OPINION

Defeated Democrat Farouk Shami made good on his promise to spend millions on his bid for governor. Nearly $12 million in expenditures netted Shami a paltry 12.8 percent of the vote.

Matt Stiles at the Texas Tribune crunched the numbers, calculating the cost per vote for primary candidates. Not surprisingly, Shami tops the list, spending an eye-popping $135 for each vote. As Matt wryly notes: For that price, Shami could have given each supporter one of his pricey hair straightening irons. Considering that I saw little evidence of Shami's millions out on the street, that might have been a better strategy.

Near the other end of the spending spectrum is George Clayton, who is the academic coordinator at North Dallas High School. He spent only five cents per vote to upset longtime State Board of Education member Tincy Miller in the Republican primary. Few folks, including Miller, saw that coming.

Interestingly, there are more winners on the list of 10 candidates who spent the least per vote than on the list of top 10 spenders. Perhaps I should rescind my earlier comment about giving away straightening irons.

When the news came out last year that the city was fudging adjusting crime statistics to more closely conform to federal reporting standards, it looked an awful lot like maybe the city was trying to make its statistics look better than they actually were so we wouldn't be listed around the country as one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country. When the news came out, again, that police weren't registering certain property crimes (like a guy busting through the front door but running away without stealing anything), it looked even more fishy.

Even so, Police Chief David Kunkle's explanation seemed at least plausible. We cut him some slack.

But now it emerges, thanks to excellent reporting from Tanya Eiserer and Scott Goldstein, that the city has deliberately made it difficult, if not impossible, to locate certain embarrassing statistics, like murders, rape and aggravated assault, on the crime-statistics Web site.

Well, gosh, we believe in transparency. They should be there because people need to know what's going on in their communities, Kunkle and other police officials say. "We were asked, and we complied with a request to remove from the public site the ability to select the offenses of Murder and Rape," counters Leslie Delatte, president of the company that maintains the Web site.

The Police Department denies issuing such instructions. City officials explain that there are, um, well, certain filters necessary for, um, certain kinds of murders, and well, uh.

Please, folks, just admit it. You've been trying to alter public perceptions by hiding the bad numbers.

A last word from me, at any rate.

I was amused by the insistence, especially from Debra Medina supporters, that polling on the Republican governor's primary was not to be trusted. Rasmussen Reports, the polling outfit that did the most on the race, came for special criticism, despite a history of generally getting it right.

Here's the final actual vote percentages:
-- Perry, 51.08%
-- Hutchison, 30.33%
-- Medina, 18.57%

Here's the final Rasmussen poll, taken Feb. 23:
-- Perry, 48%
-- Hutchison, 27%
-- Medina, 16%

That left Rasmussen with about 9 percent undecided, and those voters spread reasonably equally among the three candidates on Election Day.

Rasmussen was closest to the pin among the major polling outfits that took samples in February, when interest was at its highest and decisions were being made. Three others:
-- Public Policy Polling (Feb. 19-21): Perry 41, Hutchison 30, Medina 20
-- Daily Kos/Research 2000 (Feb. 8-10): Perry 42, Hutchison 30, Medina 17
-- DMN/Blum-Weprin (Feb. 2-10): Perry 45, Hutchison 29, Medina 17

For your entertainment, if you find such things entertaining, here are cherry-picked comments (all spelling and grammar in the original) to two blog posts about polling leading up to the vote:

This is my long-delayed, but not at all emotional, response to being without power for a couple of days back during the Great Blizzard of 2010. I have a couple of thoughts on things that could be done a little better:

1. GREENVILLE - We explain why this is such an important part of town and why we worry so about its decline, due to this week's fire and other recent signs of deterioration. We acknowledge in this editorial the ebb and flow of Lower Greenville, but the fundamental point of the edit is to warn the city against its deterioration. Colleen writing on behalf of the board.

2. SENTENCING - It was easy to lose sight amid all the election frenzy of the significance of the sentencing in the Dallas City Hall public corruption case. We remind readers why this was such an important case and a significant outcome. These sentences mean business and should be a lesson to others tempted to conspire to skirt the law. We are struck by an overall profound sense of sadness about the way the case ended up, and by Don Hill's stunning lack of recognition of his wrongdoing. We also remind readers of what a black eye this case was for both southern Dallas, an area historically underserved by many of its own representatives, and for the city as a whole, which is tarnished badly by this sort of publicity. Colleen writing on behalf of the board.

3. CHILE -- We reflect on the devastation of Chile but make apt comparisons to Haiti and explain why an earthquake substantially worse in South America did so much less damage than a less-worse earthquake in the Caribbean. There are lessons here about infrastructure and preparedness which cities like Dallas can learn from. Tod writing on behalf of the board.

4. STREETCARS -- We explain in greater detail why the recent funding for streetcars in downtown and Oak Cliff is a particular triumph for southern Dallas. Bill writing on behalf of the board.

5. DCTOLLWAY -- We aseess Maurine Dickey's Dallas County tollway authority idea and explain why we think she has the right goal but but not the right implementation idea. Rodger writing on behalf of the board.

Victor Carrillo, chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, blames his loss to an unknown challenger in Tuesday's GOP primary on voter bias against his last name. "Given the choice between 'Porter' and 'Carrillo,' unfortunately, the Hispanic surname was a serious setback from which I could never recover, although I did all in my power to overcome this built-in bias," he says.

The victor, David Porter, says he worked hard for this victory and writes off Carrillo's comments as "sour grapes."

That was my initial reaction until I also looked at the extremely narrow victory in the Democratic primary of Hector Uribe in the Texas land commissioner's race. Here was a guy who had strong backing from the Democratic Party. He had spent 12 years as a state senator and House member. He was well-versed in the workings of the Legislature. The most impressive experience the other Democratic candidate, Bill Burton, offered was a short tenure as a justice of the peace in Henderson County.

I talked to both candidates, and of the two, Uribe was clearly the better qualified. Uribe narrowly won, with a 20,000-vote lead out of more than 560,000 votes cast statewide.

I think Carrillo might be making more of an issue out of ethnicity than he should, but I do believe it deserves more thorough examination. For both parties, I doubt Hispanic voters were well represented in the polls, and without them to balance out the results, I do believe non-Hispanic voters who weren't familiar with the candidates chose the non-Hispanic surname more often.

One of the perplexing elements of the Dallas County constables saga has been the apparent reluctance of District Attorney Craig Watkins to get to the bottom of it.

Watkins has gone out of his way to make clear that if anyone is going to investigate allegations of criminal corruption in his county, it's him and his prosecutors. Statutorially, he has a point. The question has been why, from the start, he just wouldn't say he was doing that, when we knew some number of constables employees had filed affidavits with Watkins' office alleging misdeeds.

Another angle that got washed away in the torrent of information was the possibility that Watkins faced a conflict of interest. I was reminded of that this morning, reading our news account by Kevin Krause and Ed Timms detailing the release of a report on the civil investigation into Precinct 1 Constable Derick Evans.

Here's the letter to supporters from defeated Texas Railroad Commissioner Victor Carrillo as it was posted on Burka's blog.

It's filled with anger, arrogance and perhaps several uncomfortable grains of truth. think I understand Carrillo's anger, but this missive ranks as the most ungracious response as I've ever seen. And it shows some of the arrogance Carrillo displayed as RR commissioner. And in our recommendation edit in this race, we expressed concerns about his lack of leadership on replacing gas couplings and other matters. And we had even greater concens about Porter.

David Porter, the man who ousted Carrillo, didn't sit down to be interviewed about his candidacy, so I called him to give him an opportunity to talk before the DMN published its recommendation in this race. I got an astounding level of anger from Porter who seemed to assume the entire world, including the DMN and MSM, was against him. I don't know how that could be since I seriously doubt that anyone in the media had heard of him until he got into this contest.

I think I understand some of Carrillo's pain and anger, namely the lack of support from the GOP and the issue of race. .Still, Carrillo's letter ranks as the ugliest exit I've ever seen.

Things are continuing to heat up both on my blog post and ensuing comments from yesterday off the Johnson victory and on today's post, which features an analysis by Gerald Britt.

To read more and comment, click here.

1. SBOE -- Overlooked somewhat in the midst of this week's election is the significant electoral changes to the oft-overlooked state Board of Education. Two incumbents were unexpectedly defeated - one incumbent we recommended, the other we didn't - and the fact that this board now finds itself with two new faces suggests that changes may be afoot. If that's the case, we'd generally view that positively since this is a board we've spent a lot of time criticizing. We're confident Ratliff will be a positive force and we explain why. While we didn't embrace Clayton because he seemed less informed than Miller, we'd be happy if he proved us wrong and contributed to making this board a more constructive force for education. We explain to readers why we think this board is as important as we do and we spell out what we'd like to see it do differently - as specifically as possible - in the future. Bill writing on behalf of the board.

2. FUNDING -- We praise some aspects of Obama's race-to-the-top education funding ideas, even the portion that allows state flexibility re standards. But we're quick to note the importance of accountability here. Standards are meaningless without it. Bill writing on behalf of the board.

Please feel free to add your thoughts in comments below.

This blog post is written by Tony Laws of Oak Cliff, who works in marketing and promotion and is a Community Voices volunteer columnist. His e-mail address is anthonyplaws@yahoo.com.

I read, with the usual interest, James Ragland's column about U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn's prison sentences imposed on former mayor pro tem and City Council member Don Hill and his crew of greedy cohorts. While I agree with the sentences imposed and the need to use this embarrassing affair as fair warning to all who might, in the future, think that this type of behavior is acceptable, necessary or warranted, it pains me that a deeper, more villainous and more damaging if not addressed, lesson is not being mentioned in this huge schematic that is American politics, American laws and the American psyche!

I'm shaking my head in total puzzlement over this decision by Dallas Housing Authority head MaryAnn Russ Which sounds to me to be:
a) overly legalistic
b) purely ideological and personal
c) all of the above
I can't imagine that this issue hasn't come up before. I'm betting that housing executives have found ways to be flexible, something the HUD spokesman in Washington seemed to suggest. According to the spokesman, the Fair Housing Act does not prohibit religious activity in common areas of public housing as long the activity does not result in unequal treatment of residents. Seems pretty simple to me.

MaryAnn Russ seems to be making a mountain out of a mole hill. She compares her decision to barring prayer in public school. Good grief. These are senior citizens who want community worship -- it's voluntary and not even slightly coercive.
Doesn't DHA have better things to worry about?

If I were Bill White, I would get a team together to study every precinct in Dallas and Harris counties in which Kay Hutchison did well. Then, I would start targeting voters in those precincts with fliers, events, social media, whatever. White couldn't come close to winning most of them, but he doesn't have to worry about that. He just needs to win some of them to run up his vote total in November. And my hunch is there are some Kay voters who are so turned off by Perry that they would entertain voting for White.

That's observation number one from last night's election.

Observation number two is that White ought to be worried about what happened in Harris County. Rick Perry got more votes there than White did, and White was the mayor of Houston for six years. If White's banking part of his campaign on winning Houston, he ought to be nervous. Perry showed that he can do well there. Assuming Perry picks up most of Hutchison's Houston voters, White's really got a challenge in his own backyard.

Every week, we poll the members of the editorial board on a timely and divisive topic. This week, the question is:

What is it about Rick Perry that, after so many years in office, voters keep handing him victories ?

Here are their responses:

Our editorials for tomorrow will be about what we think Sen. Hutchison ought to do regarding staying/leaving the Senate given her disappointing loss in yesterday's primary and what we suggest DISD and other districts should do beyond what they're already doing when it comes to teachers who abuse kids.

The former will be written by Mike Hashimoto and the latter by Jim Mitchell.

Feel free to use the comment section here to offer suggestions about these editorials.

I'm still adjusting to the amazingly awesome news that not only did Eric Johnson win the 100th District seat by a landslide, but that he carried South Dallas by 70 percent. As a friend and very-plugged-in South Dallas expert summed it up: "It's proof that there is a God -- and she doesn't listen to robocalls."

So last night when sufficient returns were in to indicate the early vote was no fluke, I started thinking again about Dallas County Democratic Party chair Darlene Ewing's prediction this week that Johnson would fall short in the race -- despite his opponent, Terri Hodge, being unable to serve as a condition of her plea deal in the City Hall corruption scandal.

My first reaction to the Ewing remarks is here. But later in the evening -- when we were too busy with the print edition to do more blogging -- my reaction turned to not only how could Ewing be so wrong but was this at all appropriate for the Democratic chair to be offering up Election Week? And most important, what is anyone who is so out of touch doing in this job?

Don't mean to torch Ewing, whom I know nothing about. But anybody got any thoughts on this?

We know that Hutchison lost to Perry statewide, but here's a surprise: She is losing at this point to him in Dallas County, her home turf. If that holds up, that will be a stunner. She also is losing to him in Harris County, pretty convincingly. Another bet I wouldn't have made a year ago is that she loses to Perry in the state's two biggest urban counties.

While awaiting election results, I just saw Sarah Palin do a standup comedy routine on the Leno show.

She shouldn't quit her day job. Then again, neither should Leno.

Here's a real wildcard race. George Clayton, a Dallas teacher, is leading longtime State Board of Education member Tincy Miller. She's been part of the board's more moderate faction. Clayton didn't come across as a conservative in our interview with him, but he did come across as unpredictable. If he holds on, this would be a shocker victory.

Another state race I'm keeping my eye on is Don McLeroy's State Board of Education seat. (He's the former chair of the board who was removed by the Texas Senate last year over his religious views; he self-identifies as a Christian fundamentalist and believes in a literal reading of Genesis, for example.)

He's being challenged by lobbyist Thomas Ratliff in the GOP primary; there's no Democrat running in the fall.

And the race is close. With 19 percent of precincts reporting, Ratliff is behind by a hair, 49.73 percent to 50.26 percent.

Updated at 10:04: With 62 percent of precincts reporting, Ratliff is ahead by a hair, 50.38 percent to 49.61 percent.

That's a headline most folks, including me, would not have bet on this time last year, especially by 9:30 on primary night. This was Hutchison's first defeat since she lost a congressional race in 1982, so I'm sure this one stings a lot.

She not only ran against a very good campaigner, but she ran headlong into the anti-Washington sentiment that health care and the growth of government has brought on. She is the first casualty in the backlash against Washington, which is odd in that she is a fairly conservative Republican.

Very classy. I thought she was generous in her comments, poised in her demeanor.

I also thought, frankly, that she conceded a bit prematurely. But perhaps her campaign sees a firm pattern via vote distribution that isn't yet apparent to those outside the organizations. (Then again, wouldn't it be awful to concede and then a couple of hours later see your opponent's lead dip by 2 or 3 percent - just enough to toss it into a runoff?)

Now that Harris County finally got off the dime, we have a fairly complete early voting picture for the state:

Perry 52.79%, Hutchison 30.48%, Medina 16.72%

Back to predictions from yesterday, I'm not wrong yet. Based on the Colleen theory, though, I will be.

Remember, her forecast had us in a runoff if Perry wasn't in the mid- to high-50s after early voting.

Your view so far?

Update: With about 13 percent counted, Perry has lost about four-tenths of a percentage point, still at 52 and change.

Final update: Whaddya know? Hutchison concedes.

I went to see my wife at the school she teaches at this afternoon before reporting to work. Her school is a polling place. As I pulled up it looked like the property had been flooded by a see of red Cindy Burkett signs. That was before I saw Cindy smiling from the big sign at the parking lot entrance or the two Cindy supporters holding signs in the parking lot waving at me.

Looks like all of that signage is paying off. Burkett has a commanding lead in the race for state representative in District 101. She may even avoid a runoff.