Barring any catastrophic event, Ted Cruz is going to be the next Senator from Texas, but the campaign keeps on chugging along. The official fundraising forms from the FEC aren’t up yet, but the two campaigns have announced the totals raised.
I can’t find any mention of Paul Sadler’s fundraising numbers on his press release page, but according to the Houston Chronicle, Sadler raised “about $358,734″ in Q3. In truth, that’s a bit more than I expected him to raise, given that he has about as much hope of being elected Senator than the Cleveland Browns do of winning the 2013 Superbowl.
I intend to do a comprehensive roundup of why Ted Cruz won the Senate race, and why David Dewhurst lost, but it’s such a big subject I’m having trouble getting started. There’s entirely too much to talk about, and I’m still digesting all the ramifications.
So instead, here are a few other random observations from last night’s runoff:
Republicans now have two Hispanic candidates running for statewide office: Ted Cruz at the top of the ballot (just below President) for United States Senate, and Elsa Alcala for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Place 8. Number of Democrats nominated for statewide office in Texas in 2012: Zero. (Even the Libertarians have more statewide Hispanic candidates than the Democrats this year, which is to say they have one.)
Actually, the Libertarians more candidates running statewide than the Democratic Party does. And the Greens (five) have just as many.
Donna Campbell stomped Jeff Wentworth, taking two-thirds of the vote against a long-time incumbent which (absent a serious scandal) is almost unheard of. However, the result isn’t the “upset” some newspapers are proclaiming it, since Elizabeth Ames Jones split the anti-Wentworth vote in the primary, indicating deep dissatisfaction with the very establishment incumbent.
As expected, Paul Sadler beat Grady Yarbrough for the Democratic Senate nomination. Sadler is about to find out that when members of the national Democratic Party promised him adequate funding if he won the primary, they were engaged in what is commonly known as “lying.”
Republican U.S. Congressional Race runoffs: Ron Paul-endorsed Randy Weber beat Felicia Harris in CD14, Roger Williams beats Wes Riddle in CD25 (Last Williams Standing, and I think the only Senate race dropout to win their new race), once and future congressman Steve Stockman (part of the Gingrich wave in 1994) beat Stephen Takach in CD36. Plus longshots in two heavily Democratic districts: Dale A. Brueggemann over Eddie Zamora in CD15 to face incumbent Ruben Hinojosa, and Jessica Puente Bradshaw over Adela Garza to take on Filemon Vela in new “minority opportunity” CD34.
Pete Gallego beat former congressman Ciro B. Rodriguez for the chance to take on Republican incumbent Francisco “Quico” Canseco in CD23. Canseco took the seat away from Rodriguez in 2010, and CD23 is essentially the only realistic opportunity Democrats have to flip a Texas U.S. congressional seat this election.
The Tea Party is alive and well not only in Texas, but also in Georgia, where voters rejected a consultant pocket-lining mass transportation tax hike supported by the Republican governor.
Now that polls have closed, runoff voting results are trickling in, and Ted Cruz is currently beating David Dewhurst by a little more than 52% to 48% in early voting results. Remember, Dewhurst dominated early voting results in the primary; if the same pattern holds, Cruz should win decisively.
Democratic results are here. If early results hold, the Grady Yarbrough dream dies tonight…
Tomorrow’s election day! Get out there and vote! And if you’re still making up your mind, you might want to read my endorsement of Ted Cruz.
Now the final roundup of pre-runoff Senate race news:
Evan at Perry vs. World debunks Cruz’s role in Dewhurst’s last-minute “cash for kids” ad. “Ted Cruz was trying to help the Kids for Cash victims get the money they deserved from an insurance company.”
The more detailed explanation that Evan links to is here. “In either case, Cruz had nothing to do with the creation of the fund or how much it pays victims. He was not one of the attorneys listed on the agreement. If anything, Cruz’s only involvement in the case would have resulted in more—not less—money for victims.”
Even Paul Burka can see the writing on the wall: “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.”
Politico joins the list of those expecting a Cruz victory. “We’re on the 2-yard line. We have marched the entire length of the field. We started out up in the hot dog stands.”
Final day of campaigning: “At Dewhurst’s stopover at an Austin Chick-fil-A franchise early Monday, about a dozen supporters waved Dewhurst placards—and close to half of them were lobbyists.”
Q: So Dewhurst, are any of your staffers working for the SuperPACs slamming Ted Cruz? A: No. Q: Former staffers? A: Uh….
Fox Houston: “Early voting numbers show Cruz ahead by 10 percent.” I assume they mean the PPP poll, as they usually don’t release actual vote totals until the polls have closed on election night.
Dewhurst is still campaigning. Here’s his last-minute-push video with Rick Perry:
At least it’s refreshingly-free of dishonest slime attacks against Cruz…
And yes, the Democrats are having their own runoff tomorrow. The Texas Democratic Party all but says “Screw neutrality, you better vote for Paul Sadler if you know what’s good for you.” They also commit a factual error. As readers of this blog know, Grady Yarbrough has been endorsed by a newspaper, The Austin Villager. Since the The Austin Villager is a black community newspaper, if a Republican omitted them, you know they would be accused of racism…
Yarbrough comes out for illegal alien amnesty, which might be a we tad inconsistent with his previous stance on putting the Berlin Wall on the border.
If Yarbrough does win the Democratic runoff, $20 says Sadler and the TDP try to get him thrown off the ballot for not filing his FEC forms…
Ted Cruz staffer Joshua Perry recently tweeted that he had hit a deer. (Both his car and the deer were fine.) I quipped that he should hope it was a Dewhurst-voting deer. He replied he thought it was for Sadler. But there are so many other possibilities:
It was a Grady Yarbrough deer, disoriented from suddenly being thrust from the safety of obscurity, out into the bright onrushing headlights.
It was a Sean Hubbard deer, which had spent the last two months wandering around despondently without purpose, before finally deciding to put itself out of its misery.
It was a Craig James deer, sure it could make it across the road, but only made in 3% of the way before it got hit.
It was a Ricardo Sanchez deer, which just stepped out into the road before realizing that it didn’t have the energy to get to the other side.
It was a Joe Agris deer, who felt its mission was accomplished simply by stepping out onto the road.
It was a Michael Williams deer, which suddenly decided it wanted to be on another road.
It was a Roger Williams deer, which was just following the Michael Williams deer.
In summary: I’ve been following the Texas Senate race too damn long!
George Will says that Dewhurst is good enough. I would take issue with one of Will’s assertions, though: If you read that letter signed by eighteen Texas state senators, it is not “in support of Dewhurst,” but rather a technical description of the various legislative fates of the various bills Cruz said Dewhurst either killed behind the scenes, or else didn’t push hard enough for. It’s not an endorsement of Dewhurst’s candidacy by those Senators. However, Dewhurst did just pick up the endorsement of…
State Senator Dan Patrick. Given the significant differences Dewhurst and Patrick have had over the years (most notably the fate of the anti-groping bill), that’s a good pickup for Dewhurst, though I don’t think it really moves the needle.
Many members of the legislative Tea Party Caucus are not pleased.
Dewhurst’s conservative credentials get examined by Rice professor Mark P. Jones, who concludes that “Dewhurst’s ideological location is somewhere in the moderate or centrist wings of the Republican Senate delegation,” while passing legislation acceptable to “most” Republicans.
Blogger Befuddled by the Clowns says that “Dewhurst because he clearly feels he will be able to swing in and buy the votes. In my mind, this represents the same old arrogance that has existed in Washington DC for decades. This prevailing attitude is the very essence that I want evaporated from our Federal Government…It is clear that David Dewhurst is out of touch with the real working class and will bring his elitist ideals with him. These are the reasons why I voted for Ted Cruz.”
The Senate race runoff is barreling down the track toward us, so there’s a lot of race news this week:
New poll has Dewhurst down by 10 points. One caveat is that I haven’t heard of Political Gravity before, so I have no way to evaluate their robopolling methodology.
Cruz beat Dewhurst in fundraising from the first 11 days of July, pulling in $522,600 while Dewhurst brought in $160,400.
Cruz has 15 times as much cash on hand as Dewhurst. Then again, Dewhurst could always write himself a check, and maybe he’s prepaid for more deceptive attack ads.
But if so, why is Dewhurst having a fundraiser with Governor Rick Perry on election eve? I would think you would want to be doing your last big campaign push then…
This article suggests that Cruz has actually been spending more than Dewhurst, but I’m not sure that’s right. And has Dewhurst really only donated a paltry $22,147 to his own campaign? Maybe, since he’s loaned it millions, but that number still seems strangely low (but I don’t have time to go digging through his FEC reports right now).
Joe Holley says Cruz won Tuesday’s debate. “A debate, whatever the format, is just not Dewhurst’s forte, as he himself pretty much admitted Tuesday night, and he went on to prove it. He looked uncomfortable, often stumbled, and at times found himself on the defensive. It was not a good night for him.”
Even though I’ve endorsed Ted Cruz, I think it only fair to point out that Dewhurst has, in fact, constantly stated that he’s in favor of repealing ObamaCare pretty much since he joined the Senate race. (I even used the Wayback machine to verify it.) However, Cruz has been more fervent and articulate in campaigning against ObamaCare, making the phrase “repeal every syllable of every word of Obamacare” one of his stock talking points from the very beginning of his campaign. He’s also discussed the 10th Amendment reasons why ObamaCare is unconstitutional, something that I don’t recall Dewhurst doing. (Dewhurst has mentioned the 10th Amendment in support of the Texas Voter ID law.)
Cruz’s worry (which I think is legitimate) is that Dewhurst might be willing to compromise on ObamaCare. And I could easily see Dewhurst signing on with some “Group of 14″ (or whatever) to needlessly save ObamaCare despite a Republican House, Senate, and White House, rather than push for full repeal.
Which is why this rings a little hollow to me:
But unlike some of Dewhurst’s other ads, at least that one probably won’t cost him votes…
Here’s the video of last week’s Cruz-Dewhurst debate:
The Dewhurst campaign is pointing to this Cruz appearance on the Dan Patrick show as evidence Cruz is a hothead:
34 minutes? No time to listen tonight…
And here’s still another journalist opining that the mid-Summer runoff date will mean. Memo to the MSM: IT’S TEXAS! IT’S HOT! WE’RE FREAKING USE TO IT!
Grady Yarbrough and Paul Sadler also debated last week. Yarbrough said he supported a border wall, saying that the Berlin Wall was effective. Hmmm, I don’t think I would have made that analogy…
Speaking of things I’m not watching tonight, here’s KERA’s embeddable video of the Democratic debate:
More on the Democratic debate. Another summary. My summary of those two summaries: Yarbrough wants a border wall and legal pot, and Sadler is against both of those. Sadler does actually say the national debt is too high.
Here’s a nifty interactive primary map for the Democratic side of the Texas Senate race. What jumps out at me is less the respective totals for the Democratic candidates than the fact that that there were no votes cast in the Democratic primary for United States Senator at all in 13 counties. Sure, some (like Loving) are sparsely populated. But out of the 13,153 registered voters in Hockley County, not a single one cast a vote in the Democratic Senate primary? Either there’s something screwy with the data collection, or the Texas Democratic Party is even more pathetic than even i realized.
One more tidbit: Sean Hubbard came in dead last in his home base of Dallas County…
I put off putting up the latest Texas Senate race update until the Republican Party of Texas convention in Ft. Worth concluded. Good thing, too, since a lot of news came out of it, almost none of which was good for Dewhurst, but some of this news may be a bit old.
Ted Cruz appears on Fox News:
Dewhurst claims he wants more than five debates with Cruz. Since Dewhurst did extremely poorly in the ones he did have, color me skeptical.
The Cruz campaign says it’s raised a lot more Texas contributors and small donors than Dewhurst does. While I think they’re probably correct, honesty compels me to point out that comparing Cruz’s internal June 4 donation stats with Dewhurst’s May 17 FEC stats is not an apples-to-apples comparison for many reasons, not last of which is that FEC reports only show donations over $200, so the 69 number for “donations under $250″ is simply misleading. (When I pointed this out to the Cruz campaign, they noted that Dewhurst is free to release his own small-donor statistics. Which is true.)
A look at various reasons Dewhurst couldn’t win without a runoff. Ahem: “Just about everybody bet on Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to win outright.” yeah, Ross Ramsey, everyone except those of us who were actually paying attention to the race.
And as far as I can tell looking at the stats on his official page, the most people who have listened to any David Dewhurst YouTube radio interview posted in the last month is…35.
