The emergence of Ted Cruz has made life miserable for Minority Whip John Cornyn. Cruz constantly has the senior senator for Texas looking over his right shoulder. Cornyn voted against Kerry as secretary of state, as did Cruz, but it’s likely that he did so only to inoculate himself against further doubts being cast on his conservative bona fides.

Roll Call has a story about the likelihood of a primary challenge to Cornyn:

The founder and director of a grass-roots conservative group said he expects Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, to face a primary challenge. Cornyn is up for re-election in 2014.

“I don’t know how good of a primary challenge he is going to get at this point, but he will get a primary challenge,” said Dean Wright, co-founder and director of New Revolution Now, based in Austin, Texas.

“There is vetting going on,” Wright said, but he did not have any other details. He noted that one possible challenger could be Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is viewed as much more likely to run for governor in 2014. Abbott and Cornyn are known to have a cordial relationship, with Cornyn once touting Abbott as a possible Senate candidate.

* * * *

There is another factor that makes Abbott an unlikely challenger to Cornyn. I have personally heard Abbott say, in years past, that the U.S. Senate is not a good option for him, because the travel back and forth would be difficult for him. In any case, I don’t think it matters: Abbott is widely thought to be focusing on the Governor’s Mansion in 2014.

Tagged: john cornyn, Ted Cruz

It’s Chip Roy, who was the chief ghostwriter for Rick Perry’s Fed Up! Erickson is especially impressed that Cruz did not turn to a K Street lobbying firm for a chief, as many new members do. Erickson writes:

[The decision] signals Senator-Elect Ted Cruz is not going to Washington sell out the conviction he ran on, but actually, as we’ve all known, does believe in federalism, the tenth amendment, and limited government.

What I find revealing about the choice of Roy is that Cruz–who has been making noise as a potential contender for the White House in 2016–appears to be putting his chips on the tea party as the future of the Republican party. In doing so, he is aligning himself with insurgents like Rand Paul and, of course, the chief insurgent, Jim DeMint, who helped fund Cruz’s Senate race.

Is this a good bet? I’m dubious. The tea party has a lot in common with the old Ross Perot “United We Stand” bunch. These groups seldom have staying power. Granted, the Kochs’ involvement makes the tea party’s survival more likely, at least in the short run, but in the establishment almost always prevails. It may prove to be the case, though, that Cruz is so appealing that he can transcend the factionalism in the Republican party. The strength of the Republican field in 2016 is that it is filled with big names: Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee. Only Rubio and Cruz qualify as fresh faces, though, and that might be where the rank-and-file look first.

Tagged: Ted Cruz

The race has been moving in this direction for months now. Nothing Dewhurst has tried has changed the dynamics of the race at all. If anything, the millions Dewhurst has spent on TV have hurt his own campaign. The China ad and the Kids for Cash scandal ad have not achieved anything. Dewhurst’s array of consultants has never been able to lay a glove on Cruz. The most the campaign has been able to achieve is to establish the idea that Cruz is a lawyer who will take on any client who walks in the door, and that is just not enough to undermine Cruz’s positives.

The conventional wisdom concerning the numbers in this race is that the bigger the turnout, the better Dewhurst would do–the idea being that a large turnout would indicate that there is more to the GOP electorate than the tea party. But the fact is that the Dewhurst campaign never identified a constituency. The campaign was a mess from the start: Dewhurst, despite ten years in office, never really established an identity separate from Rick Perry.

And speaking of Perry, he’s the big loser in this race. He went all-in for Dewhurst, even lending him his own campaign organization. In effect, the Perry team portrayed Dewhurst as Perry’s alter ego. That was doomed to fail. In promoting Perry, the Dewhurst campaign diminished their own candidate.

What happens to Perry now? I think his political career may be over. The party he led is split, and the faction whose candidate he opposed appears to be winning the race. Perry’s ego is so huge that he thought he could get Dewhurst elected simply by endorsing him. How can he run for another term as governor (which he clearly wants to do) when he supported an establishment candidate against the tea party’s darling? Dan Patrick is in the same position. Both have lost credibility with their base. Everything is wide open now.

The big winner in this election (other than Cruz himself) is George P. Bush, Jeb’s son, who endorsed Cruz. That tells me two things: (1) he has inherited good political antennae; (2) his statewide political ambitions are on the fast track.

More from PPP:

Cruz’s [anticipated] victory is driven by 4 things: the Tea Party, the enthusiasm of his supporters, a generational divide within the Texas Republican ranks, and the lack of regard the party base currently holds for Rick Perry.

PPP is a Democratic polling firm and has every incentive to denigrate Rick Perry. Nevertheless, I believe PPP is right. There is a general lack of regard for Rick Perry among Republicans, Democrats, the tea party, and independents.

And Politico weighs in:

Runoffs, of course, are notoriously unpredictable and hard to poll. One example: Dewhurst adviser Dave Carney tells [Dave] Catanese, “I know we’re winning the early vote.” But PPP reports Cruz has a wide 55-40 lead among those who say they’ve already voted.

That fits. I don’t think anything I have heard from the Dewhurst campaign has proven to be accurate.

Tagged: david dewhurst, george p. bush, Ted Cruz

Dewhurst gave his best performance of the campaign, but it may not matter.  He still has a tendency to be stiff and wooden. It’s almost painful to watch him struggle to achieve fluency. Cruz has a big edge as a speaker; he reeled off points, “One…two…three…four.” It was good debating technique, but the look on his face seems to say, “Look how smart I am.” Dewhurst made a slip when he said he was endorsed by the NRA, which Cruz promptly pounced on.

Dewhurst said, “I’m the most conservative lieutenant governor in the history of Texas.” I tried to think of who the competition might be. Rick Perry might be one answer, although Perry had little to show for his year as light gov, other than his sincere but unsuccessful efforts to reach a compromise on the hate crimes bill in 1999.

Cruz accused Dewhurst of impugning his patriotism with an ad that included the Chinese flag. “You’re better than that,” he said to Dewhurst.

Viewers were able to post comments alongside the video feed. Almost all of the comments were pro-Cruz; a few were anti-Dewhurst. Dewhurst made a strong pitch for his conservative record, and deservedly so, but Cruz is just so much more steeped in the rhetoric of the far right. I suspect a lot of people in the audience–the debate was sponsored by the King Street Patriots, a tea party organization–were  thinking, “He’s one of us, and Dewhurst isn’t.” And it’s true. He’s not.

Cruz scored heavily when he brought up Dewhurst’s support for amnesty in 2007, in a speech that, Cruz charged, Dewhurst caused to be removed from his Web site. Dewhurst denied that he had ever supported amnesty or a guest worker program. Cruz also attacked Dewhurst for spending $10 million “flooding the airwaves with false personal attacks.”

For the most part, however, Cruz and Dewhurst had few disagreements on policy. Cruz brought up Dewhurst’s statement in the previous debate that Europe had better healthcare outcomes than the U.S. Dewhurst tried again and again to return to his record (“I  balanced five straight budgets”) and his passage of Voter I.D. and tort reform, but his efforts fell flat. Cruz has no record at all, other than his law practice, but that doesn’t matter to his supporters.

The truth is that, if elected to the Senate, Cruz and Dewhurst would vote alike 99% of the time. They would likely differ on only one vote that would matter, and that is the vote for Republican whip. Jim DeMint, of South Carolina, is seeking the position, and so is John Cornyn of Texas.* You would think that a senator from Texas would support a colleague from his home state, but DeMint got Cruz into the race and helped fund him. The odds are overwhelming that Cruz will vote for DeMint, perhaps casting the deciding vote that would rob Texas’s soon-to-be senior senator from achieving the number two position in the Republican hierarchy.

If Cruz wins the race, the Dewhurst campaign will go down in Texas political history as one of the worst that has ever been run–and one of the biggest upsets since Rick Perry defeated Jim Hightower in 1990. Dewhurst had every advantage–name I.D., money, conservative record, Rick Perry’s endorsement (if that’s an advantagte. Cruz had nothing except the ability to connect with the far right. But based on where the energy is in the Republican party, that may be all Cruz needs.

UPDATE: Earlier today, TEXAS MONTHLY received the following email from DeMint’s Senate office:

Senator DeMint has not sought and does not plan to seek a Senate leadership post and reports to the contrary are simply false. Please correct this story. Thank you.

Senator DeMint is in line to become chairman of the Commerce Committee, a powerful panel, assuming that Republicans honor his seniority. He has also expressed a desire to be a member of the Finance Committee. As for Cornyn, I also came across a reference to him in a story from Roll Call, which described Cornyn’s support from his colleagues as “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

I see nothing wrong with raising the issue of how Cruz will vote for Republican whip. This ought to be an easy vote for a Texas senator. If Cornyn is elected whip, he would be next in line to succeed Mitch McConnell as majority leader. The last Texan to hold that position was Lyndon Johnson. While many readers may scoff at “politics as usual” involving one’s home state, Texas sends a huge amount of tax dollars to Washington. Getting something back is important. Money for highways and the huge military installations at Fort Hood and Fort Bliss are crucial to this state. Whether DeMint runs for whip or not, Texas  needs a senator who will protect the state’s interests.

Tagged: david dewhurst, Ted Cruz

It’s Rick Perry. Well, not exactly. What has happened is that Team Perry has taken over the Dewhurst campaign. Dave Carney is in charge. Mark Miner has joined the communications team. Rob Johnson is heading up the Super PAC. Everyone understands what that means. It means that the Perry playbook will be the textbook for Dewhurst’s runoff campaign against Ted Cruz. And the contents of the playbook have never been a secret. Chapter One is “Always attack.” Chapter Two is “If the first attack doesn’t work, try another one.” Chapter Three is “The only good use for earth is to scorch it.”

The unsolved mystery of Perry’s deep involvement in the Dew’s Senate race is why he cares. He must think  he can benefit by Dewhurst’s going to the Senate.

How? In the first place, it is to Perry’s advantage to have an ally in the Senate, assuming he intends to remain active in state and national politics. Texas’s senior senator, John Cornyn, and Perry are not close. Nor does Perry have a lot of friends in the Texas congressional delegation. He won no allies in the delegation by running for governor against Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2010 with an anti-Washington message that irked all the members of the delegation, not to mention rubbing off on many of them. Most members of Congress work hard. They regard Perry as a show horse, rather than  a workhorse. Cruz is certainly no friend of Perry’s, and he is also a rival for Perry as the leader of the tea party in Texas.  That leaves only Dewhurst as a possible ally.

Finally, it’s possible that Perry can gain from Dewhurst’s departure by the simple possibility that Dewhurst would no longer be light gov. The Texas Senate would have to choose a successor, and Perry, as governor, would be in a position to influence that selection, which could prove to be useful if he remains in office as governor.

As I wrote in a previous post, the issue of how to run against Cruz is crucial. Cruz is a grassroots candidate. Dewhurst clearly is not. He is the establishment candidate. Cruz has an edge in using social media to contact his voter base and get them to the polls. Dewhurst’s failure to reach 50% in the closing days of the primary race indicates the campaign’s lack of a social media strategy that can identify and turn out his voters.

Carney will follow his usual strategy of attacking his opponent in the media. This strategy has the dual benefit of weakening Dewhurst’s opponent and providing consultants with more income from the placement of advertising. But how many bombs does Dewhurst have left to throw at Cruz? They have already hit him with an attack on his representation of a Chinese company that ended up having to pay a large jury verdict to an American competitor. A claim that Cruz supported amnesty for illegal aliens did not appear to have much credibility. What else is left? If the Dewhurst campaign is out of bombshell revelations, they could find themselves on the defensive in the closing days of the runoff.

Tagged: dave carney, david dewhurst, Ted Cruz

Dewhurst has no business being behind the eight-ball in this race. His campaign should have wiped the floor with Ted Cruz.

In late January, Cruz’s name ID was 40%. All Dewhurst had to do was stay with his message–that is, touting his record as a conservative light guv and basically ignoring Cruz. That’s when his campaign made the fatal mistake: On February 1, it hired Dave Carney. What kind of consultant is Carney? He’s an attack dog. Dewhurst ultimately went on the offensive with the China ad. It was very effective. It hurt Cruz, but it helped in even morem by raising Cruz’s name ID, which was around 40% at the time. That was the last thing Dewhurst wanted. The Dewhurst campaign stayed on the attack, including a late spot accusing Cruz of favoring amnesty, which had little credibility. The amnesty attack ad was so overdone that it caused Dewhurst to lose ground in the days before the primary. In effect, Carney’s tactics handed the initiative to Cruz.

Dewhurst should have stuck to his record. He could make a great positive case for himself. (If Cruz ever ran a positive spot, I never saw it.) Instead, he put his campaign in the hands of someone whose most recent credit was the failed Perry presidential campaign. All that got Dewhurst was an endorsement from Perry that hung a sign around Dewhurst’s neck labeled “establishment candidate.” Perry’s performance in the presidential race was evidence that Carney wasn’t the grand strategist he was reputed to be. (Remember, he worked for Craddick, too, in 2008, and didn’t have much to show for it either.)

Tagged: dave carney, david dewhurst, Ted Cruz

This was Kate Alexander’s main takeaway from the Senate debate. I don’t think it was any surprise that the top-heavy favorite in the race was on the defensive. If anything, as I wrote in my report on the debate on Friday, I thought Cruz missed opportunities to attack Dewhurst. Cruz’s charge that Dewhurst’s support of the business margins tax amounted to backing an income tax would have been a lot more effective had the Texas Supreme Court not ruled that it wasn’t.

The most telling exchange involving Cruz and Dewhurst was this one, reported by Alexander:

Cruz, who has won endorsements from several tea party standard-bearers from Washington, said there is an ideological battle afoot and that Dewhurst is not on the side of tea party conservatives.

“There is a civil war going on right now for the hearts and minds of Republicans in the Senate,” Cruz said.

In my book, this is exactly the problem with the Republican party today. And it’s going to kill them. Too many Republicans put ideological purity ahead of addressing the country’s problems. Ted Cruz is a smart man and a good lawyer, but do Texans really want a senator whose foremost concern is fighting a civil war with other Republicans? Dewhurst is hardly the reincarnation of Daniel Webster, but at least he knows who the enemy is.

Tagged: david dewhurst, Ted Cruz

Tom Leppert’s pitch was that when he became the mayor of Dallas, the biggest problem was crime, and he brought it down by 31%. “I’ve been there, I’ve done it.” Good talking point, but not what is uppermost in the minds of primary voters.

Craig James kept saying that he lived on “Real Street.” In a comment that I presume was leveled at Dewhurst, he said, “I don’t trust anyone who has been a politician.”

Ted Cruz had the most enthusiastic following. He staked out a position on the far right. “When the next senator gets to Washington, there is going to be pressure to compromise on Obamacare. I’ll throw my body in front of the train to stop it.” Cruz also promised to co-sponsor Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve Bank. “There is no reserve,” he said, “and it’s not a bank.”

Glenn Addison, a school board member from Magnolia, handled himself pretty well. He couldn’t resist going after the Federal Reserve too, calling it an “outrageous, outlandish, unconstitutional institution.”

And David Dewhurst, ever the wonk, attempted to explain that the Fed uses its balance sheet to buy bonds. I had no idea what he was talking about. His main argument was, “Some of us have led and balanced every single budget.” It’s true, but in Texas, the budget has to balance or the comptroller cannot certify that it meets our pay-as-you-go requirement.

To call this a debate is something of a misnomer. The candidates got to make opening and closing remarks, and they answered some broad questions from moderator Michael Quinn Sullivan. I think the format hurt Leppert the most. He really didn’t have a lot of chances to deal in issues. Cruz got in the best shot when he asked, “Who do you trust?” — the point being, if you are a conservative, it shouldn’t be Dewhurst.

James sounded more like a football coach than a politician. He talked about how he was given athletic talent and how hard he had worked to improve himself. “I was driven to succeed, it didn’t just come to me.” Then he tried to crack a joke, but it fell flat: “I won’t go with three points because I might forget the third one.” “The United States gave a guy like me who grew up in an apartment a chance. I was driven to excel, it didn’t just come to me. I coached my kids, I raised a family, now it’s time for me to become a public servant.” It may be unfair to blame James for being an amateur in a pro’s game, but he talked too much and strayed too far off topic.

Even Addison was more comfortable talking about issues than James. He was really quite engaging for someone who hasn’t spent a lot of time in the public eye.

If I had to name a winner, it would be the Dew. He was the favorite going in, and nothing changed the expectations. Cruz had an opportunity to hit him for not being a “real” conservative but the shot missed the target. In the end, I see no reason to change my belief that Dewhurst is going to win this race. He has the edge in money and in name identification. The fact that it is now a five-candidate race does raise issues for Dewhurst, because the bigger the field, the greater the likehood of a runoff. The worry for Dewhurst is a runoff between him and Cruz, in which conservative voters come out to vote but the mainstream Republicans stay disengaged.

Tagged: Craig James, david dewhurst, Glenn Addison, Ted Cruz, tom leppert, U.S. Senate

A commenter tipped me to this story that appears on a new San Antonio blog called Plaza de Armas. The bloggers are former investigative reporters for the San Antonio Express News and the Current. The gist of the story is that U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz, a well known attorney, is representing a Chinese conglomerate called Shandog Linglong in a major patent infringement case. I have copied the story from the Plaza de Armas blog.

The story appears in italics, below:

Many politicians are lawyers by trade, but politicians and lawyers operate under a sharply different set of standards. For example, in the legal world, where every defendant is deserving of representation, taking the case of a suspected domestic terrorist is just doing your job. In the political world, however, where every public word you’ve ever uttered isruthlessly dissected for potential talking points, photo ops with Timothy McVeigh don’tplay so well on election day.

Since leaving the office of Texas solicitor general in 2008, Ted Cruz has been followingthe code of the legal world, as a successful appellate lawyer with the prominent Houstonfirm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP. These days, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison, he is also emerging as the golden boy of Texas Republican politics.

Slick and highly articulate, Cruz has the kind of “God Bless the U.S.A.” bio that mostpoliticians need professional fiction writers to manufacture: Dad escapes political torturein Cuba, lands in Austin with $100 sewn in his underwear, works his way through theUniversity of Texas by washing dishes for 50 cents an hour, and inspires his son to make it to Harvard Law School. Cruz has stirred an all-out man-crush in veteran columnist George Will, earned the endorsements of a host of GOP-friendly organizations (includingthe Hispanic Republicans of Texas), and can claim Ronald Reagan’s old pal, Ed Meese,as his national campaign chairman. But Cruz’s decision to represent a Chinese conglomerate in a high-stakes patent piracy case could cause him some political headaches over the next year. (more…)

Tagged: 2012 senate race, chinese patent lawsuit, patents, Ted Cruz

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