Morales Wants to Get Back Up on the Bike?

You beat down Roy (Peter Brown beat him for At-Large 1 in 2005) and then you beat him down again (Melissa Noriega beat him in the 2007 At-Large 3 Special Election). Then once more (Melissa Noriega beat him in the 2007 At-Large 3 General Election), and again for good measure (Parker and Locke best him in the 2009 Mayoral race). Then, Roy shrugs and says, "Oh what the heck, maybe I'll run one more time." After all he's only run city-wide four times. Two more and he'll have his own monument in DC:

Morales, meanwhile, was getting the brakes fixed on his car and trying to decide whether to endorse. The three-time candidate and Harris County Board of Education member would not rule out another citywide run.

It took Lincoln six times,” he said.

(Yeah, Chron, he's run city-wide four times, not three - count 'em up. The two At-Large runs in 2007 were two separate races. Roy could have opted out after he got beat in the Special, but he loved the thrill of defeat so much, he signed up again for the fall.)

The Chron seems to have found out there was even more E-Day GOTV for Roy than I suspected:

Although major Republican stalwarts largely were missing from his campaign, he was the beneficiary of several last-minute lifelines that may have increased his appeal to conservative voters. 

Perhaps the most significant was a shout-out he received at a Tea Party rally Monday night at Sam Houston Race Park. The estimated 10,000 people who attended were urged to vote for him. 

He also was the beneficiary of two huge mail pieces sent to voters in West Houston, Clear Lake and Kingwood, urging party activists to cast their ballots for him. One came from a voter guide mailed out by the Texas Conservative Review and the other from the Harris County Republican Party, which endorsed him Oct. 19. The party's mail piece was sent to 70,000 households, and volunteers made more than 200,000 calls on his behalf on Election Day.

Yeah, well, here's the deal. I think the Chron got played on that "volunteers made 200,000 calls for Morales on Election Day" thing. If you are using phones and a call list you can make about 25 calls per hour. So, you would need 8000 volunteer hours on Election Day. Or, you could do virtual phone banking and double that rate, so 4000 volunteer hours. Or, you could use predictive dialing, with one caller making about 100 calls per hour, so you'd need 2000 volunteer hours on E-Day. If each spry Republican volunteer took a 2-hour shift on the predictive dialer, they'd need 1000 volunteers.

Are you telling me the Harris County GOP got 1000 volunteers to call voters on Election Day asking them to vote for Roy Morales? Color me skeptical. Actually, I just plain don't believe that. This begins to sound like more of Morales' over inflated claims like these he made in 2005, running against Brown:

I have provided the White House with plans to deter nuclear war. During a Korean peninsula exercise, I crafted a plan to greatly reduce Korean civilian causalities. I authored the Global Information Operation Planning Order for defeating terrorism.

Roy seems to be having fun running city-wide. He doesn't have to raise very much money. The media treats him like a serious candidate, so he gets a lot of attention. He gets a chance to tell his "deterring nuclear war in Korea" stories. Bikers make an ad for him. And, now we learn he can snap his fingers and 1000 volunteers appear. 


I think he should run for Mayor again in 2011. He can always use tape and a sharpie and spruce up his 2009 yard signs.