Houston Press -- Harris County Democratic Politics

Bush Envy -- When Democrats try to impersonate Republicans, the results ain't pretty

County vote totals reflect the dampening of party enthusiasm.

In 2000, Democrats led the GOP in the number of straight-party ballots, 264,747 to 260,705. This year the trend reversed, with Republicans dominating 180,266 to 169,570.

District 25 Congressman-elect Chris Bell found out the hard way in last year's mayoral campaign that when Republicans have a choice between one of their own and a Democrat campaigning as the next best thing, the real deal wins every time. Fellow councilman and conservative Republican Orlando Sanchez ran far ahead of the third-place Bell because westside GOPers would not cross party lines, even in a nonpartisan race.

"It's not like, 'God, he has a lot better budget plan' or 'It seems like he really has an idea what he wants to do with the public works department,'" lamented Bell afterward. "It's just that he's a Republican."

By attempting to play footsie with the Republicans, Bell also sent hard-core Democrats reluctantly crowding into the camp of incumbent Lee Brown, who then edged out Sanchez in the runoff for re-election as mayor.

Bell learned from that experience, and successfully ran a congressional campaign based on bread-and-butter Democratic issues mixed with hardball attack ads against GOP businessman Tom Reiser. It helped that he had a district with a Democratic edge. Bell didn't needlessly antagonize Republicans, but he didn't pander to them, either, in achieving one of the few Democratic victories in contested county races.

Too bad some statewide and local Democratic candidates didn't get the message in time.

Bell says disorganization in the effort to get out the vote in the black and Hispanic areas may be partly to blame for the Democrats' poor showing.

"I heard there was a lot of infighting in the community, that a lot of money was being spent but it wasn't spent effectively in what would really drive the vote," says Bell. "As far as the black-brown coalition coming together, I don't think that happened. There's still significant mistrust between those communities, and if I heard that once, I heard it a hundred times during the course of the campaign."

Schechter agrees.

"It appeared that the coordinated campaign ran a fairly segregated-type effort," explains the chairwoman. "Only Hispanic professionals doing Hispanics, and only African-American officials doing African -American, and only Anglos doing the swings. I thought the Democratic Party was about everybody at the table together, not anybody running something separate."

At times it seemed like it was three seperate Democratic parties, one for blacks, one for hispanics, and one for whites. There was little coordination and working together.