Houston’s District H Council Race Makes Me Ill

As part of a determined effort to kill my blog traffic, I’m going to write again about Houston’s Council District  H runoff election.

District H held a special election last week to fill a council vacancy.  In this election, the district’s educated Anglo voters in the Heights neighborhood teamed up with the district’s politically underrepresented Hispanic voters to generate a turnout of something like 5 %. 

( Here is a story about people in India voting despite attacks from Maoist guerrillas.) 

Because who cares?

As long as you can send your own kid to a Montessori pre-school who gives a shit if the Latino kid a few miles away has limited prospects in life?

Just because you’ve been treated like crap for hundreds of years doesn’t  mean you should change that fact. Stay home! Why not?!?  

The District H race last week offered voters the chance to put a second Latino Councilmember on Houston City Council. Houston is a 40% Latino city with one Hispanic Councilmember out of 14 members.

The upcoming runoff offers voters the same chance to elect a Hispanic.

Now one should not vote for someone just based on ethnic group. But ethnic loyalty in minority communities is often a factor in how people vote in these communities. Political representation is a visible and important symbol that ethnic groups have arrived as important participants in urban politics.

Is there unity among Hispanic Democrats in Houston?

That’s crazy talk! 

My fellow blogger Charles Kuffner writes today about a defeated Hispanic challenger in District H endorsing runoff candidate Maverick Welsh over opponent Ed Gonzalez. 

Maybe the endorsement was based fully on a weighing of the merits of each contender, but it seems quite likely that factional disputes among Hispanic Democrats played some part in the endorsement.

These factional disputes go back many years in Houston’s Hispanic community. The people involved in these disputes for all these years should reflect on the harm they have done to a community they say they are serving.

I don’t live in District H. With both candidates being Democrats, I don’t care who wins the June 13 runoff. I write about it because the whole thing makes me sick on a variety of levels.

People should turn out to vote. People should care who governs their city. People should have some sense of loyalty and respect for each other in gaining a political foothold in a city. That’s what people do in a normal healthy city and community.

Here is the link for Maverick Welsh.

Here is the link for Ed Gonzalez