Analyzing the Special City Council Election in District H
Readers may recall that if one just looks at the registered voter population in District H, the Hispanic electorate is now a bit smaller than the Anglo voter group (45% to 42%), with blacks accounted for most of the remainder. Based primarily on those numbers, I thought Maverick Welsh was likely to get one of the runoff spots, leaving the best known and funded Latino contenders, HPD officer Ed Gonzalez, and Houston Community College Trustee Yolanda Navarro Flores, fighting for the other opening. Gonzalez won that fight, leading the field with 31.4% of the vote to Welch’s 26.9%, and Ms. Flores taking third with 18.3%.
Beyond the order of finish, what else does the May 9th vote tell us? Most obviously, very few voters were much interested in who replaces Adrian Garcia as their district council member since just 4,141 people voted out of 93,883 registrants – a paltry 4.41% turnout. Among the few who did vote, it is interesting to see how the six candidates with obviously Hispanic names did collectively. If we add the votes received by Lupe Garcia, Gonzalo Camacho, Hugo Mojica, and Rick Rodriguez to the Ganzalez/Flores total, that comes to 2,707, or 64.7% of the total vote. So, by this measure, the special election turnout was dominated by voters supporting Latino candidates, whether or not these folks themselves were Hispanic. Welsh, the only Anglo on the ballot got 26.6% of the total vote, with African American Larry Williams taking 7.4%.
Now if anything like the combined Hispanic candidate vote rallies behind Ed Gonzalez, he would easily outdistance Maverick Welsh in the runoff. Will that happen? Probably, but not necessarily. Hispanic voters have some inclination to rally behind a runoff contender from their community, but this is far less pronounced that the African American community’s cohesion in similar circumstances. Back in 1991, the Texas Legislature drew a new majority Hispanic congressional district in Harris County, the 29th District of Texas. Three prominent Hispanic candidates entered the 1992 Democratic primary, City Council Member Ben Reyes, State Representative Al Luna, and Houston Municipal Judge Sylvia Garcia. One Anglo, State Senator Gene Green, also ran. Reyes led Green into the runoff, and the combined Hispanic candidate vote totaled more than 70 percent, so Reyes seemed sure to move on to Washington, D.C. after a runoff with Green. That did not happen. Green beat Reyes in the April 1992 runoff election, then repeated his victory later that summer when a federal court forced a rematch because of illegal crossover voting in the April contest. Reyes lost because he could not unite the Hispanic community behind his candidacy when he faced a single Anglo opponent.
Maverick Welsh needs to hope that happens again and he can pull an upset runoff win like Gene Green did 17 years ago. In that regard, he did garner the endorsement of Yolanda Navarro Flores, somewhat increasing his chances.
But if Welch is to prevail, he has to do a far better job in the runoff with his absentee and early vote program. About 15% of the May 9th vote was cast by absentee ballot, and Welsh ran far behind Gonzalez and Flores (even losing this vote to Larry Williams) among the voters who mailed in their ballots. Nor did Welsh do much better with those who voted early in-person across the district, finishing a poor third among these folks who made up 30% of the total special election vote. Since runoffs like this typically attract even fewer voters than the first round, if Mr. Welsh does not substantially close this gap among mail-in balloters and early voters, he will have effectively lost the election before the polls open on “election day” next month.
-Richard Murray
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