Don't Ask, Don't Tell

[Sam Spade]

marking this thread for the chance to take apart a few people on Houston.

Btw, I once did numbers for the 2008 Prez election in Houston v. Harris County (deleted my file stupidly), and remember that I ended up getting something like 60%-65% Obama for Houston and 60%-65% McCain for Harris County.  They were about equal in votes.  There's a few places that you don't think are Houston, yet actually are, and vice versa.

Also, 50.86% for an incumbent Houston mayor is really piss poor, but I suspect it had more to do with the stupid flood levy that they've enacted, and then reneged on, and then the silly red-light camera thing than homosexuality.

Historically, Houston has always been a Democratic city.  Even when Louis Welch was running the place in the 1960s and 1970s, he was still a Democrat.  Don't let the non-partisan election thing fool you - the competitive mayoral races in Houston almost always end up between a Republican (usually a moderate one) and a Democrat, partially because the Republican base of Houston tends to be pretty organized (though they can't win elections because of the numbers).  2009 is really an exception in that regard, similar to 1991.  Go look at 1997, 2001, 2003, for example.  1991 and 2009 were elections about the white uniting against the black.

[Sam Spade]

Don't let the non-partisan election thing fool you - the competitive mayoral races in Houston almost always end up between a Republican (usually a moderate one) and a Democrat

no, no, no.  You have to listen to Link here Sam.  No one knew Whitmire was a Dem when she defeated Republican McConn in '81, Houstonians were completely in the dark.

and even though both you and I grew up on Houston's east end, and even though you and I have probably been to Gulfgate Mall over a hundred times...Link knows the area and the mall better than we do.

I had a post on this, but lost it.  Whatever, I'll bring it up next time.  My family still lives in the East End, but the middle class Hispanic part that's fairly nice (not Eastwood, but the other area).

I'm a bit younger than you - Gulfgate was dead when I was around it in the mid-late 1990s, but it was of course, at one time, the best Houston mall.  I suspect we have a different view as black and Hispanic infiltration tends to mean different things, and the area around MacGregor Park was all black.  I really did live (and my parents still work) in the real barrio north of Buffalo Bayou, and I saw Fifth Ward during that era - the blacks were such animals in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s in Houston, that I understand your feelings on the matter.

[Sam Spade]

the blacks were such animals in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s in Houston, that I understand your feelings on the matter.

Thanks.  It's always good to know who you are dealing with.

Of course. And now we have real obvious proof that you don't know anything about Houston.