Finally, John Cornyn has a real challenger. Steve Stockman has Tea Party support, impeccable conservative credentials, experience in high profile races (he knocked off Democratic fossil Jack Brooks for a U.S. congressional seat in the Gingrich wave of 1994), and a Southeast Texas base that might (might) let him tap into Houston’s rich Republican fundraising base. But he has gotten into the race very, very late, against a well-funded opponent whose deviations into RINO-Land have been far less severe those of Arlen Specter, DIck Luger or David Dewhurst (and that role-call of names is probably slightly unfair to Dewhurst). Ted Cruz had about fifteen months to knock off Dewhurst, while Stockman has three to take down Cornyn. Further, while Cruz’s race against Dewhurst was one of the top Tea Party vs. RINO races nationwide, I get the impression the Stockman/Cornyn fight will take a distinct backseat to Matt Bevin’s attempt to take down Mitch McConnell, and possibly several other races.
It’s certainly possible that Stockman can take out Cornyn, but it’s going to be very difficult, especially while still carrying out his congressional duties.
For the sake of completeness, here’s a look at the other candidates.
Dwayne Stover: A bridge-builder. I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean that his company actually builds bridges.
Read Reasor: Good: Former F-15 pilot. Bad: His platform (if you can call it such, being a Facebook post, since his website doesn’t currently work) is a strange mashup of WPA works program, workfare and local autarky. I would like to see his “let welfare recipients build their own home” idea run as a small pilot project somewhere, but his plan has more than a whiff of late-night college bull sessions to it.
Linda Vega: A Houston-area lawyer. She has a good resume…for someone running for a county judge position. U.S. Senate? Not so much.
David Alameel: Former dental chain owner, and worth a reported $50 million dollars. With that big money, he should be a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination, right? Not so fast. “This will be Alameel’s second run for office in as many cycles. Last cycle, he ran for Congress in the newly-drawn 33rd District and finished fourth out of 11 candidates in the Democratic primary. Alameel received 2,064 votes (10 percent)…[he] actually spent $4,485,086 million in the 2012 race, which comes out to $2,173 per vote.” That almost makes John Connally’s 1980 run for President look like a model of model of prudent campaign financing…
Michael Fjetland: Ran as a Republican in the primary against Tom Delay in 2006. Proclaims “I am the ‘Anti-Cruz'” in an all-capital letters font. (Pro-tip: When you use ALL CAPS more often than Time Cube Guy, you’re doing it wrong…)
HyeTae “Harry” Kim: Odessa physician. Sorry, that’s all I’ve got for you.
Lakesha Rogers: The LaRouche Candidate.
Maxey Scheer: El Paso attorney who’s also running as the anti-Cruz candidate, complete with towing a crashed-car prop behind her to protest Cornyn’s “Cruz Control.” (Get it? Get? Cruz control? It’s a concrete metaphor and a pun! Get it? Get it? Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more!) Given the Statesman‘s polite attention, I’m going to guess she’s the designated “Democratic faithful” candidate if Alameel’s wealth can’t get him across the finish line, though her gas costs may prove prohibitive. Also seems intensely race-conscious.
Paul Burka covers it as well. Ignore the usual Burka liberal hand-wringing and there’s actually a lot of useful information here. (Hat tip: Texas Iconoclast, which has stopped updating the main page, but still puts tidbits in their sidebar.)
The Texas Tribune offers a handy overview of the their tax returns.
Cruz wins another straw poll, this one at the Tarrant County Republican Party Candidate Fair.
Joe Holley profiles James. The most interesting takeaway for me is learning that James has two of Rick Perry’s longtime financial supporters backing him: Houston investor Jim Lee and Dallas insurance executive Roy Bailey. And the fact that James only set up Texans for a Better America in April, after his name was already floated as a potential Senate candidate.
Another Perry supporter, campaign manager Rob Johnson, lands a gig working for David Dewhurst’s Super PAC “Texas Conservatives Fund” to support his Senate campaign. That’s not the only Dewhurst PAC: “Former Harris County Republican Party chairman Gary Polland and San Francisco-based political consultant Bob Wickers recently formed the Conservative Renewal PAC.”
The Dewhurst campaign is crying foul on Cruz hitting them over the Super PAC, pointing out Cruz’s support from the Club for Growth PAC. The Cruz campaign retorts that The Club For Growth PAC has been around for years to help various candidates, while Dewhurst’s PACs exist only to serve David Dewhurst.
James calls for Eric Holder’s resignation, and says that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott should be the next U.S. Attorney General. That’s interesting, because I got the impression that Abbott was pretty close to Cruz, though I don’t think he’s formally endorsed him.
Speaking of which, Paul Sadler appeared on WFAA, they of the crappy video embedding:
Salder raised $5,000 in Q4. Granted, he didn’t join the race until December 19, but that’s still pretty poor for the Anointed Democratic Establishment Candidate.
Even Daniel Boone raised more money, in Q4, raising $5,401.
Here’s an updated list of the declared 2012 Texas senate candidate’s websites, along with any subsidiary pages that change frequently (in-the-news, press releases, etc.), along with their Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and FEC fundraising report pages, plus any additional pages worth noting. (For example, Tom Leppert’s website provides links to his LinkedIn page, and his YouTube and Flickr streams, so I have included those here.) I’ve also tried to be flexible; Ted Cruz doesn’t have links for separate YouTube or Flickr sites, so I’ve included similar pages on his campaign page.
Consider this a one-stop research stop for lazy efficient journalists and bloggers (as well as a handy cheat-cheat for myself, since I’ve been doing extensive coverage of the race).
Where candidates have sign-up splash screens, I have omitted those to go straight to the website (or, for Facebook links, their wall).
Websites for 2012 Republican Senate Runoff Candidates
Very soon the candidates should be crowing about how much money they pulled in during Q4. In the meantime, here are few variegated updates for your political junkie pleasure:
Rick Perry gives a boost, in passing, to Dewhurst’s Senate bid in Iowa, with Dewhurst and other Texas officials present. It certainly won’t hurt Dewhurst’s chances, but it’s a bit short of a full-throttle endorsement.
James says he’s living on real street. “Only in politics is it possible for a former football star turned national broadcaster be able to make the claim how connected they are to ordinary people.”
KYFO in Lubbock did a poll asking people if they would vote for James in the Senate race. Right now a bracing 96% are voting no…
A not particularly insightful breakdown of the race. The Craig James-to-Jack Kemp comparison is particularly inapt; Kemp went straight from playing quarterback for the Buffalo Bills in 1969 to running for and winning a congressional seat from Buffalo in 1970. James’ last year of professional football was 1988, and being a cable sportscaster is a level of fame below even a Kardashian sister.
Democrat Paul Sadler gets more love from the Longview News-Journal. Sadler’s hometown of Henderson lies between Nacogdoches and Longview.
The Houston Chroniclealso examines Sadler’s chances. Democrats have pinned their hopes on “a former six-term Texas House member who hasn’t held office since 2003, who has little statewide name identification and whose last race was a losing effort in a runoff election for the state Senate in 2004.” Indeed. But note that writer Joe Holley is incorrect when he says that Sadler “is among six other Democratic candidates,” as there are now only five Democratic Senate candidates. However, I can’t really blame him, as the Texas Democratic Party has never actually said why Eric Roberson and John Morton no longer appear on the list of candidates, nor have they answered my query on the issue.
And here’s another article that mentions Sadler, but none of his opponents in the Democratic primary. It’s almost as if the state’s lockstep MSM outlets have already picked their preferred candidate…
EmpowerTexas will be hosting a senate debate in Austin on January 12. Participants are Cruz, Dewhurst, James, Tom Leppert and Glenn Addison (which is the right five if you’re limiting it to five).
There’s also a Saddle Up Texas Straw Poll event in Houston January 12-14. Cruz, Dewhurst, Leppert, Addison, Lela Pittenger and Dr. Joe Agris are all scheduled to attend, as is Andrew Breitbart. Call me a cynic, but when an event has a list of sponsorship opportunities but no actual sponsors 10 days before the event, as well as $45 tickets (good luck with that), my gut feeling is that the organizers are going to take a serious financial bath. (Indeed, it gives off a whiff of The Ultimate Fantasy, a legendary Star Trek convention debacle I attended which also took place in Houston…)
I try to deal with substantive issues in coverage of the race, but every now and then it’s worth noting good old-fashioned politicking. Take, for example, the way Cruz celebrates every Texas university bowl win (U of H, Baylor, A&M, Texas) on his Facebook page, including team logos. Leppert comes close, but missed the Aggies. Dewhurst doesn’t seem to discuss sports on his Facebook page, despite including the Longhorns among his likes.
Like everyone else, political wonks are taking off for Christmas, so just a few tiny bits of Senate race news:
Tom Leppert appeared on the Janet Mefferd Show:
With Ricardo Sanchez out of the race, Texas Democrats face a Latino problem.
So how do you write up a summary of the Senate race, and manage to list every Democrat in the race except Sean Hubbard, and every Republican in the race except Glenn Addison and Lela Pittenger, and misspell Curt Cleaver’s name to boot? Did the Wichita Falls Times Record News let all their fact checkers take the week off for Christmas?
Of all the declared longshots who failed to file for the race I queried as to their intentions, only Andrew Castanuela wrote to say he was pursuing a campaign as a write-in candidate, which seems a fairly futile course of action for someone whose last name is not Murkowski.
The filing deadline for all races is coming up on Thursday. Beyond that, the biggest news is probably going on behind the scenes, as I suspect all three of the major candidates are raising money like mad in advance of the Q4 deadline, the last to be reported before the March primary.
So have Glenn Addison, Curt Clever, Charles Holcomb (as mentioned yesterday), and one Ben Gambini of Winnie (about which The Google has precious little; he might as well be Chauncey Gardener).
Still no sign of Ricardo Sanchez’s name. Two days left…
Leppert picked up the endorsements of a number of former Dallas Cowboys, including Roger Staubach (who I mentioned previously as having donated to Leppert) and Troy Aikman. Again, all those play to his Dallas base, but Staubach and Aikman’s endorsements certainly won’t hurt him in the rest of the state.
Dewhurst stated that he was willing to debate once or twice. As Texas Iconoclast noted: “How magnanimous of his highness.”
Once you get beyond the condescending opening (“Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst enters the U.S. Senate campaign with considerable cash and name recognition, but a couple of Republican challengers are nipping at his heels”), this Houston Chronicle piece is a fairly accurate distillation of the consensus wisdom on the race.
Speaking of MSM outlets, Robert T. Garrett in The Dallas Morning News has an interesting bit on Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks setting up a phone bank for Cruz. Garrett has even toned down most of his usual smug condescension…
The Texas Restaurant Association endorses Dewhurst. That link also notes that:
This endorsement follows other major Texas endorsements of Dewhurst’s candidacy in recent weeks, including the Texas Poultry Federation, three former presidents of the Texas Farm Bureau, BEEF-PAC, the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association Political Action Committee and the Texas Farm Bureau Friends of Agriculture Fund last week. David has also received endorsements from the Texas State Association of Fire Fighters, the Texas State Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, the Texas Municipal Police Association and the Texas Department of Public Safety Officers Association PAC. Prior to those, he received endorsements Texas Right To Life PAC, pro-life leaders Kyleen Wright and Carol Everett, and the Texas Alliance for Life PAC.
Dewhurst was always going to get the lion share of the business endorsements. The pro-life endorsements I’ve covered. The police and firefighter pickups won’t hurt.
Well, there’s one group that probably won’t be endorsing Craig James if he jumps in: Texas Tech boosters. But I don’t know where the silly “killed 5 hookers” meme started.
Robert Pratt at Empower Texas is not impressed with Tom Leppert’s pledge to “get things done” in Washington. I hardly qualify as a Leppert cheerleader, but I do think they make much ado about nothing for what is essentially a rhetorical flourish.
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…
Cruz also got more love in the form of a fundraising push from Sen. Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund PAC.
A new poll from the Dem-leaning PPP shows Dewhurst with (no surprise) a big lead in name recognition. The poll also shows Dewhurst, Cruz and Tom Leppert all beating Ricardo Sanchez (who, while theoretically running, has been about as scarce on the campaign trail as Dewhurst) and former Congressman Chet Edwards (who isn’t running, and hasn’t been running).
The most surprising thing from the full poll results? Elizabeth Ames Jones edges out Tom Leppert for third place.
Ross Ramsey calls Dewhurst “the Mitt Romney of the Texas Senate race.” Ouch! “There’s the part of Dewhurst that’s like Romney. Both entered their races as presumptive front-runners. Neither is the sort of guy who’d be at the barbecue at 4 in the morning starting the fire and working on the briskets and ribs. They’re business aristocrats. Swells.” Double ouch!
The Leppert campaign has put up the endorsements of Job Creators for Leppert. Of course, it doesn’t really help defend against the charge of his limited regional appeal when some 90% of the names on the list hail from the greater Dallas area…
And speaking of Garland, there was another longshot Republican there I hadn’t heard of before: Curt Cleaver, who seems to be running on a full-tilt Christian conservative platform. He evidently started running in August. I guess I’ll have to update my cheatsheet of candidate’s web pages. I just sent him email to ask why he’s running, as I do not think the Republican side of the race suffers from a dearth of candidates…
And this week, besides appearing as a question in the PPP poll, Ricardo Sanchez…did absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell. It’s been a month since his news page was updated, a month since his Facebook page was updated, and three months since his lone, solitary tweet was released unto the cold, cruel world. Does Sanchez actually want to run for the Senate?