It takes a while for the FEC to put up the list of individual donations (even longer than putting up the summary reports), so I didn’t think to check out David Dewhurst’s individual contributions until this week. One thing that jumped out at me from the report was just how many donations he got from lawyers at Fulbright & Jaworski.
Fulbright & Jaworski ranked 52 overall on the Vault list of the top 100 law firms in the U.S., and fourth in the energy sector. The Jaworksi in the name comes from Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski. They’re headquartered in Houston but have offices worldwide. They’re generally considered one of the three biggest law firms in Houston, the other two being Baker Botts and Vinson & Elkins.
From the FEC, here are the donations Dewhurst received from Fulbright & Jaworski employees for his senate race (presented in the same format provided by the FEC, both for authenticity, and because I’m too lazy to reformat them):
BELL, JERRY A MR JR AUSTIN TX 78701 09/27/2011 1000.00 FULBRIGHT & JAWORSKI, L.L.P./ATTOR
BODE, JOYCE R MS AUSTIN TX 78701 09/27/2011 1000.00 FULBRIGHT & JAWORSKI, L.L.P.
I actually offer this up as more of a data point than a “gotcha.” While some Fulbright & Jaworski lawyers have been involved in liberal causes (like representing detained terrorists at Guantanamo Bay), 71% of their political donations have gone to Republicans. Fulbright & Jaworski seems to have done a lot of work for Dewhurst’s company Falcon Seaboard. (The Howard Wolf listed above is actually a retired partner for Fulbright & Jaworsk, as he’s currently President and Acting Chairman of Falcon Seaboard, has been appointed to several state boards, and is one of Dewhurst’s closest confidants.) Indeed, Dewhurst’s ties to the company are so extensive that he was he was willing to do this video taking about how awesome they are:
(I was also surprised to find an old high school classmate in the same video…)
The New York Timesdiscovers Ted Cruz. It’s generally a solid piece, though I do want to quibble with one part, even though it’s an opposition citation: “Mr. Dewhurst’s aides say that unlike Mr. Rubio, Mr. Cruz has been unable to translate the national attention into big increases in fund-raising and polls. While Mr. Cruz has raised $2.8 million to Mr. Dewhurst’s $2.64 million, Mr. Dewhurst has been in the race only since July.” Two points: 1.) Cruz is actually ahead of where Marco Rubio was in at this stage of the 2009-2010 election cycle, and 2.) Cruz’s National Review cover appearance (the most important part of that national attention) was just hitting newsstands at the very end of the Q3 fundraising period, so I wouldn’t expect to see any real fundraising bump until the Q4 numbers are released in January.
The Texas Tribune talks about David Dewhurst’s Ivory Tower strategy, which he seems to have gone back to. Dewhurst had this to say in his defense: “I’m not conservative enough, some say. They don’t know me. When they get to know me, they’ll know I am.” With all due respect, Lt. Governor, you’ve been in your current office since January of 2003, and many complaints come from conservatives in Texas. The problem is not lack of familiarity.
He also continues to garner hit pieces from the keyboard of The Dallas Morning News‘s Robert T. Garrett, who wonders at length why Cruz actually wants to be a conservative and dares to call out the Republican Senate leadership, rather than being one of those get-along-to-go-along Republicans DSM and other MSM outlets favor. Garrett asks several myopic questions, one of which I’ll actually answer for him: “Won’t opponents David Dewhurst and Tom Leppert say he’s undermining his effectiveness for Texas?” No, because whatever their other flaws, Leppert and Dewhurst both realize they’re trying to win the approval of Republican voters, not Dallas Morning News reporters. These days, approval from those two groups bear an obviously inverse relationship…
The Southern Political Report offers up a hefty does of Consensus Opinion on the race. If I had more time, I’d like to dissect the “People With Hispanic Surnames Can’t Win Statewide Republican Races” myth, which is based on precisely one data point: Victor Carrillo’s loss to David Porter in the 2010 Railroad Commissioner race. Even that same year, Eva Guzman beat Rose Vela for Supreme Court place 9. Moreover, it ignores the fact that Carrillo himself beat out the very-anglo-named Robert Butler in 2004. Carrillo lost in 2010 because he ran a very lackluster campaign and because Porter’s answers to the League of Woman Voters survey seemed more conservative, especially given the politically correct nods Carrillo gave to environmentalism and alternative energy in his answers, which was the deciding factor for me personally. However, I do get the impression that one factor did unfairly impact Carrillo’s campaign: the unpopularity of Rick Perry’s Trans-Texas Corridor proposal, which, even though the improperly named Railroad Commission had jack all to do with, probably did marginally hurt his candidacy because he was the incumbent.
Cruz has another low-budget animation aimed at Dewhurst. I don’t think it’s as effective as the Chupacabra spot, but I think these cheap Internet animations are very cost effective for building awareness.
No Ricardo Sanchez news this week, but he’s probably still recovering from his house fire, so I’ll give him some slack this time around.
If it seems like I put up a lot of Cruz media appearances, that’s because Cruz makes a lot of media appearances. I try to put up or link to any major state or national media appearance by any of the Texas senate race candidates. It just so happens that the Cruz campaign is very proactive in sending me links to them and making sure they appear on their blog. If the David Dewhurst and Tom Leppert campaigns were to do more appearances and send me the links, I would be putting those up as well.
I’d even put up more media appearances by Ricardo Sanchez…if he did more than one a month. And if his campaign bothered to put them up on his empty YouTube page.
Dewhurst makes an appearance in an NBC Nightly News Veteran’s Day piece that’s mainly about his father’s service in World War II:
Not a bad roundup of the race from Kate Alexander of the Austin American-Statesman. And the Sanchez campaign must be cringing over this cruelly accurate line “Democrats are barely mounting a fight for the U.S. Senate seat, so the Republican nominee is pretty much a shoo-in.” (One quibble with one of the quoted sources: I don’t think Leppert can drop $20 million on advertising. His fundraising has been solid but not mind-boggling, and he’s rich, but not Dewhurst rich.)
Hotline on Call is similarly dismissive of Sanchez: “Ricardo Sanchez has proven to be a non-factor in Texas.”
First, Texas Right to Life PAC endorses David Dewhurst. That’s a very good pickup for him, as he has not exactly been overwhelmed with conservative endorsements. I’m sure the Ted Cruz campaign is not happy that Dewhurst snagged this one. (Also not happy: ex-senate candidate Elizabeth Ames Jones, now running for the state senate from District 25…where they endorsed rival Donna Campbell for the same seat the same week Jones (who has repeatedly stressed her pro-life credentials) got into the race…)
Of the two, I have to rank the Dewhurst endorsement as the better pickup, mainly because his conservative endorsements for this race have been thin on the ground.
Can Dewhurst snag more conservative endorsements? Maybe. He’s been endorsed by groups like the NRA and Texans for Lawsuit Reform in the past…but that was when he was running against Democrats as Lt. Governor. Such groups may decide that Cruz is the better alternative, or pass on endorsing anyone before the primary.
Ted Cruz will be on Sean Hannity’s show at 8:30 PM tonight, discussing Fast and Furious, Occupy Wall Street, and no doubt many other topics. Since there does not appear to be a radio station that carries Hannity in Austin, and since I will be celebrating Nigel Tufnel Day tonight anyway, I guess I’ll have to catch it in reruns.
While on the subject of Cruz, I wanted to partially take issue with some of the assertions in the Kevin Brennan National Journal piece called “Popping the Ted Cruz Bubble.” Essentially it argues that Cruz is not the frontrunner and that previously mentioned internal Dewhurst poll shows that Cruz is way behind.
These two consecutive sentences get to the heart of the problem with Brennan’s piece: “Of course, a poll conducted for one of Cruz’s rivals is by no means a definitive take on the race. But that poll mirrors results of other surveys conducted privately in the state in recent months.”
The first part of that sentence is true but incomplete, since it is missing the word “internal” before poll, and the Dewhurst campaign has not deemed to share with us any of the methodology with which it was conducted. Despite Brennan’s assertion that its finding “come from live-call surveys that follow best-practices methodology most top-quality pollsters use, ” the only thing we actually know (thanks to Brennan) is that it was conducted by Mike Baselice.
Likewise, the second sentence makes assertions which are completely unverifiable to readers, and Brennan offers no convincing argument why we should take those assertions at face value. “Lots of super-secret polls that no one else but me has seen totally agree with the point I’m making.” Which polls? Conducted by who? Surveying how many voters? Registered or likely voters? With what methodology? With what margin of error? Etc. Without that knowledge, Brennan is simply making an unfounded assertion and asking us to take it on faith. And the rest of his article depends on taking those assertion at face value.
Honestly, if Dewhurst’s internal poll was rock solid, they would have released the full poll and methodology to the public, not merely leaked tidbits to favored journalists, especially given how favorable it is to Dewhurst. The fact that they haven’t indicates there are either methodological problems that can’t stand up to real scrutiny, or that the poll show other things (low likability scores for the Lt. Governor, perhaps?) that the Dewhurst campaign doesn’t want us to see.
Ultimately, Brennan uses those unnamed, unshared polls to offer the conclusion that “Cruz is virtually unknown among Texas conservatives,” a statement that is not merely false, but actively risible. The guy who was endorsed by Jim DeMint and the Club for Growth, has raised just shy of $3 million from contributors, and who was the poster boy for a laudatory cover story in National Review is “virtually unknown among Texas conservatives”?
Tom Leppert picked up the endorsements of the mayors of Corpus Christi, Arlington, Sugar Land, Richardson, Denton, and several other Texas cities. Though some of those are from his Metroplex base, those are good pickups for him, and it is interesting that he picked up the support of mayors of high-growth, suburban “ring” cities.
Robert T. Garrett of The Dallas Morning News calls Ted Cruz a “social conservative spearchucker.” (I can just picture Garrett using this phrase about Michael William or Herman Cain, and then Having a Little Talk with his editor.) Potentially offensive phrasing aside, “social conservative” is not quite accurate, since Cruz is a classic “fusionist” conservative Republican candidate, as both a social and economic conservative. In this race, Glenn Addison and Curt Cleaver fit the mold of social conservatives more fully than Cruz. And it does make one wonder, yet again, why Garrett insists on pushing the “Cruz sucks/Dewhurst is invincible” angle that has become his recent stock-in-trade…
The Houston Chroniclehas a poll for which Senate candidate you support.
USA Today deigns to notice Sean Hubbard. That’s probably the political highlight of his week, although last week he attended Occupy Dallas, which seems appropriate, since both will be entirely forgotten by this time next year. Judging from the pictures, I’ve thrown parties that had more attendees than Occupy Dallas…
Many candidates have offered up thanks to veterans today, but it took Ricardo Sanchez to turn it into an election pitch. I have no problem with Sanchez running on his military record, or if he had mentioned it in passing in a post appreciating veterans, but to turn a Veterans Day message into a pitch of Democratic talking points while hustling for votes seems…unseemly.
I’ve not been keeping up with the situation in Killeen, but evidently City Council members voted to give the City Manager a $750,000 buyout, then refused to justify their actions to the taxpayers. The result? All five remaining City Council members were successfully recalled. Note to politicians across the state: Texas is not California. Try to get away with this sort of self-dealing here and we will boot your ass out of office. (Hat tip: Blue Dot Blues.)
Speaking of cartel violence, the Mexican government evidently has the La Familia Michoacana drug gang on the ropes. La Familia was previously allied with the Gulf Cartel, but more recently worked with the Zeta cartel. I’d previously mentioned La Familia (and their activity in Austin) here.
Democrats on the “SuperCommittee” propose…wait for it…wait for it…spending more money! Remember, any time a congressional Democrat says they want to cut spending, they’re lying. (If a Republican says they want to cut spending, there’s at least a possibility that they’re telling the truth.)
David Brooks praises Mitt Romney as “smart” and “sophisticated.” Yeah, like conservatives needed another reason to vote against Romney…
By contrast, George Will says that in Romney “Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis.” (What’s the difference between David Brooks and George Will? One is a well-dressed, articulate, sophisticated, respected conservative columnist, and the other is David Brooks.)
I already mentioned this yesterday, but here’s the video of Sen. John Cornyn laying the smackdown on Eric Holder as to the difference between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious.
I’ll try to do a Greek/Euro debt update just as soon as I figure out just what the hell Europe is actually doing…
Trailing in polls, fundraising, name recognition, and stage presence, Elizabeth Ames Jones announced she’s dropping out of the Senate race to run for the Texas Senate District 25 against incumbent Sen. Jeff Wentworth.
Setting aside of the question of why you would want to move from the Railroad Commission to the State Senate (which seems like a slight downgrade to me), the Senate District 25 race already had one Tea Party challenger to Wentworth in Donna Campbell, who may find herself financially outgunned if Jones transfers her U.S. Senate race money. (Naturally, Wenworth wants Jones to return the money.) There have been mutterings in some quarters (at least stretching back to last decade’s redistricting fight) that Wentworth is too liberal for his district. Should all three stay in, this should prove to be a very interesting primary fight.
Clearly Jones was overdue to get out of the Senate race, and had been for some time. Not only were David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz firmly established as the top two candidates, but they and Tom Leppert were all clearly outperforming Jones in every phase of the campaign. From all that I could see, Jones performed poorly at the the various candidate debates and forums and fell woefully behind in the fundraising race. I think there was a much greater possibility that Jones could have come in behind long-shot Glenn Addison in the March primary than that she could overtake Cruz or Dewhurst.
Jones was the very first candidate to declare for the U.S. Senate race, filing her paperwork way back on November 3, 2008, but never seemed to gain any traction once additional candidates jumped in after Kay Baily Hutchison announced she was retiring.
This is good news for the Ted Cruz campaign, and bad news for David Dewhurst, since it gives Cruz a clearer shot at him. Dewhurst clearly has no desire to debate Cruz one-on-one, and the more candidates in the race, the less likely it is for conservative voters to coalesce around Cruz as the anti-Dewhurst campaign.
Now that Jones is out, will Leppert bow out as well? I doubt it. Though he clearly hasn’t caught fire, Leppert has (thanks to a generous measure of self-funding) stayed on pace with the front-runners in the fundraising derby, and he’s clearly a better campaigner, and has a much better organization, than Jones. My hunch says that he stays in until March, and then comes in a distant third. But there’s still an awful lot of campaign left…
I suppose I should do these updates some day other than Friday night Saturday morning, since few people read them then or over the weekend, but it’s been a busy week…
Mario Loyola discusses Ted Cruz and his father Rafael as part of a longer story on the Cuban exile experience in America, the widespread Cuban opposition to the Batista regime, and how Castro betrayed the revolution to impose Communism. And he delivers such a complete and utter bitchslapping of The Dallas Morning News that I have to quote the last few paragraphs:
Cubans here and there have had to endure the calamities of the Revolution alone. Conservatives in America reached out to us and supported us, and our parents found solace in their enmity to Communism. But they weren’t really with us either, because they had no idea how awful Fidel Castro really was. It simply isn’t within the comprehension of any American that someone could actually choose to be as evil as Castro. The sheer depravity of his crimes against the Cuban people helped to keep the depredations of his rule a secret hiding in plain sight, where only other Cubans could see them.
It’s no surprise that liberal papers such as the Dallas Morning News now think they’re in some position to judge which families are truly exiles and which aren’t. It was liberal papers — particularly the New York Times — that originally built Castro up into an international hero and persisted in romanticizing him long after he offered Cuba’s young men to the Kremlin as a Third World army. It was liberal papers that blamed the U.S. embargo for the economic catastrophe into which Castro plunged Cuba. It was liberal newspapers that helped to occlude the unspeakable daily abuses of Castro’s regime beneath the fantasy of a romantic nationalist who was bravely willing to stand up to imperialism.
“There is power,” the Dallas Morning News tells us, “in linking your past and your future to this unending struggle [against Fidel]. But because the fathers of both these men [Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio] migrated several years before the revolution, as is now clear, the link is at best a stretch. In the case of Cruz, the situation is even more complicated because his father originally supported Castro.” What utter nonsense. It would be offensive if the editors actually had any idea what they were talking about. No Cuban exile would for a second say that the Rubio and Cruz families were any less exile than anyone else. All of our families lost their homeland. That some were already here when it happened is irrelevant — nobody meant to forsake Cuba by coming here. We lost Cuba because Castro took it from us, from all of us, born and unborn, both here and back there.
Among Cuban-Americans, having been an early supporter of Castro in no way diminishes your anti-Communist credentials. On the contrary, it is the typical story for almost every family. Virtually all of our families opposed the dictatorship of Batista. Virtually all of our families believed Castro’s rhetoric of democracy and liberty. The first thing everyone hated about him was his evident relish in betraying his most ardent supporters. That was the first of many very personal reasons he would give us to hate him, reasons that only we can really understand.
What makes us exiles is not merely the fact that our families can’t go back to Cuba. It is that Castro wantonly ruined the land that our families grew up in, the land of our forefathers, and now that land exists only in the fading black-and-white pictures and memories of the happy childhoods of a generation that is dying now. Compared with that, what possible difference could it make that our grandparents arrived one year and not another? Senator Rubio didn’t know exactly what year his father first got here because it doesn’t matter.
Still, I can’t say that I’m terribly surprised by the Dallas Morning News’s display of presumptuousness and ignorance. The editors are decent people, and if they knew even 5 percent of what I know about the Revolution and its exiles, I’m sure they would be deeply ashamed of what they’ve written. But they don’t and they never will — Castro has already seen to that.
Read the whole thing.
Speaking of people that Mario Loyola just made look like petty, misinformed idiots, The Dallas Morning News‘s Robert T. Garrett (who we talked about last week) covers Cruz’s accusations of MSM outlets like The Dallas Morning News targeting conservative Hispanics. Tune in next week for Garrett reporting on Cruz’s complaints about Garrett’s reporting on Cruz’s complaints. Presumably from the inside of a mirror box.
The Ted Cruz campaign has challenged David Dewhurst to five one-on-one Lincoln-Douglas debates (and the King Street Patriots were quick to agree to host at least one). This is a smart way for Cruz to help break further away from Tom Leppert and Elizabeth Ames Jones, and turn the race into a two man contest between him and Dewhurst…which is why Dewhurst would be foolish to take Cruz up on the offer. And, indeed, he does not seem so inclined.
ABC News notices the hit pieces on conservative Hispanic politicians in this interview with Cruz:
New Revolution Now emailed to say that Cruz won the straw poll at the Tuesday’s Texarkana senate forum. The total results were:
Ted Cruz: 54%
Glenn Addison: 21%
Lela Pittenger: 20%
Andrew Castanuela: 5%
David Dewhurst: <1%
Speaking of polls, this David Catanese Politico piece says that Dewhurst’s “internal poll” has Dewhurst at 50%, Leppert at 9%, and Cruz at 6%. I’m sure it does.
The Texas Tribune says “Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is running a state version of a Rose Garden strategy.” As indeed he is.
I get the distinct impression that someone at D magazine doesn’t like Leppert. They also evidently don’t like using anything that’s actually funny in their “comedy.”
This page on possible Senate race takeover targets had the Texas race down at 21st (i.e., not bloody likely), and had this to say: “Ricardo Sanchez hasn’t made the impact the local Democrats hoped he would.” Indeed.
Evidently all tuckered out from his 18-minute interview October 23, Sanchez seems to have returned to hibernation this week.
Other than appearing in that poll and turning 55 on October 29, Elizabeth Ames Jones doesn’t seem to have been much more active than Sanchez. Hey, here’s an idea: They’re both from San Antonio. Why not meet each other for a weekly debate? Nothing else they’re doing seems to be attracting donations or attention, and both need to bone up on their public speaking skills…
