CD 22: Olson v Kulkarni

The 22nd Congressional District, once represented by redistricting architect and House Majority Leader Tom Delay, regularly has voted for top-of-the-ticket Republicans by more than 25 points, and Olson — first elected in 2008 — never faced a serious re-election challenge until 2018.

Putting the district in play, Kulkarni believed, was Fort Bend County’s fast-growing and highly diverse population, a natural target for the former State Department foreign service officer who speaks six languages and would hire campaign staffers who spoke even more.
Olson never had won a general election by fewer than 19 points — his margin in 2016 — but several trends gave Kulkarni reason to contest the district. Notably, it shifted 17.5 points in favor of Democrats from the 2012 to 2016 presidential election, the fourth most dramatic change in the country.

Kulkarni’s preliminary data also found that both parties had ignored major swaths of the district. In particular, Asian residents make up about 20 percent of the district’s population, far more than any other Texas congressional district, but Kulkarni found that three-quarters of Asian voters had not been contacted by any political party.

Kulkarni’s efforts hinged on turning out the scores of college-educated immigrants who moved to the district during the last several years. He ultimately lost by 4.9 percentage points, a result he attributes partly to not reaching enough Hispanic voters. He did not rule out giving it another shot in 2020.

“If I'm the best candidate, I'll run again,” Kulkarni said. “I don't want to throw away all the hard work that we did in organizing here, because going from 19 points two years ago or 34 points four years ago, to 4.9 — there's obviously a change going on in terms of who's participating.”

President Trump has asked internal and external advisers about whether he can fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell, two people familiar with the exchanges said, in a sign of his mounting frustration with the central bank chief.

News of Trump’s discussions about Powell prompted rebukes from lawmakers and alarm among economists and Wall Street executives Saturday. In the evening, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tweeted a statement from the president: “I totally disagree with Fed policy .?.?. but I never suggested firing Chairman Jay Powell, nor do I believe I have the right to do so.”

The two people familiar with Trump’s questions about his authority to remove Powell spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the private conversations. One of them characterized Trump’s inquiry as a reflection of his rage over the stock market’s recent plunge and his desire to blame someone.

The Federal Reserve Act says that a Fed governor can be removed “for cause,” which courts have interpreted as criminal activity or malfeasance, as in other cases regarding independent agency leaders.

Powell is both one of the Fed’s governors and its chair. The law is silent on whether someone at the Fed can be stripped of the chair position.

“The law isn’t clear,” Fed historian Peter Conti-Brown, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in a series of tweets. “Trump can probably de-designate a Fed governor as board chair, but not fire the governor.”