Maurice Chammah’s “Let the Lord Sort Them” is a searing history of the rise and fall of capital punishment.
Harris County
GOP state legislators have proposed bills that could make it more difficult to cast a ballot in 2022. Some might backfire on the party.
The county’s decision to open eight locations for round-the-clock early voting drew workers too busy to vote during the day—and others eager to send a message about voter suppression.
“Bonkers” is, of course, a technical term.
After some Houstonians had to wait in six-hour lines to vote in the March primary, new county clerk Chris Hollins is determined to help every eligible Houstonian cast a ballot this fall.
While the rest of Houston’s legal community was adapting to COVID-19, DA Kim Ogg was determined to find who leaked an internal document.
Governor Greg Abbott is letting counties decide whether to postpone certain May elections. For the general, expanded vote by mail may be necessary.
Four years ago, Ogg won election by promising to reform the county’s justice system. Now she’s getting primaried by two of her former prosecutors, who say she hasn’t done enough.
Led by a twentysomething Latina, Democrats now run Harris County, offering a glimpse at what things might look like—for better or for worse—if the party finds itself back on top across Texas.
In a landmark legal case, Harris County has agreed to release the vast majority of misdemeanor arrestees instead of locking them up. But reformers aren’t done yet.
The National Voter Registration Act prohibits removing ineligible voters from voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. That’s just what the Harris County registrar tried to do.
That’s one way to do outreach to voters who may feel alienated by the presumptive Republican nominee for President.
That’s definitely not how anyone saw that investigation going.
According to Blanca Borrego's family, she was taken into an exam room where sheriff's deputies were waiting for her.
Lots of bad news—often caught on camera.
After the Houston Chronicle's shocking and revealing depiction of what can happen with a grand jury, the Greater Houston Coalition for Justice is pushing for change.
For years Harris County politics has been controlled by a small group of political operatives and consultants. Foremost among these is Steven Hotze, a doctor who heads an organization called the Conservative Republicans of Texas (CRT). The CRT and other groups Hotze is affiliated with send out mailers…
Sheriff Adrian Garcia spent part of his week last week testifying before the Department of Justice about the rate of abuse that occurs under his watch.
Texans feted both presidential candidates Tuesday as Mitt Romney's campaign coped with the fallout from the candidate's latest blunder.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker suggested making the city's crime lab independent and adding a Innocence Project representative to the board overseeing it.
Tomball state representative Allen Fletcher is on his way to a second term. His former business associate may be on his way to the federal penitentiary.
Inside the Eighth Wonder of the World—the largest shelter ever organized by the American Red Cross—faith, hope, and charity helped the survivors of Hurricane Katrina begin the process of rebuilding their lives.
The number of people Texas executes each year is steadily declining as public sentiment in America turns against the death penalty.
Larry Swearingen has ten scientists and doctors who say he isn't a killer. He also has a new execution date.
Dr. Richard Murray, the University of Houston political scientist and TV commentator, recently posted on the Channel 13 Web site some numbers about population trends in Harris County. The latest estimates show most of the growth in Texas and the Houston metro area is driven by the increasing…
Murray, the University of Houston political science professor and pollster (although he says he doesn't do much political polling any more), spoke yesterday at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. I asked him beforehand about the Thibaut-Murphy race. (His son is a consultant for Thibaut.) He said that it was going to be very close, but Thibaut might have a slight edge because the Anglo population in the district has been declining by around 2% per election cycle. Murray began his talk by describing himself as a moderate Democrat. He addressed the difference between the one-party Democratic state that existed when he arrived here in the sixties, and the one-party Republican state that exists now. "The problems are more serious with the current one-party system than with the one-party system of the sixties," he said. "The voters in the Democratic primary were more representative of the state as a whole than the voters in the Republican primary are today." This is true. The Republican party did not hold primaries in most counties. Texans were conservative, but they were conservative Democrats. The Democratic party was split between liberals and conservatives, so that a broad spectrum of opinions was represented in the primary. Almost everybody voted in the Democratic primary, including the small number of people who identified themselves as Republicans. Murray addressed the subject of Hispanic voting. Hispanic registration, he said, was 21%, but Hispanic voter turnout was only 12%. The Anglo vote will keep going down, he said. This decade will see 400,000 to 500,000 more Anglos coming to Texas -- but 4 million "other." Anglos will be 10% of the total increase. Republicans have competed for the Hispanic vote, Murray said. They have competed well, but Murray foresees a significant reversal.
Every year thousands of women are smuggled into the United States and forced to work as prostitutes. Many of them end up in Houston, in massage parlors and spas. Most of them will have a hard time ever getting out.
The Gallup organization released a nationwide poll last week showing the partisan preference in every state. The daily tracking poll, conducted during the election campaign, sampled 19,415 adult Texans concerning their self-identification by political party and found that 43.4% identified themselves as Democrats compared to 41.0% who identified themselves as Republicans. Do I find the results credible? To some extent, yes. There is no shortage of evidence of a Democratic trend: the Democrats' sweep of Dallas County offices in 2006; similar. but less, success in Harris County this year; and the huge turnout for the 2008 presidential primary. But I question the accuracy of a poll about party identification that is based upon interviews with adults, period. Not likely voters. Not registered voters. No effort was made to screen the sample. In any case, the Democrats' problems are manifest: They can't win an election above the local level. They can't win a statewide race; they can't even win a contested congressional race. It really doesn't matter what people's political leanings are. If those leanings don't translate into votes cast and elections won, they don't count. In the Gallup poll, Oklahoma was bluer than Texas. Democrats hold a six-point lead there over Republicans in party ID. But John McCain carried every county. According to Gallup, Georgia also computes as a blue state. The Democrats didn't come close to winning the U.S. Senate seat that was contested there. This is the biggest problem the Democrats have: How do they turn party ID into votes? I have had some long conversations with a semi-retired Democratic strategist (as well as with some Democratic politicians). His view is that the Democrats are nowhere close to being an effective political party. They don't have the fundraising base to compete with Republicans. They don't have the consultant talent to compete with Republicans. They don't have a bench of candidates who can compete with Republicans at the statewide level. The Republicans are low-hanging fruit, but the Democrats don't have the party infrastructure that can take advantage of the GOP's failure to govern the state. Will Rogers said it some 70 years ago: "I belong to no organized political party. I'm a Democrat." The strategist pointed out to me that the Republicans will probably raise and spend $100 million in the next election cycle. This includes the contested gubernatorial primary, the general election, and possibly a U.S. Senate special election, plus the other statewide and legislative races. That kind of money brings out voters. How can the Democrats match that? They can't. The Democrats do not have the ability to fund statewide races and legislative races at the same time. Yes, they have developed some new fundraising sources. But they are still far behind in the statewide races. This creates a dilemma. What should they do with their limited resources? Try to elect a governor? Try for seats on the Legislative Redistricting Board? Focus on the top of the ballot or the bottom? The money goes further at the bottom, but the credibility of the party can be restored only by winning at the top. The Democratic political operation in Texas is not without talent. It's without direction. It's without coordination. There plenty of wannabes, but no game plan. You have the House Democratic Campaign Committee, the Lone Star Project out of D.C., the trial lawyers, Annie's List, and lesser fiefdoms. Things slip through the cracks. Chris Harris should have been challenged for his Senate seat. Linda Harper-Brown should have been defeated. The Democrats need--you're not going to like this--a Karl Rove. (And before Rove there was Norm Newton and the Associated Republicans of Texas. Look what Rove was able to do for the Republican party in Texas. Look at what Eppstein was able to do in getting Republicans elected to the Legislature. You have to have people who are willing to spend full time on politics--not just on their clients, and not on lobbying, but thinking about the next election and how to win it. That's what Rove did in the late eighties and the nineties. That is what Jack Martin did when he was Lloyd Bentsen's chief operative, before he formed Public Strategies. The 1982 election, in which Bentsen was reelected, Bill Clements was swept out of the governor's office, and Democrats won up and down the ballot even as Ronald Reagan occupied the White House, is the model for a coordinated campaign. Until the Democrats treat politics as a business that requires an effective organization and an effective message, they are not going to fulfill the high expectations of their base. The Republican policies of the past six years should have been a gold mine for opposition research, but the Democrats have no message machinery. When Karen Hughes was at the state Republican Party, she chipped away at the Democrats every day. The rest of this post is strictly for political junkies.
I am going to use this format to update daily the number of early votes cast in the fifteen counties with the most registered voters, ranked by the Secretary of State in the order of most to least registered voters. I am also going to include the numbers for the…
As Dallas goes, so goes Houston. Two years after Democrats swept Republicans out of control in the Dallas County courthouse, it appears that the D’s will do the same in Harris County, with one exception: county judge, Ed Emmett, whom many will remember as a former legislator in the eighties.
In a Zogby poll taken for the Houston Chronicle to coincide with the start of early voting, the results showed Barack Obama with a 7-point lead over John McCain in Harris County and Rick Noriega with a similar lead over John Cornyn. The poll was published by the…
Fort Bend County is off the charts: up 142% compared to the votes cast here in 2004. Harris County is up 117%. The lowest six of the top fifteen counties (based on registered voters) have combined to cast just 4,000 votes more than Harris County. The six are Fort Bend,…
