CD 18 Poll
Folks know that Commentary lives in the 18th Congressional District (CD 18). CD 18 has been without a member of Congress for nearly five months now. We will have to wait another three months before we start casting votes for the next member of Congress from CD 18. The Hobby School just put out a poll on the CD 18 Special Election and here is from Houston Public Media:
Acting Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Council Member Amanda Edwards are locked in a dead heat in the November special election for Texas’ 18th Congressional District. The latest survey from the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs finds that Edwards and Menefee lead a field of nearly two dozen candidates seeking to fill the open seat.
The poll shows Edwards and Menefee, both Democrats, tied when it comes to their net favorability ratings. Also, each candidate can claim the support of 19% of likely voters in the special election. The poll has a margin of error (+/-) of just over 2%, among 2,300 registered Harris County voters who were surveyed.
Tied for second place are state Rep. Jolanda Jones, a Democrat, and Carmen Maria Montiel, a Republican, each at 14%.
“We have a four-way race for one of two positions in an almost certain runoff,” said Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and a senior research fellow at the Hobby School. “At this point, we have to view Edwards, Menefee, Jones, and Montiel all as viable candidates to enter the runoff, with Edwards and Menefee having a slight advantage.”
The poll found both Menefee and Edwards performed comparably well among white voters, Black voters, and Democrats, with Edwards performing slightly better among women and Menefee notably better among men.
The poll found Montiel performing the strongest among Latino voters. And while Jones tied Edwards for second place among Black voters, she ranked fourth among white voters.
Whoever has the dough is positioned to move up. Former Council Member Edwards and Acting County Attorney Menefee have the most dough. I am thinking as we move into August, things will start to heat up.
The featured photo is my preference in the CD 18 Special Election. I voted for her for Congress in the 2024 Democratic Party Primary and I was rooting for her to be selected as the replacement nominee last year.
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This is about as stupid and dumb as stupid and dumb can get. See this from the Chron:
Gov. Greg Abbott boasted about plowing another $3.5 billion into cutting homeowners’ property taxes in the latest legislative session. Now, he wants state lawmakers to go even further during the special session by capping how much cities and counties can increase their spending.
The Texas Republican has framed the issue as his next major legislative battle after signing long-sought private school vouchers into law earlier this year.
“What I would like to see done is to make sure that every property taxing jurisdiction must live just within the same spending limits that the state has to live in,” Abbott said in an interview with Hearst Newspapers. “And if they’re confined in that … their ability to impose greater property taxes is going to be hamstrung.”
The governor wants to tie local spending increases to population growth and inflation, similar to spending limits imposed on the state. He and other Republicans argue city and county spending is driving up tax bills even as the state keeps pouring in billions to keep them down. The next two-year state budget sets aside $51 billion to pay for past cuts and to fund the new ones.
Abbott has previously said he wants to campaign on the issue like he did vouchers and bail restrictions he successfully pushed through the legislature earlier this year.
“I’m just thinking, well, it worked with these two strategies, maybe it’s time to employ the same strategy as it concerns property taxes,” Abbott said in June. “I was not out in the trenches fighting for that in the same way.”
It is just the latest way that city and county budgets, which rely heavily on property tax revenue, would be boxed in by state-imposed restrictions. Local jurisdictions have to get voter approval to raise property taxes more than 3.5%, under legislation passed in 2019. Larger cities and counties, meanwhile, are also prohibited from slashing law enforcement spending — which account for a massive chunk of most budgets — or the state freezes their property taxes and can deduct from its sales taxes.
Taken together, the restrictions would present a near-impossible hurdle for the state’s metro and fast-growing suburban areas, said Adam Haynes, policy director at the Texas Conference of Urban Counties.
“For fast-growth cities and counties, we would always be catching up to the expenditure ratio … and we would never catch up,” Haynes said.
He said the state is pushing restrictions, even as counties, in particular, already do much of the state’s work with little financial assistance.
“We house the state’s prisoners, we build the state’s roads, we run the state’s elections, we care for the indigent population, health care — all of those are state responsibilities that they put down on the counties to do, all the while saying, ‘cut your property taxes’ — and now, ‘cut your expenditures,’” Haynes said.
Here is the entire Chron read: Greg Abbott property tax push to cap city and county spending.
Let’s see increased pay for first responders. Investments in infrastructure and emergency preparedness. Parks expansions. All that I mentioned put in jeopardy. How are we supposed to have great cities and towns. This isn’t sound public policy. This is plain old bullying. Gov. Abbott has no clue how local governmental entities operate. What a moron.
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My best friend and I were at Daikin Park last night. It was nice to have peanuts, a couple of dollar dogs, Saint Arnold, and great convo. It was even nicer to get a win. The homie wraps up this afternoon.