A terse, five-paragraph June 14 Associated Press report on the results of San Antonio's mayoral election the previous day gave no indication of the party affiliation or political outlook of the winner or loser.
Readers could only determine that the winner, Ivy Taylor, became "the first African-American elected to the post," which of course had to mean that the handpicked candidate to succeed Julian Castro, who left to the post to become President Obama's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, had triumphed. But it didn't. The AP report gave no indication that the Democrats' handpicked Hispanic candidate had lost a race they thought they were on track to win six weeks earlier.
Here is the full AP report:
Given that this same story is the only relevant one present at the AP's national site, it seems quite safe to say that the wire service would prefer that readers not know that Leticia Van de Putte is a Democrat, or even Hispanic. Though Taylor is apparently not a member of either major party, the excuse that the election was technically nonpartisan is pathetically weak, for at least two reasons.
First, Van de Putte was a Democratic State representative for 24 years who, among other things, stood alongside losing 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis at the Texas capitol in support of "aborting an unborn (child) after 20 weeks." Second, Julian Castro, though not yet widely known, is considered a Democratic Party star who supposedly had San Antonio eating out of the palm of his hands. So his party's candidate to permanently succeed him should have been a shoo-in, right? Wrong. In fact, the AP report might lead many readers to believe that Taylor was Castro's preferred interim successor, because most urban city councils are Democrat-dominated.
Here is the Texas Tribune's take on the result, which is that social and fiscal conservatism are not automatic losing issues in urban areas (bolds are mine):
Taylor's San Antonio Win a Wake-Up Call for Democrats
How did a Brooklyn-born city planner who has never run for partisan office beat a nearly lifelong San Antonio Democrat in the race for the top job in the liberal-leaning Alamo City?
On Sunday, the day after Ivy Taylor narrowly defeated former state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte for a full term as mayor of San Antonio, answers to that question varied dramatically. But even Van de Putte's supporters, who played witness to her second high-profile loss in seven months, were sounding the alarm that the outcome spelled more doom for Texas' beleaguered minority party.
"It ought to scare every Democrat in Bexar County," said Christian Archer, Van de Putte's campaign manager. "If you're a Democrat and in Bexar County, you better wake up."
"We keep putting the blinders over our eyes and saying, 'Oh, no, no, no, it'll go away.' And it's not going away," added Archer, a veteran of San Antonio mayoral politics. "What's not happening is the kind of turnout that we need."
Taylor's side, meanwhile, was basking in the glow of a hard-fought victory it considers representative of a sea change in city politics.
... "It's a new day in San Antonio," Taylor strategist Josh Robinson declared Sunday, saying the election proved San Antonio is more of a "purple city" than most Democrats assume. The outcome, he added, showed that the "old way of doing things didn't work anymore."
... Taylor’s crossover appeal ...(was) anchored in the chorus that Van de Putte was a career politician simply on the hunt for her next job. Both women had initially denied interest in the race, but it was Van de Putte who did so while campaigning for lieutenant governor, just two years after running for re-election to the Senate — a sequence Taylor's campaign was happy to point out.
... it was not just lower-than-expected turnout that hurt Van de Putte, according to her backers. She was up against a woman who had galvanized the city's social conservatives through her opposition to a nondiscrimination ordinance in 2013, and the city's fiscal conservatives through her decision to effectively kill a plan to build a streetcar system downtown.
Led by Justin Hollis — the GOP strategist who engineered Will Hurd's successful challenge last year to U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine — Taylor's team insists her coalition was broader than one ideology or party. But it was Republicans who were the most energized Sunday, claiming a renewed ally in the seventh-largest city in the country — and a key gateway to politically ascendant South Texas.
The bad news for Democrats in Texas continues to pour in, but the AP didn't want anyone outside of Texas to know that.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
