When I first wrote about the race for U.S. Senate, I said that there was no race, that Dewhurst has a huge lead in fundraising and name I.D. I still think that Dewhurst has the advantage over Ted Cruz, but, even in a state as big as Texas, there is such a thing as word-of-mouth, and it’s not on Dewhurst’s side. The Dew has never been one to spend time watering the grass roots. I don’t put much stock in the small-sample straw polls that have uniformly favored Cruz over Dewhurst, and Cruz’s endorsements from the likes of Tina Benkiser, George Strake, and Cathie Adams reflect yesterday’s RPT, not today’s. (George P. Bush’s endorsement of Cruz is of more contemporary value. ) But there is an enthusiasm gap in this race, and it favors Cruz. I wonder whether Dewhurst has bothered to have oppo research done on himself. I’ll bet there is a lot of stuff that won’t sell in an ultraconservative primary. I’ll bet, too, that Dan Patrick will have some unflattering things to say about the light gov. Dewhurst needs to take this race seriously, and so far I haven’t seen much indication that he is doing so.

Tagged: david dewhurst, senate race, Ted Cruz

Is it even worth writing about? Dewhurst has the money and the name I.D. Tom Leppert has neither. Cruz has a great reputation as a lawyer but little else. Dewhurst has already driven most of the hopefuls out of the race and into contests for Congress–the worst job in American politics. He will win in November, then will wait to see whether the Republicans win nationally before deciding whether to take the Senate seat or, if Perry gets a Washington gig (prez, veep, cabinet), he can decline to be seated and elect to move up to governor if Perry vacates. The only way Dewhurst loses is if someone with more money and better conservative credentials than he has gets into the race. And that would be …. who? Give me some names. Who can beat Dewhurst?

I have friends in the Dewhurst camp who think he will be miserable as a senator. Junior to Cornyn? Ugh. No love lost there. Dewhurst hates living by a schedule. I followed Cornyn around for a couple of days in 07. Every minute of the day was planned. A video conferences with a business group in the Valley. A Republican leadership meeting. Fifteen minutes for me to interview him. A short staff meeting. And what is your reward for being a senator? A second-rate committee assignment for a freshman and a national television gig now and then. Wait your turn for a subcommittee chairmanship. Dewhurst is used to being the boss. Freshman senators can’t be the boss of anything. And, you know, he doesn’t have a great political personality. He’s not the hale fellow, well met type. On the other hand, sticking around as light guv isn’t a good career move either. The Texas Senate has had it with him. He’d better hope that Perry leaves — but he has been hoping for that since 2003.

Tagged: david dewhurst, senate race, Ted Cruz, tom leppert

A couple of weeks ago I questioned in this space whether Medina might enter the Senate race if Hutchison resigns her seat after the primary or the runoff? Apparently someone else was thinking the same thing. The analysis that follows was sent to me by someone who is well known to readers of this blog, someone with SO license plates. The analysis picks up below the asterisks:

* * * *

I just read your comment about Medina running for Kay’s seat, if it ever opens up. I [have] speculated on the same thing. I have been trying to figure her reason to run in the R primary. It doesn’t make sense for her. Here is why:

1. If she really cared about her issues she would have run as an Indy or a Libertarian so she would be in the race all the way into the fall. She would then have time to build her name and would get to debate on the big stage in the general election.

2. If she actually thought she had a chance to win the R primary, or make the run-off she would not turn off the R votes by advocating legalizing drugs or saying she will not guarantee she will support the primary winner in Nov and may support a third party candidate.

So, what is her plan. Let’s go back to point 1. If she was running as an Independent or Libertarian it would be difficult to also run in a special election for Senator, and depending on when the election was actually held, she might not be legally able to do so. Secondly, if she had not run in R primary no one would know her anyway. My thesis.

She doesn’t care if some Republicans don’t like her drug stand or that she will not support Perry or Hutchinson in November. She is running in the Republican primary to build name I.D. and build support for a run in the special election for Kay’s seat. Once March 2 passes she will be free to run for the Senate (providing Kay steps down).

What is her chance of making that run-off ? Still a long shot, but she will have a shot, especially if she surprises and gets 12-18% in the primary.

My analysis of the numbers in a crowded special election field:
–Sharp and all Ds get 35%
–If Medina keeps her base and adds a few points she is 15-20% (if she does well in the primary)
–That leaves 50-55% to be split between 6 to 10 Republicans
–Dewhurst, Shapiro, Williams, Williams, Jones, all of whom have indicated they will run. You can be sure that there will be 2-4 more. Each one will pick up 3-5% points even for the bottom finishers. If you have, let’s say, 8 Republicans, can any of them get higher than her if she gets 18-20%? Dewhurst has the best chance, but with so many in the race each candidate will have their own base. making it harder for him to get 20%.

So, you could have a Medina-Sharp run-off if everything breaks her way. But three things have to happen:

(more…)

Tagged: david dewhurst, Debra Medina, John Sharp, kay bailey hutchison, michael williams, senate race

The Quorum Report today reports that the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call has a story saying that John Cornyn is encouraging Greg Abbott to join the Senate race to serve out the remainder of Kay Bailey Hutchison’s term. I was surprised to see this. Abbott supposedly has ruled out a Senate race because traveling back and forth to Washington would be difficult due to his physical condition. In fact, he said this to me a couple of years ago. Furthermore, he has had his sights set on running for lieutenant governor and governor. The considerable warchest he has amassed could not be transferred to a federal campaign, although I believe it is lawful to return the money and ask donors to resubmit it under the federal campaign limitations. The obvious question here is whether the encouragement of Abbot reveals that national Republicans are worried that their current lineup of Senate hopefuls is not strong enough to retain the seat. Can the answer be anything but Yes?

Tagged: attorney general, greg abbott, john cornyn, kay bailey hutchison, senate race, texas

It’s probably too late to ask the question, because it appears to have already been answered. With Bill White and John Sharp in the race to serve out the remainder of Kay Bailey Hutchison’s term, no obvious candidate remains to challenge the winner of the primary between Hutchison and Rick Perry.

The best the Democrats have to offer is congressman Chet Edwards. He is a conservative Democrat with a strong record on military and veterans’ issues. He has a good presence on TV and may have a little residual name recognition from having his name floated as a possible choice for vice-president. Still, it is hard for a member of Congress to get traction for a race like governor. Another possibility, albeit an unlikely one, is former Dallas mayor Laura Miller. She is a lobbyist for clean coal now, and she has been out of office for awhile; even when she was in office, she dismissed the idea of running statewide. Miller was a populist mayor, if not always a popular one; her tenure was marked by frequent friction between the mayor and the city council, as well as the black community.  She would represent the party well, but she would have some of the same problems as Chet Edwards: a narrow political base and low name identification. It’s hard to imagine either of them defeating Hutchison or Perry.

The biggest problem for the Democrats is that they don’t have the fundraising base or the party infrastructure to compete with the Republicans from the top of the ticket to the bottom. A race for governor costs around $30 million. I can’t see how the party can afford a governor’s race and still compete for legislative seats, which can’t be contested on the cheap these days. This issue of whether to rebuild from the bottom up or the top down divided the party at the state convention this year. That issue is far from settled, but it is beyond argument that what success the Democrats have enjoyed has come from the lower part of the ballot: courthouse and legislative races in the big urban counties.

All of the above sounds like I am arguing for punting, but I’m not. I do not think that the voters will regard the D’s as a credible party if they run hardy perennial Gene  Kelly for governor.  Without a public face to the party, the Democrats are just treading water. They have to start competing for, and winning, statewide races—especially since redistricting is on the agenda for 2011.  If the Legislature fails to pass House or Senate redistricting plans, the task falls to the Legislative Redistricting Board, which is made up of five statewide officials: the lieutenant governor, the speaker, the attorney general, the comptroller, and the land commissioner. Are the Democrats going to punt those too? If they do, they are just accomplices to their own evisceration.

Tagged: bill white, chet edwards, John Sharp, kay bailey hutchison, laura miller, rick perry, senate race, texas governor's race

The former state comptroller announced his candidacy today. He does not plan to form an exploratory committee but will begin raising money immediately.

This will be Sharp’s second bite at the Senate apple. In 1992, when Lloyd Bentsen resigned his seat to become Secretary of the Treasury in the first Clinton Administration, he was one of three prominent candidates to fill the vacancy. The others were Henry Cisneros and Houston congressman Mike Andrews. None of them got the appointment. Revelations of an extra-marital affair ruined Cisneros’s chances. Andrews, as I recall, was unacceptable to organized labor. And Sharp was, and is, pro-life and Richards could not bring herself to appoint a pro-life senator. So she ended up appointing railroad commissioner Bob Krueger, who didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of beating Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Sharp has run twice for lieutenant governor since then: in 1998 against Rick Perry, and again in 2002 against David Dewhurst. Readers are entitled to know that Sharp thinks that I don’t like him, which is not true. He and I got crosswise because I picked him to lose both races, and he has blamed me for both defeats on the grounds that the predictions made it more difficult for him to raise money. I regard Sharp as a first-rate public servant who, to his misfortune, doesn’t run very good races. In the 1998 race, Sharp had a killer ad against Perry—as I recall, it had a Texas Ranger saying that Perry was soft on crime—and unaccountably took it off the air toward the end of the campaign.

I thought Perry would win that race because Bush was at the height of his popularity and I thought the governor would have enough coattails to bring Perry over the finish line. In fact, Bush polled three-quarters of a million votes more than Perry, and Perry barely won, 50.04% to 48.19%. Perry has always resented Karl Rove since that race, because Rove wanted to Bush to carry El Paso, which meant turning out Hispanic voters who would vote for Bush and Sharp. Bush did carry El Paso and used his appeal to Hispanic voters to bolster his presidential candidacy. Others would say, however, that Sharp would have defeated Perry but for a late $1.1 million loan to Perry from James Leininger.

Four years later Sharp tried again. This time I was sure he would lose. By 2002, it was hard for Democrats to raise money, and Dewhurst’s resources were unlimited. Dewhurst could start early, establish his name ID and go negative against Sharp, and there would be no way Sharp could catch up. He had to hoard his money until the end, and he couldn’t win. As it turned out, 2002 was the high point for Republicans in Texas. By the next general election campaign, in 2006, Perry was running for reelection as governor, and the Democrats’ fortunes were at a low point.

Even so, Sharp might have beaten Perry in a head-to-head race, but Perry shrewdly asked Sharp, a former Aggie buddy of Perry’s, to help him fix the school finance system, which the Texas Supreme Court had declared relied on local property taxes to a degree that made the system unconstitutional. Sharp agreed to head the committee that came up with the new business tax. By giving Perry cover, Sharp infuriated many Democrats, who wanted to blame Perry for the unpopular tax. Sharp has always seemed to be off in his timing. He runs when things are bleak for Democrats and doesn’t run when there is an opening. (Sentences like this one explain why he doesn’t like me.)

So here we go again. Sharp is running for a Senate seat which Hutchison will likely vacate around a year from now. Perry will be able to appoint Hutchison’s successor, who will have the advantage of incumbency. The appointee will have to run in a special session two months after the vacancy occurs. This race could draw some people with large bank accounts: Dewhurst again, former Secretary of State Roger Williams, and, on the Democratic side, Houston mayor Bill White, who is term limited in 2009.

Sharp’s big shortcoming has been his inability to raise the kind of money he needs for a statewide race. Nobody doubts his ability to do the job. Sharp is gambling that, by starting early, he will be able to raise the money he needs to take on the boys with the fat wallets. I am still skeptical. He could end up in a special election with the likes of Dewhurst, Roger Williams, Michael Williams (the railroad commissioner), and Bill White, and I am only halfway through the list of names known to be interested in the race. Because of his alliance with Perry in 2006, many Democrats do not look upon him with favor.

I can’t see him beating Bill White. Sharp is a two-time loser with business-tax and pro-life baggage. Sharp’s best chance is that White will run for governor instead of senator (but why would he do that when a Senate seat is open?). If White decides to retire from electoral politics, then Sharp still faces the obstacle of trying to defeat a well heeled Republican.

I do think Sharp has been very savvy about the way he has played the game so far. He has taken his candidacy to Washington, where he can make the case to Senate Democrats that he can win the seat, and depending on the twists and turns of politics in an Obama presidency, deliver the D’s that coveted 60th Senate seat. The national D’s have oodles of money to spend on Senate races. They wouldn’t spend it on Rick Noriega, but they might spend it on Sharp. (The business tax fight is of little interest to national Democrats, though it does loom large with some Texas D’s.)

So Sharp might be well financed, for once. The question is whether his name still energizes Texas Democrats. Some, yes. He has always run well among Hispanics. But he has to be counting on Texas turning blue by 2010, and that is not a good bet. Democrats seeking statewide offices ran worse in 2008 than their counterparts did in 2006. Unfortunately for Sharp, he reached the apex of his political career ten years ago, just as the Republicans were reaching their high point in Texas.

Tagged: bill white, bob krueger, david dewhurst, henry cisneros, james leininger, John Sharp, karl rove, kay bailey hutchison, lloyd bentsen, michael williams, mike andrews, rick noriega, rick perry, Roger Williams, senate race

Fellow Republicans and patriots,

I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Democrats under Wendy Davis–I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade by their lawyers for 24 weeks and have not won a case–The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion; otherwise, my political career is to be put to the sword, if the seat is taken. I have answered the demand with a press release & our campaign signs still stand proudly on our campaign headquarters’ walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of partisanship, of ambition, of incumbency, of everything dear to the Fort Worth character, to come to our aid. Victory or death!

* * * *

Having lost his battle to have Wendy Davis declared ineligible to run for or serve in the state Senate, at every level in the Texas judicial system–the trial court, two appellate courts, and the Texas Supreme Court, Brimer now is declaring his intention to continue the battle in three different forums. From his press release:

With the court ruling today, we will focus on winning this election and defeating our ineligible opponent at the ballot box leaving the question of eligibility to be determined by action taken after the election.

The eligibility of our opponent is still a question mark? In the Court’s own words, it states “Even if Davis is ineligible to hold office- an issue we do not reach in this appeal…” Therefore, as a result of the Court of Appeals decision today, an ineligible candidate who is on the ballot after early voting begins can only be removed by one of the following three options:

A) By an administrative action taken by the State of Texas (after the polls close but before the vote is canvassed –Texas Election Code 145.003(d);

B) By a vote of the members of the Texas State Senate to refuse to seat an ineligible candidate (Texas Constitution Art III, Section 8);

C) By a judicial Quo Warranto action taken by the Texas Attorney General or other appropriate State Official.

The first question that comes to mind is: Why is Brimer revealing his intention BEFORE the election? I can’t see how this is to his advantage. Wouldn’t he be better off saying that he has every intention of winning this race on November 4?

If he’s going to carry the fight to the bitter end, do it, but don’t announce to the world that you’re a sore loser before you’ve lost. Nothing Brimer has done in this race makes sense to me.

Now, let’s talk about the options:

A.. An administrative action under 145.003 of the election code. Here is some pertinent language:

(d) The presiding officer of the final canvassing authority
for the office sought by a candidate may declare the candidate
ineligible after the polls close on election day and … before a certificate of election is
issued.
(e) Not pertinent
(f) A candidate may be declared ineligible only if:
(1) the information on the candidate’s application for
a place on the ballot indicates that the candidate is ineligible for
the office; or
(2) facts indicating that the candidate is ineligible
are conclusively established by another public record.
(g) When presented with an application for a place on the
ballot or another public record containing information pertinent to
a candidate’s eligibility, the appropriate authority shall
promptly review the record. If the authority determines that the
record establishes ineligibility as provided by Subsection (f), the
authority shall declare the candidate ineligible.

I don’t think Wendy Davis is out of the woods yet. I assume that the final canvassing authority is the Texas Secretary of State, whose office, of course,l is completely stocked with Rick Perry allies. Secretary of State Hope Andrade could make such a ruling.

B. A vote of the Texas Senate, which, of course, has a 20-11 Republican majority. If Brimer is counting on Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst to save him, he can forget it. Dewhurst is not going to put the fix in to save Brimer, with potentially grave consequences to his own political career and to the ability of the Senate to function in the 81st Legislature.

C. A quo warranto proceeding by the Attorney General. Greg Abbott showed himself during the redistricting fight of 2003 to be an unrestrained partisan. Some of his AG’s opinions have done the same (like the one for Craddick). It’s pretty easy for lawyers to hide behind pious-sounding words in a legal opinion. Davis ought to worry about this one.

Tagged: forth worth, kim brimer, senate race, wendy davis