And here’s your final Texas Senate Race update for 2012! I’ve been covering this race since Kay Bailey Hutchison decided not to run again on January 13, 2011.
I expect Ted Cruz to beat Paul Sadler handily (and here’s my endorsement of Cruz). Later today I hope to have a prediction up on just how well I expect him to do.
I was going to have an insightful, data-filed post on the Texas 23rd Congressional district race, but then I realized that the Los Angeles Times data I was relying on flipped at least one bit of information (NRA-ILA is doing independent expenditures against Pete Gallego, not against Rep. Francisco “Quico” Canseco), which means I can’t trust the rest. Super executive summary: Canseco has a huge cash on-hand advantage, $785,623 to $23,250, but assuming the other LA Times numbers are right, the independent expenditure race is a lot closer to even.
Now on to a LinkSwarm a week before the election:
Barring any catastrophic event, Ted Cruz is going to be the next Senator from Texas, but the campaign keeps on chugging along. The official fundraising forms from the FEC aren’t up yet, but the two campaigns have announced the totals raised.
Ted Cruz raised $3.5 million in Q3, $2 million of it after the runoff.
I can’t find any mention of Paul Sadler’s fundraising numbers on his press release page, but according to the Houston Chronicle, Sadler raised “about $358,734” in Q3. In truth, that’s a bit more than I expected him to raise, given that he has about as much hope of being elected Senator than the Cleveland Browns do of winning the 2013 Superbowl.
Oh, and just for the record: Losing Democratic Senate runoff candidate Grady Yarbrough did finally file his FEC report.
The Senate race runoff is barreling down the track toward us, so there’s a lot of race news this week:
Dwight has been all over the story of Amado “Mayo” Pardo, owner of South Austin Mexican restaurant Joviata’s, who just happens to be a two-time convicted murderer (a third murder charge was dropped as part of a plea bargain for the first) and the accused leader of a heroin-dealing ring.
He’s also a noted fundraiser for the Democratic Party.
I have not been able to find any direct political donations at the state or national level for Pardo (and the Travis County website doesn’t seem to have a way to search for individual donations, only rank upon rank of PDFs), but Jovita’s seems to have been the site for numerous liberal and Democratic fundraising events:
There are more, but you get the idea. If these people were just renting Jovita’s as a venue, fine and dandy. But if they were specifically approaching Pardo to hold fundraisers for them, perhaps a bit more due diligence was in order on the part of the Austin Democratic establishment? The Austin Chronicle named him “Mayor of South Austin” in 2009. Here’s their profile of him, also from 2009, in which discusses his reading Marx and his love for Cesar Chavez, but omits his two murder convictions. How could he spend two decades hob-nobbing with Austin’s liberal community and no one bothered to find out that not only did he have two murder raps, but the FBI believes he had been dealing heroin for 25 years?
Of course, Pardo hasn’t been convicted. Instead of a heroin-dealing convicted murderer and liberal activist, he may only be a convicted murderer and liberal activist…
I wonder if the founding fathers’ conception of the First Amendment right of free speech ever extended to faking pictures of a penis in a woman’s mouth. Which is what Obama supporter and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt just did to conservative commentator S. E. Cupp. I tend to doubt this thought crossed the mind of anyone attending the Constitutional Convention in 1787, not least because photography hadn’t been invented yet, and our founding fathers weren’t total pervs.
Remember all those liberals crowing over the need for civility? Whatever happened to them?
Expect some proforma sniffing from the left, to be followed by a quick flick into the memory hole, mainly because Flynt has been a serious contributor to Democrats and liberal causes over the years:
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 HUSTLER MAGAZINE 8/19/96 $10,000 Clinton, Bill (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC 10/20/04 $2,500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 LFP – SELF-EMPLOYED/PUBLISHER/CHAIR 12/29/03 $2,000 Kucinich, Dennis J (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90210 L F P INC 8/30/93 $1,000 National Republican Senatorial Cmte
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC./PRESIDENT 7/22/06 $1,000 Studebaker, Stephanie (D)
FLYNT, LARRY LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 PUBLISHER 7/7/04 $1,000 DNC Services Corp (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC 5/10/05 $500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 HUSTLER 5/18/98 $500 California Voter Registration Project
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90210 L F P INC 8/30/93 $275 National Republican Senatorial Cmte
FLYNT, LARRY LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 1/9/97 $-1,000 Clinton, Bill (D)
FLYNT, LARRY LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 8/24/96 $-9,000 Clinton, Bill (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 LFP INC./CEO 9/28/06 $10,000 Democratic Party of Nevada (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 LARRY FLYNT PUBLICATIONS/EXECUTIVE 8/27/06 $10,000 Democratic Party of Washoe County (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FLYNT MANAGEMENT GROUP/PRESIDENT 12/30/05 $2,100 Carter, John William (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FLYNT MANAGEMENT GROUP/PRESIDENT 12/30/05 $2,100 Carter, John William (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC 7/19/05 $1,500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC 7/18/05 $1,000 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 FMG, INC./PUBLISHER 8/25/05 $1,000 Clinton, Hillary (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 6/30/05 $-500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C LOS ANGELES,CA 90069 9/22/05 $-1,000 Clinton, Hillary (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 8/10/05 $-2,500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 10/21/04 $-2,500 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 SELF/PUBLISHER 2/15/08 $2,300 Kucinich, Dennis J (D)
FLYNT, LARRY BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 SELF/PUBLISHER 8/4/08 $1,000 Kucinich, Dennis J (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FMG INC/PRESIDENT 5/10/07 $2,300 Kucinich, Dennis J (D)
FLYNT, LARRY C BEVERLY HILLS,CA 90211 FLYNT PUBLICATIONS/CEO 9/26/11 $2,000 Hall, Isadore (D)
Of course, the donations to Bill Clinton (a man after his own heart) should surprise no one. The big mystery is those two donations to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Maybe he did it just to see if they would notice.
That’s an awful lot of money for Dennis Kucinich for a guy in California. I wonder what Flynt’s interest is….
I’ve been going through all 767 pages of David Dewhurst’s Q1 FEC report to see if anything leapt out at me. Honestly, this is really more of a sampler, since as the bank in the race, there’s just no end of Presidents, CEOs, Founders and Owners of various oil companies, insurance companies, banks, car dealerships, etc. donating to Dewhurst.
Some notable names among Dewhurst’s individual donors. Unless otherwise noted (or I screwed something up) these are current donations to date and are earmarked for the primary:
Now a brief look at the corporate donors. I’m omitting the ones already announced on Dewhurst’s website that I’ve been including in the regular Senate race updates.
Overall impressions: Lots of oil industry people, bankers, real estate developers, lawyers, and, for some reason, a statistically improbable number of dairy owners. And give Dewhurst credit for one thing his campaign team has been emphasizing: The overwhelming majority of individual donor money he’s raised has come from inside Texas.
A look at the expenses side of Dewhurst’s FEC report when I have time.
The Ted Cruz campaign announced that they raised $1.3 million in campaign funding in Q1, which is up $200,000 from his Q4 numbers. I was a bit disappointed in his Q4 numbers, thinking he should have had more of a bump from his National Review cover appearance, but his Q1 number is actually more impressive, given how long this campaign has dragged on, indicating that the Cruz campaign is still building momentum.
David Dewhurst raised raised $1.66 million in Q1, which was slightly up from the $1.54 million he raised in Q4. Dewhurst, as most predicted, continues to lead the money race, but not by as much as anticipated.
Now the big question is how much of Dewhurst’s own money he dropped in for Q1…and how much he’ll drop in for Q2.
I’ve been reading up a bit more on the compromise redistricting lines released by the San Antonio district court. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot was able to keep most of what the legislature passed, and the Governor signed, intact, but a few changes were made to satisfy Democratic demands to win in court what they couldn’t at the ballot box settle lawsuits by various minority interest groups under the provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
Though U.S. Congressional Districts, State Senate Districts, and State House districts were all affected by the new maps, I want to focus on three U.S. Congressional Districts, including some shown in this map here:
All in all, Texas Republicans expect to pick up two to four U.S. Congressional seats thanks to redistricting, which looks extremely doable.
And now we finally have election dates:
While it may be unseemly to kick someone when he’s not only down but actually out, the FEC report for now-withdrawn Democratic Senate candidate Ricardo Sanchez tells why he had to drop out of the race (even apart from his unfortunate house fire) in stark detail.
For Q4, Sanchez pulled in a paltry $40,317. So the anointed Democratic candidate pulled in about one twenty-fifth the amount in contributions serious Republican candidates like David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz received during the same period.
During the same quarter, the Sanchez campaign laid out $133,210 in operating expenditures. Even deducting the (by my quick count) $32,600 in refunded contributions at the end of the quarter, that’s a ruinous burn rate given how little he was taking in. Like the blue model welfare state, this sort of mismatch between receipts and spending is unsustainable.
If he were still in the race, I might wonder why Sanchez was not only paying a Jennifer Lehner $11,864 in payroll between October 1 and November 26, plus a $4,000 housing stipend (for San Antonio? That seems reasonable…if it’s for six months), but was also ponying up $2,500 consulting fees for a “Mrs. Ada B. Lehner” residing at the same Carmichael, California address as Jennifer. (“If you hire me, you also have to hire my mom.”) But since he’s dropped out, what’s the point?