MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR:
Messages From the Primary

The March 9 primary election produced plenty of good signs for Democrats. Here are some of the messages we can take heart in.

1) George W. Bush Got Waxed in Texas!

In the 2004 primary election, George Bush got 73,605 votes in Harris County. Democratic presidential candidates got 73,526 votes. Democrats came with 79 votes of out-voting George Bush for president in Harris County! (On election day and in the early vote, Democratic candidates out-polled George Bush decisively – 69,572 for Democrats versus 62,630 for Bush; it was only his advantage in the Howtze run mail-in operation which allowed him to avoid the embarrassment of being beaten by the Democratic presidential candidates in Harris County.)

Statewide, the results were even more astonishing: President Bush got 686,066 votes statewide in Texas; Democratic candidates for president received 830,452 votes – almost 10 percentage points higher than the incumbent! In Dallas County, Democratic presidential candidates outpolled Bush almost 2 to 1 (51,749 for the Democrats; 28,010 for Bush).

Even within the activist Republican community, George W. Bush is very weak. Of the 81,952 votes cast in the Republican primary in Harris County, only 73,605 – less than 90% – were cast for Bush. And this is among the “gung-ho” Republicans who participated in the primary. More than 10% of Republican activists (8,347 out of 81,952) couldn’t bring themselves to vote for their party’s incumbent candidate for president!

Statewide, the results were equally bleak for Bush even within his own party: more than 7.5% of the participants in the Republican primary voted for “uncommitted,” rather than Bush; the number who voted in the primary but refused to cast a ballot for Bush is not yet available statewide, but when added to the “uncommitteds,” will undoubtedly mean that Bush couldn’t break 90% even among hard-core, rabid Republicans. In Tom DeLay’s district, for example, 9.62% of the voters in the Republican primary chose “uncommitted” over George Bush (and that doesn’t count the people who didn’t vote at all in that race, despite being at the Republican primary that day.)

Folks, this is very promising.

2) Democrats Are on the Way Up; Republicans Are on the Way Down (And Out).

The Republicans got 165,958 voters (9.46% of the electorate) to participate in their presidential primary in Harris County in 2000; Democratic turnout was 56,168 (3.20% of the registered voters) last time we had a presidential contest. In 2004, Republican turnout was 81,952 (4.53%) – a drop-off of more than 50%; Democratic participation was 78,466 (4.34%) – an increase of 40%! Overall, this was the lowest turnout for a Republican primary since at least 1990 (and I didn’t go back father than that to check). By contrast this was the highest Democratic turnout we have had in Harris County in all but one of the last six primaries.

And this was in a year when Republicans had far more contested races on the ballot, attracting voters to the polls, than did Democrats. They had two open congressional seats, for example, with multiple candidates in each, spending millions of dollars; Democrats had only one significantly contested congressional district on the ballot in Harris County. Republicans had vigorous campaigns for statewide and local judicial offices and a high profile Railroad Commissioner race; all Democratic candidates for judicial or statewide office in Harris County were unopposed. We did have a serious race for constable in precinct 7 and for state legislature in district 131, but those races overlapped the congressional district 9 election. There were also some other contested legislative races, but nothing which could explain the stark difference in turnout trend, where Democrats were up (40%) while Republican participation fell in half.

Good work Democrats!

3) Republicans Are Still Afraid To Let Voters Vote.

I had not meant nor intended to politicize this, but feel compelled to report it. As you may have heard, on election day a fire at a pesticide plant in the Pasadena area resulted in the closing of polling places for 6 Democratic and 8 Republican precincts for more than three and a half hours and voters being told not to leave their homes (thus, not to go vote) for that same period of time. Giving credit where credit is due, Beverly Kaufman’s elections division did a terrific job of adapting to a situation nobody had every seen occur before – losing that many polling places for that long on election day, and by 1 p.m. they had set up a community polling station at the Pasadena City Hall and, with help from the political parties, found sufficient workers to operate it and got the word out to the public that that facility was available. Our own primary staff (Dinah Weems, Martha Cottingham, and Jennifer Sanders) did a fabulous job responding to this crisis, fielding questions, getting facts, finding workers for the makeshift site, etc.

Because voters in the area had been unable to cast ballots for a protracted period of time, however, we thought those people who wanted to participate in the process that day should be given a full opportunity to do, despite these extraordinary circumstances, so, with the help of Marc Whitehead (thank you, Marc Whitehead!), we submitted a petition to a state district court judge asking that the polls be kept open at those six precincts for one extra hour – until 8 p.m. – so citizens who wanted to participate in the primary election process but were prevented from doing so earlier by an order from city officials that they stay in their homes and not go to the polls (and the unavailability of polling places shut down by the fire) would not be shut out of the process. The County Clerk’s lawyer (from the County Attorney’s Office) attended the hearing and informed the judge that the county had no objection to the request.

To my great surprise, the Republican district court judge turned down this modest request to make voting available to the affected citizens for that one additional hour. So we immediately contacted another district court judge (another Republican – they all are right now), and he, too, turned down our request (after consulting the first judge).

I am shocked and chagrined. The truth of the matter is that there were no contested races which could have been affected by this extension of voting hours. (Ironically, the pesticide warehouse fire occurred in Tom DeLay’s district, and we didn’t really have any seriously contested races in that area.) We were simply trying to encourage citizens to participate in the primary process (and perhaps thereby to be able to become delegates to the various conventions, but at all events, to have a reasonable opportunity to participate in primary day voting, despite these extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances.)

But Republican judges are so afraid of people voting, two of them denied this modest accommodation to permit folks to participate on a

Four years ago, Republican Supreme Court Justices pretended to be so offended by the fact that the standards applied to determining the intent of voters in one county in Florida might be different from the standard employed in another county that the recounts couldn’t continue without violating the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. I wonder what these judges would say about voters in one part of the county being allowed to participate in an election for only 2/3 of the amount of time voters in the rest of the county were permitted to vote.

Basically, two Republican judges in Harris County on March 9 rejected and refused to follow the holding of the Supreme Court of the United States three years ago in Bush v. Gore. Apparently, the Equal Protection Clause can be invoked by Republicans, but not by Democrats.

At all events, this should be an early warning: Republicans (at least Republican judges) do not believe that voting is a good thing for people to do. They will do whatever they can to limit or discourage participation in the electoral process. Democrats believe that voting and participation in the political process is a crucial element of our democratic form of government. Republicans do not share that view nor think that voting is important in a democracy or that results of an election should be honored (witness redistricting, recall, impeachment, and Florida 2000, for example).

As these two Republican judges demonstrated, Republicans will do whatever they can to suppress voting and discourage voter participation in the process. It’s our job to see they don’t succeed in that endeavor.

Gerry Birnberg
Chair, Harris County Democratic Party
March 20, 2004

Archive of Gerry Birnberg's Messages

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