Election junkies, fear not: the 2009 election cycle has not quite yet gasped its last breath. This is actually a fairly active week for electoral action. It all kicks off tomorrow, when we have the competitive Senate primary in Massachusetts to elect the successor to the late Senator Ted Kennedy.
Down South, we follow up last week's absurdly close race for Mayor of Atlanta with another battle for City Hall that promises to be incredibly tight.
This coming weekend, the voters of Houston will head to the polls in order to select their replacement for popular Mayor (and new gubernatorial candidate) Bill White.
In a contest that has layers and layers of subtext, we have an African-American male candidate (Gene Locke) squaring off with a Caucasian candidate (Annise Parker) who would make no small amount of history by being one of the highest-ranking openly gay public officials in American political history.
Parker's sexual orientation--perhaps not surprisingly--has emerged as an issue in the campaign. A group of socially conservative pastors have backed Locke, arguing that Parker's ascendancy to City Hall would present a "morality" problem for the City of Houston.
The support of some of these groups, and other leading anti-gay activists, has been a tender subject for Locke, who has been compelled to reconcile vocal support for some GLBT causes with being embraced by some of the most hostile anti-gay voices in the city. He attempted to reconcile the two during a debate last week:
I will accept endorsements from those people who believe that I am the best candidate, and they would join a long list of folks who have endorsed me, from the police officers union to the firefighters to the Realtors to the home builders to the Teamsters. I think my criteria is, do you believe I am the best candidate, and if you do I accept your endorsement.
Locke went on to insist that he did not believe that Parker's sexual orientation was the only reason for their endorsement.
The race could prove to be a close one: a new poll from Zogby has Parker holding a modest edge (42-36) over Locke with a week to go. Locke can take heart in the fact that many of the undecideds are African-American voters (a group he has a sizeable lead with). Parker can take heart in the fact that she has a clear edge among Independent voters.
Early voting has been fairly brisk, with more voters having participated in the runoff as had done so at this point in the general election in October/Early November.
An analysis of the voting patterns suggests good news for both candidates--strong turnout has been reported in strongholds for both Parker and Locke.