Posts Tagged ‘Chris Bell’

Handicapping the 2020 Texas Senate Race

Wednesday, December 11th, 2019

I know I’ve lavished a lot of time and attention to the clown car updates, but there are several other 2020 races worth looking at, some of them right here in Texas.

A bunch of Democrats are lining up to challenge Republican incumbent John Cornyn for the U.S. Senate. Now that the filing deadline has passed, let’s take a look:

Democrats

  • Former U.S. Congressman Chris Bell. Bell’s last big race was a failed run for Governor in a four-way scrum against incumbent Republican Rick Perry and nominal independents Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Strayhorn. Background:

    Bell, a former Houston City Council member, represented a district in Congress from 2003-05 that included part of the city. In the 2006 gubernatorial race, he got 30% of the vote against then-Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, and two well-known independent candidates. He has since attempted a number of political comebacks.

    In his filing with the FEC, Bell named former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski as his campaign treasurer. Bell said the Jaworski name “stands for integrity and the highest ethical standards in the eyes of many Texans – things that are sorely missing in today’s Washington and that I plan to talk about a lot on the campaign trail.”

    Wait, did he just use “Galveston Mayor” and “integrity and the highest ethical standards” in the same sentence? Outside the Rio Grande Valley, Galveston has a reputation as the most corrupt locale in Texas, dating back to when the Maceo brothers ran Galveston for the mob and the Balinese Room had gambling tables that folded back into the wall whenever Johnny Law came walking down the long pier. My late uncle used to run a Galveston restaurant, and he said the entire political establishment was on the take.

    Having run a high profile state race previously, and with a strong fundraising base in Houston, I see Bell as one of the favorites to make the runoff.

  • Michael Cooper: Not the basketball player. There’s squat in the way of useful information on his website as of this writing, but Ballotpedia says “Michael Cooper earned a bachelor’s degree in business and social studies from Lamar University Beaumont. Cooper’s career experience includes working as a pastor at his local church, president of the South East Texas Toyota Dealers and in executive management with Kinsel Motors.” He came in second in a two man race for the Democratic nomination for Lt. Governor in 2018, but only lost by 5 points to oil executive Mike Collier (who lost to incumbent Dan Patrick in the general). Got to say that, objectively, Cooper looks damn good in that cowboy hat and bolo tie:

  • Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards. Seems like a relatively mainstream liberal, at least compared to way too many presidential candidates. City Council to U.S. Senator is a big jump. She’s fighting with Bell for backers and West, Cooper, Lee, Foster and Love for the black base. Going to be hard to make the runoff, but if West or Bell stumble, she seems best positioned to take one of their slots.
  • Jack Daniel Foster, Jr. Appears to be a political neophyte in a race that already has several black candidates. Plus his big issue (which seems to boil down to “more money for community colleges”) strikes me as a county- or state-level issue, not the purview of a U.S. Senator. But I think he gets to 1% based solely on “Jack Daniel” in his name.
  • Annie “Mama” Garcia. Neophyte that seems to be running on Trump Derangement Syndrome, socialized medicine and gun control. 3% of the primary vote will be a challenge.
  • Victor Hugo Harris: A cipher, with no website I could find. I suspect that reminding Texas votes of a 19th century French novelist is an inferior election gambit to reminding them of whisky.
  • M.J. Hegar: A retread candidate who lost to incumbent John Crater in the Texas 31st congressional district race in 2018, albeit by less than 3%. Usually stepping up in weight class after a losing run isn’t a recipe for electoral success. Air Force vet. Seems better funded than other Democrats in the race. Policy positions are all polished liberal platitudes, which may not play to the Democratic base in an election year. An outside chance to make the runoff if white suburban women turn out for her in March rather than Chris Bell and all the black candidates split the black urban vote, but I still doubt it. Probably destined to fall somewhere between third and fifth place.
  • Sema Hernandez: Hard left/Social Justice Warrior/Democratic Socialist of America candidate. DSA had some successes at U.S. House races in 2018, but not in a senate race, and not in a state like Texas. Absent a huge out-of-state funding push for her, I don’t even think she even sniffs the runoff.
  • D. R. Hunter: Another cipher without a webpage. Unless he has a Samoan attorney and writes for Rolling Stone, I wouldn’t expect him to make much of an impression.
  • Midland City Councilman John B. Love III. Midland City Council is a stepping stone for a state House race, not the U.S. Senate. Not seeing signs of a serious campaign, and I don’t see him making any headway with Edwards and West in the race.
  • Financial advisor Adrian Ocegueda: Twitter. Came in sixth of nine Democratic candidate for Governor in 2018. His one issue is campaign finance reform, but I can’t make hide nor hair of what he actually wants to implement. Oh, and he wants West to drop out of the race. I’m sure that will happen any day now…
  • Leftwing activist Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: Seems to be running as the hard-left Hispanic identity candidate. Don’t see her sniffing the runoff, and “Tzintzún” sounds like a lost South American city populated by the degenerate remnants of an eldritch people who worshiped some blasphemous Cthulhu Mythos god deep in the primordial past…
  • Dallas State Senator Royce West. The state senate is a pretty good stepping stone to higher office, and I don’t see any other big names from the Metroplex in the race. His issue stands are largely midleft boilerplate. He’s been in office since 2009, and in 2018 he ran completely unopposed, with no primary or general election opponant (not even a Libertarian or a Green), which suggests both political strength and the possibility that he’ll be rusty in a competitive race. A favorite to make the runoff.

    • Republicans

    Cornyn has a few challengers on his side of the aisle as well:

  • Computer programmer Virgil Bierschwale. If his name rings a vague bell, it’s because he also tried running in the 2012 U.S. Senate race as a Democrat. He dropped out of that race because he was unable to raise the filing fee, which would tend to auger poorly for his chances this time around. Big issue is immigration and foreign guest workers.
  • Incumbent Senator John Cornyn. Cornyn won reelection in 2014 with the largest vote total and percentage of any statewide candidate, winning with 61.6% of the vote, which was two points better than Greg Abbott walloped Wendy Davis by. He’s been in office a long time, and sometimes longtime incumbents get complacent and lose. I don’t see that happening here. He’s going to win the primary and the general.
  • Bridge construction company owner Dwyane Stovall. He took a run at Cornyn in 2014, where he won lots of Tea Party straw votes, but came in third in actual primary voting with 10.7%. Made an abortive run at TX36 in 2016. A higher level of gadfly than Bierschwale, but just as doomed.
  • Former Dallas Wings owner Mark Yancey. More money than any of Cornyn’s other competitors, but WNBA owner money is not U.S. senate race money. He might come in second and still only garner 15% of the vote.

    • Additional race Information

  • Texas Secretary of State candidate search
  • Open Secrets race fundraising
  • Ballotpedia page on the race.

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »

    Texas Governor’s Race Update for September 12, 2014

    Friday, September 12th, 2014

    Reporting on the Wendy Davis campaign at this point is like reporting on the Titanic 80% of the way into the sinking (“And there goes the second smokestack under the waves!”). But someone has to write a first draft of those epic failures for the historical record, so let’s press on…

    Right now polls show Greg Abbott up a comfortable 18 points over Davis, 54% to 36%.

    It’s gotten so bad that the Davis campaign “leaked” one of those ridiculous, can’t remotely trust them “internal polls” that shows her a mere 8 points behind Abbott, 38% to his 46%. You know it’s bad when you can’t even pretend to be winning in your own fantasy land poll.

    Also, the Abbott campaign filed an ethics complaint against the Davis campaign for using her campaign funds to attend a book signing in New York City. (I wonder if her New York City signing had the same strict conditions as her Austin signing.) Since Davis did have one fundraising event on the trip, I doubt the complaint will succeed legally, but it does further the Abbott campaign’s picture of Davis as a woman who has more supporters in New York and California than in Texas.

    The big question at this point is: What’s the floor for how poorly Wendy Davis can do in the general election? I think she can drop below the 39.96% Tony Sanchez garnered in 2002. I don’t see her eclipsing the pitiful low-mark of Garry Mauro’s 31.18% in 1998, much less Chris Bell’s 29.79% in the 4-way Perry-Bell-Strayhorn-Friedman race in 2006. Davis has garnered a lot more fawning media attention than Sanchez ever got, and didn’t have the bruising primary fight Sanchez had against Dan Morales, much less one where her opponent ended up endorsing the Republican nominee, as Morales did. On the other hand, Davis doesn’t have $60 million of her own money to spend on her campaign the way Sanchez did.

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    Posted in Elections, Texas | No Comments »

    Burka Gets Kinky

    Thursday, July 25th, 2013

    Liberal fossil Paul Burka is peeved that Kinky Friedman might run for office again. “When Friedman ran for governor in 2006, he helped make it impossible for Rick Perry to lose in a four-way race. By helping to divide the vote among four candidates, he enabled Perry to win with a pitiful plurality of 39%. I have no doubt that Friedman’s intention was to help Perry.”

    Burka calls another possible Friedman run “sick comedy.”

    A few points:

    1. When Friedman jumped into the 2006 Governor’s race as an independent in early 2005, it wasn’t a four-way race. It only turned into one when Comptroller Carole Stewart Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn realized that Perry was going to slaughter her in the GOP primary and dropped out to run as an independent.
    2. Watching the race unfold, I didn’t get the impression Friedman was running to ensure Perry’s re-election, but A.) Because he thought it would be fun to run for governor (and maybe even fun to be elected governor), B.) He was dissatisfied with the status quo, and C.) Given Jesse Ventura’s fairly recently election as Minnesota Governor, Friedman thought he could win as an independent. He was wrong, but it didn’t look like an inherently risible proposition when he ran.
    3. If Perry’s 39% was pitiful, what do we call Democrat Chris Bell’s 29%?
    4. By competitiveness standards, have Democrats run any “non-joke” candidates statewide in Texas lately?

    Now, I happen to agree with Burka’s assessment of Friedman’s political chances. But more interesting is the reason he feels the need to opine on them.

    Underlying Burka’s lament, and his obvious bitterness over Kinky’s candidacy, is the idea popular among his fellow liberal journalists that someone could have beaten Perry in 2006 if Kinky hadn’t split the vote. In some ways it’s a defensible position, as that was a “Bush Fatigue” wave year for Democrats and Perry was suffering from a number of self-inflicted wounds (toll roads, the Trans-Texas Corridor proposal, etc.). And maybe a popular, polished, well-funded Democratic candidate just might have had a chance to defeat Perry in 2006. Unfortunately for the Democrats (though fortunately for us), none was apparent on the scene in 2006. Or any time, really, since Bob Bullock and Ann Richards retired. Democrats didn’t come close to sending Perry home in 2006, and they haven’t any time since, letting him retire undefeated in gubernatorial contests.

    And so Burka’s great white whale escaped yet again…

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    New Poll Shows Support for Dewhurst Down to 22%

    Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

    The Ted Cruz campaign noted that a new UT/Texas Tribune poll showed Lt. Governor David Dewhurst’s support among Republican voters down to 22%, which is about half what previous polls have shown, and even less than that possibly anomalous Azimuth Research Group poll that showed both Cruz and Dewhurst tied around 30%. The UT/TT poll shows Cruz in second place at 10%, with a whopping 50% undecided. Still, to have such huge name recognition and to only be sitting at 22% must be frustrating for Team Dewhurst.

    The same poll shows Ricardo Sanchez at a mere 11% of Democratic voters. He’s even running behind Chris Bell at 15%, even though Bell isn’t in the race…

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Texas 2012 Senate Race Websites (and Tidbits)

    Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

    Note: A more detailed and up-to-date list of Texas Senate Candidate Websites can be found here.

    For today’s 2012 Texas Senate Race coverage, I thought I would provide a handy list of all the candidate’s own websites (listed alphabetically).

    Websites for 2012 Republican Senate Candidates

  • Ted Cruz
  • David Dewhurst has not announced he’s running yet, so here’s his official Lieutenant Governor’s page
  • Elizabeth Ames Jones
  • Tom Leppert
  • Michael Williams
  • Roger Williams

    • Since I’m trying to provide a complete lineup, here are some very, very longshots that have declared for the Republican primary:

  • Glenn Addison
  • Andrew Castanuela
  • Lela Pittenger

    • I’ve seen reports that a Nick Latham is running (he declared in 2009), but it’s hard to take him seriously as even a longshot candidate when all the links on his website are 404.

    Websites for 2012 Democratic Senate Candidates

    Through diligent research, I have finally found an actual, declared candidate for the Democratic nomination. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you your de facto Democratic Senate front-runner, Sean Hubbard. Yes, it’s a Facebook page. I was able to reach Hubbard by email, and he says he’s just waiting for the domain transfer for his actual campaign website to go through. To his credit, that Facebook page has been updated recently, which puts him one up on John Sharp. (Actually, it appears that a few other people have finally posted encouragement on Sharp’s Facebook page, although Sharp himself still hasn’t posted in more than a year.) One problem facing Hubbard is that Texas voters might be a little hesitant to vote for someone who looks like he still gets carded trying to buy a beer…

    As for other Democratic Senate candidates, I sent email to Sharp to see if he was running and received no reply. I emailed Chet Edwards today, but there hasn’t been much time for him to get back to me. I see Chris Bell’s name being bandied about, but his law firm doesn’t have an e-mail address for him, and it seems rude to bug him by phone.

    Supposedly there’s a transsexual bodybuilder named Chris Tina Bruce running as an independent, but I can’t find a campaign website. Given the paucity of Democratic candidates, I’m not sure why Bruce doesn’t just declare for the Democratic primary, as the field is wide open…

    And finally a dollop of Senate race tidbits:

  • Ted Cruz says he has raised (extend Dr. Evil pinkie) one MILLION dollars for his campaign.
  • Tom Leppert says he’s raised $2.6 million…but that includes a $1.6 million loan from himself to his campaign.
  • Ted Cruz gets some serious love from The Weekly Standard.

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | 4 Comments »

    Still More 2012 Texas Senate Candidate News

    Friday, January 21st, 2011

    Add Republican Rep. Mike McCaul to the list of names of those considering a run.

    Polls show Dewhurst doing the best in polls against potential Democratic challengers, but all named Republicans beat all named Democrats. Given the state of Texas politics, that sounds about right.

    On the Democratic side, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro says he’s not running. Bill White also says no, despite Nate Silver’s pimping. Houston Sheriff Adrian Garcia also says he’s not interested, but his statement (“I have no interest in running for U.S. Senate at this time”) leaves a good bit more wiggle room.

    I keep hearing that John Sharp is going to run, but I wonder if anyone has told Sharp. He was making noises about it last March, and since then has been pretty much invisible. Signs of a Chet Edwards Senate run are even more non-apparent on the web.

    The Texas Tribune lists all sorts of wacky possibilities: Chris Bell (Maybe), George Prescott Bush (Bush41’s grandson, and No), Kinky Friedman (probably not, though he can’t do much worse than many of the other Democratic possibilities), Craig James (Maybe, but hard to see him gaining any traction in the Republican field; try running for the House first), Florence Shapiro (another Maybe, another person who couldn’t find traction in the Republican field), Leticia Van Putte (who?), and Farouk Shami (they actually asked him). Why not see if Phil Gramm or Dick Armey was coming out of retirement while you’re at it? Or some random Bullock or Hobby offspring?

    Not that it probably matters too much; there hasn’t been a Democrat elected in Texas statewide since Bob Bullock won in 1994, and Texas hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 (the same year the Dukakis/Bentsen ticket lost to Bush/Quayle). Things are always fluid in politics, but there does not appear to be any instant revival for the Texas Democratic Party over the horizon in the near future…

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »