A roundup of Texas Senate Race news, some of which I would have reported sooner if my week hadn’t been so packed…
Rep. Mike McCaul passes on the race. Big news, and I think the Ted Cruz campaign is heaving a sigh of relief at not having someone as rich as David Dewhurst (but demonstrably more conservative than the Lt. Governor) in the race.
Here’s the audio for Ted Cruz’s appearance on the Mark Levin show.
Standard democratic talking points, well-spoken, but delivered in the tone of a slightly bored high school algebra teacher. Gravitas he’s got, but if this is the best he can do charisma wise, I don’t think any of the likely (or even unlikely) Republican candidates have anything to worry about. That accomplished, Sanchez seems to have gone back in hibernation for the rest of the week.
Robert T. Garrett of the The Dallas Morning News offers up a hard-hitting expose that absolutely nails Cruz…on not doing reporter’s homework for them. The upshot is that Cruz’s father was tortured by and fled the Batista regime rather than Castro’s communist regime. Did Cruz tell his story in a way that led people to believe that his father fled Castro? Yeah, he did. And that’s worth reporting. I can see doing at least a paragraph on that as part of a general article on Cruz. But it doesn’t explain why Garrett felt the need to expend 769 words explaining not that Cruz lied, but that he told an easily misinterpreted truth. Given that he hasn’t lied about anything, and has told the precise story forthrightly upon being questioned about it, it’s hard for me to work up any indignation about people misconstruing one part of a candidate’s father’s history.
Curt Cleaver raised $3,208, which is respectable for a longshot, especially considering his late start. (Psst, Curt, handy campaign tip: It actually costs you nothing to update your Facebook and Twitter pages more than once a month…)
Andrew Castanuela has raised $1,503. Coming up the rear is Beetlebaum Stanley Garza with $200…of which he’s spent $199. Got to save up for that big ad blitz…
According to an email from the New Revolution Now folks, Cruz won the straw poll for the Tyler candidate forum, with 39%, Glenn Addison came in second with 30%, Lela Pettinger took third with 18%, and Tom Leppert took fourth with 10% (which is, I think, an improvement from his previous straw poll performances). David Dewhurst, Elizabeth Ames Jones, and Ricardo Sanchez all polled less than 1%. And Jones was scheduled to be at the forum…
Addison raised $35,059 for the Q3 fundraising quarter. This brings his total fundraising up to $60,486, and he has $35,557 on hand. While that amount will not cause Dewhurst or Cruz to lose sleep, it’s still impressive for a longshot candidate. It’s also more than a third what ostensibly “serious” candidate Ricardo Sanchez raised this quarter, and Addison did it without (as far as I can tell) a professional campaign staff or professional fundraisers. If someone with Addison’s intelligence and drive were competing in the Democratic primary, Sanchez would be in serious trouble…
The Wall Street Journal does a piece on the Tom Leppert-occupy Wall Street story, clarifying that Washington Mutual, upon whose board Leppert sat, didn’t receive a bailout, but that J.P. Morgan Chase, which absorbed WaMu assets at a deep discount after WaMu melted down, did.
Curt Cleaver…hasn’t update his Facebook or Twitter feeds since September 15, preventing me from completing the Republican Senate Candidate Longshot News Perfecta.
Both Sanchez and Sean Hubbard (according to his Facebook page) will be speaking at the Dallas County Democratic Party’s Annual Fish Fry Friday, October 21. Strangely enough, however, Sanchez’s name is the only one on the flyer.
Sorry, absolutely no Stanley Garza news to be had. Believe me, I looked.
Finally, according to his Facebook and Twitter feeds, Glenn Addison became a grandfather today. Congratulations!
The Cruz campaign emailed to say they’ll be sending me the video file of the interview sometime in the next 24 hours, so here are a few race updates to tide you over until then.
Matt S. Dowling has his interview with Cruz up. I haven’t had a chance to watch all of it yet. Expect the setting to seem eerily familiar when you watch my interview…
And speaking on interviews with Cruz, here’s a snippet he did on a radio interview about the debt limit vote, which he was against.
Yet another high-profile national conservative endorses Cruz, in this case Pennyslvania Senator Pat Toomey. Toomey will always have a place in the hearts of conservative everywhere for pushing the odious Arlen Specter out of the party and taking his Senate seat.
I first encountered Ted Cruz in Laredo in 2003. As the state Senate Democrats’ 46-day Albuquerque quorum break ended, they boarded a plane and went to Laredo to attend a hearing on the matter in Federal court. I accompanied them on the plane, and attended the hearing in the Laredo courtroom. Ted Cruz, then the Solicitor General, was the state’s lawyer in court that day. In other words – ironically – he was Dewhurst’s lawyer in the suit. I have never seen a better courtroom performance, before or since. He was articulate, passionate, and flat-out out-lawyered the Democrats’ legal team. By the end of that hearing, not only was I convinced that Cruz had won the day (which he did), but he was so utterly great that I myself had serious doubts as to the merits of the Democrats’ suit. I’ve been a begrudging admirer of Cruz’ skills ever since.
Polifact says that Tom Leppert calling David Dewhurst a “career politician” is false. Because he’s only been in politics since 1998, not “most of [his] working life.” While I’m not sure I agree with that line of thinking, at least it’s less risible than some of the arguments Polifact has made in the last year…
Lots of reaction to Lt. Governor David Dewhurst’s long-awaited announcement that he was getting in the Senate race yesterday.
Here’s Dewhurst’s official announcement:
Ted Cruz offers a video response:
That video offers a URL for another Cruz website, https://www.provenconservative.com/, but it’s just a fundraising splash page with a link that leads to the main Cruz website.
In response to the Dewhurst announcement, the Tom Leppert campaign sent me a press release (which doesn’t appear to be online) stating:
“It comes as little surprise to me that David Dewhurst has thrown his hat into the ring. Like other career politicians, he has long expressed his interest in a host of higher offices, and I’m glad he has finally settled on the job he wants next.
“As my Twitter followers know, I have been asking David where he stands on a number of important issues. Now that he’s a candidate he should be ready to tell us whether he will support Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget, fight the NLRB’s attacks on Right to Work, call for an end to Obama’s offshore drilling moratorium and sign the Cut Cap Balance Pledge.
“This election is about which candidate knows how to spur job growth and restore fiscal responsibility to Washington. The career politicians and lawyers have had their chance, and they’ve failed. It’s time to send a real-life job creator to the U.S. Senate. I’ve signed both sides of a paycheck, and I’ve made the tough choices in both the private sector and as Mayor of Dallas to cut spending and balance budgets.
“At a time when families are struggling and Washington continues down the wrong path and ignores the tough calls, Texans will choose a new Senator to represent them. They will have three clear choices – a career politician, a lawyer, or a businessman who brings a unique conservative approach to government. Someone who’s signed both sides of a paycheck, grown a business, and cut wasteful spending in both the public and private sector. Who understands firsthand how decisions made in Washington affect the economy. Only one candidate in the race for Senate has created thousands of jobs and made the hard calls that are so lacking in Washington right now.”
More about the Leppert “lawyer” attack line against Cruz anon (I don’t think it will be successful), but it’s interesting how the Leppert campaign plays up his businessman credentials and never mentions (at least here) that he was Mayor of Dallas for four years.
I can find no online reaction from Elizabeth Ames Jones to Dewhurst entering the race, but she just went from a distant third to an even-more-distant fourth.
Paul Burka is not impressed with Dewhurst’s announcement. Laid-off teachers, yadda yadda, but what’s interesting to me is that Burka says he received a Dewhurst robocall for his announcement. This does not strike me as the optimal strategy for disseminating information in the internet age…
Dewhurst is a billionaire and has proven that he can run and win statewide contests in Texas, which can be a challenging state to run in due to its size, its five or six (depending on how you count) major media markets and slew of mid-sized markets, and its diversity. He’ll be formidable, and may even jump to the favorite slot due to his high name recognition alone. And, he speaks Spanish fluently. I’ve seen him handle interviews with Spanish-speaking media on the fly; he’s a pro.
The Spanish-speaking bit is interesting, but I’m not sure the billionaire part is accurate. Dewhurst is rich, certainly, but I didn’t get the impression that he was that rich.
The Daily Kossacks still seem to regard Cruz as the real conservative in the race: “While Dewhurst has been dithering on the parapets, his chief rival for the GOP nomination, Ted Cruz, continues to cement his position as the movement conservative standard-bearer.”
At least one blogger was underwhelmed by the Dewhurst announcement: “With all the fanfare and enthusiasm of a Baptist funeral, Lt. Gov. Dewhurst announced Tuesday that he’d like to be among the number of people Ted Cruz will pwn next March.”
Other Senate race news:
The Washington Post says that Ricardo Sanchez’s fundraising efforts are off to a poor start.
Over at the Houston Chronicle, Patricia Kilday Hart displays her poor research skills by declaring that “Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez is the only announced candidate in the Democratic Primary U.S. Senate race.” Perhaps Sean Hubbard should take up robbing banks, since he seems to be invisible to vast swathes of the MSM.
Ricardo Sanchez raised $160,000. Which is about what you would expect the DNC’s hand-picked candidate to raise.
The FEC reports aren’t up yet, so we can’t look at the details. In truth, Cruz did a bit worse than I expected him to with all the endorsement momentum he’s been building up, and Leppert did significantly better. Jones managed to raise her quarterly fundraising totals from disastrous to merely disappointing.
Q2 is usually a slow fundraising quarter the year before an election, but both Cruz and Leppert will need to pick up the pace if Dewhurst does jump in.
A few more pieces of senate race news:
Last week Paul Burka was confidently predicting that Dewhurst would blow away the competition with his money. Now he’s wondering if Dewhurst is too complacent. “There is an enthusiasm gap in this race, and it favors Cruz.” It’s like Burka fell asleep at his desk and woke up in pain, discovering that someone had inexplicably jabbed a sharp clue into his side while he slept…
The San Antonio Express-News says that Ted Cruz has the momentum, especially compared to one “Tom Lippert.”
Elizabeth Ames Jones has announced that former GM Chairman (and fellow San Antonian) Ed Whitacre would be her campaign manager. If he brings several million dollars in campaign donations with him, this will be a brilliant move. If not? Not so much. Usually candidates like to have someone with, you known, political campaign experience running their campaign. Hiring a guy who is most famous for taking over GM right after Uncle Obama dumped a ton of taxpayer money on them probably isn’t going to vault her into first place. She also named oilmen W.A. “Tex” Moncrief Jr. and George P. Mitchell as honorary chairman.
According to Jones’ and Tom Leppert’s Facebook pages, there was supposedly a Ronald Reagan Republican Women Senate candidate forum in Houston last night, but I can’t find reports on it anywhere today…
In the course of naming Rick Perry the “winner” of the recent legislative session, the Texas Tribune’s Jay Root repeats the lie that Education funding was decreased in the recent session, rather than receiving a slight increase. Does the MSM just believe that if they repeat the lie enough times people will believe it’s true?
A Daily Kossack looks over the phony-baloney PPP Texas senate race poll and stills comes up gloomy about Democratic chances. Also manages to display his ignorance, stating “On the Democratic side, the only announced candidate is retired Gen. Ricardo Sanchez,” not only ignoring declared Democratic candidate Sean Hubbard, but also his appeal for votes on Daily Kos. I guess it’s just a case of the far left hand not knowing what the other far left hand is doing…
I hope everyone is enjoying their July 4th weekend, even though those of us in drought-stricken central Texas won’t be firing off any fireworks this year…
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram‘s J. R. Labbe is shocked, shocked that all the contenders for the Republican Senate nomination at the forum sounded like Republicans rather than those “courageous” tax-hikers the liberal media is always carrying water for.
You have to admire the pithy concision of this line: “State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, would be hard to beat in a bid for U.S. Senate, according to a poll released today by state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston.” Iconoclast is unimpressed. “Pretty much everyone I talk to scoffed at the numbers regardless of who they work for or whether they like Patrick.”
Democratic longshot Sean Hubbard makes his pitch to the Daily Kossacks on why they should support him over Ricardo Sanchez. Honestly, it’s pretty weak sauce, full of generic “I’ll be a good Senator and listen to my constituents” stuff. He also put up this missive to the Kossacks, which has more liberal talking points of the sort that will please that crowd. But it’s woefully short of what he has to do to even get on the radar. As an underfunded longshot, he pretty much has to be attacking Sanchez every single day from the left if he wants to gain even the tiniest bit of traction in the race. No one beyond hardcore political junkies have even heard of him or realize he’s running at this point. If he can’t change that he’s going to continue being Mr. Irrelevant, despite the fact that Sanchez could very well be vulnerable to a serious challenger on his left flank.
I’m linking to this piece mainly to mock it, as it looks like the text in the link above has been automatically translated into another language, and then back into English, and then posted without any editing. “Hе accepted thе credentials οf thе forums wіƖƖ contrariety depending οn thе hosting organization, bυt generally any claimant wіƖƖ margin qυеѕtіοnѕ frοm a regressive row acted bу attendees аnԁ thе panelists themselves. Each forum іѕ approaching tο final аbουt dual hours.” Even by the standards of content-scrapping linkbait zombie sites this is peculiar…
Elizabeth Ames Jones interviewed in The Jarrell Star Ledger. I’m just happy Jarrell has a newspaper, given the tragic affinity tornadoes have for the place…
Finally, one bit of non-news: We’ve been hearing for over a week that Michael Williams was getting out of the Senate race to run for the newly created Texas 33rd Congressional District, an idea buoyed by his absence from the candidate forum on Wednesday. However, Williams has not publicly confirmed or denied the information on either his website, his Facebook account, or his Twitter feed. I can understand weighing your options, but this complete silence on the issue after you’ve already sent out a fundraising solicitation for the congressional race seems a bit odd…
It being the Friday of a long weekend, I doubt terribly many people are going to be reading this, but there have been some significant Texas Senate race developments:
Houston State Senator (and former sports caster) Dan Patrick is considering running for the Senate seat currently held by Kay Baily Hutchison. He was rumored to be considering a run back when Hutchison announced her retirement in January, but he’s been mum on the issue during most of the current Texas legislative session. He announced that he was forming an exploratory committee on Laura Ingraham’s talk radio show this morning. As anyone who reads this blog knows, he’s joining a crowded field, but he does fill the niche as a full-bore cultural Christian conservative that none of the other declared candidates (save longshot Glenn Addison) really fill. With Ted Cruz and Tom Leppert already off to significant head starts, Patrick will have to do some serious fundraising if he wants to be competitive. Patrick might benefit from some confusion with the other sportscasting Dan Patrick. Many Houston TV viewers remember Patrick as a sportscaster from the “Luv Ya Blu” era Houston Oilers era of the late 1970s and early 1980s. (I have vague memories of Dan Patrick being thrown out a door during a dust-up with then Oilers quarterback Dan Pastorini, but I may be misremembering one or both of the people involved.[2014 Update: Actually, I talked to Dan Patrick, and while he watched it happen, it wasn’t him, but rather Houston Post reporter Dale Robertson, who Pastorini threw out.]
Speaking of Addison, he’s complaining that The Texas Tribune is excluding him from an upcoming debate. Actually, I can see both sides on this issue. Certainly The Texas Tribune, as a private organization, can use any criteria they want to determine who a “serious” candidate is, and the one they chose (someone had to have raised at least $100,000 by March 31) is both objective and defensible. Plus the more crowded any debate, the less time potential voters have to assess any one candidate. On the other hand, the idea that fundraising should be the only gating factor in determining electability is entirely too reductive for a robust democratic process. My suggestion? Have the political equivalent of a “play in” game. Reserve one spot for a declared candidate who does not meet the $100,000 threshold criteria (Addison, Lela Pittinger, Andrew Castanuela, or Sean Hubbard) and then let people vote online for who to include. That would give the longshots a chance to be seen, and add interest to the proceedings…
Elizabeth Ames Jones slams the Obama administration for their energy policy. “The demand for oil is not going away just because some bureaucrats have the ill-conceived or ill-informed idea that all our energy needs can be met by green energy.” I still don’t think Jones has a real chance in the race, but she seems strongest when talking about oil and gas issues. Maybe it’s a good thing that she hasn’t resigned from the Railroad Commission…
Speaking of Leppert 2.0, he was seen at a fundraiser for Mitt Romney. Maybe the two of them got together to commiserate on being unfairly dinged for little things like actual governing records.
Gay activist and Stonewall Democrats of Dallas President Omar Narvaez laments the disappearing act of Leppert 1.0: “[Tom Leppert] was our friend [when he first ran for the office] but when he decided to run for higher office, suddenly he wasn’t our friend.”
Jonathan Chait is buying into Obama’s Latino strategy. But this ignores Micky Kaus’s point: How many times can Obama verbally flog amnesty without actually do anything about it before pro-illegal alien voters realize he’s all talk and no action? How many times can Lucy snatch away that football before Charlie Brown finally wises up?
Why did the media endlessly hype the Rapture predictions of a few far-out-of-the-mainstream evangelical Christians? Easy: “smug superiority and cheap laughs…There’s a cruelty underlying our desire to laugh at this story—a desire to see people humiliated and to revel in our own superiority and rationality—even though the people in question are pretty tragic characters.” True, as far as it goes, but it’s missing one important reason: the loathing of all forms of Christianity by urban atheist adherents of competing religious beliefs (big government liberalism) and unlikely eschatologies (global warming).
Ex-Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney pops up to condemn the bombing of Libya. From Libya. I think the over/under for how long it will be before she’s actually endorsing Hamas suicide bombings against Israeli preschools is two weeks.
Democratic Senate candidate Sean Hubbard hopes to raise $5,000 by the end of the month. That would seem to be a reasonable goal, but he’s going to need (at a minimum) about ten times that if he wants have even a dark-horse hope of derailing the DNC coronation of Ricardo Sanchez. Surely there are still enough nutroots Code Pink types in Texas that disgruntled by Obama’s continuation of “Bush’s Wars” to come up with that to oppose the “Abu Ghraib” candidate…
I’m linking to the USA Today story of Catalina Camia because, unlike her journalistic brethren, she actually noted that Sean Hubbard was already running. It’s nice to know that at least one member of the MSM is, in fact, capable of using Google.
As for Hubbard, well, I hope he enjoyed his time as de facto Democratic front-runner, since it ends today…