Turnout in Houston’s election was widely expected to be about 25%, a fairly sad showing with an open mayoral race on the ballot. Worst-case projections had 200,000 voters coming out. Turnout was a pathetic 19%; less than 180,000 voted. As the Houston Chronicle put it, “voters stayed home in drove. Despite Houston’s growth since 1997, about half the number of voters showed up this year as in that mayoral free-for-all. With an undervote of only about 2%, it was the rare voter who showed up and didn’t make a choice in the mayoral race.

The Houston Chronicle got its anti-Peter Brown wish; Annise Parker and Gene Locke made it to the runoff with about 56% of the vote received between the two of them. Peter Brown spent at least $3.2 million and possibly close to $4 million. What did it get him? 4,000 more votes than Crazy Roy Morales, who basically never had money.Crazy Roy Morales is the clear winner in expenditure efficiency. Locke was able to get votes at about half the cost of Brown, and Parker’s votes came at about half the price of Locke’s. She may need to maintain such expenditure efficiency for the runoff.

I know $4 million is nothing compared to what Bloomberg spent in New York. Nevertheless, Brown’s expenditures make for an amusing political cartoon.

Nancy Sims has by far the best explanation of the failings of Brown’s money:

Unfortunately for Brown, the simple execution of a textbook campaign plan did not translate into a broad base of supporters. Even when it felt like his support was surging with the total media blitz, most of the pundits thought the support was “soft”. There just weren’t enough real people backing the candidate.

Meanwhile, Parker and Locke parlayed their less funded efforts into people power. Parker has very passionate supporters and lots of them. Her social media numbers double her opponents. Her number of small dollar contributors far exceeds the other campaigns. And, trust me on this, people feel strongly about their candidate.

Locke had outstanding fundraising efforts. In a normal year, he would have been considered the “big bucks” guy. He had the majority of backing from the business community. Many criticized Locke for going on TV late but his campaign was insistent that they were most focused on their field organization. Appropriately so. It appears their field operation was successful. They quietly remained focused on their goal of turning out core voters and it worked very well.

Here’s a lesson for all those who complain about money in politics – Bottom line is that dollars donated often translate into support. When a person makes a donation to a campaign, they are emotionally invested. From a $5 contribution to a $5000 one, they have put sweat equity into that money. It is a commitment on their part to “invest” in that candidate because they believe in them.

Kuff thinks these are the six important questions for figuring out the runoffs:

1. What will Peter do?
2. Where’s the money?
3. What about the Republicans?
4. How negative are things going to get?
5. Who will the Chron endorse?
6. What will early voting look like?

Miya is wrong to call another losing mayoral candidate, Crazy Roy Morales, a “little-known candidate.” The mainstream media’s continued treatment of Crazy Roy Morales as a legitimate candidate gave his candidacy far more awareness than it deserved, resulting in Crazy Roy Morales performing better than Brown on election day.

It will be fascinating to see where the Crazy Roy Morales supporters — his hateful supporters — go. Will they just stay home or will they choose which minority they hate more? Will they go to Parker, the apparent next-best choice according to the Texas Conservative Review? Parker’s fiscally prudent attitude earned her a grade of B while Locke received a D for supporting more taxpayer-funded sports stadiums. My initial feelings are the same as Kuff, but Martha might be on to something [respectively below]:

Oh, and I don’t think it will matter if Roy endorses anyone. Seems to me if the people that voted for him actually cared about affecting the outcome of this race, they’d have voted for someone else the first time around. My guess is the vast majority of Roy supporters sit it out in December.

I think Republicans will decide who they are supporting and they will send the signal out via TCR, Berry, email, etc. and that signal will be captured by a sizable enough portion of the Morales voters and they’ll go out and vote. They’ve already been told by TCR that Parker is fiscally conservative and Locke is not.

Richard Murray weighs in on where losing candidates’ supporters might go:

Nearly half the General Election voters supported a losing candidate for mayor. Where do they go? I think African American supporters of Peter Brown will gravitate to Gene Locke, and Anglo Brown voters toward Annise Parker without regard to what Mr. Brown does personally. Since there are twice as many white Brown voters compared African American supporters, that nets an advantage for the Controller. But Roy Morales voters may well have a harder time supporting a lesbian contender than a black man backed by much of the business community. Probably a net advantage here for Locke but there is more uncertainly here forecasting movement among Morales voters than is the case with Peter Brown voters.

In the Controller’s race, Green and Khan will compete in the runoff. Between Green’s IRS issues and Khan still not living in Houston after 6 years on Houston City Council, this race will be interesting. Will Khan be on air as much as the mayoral candidates like he was in the past two weeks? Will Green bother to actually do anything resembling campaigning? I appreciate Stace’s take on the results:

Nothing made me feel a sense of power that one can only get from voting after watching Pam Holm lose. Holm participated in Toni Lawrence’s anti-immigrant, Border Watch-supporting press conference, and soon after she went on the attack on Ronald Green, she attempted (and succeeded with a few) to friend some major Democrats on Facebook. Then I heard about the “Democrats against Green” robocalls and wondered who was behind them.

Despite receiving nearly all the endorsements, Herman Litt did not make the Houston City Council At-Large Position 1 runoff. Karen Derr and Stephen Costello will square off for this open seat.

In City Council At-Large Position 2, Roslyn Shorter was able to spoil incumbent Sue Lovell’s hopes of avoiding a runoff, which will see Lovell facing Andrew Burks. This is a result of the predicted Democratic infighting that would result from the long primary between Obama and Hillary. Lovell, a big Hillary supporter, faced Shorter, an Obama organizer, previously when Shorter challenged Lovell for her DNC seat. Clearly Shorter wasn’t able to utilize any sort of Obama supporter network to her advantage. I certainly never received anything from her, and I was an Obama delegate to the Texas Democratic Party convention.

Melissa Noriega, of course, won reelection to At-Large Position 3. Despite the 45% undervote in her one-person race, she received the most votes of any candidate in Houston. C.O Bradford, Sue Lovell, Jolanda Jones, and Ron Green, whose races varied between about 15% and 25% undervote, also received more votes than any of the mayoral candidates.

Bradford barely avoided a runoff in At-Large Position 4, receiving about 52% of the vote.

Incumbent Jolanda Jones will face a runoff in At-Large Position 5 with Jack Christie. While Lovell shouldn’t face much trouble retaining her seat, Jones will likely have a tough fight keeping hers.

Greg has a great take on the At-Large runoffs:

As for the At Large runoffs, I expected both Sue and JoJo to make the cut tonight, but about the only real surprise I see on the board is that the spread between Jones and Christie is tight enough to make that an interesting runoff. As much as I’d love to see Sue sweat out a runoff, the spread between her and Burks is substantial and Sue nearly eked out a win if only for 1-2,000 more votes. I’ve dealt with Andrew Burks a few times and he’s a nice enough guy … just not a tough enough campaigner to worry about. Still, Sue might want to try making some friends for a change over the next five weeks. JoJo, on the other hand, is in severe danger of being booted off the island once more.

In City Council Districts B, C, D, and E, Johnson, Clutterbuck, Adams, and Sullivan all won their respective races easily. In District G, Pennington clenched nearly 60% of the vote to prevent a runoff. Gonzales and Rodriguez ran unopposed in their respective races in Districts H and I. Districts A and F will have runoffs between Brenda Stardig & Lane Lewis and Mike Laster & Al Hoang, respectively.

District F had the smallest turnout of any contested District race in Houston, but it also had the fewest undervotes of any of the non-mayoral Houston races at less than 9%. Even the Controller race had about 16% undervote.

The District F runoff may be as exciting and fascinating as the mayoral runoff. In Houston’s most diverse district — including 17% Asian American based on the 2000 census — Vietnamese American Republican Al Hoang will face white Democrat Mike Laster, who has the support of former AAA-Fund endorsees Rick Noriega and State Rep. Hubert Vo, along with the Houston Chronicle and Asian American Democrats of Texas. District A could see strong Republican turnout to support Brenda Stardig against Lane Lewis.

You can take a look at votes in the City Council District races:

Every proposed amendment to the Texas Constitution passed. While I’m disappointed that some passed that probably will make Texas a worse place, none of the amendments are of the terrible ilk as making equal marriage double illegal or placing caps on malpractice claims.

I found the “AAA-Fund Texas”-endorsed Proposition 4’s result to be startling. It had the second-lowest margin of victory of the proposed amendments. Greg has a fascinating map (powered by this spreadsheet) showing how the counties voted. It’s truly incredible how much of Texas voted anti-education, or as this should be seen, anti-more prestige for Texas. Does anyone know what the driving force against this proposed amendment was? At least it passed. Here in Houston, just about everyone is looking forward to having a second Tier 1 university here. In addition to the University of Houston, hopefully some of UT Dallas, UT Arlington, UTEP, UT San Antonio, Texas Tech, and University of North Texas will also become Tier 1 universities. While part of me wants to see all of them become Tier 1 universities, I don’t want to see the funds split too thinly.

In other education-related news, voters in Spring Branch ISD “overwhelmingly rejected,” 19,567 to 5,634, Houston Community College’s attempted annexation of the Spring Branch ISD territory. More amazing, this ballot measure had only a 2.37% undervote. Spring Branch voters were unwilling to pay an additional $90 per $100,000 property valuation to gain reduced tuition rates to HCC and free dual credit for Spring Branch ISD high school students taking dual credit classes. I found community college classes I took far easier than AP high school courses. I would have loved to get most of my basic courses out of the way for free with less effort than I put in in high school.

In the Alief ISD Trustee Position 5 race, 19-year-old Grace Parmar, who ran to try to save Alief ISD from the tax-reducers who have no care for school quality, lost her Asian American vs Asian American race by 142 votes out of over 8900 votes.

Mark your calendar for December 12. Republican Asian Americans MJ Khan and Al Hoang could make history as Houston’s first Asian American City Controller and first Vietnamese American member of Houston City Council. Their runoffs and the runoffs in At-Large 1, At-Large 5, and District A could have as much of an impact on the mayoral runoff as where Brown and Crazy Roy Morales supporters go. Annise Parker could make history as the first out mayor of a major American city. Asian Americans could very well be the deciding vote!

If you’re not registered to vote, you must register by next Thursday, the 12th. Early voting starts November 30.

- Justin Gillenwater

Posted by Justin on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 9:10 pm.