Why was the Status Quo Upheld in CFISD Board Election?

Trustees Covey, Ogletree, and Ryan were reelected Tuesday, some by large margins, over an effort by conservatives to oust them from office.

Cy-Fair ISD voters returned John Ogletree, Don Ryan, and Bob Covey to the board of trustees for another three-year term Tuesday, after a concerted effort  to oust the incumbents.

Conservative challengers Bill Henderson, Kay Smith, and Scott Adams lost in their bids for the board, by 20 percent, 11 percent, and just 4 percent respectively.

Despite a banner year for Republicans and conservative candidates, I am a little surprised all three challengers failed. But in the end, what I think helped Ogletree, Ryan and Covey was group cohesiveness.

Did the signs cause CFISD's board challengers to fail?

People always seem to respond to “groupspeak.”  With the Citizens for Quality Cy-Fair ISD Trustees PAC behind them, joint signage, and what seemed like a good presence of canvassers at the polls, people more easily identified with the incumbents in a year when anti-incumbent sentiment was the theme.

If cohesion was a winning strategy, the conservative triumvirate had a mixed message of sorts, with similar-sized signs and apple logo, but different colors.

Adams, who was closest to winning, had black-on-yellow signage, far different from the red and blue signs the other two challengers used.

Sheer numbers clearly were also in play online and at the polls; on Facebook, the PAC has over 750 supporters, versus just 127 for the conservative challengers.

So, was it the cohesiveness and ease of incumbency, or the failings of the challengers to use such a strategy that caused them to fail? Hit me up in comments…

Best and Worst Campaign Websites: Harris County Republican Edition

Each election, I am both amazed and appalled by some of the choices of branding political candidates choose to forgo on their campaign signs and websites. While few are excellent, many are notoriously bad. The Harris County Republican slate is no exception.

 

Today, I look at some of the best (and worst) the Harris County GOP has to offer, and a few comments from me to you.  By and large, the Republicans could use a book on CSS for Christmas.

 

The Best

 

Best Congressional Rep Site: John Culberson

Typically, the best Republican websites come from the Congressional incumbents.  They have more money, staff and relevant content on the issues to fill a site.  U.S. Rep. John Culberson (R-7) has the most organized site, featuring top-of-the-page navigation, plenty of social media links and buttons calling voters to interact with the campaign, and an overall clean feel.

 

Best Texas Senator’s Website: Dan Patrick

Of all the Republicans in all of Texas, Sen. Dan Patrick (R-7)‘s website is built to inform and engage.  A Twitter link up top provides easy access, which a left-hand navigation is straight forward with sections for issues and videos. The gigantic Texas flag behind him and the red, white and blue nature of this website screams “I AM RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR IN 2016.”.  Scary thought, isn’t it?

 

Best Texas House Site: Patricia Harless

Texas Rep. Patricia Harless (R-126) sets the bar for what every House member’s website should aspire to be. Not only is it clean and classy, in a Texas cowboy kind of way, but it offers her constituents and supporters ways to get in contact with her via email and social networks. Furthermore, bonus points for the very cool tagline: “I believe that limited government means limited spending.”

I hope she will run for higher office at some point, and take this website with her. 🙂

 

The Worst

 

Harris County Republican Party Website

I start the bad section with the Harris County GOP’s party website only because it could be better.  Republicans, by definition, are not very good with the Internet to begin with, so I will try to be brief. But, this site is crammed, very modular in its appearance while also looking very disheveled. My eye doesn’t quite know what to look at, and therefore, I am apt to struggle to focus on one thing; for example, the video embedded (congrats on learning how to embed videos, guys!) at left is so “heavy” in weight, even if I want to look at the buttons at right (which are the second “heaviest” item), I have a hard time focusing.

 

Another point I want to make, thus proving the assertion about the GOP and its slow progress online: While viewing the website’s page source, the webmaster (or creator) illustrated how behind they were by not only taking the time to write out metatag keywords (which, for all intensive purposes, lost importance years ago when it came to SEO and search engines), but alternating between capitalizing keywords, as if they were case sensitive.

 

Worst Congressional Rep Site: Steve Mueller (R-9)

Remember when I said the Congressional incumbents had the best sites? On the flip side of that, Congressional also-rans (in this case, Republicans challenging standing Democratic incumbents, who no matter how bad they suck, always win) have among the worst. Steve Mueller, God bless him for trying, has nice talking points framed by a website my 10-year-old brother could make if he was learning HTML.

 

The Nice Try Award: U.S. Rep. Pete Olson (R-22)

Okay, I lied. Not all Republican incumbents have the nicest sites.  Rep. Pete Olson shows just how boring, white bread he can get by filling one of the Republican’s nicest websites with big blocks of text from top to bottom. Olsen is highly prolific, and unless you have the time to read Olson blah blah blah about blah blah blah, you will be turned off by this website.  Olson does get points for breaking out of the red, white and blue motifs, however.

Change Your Website, Please Award: State Rep. Gary Elkins

Back when I was with the 1960 Sun Newspapers, I met and spoke with Rep. Gary Elkins on a number of occasions.  His policies, especially in terms of small business, are incredibly sound. But, his website looks like something I tinkered with when I was in my freshman year of high school!  It is a very simple HTML site. I wish he’d do something about this eyesore.

 

Weirdest Navigation Award: Judge Vanessa Velasquez

In the Harris County judicial races, one judge stands out for a weird navigation feature on their website.  Harris County Judge Vanessa Valasquez, of the 183rd Criminal District Court, relies on this crazy Flash menu which changes at a rate of every 4 seconds.  The image isn’t even shaped like the flap, with a corner virtually cut off. It looks pretty tacky, and for an older voter, probably isn’t clear it is a link.

 

Worst Perennial Website: Orlando Sanchez

Orlando Sanchez is to the Harris County Republicans as Chris Bell is to the Harris County Democrats: He is always running for something.  And when he throws his hat in the ring, Orlando counts on the above early ’90s HTML website to carry him through, time and time again.  In fact, if you look closely, the “for Harris County Treasurer” part appears to be pixelated, likely because they changed it in Microsoft Paint every time he filed for a new campaign.  The left-hand navigation is very simple, and let’s face it, the site is boring.

 

Wow, You Work in IT? Award: Stan Stanart

While Harris County Clerk candidate Stan Stanart is busy vying for Beverly Kaufman’s seat, he is also busy as the Harris County GOP’s IT guy.  And yet, despite being the Computer Whiz-in-Chief, this train wreck of a website is supposed to persuade us to “Stand with Stan.”  The alternating red and blue text is bothersome, the artwork is fuzzy, and the faded American flag looks like some Windows Outlook background. Navigation is simple enough, but the end result leaves much to be desired, Stan.

Oh, and when the September 27th Fundraiser was over, you should have removed the flashing yellow banner. I got my hopes up thinking I was going to get to spend a night with you, Chris Daniel and Paul Bettencourt!

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Brandon De Hoyos | theblog@meetbrandon.com

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Another Conservative Blog?

Let’s face it. I’ve been down this road before.

Like so many others on the Internet, you sign up for your WordPress account, register a worthwhile moniker, get all gung ho about visions of affecting the blogosphere with your wit and wisdom; so, why I am starting another conservative blog?

Blame the Lone Star College-CyFair Republican Club, and today’s meeting speaker, Corie Whalen of American Majority, whose topic on using social media to inspire others to vote conservative struck a chord with me.

Did you know only 6,600 people search the term “conservative blogs” each month on Google, according to the AdWords keyword tool? (Here are the top 10 conservative blogs).

On the flip side, did you know Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and talk radio audiences routinely trump in size the audience for “mainstream” media? Don’t believe me? For 106 months and counting, Fox News has beat CNN and MSNBC consecutively, according to the unbias Nielsen Ratings. 

Wall Street Journal’s  increasing circulation is amazing considering the number of other papers around them struggling to survive. Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck maintain their audiences while liberal radio tries and fails. (See Air America Radio…)

So, why not the Internet? 

Drudge and Breitbart aside, liberal political blogs tend to fair better and engage Internet users better, said Whalen. There seems to be a technology gap between liberals and conservatives.  The campaign websites are evidence enough.

Age likely plays a huge role, with fewer young people engaged in politics in general, conservative and libertarian included.

And so, here we are, on day one of Otros Dos Centavos, considering the role this slice of cyberspace shall play in the political world. (And, yes, the title is indeed a play on Stace Medellin’s Dos Centavos. If you are a liberal, you can get your CHANGE there… ¡Sí, se puede!)

Stay, read, engage, vote. And if you are a young conservative with a computer, participate.