From a reader:

Your emailer anticipates a Delay conviction on the grounds that the “Austin jury pool will be made up of the most wacked-out liberals in all of Texas.” While Austin has more than its share of this ilk, they are a minority (albeit a very loud and visible one).
I learned this first hand as a conservative campus activist at the University of Texas in the early 1990’s. A local Baptist minister had managed to place a proposition on the ballot to repeal the domestic partner benefits which had just been granted to Austin city employees.
While the “Yes” campaign was virtually non-existent, the “No” side reportedly spent over a million dollars. The “No on 22, It’s Not Fair” bumper stickers and yard signs were ubiquitous and the TV ads with dark references to Pat Robertson were plentiful. I never saw a “Yes on 22″ bumper sticker. There were very few yard signs and no TV ads.
In spite of what looked like overwhelming odds, a few of us right wing lost causers went to work at some of the polling stations expecting (correctly) to be on the receiving end of lots of verbal abuse. What we didn’t expect was the huge amount of whispered support for our cause on the part of Suburban driving moms and other normal Austinites.
In the end, Austin voted 2 to 1 against domestic partner benefits.
Austin’s takedown of the gay lobby Goliath was Bill Schneider’s political “play of the week” on CNN’s Inside Politics. The lesson according to Schneider had something to do with how political arguments are framed. The lesson I learned was that Austin was not nearly so liberal as many of us had believed it to be.