Rick Perry vs World

19 July 2005

Who's running against Chet Edwards?

I'd been wondering for awhile who would run against Chet Edwards. Via Kuff, we get the answer: there are 5 potential candidates.

Serving in Iraq during the ongoing conflict, Marine Capt. Van Taylor told a publication he was asked by locals in the town of Afak to become its new mayor. He declined and has since moved from the Dallas area to West in McLennan County and is considering his first campaign for Congress.

...

A rocket attack last year in Iraq while Bentley Nettles, 41, was preparing to take a shower gave him the second of his two Purple Hearts during an 18-year Texas National Guard career that has sent him to Afghanistan and Bosnia.

Tucker Anderson, 34, quit his job in Washington, D.C., as an aide to U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas, to return to the Robertson County hometown of Calvert where he grew up and begin the first campaign of his own political career.

Fred Wood, 45, of Scurry, is selling his 56-acre ranch to move to the 17th Congressional District, preparing a campaign that may focus on his ideas for using new technology to curb illegal immigration on the Mexican border.

Texas A&M University political science instructor and longtime political consultant Todd Kent, 45, of College Station, is also considering a campaign. He has strong regional roots as the son of Brazos County Republican Party Chairman David Kent.

The only one I've heard of is Tucker Anderson, because a friend who worked with him for Sessions mentioned him as a good guy who had a unique way of looking at policy.

It's Bush's home district, and he won with 69% in 2004. The right candidate could certainly beat Edwards.

Posted by Evan @ 07/19/05 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

Pledge drive

No, I don't want your money. (Unless you'd like to check and make sure that a GoogleAd doesn't interest you over there on the right). I don't even have a tipjar. [That's just because you figure no one would use it. -- ed.]

I want your eyeballs. If you stop by this blog semi-regularly, then you must at least get something out of it. Would you be willing to email a friend and mention this blog? If you feel weird, include the address to this post, so they know you have a reason to be sending it to them.

Also, I'm going to expand my focus beyond the gubernatorial race, as my fancy strikes me. So this may become more of a generalized Texas politics blog. Who knows?

Posted by Evan @ 07/19/05 10:23 AM | Comments (2)

KBH rumored for Supreme Court

She skipped running for the governor's mansion...so she could go to the Supreme Court?

This Reuters report names Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison as a potential candidate for the Supreme Court.

That's news to me. And I have real troubles seeing that it could be true. She is a woman, and she is legally trained, having graduated from UTexas Law. She'd also be easily confirmed.

But -- this is a terrible thing to say about a person, but it's true -- she's too old. Plus, she's never been a practicing lawyer, to my knowledge. And if you thought the Right would get upset about Al Gonzales, I would imagine a similar brouhaha if Hutchison were nominated.

It ain't gonna happen.

UPDATE: The nominee is not Kay Bailey Hutchison. Surprise, surprise, I know. Judge John Roberts of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals is the Supreme Court nominee. Confirmation looks likely.

Posted by Evan @ 07/19/05 09:28 AM | Comments (0)

Strayhorn campaign manager making appearances

Brad McClellan, son and campaign manager for Carole Strayhorn is in Kilgore the morning of July 28th. He's speaking to the "No Texas Teacher Left Behind" group.

Let the politicking begin!

Posted by Evan @ 07/19/05 09:23 AM | Comments (0)

Fundraising numbers

Money numbers for the Republicans, Democrats and Independents, all in one place for easy reference. Straight from the source.

Rick Perry: $8.75 million cash on hand. Raised $2.34M in 2005, spent $1.44M in 2005.

Carole Strayhorn: $7.03 million in cash on hand. Raised $1.58M and spent $0.28M.

Chris Bell: $10,741 in cash on hand. Raised $153K, spent $127K.

Kinky Friedman: $17K in cash on hand. Raised $301K, spent $285K.

A few notes:

1. Rick Perry and Carole Strayhorn start from a relatively similar base of money. Perry's campaign picks up the tab when he travels, as I understand it, and Perry is also spending money to put pressure on state legislators over school finance. Still, both should have money.

2. Kinky outraised the Democrats' only "exploratory" candidate. Yikes. That can't be something the Donks want to see. To be fair though, it's easy to overdo the importance of this.

3. Kinky is spending it as fast as he's bringing it in. Kinky already has over 10 people on staff, according to the Dallas Observer article, and he doesn't even know if he'll be on the ballot yet.

I went and poked through the Kinky campaign's expenditures. There are a few $5000 advances to Kinky for "travel expenses," which seems a bit unusual to me. Some of it is to bookstores and to vendors. Quite a bit is payroll and consulting fees, as you'd expect.

Rookie candidates often have problems keeping expenses down. We'll see what Kinky's burn rate is after the next reporting cycle. He's got to start saving money for signature gathering.

4. I'm going to poke through the other campaign reports when I get a chance.

Posted by Evan @ 07/19/05 09:06 AM | Comments (0)

Cornyn running for Senate leadership?

Junior Senator John Cornyn has decided to run for vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the #5 slot in leadership. He'll face off against John Ensign from Nevada, who made a deal with Kay Bailey Hutchison that she would run for #4 and Ensign would run for #5. Senator Hutchison is #5 right now.

Of course, if Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum isn't re-elected to the Senate -- and right now, he's probably a little less than a 50% chance for re-election -- then potentially everybody might move up a slot, as he would fill the #2 Majority Whip slot in the next Congress if he is re-elected.

The article notes that Cornyn "has assumed a high profile for a freshman lawmaker." That's true, Cornyn has been quite visible for a freshman...to the DC crowd. In Texas, he's considerably less visible, and his name ID is remarkably low for a former Attorney General and current Senator.

UPDATE: A reader points to a profile of Cornyn in Sunday's New York Times.

Posted by Evan @ 07/19/05 08:06 AM | Comments (0)

18 July 2005

Shorts

1. Rebecca Rodriguez at SAEN writes up the contribution reports for Strayhorn and Perry.

2. Is Chris Bell running for governor or against Tom DeLay? There's been lots of murmuring about this, but Kristen Mack published what everyone was saying.

3. Perry says he'll call the Legislature right back to work on school finance if this session ends without a deal.

4. Harvey Kronberg reports that Governor Rick Perry is scheduled to lead a "major trade delegation" to the 2005 World Expo in Japan. It might not happen, per school finance. If the governor goes, Perry's campaign covers the costs.

5. Bruce Hight in the Statesman on turnout in the primary. I'll probably have more on this later. It's definitely worth a read.

6. Perry apologized to a group of folks for having a messianic Jew represent Jews at the Fort Worth bill signing.

Posted by Evan @ 07/18/05 03:53 PM | Comments (0)

McNeely: Strayhorn needs new primary voters

Dave McNeely, longtime Statesman columnist, writes:

For Carole Keeton Strayhorn to have any chance to unseat Gov. Rick Perry in the 2006 Republican primary, she needs a significant boost in primary turnout.

The most who have ever voted in a Texas Republican primary for governor was in 1990. That year, 855,231 turned out for the white-hot contest between Clayton Williams Jr., Tom Luce, and Kent Hance - even while an even hotter street brawl was being fought on the Democratic side between Ann Richards, Jim Mattox and Mark White.

By contrast, the fewest voters in a Democratic primary came in the lackluster year of 1998, when 654,154 voted. Republican Gov. George W. Bush was seeking re-election and was considered a shoo-in. In fact, the largest Democratic turnout that year was for attorney general, not governor or lieutenant governor, elections which were uncontested.

It was the first time in decades that the Democratic primary turnout fell below 1 million. But even that meager turnout was 57,315 more than the GOP primary, and Democrats have always outpolled Republicans in non-presidential primaries.

At the same time, in the last three non-presidential general elections, the voter turnout has almost tripled the combined primary election vote. Clearly, there are plenty of people who care enough to vote who might be attracted to a primary.

It's possible Gov. Perry has irked enough people - particularly in the education community - that even some who voted for him in the past will turn thumbs down.

His staff has boasted that in a primary, no one can get to the right of Perry, who has shamelessly panderied to the religious right. But that leaves the center - if a center develops in the modern GOP primary.

That's the basic gist of the story: there's never been a very competitive Republican primary (sorry, the AG primaries don't quite count). Why? Well, some might say that the hand of Karl Rove tended to guide competitive candidates towards offices whereby they wouldn't face an opponent.

How many folks will vote? The folks who vote in the GOP primary are now the kingmakers like the Democratic primary voters.

Lots of folks base their campaign plans on changing the turnout model into one more favorable to them. We generally have a name for these candidates: losers.

I'm not being silly. Yes, there will be more people that vote in this primary, but plans to radically alter the turnout generally just don't work (and no, I don't think BushCheney04 is a counterexample). Strayhorn has her work cut out for her. Maybe she can do it, but the odds are against her.

Posted by Evan @ 07/18/05 03:47 PM | Comments (0)

New Texas Monthly, Kinky Friedman, Lakewood, random thoughts

This morning I went and picked up the new August Texas Monthly with Joel Osteen on the cover (I also started the new Nick Hornby novel, which is as brilliant as all the rest).

I discovered Sunday morning on the way to church that I now have the largest congregation in America (world?) not far from where I live. Now that Lakewood Church has moved to the Compaq Center, there will be Rockets game-traffic every Sunday morning. (Note to self: take Shepherd onramp to 59 and not Kirby. You'll save at least 10 minutes).

The article on Lakewood and Pastor Joel Osteen by retired Rice professor William Martin was interesting and informative. I just missed taking Sociology of Religion at Rice with Dr. Martin, but I was just as pleased to take it with Dr. Michael Emerson, who was one of my favorite professors. As part of a class assignment, I visited Lakewood once. It's quite the experience, and I imagine it'll be quite the experience to go see Lakewood in the Compaq Center. It is extremely impressive that Lakewood is very diverse, and accurately reflects the diversity of the surrounding population.

Post-college, I lived in Northern Virginia for a little while. Once, I was flipping through tv channels and saw Lakewood airing on 3 different tv stations in the DC area. Wow. Of course, I watched the Redskins instead when they came back from halftime.

There was also an article on Kinky Friedman that is worth the price of the mag. I've emailed the folks at Texas Monthly to see if I can get y'all a link to the article, but in the meantime, here are some thoughts I jotted down as I read the article:

-- the Kinky campaign is currently in "phase one," which seeks to put Kinky in the spotlight as a serious candidate while laying the groundwork for signature gathering. I assume this means Phase 2 will be the signature gathering required to get on the ballot.

-- lots of one liners. Many of them are the same ones that appeared in recent articles and profiles of Mr. Friedman.

-- number of times Kinky is quoted using the f-word: 3.

-- Bryan Eppstein, possibly the highest regarded political consultant statewide in Texas, is quoted thus: "Could Kinky even pull 20%?"

-- Kinky's answering machine no longer says, "You've reached Richard Kinky "Big Dick" Friedman. (great, this means I'll start getting google search hits for "kinky big dicks")

-- the campaign claims that they've had 25000 offers to help gather signatures to get on the ballot.

-- there will be a CMT reality show this fall -- before Kinky will have even started gathering signatures to know whether he'll be on the ballot -- about Kinky Friedman's campaign.

Posted by Evan @ 07/18/05 03:33 PM | Comments (0)

16 July 2005

Perry's campaign finance report

Rick Perry's campaign finance report was filed today.

Perry has almost $9 million in cash on hand after raising $2.3million between June 20th and 30th. Overall, for the first six months of 2005, Perry has spent $1.4 million and raised $7.1 million.

Perry's opponent, Comptroller Carole Strayhorn, has $7 million in cash on hand, after raising $1.5 million in the same 10 day June period.

Posted by Evan @ 07/16/05 12:43 AM | Comments (0)

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