Getting out the early vote
Campaigns take different tacks as polls open today
Nearly every night for the past two months, Freddy Blanco has made calls or walked the streets of his East End neighborhood, telling his friends to vote Adrian Garcia for mayor.
Relatively few in Blanco’s tree-lined precinct of low-slung houses and yelping dogs vote regularly. Just 17 percent cast ballots in Houston’s last open-seat mayor’s race six years ago, according to county election records.
Blanco, a volunteer on Garcia’s campaign, is working to change that.
“Mostly, I know all these people,” said Blanco, 63, as he trundled from door to door, a bag of campaign literature at his hip. “Right now, they’re attacking Adrian a lot, but I still tell my friends, ‘Hey, this is the man.’ ”
In the days before Monday’s start to early voting, Houston’s top mayoral campaigns moved to mobilize their volunteer forces, aiming to ensure their supporters make it the polls. With 13 candidates on the Nov. 3 ballot and no incumbent, the vote is expected to splin-
ter, forcing a December runoff. Early voting runs from Monday to Oct. 30.
State Rep. Sylvester Turner, who has the combination of high name identification and a reliable base, widely is expected to secure one of the two runoff spots, leaving his competitors to battle for second place.
Recent polls show the next four or five candidates separated by only a few percentage points, with former Kemah Mayor Bill King and Garcia, the former Harris County sheriff, often in second and third place.
Many undecided
However, surveys also indicate a large share of Houston voters remain undecided, and the campaigns’ estimates of voter turnout vary widely, from 175,000 to 230,000.
The city’s controversial equal rights ordinance, known as HERO, is expected to bring nontraditional voters to the polls, but how many remains an open question.
In this volatile, lowturnout climate, ushering supporters to the ballot box becomes crucial, as just a few votes could separate the two candidates who advance from those whose campaigns sunset when the polls close on Election Day.
“Particularly when you have a race where you have a lot of candidates that are ostensibly bunched together, campaigns that can effectively turn out their identified supporters are at an advantage over campaigns that don’t,” local Democratic strategist Keir Murray said.
Though Houston’s municipal races are nonpartisan, the top campaigns’ field strategies in the homestretch fall along party lines.
Democrats — Turner, Garcia and former Congressman Chris Bell — are concentrating on getting their voters to the polls, while Republicans — King and City Councilman Steve Costello — remain focused on persuading undecided Houstonians to vote for them.
Former City Attorney Ben Hall’s campaign, in sixth place in recent polls, declined to discuss its field operation.
The campaigns’ approaches reflect conventional political wisdom — Republicans are more reliable voters than Democrats — and recent polling that indicates a larger share of conservatives have yet to pick a candidate.
Barred by state law from raising money during the legislative session, Turner, a 26-year state lawmaker, turned his campaign to field work early, beginning to block walk in April before his competitors hit the streets. Since then, the campaign has completed a combined 300,000 door knocks and phone calls, part of a robust boots-onthe-ground effort it hopes will set this bid apart from Turner’s two previous attempts at the mayor’s office.
Turner’s operation includes 14 paid field positions and about 500 volunteers who block walk from 10 a.m. until dark every day except Sunday, when they start at noon. Turner’s phone banks also gear up at 10 a.m. and run until 9 p.m.
“One of our … favorite expressions around the office is ‘When did Noah build the ark? The answer, of course, is before the flood,’ ” Turner campaign manager Ben Tyson said.
Most of his top competitors concede Turner likely will advance. Their sights are set on sharing the Dec. 12 runoff ballot with him.
Garcia and Bell’s strategies to get there are relatively similar, with both campaigns relying on a combination of paid field staff and volunteers to call and knock on the doors of likely supporters. Garcia’s operation, backed by stronger fundraising muscle, is larger and more streamlined.
Rather than working exclusively out of its headquarters, Garcia’s campaign has pursued a decentralized field strategy, setting up phone banks and block walking hubs across the city. From there, five deputy field directors and about 20 paid fellows pair off with volunteers to hit targeted doors five nights a week and make calls on three nights.
Turnout battle
Perhaps more than any of his competitors, Garcia’s success hinges on turnout: Will Hispanics, who traditionally vote in low numbers, show up to cast their ballots for the man who could become Houston’s first Hispanic mayor?
Last Wednesday, more than two dozen volunteers sat in rows in a nondescript office space on Richmond Avenue, just west of the Galleria, their eyes trained on computer screens displaying pre-written scripts. Each machine ran a predictive dialer that connected volunteers to voters, minimizing the time volunteers spent on unanswered calls.
Though Garcia entered the race a presumptive frontrunner, he has fallen in recent polls as competitors criticized his record managing the Harris County Jail.
Garcia said he remains confident.
“Polls are always a snapshot in time, and so you respect them for what they are and for when you took them,” Garcia said outside the phone bank. “It’s natural that some people would have grown given the investment that they had made.”
Seven miles away, in Montrose, Bell volunteers sat at folding tables strewn with papers last Thursday in a clothing store-turned-campaign office. Most of those calling numbers from printed voter lists were young, some in high school, others college. A poster on the wall featured a handdrawn bell shaded to track the number of calls made: 35,000 so far.
Unlike the Turner and Garcia campaigns, which say they are running citywide field programs, Bell’s ground game is more targeted. City Council District C, home to many white progressives, is Bell’s stronghold. Also hanging in Bell’s headquarters were maps of districts E,H, J and K, all dotted with colored stickers representing the share of each precinct he would need to win to qualify for a runoff.
Bell’s campaign employs four paid field staff, down from a peak of 10, and more than 100 people have completed volunteer shifts.
“In a close election, field is going to make the difference,” said Bell campaign manager Patrick Devney, who estimated the campaign had knocked on more than 21,000 doors. “We know we have a strong base that shows up.”
King and Costello, on the other hand, entered the race with lower name identification and poured their early resources into costly television advertising rather than extensive ground games. Now, they are competing for the same slice of conservative voters — about 30 percent of the Houston electorate.
King, focused on persuading those already planning to vote that he is their best choice, has pursued a neighbor-to-neighbor field strategy, signing up volunteers to block walk and make calls in their own neighborhoods. As of last week, the campaign had 107 precincts covered, mostly in council districts A,C, E and G, with some presence in F, I and J.
“We believe that people talking to their neighbors makes a much bigger impact than just people knocking on doors,” campaign manager Robert Jara said.
Plus, King is tighter on cash than many of his competitors. He had $322,000 in the bank as of late September and $650,000 in outstanding loans.
Early votes key
Costello, too, is targeting likely but undecided voters.
“There’s just an uncanny amount of undecideds out there, so I’m not so sure it makes sense for anybody to move people to the polls if they don’t know how they’re voting,” campaign manager Ward Curtin said.
Most recent polls show Costello, who lacks the defined base of many of his rivals, in fifth place. However, he has money to spend that many of his rivals lack:
nearly $697,000 as of late September.
Though Election Day is two weeks away, recent races suggest half of the vote could be cast before Nov. 3.
About 35 percent of voters cast early or absentee ballots in 2009, and that rose to 46 percent in 2013.
“Your most committed supporters are the people who are the most likely to run out the door and cast their ballot early. Your late breakers aren’t paying very much attention or are not particularly committed to one candidate or the other,” Murray said. “Sometimes those undecided voters will break one way or the other. Sometimes they just split. Sometimes a lot of them just don’t end up showing up. So, the campaigns that can bank as many votes early are at an advantage.”