Early voting has been heavier than some people were expecting. One constitutional amendment -- a proposed ban on gay marriage -- is a draw for voters, but there's not much else around the state to get the blood flowing. Houston's city elections correspond with the amendment elections, but there's not much fight in that. With a couple of days of early voting uncounted, turnout in the 15 biggest counties in Texas totaled 3.3 percent of the registered voters. Harris County accounted for almost a fourth of the overall total, but the big turnouts on a percentage basis have been in Travis County (7.1 percent with two days uncounted) and neighboring Williamson County (6.3 percent had voted early). Secretary of State Roger Williams is predicting a 16 percent turnout when it's all over. That stinks, but it's a high number for this kind of election. Only 12.2 percent of the voters showed up for constitutional amendments in 2003.
• Gov. Rick Perry would beat all comers according to a Zogby Interactive poll from mid-September. The surprise in the bucket of numbers is that Kinky Friedman out-polls Tony Sanchez, the Laredo Democrat who spent almost $70 million losing to Perry in 2002. By Zogby's lights, Perry would pull 40 to 41 percent of the vote in any three-way general election race with potential opponents Friedman, Sanchez, Chris Bell, John Sharp, or Jim Turner. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn would get 32 to 35 percent of the vote in any of those general election scenarios, but would come out in first place. They didn't test the Republican primary featuring Perry and Strayhorn. They got responses from 1,227 people between September 16 and 21 and say their margin of error is +/- 2.9 percent.
• U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, had a good week. He got a Democratic judge -- Bob Perkins -- knocked out of his trial, and he reported raising $318,020 during the third quarter for his defense fund. He spent $278,466 from that fund during the same period. Contributions are capped at $5,000.
• Kinky Friedman's campaign says they raised $170,000 at a fundraiser featuring singer Willie Nelson and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura. Separately, that campaign is trying to get people to watch a reality TV show on Country Music Television about the campaign to better their chances of keeping it on the air. That prompted Jason Stanford with Democrat Chris Bell's campaign: "We hear that on the last episode Kinky gets voted off the island."
• Endorsements: Gov. Rick Perry picks up the San Antonio Police Officers Association, the Texas Society of Professional Engineers, and U.S. Rep. Michael Conaway, R-Midland. Susan Combs, running for comptroller, got a nod from the Texas Civil Justice League.
• Robert Sanchez, a Republican who had started a campaign against U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio, announced he won't run after all. He began the effort last March and said in a note to supporters that "many of the necessary elements of the campaign did not develop as needed."
• Oliver Bell, an Austin Republican, tells the local paper he's decided not to run for the Texas Senate after all. Democratic attorney Kirk Watson -- former mayor and current president of the chamber of commerce -- is the only candidate at this point who's announced he'll run for the spot left by Gonzalo Barrientos' decision not to seek another term. Republican Ben Bentzin, who challenged Barrientos in 2002, had already decided against a contest with Watson when a House seat opened up. Bentzin will run for that against three or four Democrats; Watson might get a cakewalk.
• Donna Howard, one of the Democrats who wants to represent Austin's HD-48, says she'll run in the special election to replace Rep. Todd Baxter, R-Austin, who resigned. The Democrats made some efforts to keep their numbers down in that special election -- the better to fend off Republican Ben Bentzin. We won't know if that worked until they start signing up. Howard, Andy Brown, Kathy Rider and Kelly White have all expressed interest in running. Gov. Rick Perry hasn't called a special election yet.
• Analyzing legislative and congressional districts? You'll need numbers from the 2004 elections cranked by the Texas Legislative Service. They sent us files listing election results by congressional, Senate and House districts and you can download them in the Files section of our website.