Burnt Orange Report

Byron---

HD102 (Harriet Miller's race) is only half inside the 32nd CD. It is true that the portion of the district inside the CD was relatively more Republican than that outside it, but it is also true that Harriet outperformed the other Democratic candidates in her district over all. The only Democrat who beat her head-to-head in identical precincts was Frost, and her relative performance versus the other Democratic candidates within her own district appears to have been essentially the same, regardless of whether the precincts were inside or outside of CD32. Thus, it's hard to identify any "Frost effect" in her race at all, since her differential wasn't changed by whether his people were working the turnout phones.

I'll correct that... thanks

On January 5th, at a Finance Council meeting of the Dallas County Democratic Party, in response to a question from Katy Hubener (the recent candidate for HD106 who came very close) asking what effect the 4.5 million dollar Frost race had on the performance of the county-wides, Chair Hays said that she thought that the Frost campaign had no effect at all because all the money was spent entirely within the 32nd district, which Frost lost very badly. How would you characterize Chair Hays's reasoning, Byron?

Hays is an idiot. I don't use that term lightly either. She is incapable of raising money let alone organizing a field staff. I went to volunteer during early vote and there office was CLOSED!

I think it's fair to say this:

Frost ran 10 points ahead of Kerry in 32.

If this came in any part from getting more Democrats to the polls, then the DCDP candidates had their margin of defeat in 32 cut by a considerable amount.

Not losing a bad box by as much as you expected is just as good as out-performing a good box.

Now the question is, where did Frost's ballots come from? Increasing Dem turnout, or drawing cross-over votes?

That really ought to be the question.

Or perhaps my question presents its own answer.

Obviously, a lot of people who voted for Frost didn't vote for Kerry.

Then again, a lot of people who voted for downballot Dems also didn't vote for Kerry.

QUESTION: Now the question is, where did Frost's ballots come from? Increasing Dem turnout, or drawing cross-over votes?

ANSWER: Both

[*someone who crosses over and doesn't vote a straight ticket is far less likely to keep going done and individually voting for a all Rs.]

Dean: 69%
Frost: 25%

because the numbers don't lie :)

What numbers are those Karl T? Is the the DFA poll spread?

Don't get me wrong I like netroots but why do they feel that they are the only opinion that matters in Dem politics. Alot of people slammed the 14 TX members of the DNC for being out of touch with the grassroots. I disagree. Our elected dems are on the frontlines and most connected with the grassroots.

Those leaders have funded and organized the campaigns for the last several decades. Is the average Dem activist more likely to have a job where they can regularly post to a blogg throughout the day or someone who does what they can to get their friends and neighboors to vote?

Another point worth making:

Dallas County's been trending Dem for years.

Granted, Frost should get credit where credit is due.

But I think the modest increase in DPI should not necessarily be viewed as surprising.

I agree Jim, and that's what the PowerPoint presentation is for. It takes an in-depth, detailed look at where the increases came in 2004.

I don't know much about the inner-workings of the Dallas County Democratic Party, but I do feel I should jump to Susan Hays' defense here.

I am very fimiliar with the situation of Susan allegedly "endorsing" a Republican judge. That's not at all what she did. She wrote a letter of support for a (as I understand it) centrist/moderate GOP judge who she'd known a long, long time. To me, supporting someone toward the middle in an era when there will be few moderates appointed by the administration isn't a hanging offense. If it were an election, that'd be an entirely different matter, but it was a federal judicial appointment.

Also, from my work with Susan in SD2, I've found her very helpful. Again, I can't speak for the inter-party politics, but I will defend Susan on what I'm familiar with.

I'm sure there are some centrist Democrats in Van Zandt County who'd consider passing a resolution of no-confidence in me--in spite of our wins and financial success--because I'm too liberal and won't "get along to go along" with the Republicans locally.

Vince, what Susan did would have been ok if she did it on her own letterhead as a lawyer, but she used the Dallas County Democratic Party letterhead. Even Sen. Cornyn read the letter into the record as the Chair of the Democrat Party of Dallas County.

Regarding Dallas County SD-2; The SW Dallas County portions are Democratic (Cedar Hill, DeSoto, Lancaster), but there's not enough population, although its growing. Garland is a low turnout town except for the affulent areas as well as Mesquite which used to be David Cain/Ted Lyon territory. West Mesquite is where most of the Dems live. North Mesquite has a large christian coalition contingent which is very organized and gets out the vote for Jeb Hensarling and Elvira Reyna. The problems in SD-2 are Rowlett, Sachse and the new areas of Garland, which have voting patterns more similar to Collin County or Rockwall. I look forward to attending the Canton meeting on SD-2.

Re.: Comments of PCT 1233 – What’s missing from the PowerPoint presentation provided is the commentary that went with it. My intention was to show not only how Frost’s effort “democratized” Dallas county, but also a gratuitous plug for how I think the prevailing thinking in Dallas must change in order to securely win in the future. The point was not so much that Miller benefited from Frost’s campaign, but rather that like Frost she brought an aggressive persuasional campaign to a republican district and the results were quite dramatic. Although there was certainly some synergy between the two candidates, Miller did exceedingly well largely due to her and her volunteer’s extraordinary efforts. Now Miller, like Frost, had only the most remote chance of winning, but their campaigns both proved the truth of what Frost himself said during the campaign – the democratic message can resonate even among voters that we have traditionally written off. The historical refrain, at least in Dallas, is that “turnout is everything” – thus, all of our county efforts have been targeted to minority or “base” constituencies. If raising turnout from our base alone could win elections, then we would have won the County in 2002 when the minority vote as a percentage of total county turnout was highest. We won a handful of races this year, however, when it was significantly lower. How can this be? Simply put – it seems to me that Frost’s efforts broke straight ticket voting and had the effect of making Democrats and our message more palatable to an enormous number of voters. And remember, Frost’s campaign was not limited to CD32 – he ran advertisements across North Texas and all sorts of people were exposed to his message thru media coverage and interaction with the candidates at forums, public events and churches. To suggest, as our Chairwoman has done, that the victory was due to turnout work in 16 precincts in the 23rd Senate District (this has now morphed into 35 precincts over the past two weeks) is simply erroneous. Not only was the 23rd’s contribution to the total countywide turnout this year lower than the past 3 election cycles, whatever gain was made in Hispanic turnout (largely located in those CD32 precincts within SD23) was offset by the drop in black participation! – Not surprising since there we no African Americans on the ballot. So what does this mean for the future? Well – it’s simply not reasonable to assume that black voters are going to be motivated by billboard appeals from Senator Royce West alone without African Americans actually on the ticket; this was a huge deficit which the Dallas County Chairman must accept some responsibility. Nor can we assume that the Hispanic electorate is going to come to the rescue anytime soon – they’re getting more republican and at least in Dallas still have very anemic turnout. What works is getting a persuasional message out to a much broader range of Dallas voters - and with our very limited campaign budgets, its only possible with aggressive direct mail (just like the republicans have been doing since the late 70s.) TDP sent out direct mail pieces (not the County party) featuring Valdez, Raggio & Ms. Huebener – quite effective. Simply put, our Party’s problem, not only in Dallas but the state as well, is not with minority voters; it’s with anglo voters. Our Dallas county effort in 2006 must have both turnout and persuasional components to be successful – in other words, replicate as far as possible what Frost was able to do among voters long written-off by party activists along with a diverse ticket and meaningful turnout efforts. Unfortunately, rather than planning for and building a war-chest for the 2006 elections, what we’re getting is a combination of self-serving propaganda and hot-air from an increasingly unpopular County chair feebly funded by a handful of strutting egoists among Dallas’ cadre of trial lawyers; and a growing insurgency among activists which will consume most of their energy for the better part of the year.

Gary.... thanks for your clarifications. My apologies if I misrepresented any of the arguments that you made.

I agree with Gary's posting on Frost and Harriet Miller races. I am a precinct chair in a Republican majority precinct (1811) that is in both CD 32 and HD 102 and worked on both Frost & Miller's races. What made a positive difference this yr. were good candidates and good organization. Previously we didn't have strong Democratic candidates for Congress and House Rep. in this area, and our past numbers reflected this. In 2004 my precinct improved its DPI by 12+ pts, in 2002 our DPI was 21 and this yr for Frost we got him a 33% and 35% for Harriet Miller, while Kerry and the judges received about 29%. We saw this kind of improvement in many of the precincts in Far North Dallas, some of them recording middle 40s% DPIs for Frost and Miller. Also these DPI increases took place in precincts that had turnouts in the 70-75%.

I am strong believer that Lupe and the Judges owe their victories in part to the good organizing work that Frost did in increasing DPI throughout the 32nd and repressing the Republican vote. While many are rightly excited about the Democratic victories, 2006 may not be as Democratic friendly for the county as some think without a Frost on the ticket fighting the good battle.