Astros Grub
I was at my Dad’s yesterday and “Houston Life” came on. It is a local talk show from KPRC-TV that airs at 1 pm on weekdays. Reagan Bregman was the guest co-host yesterday. Alex Bregman is her hubby. She did a darn good job.
_____
This is from State Sen. Carol Alvarado’s remarks last month when she introduced the 2022 World Series Champions Astros on the Texas Senate Floor:
Hashtag #EarnIt was the campaign slogan when we won our first World Series title. We won our second with hashtag #LevelUp. Anita, many of us are anxiously waiting for the 2023 campaign hashtag.
#LevelUp has been replaced with #Ready2Reign.
That works for me.
_____
A number of folks were expecting this. It had been rumored for a couple of weeks. See this from the Chron:
Councilmember Robert Gallegos, the lone Hispanic member of Houston’s City Council, has entered the mayor’s race.
Gallegos filed a form Thursday with the secretary’s office to start raising money for a mayoral campaign. He has not yet responded to requests for comment.
He joins state Sen. John Whitmire, former County Clerk Chris Hollins, former Councilmember Amanda Edwards and attorney Lee Kaplan among the contenders for the seat.
He is the first Hispanic candidate in the field. Gilbert Garcia, the bond investor and former METRO Chairman, widely is expected to run as well.
A poll went out last month that presaged Gallegos’ entry, asking residents who they would pick among the declared candidates, Gallegos, and Garcia. Recipients said it contained specific information about Gallegos and his track record on council.
Houston historically has struggled to elect Hispanic leaders, even though the community makes up nearly half of the city’s population, which is something Gallegos sought to address in the city’s redistricting process. The city has not elected a Hispanic as mayor since Joseph Pastoriza, the son of immigrants from Spain, won in 1917. The city has never elected a Latino mayor.
Since 2014, Gallegos has represented the city’s District I, which includes the East End and part of downtown. He previously worked for eight years as an aide to then-Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia, who now serves in the U.S. House of Representatives.
He was a founder of the Eastwood-Lawndale Super Neighborhood Council and also worked as a civic activist and Harris County jailer before joining council.
On council, he has consistently criticized railroad companies that block the East End’s streets with cargo trains. In last year’s budget deliberations, he tried to create ways to get more funding for Solid Waste’s garbage and recycling collections.
Gallegos will have to broadly expand his voter pool. Less than 11,000 people voted in the most recent District I race, whereas 241,00 people voted in the mayoral contest.
He will face an uphill climb in fundraising as well. Candidates announced earlier and started raising more money than usual in this year’s contest. Each candidate has raised more than $1 million to date and has more than $1 million in the bank. In his January campaign finance filing, Gallegos reported having about $133,500 in the bank.
It is possible other candidates join as well. Another poll recently tested how U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee would fare in the contest, although it was not clear who funded the poll.
The pool of candidates also lacks a conservative candidate. The races are nonpartisan, but the last two elections have ended in runoffs between Mayor Sylvester Turner, a longtime Democrat, and conservative challengers.
Got it?
_____
This is what you get when folks think they are way smarter than the rest of us. From the Trib:
When state lawmakers passed a sweeping and controversial new election law in 2021, they quietly included a provision that drew little notice or debate.
But election administration experts say the measure is unprecedented, it mandates the purchase of voting technology that doesn’t currently exist — and it’s on the verge of costing taxpayers more than $100 million.
Sponsors of the provision said they aimed to prevent cheating in elections by prohibiting the use of modern technology to count votes and store cast-ballot data. It passed without debate on a voice vote and goes into effect just before the November 2026 general election.
When it does, millions of dollars’ worth of voting equipment will immediately be prohibited by the new law, a situation that could force at least some counties to hand-count ballots for lack of a legal alternative. Election officials across the state are worried they’ll be left without the tools necessary to safely deliver accurate and timely election results.
“Humans make mistakes. I’m very worried about the accuracy of our elections if we have to rely on a hand tally of votes,” said Chambers County Clerk Heather Hawthorne said. “The inaccuracies would be huge, and our state would be in trouble.”
Election security experts are also concerned. “You may be able to conduct an election, but it would not be accurate, it would not be secure and would not be timely,” said Ryan Macias, an election administration, security and technology expert and founder of the elections consulting company RSM Election Solutions. “With how complicated U.S. elections are, this is inconceivable.”
Here’s how it works now: With permission from the Texas secretary of state, election officials use media storage devices such as USB flash drives — provided by state-certified voting machine vendors — to collect data from ballot scanners used at precincts and voting centers on Election Day. Those drives are how officials easily and safely take that data on cast ballots to a central counting station, where they’re inserted into a tabulating computer to quickly gather results. The equipment involved is expensive, and elections officials reuse it each time there is an election, writing over the previous data with the new election data.
But the provision — proposed by state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, and supported by the bill’s primary author, Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola — prohibits the use of this exact kind of data storage device that can be reused, including the ballot scanners and the tabulating machines. Experts say that in order to fully comply with the new law, counties would have to buy entirely new voting systems each election cycle.
Lawmakers knew that, or should have known — the secretary of state’s office provided cost estimates before the bill passed.
According to those estimates, it will cost taxpayers more than $116 million to replace the eliminated equipment. Because any new machines cannot be reused — the data can only be “written once” — counties would be forced to continue buying new equipment. The secretary of state’s office estimates that this ongoing cost would be more than $37 million every two years.
And that’s if counties can even find compliant voting technology to buy. The Texas secretary of state’s office says the two Texas-certified voting machine vendors, Hart InterCivic and Election Systems & Software do not currently build such machines. In fact, no machine matching the specifications has been invented by any company operating in the United States. Nonetheless, Hall’s provision requires states to purchase and implement the technology by Sept. 1, 2026.
Dumbarses for sure.
_____
From the Astros:
HOUSTON, Texas —The Houston Astros and Houston-based energy company Oxy today announced an expansion of their long-standing partnership where Oxy will become the team’s official jersey partner for the next seven seasons. The Oxy logo will be featured on the Astros jersey sleeve throughout the regular season and any postseason games.
The partnership builds on the relationship that both organizations formed in 2013 rooted in shared values, a passion for excellence and a strong commitment to community service throughout the Houston area.
“Oxy and the Astros share a passion for the city that we call home and it’s exciting to deepen our relationship and recognize our strong ties with Oxy’s addition to the World Series Champion’s jerseys,” said Vicki Hollub, President and CEO, Oxy. “We believe this partnership provides an opportunity to reach new audiences that share our commitment to building stronger local communities and who embrace the value of service to others.”
“We are excited to expand our relationship with Oxy as our inaugural jersey patch partners,” said Jeff Stewart, Vice President Corporate Partnerships. “The Astros are proud of our longstanding relationship with Oxy and are grateful for their shared commitment to both community and our fans.”
Oxy is a current sponsor of the Astros Foundation. Oxy also supports the Astros with Operation Military Appreciation, a signature gameday feature where veterans and active-duty military members receive complimentary tickets behind home plate at home games and are recognized during the game.
Through the foundation’s Community Leaders program, which provides young athletes with the environment and resources needed to develop physically and mentally, Oxy has renovated and maintained baseball fields and subsidized youth league registration fees, uniforms, and equipment in Houston’s Denver Harbor neighborhood.
The Astros Foundation and Oxy have also partnered to improve educational opportunities through the Literacy Bus, a mobile interactive unit that encourages family reading in Houston-area communities. In 2022, the program donated approximately 46,000 books to 41,000 children, in addition to school supplies for several districts.
About Oxy
Oxy is a Houston-based international energy company with assets primarily in the United States, the Middle East and North Africa. We are one of the largest oil producers in the U.S., including a leading producer in the Permian and DJ basins, and offshore Gulf of Mexico. Our midstream and marketing segment provides flow assurance and maximizes the value of our oil and gas. Our chemical subsidiary OxyChem manufactures the building blocks for life-enhancing products. Our Oxy Low Carbon Ventures subsidiary is advancing leading-edge technologies and business solutions that economically grow our business while reducing emissions. We are committed to using our global leadership in carbon management to advance a lower-carbon world. Visit oxy.com for more information.
_____
The Astros also introduced to the media the new grub that they would be serving this season at The Yard. This is from the Chron:
When you walk into Minute Maid Park this Astros season, you’ll have plenty of options for standard ballpark fare. If a stadium hot dog or nachos aren’t going to do the trick though, Aramark is trying to make sure you’re covered with twists on some old favorites.
How about a pupusa hot dog? Or maybe some funnel cake fries? If you’re an Alex Bregman fan, there are savory items all over the stadium covered in Breggy Bomb seasoning and sauces.
Ever since the Astros squeezed the final out in the 2022 World Series, Scott Strickland, Aramark’s executive chef at Minute Maid Park, has been brainstorming with his team to come up with creative additions to the ballpark’s menu.
“Coming up with something new every year is the hardest part,” said Strickland, who is going into his sixth season at the ballpark. “I try to keep up with social media food trends to see what’s going on out there. I ask my kids and their friends, ‘Hey, what would you like to see?’ Literally, everything’s been done in food, so it’s all about your spin on it and what you can throw onto it and how you can get your personality into it.”
That means instead of a traditional hot dog — although there are plenty of those available — you can have a pupusa dog instead, which is a Slovacek sausage wrapped in a fluffy pupusa, which is a type of flatbread made famous in Central America. That mashup of a ballpark favorite will be available on the lower level on the first base side at Elote, which also will have Texas beef tostadas and empanadas as well as actual cobs of elote,
“We have delicious pupusas, and you can buy a traditional sausage wrap at places, so why can’t we put those two ideas together? It’s delicious,” Strickland said. “Then, you have elote, and we just think being able to walk around with a whole corn of cob is going to be cool.”
Aramark also is adding a few new concepts to the ballpark, bringing in an Italian spot and a cajun location to the upper level. The Italian stand features a variety of sandwiches, including meatball, Italian sausage and chicken parmesan. The cajun stand focuses on po boys with shrimp or catfish, both flavored with Bregman’s Breggy Bomb seasoning, which also will be used on the barbecue in the stadium.
“We’re focusing a lot on the upper level because we have a great fan base up there and we need to give them some great food,” Strickland said. “And, we really needed the cajun/creole option. We’re closer to the Louisiana border than we are the Mexico border, right? We have all this Tex-Mex stuff, so why not bring a little cajun/creole to the mix?”
Don’t forget about dessert. Aramark is putting out a twist on the traditional ballpark pretzel by coating it in cinnamon sugar instead of salt. There also will be funnel cake fries.
“Everyone loves the salted pretzel, so we added the cinnamon sugar pretzel that you can eat afterwards,” Strickland said. “The funnel cake fries are more eater friendly. You can share them with your friends instead of having a big funnel cake and making a mess all over yourself.”
If you want to have a lot less fun, there also will be fruit carts throughout the stadium.
Commentary will say it again. I am good with a hot dog, peanuts, and a Saint Arnold.