HOUSTON ELECTION REPORT

Houston Election Report

Houston Election Report

Introduction

For the first time since I can remember, maybe since I turned 19, I did not vote today. I apparently never registered to vote in the first place! My only excuse is that I got my new driver's license last year in Austin, and never really got wrapped up in the mayor's race, removing the two major reasons I would remember to register.

I tried to get excited about the mayoral election, particularly when my friends and coworkers began talking about the different candidates. Since the election is technically “non-partisan”, it becomes a little bit harder to pick your preferred candidate (Houston Chronicle , 2009). Not that that's a bad thing; on the contrary, I think it's probably the best situation. It's so easy to claim to be a member of one political party or another, and end up voting for someone who is pretty much against everything you are for, and vice versa. Party politics is generally about ideology, while local elections are about how many police officers we have or how well our sewer systems work.

Question 1: What were the major differences between this year's elections for Mayor and City Council and last year's elections for President and Congress? Most of the assigned readings for this course have focused on national political campaigns. Of the theories of campaign strategy and voting behavior covered in class, which apply equally well to both local and national elections, and which do not?

Mike McGinn now leads Joe Mallahan by almost 5,000 votes in the mayoral race - comfortably outside the margin for a mandatory recount. After late Friday's count McGinn led by 2,384 votes.

After Monday's vote count McGinn had 96,514 votes (50.9 percent) to Mallahan's 91,575 (48.3 percent).

In front of cheering volunteers and staff, an emotional McGinn thanked his campaign workers.

"Everybody look around this room. Look around this room at the people here. Know what you did, know how hard you worked," McGinn said. "Everybody, today, we did it."

McGinn bucked the business, labor and political establishment in defeating Mallahan. He also overcame a big fundraising disadvantage. Mallahan, the T-Mobile vice president who donated $230,000 to his own campaign, brought in about $700,000(Houston Chronicle , 2009). McGinn raised a little more than $200,000; his staff was made up largely of volunteers.

"We went out and we spoke to people, we listened to people," McGinn said at his election headquarters. "The people of this city believe in Seattle...that when you come together and work on something, you can make it better. We've got a lot more work to do, we all know this...but we know how to do it."

Question 2: Houston city elections are technically non-partisan. What role, if any, did the parties play in the race you wrote about? In national elections, party ID is the best predictor of how someone will vote. When candidates do not run under a party label, what cues are voters most likely to rely on in making their voting decision?

Reports for City ...