Howard Wins House Runoff

February 15, 2006

Howard Comes Out Like a Rose in Valentine's Day
Runoff for House Seat that Democrats Take Back

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

It wasn't exactly a St. Valentine's Day Massacre. But it wasn't ever close as Democrat Donna Howard put the final touches on a campaign that began as an underdog and ended with a 16-point victory Tuesday in a special runoff election for an open Austin state House seat that Republicans had controlled for more than three years.

Howard - a nurse and former school board member in the affluent enclave of Westlake Hills - defeated Republican high-tech executive Ben Bentzin with almost 58 percent of the vote in the second and final round of the race to fill the vacant House District 48 seat.

Howard jumped out to the lead with 56 percent of the early vote and never looked back as voters in northwest Travis County picked her to replace former House member Todd Baxter, a Republican who represented the district for three years before stepping down three months ago to launch a career as a lobbyist.

Howard, who will be on the ballot again in the March 7 primary election, used an aggressive election day ground game to seal the victory on the heels of a race that appeared to be stacked in Bentzin's favor until the Democrat defied the odds and came within a few dozen votes of winning outright in the initial election last month.

Speaking to supporters at a victory celebration, Howard attributed the win in one of the state's few true swing districts to a simple message that centered on positive change, taking care of the community and fixing the state's public school system. But the campaign itself wasn't always positive as local Democrats went on the attack before the first round of voting in an attempt to cast Bentzin in the same light with the grand jury investigation that led to criminal charges against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The Travis County Democratic Party followed that up with a concerted effort in the runoff to portray Bentzin as an advocate for school vouchers in an area where appear to be substantially unpopular.

Bentzin's campaign stuck to the high road when it thought it was ahead during round one. But Bentzin's disappointing 38-point showing in the January election forced the Republican's campaign to go negative as well - and it had help from the Texas Republican Party with direct mail aimed at painting Howard as a school trustee who'd backed wasteful spending and could not be trusted with the state taxpayers' money.

Republicans now have nine months to try to turn the state House campaign around before Bentzin and the Democratic nominee meet in the November general election. Former Austin School Board President Kathy Rider, who received 10 percent of the January 17 vote before endorsing Howard in the runoff, will be on the ballot again in next month's Democratic primary election along with Andy Brown, an attorney who had not established residency in the district in time to qualify for the special election. Libertarian Ben Easton, who claimed two percent of the first round vote, will be on the ballot in HD 48 this fall.

Democrats trumpeted the final results as compelling evidence of a public backlash against the GOP and its candidates for everything from the war in Iraq to the ethics scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff to the probe that knocked DeLay out of his leadership role to the Republicans' inability so far to resolve the school finance crisis in Texas. But there's no way to know for sure at this point whether the HD 48 vote was the foreshadowing of a trend or an aberration in a politically neurotic district that voted against the gay marriage ban and favored John Kerry for president despite demographics that had made it appear more Republican when the GOP redrew House borders five years ago.

Baxter won the first HD 48 after the 2001 remap by defeating incumbent Democrat Ann Kitchen in 2002. Democrats contended that Baxter won because he had support from a political action committee that was founded by DeLay and is now under indictment. Baxter, who'd never been accused of any wrongdoing, had to overcome relentless attacks about contributions he'd received and hung on to the seat in November 2004 with a victory over Democrat Kelly White by less than 200 votes. Baxter knew he could expect more of the same in a 2006 race.

But Republicans thought Bentzin would be relatively immune from the DeLay-based attacks because he'd used his own money to finance a state Senate race in 2002. The timing of the special election and its short fuse also appeared to give the GOP's candidate a significant advantage - and Bentzin had endorsements from top Republican leaders including Governor Rick Perry and Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs, who represented HD 48 herself before running statewide.

But Democrats found a way to link Bentzin to DeLay when it was revealed that he'd paid a fundraiser for the powerful congressman from Sugar Land through a third party for help with his campaign to unseat state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos four years ago. Howard and the Democrats at the same time were able to neutralize criticism of her for supporting a bond issue for a second high school in the Eanes school district in the 1990s by showing voters that two of President George W. Bush's top advisers had also backed the proposal.

Howard was voted off the school board after the bond package failed at the polls - and she lost two subsequent races for the State Board of Education. But the same school board experience that Republicans tried to use against Howard gave her an advantage in the debate over how to fix the state's school funding session at a time when a special session on that subject is on the near horizon.

If Howard meets Bentzin again this fall as expected, she will be in a new position of having to defend votes cast in a special session on school finance sometime between now and this fall. In the meantime, she enters the March primary as the incumbent in a district that was drawn for Republicans as one of four Democratic state representatives in a county where the only House seat still held by a GOP member is also open and up for grabs this year.

Partisans on both sides may get a better idea of whether Howard's win was the start of a trend when voters in Grand Prairie and Irving go to the polls for a special election in HD 106 on February 28. Democrats think their only candidate in that special contest has a chance to beat the only Republican in the race for a seat that the GOP has represented for more than a dozen years.