Parties turn race for mayor partisan
GOP, Democrats seek to sharpen contrasts between King, Turner
Even though Houston elections officially are nonpartisan, the contest between Bill King and Sylvester Turner has evolved into a test of party might as voters prepare to elect the Bayou City’s first new mayor in six years.
King has framed the runoff as the choice between a businessman and a career politician, a common appeal by Republican candidates against Democratic incumbents. Trying to paint King as too extreme for Houston, Turner’s campaign has taken to invoking the tea party and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the latter-day bogeymen of the Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, the local Republican and Democratic parties have endorsed their favorites and affiliated groups are gearing up their ground games to phone bank and knock on doors for their preferred candidates.
The result is a race without overt party identification, but with all of the trappings of a partisan battlefield.
“We’ve seen across the country the intensity of the partisan division grow,” University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray said. “It’s not that the
overall population has become more partisan and polarized, but people who vote, particularly in a low-turnout election like a Houston mayor runoff, tend to be partisans.”
Murray said he expects turnout to be about 20 percent in the Dec. 12 runoff to replace termlimited Mayor Annise Parker, down from 27 percent on Nov. 3.
The general election campaign largely revolved around routine but pressing municipal issues — pensions, infrastructure and public safety — but votes fell along ideological and racial lines, with King winning the city’s three conservative council districts, most of them predominantly white, Turner winning five left-leaning, majority-minority districts, and former Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia taking two Hispanic districts.
The anomaly was predominantly white, progressive District C, which King won as much of the vote fractured among Turner, Garcia, former Congressman Chris Bell and City Councilman Steve Costello.
Reaching across the aisle
Now, each having locked down his base — white conservatives for King and African-American Democrats for Turner — the candidates are fighting over the middle while striving to ensure their general election supporters return to the polls in December.
That means publicly reaching across the aisle and across racial lines.
Last week, Bell, a Democrat, endorsed King to the chagrin of many Democratic activists, and before that, Costello, a Republican, backed Turner.
Turner, a 26-year Democratic state legislator, welcomed Costello’s endorsement with a line now common in his news releases.
“I look forward to working with Steve as we unite Democrats and Republicans, business and labor,” he said in a statement.
King, a businessman who identifies as independent, sidestepped party labels when he appeared with Bell in Meyerland last Tuesday.
“There are those that want to make this a partisan election, but the truth of the matter is the issues that face the city are not partisan issues,” King said.
That evening, as King and Turner faced off in the first runoff debate, they took up lines of attack that occasionally blurred traditional ideological divisions.
Asked about Houston’s controversial infrastructure improvement program, ReBuild Houston, King said he agrees with Turner that Houston needs a dedicated revenue source for infrastructure but criticized the drainage fee that funds ReBuild.
“I’m not crazy about the drainage fee as opposed to property taxes, because the drainage fee is a very inefficient tax. It is also a highly regressive tax. It hits poor people much harder than it does wealthier people,” King said.
Turner repeatedly criticized King for proposing to issue additional bonds to finance infrastructure projects and Houston’s $3.2 billion unfunded pension liability.
“A businessperson doesn’t keep putting things on the credit card when you cannot afford to pay them,” Turner said.
City leans Democratic
Yet in the background, the Harris County Republican and Democratic parties, local activists and Turner’s campaign have been working to sharpen partisan contrasts.
“How the city of Houston goes is important to everybody in Harris County. Andit’s important that Republicans and conservatives get active in city elections,” Harris County Republican Party Chair Paul Simpson said. “We want to do everything wecan to show that wecan make a difference in Houston and help the city.”
Local Democratic Party Chair Lane Lewis warned against increasingly partisan municipal politics, even as he touted Turner’s Democratic credentials and the party’s approach to governance.
“We cannot allow the partisan politics of Washington to interfere with the municipal politics of getting trash picked up and water running and streets fixed. We cannot afford that gridlock at City Hall,” Lewis said. “But on the election side of it, it’s very clear that it’s becoming more and more partisan.”
Houston leans Democratic, meaning framing the race in partisan terms plays to Turner’s advantage.
Accordingly, his campaign released a pair of television and radio ads last week casting King as out of touch and “too extreme for Houston.”
Turner supporters have reprised this characterization on social media and lambasted Bell for choosing King over party allegiance.
“There’s no such thing as a nonpartisan election, y’all. Sorry bout it,” Turner-aligned Democratic activist Kris Banks tweeted after last Tuesday’s debate.
Leveraging Bell, King’s campaign has tried to reverse that narrative.
“To try to paint Bill as some kind of right-wing zealot or hater is absolutely absurd,” Bell said at their joint appearance.
Yet both candidates’ bids are being bolstered by prominent partisan groups.
Battleground Texas has planned to block walk for Turner, while the Kingwood Tea Party expects to encourage area residents to vote for King, and the Spring Branch Republicans is gearing up to block walk, phone bank and distribute mailers supporting King. Ordinance spurred turnout
Meanwhile, opponents of Houston’s defeated equal rights ordinance have released a new television ad warning about a possible revival of the controversial nondiscrimination law and asking voters to support candidates who opposed it. In it, King’s name is circled atop a sample ballot.
“The far right was just taking a big deep breath and saying, ‘Well, he’s not as conservative as I’d like, but he sure knows how to handle the issues, getting back to the basics,’” said Buffie Ingersoll, a moderate Republican who endorsed King.
Murray said the race is more partisan than usual for city races, attributing the dynamic in part to the equal rights ordinance thought to have brought many conservative Republicans to the polls.
“It’s not surprising that the Democrats particularly, since they have a significant edge in partisanship within the city, would try to make this a partisan race,” Murray said. “And Republicans hope that they can counter and in a low-turnout election get enough of their partisans to go to the polls to squeak out a win.”
Early voting for the Dec. 12 runoff runs from Dec. 2 to Dec. 8.