Voters Soundly Reject HER Ordinance. Katherine Driessen, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
Supporters failed to come up with a coherent message and should have focused on the possible economic ramifications of failing to uphold the law, said Rice University political scientist Bob Stein.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the economic argument was a salient argument," Stein said. "Would they have been able to win this with that messaging? I don't know. But it would not have been as lopsided and someone could have resurrected the issue at council with a smaller margin."Although not a (large) part of their campaign, the economic impact argument has certainly become a gigantic part of their response. And while I'm not going to link to every tweet here, a quick look at the Houston Twittersphere reveals that the economic sky appears to be falling.
Already this morning (I'm writing this at about 6AM, to publish later) I've seen dire predictions of the following:
1. The NFL is going to pull the 2017 Super Bowl from Houston
2. The NCAA is going to pull the 2016 Final Four From Houston
3. The recruiting of tech personnel in Houston has become almost impossible.
4. Financial gloom and doom and threats that the city "will pay"
OK then. This is where we are and where, apparently, the city is going forward on this issue. Given that the reaction is so heated, passionate and strong, I think maybe it's time for Houstonians to reconsider some key items.
What is the role, going forward, of the Greater Houston Partnership?
One of the biggest, and most vocal, supporters of HER Ordinance was the GHP. Until now, they've been viewed (incorrectly IMO) as a "Houston Business Group" that speaks for the bulk of Houston's employers.
I believe that this description is, increasingly incorrect. The Greater Houston Partnership is, in reality, the remnants of the Houston Chamber of Commerce. While it once might have advocated for Houston businesses it has recently shifted into a quasi-governmental agency whose primary mission is to advocate for increased government expenditures. It also rarely deviates from the preferred message of City Hall.
Much of this is because many of the member organizations do business with the City and their livelihoods depend on maintaining a prime position at the trough. For most Houston businesses (and there are way more companies NOT a member of the GHP than the number that are) access to city contracts is not a priority or a concern.
Perhaps its time for the GHP to be viewed as nothing more than a go-between organization that facilitates public/private partnerships but does not speak for the Houston business community as a whole. They are, in practice, a quasi-governmental agency and should be treated as such.
What is the path, going forward, in regards to a Houston Civil Rights Ordinance?
In order to try and depoliticize this I'm going to drop the HER Ordinance language and start discussing the HCRO for future ordinances instead (I will keep HER Ordinance when discussing the recent election). The question of whether or not you think Houston NEEDS a civil rights ordinance is not one centered on racism, but on political philosophy.
For those on the Left, the creation of an ordinance is a must-have and that ordinance has to regulate to the worst violators in all cases. The feeling is that if the city government does not impose strict rules of business that prevent companies from discriminating, then the worst nature of people will prevail and minority classes will be forced to live under a set of de-facto Jim Crow laws that make economic success impossible.
For those on the Right it is really a matter of where so-called "rights" originate. The feeling is that legislation such as the HCRO are attempts by the government to "grant rights" that are really innate within all of us at a Universal level ("endowed by the Creator" etc.) and that what the government grants they can also take away. To them the best way to ensure rights is to let the marketplace decide, and bad actors will be shunted from society and ran out of business.
I am going to commit a great blogging sin here an admit that I'm torn. I realize that this makes me seem like less than an authority on the issue but it's true. On the one hand, I agree that the government can not, and should not, be in the business of trying to grant "rights" to any people. They are neither wise, or consistent enough to ensure long-term equal protection. It only takes one activist (such as Annise Parker) to decide that they want to promote one group over another for the entire system to come crashing down. In the end, I think this is really what was at the heart of the HER Ordinance debate. Not men using women's restrooms or so-called "equal rights for all" but an argument over whether or not the city should be in the business of granting rights to a class that have not existed before. HER Ordinance created an entirely new set of rights, and established a messy path for conflict resolution that had not been property vetted within the public square. It was a mess of an overreach and a bad piece of legislation that should have been sent to the scrap heap from the beginning.
On the other hand (as I've stated before) I understand that discrimination exists and that it should be a core mission of a community to try and minimize it wherever possible. For the conservative with a libertarian streak in me the idea of a municipal ordinance runs counter to my core beliefs. To the human in me, the idea that driving while black is a very real thing is concerning.
As such, I'm going to punt. Yes, I realize that this is a cop out but that's what I'm going to do. All I'm going to say is that whoever wins between Sylvester Turner and Bill King needs to try and bring ALL of the affected groups together in order to determine the path forward. Whether that path is a revised ordinance that fixes many of the errors from HER Ordinance or just letting things be I have no idea.
What is to be done about the sorry state of political polling in Houston?
One thing is for sure: The polls that came out before the election were awfully wrong. Every poll that I saw had HER Ordinance winning. It lost by a count of 2-1. In the Mayoral election almost every poll had King and Garcia statistically tied at somewhere around 9-13%. King got over 25% of the vote while Garcia only mustered around 16%. One poll even had Chris Bell within shouting distance of the run-off. He finished behind Ben Hall with around 7% of the vote and was a non-factor.
I believe there are two factors at work here:
1. Houston utilizes a limited pool of pollsters who bring partisan ideals to their polling methods. Bob Stein is a Democrat whose wife (Marty Stein) was a long-time Democratic staffer at City Hall. I've long brought up issues with his sampling methods and the fact that I believe he underrepresents social and fiscal conservatives in Houston. As I stated before, the Greater Houston Partnership is an extension of City Government and any polls that they released should be viewed from that angle. Their polls are akin to a campaign's internal polls, which are typically little more than propaganda. Houston Public Media is a far-left media outlet, as is Public Policy Priorities. Going forward there's going to be a need to take all of this into consideration when viewing voter polls for Houston Municipal Elections.
2. Telephone polls have become all but useless. Houston personality Reg Burns made this (correct) comment to me on Twitter last night. The fact is most phone polling is conducted during business hours when people who lean conservative are at work. In many other cases caller ID means that people don't answer the phone when they see a poll. What this means is that the pool of respondents are one of two groups of people: a.) Activist partisans - whose answers are typically not reflective of the electorate as a whole. b.) The jobless - whose answers are typically not reflective of the electorate as a whole. Regardless of which group it is, polling companies are going to have to find new ways to connect to the electorate if polls are going to continue to be viable. I will say that this is more relevant at the local level than the National, where there is a large enough voting pool that polls still can carry meaningful weight (see: the 2012 Presidential Election)
How do we treat local media coverage of Houston Elections going forward?
Now is typically the time where you would expect me to start bashing on the Houston Chronicle. And while they're certainly a part of this problem they are not the sole culprit, or even the main driver.
1. ALL of the media coverage surrounding HER Ordinance leaned toward the pro-side. All of it. The local media seemed content to repeat the mantra of HER Ordinance supporters that the opposition was "spreading lies" about men in women's restrooms. Every Houston Chronicle story on the matter repeated the claim that HER Ordinance provided protections to 15 classes of people, which came directly from supporter's playbook.
Celebrities, or personalities, speaking out in favor of HER Ordinance were treated as heroes, while those speaking out against were treated as villains. It was white-hat/black-hat, yellow journalism at it's worst. Too much attention was paid to out-of-state celebrities (who typically are ignored in Texas elections) making pleas in support while Bob McNair and Lance Berkman were persecuted relentlessly online for conscientious objections. It was enough to make one wonder if there was an internal HER Ordinance memo that circulated among the media or if the super-secret "roundtable" just came to a de-facto agreement regarding the same.
In addition, the chumminess between reporters and public officials in Houston is getting out of hand. That a KTRK reporter is allowed to report on her husband's political activities and statements without disclosing the relationship is beyond the pale and the fawning of certain reporters over Sylvester Turner felt at times like ad-hoc donations rather than news.
Finally, the Houston Business Journal, on election day, allowed the Greater Houston Partnership to basically run a campaign ad, for free, in their publication and treated it as a news story. There was no attempt to provide the opposition extra time.
I realize that many don't believe that the media has a bias problem, but they do. It's not partisan, but ideological, in nature and it's resulting in a loss of public trust in the media. On HER Ordinance, it was palpable and led to many people being shocked at a result that probably should not have been all that shocking.
There should have been a lot more attention paid to the schism that developed between Mayor Parker and the Black Pastors Association. A real, but unreported story, coming out of this election is that many of the people who voted for Sylvester Turner (a HER Ordinance supporter) probably cast "no" votes on the ordinance itself.
A second story going unnoticed is that this fight probably marks the end of Annise Parker as a viable candidate for elected office. Her subpoenas of church sermons has probably effectively destroyed her support from the black community, something that she would need to win what is presumed to be a run for Harris County Judge.
Why are the media falling asleep on these stories? I have no idea.
2. Every media outlet treated Marty McVey as a "credible, front-line" candidate for Mayor. At the end of the day McVey received 1,376 votes, or 0.53% of the total. This placed him on almost equal footing with Demetria Smith (1,232 votes 0.47%) and Victoria Lane (908 votes 0.35%). Neither of those candidates received ANY media coverage. This also placed him behind Hoc Thai Nguyen (2,321 votes 0.89%) who also received zero media coverage.
Despite this performance McVey was invited to every Mayoral Forum, while the other three were, for the most part, not, he received a glowing puff-piece from the Houston Chronicle, and all four of Houston's prominent local TV stations provided him air-time and coverage. How did this happen?
Either McVey was given credence because he dumped his own money into the race, or the news outlets provided him with stature because he was a Caucasian Democrat with business connections to the correct people. In no poll did McVey even register as a blip on the radar, but he was viewed as "top-tier" for no other reason than the media said so. Even worse, he was allowed to make ridiculous claims (that he had turned around over 60 struggling businesses in Houston) despite no evidence to support his claims and information in the public record that seemed to bring that into question.
When one media member did question McVey, he responded with personal attacks.
Outside of that, missing from the coverage was almost any solid analysis of the race for Controller (which is now in a run-off between Bill Frazar and Peter Brown's son Chris) or any serious discussion of the City Council races. (And here is where I go after the Chronicle) As an organization that presents itself as the "local newspaper of record" there is an obligation that comes with claiming that. The Chron should have, at minimum, conducted forums for each of these races and live-streamed them, or contracted with Houston PBS to air them on TV. As a matter of fact, as a PUBLIC broadcasting station, Channel 8 should have pushed for this as well.
Instead we got a couple of articles that were nothing more than whimsical overviews and some endorsements from the Editorial Board which were made based on secret discussions with some (not all) of the candidates. In a city the size of Houston this is not only unacceptable, it's bordering on journalistic malpractice.
That's all I've got for now.
