfavorably by 18%.

* * * *

I see nothing in here that is bad for Perry or good for White. Nothing has changed except the White campaign’s bank balance–for the worse. The political climate weighs heavily in Perry’s favor and is reflected in Perry’s high approval rating. About the only thing White can hold onto is that this is August and most people do not pay attention to politics in August.

The most significant number is Perry’s 59-33 margin among unaffiliated voters. If you’re a Democratic candidate and independent voters are breaking almost 2 to 1 against you, you’re unelectable.

White’s television has been primarily positive to this point. At some point he is going to have to attack Perry. But most of the anti-Perry issues were vetted in the primary by Hutchison, and she did nothing but lose ground throughout the campaign. Perry is such a familiar figure by now that everybody knows how they feel about him. This is why, as I have written before, nothing sticks to him. When I was on MSNBC earlier in the month, Chuck Todd asked me, “Does White have a snowball’s chance?” My response was, “That’s about right. He has a snowball’s chance.”

Tagged: bill white, rasmussen reports, rick perry

To readers:

I think gremlins must have invaded the Rasmussen Web site yesterday. The pie charts that I referred to yesterday are gone today. Where the charts were yesterday, there is white space today. The Perry job approval numbers are still there. The media coverage pie chart is gone too. (It showed Perry 77% of coverage, White 22%). That sounds right, but a lot of Perry’s coverage has been not so good. In any case, I don’t trust any of the numbers I reported yesterday, especially White’s negatives. He’s still largely unknown. No way his negatives are in the 40s today, though they may end up there.–pb

* * * *

Expectations were high that a new Rasmussen poll was coming out today on the Texas governor’s race. (The previous poll, on July 15, had Perry leading White by 50% to 41%.) Apparently not. Here is what is available on the Rasmussen Web site. These numbers bear yesterday’s date, 8/18:

Positive/Negative view:
Perry 45.4% positive, 54.6% negative
White 44.7% positive, 55.3% negative

White’s negatives have shot up during the campaign. This may indicate that the money he spent on television (along with the independent expenditures on his behalf) may have worked against him.

Perry job approval: 52% approve, 47% disapprove. This indicates that the electorate is sharply polarized. No surprise. Perry is an extremely partisan and divisive candidate.

Rasmussen puts great emphasis on “strong” approval and disapproval. The graph for Obama’s strong approval/disapproval is not easy to read, but the gap is negative 24. Approximately 30% strongly approve of Obama’s job performance and 54% strongly disapprove.

When the next Rasmussen poll appears, a crucial point will be whether White, who has run a lot of television with no answer from Perry, has closed the gap at all, and whether it matters at this stage of the race. I think it does matter. White needs to start showing some movement if he is going to continue having success in fundraising.

In response to Eileen’s question, below, about whether the mountains were real or fake: They were fake. Colorado Springs is situated right at the base of the mountains. It is a magnificent setting, but if you go two miles east of I-25–say, to the airport, it is plains, plains, plains all the way to the Mississippi/Missouri. MSNBC caught up with me in Grand Junction (the junction being where the Gunnison River joins the Colorado) almost to the Utah border. Unfortunately, there was no TV studio they could use for an interview, so I said that my wife and I would drive to Colorado Springs, where I had hoped we could stop anyway. The interview was originally scheduled for the studios of the NBC affiliate, but then the New York schedulers discovered that there was a state-of-the-art studio at Focus on the Family. So we drove to Colorado Springs and the next morning I headed north to the studio.

I’m not the most punctual person in the world, but I had a GPS and printed directions for 8605 Explorer. Just as the GPS gal with a Brit accent was giving me the crucial directions, MSNBC called to ask where I was. I couldn’t hear the directions. I was able to backtrack and get to the Focus on the Family campus, a large compound with buildings set back from the street so that it was impossible to find addresses. But I arrived on time at 8605. Alas, the door was locked. Meanwhile, my cell phone was ringing with NBC wanting to know where I was. Fortunately, a janitor was walking up to the door. He wanted to know who I was. I wanted to know where I was. Wrong address! The TV studio, the janitor said, was in another building, 8655 Explorer. I drove up and parked my car in the tow-away, fire zone, red curb area as close to the front door as I could and a very worried producer met me inside. We raced up the stairs and I made it on time.

I thought Chuck Todd did a great job with the interview. (It didn’t hurt my opinion of him that he cited my blog post about Obama’s trip.) He didn’t just ask short questions; he began his questions with a bit of a discourse. I felt that the interview was more like a conversation than an effort to get me to say something controversial. I was surprised by how long the segment was. In the end, he asked me if White had a “snowball’s chance” and I said that “snowball’s chance” was about right. (I did add that White had been a very good mayor of Houston.) Todd said that David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, believes that Texas will be a swing state in future3 elections. I pointed out that Perry usually gets about a third of the Hispanic vote and added that Hispanic turnout, which is the basis of Plouffe’s optimism, is increasing only at the rate of around 1/2% per election cycle, and at that rate it would be the 2020s before Texas would be a swing state.

(more…)

Tagged: colorado

So is the scenery behind him fake or real?

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Republicans are salivating with anticipation; Democrats are running for cover. This is nothing new. The biggest enemy of the Texas Democratic party has always been the national Democratic party, dating back to 1952, when Governor Allan Shivers broke the Solid South by endorsing Eisenhower, who carried Texas. The worst thing that can happen to the Texas Democratic party is for national Democrats to nominate or elect a presidential aspirant who is anathema in Texas. John F. Kennedy carried the state in 1960, but he would not have done so had he not made the shrewd choice of Lyndon Johnson for a running mate. Hubert Humphrey carried the state against Richard Nixon in 1968, barely. McGovern was a total disaster in 1972. His presence on the ticket assured another term for U.S. Senator John Tower and an easy win here for President Richard Nixon. Jimmy Carter carried the state in 1976–the last Democrat to do so–but he was so unpopular by 1978 that the Republicans, a party still in the larval stage, reelected Tower and won the governorship, behind Bill Clements, for the first time since Reconstruction. In 1980 Reagan thumped Carter here, and he won again in 1984. The 1984 Democratic candidate was Walter Mondale, and he carried only his home state of Minnesota. The ’84 election began the destruction of the Texas congressional delegation. which was the most powerful and most cohesive in the House. Six Democrats lost their seats that year. In 1988, U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen was Michael Dukakis’s running mate. That gave Texas Democrats some hope, but (1) George H. W. Bush was the nominee, and (2) Dukakis ran a terrible campaign. Bush won, 55.44% to 43.68%.

The only Democratic nominee, other than Carter in ’76, who has run well in Texas since 1952 is Bill Clinton. In 1992, with Ross Perot in the race, Bush narrowly carried Texas, 40.56% to Clinton’s 37.07%. Perot got 22.01%. The race was close again in 1996, when Bob Dole defeated Clinton, 48.75% to 43.83%. The next two elections were landslides for George W. Bush against Al Gore (2000) and John Kerry (2004). In 2008, Obama could muster only 43.68% against John McCain’s 55.44%.

In short, national Democratic candidates have a long history of running poorly here. The only reason that they visit Texas at all is to raise money, and all that does is take money out of the state that might be used here to pick up some legislative seats. Obama’s visit will help the entire Republican ticket. So if Bill White is perceived as running away from Obama, who can blame him?

Tagged: barack obama, bill white

I’m out here in the Four Corners area, and there has been some pretty interesting politics going on. In Arizona, Ben Quayle, the thirty-three year old son of the former vice-president, is running for the hotly contested Republican primary in the 3rd district. One publication has already reported that Quayle has never cast a ballot in a municipal election and has voted in only two Republican primaries since first registering to vote in May 1997. A local TV station confronted him over a brochure he put out saying that he intended to raise his family in Arizona. Nothing to criticize there, except that, as the TV station pointed out, he does not have a family; the two children portrayed in the family portrait are his nieces.

In New Mexico, where Governor Bill Richardson is term-limited, Liuetenant Governor Diane Denish, who isthe Democratic nominee for governor, has been outted by a Libertarian blog, called The Watchdog, for misusing federal stimulus funds. Not the Obama stimulus funds, but funds from a 2003 stimulus package signed by President Bush. I was just watching the news on TV one night when I heard this campaign ad: “As jobs were lost, Richardson-Denish wasted millions. … Denish even spent federal stimulus funds on campaign Christmas cards.” (She did hire a contract employee to help with Christmas cards but the amount was negligible.) However, her biggest problem is probably Richardson.

Denish’s Republican opponent, Susana Martinez, accused her of using $225,000 in federal funds to pay for a driver to shuttle her to meetings. I found another reference that she received $106,500 to hire personal security personnel. Martinez, a district attorney, says that her security detail is a .380 semi-automatic handgun. Denish fired back that Martinez has the worst DUI conviction record in the state. Denish also said Martinez took money from a big Swiftboat contributor. Hmm … could that be our own Bob Perry, who has made some big contributions to Hispanic Republicans in Texas?

Tagged: ben quayle, bob perry, diane denish