New Poll Shows Cruz and Dewhurst Neck and Neck

October 17th, 2011

The Cruz campaign alerted me to a new poll from the Azimuth Research Group that shows David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz neck and neck. In fact, they show Cruz leading, 32% to 31%, though they note that before rounding, the actual amount is less than 1%, and in any case within the +/-3% margin of error. Tom Leppert was third with 8%, Lela Pittenger as fourth with 5%, and Elizabeth Ames Jones edged out Glenn Addison for fifth, 4% to 3%.

While this is certainly good news for the Cruz campaign, a few caveats are in order:

  • Azimuth is a relatively new polling organization; in fact, I think they only started doing polling this year. Without a track record to for results in previous elections, there is no way to judge how effective their polling methodology is.
  • One of the polls they did earlier this year showed Ron Paul leading the Presidential race at 22%, substantially higher than any other polling company.
  • That, plus Pittenger coming in fourth, would suggest that the poll disproportionately samples people who are unusually active in politics, and thus not reflective of the actual makeup of Republican primary voters, which would boost Cruz in comparison to Dewhurst.
  • As such, I would take these results with several grains of salt until replicated by one of the more established polling services like Gallup or Zogby.
  • Still, even with those caveats, this is great news for Cruz five months out from the primary, as it shows a huge bump from the PPP poll of a month ago, which showed him at 12%. Even if you think the methodology overstates Cruz’s gain by 50%, that would still put him at 22%, a 10% increase in a single month. The poll was conducted 10/12-10/17, so it might show the effect of Cruz’s National Review cover appearance.

    Outlier or not, I can’t imagine anyone is happy with this result over at the Dewhurst campaign. With his money and name recognition, Dewhurst was supposed to be winning the race running away at this point. He’s not.

    Red State, Blue State

    October 16th, 2011

    Tax revenues in Texas rose 11.8% in September compared to September a year ago.

    Meanwhile, California took in 4 percent less than anticipated in September, falling $300 million short in September alone and $700 million short for the year.

    These numbers offer me a chance to offer up my long-in-gestation comparison between Texas and California.

    Both Texas and California share a number of similarities: They are the two most populous states in the Union, both are southern states with warm climates, both have long coastlines and important ports handling international trade, both share a border with Mexico, both have diverse populations and diversified economies, including extensive portions of the agriculture, energy, and high tech sectors.

    The biggest difference between the two is their respective governments. Texas, of course, is the paragon of the red state model (low tax, low spending, limited government, non-union) whereas California is the classic example of the blue state model (high tax, high spending, expansive welfare state, closed shop). Texas kept government small, tightened its belt and lived within its means. California spent like there was no tomorrow, jacked tax rates into the stratosphere, and gave generous contracts to public employee unions. Now Texas is doing well and California is going broke.

    Jay Ambrose asks:

    So what example should America follow, that of deficit-slaughtering, budget-cutting, seriously limited government in Texas, which has added 730,000 jobs in the past decade, or that of regulation-happy, spend-mercilessly, owe-everything, flee-this-place-quickly California, which has lost 600,000 jobs during the same period?

    Texas has some of the best cities for jobs in the country. California? It “boasted zero regions in the top 150.”

    Chief Executive ranks Texas as the best state for business, and California as the worst.

    High tech companies are fleeing California for low tax states. In fact, high earners inevitably flee high tax states for low tax states:

    Examining IRS tax return data by state, E.J. McMahon, a fiscal expert at the Manhattan Institute, measured the impact of large income-tax rate increases on the rich ($200,000 income or more) in Connecticut, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 5% from 4.5%; in New Jersey, which raised its rate in 2004 to 8.97% from 6.35%; and in New York, which raised its tax rate in 2003 to 7.7% from 6.85%. Over the period 2002-2005, in each of these states the “soak the rich” tax hike was followed by a significant reduction in the number of rich people paying taxes in these states relative to the national average. Amazingly, these three states ranked 46th, 49th and 50th among all states in the percentage increase in wealthy tax filers in the years after they tried to soak the rich.

    Here’s a comparison between California and Texas that explains, in great detail, how and why Texas is kicking California’s ass. Remember those job creation numbers, so ably depicted by WILLisms?

    Now compare Texas to California via this chart from Mark J. Perry’s Carpe Diem blog:

    Another reason Texas is thriving is that it doesn’t have overpaid, all-powerful public sector unions.

    High tech employees are fleeing California for Texas, because they can keep more of what they make, the government isn’t going bankrupt, and the roads and schools are now better in Texas. Despite all the money California spends on a a bloated public sector, the actual core services delivered are worse in California than they are in Texas:

    “Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California’s government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class.”

    Just how broke California is became apparent in a recent Michael Lewis piece in Vanity Fair. It illustrates who irretrievably broken California’s politics and finances are, and just how little a dent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made in fixing the problem:

    David Crane, the former economic adviser—at that moment rapidly receding into the distance—could itemize the result: a long list of depressing government financial statistics. The pensions of state employees ate up twice as much of the budget when Schwarzenegger left office as they had when he arrived, for instance. The officially recognized gap between what the state would owe its workers and what it had on hand to pay them was roughly $105 billion, but that, thanks to accounting gimmicks, was probably only about half the real number. “This year the state will directly spend $32 billion on employee pay and benefits, up 65 percent over the past 10 years,” says Crane later. “Compare that to state spending on higher education [down 5 percent], health and human services [up just 5 percent], and parks and recreation [flat], all crowded out in large part by fast-rising employment costs.” Crane is a lifelong Democrat with no particular hostility to government. But the more he looked into the details, the more shocking he found them to be. In 2010, for instance, the state spent $6 billion on fewer than 30,000 guards and other prison-system employees. A prison guard who started his career at the age of 45 could retire after five years with a pension that very nearly equaled his former salary. The head parole psychiatrist for the California prison system was the state’s highest-paid public employee; in 2010 he’d made $838,706. The same fiscal year that the state spent $6 billion on prisons, it had invested just $4.7 billion in its higher education—that is, 33 campuses with 670,000 students. Over the past 30 years the state’s share of the budget for the University of California has fallen from 30 percent to 11 percent, and it is about to fall a lot more. In 1980 a Cal student paid $776 a year in tuition; in 2011 he pays $13,218. Everywhere you turn, the long-term future of the state is being sacrificed.

    It’s even worse at the local level, where cities are going broke do to outrageous union pensions, such as in San Jose:

    It shows that the city’s pension costs when he first became interested in the subject were projected to run $73 million a year. This year they would be $245 million: pension and health-care costs of retired workers now are more than half the budget. In three years’ time pension costs alone would come to $400 million, though “if you were to adjust for real life expectancy it is more like $650 million.” Legally obliged to meet these costs, the city can respond only by cutting elsewhere. As a result, San Jose, once run by 7,450 city workers, was now being run by 5,400 city workers.

    What do the citizens of California get for some of the highest public sector wages in the country? Police and firefighters that stand around watching a man drown.

    San Jose is far from the worst:

    Back in 2008, unable to come to terms with its many creditors, Vallejo declared bankruptcy. Eighty percent of the city’s budget—and the lion’s share of the claims that had thrown it into bankruptcy—were wrapped up in the pay and benefits of public-safety workers.

    California has some of the highest taxes in the country, and it can’t make ends meet because it’s welfare state and public employee unions suck up every available dollar and more.

    You cannot tax your way to prosperity.

    You cannot spend your way to prosperity.

    Government can only create the conditions that allow the free market to create jobs.

    The red state model works.

    The blue state model doesn’t.

    Texas Senate Race Update for October 14, 2011

    October 14th, 2011

    And still more Texas Senate Race news:

  • BattleSwarm Blog gets named by the Ted Cruz campaign as the blog of the week. Sweet! Though I do feel compelled to point out that I have not endorsed any Senate candidate, that I try to give all the candidates a fair shake, and report things as I seem them without fear or favor. That said, I think Cruz is a very strong, conservative candidate who has run a very smart, effective campaign.
  • Cruz appeared on Glen Beck’s radio show. Beck does not sound enamored of David Dewhurst.
  • Speaking of Dewhurst, he picked up the “Courageous Defender of Life” award by the Texas Alliance for Life at the organization’s Annual Benefit Dinner in Austin. Given movement conservative grumblings about Dewhurst, that’s a very nice pickup for him.
  • Politico notes that Dewhurst’s $2.6 million haul “is the biggest total of any GOP Senate candidate over a three-month period this cycle.”
  • Tom Leppert puts up an Anti-occupy Wall Street petition. (Caveat: Remember that The American Independent isn’t.)
  • The Hill reports on the China dust-up. “It shows that Dewhurst is taking Cruz’s challenge very seriously, and that the two do not fear going on the attack against one another.”
  • Elizabeth Ames Jones is keynoting the the DUG Eagle Ford Conference, which is not for owners of a particular model of car, but which is about developing unconventional gas. Again, while it’s good that she’s taking her day job as Railroad Commissioner seriously, these days Jones’ event schedule makes it look like she’s running for Secretary of Energy in a Perry Presidential administration more than she’s running for the U.S. Senate.
  • There will be another candidate forum in Tyler this Saturday, at the Ramada Inn Conference Center, 3310 Troup Highway, Tyler, TX 75701. In attendance will be Cruz, Leppert, Jones, Glenn Addison, Andrew Castanuela, Lela Pettinger and Curt Cleaver. Lt. Gov. Chupacabra will once again be skipping the festivities.
  • That flyer is interesting for a number of reasons. Not only do they list and give one page bios for the attendees, but they also do they same for candidates they invited who aren’t attending. In fact, a lot (maybe all) Tea Party event have invited all the declared candidates, and I don’t know why Democratic longshots Sean Hubbard and Stanley Garza haven’t taken advantage of the offer, since their campaigns are generating zero buzz otherwise, and the forums would provide a chance for more exposure.
  • This Texas Tribune piece is a pretty standard brief roundup of the race, but it is notable in that it mentions Addison (and none of the other longshots) along with Cruz, Dewhurst, Leppert and Jones. Given Addison’s earlier complaints about being excluded from the Tribune’s June Senate candidate forum, I think he should rightly see this as an accomplishment.
  • Finally, signs of a Ricardo Sanchez campaign! He’ll be holding a “kickoff fundraiser” in Austin on Tuesday, October 18. Given that Sanchez first announced he was running on May 11, isn’t October a little late to be holding a kickoff fundraiser? What’s he been doing the past five months?
  • That flyer bears the name of Taylor Collective, who have done a lot of work for lefty causes and candidates, including Vermont’s Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.
  • Leppert Raises $640,000 in Q3, Tosses in Another $500,000 of His Own Money

    October 14th, 2011

    Tom Leppert’s campaign announced that it raised $640,000 in donations in Q3. In addition, it announced that Leppert, as he did in Q2, threw in another half million of his own money.

    Those are significant sums, and by no means disasterous, but it’s slightly less than the $750,000 in contributions he raised in Q2, which was, in turn, less than the $1 million in contributions and $1.6 million in self-funding he raised in Q1.

    So far Leppert has run a relatively smart and disciplined campaign, and currently has more cash on hand than Cruz, but he’s still in third place. He hasn’t generated the grassroots enthusiasm and buzz that Cruz has, and I’m reasonably sure he can’t self-fund at nearly the level David Dewhurst can. Though Leppert has positioned himself as a conservative (and issued many conservative position papers on a range of issues), he seems to draw more from Dewhurst’s establishment base in the business community, and the slight decrease in Q3 numbers may indicate that Dewhurst is already eating into those funding sources. Further, I see no signs that Leppert has successfully moved beyond his geographical base of support in the greater Dallas Metroplex.

    On the plus side, Leppert hasn’t seen quite the falloff in donations predicted by Cruz consultant Jason Johnson and he’s continued to attend the candidate forums (though he does not seem to be generating a lot of enthusiasm at them), which is more than you can say for Dewhurst. Also, no more skeletons have fallen out of his closet since the SEIU and ACORN revelations. That might change. (I might even shake a bone or two myself in coming weeks…)

    Obviously the Cruz campaign would like to see Leppert drop out to make it a clear one-on-one campaign against Dewhurst. However, while Leppert has not set the grass roots on fire, he has run a solid race, which is more than you can say for Elizabeth Ames Jones. If things continue on in the same vein, Leppert is well-positioned if one of the frontrunners stumbles or withdraws. After all, it’s politics, and stranger things have happened.

    However, right now Leppert is clearly in third place, and I expect Cruz’s new, National Review-boosted profile to result in a Q4 contribution increase sufficient to erase Leppert’s current self-funded edge in cash-on-hand.

    Leppert is hanging tough and running a competitive campaign, but in the end I don’t think that will be enough to get him into the runoff.

    (Edited to add: After I published, this I noticed that the Dallas Morning News link at the top had been updated to say that Elizabeth Ames Jones pulled in $235,000 for Q3. He doesn’t provide a link for this, and I can’t yet find confirmation on her website, Facebook page or Twitter feed. If true, I don’t see how Jones thinks she can compete with three candidates who all have ten times as much cash on hand as she does.)

    Sanchez Campaign Scrubs Mention of Tax Cuts From Their Website

    October 14th, 2011

    You may remember back in June, when I noticed that Ricardo Sanchez’s campaign website mentioned tax cuts as a means of creating jobs and improving the economy. Given that was so out of character for a Democrat, I thought I better get a screen shot to prove it was there:

    It’s in the third paragraph. Click to embiggen.

    It’s a good thing I did, as the Sanchez campaign has scrubbed the phrase “tax cuts” from the page. The old phrase was:

    The best approach to creating jobs in Texas is for us to provide tax cuts, incentives and increase financing support for small businesses.

    That same sentence today has excised the words “tax cuts”:

    The best approach to creating jobs in Texas is for us to provide incentives and increase financing support for small businesses.

    In fact, as far as I can tell, that’s the only change to that page.

    I have written the Sanchez campaign for an explanation of the change. I’ll let you know what they have to say if I ever receive a reply.

    Evidently tax cuts are so anathema to Democrats that even the hand-picked DNC candidate, running without serious primary opposition, running to be Senator from a very conservative state, and sure to be a heavy underdog in a general election in which Democratic control of the Senate will be up for grabs, is not allowed to mention them on his website.

    Senate Race Fundraising Numbers: A Historical Comparison

    October 13th, 2011

    Here are are some impressive fundraising numbers: Through the end of Q3 on September 30, the odds-on senate favorite has raised $6,444,926.

    The challenger? A comparatively paltry $1,615,165.

    Given those numbers, it should be pretty easy to figure out who the eventual winner is going to be, right?

    Wrong.

    Those numbers are from 2009, the odds-on favorite was sitting Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and the underfunded challenger was then-Speaker of the state House of Representatives Marco Rubio. Of course, that’s Senator Marco Rubio now, since he ended up pantsing Crist so badly the latter dropped out of the Republican primary and ran as an independent …whereupon Rubio kicked his ass.

    What happened? The Tea Party happened and Rubio caught fire as a better (and more conservative) candidate. Also, this happened:

    After that, Rubio’s fortunes (and fundraising) climbed while Crist’s fell. That’s why this:


    Should throw a sense of deep unease into David Dewhurst’s campaign team.

    Of course, that’s not the only similarity between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio:

  • Both are the sons of Cuban exiles.
  • Both earned law degrees.
  • Both were involved with conservative Republican politics from an early age.
  • Both were Tea Party favorites.
  • Both have been endorsed by Sen. Jim DeMint.
  • Both have been endorsed by George P. Bush.
  • I’m hardly the first one to make comparisons between Cruz and Rubio. (The Cruz campaign has not been shy about it either.)

    However, there are some differences that will make Cruz’s campaign against Dewhurst more difficult than Rubio’s was against Crist:

  • Dewhurst is more of a squish while Crist had gotten to be a full-blown RINO (no matter how hard others might make the comparison). None of Dewhurst’s disappointments compare to Crist embracing Obama-Pelosi-Reid’s budget-busting, pork-laden Stimulus.
  • Dewhurst is considerably wealthier than Crist ever was.
  • The Florida primary was much later, on August 24, whereas the Texas primary falls on March 6 in 2012.
  • Crist had been in politics since about 1986, whereas Dewhurst wasn’t elected Land Commissioner until 1998.
  • Rubio-Crist was pretty much a two man race, whereas Cruz must also contend with Tom Leppert (and, to a lesser degree, Elizabeth Ames Jones) as high-profile, well-funded candidates.
  • The Cuban-American community is not nearly as influential in Texas as Florida.
  • The chances of Dewhurst dropping out and running as an independent are, I think, pretty close to zero.
  • Still, at this point Dewhurst is running behind where Crist was during the same period, and Cruz is likewise running ahead of where Rubio was. Also, Texas is considerably more conservative than Florida.

    All this is a prelude to saying that Dewhurst’s and Cruz’s Q3 fundraising numbers are interesting, but hardly dispositive. There’s still a lot of race to be run.

    Dewhurst Raises $2.64 Million, Throws in $2 Million in Self-Funding, Has $4 Million On Hand

    October 13th, 2011

    Hot on the heels of Ted Cruz’s $1 million+ Q3 comes news that David Dewhurst raised $2.64 million in contributions. He also threw in $2 million of his own money, and has $4 million in cash on hand.

    That’s serious money, and having raised that much in essentially a month is impressive, no matter how you slice it. Still, Dewhurst was always seen as the “bank” in the race, and as someone who’s run successful, high profile statewide races before, it’s no surprise that his fundraising operation hit the ground running. A good portion of that $2.64 million is no doubt coming from Dewhurst supporters who were sitting on the sidelines waiting for him to get into the race, or business interests hoping to “back the winning horse.” It will be interesting to see if he can maintain that torrid pace in Q4.

    If there’s any cause for optimism among the Cruz campaign is that Dewhurst only put in $2 million of his own money in Q3, which means he still may be underestimating Cruz, as Dewhurst is purported to be so rich that he could easily give 10 times that much.

    I hope to provide some additional context to those fundraising totals in the next day or so…

    (Note: Totals corrected. When I first put this up, I said he raised $2.4 million, but that’s actually how much he raised over the last 31 days in the period.)

    Ted Cruz Raises $1 Million+ in Q3

    October 13th, 2011

    It’s time for candidate’s Q3 fundraising totals to start trickling out, and the Ted Cruz campaign is first out of the gate with the news that he raised $1,057,953 in Q3 and has $2.4 million cash on-hand. This is in line with his Q1 and Q2 fundraising totals, and I would expect a huge bump in Q4 thanks to his cover appearance in National Review.

    Now we wait for the Q3 fundraising numbers for the other candidates. How much personal money will David Dewhurst sink into his own campaign? Will Tom Leppert continue to self-fund at his $1 million a quarter clip? Has Ricardo Sanchez been fundraising in Q3? Or doing anything at all?

    Stay tuned…

    In Which My Texas Senate and Fast and Furious Updates Converge

    October 12th, 2011

    Former Texas Solicitor General and current senate candidate Ted Cruz calls for a Special Counsel to investigate Fast and Furious. The text of his announcement:

    Today, I’m calling for the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate Justice Department corruption in the weapons-trafficking scheme, “Fast and Furious.” The facts require a serious investigation. We cannot trust the Attorney General to “investigate” himself. The grave nature of these allegations—and the appearance of multiple obfuscations and evasions—demand an investigation free of political second guessing from the Obama White House.

    The more we learn about Fast and Furious, the more disturbing the revelations are. The public has a right to know who knew what and when. Americans deserve an open, transparent investigation free of political spin. It is clear that this case has now reached a critical point where an impartial investigator is required.

    Attorney General Eric Holder has been far from forthcoming in this investigation. Questions about what Holder and his staff knew about the operation, and their repeatedly changing stories, warrant an outside review.

    Everyone has the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty, but the continual stonewalling in this case has undermined the public trust. That trust can only be ensured by appointing a Special Counsel to review the case.

    As part of the Fast and Furious operation, more than 2,000 weapons were provided to Mexican drug cartels as part of a failed attempt to identify weapons smuggling networks. Many of those weapons have turned up at Mexican crime scenes. Two weapons were found at the scene of the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

    And then a link to an email for to join the call for the investigation (and, no doubt, provide a handy list of potential Cruz supporters).

    There may be a few national gun bloggers reading this who haven’t heard of Cruz, but that will no doubt change when the issue of National Review with him on the cover hits the stands. This is another example of Cruz getting a jump on his main rival, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, in addressing vital issues for movement conservatives.

    More Fast and Furious information here.

    More Texas Senate Race information here.

    Fast and Furious Update for October 11, 2011

    October 11th, 2011

    Either I’m getting a little better handle on things, or Fast and Furious revelations have slowed down just enough for me to keep up.

  • Looks like a subpoena is heading Eric Holder’s way.
  • Holder does not look like a happy camper:

  • The DEA appears to be even more involved with Fast and Furious than previously reported.
  • Obama’s popularity is dropping steeply with Hispanics…and Fast and Furious isn’t helping.
  • The MSM seems to have noticed that the Mexican cartels employee heavily armed paramilitary units, which anyone following the story on blogs would have known for, oh, at least a year.
  • The myth of the good drug cartel.
  • Report from the front lines of the Mexican drug war.
  • (Hat tips: Sipsey Street, Say Uncle, and the usual suspects.)