News reports in San Antonio and Houston paint a revealing picture of the possible outcome of the November 5 General Election in Texas. However, there is always time to prove polls wrong because the only poll that counts, as political oldtimers say, is the one taken on Election Day. The San Antonio Express-News reported recently that the number of registered voters in Texas has jumped since the 2000 presidential election by 450,000 to 12.8 million and that nearly one-fifth of those are Hispanic. That would seemingly spell news for Democrats. However, consider a recent news report from the Houston Chronicle. That daily reports that the party’s effort to increase minority turnout is working better in the Black community than in Hispanic communities.

This is likely good news for Kirk and also shows the hard work of grassroots efforts such as those by the Texas NAACP. But with early voting already underway, this creates some challenges. Polls suggest that both Ron Kirk’s campaign for U.S. Senate and Tony Sanchez’s campaign for Texas Governor need strong minority support to succeed.

It appears that Kirk has solid support among African-American voters, but Sanchez’s support doesn’t appear to be as strong among Hispanic voters and the increase in registered Hispanic voters isn’t as high as predicted, based on figures released by the Texas secretary of state. Although party leaders are hoping that strong Black and Brown turnout will boost the political fortunes of both Kirk and Sanchez, it isn’t clear that either candidate will draw a significant voter turnout from each other’s base. That is, it is unknown how many of the Hispanic voters who support Sanchez will support Kirk and it is unequally unknown whether Black voters who support Kirk will support Sanchez to the same degree.

And, it also unknown on what a lower than expected brown turnout will mean for either camp, but obviously it wouldn’t be good. Some people say privately that the fact the Democratic Party, the so-called coordinated campaign and even individual campaigns remained stubbornly White may have dealt a serious blow to the so-called dream ticket. Stay tuned for the outcome and the results on Nov. 5, 2002.