Let’s look in on the US Senate race here in Texas. That’s the one pitting Democrat State Representative James Talarico against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton defeated incumbent John Cornyn in the May Republican primary runoff while Talarico defeated Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett — without a runoff — in the March Democratic primary.
A frequent mainstream media narrative is that Talarico is struggling to win the votes of Black Texans, including Black Democrats, because he defeated Crockett. For instance, over the preceding weekend, multiple media outlets ran with a story that Talarico was heckled by a Black woman at an event in Houston evidently intended primarily for Black voters.
Typical of media coverage was this lead from The Hill: “Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D) received a harsh reception from an attendee at his town hall in Houston on Sunday.” The story goes on to report that video shows “a Black woman yelling, ‘So you stay here, you answer our questions or you suffer the consequences.’” Talarico, the story continues, “told the woman he appreciated her for traveling to attend the town hall, she replied, ‘I did it for my people, not for you.’”
Only after recounting this “harsh reception” from a single person in the crowd did The Hill report: “The Houston Chronicle reported attendees gave Talarico a standing ovation when he took the stage at the Kingdom Builders Center.”
At least The Hill included the part about the standing ovation. Some reports left that out entirely, for example a report originally form Mediaite that was also picked up by Yahoo. That story focused solely on the heckler’s exchange with Talarico. It was headlined, “James Talarico Shouted Down During Houston Town Hall Event” and built on a social media post by Faith Bugenhagen of the Austin American-Statesman.
One had to read (and subscribe to) the Houston Chronicle to learn that the heckling came as Talarico “was about to answer the final question of a town hall” and that after the exchange Talarico “turned to answer more questions and push the event longer.” Both The Hill and the Houston Chronicle reported that Talarico took questions “for more than 90 minutes.”
The Houston Chronicle also reported that the standing ovation which greeted Talarico came “after introductions from U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee, State Rep. Lauren Ashley Simmons and Houston City Council Member Martha Castex-Tatum. The crowd chanted ‘Take back Texas’ as they hoisted campaign signs.”
With the exception of the Houston Chronicle, however, the media focus was on the single heckler rather than the overall nature of the event. A similar media approach occurred in coverage of Talarico’s appearance at the Texas Democratic Convention earlier this summer. I’m going largely from memory on this particular part of the story because stories about Talarico’s speech to the Black Caucus at this summer’s Texas Democratic Convention are now eclipsed in online searches by the more recent Houston incident, even when searching specifically for stories about Talarico’s appearance there.
I did, however, find a Texas Tribune story which fit the media template. Most of the story is devoted to describing Talarico’s challenges with Black voters. Then, about halfway through, the Tribune acknowledges that Talarico “was well received at the Black caucus, with a notable portion of the room jumping to their feet when he appeared.”
It’s true that Talarico needs to win a large majority of Black votes if he has any hope of becoming the first Democrat since 1994 to win a statewide race in Texas. As the Houston Chronicle story notes, Talarico “lost 8 of 10 Black votes in Houston and Dallas in his March primary win over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.” What most stories that concentrate on sensational moments like the “heckling” don’t note is that polls show Talarico doing much better with Black voters than previous Democratic Senatorial nominees. That news comes from a recent poll by the Texas Politics Project.
That poll, as reported by Houston Public Media:
“found 67% of Black voters surveyed said they support Talarico — of note considering what those numbers looked like for previous Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate at similar points in their campaigns. In 2024, the group’s polling around this time showed Colin Allred drawing 47% of the state’s Black voters, while Beto O’Rourke had 49% in 2018.”
Overall the poll had Paxton leading Talarico by one point, 43% to 42%, well within the margin of error and with plenty of votes still in play.
Regarding Black support for Talarico, the Houston Public Media story went on to quote “Joshua Blank, research director for The Texas Politics Project and author of the poll.” Blank said, ‘“The main advantage Talarico has with Black voters and with Democratic voters in general is he’s just significantly more well known at this point in the race.”’ And, the story continued, “Blank said Democratic candidates often spend much of their campaigns simply introducing themselves to voters. But, explained Blank, Talarico entered the race with a higher profile than recent Democratic Senate nominees.” He added that “‘support in a poll’” and ‘“voter enthusiasm”’ are not the same.
That’s all true, but Talarico’s “higher profile” results in large part from the high profile Democratic primary earlier this year in which he defeated Crockett. Yet Talarico is polling 18 percentage points ahead of where O’Rourke stood with Black voters at this point in 2018 (against Ted Cruz) and 20 points ahead of where Colin Allred was polling at a similar juncture in 2024 (also against Cruz). This would seem to offer at least a bit of evidence that Talarico is not being seriously damaged with Black voters due to having defeated Crockett in the primary; all of which runs contrary to the dominant media narrative.
City Audit on “Nonprofit Contract Performance Management” – Sounds Boring But. . .
Now, let’s take a quick look at the goings on at City Hall. I realize we are only capturing a small portion of the activities, but a recent report, from the City Auditor’s Office is very revealing about how City Hall works nowadays. Specifically I’m referring to an audit of the City funding and monitoring process for nonprofit organizations who seek and receive money from the City.
The audit found: “We reviewed 151 annual output and outcome performance expectations. We found that the nonprofit organizations did not meet 67 (44%) of the expected output and outcome performance expectations. This included 45% of the output and 42% of the outcome performance expectations.”
“We reviewed 151 annual output and outcome performance expectations. We found that the nonprofit organizations did not meet 67 (44%) of the expected output and outcome performance expectations.”
Austin office of the city auditor
Furthermore, “For nonprofits that did not meet one or more performance expectations, there were significant deviations between what the City was expected to receive and what the nonprofit provided. For more than half of the performance expectations we reviewed that were not met, what was provided was more than 40% below the expected amounts. . .”
“As a result, the City is paying for services that were not fully delivered, and vulnerable residents may not get the services they are supposed to receive.”
Another revealing part of the audit occurred when auditors referred back to a 2019 audit and reported: “the City’s Anti-Lobbying Ordinance is not applicable to social service contracting unless authorized by the City Council. Six of the seven peer cities surveyed during the 2019 audit stated that anti-lobbying rules apply to procurement of social service contracts. The City of Austin’s current policy prevents award of these taxpayer dollars in accordance with procurement industry standard.”
“As a result, the City is paying for services that were not fully delivered, and vulnerable residents may not get the services they are supposed to receive.”
Austin office of the city auditor
Translation: The City has an anti-lobby rule for those seeking contracts. But in order for that rule to apply to nonprofits the City Council must take formal action. They had not done so before 2019.
So (switching back to audit language), the 2019 audit “recommended the City Manager work with Council to determine whether the City’s Anti-Lobbying Ordinance should apply to social service contracts.” Evidently the recommended (seven years ago) collaboration between the City Manager and Council did not reach a conclusion that Austin’s “Anti-Lobbying Ordinance should apply to social service contracts.”
The auditors try to offer some reasons for that decision, or lack of action — albeit in somewhat obfuscating language that reflects the fact that the Auditor reports to the Council (I don’t mean that in a condemning way, just to convey the reality of the structure. I’m grateful that the auditor is still getting this information out there for the public to see and people are free to reach their own conclusions.):
“The recommendations to develop a Citywide social service procurement policy and determine whether the City’s Anti-Lobbying Ordinance should apply to social service contracts have not been implemented due to shifting responsibilities and definitions of social service contracts and grants.”
No further mention is made in the current audit of lobbying or the anti-lobbying ordinance. So presumably the possibility of the Council applying the anti-lobbying ordinance to nonprofit contracting is remote at best, but maybe they will surprise us.
In other words, during the last seven years, the decision has been made, albeit quietly and out of public view, that the anti-lobby ordinance should not apply to nonprofits seeking City funding.
So let’s end with a summary and a related example. What the 2019 audit recommended was that people associated with nonprofits that are seeking, or already obtaining, funding from the City — that is people who stand to benefit financially from the City allocating funds to the nonprofit — not be allowed to lobby City Council Members for funding of the nonprofit with which they are associated. That’s because the process can be abused.
A traditional alternative is to entrust City staff with sorting through all requests for City funding of nonprofits and come back to the Council with recommendations. The Council can provide the staff with goals and objectives that they would like to see addressed with funding. The staff has also traditionally worked with the Council-appointed Community Action Network (now called the Community Advancement Network) to make funding recommendations. I know that many Council Members in the past, like yours truly, had a policy of steering nonprofit representatives to staff when they sought to lobby for funding. The 2019 audit recommendation to consider extending the anti-lobbying ordinance to nonprofit recommendations tells me that this traditional practice is no longer in operation. Plus, seven-years worth of Councils since then have failed to act on the recommendation.
When relations get too cozy between funders and fund recipients it risks corruption and the appearance of corruption. It can also result in something of a revolving door for City funds. Last year’s Prop Q campaign provides an unsettling example of what I mean. In Prop Q, the Mayor and Council supermajority sought voter approval for a tax increase significantly beyond the annual increase allowed by state law without an election. Many of the funds from the tax increase were intended to go to nonprofit organizations. Specifically, $51.5 million of that proposed tax increase was to be spent on services related to homelessness.
When relations get too cozy between funders and fund recipients it risks corruption and the appearance of corruption.
Several nonprofit groups who stood to gain financially from Prop Q donated large sums to the Prop Q campaign. That included ECHO (Ending Community Homelessness Coalition), the City’s leading recipient of funds for homelessness services. As readers likely recall, Prop Q failed by an almost two-to-one majority.
There is a very high likelihood that that money came originally from City coffers then was donated to the campaign as an investment in getting voter approval for more City funding. In this way it is a revolving door for money, but none of that money revolves to taxpayers. They only supply money.
This arrangement is not exactly the same thing as nonprofit representatives lobbying Council Members to fund their agencies. But, it is an example of how cozy the relationship between the Council and those the City supports financially can become. And, direct lobbying by groups risks that the best choice for the job — as evaluated by staff — could lose out to a nonprofit with better connections or more effective lobbying. It also risks making the path of City funds into Mayoral and Council campaigns more direct and more participatory on the part of the Council. It actually risks even worse.
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