Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

“Leading Democratic U.S. senatorial candidate Ricardo Sanchez announced Friday that he’s ending his campaign to replace retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.”

I didn’t exactly predict it, but I did suggest it was a strong possibility:

Even before his house burned down, there was precious little evidence Sanchez was really interested in running for the Senate. His fundraising is abysmal, his media appearances are rare, his campaign stops even rarer (Ted Cruz and Glenn Addison do more campaigning in a day than Sanchez manages in a month), his social media footprint miniscule, and his buzz factor is non-existent.

Sanchez peaked when he announced for the race. Ever since then it’s been a long, painful slog, with his only reward the prospect of being slaughtered by Ted Cruz or David Dewhurst in the general election. Is there a serious non-partisan observer anywhere who looks at Sanchez’s dismal campaign and thinks he can win?

Evidently not.

So, Texas Democrats: Right now the only two candidates on your side who have filed are Sean Hubbard and Daniel Boone. Or a guy that doesn’t look old enough to drink, and a guy who’s been dead for 191 years. Hubbard’s been running longer, but Boone has a great name to campaign on.

Of course there’s still time for additional candidates to file by Monday. (And maybe declared-but-not-filed longshot candidates Stanley Garza and Virgil Bierschwale will jump in.) I would imagine that DSCC chair Patty Murray will be working the phones like mad this weekend to at least give some semblance of a real Texas Senate race. Unless Tommy Lee Jones changes his mind, I don’t see her having much luck.

Maybe Hubbard will actually start campaigning full-time. I got the impression that he was working his campaign hours around some sort of day job.

Actually, Democrats shouldn’t be too depressed over this turn of events. All political issues aside, Sanchez was simply a bad candidate who ran a lousy campaign. At least Hubbard acts like he actually wants to run.