Monday Roundup: Melissa Noriega wins

As was more or less expected, Melissa Noriega won her city council election in Houston handily, 55% to 45%. There had been some sweating and fretting about turnout, and rightly so — while you never know which way that pendulum is going to swing in most elections, in a special (read: runoff) election for a municipal race you can almost always count on it being down. In this race, with turnout reported to be around 3%, every bit mattered. Our congratulations go to Melissa.

Our condolences, however, go out to Ed Oakley, who did not win his election for Dallas city mayor. Instead, Tom Leppert was elected, and he'll start work June 25. Our own John McClelland has some numbers broken down for those of you that are into that sort of thing.

From a web popularity perspective, it seems like Ron Paul might become this presidential cycle's Howard Dean. The story is this: while his poll numbers are dismal and he has more or less been universally written off, the Internet is crazy about Ron Paul. Other candidates should take note: Ron Paul is winning the Facebook war, the MySpace war, and the MeetUp war. He's also managed to fundraise into six figures following both televised debates. An anti-war Republican may have appeal people weren't expecting, and while I wouldn't put good money on Ron Paul winning anything in this race, he's there, and he's winning the Internet.

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz takes a few moments to make some good points about media coverage in today's world, and doesn't restrict himself to just discussing O.J. or Paris Hilton. Essentially, he posits that everyone is to blame for the weird, skewed way news is covered these days, and for the crazy mixed-up priorities of the viewing public.

I often find myself watching the news and saying, "This isn't news," to whoever happens to be watching with me. I guess Kurtz's piece is saying that the media knows what it does, but that it feels helpless to change it? I know that staff reductions in print media have largely been caused by a drive to increase profit margins and the rise of the media conglomerate, but 24-hour news networks have always been a little hit-or-miss when it comes to what gets covered and how.

The Chron lets you know that fundraising is already underway for state House races in 2008, and predicts that due to uncertainty as to the speaker of the House, there are likely to be a large number of contested primaries. Some feel like Bob Perry and James Leininger, two of Craddick's main supporters from the business world, may bail out on the ship in light of recent troubles. The Chron offers Warren Chisum's opinion to the contrary, that they will actually increase their support for him, and I think that sounds about right.

Finally today, via Harvey and QR comes the list of bills Perry decided to veto, one or two of which I have no doubt will spark some discussion.